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Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#61

Post by dmitrygr »

fao_ wrote: post #47
jerf wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeff's net worth isn't in cash. It's going to be affected much more strangely than your analysis suggests. If Amazon has to raise its labor costs that much, Wall Street will react in a way that is difficult to predict the magnitude, but easy to predict the direction. Normally I'd suggest analyzing that 13.2B in terms of the profits of the company, which for instance last Jan 2019 was ~$3 billion, which if projected o…

If a company cannot pay it's workers properly then, to be honest, it really shouldn't exist.

The places these warehouses are at usually have low CoL, and $15/hour is GREAT wage there. People line up to get jobs there!

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#62

Post by _bxg1 »

jefflombardjr wrote: post #39
_bxg1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not simply about hurting Amazon, it's about sending a signal. "This specific part of our business is threatened by the way that we're running it." Let it make business sense for Amazon to treat people like human beings. Otherwise it won't.

And then what? Amazon will continue to do the bare minimum to appease these signals periodically. It is not the duty of consumers to provide a social safety net for workers. This is precisely where government should step in. If you really give a shit about the people working at Amazon, write to your congressman/congresswoman and voice your support for social programs that would positively impact them.

> If you really give a shit about the people working at Amazon, write to your congressman/congresswoman and voice your support for social programs that would positively impact them.

It's not either/or. In today's political climate, unfortunately, pushing the market is the only thing that seems to ever accomplish anything.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#63

Post by mdorazio »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #57
mdorazio wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The compensation should reflect the mental and physical stress they put people through. As with all companies paying workers to do a job, the compensation should reflect the confluence of supply and demand in the market. The fact that Amazon can easily hire as many workers as it wants at $15/hr says that they are paying their employees plenty already. It bothers me that people are constantly demonizing Amazon for t…

Market conditions are set by regulation and market participants (there is no such thing as a pure free market except in an economist's textbook). Congress (the Senate specifically, conservatives/republicans) have failed to raise the federal minimum wage ($7.25, unchanged since 2009) to reflect the required wage to survive with increased costs of living (housing, broken healthcare, etc). This caused Senator Sanders to…

1) Because it's not an Amazon problem, it's a fulfillment center/warehouse employee problem that applies to just about every company in the industry I'm aware of.

2) Because Amazon is a for-profit company, not a charity, and its responsibility is not to pay employees more than it has to or give them more benefits/easier working conditions than are necessary. Are you also demonizing your own employer for not paying everyone as much as it possibly can without going bankrupt?

3) Because in many areas where Amazon warehouses operate, they are a significantly better job prospect than other options, working conditions be damned.

4) Because competitive markets don't let companies pay their workers whatever they want to. If you pay your workers too much, a competitor will pay theirs less, pass the savings on to customers, and take market share from you. Amazon is one of the wealthiest companies in the world because it doesn't pay all 600,000+ of its warehouse workers an amazing salary and let them work in better conditions.

A lot of people who are angry at Amazon are really angry at the outcome of unchecked capitalism. These are the frustrations that should be applied to voting, not to perfectly legal corporate policies.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#64

Post by mkane848 »

idlewords wrote: post #18
Animats wrote: post #9

Yes. Don't be a scab and cross the picket line. Don't buy from Amazon today.

Everyone on this site uses AWS.

Which is in an of itself an entire set of problems to sort through, but I don't see what actual point you're making other than spewing do-gooder derogation.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#65

Post by toomuchtodo »

mdorazio wrote: post #63
toomuchtodo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market conditions are set by regulation and market participants (there is no such thing as a pure free market except in an economist's textbook). Congress (the Senate specifically, conservatives/republicans) have failed to raise the federal minimum wage ($7.25, unchanged since 2009) to reflect the required wage to survive with increased costs of living (housing, broken healthcare, etc). This caused Senator Sanders to…

1) Because it's not an Amazon problem, it's a fulfillment center/warehouse employee problem that applies to just about every company in the industry I'm aware of. 2) Because Amazon is a for-profit company, not a charity, and its responsibility is not to pay employees more than it has to or give them more benefits/easier working conditions than are necessary. Are you also demonizing your own employer for not paying ev…

This is a fine plan if you're not the one suffering. Democracy takes time, and you can (and should) use leverage against corporations at the same time when necessary.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#67

Post by filoleg »

SauciestGNU wrote: post #56
mc32 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only because it's a way to use and coöpt language for your cause, not because it's the way the public understands it. It's like AOC insunuating Pelosi racist. It's used for effect. Or, imagine a nurses' strike, but I as a patient don't honor their strike, am I a scab?

If you're a patient for something elective that could be delayed until after the conclusion of the labor action then yes, you're a scab. For emergency care? Probably not.

A strikebreaker (sometimes derogatorily called a scab, blackleg, or knobstick) is a person who works despite an ongoing strike. [Scabs] are usually individuals who were not employed by the company prior to the trade union dispute, but rather hired after or during the strike to keep the organization running.[0]

The parent comment was absolutely correct in saying that you are trying to co-opt the actual definition to serve your goals, as the word has nothing to do with being a customer.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#68

Post by switch007 »

SmileyRedBall wrote: post #26
honopu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not relevant, free market, they decide to work there, or not.

> not relevant, free market, they decide to work there, or not .. Yea they can decide to move to the next low-pay job, zero-hour contract, no benefits, wages barely pays the rent, on food stamps ..

Exactly. The implicit argument is that there is always some magical high-paying job with awesome benefits just round the corner if they just simply make the simple decision of switching jobs and/or pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Right...

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#69

Post by jefflombardjr »

_bxg1 wrote: post #62
jefflombardjr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then what? Amazon will continue to do the bare minimum to appease these signals periodically. It is not the duty of consumers to provide a social safety net for workers. This is precisely where government should step in. If you really give a shit about the people working at Amazon, write to your congressman/congresswoman and voice your support for social programs that would positively impact them.

> If you really give a shit about the people working at Amazon, write to your congressman/congresswoman and voice your support for social programs that would positively impact them. It's not either/or. In today's political climate, unfortunately, pushing the market is the only thing that seems to ever accomplish anything.

> It's not either/or

Valid point.

I do question how much something like this could realistically push the market though. Boycotting a public transportation system with only one revenue stream is very different from boycotting a multinational corp with diversified revenue streams.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#70

Post by xtracto »

Between this and the Mechanical Turk article I read earlier today, I am left thinking about these type of jobs. There is this "chasm" of things that machines still cannot but that are repetitive and boring for humans, for which the value to human-effort ratio is small.

I foresee that in the following 10 years, we will be seeing more and more of these types of works. Now, the interesting thing about some of these jobs is that they cannot be moved to places where the payment to cost of living ratio can be improved. Some Mechanical Turk tasks could (if the language allowed it) but the Amazon warehouse jobs would be impossible to move.

Unless, Amazon opens a chain of warehouses in Mexico's cities that border the US (Tijuana, Tecate, Mexicali, Sonoyta, Nogales, Cd Juarez, among all the others) and then dispatches the goods from there. That however would need to include a very good import/export deal.

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