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Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

cnbc.com

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Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#141

Post by ajross »

swebs wrote: post #17

>In addition, the company also pledges its public policy team will lobby for an increase to the federal minimum wage from $7.25 — it doesn’t identify a specific wage that it’s targeting, but instead says, “We believe $7.25 is too low. We would look to Congress to decide the parameters of a new, higher federal minimum wage.” I'm going to take a wild guess and assume it will be $15/hour. That way they'll get to look pr…

> they'll get to look progressive for adopting this wage early, while mitigating their competitive disadvantage by forcing every other company to raise their wages too eventually.

That's deeply cynical. In the process, they're actually paying real people more money. Which is sort of critically important if you care about this issue and not just taking pot shots at Amazon on HN.

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#142

Post by sumedh »

bhupy wrote: post #84
czep wrote: post #47

Opponents of the minimum wage argue that it reduces employment by creating an artificial floor on wages, that jobs are lost because employers can't afford to pay the minimum. But if you can't pay the minimum, then you didn't really have a job to offer in the first place! By extension of this logic, employers could argue that they are losing jobs because they can only afford to pay someone who will work 12 hours a day…

> If you can't pay a basic living wage, for fair hours, in safe conditions, with necessary medical benefits, then you don't have a job to offer. Why not let the employees decide if the job is worth taking? If there exists people willing to voluntarily take a job given its wage/conditions, you have a job to offer.

> If there exists people willing to voluntarily take a job given its wage/conditions,

Lot of those people are illegal immigrants as well. They cant job hop.

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#143

Post by watwat1 »

flexie wrote: post #57

$15/hour is still not much in the international market where Amazon sells its goods. In large parts of Europe it's less than what a warehouse worker makes. It's still barely enough for an adult to be able to pay his/her half of family expenses in the US. A lot of employees will still need a second job. And it only comes now, 20 years after the company's founding, after it has huge profits (and can deduct expenses lik…

Amazon doesn’t have huge profits. Educate yourself.

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#144

Post by simias »

chrisseaton wrote: post #55
tyingq wrote: post #7

Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, recently introduced legislation to end what he calls “corporate welfare” — and it’s pretty clear who he had in mind, since the bill was titled Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (BEZOS). Bernie out-marketing AMZN is pretty funny.

Maybe I've got no sense of humour, but I think that's unprofessional and something like bullying, rather than funny. Legislation should surely not target one individual by name like that?

I really dislike the trend in the USA to give silly "marketable" acronyms to laws but as far as bullying is concerned I think when you're a high profile powerful public figure who's outspoken about certain issues your name pretty much de-facto becomes public domain. If it was the name of a random citizen then yeah, that would be pretty bad indeed.

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#145

Post by [deleted] »

Egidius wrote: post #123
chrisseaton wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you deserve to be made fun of I don't think anyone deserves to be made fun of, full stop. Grown-up criticism is fine.

I don't agree. I think satire, which this can be perceived as, is a means to achieve people to get to change their mind. Making fun of people on terms of race, age, gender, anything they cannot do anything about, is not something I agree with doing. But come on, this guy was squeezing out people who ended up in the situation where they had to work in warehouse packing boxes.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#146

Post by kbutler »

rando444 wrote: post #98
chrisseaton wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I've got no sense of humour, but I think that's unprofessional and something like bullying, rather than funny. Legislation should surely not target one individual by name like that?

The legislation doesn't target Amazon specifically, just corporations who are leveraging government welfare programs in order to get away with underpaying their employees. Wal-Mart is the company that would be impacted the most by this legislation.

...and yet, Bernie gave it Bezos's name.

"I've got a bill with your name on it."

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#148

Post by JoeAltmaier »

knightofmars wrote: post #140
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Amazon actually pay any worse or have worse working conditions than any other unskilled warehouse job? I'm not sure, but I think most places are OK with bathroom breaks. I could be wrong, though. If so, why didn't the employees change jobs? See, this is much more difficult. If the Amazon warehouse pays more than other jobs around - even if the pay is still low - it makes it much more difficult to leave the job. Y…

"I'm not sure it is fully capitalism's fault..." I agree. The problem here isn't capitalism. I also don't think it's lack of laws, it might be the opposite. People being abused by corporations who have manipulated laws in order to favor the corporations. Things such as "forced arbitration clauses", "anti-union legislation", and "non-compete clauses" are meant to strip the power away from workers. That we blame any ec…

Whoa! not all of them are individual people's fault. There's still problems with the system itself including tyranny of the majority, systemic bias, inflation and recession to name the first few that occur to me.

Re: Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

#150

Post by PhasmaFelis »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #41
itamarst wrote: post #26

The blog post says "employees". No reporter I've seen has bothered to ask if it applies to contractors.

Wouldn't contractors set their own rates?

In modern America, many "contractors" are just regular employees in every respect except that they're employed and contracted out by a third party, so they don't get the same privileges, protections, and benefits as "real" employees.

A lot of companies (Lexmark is one I know for sure) like to trot out press pieces on how well they treat their employees, leaving out the fact that maybe 80% of the people working for them are not technically "employees."

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