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Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave

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Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave

#81

Post by viklove »

cco wrote: post #79
greendude29 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Amazon is doing pretty well due to the quarantine (as they deserve to given the services they provide). Them having to reduce their share of the profits from these extraordinary times is not particularly noble, but rather just average. The United States hasn't even passed the first stage of Corona yet (in SF, daily number of deaths is still rising). It is too early to mandate come backs. Here in SF, multipl…

> The United States hasn't even passed the first stage of Corona yet (in SF, daily number of deaths is still rising). It is too early to mandate come backs. That isn't true according to the numbers from https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en . Do you have a citation for that? Numbers for new deaths have been hovering between 0 and 5 for the last month in SF, SF has had a total of 22 people dead, due to successful lo…

Deaths is not a metric that can determine which stage of this pandemic we are in. Immunity is the figure you're looking for, which will not increase under a shelter-in-place order. Deaths are down, but will immediately shoot back up if the shelter-in-place is lifted.

The only goal posts you should care about are herd immunity or vaccination. Nothing else matters when discussing how much longer this pandemic will last.

edit: Wow you guys are really mad at me judging by all these downvotes. You're right, the pandemic is over, lift the stay-at-home orders!

For a long time I thought HN had higher quality discussion than Reddit, but in reality it's just the same BS with slightly larger words.

Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave

#82

Post by duxup »

uoaei wrote: post #46
duxup wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That person is not playing anything. They are noting what the facts are right now.

Those aren't facts, those are PR slogans from a blog post on Amazon's web site. I am not holding my breath to see whether these policies are enacted in good faith, given Amazon's business practices and labor relations of late.

Are you saying Amazon didn't do the things the other user noted?

Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave

#83

Post by bhupy »

renewiltord wrote: post #77
uoaei wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has by now spent millions of man-hours on addressing COVID-19 -- meetings, designing splash banners, etc. They are a very big company who pays big money for top talent. Amazon is not the scrappy upstart it was 15 years ago. Let's hold them accountable according to what they are capable. Edit: it would seem obvious in retrospect that if most major governments have action plans in case of global pandemic, a glob…

As someone reading through this thread, I have some feedback for you. This is partly to test the commonly held view that feedback is desired instead of blindly voting and partly to help you. I piped it through `base64` so that you can ignore it if you don't feel like it: WW91ciBjb21tZW50cyByZWFkIGxpa2UganVzdCBvdXRyYWdlLiBUaGlzIGlzIG9mIGxvdyBpbmZv cm1hdGlvbiB2YWx1ZSB0byBtZS4gVGhpcyBpcyB3aHkgSSB3aWxsIGRvd24tdm90ZSB5b3V…

Unrelated, but base64 encoding feedback is a great idea.

Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave

#84

Post by bl0b »

jshevek wrote: post #43
kevingadd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpaid time off is forcing low-income workers to show up unless they want to starve.

By starve do you mean "go hungry", or "eat less", or "starve to death"? Edit: I find "starve" to be a hyperbolic and emotionally manipulative choice of words, but I don't want to assume the worst. Maybe you have good reason to use this term?

Not having enough money to survive isn't a made up thing. However you want to define it, people need to make ends meet including right now.

Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave

#85

Post by CuriouslyC »

macspoofing wrote: post #24
kevingadd wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a few avoidable deaths between friends, after all? There are multiple active outbreaks in crowded factories and other facilities, just like an Amazon fulfillment warehouse. They do not have necessary safety equipment and procedures in place yet. Forcing people to show up to work under these conditions is murder. They could fix it, though. A starting point would be Amazon providing tests and ensuring that every…

>What's a few avoidable deaths between friends, after all? There is no vaccine coming for a year, maybe two, maybe never. "Flattening the curve" is ONLY a delaying strategy to not swamp the health-care system and hope that some treatments are developed (no guarantees there either). COVID is going to be part of our lives. Are you saying we should shelter in place forever? >A starting point would be Amazon providing te…

The death rate with proper medical care is very low. The avoidable deaths are a direct result of a swamped medical system.

Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave

#86

Post by chadlavi »

looping__lui wrote: post #63
uoaei wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that the way the system is currently set up, it sustains itself by using poor and working class bodies as consumable parts which are replaced when they inevitably crack under the pressure. Yes if you get a good education and get a desk job you can work from home. That's obvious. What is less obvious is who, on average, has the means and access to get to that position.

Hey, I am German. Assembly line worker generally earn similar to university graduates. It does not matter whether you are employed or not: your kids will get the same quality of schooling (almost no private schools), you get the same healthcare treatment everybody else gets, your kids will go to university for free - if they can’t afford living expenses the government will give them a free loan for that, you get 6 we…

> it’s not the “working classes” like Marx liked to predict but social/political systems

What's the difference, exactly? the social/political systems create the group of under-paid, under-served people. Call them working class or not, the problem is still there.

In the US, employers pay drastically less for physical labor than knowledge work, government does not offer a social safety net, and social services are offered almost exclusively as paid services. People get trapped in a multi-generational cycle of lower wages, which means less desirable housing, worse schools, worse health care, which means their children have less opportunity for better-paying jobs. This creates, effectively, a low-wage-jobs-only group of people.

Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave

#87

Post by Jaepa »

jonknee wrote: post #51
falcolas wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this really disagrees with the article; it's an issue because people typically on a leave of absence don't get paid (notice the lack of "paid leave").

I never said it did? The article is behind a paywall and is based off this blog post which is not behind a paywall.

No, but saying look at all they're doing without addressing kind of the key part of the article does kind of miss the point, and makes your response seem more like a response from PR then a comment on the text.

Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave

#88

Post by tracker1 »

uoaei wrote: post #42
mc32 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Policies take time to develop as people develop understanding of the situation , then there’s availability and putting policy into practice.

Amazon has by now spent millions of man-hours on addressing COVID-19 -- meetings, designing splash banners, etc. They are a very big company who pays big money for top talent. Amazon is not the scrappy upstart it was 15 years ago. Let's hold them accountable according to what they are capable. Edit: it would seem obvious in retrospect that if most major governments have action plans in case of global pandemic, a glob…

Frankly, I'm quite surprised Amazon, FedEx, UPS and USPS have done as well as they have under these conditions.

Yes, you can plan to some extent... but these are PEOPLE heavy issues. The only way this would have gone without issue is if it was pretty much ONLY robots, and had 3-4x the number of people needed, skilled and trained to support those robots, and that the robots themselves were under 25% utilization to begin with.

Telling a company they need to spend 4-5X as much for operations, just in case of a once a centuray global pandemic, is pretty unlikely.

Now, if you want to talk about getting domestic sourcing of more products, particularly in infrastructure, defense, medicine and communications/tech, I'm all ears. There's no reason more than half of medicine and telecom/tech equipment should be foreign sourced for a country the size/scale of the US as a matter of defense. With where we're at with China and Iran (effects on Taiwan of particular concern), it's even more amazing there aren't more talks about this.

Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave

#89

Post by renewiltord »

bhupy wrote: post #83
renewiltord wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone reading through this thread, I have some feedback for you. This is partly to test the commonly held view that feedback is desired instead of blindly voting and partly to help you. I piped it through `base64` so that you can ignore it if you don't feel like it: WW91ciBjb21tZW50cyByZWFkIGxpa2UganVzdCBvdXRyYWdlLiBUaGlzIGlzIG9mIGxvdyBpbmZv cm1hdGlvbiB2YWx1ZSB0byBtZS4gVGhpcyBpcyB3aHkgSSB3aWxsIGRvd24tdm90ZSB5b3V…

Unrelated, but base64 encoding feedback is a great idea.

I learnt it from someone I know[0]

0: https://lobste.rs/s/lhijk2/horrifically_dystopian_world_soft...

Re: Amazon asks workers sheltering at home to return or request leave

#90

Post by auiya »

cco wrote: post #79
greendude29 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Amazon is doing pretty well due to the quarantine (as they deserve to given the services they provide). Them having to reduce their share of the profits from these extraordinary times is not particularly noble, but rather just average. The United States hasn't even passed the first stage of Corona yet (in SF, daily number of deaths is still rising). It is too early to mandate come backs. Here in SF, multipl…

> The United States hasn't even passed the first stage of Corona yet (in SF, daily number of deaths is still rising). It is too early to mandate come backs. That isn't true according to the numbers from https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en . Do you have a citation for that? Numbers for new deaths have been hovering between 0 and 5 for the last month in SF, SF has had a total of 22 people dead, due to successful lo…

CDC says it's still rising. 

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/case...

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