I'll get downvoted to hell for saying this, but $15/hr is upper middle class pay here. I made less than that for much of my software development career...
Your post would be considerably more useful with date and location information.
Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day
231–240 of 419 posts
Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s more like blaming the local power company for local energy prices. Nobody is blaming Amazon for wages worldwide. They’re blaming Amazon for the wages of their own workers. And why not? “The market” isn’t a magic answer here. The market provides a floor on wages, not a ceiling. If Amazon pays below market wages, they won’t get enough workers. If Amazon pays above market wages, nothing bad happens aside from reduc…
If we want unskilled laborers to have more money, it's much more economically efficient for governments do this through taxation and transfer payments then for individual companies that happen to employ people in this category to pay above market wages. If society does it through taxation, it's everyone's responsibility. If only certain companies are responsible, then only a portion of the population is responsible.
I completely agree. If Amazon pays their workers better, that won’t fix the millions of other workers stuck with bad pay and abusive jobs.
But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the individual companies. Certainly, our energies should be focused on bigger societal changes. But it’s not misplaced ore to also mention the fact that some companies could already do better, and choose not to.
Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we want unskilled laborers to have more money, it's much more economically efficient for governments do this through taxation and transfer payments then for individual companies that happen to employ people in this category to pay above market wages. If society does it through taxation, it's everyone's responsibility. If only certain companies are responsible, then only a portion of the population is responsible.
I completely agree. If Amazon pays their workers better, that won’t fix the millions of other workers stuck with bad pay and abusive jobs. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the individual companies. Certainly, our energies should be focused on bigger societal changes. But it’s not misplaced ore to also mention the fact that some companies could already do better, and choose not to.
I completely agree. If Amazon pays their workers better, that won’t fix the millions of other workers stuck with bad pay and abusive jobs.
That's not what I meant by "more efficient." If every company employing low skilled labor suddenly raised pay above market wages it might help all those workers. But it would mean that prices for things produced by unskilled laborers were artificially high and prices produced by higher skilled laborers would be artificially low. This would cause the market to produce the wrong mix of goods and services and we would all be worse off for the difference.
Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Supply side economics has been debunked over and over. To change the labour market you reduce the labour supply or increase demand. Demand is already high, so tighten up labour supply. Or, in other words, limit immigration.
> limit immigration I think at this point most smart members of HN should realize that the only reason immigration has much momentum is because the democratic party relies on it to win elections. All I see from Democrats is all talk about helping the poor but they don't do the most sensible and easiest thing to help the poor, simply limit the pool of labor by limiting immigration of low skilled workers. Which makes o…
> I think at this point most smart members of HN should realize that the only reason immigration has much momentum is because the democrat party relies on it to win elections.
It's the “Democratic Party” and, no, they don't.
> All I see from Democrats is all talk about helping the poor but they don't do the most sensible and easiest thing to help the poor, simply limit the pool of labor by limiting immigration of low skilled workers.
Limiting immigration doesn't limit labor supply in a globalized market; it effects it's geography, but whether or not labor mobility is restricted capital and goods are largely free to move (and, no, Trump's tariff policies, while breaking with the neoliberal consensus, haven't been well designed to promote the interest of working Americans either. There was once a Democratic Party idea of “free and fair” trade that would have been good had it actually been substantially pursued, but in practice Bill Clinton pursued neoliberal free trade with only vestigial gestures to the kind of common, upward-moving standards they would prevent a race to the bottom.
Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're talking about a company that makes its money on volume. They have more than 600K employees and thin margins. It's not just a matter of converting profits into wages, they don't have that much in profits in proportion to the number of employees. Take their average annual profit from retail divided by number of employees and see for yourself what the difference in hourly wage would be. To pay significantly more…
For context: if Amazon were to use all of its profits from FY18 (~$11B) to pay its ~650K workers more, it would come out to just under $17,000 per worker.
I knew I should have been more specific to begin with.
Last year was neither a typical year nor is that the profit from retail.
https://www.thestreet.com/opinion/amazon-is-losing-money-fro...
AWS makes good money, but you can't really expect them to use it all to subsidize retail (even more than they already do) forever.
Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day
#236Just a little reminder that many workers in fact do not get treated well just because their company thinks they do.
I think it should also be noted that the best way to show an employer that they need to do better is supply and demand, quitting entirely and working for someone else is not only more effective than simply demonstrating or slacking off, it’s also many magnitudes more professional and better for your career.
quitting entirely and working for someone else
Doesn't work if every other employer is also like that.
Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day
#237I agree with the worker in the video, they should be treated as human beings. One of the issues is doing a simple, monotonous task every 8 seconds, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, without creating anything of value, is going to be dehumanizing and unfulfilling regardless. Robots carrying out this work would probably be for the best for everyone involved, although Amazon should do right by the workers carrying them ove…
> 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…
Would it not be even more in Amazon's interest to cultivate labor practices which make their warehouses places people might want, instead of merely being willing, to work?
"Oh, the market..." Bullshit. Amazon can afford to let people go to the bathroom without fearing for their jobs. They choose not to.
Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day
#238I agree with the worker in the video, they should be treated as human beings. One of the issues is doing a simple, monotonous task every 8 seconds, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, without creating anything of value, is going to be dehumanizing and unfulfilling regardless. Robots carrying out this work would probably be for the best for everyone involved, although Amazon should do right by the workers carrying them ove…
> 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…
Just because you have market leverage to do what you want to desperate people, doesn’t mean you should. If this were a wage dispute, I might agree, but it’s much more than that.
Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day
#239Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
> limit immigration I think at this point most smart members of HN should realize that the only reason immigration has much momentum is because the democratic party relies on it to win elections. All I see from Democrats is all talk about helping the poor but they don't do the most sensible and easiest thing to help the poor, simply limit the pool of labor by limiting immigration of low skilled workers. Which makes o…
> I think at this point most smart members of HN should realize that the only reason immigration has much momentum is because the democrat party relies on it to win elections. It's the “Democratic Party” and, no, they don't. > All I see from Democrats is all talk about helping the poor but they don't do the most sensible and easiest thing to help the poor, simply limit the pool of labor by limiting immigration of low…
So effectively you're saying:
As far as democrats are concerned, a worker from Bangladesh is just as deserving of a given job as a worker from Florida.
At that point, the party doesn't seem to be caring about American workers, but behaving more like a "global party".
Thinking further, might as well normalize wages for all low skilled american workers across the 7 billion or so world population. I mean why have borders if they're not affording any labor protections already, right?
I'm not surprised the term "globalist" took off in the last election cycle.