171–180 of 210 posts
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Well, Amazon also employs more people than entire industries, and has a long track record of grotesque Labour abuses, so this is just an additional data point for when people ask why amazon is awful
It's still less then a 1/3 as many employees as Walmart Looks like they had similar issues? https://www.plbsh.com/jury-awards-walmart-employees-6-millio...
It seems eminently reasonable and obvious that workers should be compensated for performing the Duties of their job while at work or in premises. Clearly submitting to a security check before being allowed to leave work is an obligation they incur as an employee. They should not be able to “clock out” until after such security checks.
It seems that if people want this, the law should be changed. This is isn't the job of the courts.
Is it not crazy that is has to come down to a Supreme Court case for Jeff Bezos and Amazon to treat their employees fairly? This isn't a company that's on a sink or swim margin where this will collapse the company. Not when they're fine stocking all the break rooms in corporate offices with starbucks and AWS people get shelves full snacks all day. But give an hourly employee a little more money to accommodate their s…
It's better than supporting mass surveillance by working at Google or Facebook I'd think, if you compare to the alternative FAANG companies.
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> employees are required to commute to work, but they are not compensated for their commute. Where I live (another country), employers are required to compensate workers for their commute (vale-transporte).
Wow. That is the strangest thing that I've read ion a while. Are employers allowed to take the location of prospective employees' residences into account when deciding to hire or not? If I lived across the country, would the employer have to pay for daily plane tickets?
I believe they are.
> If I lived across the country, would the employer have to pay for daily plane tickets?
I don't know anywhere in this country where an airplane is considered public transport, so no (vale-transporte is only for public transport AFAIK).
The Supreme Court decision related to this is being unfairly maligned in these comments, even though I'm in total agreement that the end result was bad. I recommend reading the ruling [0] itself; it's readable and quite short, under 2,500 words. The unanimous 2014 decision concluded that Amazon (technically, a contractor) could not be penalized under federal law for not paying workers for time spent getting through s…
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They didn’t, because apparently the time requirement off the clock isn’t clearly communicated up front when they are hired. You can’t make an informed choice if you don’t have the information. This is why employment legislation is so important - otherwise employers can spring extra costs and demands on employees with impunity. And no, it’s not acceptable to expect them to simply resign. Changing jobs can also incur s…
So the law we are looking for is disclosure. I can agree with that. Do you know if such a law already exists?
When an employment contract talks about working hours, it should not be necessary to refer to small print or seemingly unrelated clauses to know what that means. It should have a straightforward and unsurprising meaning. Employers should not be able to make up surprising and counterintuitive definitions of things like working hours, and manipulate those in their favour. In general employees should not be required to understand special exceptions from standard expected practice, unless there are specific well understood and communicated reasons that require it.
On the face of it, I don't think this case meets that sort of standard. In general I am in favour of a high degree of flexibility in the form of employment contracts. My own working hours and the expectations of my job are somewhat unusual. I work highly variable hours and I am frequently on call. I do get paid for the hours I work though.
However I do think this is a reasonable area for legislation because I think that's the only way to ensure employees are not abused, and in this case I think it's pretty clear Amazon did not signal this clearly to prospective employees and is abusing it's position of power over them in an unreasonable way.
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> Tangentially it seems crazy they're not required to pay for the time spent going through security. If they're paid hourly and not free to go they're still on the job. It’s an asshole move for sure. I hope they are forced to pay up, and then they will invest in streamlining the process.
> In its 2014 ruling in the case, the Supreme Court decided that under a 1947 law that amended the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, companies do not have to pay employees for the time they spend undergoing security checks. It's a supreme court decision that is allowing Amazon to do this [0]. TL;DR the decision is solely on if the "activities are an intrinsic element of the employee’s primary job duties and one that…
No, it's federal law which allows Amazon to do this.
The Supreme Court's role is not to act as a kind of super-legislature, creating and changing laws at whim: its role is to adjudicate disputes as to what the actual letter of the law requires given the facts of specific cases.
It seems eminently reasonable and obvious that workers should be compensated for performing the Duties of their job while at work or in premises. Clearly submitting to a security check before being allowed to leave work is an obligation they incur as an employee. They should not be able to “clock out” until after such security checks.
With that logic, my commute to work should be paid too. I'm not getting paid to drive there and they won't let me work from home. If I'm not mistaken, airline flight attendants don't get paid until the door shuts, bet none of you that fly regularly are outraged about that. And as someone that worked in a facility where I had to park off site, ride a bus unpaid, clear security unpaid, ride another bus unpaid then I co…
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It was the Supreme Court's job to change the laws about abortion and gay marriage and school segregation when Congress obviously messed up or failed to act.
Those are issues about treating people humanely and as equals. This issue boils down to whether people have to work 8 vs. 9 hours for a certain amount of pay, with some paperwork issues piled on top. It matters but there aren't any human rights involved in any meaningful way. The law isn't inherently invalid .
Ok, so the key ruling here was in 2014, which said "the Supreme Court declared that such screening procedures were not an 'integral' part of the job. Integrity’s staff at the warehouses...were hired to take products off the shelves and package them for shipment to Amazon’s customers, not to go through security screenings. The Court also found that Integrity could have eliminated the screenings without affecting the w…