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Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

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Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#131

Post by wernercd »

ravitation wrote: post #14
xt00 wrote: post #5

This will help with recruitment, but the sentiment that new workers will essentially get paid the same as older workers is going to immediately be a big sticking point. From watching the Boeing union strikes over many years, I get the sense that once a labor force unionizes they setup their own structure for pay and get that signed off -- where they have seniority and things like that. But it also means the company b…

A company doesn't become adversarial with its workforce because of unions; a company is forced to treat its workforce more as an equal because of unions. The adversarial nature of the relationship between a workforce and its company is not a result of unions, it exists without unions. It's just that, without unions, companies are free to largely ignore the demands of individual workers. Control over compensation and…

> A company doesn't become adversarial with its workforce because of unions; a company is forced to treat its workforce more as an equal because of unions.

You act like it can't be both.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#132

Post by barry-cotter »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #122
barry-cotter wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at a graph of historical workplace deaths you can’t tell where OSHA was enacted. There’s no change in the rate of decrease of workplace deaths. As far as minimum wage laws go less than 5% of the US workforce gets paid minimum wage, and unpaid internships are both obviously beneficial to those who take them and ah, skirting the law to all parties’ benefit. Minimum wage laws are a great way to reduce workfo…

Perhaps it would be helpful to share said graph?

It’ll show up if you do an image search for OSHA historical workplace deaths. Also in the below document http://freedomandprosperity.org/2012/blog/big-government/ass...

If you look at this economic history link you’ll see a reasonably consistent trend, not universal, of decreasing workplace deaths.

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-of-workplace-safety-in-th...

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#133

Post by barry-cotter »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #121
barry-cotter wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-08-27/why-walma... Walmart pays less because it has much lower profit margins. It serves far more customers and the average employee is a great deal less skilled. And it’s cheaper, with greater product choice. The average Walmart employee is definitely worse than the average Costco employee but Walmart is clearly the better business. It has higher gross profits, employs mo…

That article is paywalled for me, so I did some quick research. It looks like Walmart's gross profit of 25% is almost double that of Costco's 13%. Am I doing the math correctly? >> Walmart [1] Total Revenue (TR) = 500,343,000,000 Gross Profit (GP) = 373,396,000,000 Gross Margin = GP / TR = ~25% >> Costco [2] Total Revenue (TR) = 129,025,000,000 Gross Profit (GP) = 17,143,000,000 Gross Margin = GP / TR = ~13% [1] http…

I was wrong on gross margins. You’re right. Walmart still can’t adopt Costco’s business model. It sticks many more things, in much smaller units, in way, way more stores and the average employee is not as skilled.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/02/06/th...

> While Walmart’s gross margins are more than double those of Costco’s, an efficient model with significantly higher revenues per square foot ensure that Costco’s gross earnings for the same size of a store are higher than Walmart.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#134

Post by davemp »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #120
manigandham wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say anything about penalizing them. The point is that it's a shrewd business move planned out years ago. It wasn't done out of purely good intentions and may not have the desired effect, and many people seem to miss that.

Who cares? If it benefits more people then what difference does it make as to why it was done?

Does it really benefit more people though?

Walmart and Amazon are prime examples of centralizing forces that slurp up wealth into urban areas and increase wealth inequality. Sure minimum wage goes up, but at the cost of more money leaving circulation in rural economies. It’s a non-trivial topic.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#135

Post by davidwparker »

crooked-v wrote: post #82
sethammons wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that make the account no longer valid? His problem is not "lazy union members," he has folks he thinks are getting screwed over that he would fight for a promotion for.

And yet presumably the union would be quite happy with across-the-board raises, so the complaint tries to casually gloss over the implied conflict with management about who deserves a more limited supply of raises.

He's talking about a promotion. Presumably, that would come with a raise. But not every member of the union would be "promoted".

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#136

Post by AlexandrB »

barry-cotter wrote: post #100
cortesoft wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, can't this argument be made against ALL worker protections? We don't need OSHA, workers should decide for themselves how dangerous they want to be. We don't need minimum wage laws, workers should decide. We don't need overtime laws, let workers decide. We have seen what happens when you remove all restrictions on how employers can treat workers - workers get horribly abused and often times die. If you think t…

If you look at a graph of historical workplace deaths you can’t tell where OSHA was enacted. There’s no change in the rate of decrease of workplace deaths. As far as minimum wage laws go less than 5% of the US workforce gets paid minimum wage, and unpaid internships are both obviously beneficial to those who take them and ah, skirting the law to all parties’ benefit. Minimum wage laws are a great way to reduce workfo…

> unpaid internships are both obviously beneficial to those who take them and ah, skirting the law to all parties’ benefit.

Unpaid internships are a great way to gate off poor people from high-paying jobs. No matter how beneficial they are to the intern, if said intern can't afford rent and food while on your internship it's simply not an option for them. Unpaid internships have no place in a society that wants to consider itself a meritocracy because the primary qualification for an unpaid internship is not merit but a well-off family.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#137

Post by ericd »

crooked-v wrote: post #82
sethammons wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that make the account no longer valid? His problem is not "lazy union members," he has folks he thinks are getting screwed over that he would fight for a promotion for.

And yet presumably the union would be quite happy with across-the-board raises, so the complaint tries to casually gloss over the implied conflict with management about who deserves a more limited supply of raises.

Why should the union decide who gets raises, rather than the manager whose job it is to monitor and grade the performance of his employees?

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#138

Post by Trill-I-Am »

ip26 wrote: post #126
techsupporter wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In every thread like this, there's an argument like yours, taking the absolutist view that individual workers should have unlimited freedom ("completely and totally incapable," as you wrote) to sacrifice themselves for money. In the micro sense, you are possibly correct. However, as a society, we have decided at the macro level that no, workers are not free to make that decision because to do so would inherently driv…

because to do so would inherently drive the collective working environment to the bottom Also the part where the cost burdens of bad health outcomes are generally socialized.

Many people who object to unions would also object to that, thought

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#139

Post by AlexandrB »

ip26 wrote: post #128
FridgeSeal wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also known as "I support Unions, but only when they don't actually have any power".

So how do you create a union that has the right amount of power? When unions are able to, & do, kill the host company through greed & short-term thinking, something is wrong with the structure.

> When unions are able to, & do, kill the host company through greed & short-term thinking, something is wrong with the structure.

I love how this argument gets applied to unions but not to companies. Many companies have killed themselves through greed and short-term thinking, yet you are not arguing that something is wrong with corporate structure.

Ultimately every human organization is prone to screwing up - unions are not at all unique here - but in the US unions often get singled out as a boogey man that hurts the economy.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#140

Post by mamon »

Apocryphon wrote: post #75
1stcity3rdcoast wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the philosophical objections to this model, think about the practical issues that arise, specifically regarding overhead. Unions are notorious for having well-paid administrative staff and leadership, and that does not scale with three or four separate unions. You end up with a net drain even if you were able to eke out some slight pay advantage.

> Unions are notorious for having well-paid administrative staff and leadership Couldn't you say the same about corporations?

Corporations are spending their own money, unions are spending someone else's. That's the main difference. To be clear what I mean: At least in my country it is a legal requirement for the corporation to pay salaries of union leaders and staff - few FTEs per union.
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