Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees • Hacker News Board

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

#541

Post by empath75 » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:02 PM UTC

theandrewbailey wrote: post #333

Shivetya wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. There is a greater tolerance for whom you will accept at current wage points. The other effect of a much higher starting wage is you will have people enter the market who did not think the wage was worth their time. The people who cannot be relied on to show up on schedule, quit and want to come back, have some issues in their credit or criminal backgroun…

A national $15/hour minimum wage isn't going to fly in places like small town Kentucky or West Virginia. Those places don't have good jobs anymore, and the only businesses left are a drive-thru and a Dollar General. They can barely afford a dozen or so people working at minimum wage now, and they can't run a place with half the employees. Their customers can barely afford to shop there and can't take paying more to c…

I get that it's inconvenient for everyone in town to get up and leave, but once a region is no longer economically productive, it's the only thing that makes sense.

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

#542

Post by femto113 » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:02 PM UTC

intopieces wrote: post #501

pkulak wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're willing to shame a company for behavior you don't like, I think you should be prepared to give praise when they do exactly what you just asked for. When you constantly move the goal posts just so that you never have to abandon your righteous anger for even one day, what kind of incentive does that give companies to change their behavior?

Corporations do not deserve praise for doing the right thing. They are not people, with feelings, who respond to emotional stimuli in the form of positive reinforcement. They are businesses that respond to the market (indeed, their legal duty is to maximize profits). In markets, negative pressure works. Asking nicely does not.

Nonsense--there is no "legal duty to maximize profits". That concept isn't really meaningful: maximize over what term? In fact Amazon is probably the number one counter-example to that idea, they've never prioritized profits and have plowed everything they can back into infrastructure. There's also no "legal duty to pay employees as little as possible", nor "legal duty to fight unionization" nor a hundred other things that some corporations do against the interests of their employees. For publicly traded companies the only recourse shareholders have is to vote out the board if they don't think things are being run correctly, but there's no law that's defining what correctly is.

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

#543

Post by andrekandre » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:03 PM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #516

intopieces wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations do not deserve praise for doing the right thing. They are not people, with feelings, who respond to emotional stimuli in the form of positive reinforcement. They are businesses that respond to the market (indeed, their legal duty is to maximize profits). In markets, negative pressure works. Asking nicely does not.

> their legal duty is to maximize profits I am not nit-picking, asking in good faith: is that enacted into a law ? Or is that part of a contract between shareholders and the board of executives ? I have heard about that walmart competitor run like a family business and that gives every employees a voice (a cooperative ?).

there is such a thing as “fedicuary duty” [1] which could be sometimes interpreted as “maximize profits” i suppose...

according to this ny times article [2] it states:

`There is a common belief that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize corporate profits and “shareholder value” — even if this means skirting ethical rules, damaging the environment or harming employees. But this belief is utterly false. To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.”`

the ny times article also cites some sources such as supreme court case; it’s well worth a read

[1] https://www.sandiegobusinesslawyerblog.com/fiduciary-duties-...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

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

#544

Post by jinfiesto » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

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…

It's to their advantage to do this on their clock, so I agree. If they push this through, they'll be much more prepared than any of their competitors.

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

#545

Post by Simulacra » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

Well I don’t agree with unions politically, the threat of unionization does have a positive effect at times ...

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

#546

Post by java_script » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

ttoinou wrote: post #439

java_script wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think they should be allowed to do whatever they think is best for them. I think they should be allowed to vote and agitate for whatever they think is best for them. And thus.... viola, minimum wage and subsequent increases. Although I know majorities are a touchy subject with libertarians since there are like six of you total nowadays.

I agree with the first sentence. The rest of it is a personal attack, please read the guidelines and respect rules of places you make use of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thank you for the constructive feedback.

I have some to offer as well. This is you: https://i.imgur.com/jPyEBOD.jpg

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

#547

Post by Egidius » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #464

Egidius wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe people working in Amazons warehouses ended up in a situation they did not want to end up in the first place. Adam Smith (writer of The Wealth of Nations, you might have heard of it) pointed out that forcing individuals to perform mundane and repetitious tasks would lead to an ignorant, dissatisfied work force. For this reason he advanced the revolutionary belief that governments had an obligation to provide…

Amazon provides generous education benefits to their hourly employees: https://www.aboutamazon.com/working-at-amazon/career-choice Which is both a good thing for workers and something that makes sense for Amazon to provide. Amazon, believe it or not, doesn't actually want to hire and deal with workers who perceive themselves as perpetually and inevitably poor. They want to hire hardworking, ambitious people who want…

I'd rather see actual numbers about the flow of Amazon employees who get promoted in stead of a website with their good intentions.

Apart from that: do not think that I care about the party you're on and which political person you're against. I live thousands of miles away from your country. I only care about the idea. And the idea of getting payed $7.25 in the US seems like a preposterous way of life.

But I don't have the illusion I'm able to change your mind overhere, so I'll stop wasting my time with it. I believe in the free market, but without certain rules (like a reasonable minimum income) people and organisations are able to take advantage in a way that gets out of balance which the free market won't ever get the chance to ever fix.

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

#548

Post by lyonssp » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #502

wstuartcl wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... FFS -- it was shaming of amazon's pay rate for their employees that caused the change in behavior in the first place. I think it is rational to look at what and why actions were taken. Do you believe that the raise of the minimum wage at Amazon was out of good nature? Was it a decision to mitigate brand perception costs against labor costs after a bunch of national stories reported that they were paying so little…

>Do you believe that the raise of the minimum wage at Amazon was out of good nature? Does it matter what the rationale was? I know if I was an Amazon minimum wage employee I could care less what the rationale was. I'd just be thrilled to be getting a pay raise. Where I live the minimum wage is only $11.25/hour. Getting a bump to $15 will be a big deal for those people.

I think what you're saying is ... people like to have more money?

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

#549

Post by chipotle_coyote » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #516

intopieces wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporations do not deserve praise for doing the right thing. They are not people, with feelings, who respond to emotional stimuli in the form of positive reinforcement. They are businesses that respond to the market (indeed, their legal duty is to maximize profits). In markets, negative pressure works. Asking nicely does not.

> their legal duty is to maximize profits I am not nit-picking, asking in good faith: is that enacted into a law ? Or is that part of a contract between shareholders and the board of executives ? I have heard about that walmart competitor run like a family business and that gives every employees a voice (a cooperative ?).

It is neither. This seems to be a very common belief (i.e., that corporations are legally required to maximize returns for shareholders), but it is neither law nor regulation. Nothing prevents a company, even a publicly-traded one, from making decisions with other goals in mind, even if those decisions will reduce profits.

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

#550

Post by skrebbel » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

shimon wrote: post #415

EpicEng wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, someone on reddit says $12 https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/9kpeal/amazon_raises_...

Quick back-of-the-envelope math: Let's assume this raise will affect 250k workers this coming holiday season, bumping their pay from $12 to $15 (+$3). Over 12 weeks at 40h/week, this represents an additional $360M in labor cost. Using AMZN's 2017 revenue of 177.9B, this equates to 17.7 revenue-hours.

Why are you comparing 12 weeks with the entire 2017 revenue? You'd have a better argument that this is peanuts for them if you'd make a fair and clear comparison.