Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#341

Post by vsl » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 4:31 AM UTC

chasontherobot wrote: post #333

dehrmann wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? In countries with higher minimum wages, McDonald's uses kiosks for ordering. I'm guessing, but it feels like 1/3 of fast food staff mans the registers.

Do you have a citation for this? Tokyo has a high minimum wage (and low enough unemployment that most employers have to pay more than minimum wage), but I've yet to see an automated kiosk here. Though in support of your point, when I went to Korea last year there was a large number of automated kiosks, and I know the minimum wage there is fairly high as well. So, Japan's lack of those kiosks may have to do with a pre…

Isn’t Japan famous for manning a lot of jobs, culturally?

Around here (Central Europe, Austria, Germany, Italy too IIRC) I don’t see non-kiosk McDonalds anymore, as they went through the kiosk upgrade in the past few years. Noticeably fewer employees.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#342

Post by vsl » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 4:40 AM UTC

oceanplexian wrote: post #196

azernik wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Amazon can easily hire people at $15/hr at its current abysmal working conditions does not mean that they morally should . The market conditions let Amazon get away with it, and collective action changes market conditions.

Costco provides health insurance and pays its employees well, and employee satisfaction is high. Chick-fil-A pays its workers $17 an hour minimum and provides health insurance and benefits. There are plenty of other examples of successful businesses that pay above "market conditions". These places are also high on satisfaction and people are treated like human beings. The problem is working for a business owner who's…

They too pay at market conditions - everybody does. They just value some things (employee churn, loyalty, valuing the job and being nicer to customers etc.) more than they value money.

In Europe, Lidl is known to pay cashiers significantly more than others too. It’s damn hard to get a job there, people don’t leave Lidl jobs; consequently Lidl can afford to be picky and hire the best people in the segment. That’s business strategy, and spending money to accomplish their goal, not paying “above” market to be some sort of socialist Samaritans.

Amazon doesn’t give a damn about churn, because they don’t need to, and as long as people are freely willing to work for them, as more than enough clearly are, they don’t need to pay more.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#343

Post by thundergolfer » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 4:45 AM UTC

15engineer wrote: post #317

Reading through these comments I find myself rather dazed at all of the complaints regarding $15 an hour salaries, I'm a software engineer with 6 years of experience in a first world country and I make less than that before taxes.

Which first world country is this? I made $30AUD as a waiter in 2015. An Australian software engineer with that much experience getting paid almost half that ($15 is USD yeah?) in 2019 would be absurd.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#344

Post by thundergolfer » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 4:48 AM UTC

40acres wrote: post #159

Marx predicted this with his theory on Entfremdung (alienation), in a system of highly optimized division of labor those laborers are going to be for a lack of a better word: bored.

Also knew that capital is indifferent to the lived experience of labourers.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#345

Post by thundergolfer » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 4:51 AM UTC

f00zz wrote: post #227

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...

You’ll be getting downvoted because what you make “here” and it being upper-middle class pay is not relevant at all to these workers, unless you want to make a disingenuous suggestion that they move countries to “here”.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#346

Post by dehrmann » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 4:54 AM UTC

chasontherobot wrote: post #333

dehrmann wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? In countries with higher minimum wages, McDonald's uses kiosks for ordering. I'm guessing, but it feels like 1/3 of fast food staff mans the registers.

Do you have a citation for this? Tokyo has a high minimum wage (and low enough unemployment that most employers have to pay more than minimum wage), but I've yet to see an automated kiosk here. Though in support of your point, when I went to Korea last year there was a large number of automated kiosks, and I know the minimum wage there is fairly high as well. So, Japan's lack of those kiosks may have to do with a pre…

https://www.forbes.com/sites/edrensi/2018/07/11/mcdonalds-sa...

Though I was specifically thinking Sweden.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#347

Post by 15engineer » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:00 AM UTC

thundergolfer wrote: post #343

15engineer wrote: post #317

Reading through these comments I find myself rather dazed at all of the complaints regarding $15 an hour salaries, I'm a software engineer with 6 years of experience in a first world country and I make less than that before taxes.

Which first world country is this? I made $30AUD as a waiter in 2015. An Australian software engineer with that much experience getting paid almost half that ($15 is USD yeah?) in 2019 would be absurd.

Hong Kong and yes USD.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#348

Post by electrograv » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:04 AM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #96

SmileyRedBall wrote: post #8

What would it effect Bezos Net Worth to double the warehouse operatives hourly rate to $22?

What would it effect bezos's net worth to halve the required number of items picked per hour but keep the pay the same? Pay should be determined by the market, decent working conditions are what we should be fighting for. Amazon workers aren't poorly compensated, they're just working shitty jobs regardless of the compensation. Paying people more doesn't make abusing them okay.

If each employee was paid the same to pick half the items, then they’re effectively being paid twice as much to do the same amount of work. Amazon would have to hire twice the workers (if not more) to fulfill their order volume, which means shipping items becomes more expensive.

So the real question is: Who is going to pay the bill?

And the problem I see here is, whoever you ask this, the answer is always “not me!” Everyone wants to reap the benefits of cheap labor (e.g. cheap, fast shipping), while proclaiming they want to treat the labor force well, but without a willingness to actually “put their money where their mouth is” and pay for it when it actually comes down to it.

For example: If you could willingly add 50% to the cost of every Amazon purchase if it gave workers better conditions, would you? If your first reaction to that is “Hey, that’s not my problem! The [government/market/unions/etc.] should have to solve that!” ... then yeah, we’ll the thing is that’s what everybody says when asked these sorts of problems.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#349

Post by theranfear » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 5:28 AM UTC

dhruvrrp wrote: post #17

> He says he has to pick an item about every eight seconds, or 332 per hour, for a 10 hour day. Ignoring the math, it’s hard to imagine that pace. Are they forced to continually be moving? Or is the person counting picking up, say 15 usb chargers as 15 separate things?

Similar story to the other people here, having worked in a ups warehouse with unload rates of >1100 per hr I find it's not the physical nature of the job that's hard (in fact if you like moving around it's good) but mental stress of doing 1 dimensional things all day that is the real challenge!

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#350

Post by DJHenk » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 6:33 AM UTC

pathseeker wrote: post #194

rpvnwnkl wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like you’re both arguing for the same thing: a higher federal minimum wage.

Amazon pays above minimum wage, so the only thing increasing minimum wage will do is reduce the job supply and make people even more desperate to keep the Amazon jobs.

No, no. If you pay unskilled workers more, they will spend more and the overall economy benefits. There will be more jobs and everybody will be happy. This is called Spray Up Economics.