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Amazon raises overtime pay for warehouse workers

reuters.com

191–200 of 237 posts

Re: Amazon raises overtime pay for warehouse workers

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is going to have long term lasting effects that further suppress labor rates and further concentrate wealth/capital in the US. It's accelerating a problem we already had.

40% of the wealth in the stock market was wiped out over the last few weeks which drastically impacts the upper middle class and rich the most. Negative returns on capital do not promote wealth inequality.

Much of what was "lost" was paper profits, artificially inflated in the first place, due to extremely cheap credit and massive demand spikes due to companies buying back enormous amounts of their own stock. Limited wage growth over the past decade, and reduction of benefits helped too.

From a time horizon, US stock markets have only regressed 3 years, and both the S&P and DJIA are about double where they were 10 years ago, while NASDAQ is still higher than triple its early 2010 value. Market leaders like FB, MSFT, GOOGL, NFLX, AAPL have only fallen to levels they were at in 2019.

You simply can't just focus on the decline without taking a hard look at how markets reached those heights in the first place and evaluating whether they were sustainable. Well you can, as you did, but it would be disingenuous.

Re: Amazon raises overtime pay for warehouse workers

#192
post #93
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a well-paid programmer it’s a different story but it’s not hard to imagine the immediate liquidity bieng more valuable when expenses take a bigger bite of your income. One of the best parts about Netflix's compensation program when I worked there was that you could choose your ratio of stock to cash. You could do 100% stock if you wanted to, or 0%. Despite this freedom, almost no one chose to get any stock at a…

Why is it better to get some stock instead of its cash equivalent which could be used to buy stock?

If they provide it to you on a vesting schedule like other companies do, you gain time in market - i.e. you also gain the stock appreciation until they are vested.

Re: Amazon raises overtime pay for warehouse workers

#193
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food is Max $150-$200 per month and a decent working car can be had for less than $2k, which can easily be afforded on even a McDonald's job, which is mostly just a socializing group. I am friends with several fast food workers and they are too busy having sex with their coworkers and partying to be concerned with any of this.

Maybe you should expand your circle of friends.

I am friends with lots of people of all types including doctors, lawyers, construction workers, programmers, day care providers, you name it, and have met many more. All of them that live paycheck to paycheck are like this, just my observations. Anyone not living paycheck to paycheck is usually much more responsible, "boring" and is capable of planning more than a week in advance, but it's not hard at all. Even when trying to educate these people they do not really take it to heart and will go out and waste $200 in a night of drinking after getting their paycheck.

Re: Amazon raises overtime pay for warehouse workers

#194
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the market is still working right now. Amazon is raising wages and hiring like crazy.

Pretty sure they still need more help. Why don't you apply? Unless you'd only offer your services for free in order to spite striking workers asking for better working conditions? How noble of you...

We have laws in place that ban critical workers from striking. Air traffic controllers aren't allowed to just stop working. Usually Amazon warehouse workers are not critical infrastructure, but this month they are. Talking about "spite" implies I would be concerned about their opinion in any way if they were to start striking. Their feelings would be irrelevant.

Re: Amazon raises overtime pay for warehouse workers

#195
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should expand your circle of friends.

I am friends with lots of people of all types including doctors, lawyers, construction workers, programmers, day care providers, you name it, and have met many more. All of them that live paycheck to paycheck are like this, just my observations. Anyone not living paycheck to paycheck is usually much more responsible, "boring" and is capable of planning more than a week in advance, but it's not hard at all. Even when…

I totally agree that if a doctor, lawyer or programmer lives paycheck to paycheck there is a problem with their financial habits. But there are plenty of other people who are very frugal but never can get ahead because their pay is very low or maybe they have medical problems that eat up their disposable income.

Re: Amazon raises overtime pay for warehouse workers

#196
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure they still need more help. Why don't you apply? Unless you'd only offer your services for free in order to spite striking workers asking for better working conditions? How noble of you...

We have laws in place that ban critical workers from striking. Air traffic controllers aren't allowed to just stop working. Usually Amazon warehouse workers are not critical infrastructure, but this month they are. Talking about "spite" implies I would be concerned about their opinion in any way if they were to start striking. Their feelings would be irrelevant.

Again, why you don't you go sign up for the labor-intensive warehouse and delivery work, with significant risk of contracting COVID-19 while having poor health coverage and no sick leave, along with people demanding that you should absolutely be forced to work those conditions? Please, go volunteer your time, you seem to so apt to make other people's jobs mandatory, and oddly they are jobs you don't seem to want to do!

It again sounds like you only want to volunteer your time to this crisis if it involves the unlikely circumstance of strike busting. Very noble. I hope you gave yourself a big pat on the back.

Re: Amazon raises overtime pay for warehouse workers

#197
post #47
post #21

Glad to see this from Amazon, although I see it heading off the inevitable. Wouldn't this be the most powerful moment for employees in 'essential' services to engage in worker strikes? Is there any legal precedent for what governments would do? With all this war rhetoric thrown around, it seems a reasonable jump to declare essential workers troops on the frontline deserving of what we give other troops (free health c…

Striking in order to exploit a global disaster for personal gain would be a great way for organized labor to turn many people against them for a life time. It may work in the short term, but even that is debatable. Many people would gladly see the national guard break a strike if it's between them and basic essentials. Long term, the optics of that kind of move are so damning that it would likely be a net-loss.

These people are in an overcrowded warehouse, without proper protection, while we are self-isolating. In these trying times, I would value my health higher than that.

Re: Amazon raises overtime pay for warehouse workers

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More than half of the smoke alarms bought on amazon didn’t work I've bought multiple name-brand ones off Amazon, sold by Amazon. The one by my bathroom absolutely works. I can't count how often a steamy shower set it off. Were they buying knockoffs from third-party sellers?

A steamy shower should not set off a smoke alarm. Perhaps it has a higher false positive rate.

The reason a steamy shower shouldn't set off an alarm is because fire code requires you to put the detector far enough away from the bathroom that it will not encounter steam. Smoke detectors of all types will detect steam; they just detect particles. The person you replied to is likely experiencing false positives because of improper installation.

Re: Amazon raises overtime pay for warehouse workers

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plain cotton masks would offer considerable benefits if everybody began wearing them in public This goes against the current WHO recommendation > If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with suspected 2019-nCoV infection.

The "masks don't help" campaign is well-intended disinformation aimed at preserving medical masks for medical practitioners. It is now proven that people with no symptoms spread the virus. Breathing virus into a cotton sheet is obviously safer than breathing on other people, despite being far from perfect.

I believe this 100% to be true. Considering that under certain conditions the virus can stay in the air for up to 3 hours, masks definitely are helpful.

Re: Amazon raises overtime pay for warehouse workers

#200
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have laws in place that ban critical workers from striking. Air traffic controllers aren't allowed to just stop working. Usually Amazon warehouse workers are not critical infrastructure, but this month they are. Talking about "spite" implies I would be concerned about their opinion in any way if they were to start striking. Their feelings would be irrelevant.

Again, why you don't you go sign up for the labor-intensive warehouse and delivery work, with significant risk of contracting COVID-19 while having poor health coverage and no sick leave, along with people demanding that you should absolutely be forced to work those conditions? Please, go volunteer your time, you seem to so apt to make other people's jobs mandatory, and oddly they are jobs you don't seem to want to d…

What part of the market is still working do you not understand? Amazon is raising wages and attracting more workers. I want this to happen. I'm happy the workers are getting relief in the form of more coworkers to help cover shifts and higher wages.

If a new factory opened up in my town making ventilators and there was a critical labor shortage with no available workers, I would show up for that too. In this hypothetical there's no striking workers to "spite".

Imagining you understand my motivations is a critical thinking error. Attributing bad motivations to me unjustly doesn't just make you wrong, it makes you a bad person.

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