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

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

#901

Post by gooseglass » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:41 AM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #663

rubidium wrote: post #491

There's been similar moves in the past. Most famous of which is Ford's $5 / day. http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/03/blogs/post-per... Ford's quote from the time is relevant today: “The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same, and unless an industry can so manage itself as to keep wages high and prices low it destroys itself, for otherwise it limits the number of its customers.…

Yeah, I don't take that explanation at face value because it's describing a perpetual motion machine. Sales to your own employees are only going to be a trivial amount of revenue for any reasonable business. And I'm sure he knew that. But interpreted charitably, it's showmanship. This is a way to show leadership, get a lot of publicity, and hire better workers, so what's not to like?

As more and more occur, you'll see this more and more.

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

#902

Post by igravious » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 2:50 AM UTC

biocomputation wrote: post #888

igravious wrote: post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, yours is the uncharitable explanation. In reality it shows that Ford understood that all of us are in this together (“The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same”) – and we take it that Ford was not only referring to his own employees but to all employees. So if you want the public to be able to by your goods then we ought to recognise that the public must be able to afford those good…

More than half of Americans support single-payer. Some estimates are as high as 70%. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/most-americans-now-support-m... I absolutely support single-payer and so do most of the people I know. There isn't a HN thread long enough for the discussion of what it might take to actually get single-payer done.

70% ? If that's true then that's fantastic but also very worrying.

This shows that whereas the majority of the nation support some form of single-payer option the government (no matter who is in charge) resists it. This means that the government works for the few, not the many. This implies an oligarchy which turns out to be verifiable[0]. Out of interest I looked up all the countries that have neither free nor universal healthcare[1] and cross-ranked them according to their human development index[2]. The list is quite small. What we see is that the US is the only country with a _supposedly_ very high human development index (and the only one in the top 70 of countries) that has a healthcare system that is neither free nor fair. 8 out of the 10 least developed countries in the world are on this list. How Americans are not figuratively up in arms over this is beyond me. I think it is fair to say that the US political system is broken in a very real sense. This is worrying because traditionally only catastrophe curbs inequality this bad[3] and I'm not sure incrementalism works in a broken system. Oh well, time will tell.

   Country			Free?	All?	Level	Rank
   United States		No	No	V	13
   Saint Kitts and Nevis	No	No	H	72
   Grenada			No	No	H	75
   Lebanon			No	No	H	80
   Dominican Republic		No	No	H	94
   Jordan			No	No	H	95
   Suriname			No	No	H	100
   Dominica			No	No	H	103
   Marshall Islands		No	No	H	106
   Turkmenistan			No	No	H	108
   Indonesia			No	No	M	116
   Iraq				No	No	M	120
   Tajikistan			No	No	M	127
   Micronesia			No	No	M	131
   Kenya			No	No	M	142
   Cambodia			No	No	M	146
   Angola			No	No	M	147
   Cameroon			No	No	M	151
   Syrian Arab Republic		No	No	L	155
   Zimbabwe			No	No	L	156
   Nigeria			No	No	L	157
   Mauritania			No	No	L	159
   Senegal			No	No	L	164
   Comoros			No	No	L	165
   Sudan			No	No	L	167
   Haiti			No	No	L	168
   Afghanistan			No	No	L	168
   Gambia			No	No	L	174
   Guinea			No	No	L	175
   Guinea-Bissau		No	No	L	177
   Mozambique			No	No	L	180
   Liberia			No	No	L	181  
   Mali				No	No	L	182
   Sierra Leone			No	No	L	184
   Burundi			No	No	L	185
   Chad				No	No	L	186
   South Sudan			No	No	L	187
   Niger			No	No	L	189
   Somalia			No	No	-	---

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheide...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_univers...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Dev...

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-u...

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

#903

Post by icantdrive55 » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 3:34 AM UTC

flashman wrote: post #884

Smokey28 wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. I've spent the last year or so studying Ford. His whole point was that if people didn't have the money to buy his product or time to use it (he reduced work hours as well) then your business will never survive. He wasn't banking on employee sales, he was looking at employees as a snapshot of a wider market. Great example is fast food as well. If you are offering the "lowest cost" food option, and provid…

> Why is Bezos doing this? workers organised organise, workers!

It seems like the sorting/packaging facilities would be ripe for unionization.

Then again, I could picture Bezos moving whenever union talk started?

As to why he's doing it?

I think the bad press he's been getting over wages bothers him, along with a president who isn't a fan. A president who's popular in too many states? A president who can tell his followers to just stop buying from Amazon. Any threat now will ring a bit less hollow?

Plus, didn't he just patent that bracelet that determines how fast your hands are moving? (A horrid, intrusive piece of hardware in my opinion.) At $15/hr. in the Midwest, he will get young eager workers, and will not complain against working conditions.

A union has the power to change working conditions. A union could fight a productivity bracelet?

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

#904

Post by jniedrauer » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 3:49 AM UTC

chiefalchemist wrote: post #882

joezydeco wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And 100% "Get out of Bernie Sanders' crosshairs before he regulates us to do this"

Anecdotally, most 30 - 35 y/o and unders I know have Prime or live in a household with Prime. Mind you, not all in that demo are pro-Bernie but that target certainly skews that way. Bernie vs Amazon? I can't imagine Bernie having a chance. Prime will trump Bernie.

People can use a service and then vote to regulate that service, believe it or not.

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

#905

Post by jniedrauer » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 3:52 AM UTC

Fellshard wrote: post #865

csdreamer7 wrote: post #220

Bezos felt the Burn! I would still support Bernie's bill. Walmart pays the least of any major retailer. The market power they push onto communities undermines much of the social fabric of America. Small retailers really can't compete with Walmart and a lot of small business owners would feel guilty asking their employees to go on welfare. Charging Walmart for employees who apply to welfare would likely lead to pay in…

Individual companies raising their minimum wage is perfectly reasonable. They know what their bottom line can handle, and any consequences are fairly limited to the company itself and its competitors, for good or ill. An entire national economy raising a minimum wage is pulling yourself into the air by tugging on your bootstraps - futile, and likely to make you keel over instead. There's no alternatives if it fails o…

> An entire national economy raising a minimum wage is pulling yourself into the air by tugging on your bootstraps - futile, and likely to make you keel over instead.

There was a time not very long ago when (inflation adjusted) minimum wage was much higher than it is today. The economy did not "keel over."

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

#906

Post by chimeracoder » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 4:22 AM UTC

go_blue_13 wrote: post #862

tyingq wrote: post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To stop a union from being formed. Unions often institute work rules that contractually forbid automation.

Doesn't automation eliminate the need for negotiating with a union?

> Doesn't automation eliminate the need for negotiating with a union?

Not if the union literally forbids you from introducing automation in the first place. This is how the Transit Workers Union prevents the MTA from using technology that's been standard across the industry for decades.

An alternate strategy is to require the employer to pay the union when new technology is introduced. This drives up the cost of technology to the point where it costs more money than simply hiring the manual labor, thereby preserving the union jobs (at the cost of the taxpayers, in the case of the MTA).

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

#907

Post by throwawaymath » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 4:42 AM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #906

go_blue_13 wrote: post #862

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't automation eliminate the need for negotiating with a union?

> Doesn't automation eliminate the need for negotiating with a union? Not if the union literally forbids you from introducing automation in the first place. This is how the Transit Workers Union prevents the MTA from using technology that's been standard across the industry for decades. An alternate strategy is to require the employer to pay the union when new technology is introduced. This drives up the cost of tech…

Could you share some reading material about your MTA example? I've never heard that before.

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

#908

Post by banku_brougham » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 4:49 AM UTC

The wealth of nations is not the accumulated gold in reserves. It is the vitality, health and industry of the people.

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

#909

Post by chimeracoder » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 5:00 AM UTC

throwawaymath wrote: post #907

chimeracoder wrote: post #906

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn't automation eliminate the need for negotiating with a union? Not if the union literally forbids you from introducing automation in the first place. This is how the Transit Workers Union prevents the MTA from using technology that's been standard across the industry for decades. An alternate strategy is to require the employer to pay the union when new technology is introduced. This drives up the cost of tech…

Could you share some reading material about your MTA example? I've never heard that before.

> Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show.

> The critics pointed to several unusual provisions in the labor agreements. One part of Local 147’s deal entitles the union to $450,000 for each tunnel-boring machine used. That is to make up for job losses from “technological advancement,” even though the equipment has been standard for decades.

...and so forth. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

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

#910

Post by meuk » Wed, Oct 03, 2018, 5:14 AM UTC

Is ~15 dollars an hour considered good? It seems pretty high from a European perspective. In my country, minimum wage is about 10 eur/hour, and 15 eur/hour is normal for a junior developer.