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

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

#651

Post by Frondo » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

ttoinou wrote: post #217

exabrial wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy. I prefer to let people run their own lives instead of dictating it to them.

Being able to run its own life and not being able to choose its employer(s) seem contradictory to me

Anyone can choose their employer, it's the employer who can't pay less than some amount we as a society deem is a necessary minimum.

If anyone's going to have their freedom restrained, let's let it be the folks running businesses, hiring and firing, etc. They already hold more cards.

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

#652

Post by neonate » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

itamarst wrote: post #26

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

The press release says it includes seasonal and temp workers, so the answer is surely yes. Besides, imagine if the answer were no. That would be easy to report on and then this big PR story would turn into a disaster.

Edit: Looks like the press release has been updated to make this explicit: Amazon today announced it is increasing its minimum wage to $15 for all full-time, part-time, temporary (including those hired by agencies), and seasonal employees across the U.S.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181002005317/en/

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

#653

Post by smsm42 » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #612

Dylan16807 wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it doesn't make any sense. Amazon doesn't dominate the jobs market.

Depends how you look at it. The fulfillment centers are intentionally built out in the middle of nowhere where land and labour are both plentiful and inexpensive. If you live in such a place and Amazon is your employer, it may well be the case that you don't have a lot of other options, especially if what you came from was being on social assistance.

Land may be plentiful in the middle of nowhere but labor wouldn't be. Middle of nowhere is usually sparsely populated, that's why it's middle of nowhere.

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

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Post by lambda_lover » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 6:53 PM UTC

SEJeff wrote: post #586

lambda_lover wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lexington, Kentucky is the 60th-largest city in the United States. That is not the "small town Kentucky" that the grandparent is talking about. (S)he is talking about small businesses (or business franchises, like Dollar General) that are barely scraping by in small towns -- a gas station, a diner, a dollar store -- typically with a only 1-3 employees working at a time. A place like that would take a substantial hit…

Fair enough, but Dollar General is doing just fine: https://qz.com/1120552/the-retail-apocalypse-isnt-just-amazo... The small mom and pop stores have been closing at record paces due to things like Walmart and Amazon. A higher minimum wage might speed that up, but it just moves things faster in the direction they've been moving for decades already. The thing that blows my mind is what the federal government (by the d…

Couldn't agree more. It's also silly that there's a federal poverty level at all -- I see a poverty level as only useful on a scale as granular as county/parish, even state level is probably too large to give any useful data (for reference, I grew up in Northern New York State and now live in NYC, and any New York State poverty level is meaningless in both of those places because they're so disparate). It's a shame that the GOP, which is supposedly anti-federal power consolidation, no longer embraces that ideal. We would likely be better served here in the US by something more akin to a confederacy.

On the subject of Dollar General: I imagine the corporation as a whole is profitable, but I'm curious about their franchisees. If it's something like the McDonald's setup, then I imagine that their franchisees could be seriously hurting while the name Dollar General remains lucrative. Unfortunately I don't know much about their structure -- maybe they don't have franchises?

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

#655

Post by neonate » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

genericone wrote: post #327

I suppose there has been some 'breakthrough' in their warehouse automation stack? I suppose in the rest of the USA a doubling of wages will definitely get them through an awkward longshoreman period, "well I'm being paid more unexpectedly, I suppose I can't complain about the robots". Once the robots are well established in operations, they can start to cut labor back some more.

Surely the simpler explanation is stronger, that they are reacting to pressure. Bezos even alluded to that in the press release: "we listened to our critics".

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

#656

Post by dheelus » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 6:54 PM UTC

calvinbhai wrote: post #197

IMO, this is a genius move by AMZN - Cuts down on bad PR - Makes employees happy (while they dont get RSUs) - Make the employees genuinely skilled in operating semi-automation equipment - Make competitors bleed, because either they pay $15 per hour or face the PR wrath, while trying to catch up with AMZN in terms of automation. If you think for a moment that AMZN started replacing 90% of employees with automation, th…

AMZN is also lobbying to raise the Fed minimum wage to $15/hr

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

#657

Post by rifung » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 6:55 PM UTC

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 a job doesn't provide the means to survive then the government is subsidizing these jobs assuming you make sure everyone has enough to live.

Another issue is that the unemployment rate is no longer meaningful although that could be solved by having another statistic but unemployment is much easier to measure.

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

#658

Post by bostik » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

bhupy wrote: post #592

phil248 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you, as a company, can't exchange full time work for an amount of money that keeps an individual out of poverty, you're forcing the rest of society to cover the difference. That's not a deal any government, or any taxpayers, should want to be a part of. I don't want my taxes subsidizing profitable corporations because they can find people willing to work for sub-poverty wages who fill in the gaps using the welfare…

But isn't using welfare to fill in the gaps the most efficient solution? A well functioning market drives down the cost of goods and services to the minimum possible price, provided there's adequate competition. Commoditization is a good thing. The fact that bread and milk only cost a few dollars is net-good for society. Commoditization of labor should, thus, also be similarly good for society. At the end of the day,…

> * But isn't using welfare to fill in the gaps the most efficient solution?*

If you need welfare to cover the cost of living for full-time workers, then that is very much corporate welfare.

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

#659

Post by kazinator » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

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…

> But if you can't pay the minimum, then you didn't really have a job to offer in the first place!

Which minimum? Today's minimum, or yesterday's?

> But it is disingenuous to suggest that just because there are people who would take such jobs, that our economy should allow employers to get away with it.

How is it disingenuous if someone says such a thing and honestly means every word of it?

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

#660

Post by mrhackerpoland » Tue, Oct 02, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

johnsushant wrote: post #293

mrhackerpoland wrote: post #256

As someone who worked in Amazon warehouse, it's still so crap. Average programmer gets paid $50-100 per hour without any health risk or lifting their ass off a chair. And we workers are paid $15 pittance. Salary of warehouse should atleast be equal to a web developer.

Skilled labour costs more than unskilled labour. They're paid more because they cared to acquire skills that a warehouse worker didn't. It could be the coziest simplest job in the world, but if it has a higher skill requirement, it will come with a higher salary.

But government can surely fix it?

People can only acquire skills if they've time and ability for it, which implies they come from priviledged background.

So government can surely implement some policy to tax these privileged class 80% and use that money for welfare of warehouse workers, and make it equality of outcomes.