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1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

businessinsider.com

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Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#81

Post by fridif »

underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

>"So aside from just stop buying from Amazon, what can we do?"

Lower the barriers to entry for business. It is not easy to comply with regulations and reporting.

A scrappy startup can replace Amazon if they can focus on things that are not burdensome and arbitrary, like rent + insurance + tax reporting + legal.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#82

Post by missedthecue »

underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

Why do you accuse them of suppressing wages when they lead the way to $15/hr, and when they literally spend money lobbying congress to raise the federal minimum wage?

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-15-minimum-wage-lobby...

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#83

Post by np_tedious »

Spooky23 wrote: post #31
hncurious wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart, which has a presence in communities of all shapes and sizes, is the largest private employer in the nation with 1.5 million workers. Yet the number of Americans who rely on the corporate giant for their livelihoods is dwarfed by the number who rely on the federal government for their paychecks. The federal government employs nearly 9.1 million workers, comprising nearly 6 percent of total employment in the U…

State and local is even bigger. Id guess 600k employees of New York state/county/city/town/authority payrolls. Mass employment businesses aren’t common. I visited a gold ball factory once… there were about 3 people packing boxes and one dude fiddling with the machines.

Is "gold ball" some kind of industry term or classification of a factory? Or are they literally producing spheres of gold?

EDIT: oooh, you probably meant "golf ball". I was not being purposely difficult, just dumb

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#84

Post by manquer »

kaydub wrote: post #71

I wonder how it looks if you consider all the companies running on AWS and the engineers that only use AWS. 1 out of 153 working for Amazon, but I guess what I'm wondering is how many depend on AWS.

In that case you should also consider all vendors/suppliers who manufacture and ship for amazon either exclusively or >50% . That number would be lot larger than engineers on AWS.

Amazon's scale and reach is frighteningly massive.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#86

Post by jdavis703 »

underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

Aren’t size 14 shoes on the long side of the tail? Amazon will always be better at that than a brick and mortar retailer.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#87

Post by renewiltord »

samatman wrote: post #37
barbazoo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Would you be able to buy a couch on Amazon? The #1 bestseller on Amazon currently says "Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock." so it doesn't work here the same way other retailers don't work. So you're saying you can't get a passport from the government but you're able to buy certain things on Amazon therefore Amazon is better?

I just moved in to a new apartment, and I've been ordering furniture on Amazon. Why? Because the local Ikea is out of everything I've looked for, which is unsettling because I don't think of Ikea as running out of things. It works... ok. The delivery company only delivered one of three boxes for my bedframe, I got a refund but now I have a headboard and a mattress on the floor, and the model is out of stock. Woe is m…

I did the same and used Home Depot ship to store, then picked it up myself.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#88

Post by underseacables »

missedthecue wrote: post #82
underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

Why do you accuse them of suppressing wages when they lead the way to $15/hr, and when they literally spend money lobbying congress to raise the federal minimum wage? https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-15-minimum-wage-lobby...

That’s a fair point. I see them as suppressing wages because they open warehouses in small towns, pay $15/hr and then work the person to death so they become dependent on that job. Amazon can totally dominate an area’s workforce and use that to drive wages and benefits down.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#89

Post by tptacek »

cs702 wrote: post #59

That makes Amazon #3, after the federal government and Walmart: Entity US Employees 1. US Government 2.7M 2. Walmart 1.6M 3. Amazon 1.0M If Amazon continues to grow at current rates, it will surpass Walmart's figure within 2 years. Looking at these figures, it's evident that these three entities are far larger, wealthier, more connected, and likely more powerful than the vast majority of US cities, the vast majority…

Is this level of concentration a totally new phenomenon? In the 1970s GM employed almost 700k people, and the US population like 30% lower. Is it just different companies every generation?

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#90

Post by shakezula »

underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

> So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ?

The "just stop buying amazon" arguments never made sense to me in the first place, because most people who use it are the ones budget-stretched in the first place. A lot of rural communities have no other viable options for some items as well.

It will take massive government action and that's it. There's no other way we can fix this problem. Wages are suppressed because it's _legal enough_ to suppress them. Labor fines basically become a cost of doing business.

After the union busting that went on during the Alabama Amazon unionization votes, after all of these labor complaints against Amazon coming under media attention and not a single thing being done about it, it's clear that there is truly nothing that will stop it except a general strike.

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