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Bye, Amazon

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Re: Bye, Amazon

#971

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

pwinnski wrote: post #647
hourislate wrote: post #615

Completely anecdotal. It's possible some Amazon Warehouses are run better than others. A friend who recently got a job (5 weeks ago) at one of Amazons warehouses (NJ/NYC area) has only praise for the way things are run. They take his temperature 3 times a day, provide a mask, constantly monitor social distancing, clean washrooms every hour, enforce social distancing in any break rooms, work areas, etc. He says it's n…

Bray didn't quit over the conditions in the warehouses, he quit over Amazon's brazen and dishonest firings of organizers. It's possible that if every Amazon warehouse were run as well, those organizers would not have arisen, but it's Amazon nastiness toward them that's most alarming.

Why would Amazon continue to pay agents opposed to them within their organization? If an organization does not remove those opposed to its goals, it's going to be ineffective.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#972

Post by beerandt »

pwinnski wrote: post #647
hourislate wrote: post #615

Completely anecdotal. It's possible some Amazon Warehouses are run better than others. A friend who recently got a job (5 weeks ago) at one of Amazons warehouses (NJ/NYC area) has only praise for the way things are run. They take his temperature 3 times a day, provide a mask, constantly monitor social distancing, clean washrooms every hour, enforce social distancing in any break rooms, work areas, etc. He says it's n…

Bray didn't quit over the conditions in the warehouses, he quit over Amazon's brazen and dishonest firings of organizers. It's possible that if every Amazon warehouse were run as well, those organizers would not have arisen, but it's Amazon nastiness toward them that's most alarming.

Even the best run un-unionized factories have unions trying to get workers to organize.

To pretend that unions (leadership) haven't become just as obsessed with growth and power as corporations are, misses a huge part of the various incentives at play here.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#973

Post by zamfi »

taurath wrote: post #728
hysan wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the example replies to this I’ve seen so far are where the power imbalance between business owner and worker is huge. So I’ll give my anecdote which is from the other side. I grew up watching, and often helping, my parents as they ran their own business. We were at best lower middle class. The economic gap between us and those we hired was far smaller than any of the examples given here. My parents treated the wo…

> The workers in response didn’t cheat hours, they were flexible when the times got really tough, and in the end, they greatly respected my parents for running business the “right way”. The best way to get people who show up for work on time, don't steal from the register and don't call out sick is to pay them enough to have a life that isn't sent into a stress spiral by an electricity bill thats 10% higher. Corporat…

> The best way to get people who show up for work on time, don't steal from the register and don't call out sick is to pay them enough to have a life that isn't sent into a stress spiral by an electricity bill thats 10% higher.

Are you speaking from experience here? There is plenty of poverty that doesn't lead to theft of money and time to disprove this as a general claim.

There's more to it than paying people enough.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#974

Post by all_blue_chucks »

ultraluminous wrote: post #926
all_blue_chucks wrote: post #907

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A case can be made that making profitable misconduct legal DOES force businesses to misbehave because those that don't take full advantage of the law will be at a disadvantage to those who do. Furthermore, shaming one company to change its practices voluntarily does little to help workers at other companies subjected to the same thing. So we really should push to change the law with more urgency than we use to push a…

First, I agree with your conclusion. The way to address this is to change the law, pushing individual corporation is ineffective. However, you DON'T have to maximize your profits above all other corporations. There's no such actual fiduciary duty and there never could be. That's the point the poster is trying to make - something being legal doesn't make it ethical and acting in a unethical, but legal, manner does not…

If you have no competition, you do have the luxury to choose between profitable and ethical. But if you have fierce competition, there isn't always a choice - market forces will drive out the more principled operators of business in favor of those that are more ruthless.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#975

Post by gdy »

querez wrote: post #265

> I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right? This part of the article jumped at me -- If this is true, then I'd have to say "yes, coincidence". No company (let alone one as large as Amazon) would be that stupid in 2020.

It may not be a coincidence, but in a different way.

It's possible that they spoke up because they thought that 'no company would be stupid enough' to fire them but miscalculated.

At the same time white males kept their mouth shut because they knew that 'no company would be stupid enough' doesn't apply to them.

Need more data.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#976

Post by gdy »

alkibiades wrote: post #455
querez wrote: post #265

> I’m sure it’s a coincidence that every one of them is a person of color, a woman, or both. Right? This part of the article jumped at me -- If this is true, then I'd have to say "yes, coincidence". No company (let alone one as large as Amazon) would be that stupid in 2020.

if anything i’d expect them to go out of their way to fire some white men to avoid lawsuits

Yep, not diverse enough without white men.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#977

Post by dang »

abnercoimbre wrote: post #865
dang wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment was edited without saying so, which explains why some of the replies don't make sense. If you're going to make an edit that changes the meaning of what other people have already replied to, please say that you're doing that. The best way is to make the edit append-only.

What's the best way to escalate this? Or rather, how do we make this recommendation to moderators and/or devs?

hn@ycombinator.com is the way.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#978

Post by coolgeek »

beerandt wrote: post #972
pwinnski wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bray didn't quit over the conditions in the warehouses, he quit over Amazon's brazen and dishonest firings of organizers. It's possible that if every Amazon warehouse were run as well, those organizers would not have arisen, but it's Amazon nastiness toward them that's most alarming.

Even the best run un-unionized factories have unions trying to get workers to organize. To pretend that unions (leadership) haven't become just as obsessed with growth and power as corporations are, misses a huge part of the various incentives at play here.

> a huge part of the various incentives at play here

Do you have any evidence to support this? Anecdotal evidence will not suffice here. Calling this a 'huge' factor demands empirical evidence.

So what justifies this assertion?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#979

Post by lazyjones »

specialp wrote: post #701
xenocyon wrote: post #688

My personal snapping point as a consumer occurred several years ago, over something that's definitely not anecdotal: When Amazon employees are frisked at the end of their shift (which is a practice that applies to at least some warehouses), they are not paid for the time they spend waiting in line to be frisked. This is not an anecdote; indeed Amazon fought and won a court case insisting that it has the right to not…

Yes for me too. The fact that Amazon is so cheap that they want employees to sit around for 20-30 minutes after their shift unpaid to get searched to make sure they aren't stealing blew me away. It is one thing if Amazon wants to do this and pay their employees, but to not pay is wrong. And they felt so strongly about this they appealed a case all the way to the Supreme Court... That was the snapping point for me too…

> they felt so strongly about this they appealed a case all the way to the Supreme Court.

The felt confident that they were right about it and the SC confirmed it. It's classic double standards if you celebrate one winner at the SC and condemn others based on your political/ideological opinion.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#980

Post by ryanbrunner »

luckylion wrote: post #813
toasterlovin wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don’t default to cheating the system. Some people don't. I think you may be underestimating the degree to which A) your parents were good judges of people, and B) having ownership close to the metal can make things work well.

And being a small business. Things run very differently when there are ten people and you know everyone vs when there are ten thousand people and you only vaguely know what 1/10th of the departments actually do.

If it means that more employer-employee relationships are as strong as the one described, I'm more than happy to give small businesses a leg up over major corporations.
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