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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

#281

Post by MereInterest »

_greim_ wrote: post #146
missedthecue wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Amazon has committed the "sin of success", so they're in the spotlight. Criticisms of Amazon make sense when viewed as criticisms of laws and incentives all business operate under.

Then how is it that I consistently hear about how Costco treats its employees phenomenally? Amazon's revenue surpassed Costco's in 2016, so if it is merely success that gets criticized Costco should have been similarly before that point. But that's not the case, and both Amazon and Costco have had their current reputations for much longer than that.

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

#282

Post by beambot »

tptacek wrote: post #184
kevinmchugh wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that bookstorez are dying, in the US. Amazon killed Borders, sure, and Barnes and Noble isn't as focused on books anymore. But independent bookstores have been doing okay afaict, though having to make changes. Here's data from the American Booksellers Association: https://www.statista.com/statistics/282808/number-of-indepen... It's possible that the bookstores are increasingly in big cities or something,…

Books have kind of also never been more available than they are today? We've come a long, long way from the heyday of Waldenbooks. I feel like I might rather be an author today than pre-Amazon.

We also have public libraries with pretty amazing inter-library loan programs...

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

#283

Post by Hokusai »

prostoalex wrote: post #247
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…

> Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed I never saw the definitive source on this, but around the time when the unionization vote was happening, people claiming experience in the logistics industry described Amazon as a place with low starting wages, but aggressive bonus structure for high performers. They also offered health benefits on day 1, which is unheard of in logistics. Other warehouses in the area…

> high performers

It could be random and it will still work. You want to pay a few people fairly so the others fight with them for that positions. Workers fighting workers is the goal of this incentives, it had nothing too do with performance.

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

#285

Post by SomewhatLikely »

JustARandomGuy wrote: post #107
simonw wrote: post #98

"The US has a population of 261 million and an employed non-farm workforce of 145 million, per the BLS" Anyone know why the "non-farm workforce" is the number reported here?

It's nothing malicious; it's a common way to express employment figures. Farm payrolls tend to swell and contract seasonally (to pick/plant and much less work in-between) so "non-farm workforce" is a way of smoothing out the numbers.

Now I'm curious how much Amazon's workforce expands seasonally.

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

#286

Post by brutus1213 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #276
brutus1213 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the retailers I have experience with, the pandemic winner was Walmart (Canada) hands-down. They kept iterating their app and pickup experience (order via app and they put the groceries in your trunk) .. I am an extremely satisfied customer and have increased my spend there! Losers for me were Home Depot and Canadian Tire. They iterated slowly and when they did, made things worse it seemed.

I'm not a frequent Walmart delivery customer, but my impression was they didn't take buy-online/ship-to-home or buy-online/ship-to-store seriously until the Jet acquisition. Which Walmart bought in 2016?

So Walmart Canada's pick up seemed to develop in front of my eyes. At the start of the pandemic, there were almost no spots and they screwed up a lot. E.g you'd get half the items you ordered, wrong items, would not get pick up order ready in time, fee on orders, etc. Whoever ran the show, executed brilliantly. It kept getting better. A relative scoffed at my high praise, and I convinced him to try it .. he too was blown away. I bring this up because so many Canadian retailers acted stupidly and frankly, many old school businesses keep doing this all the time (looking at you Costco .. Costco seemed to have pretended the pandemic did not happen .. they did not develop a touchless pick up model at all, and their online prices seemed to always be higher than the store price .. cancelled my membership there).

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

#287

Post by throwaway0a5e »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #267
shakezula wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 su…

> A lot of rural communities have no other viable options for some items as well. I sometimes fantasize about what it would be like to live in a mild-to-moderately isolated community - moving to Hawaii, northern Alaska, some random island. It's fascinating reading blogs by people who live there, and many of them have a "So You Want to Move to _____" type of post. In virtually all of them, there is some comment along…

Be careful trusting what you read. The blogs are run by people who've drank the cool-aid or move there already having made their money and life, not the kids who grew up there, saw it for what it was and GTFO'd or the townies who are either living on the relative poverty line (these economies are screwy, federal numbers don't apply well) or have a substance addiction.

Source: Grew up in one of those shitholes, actively rooting for sea level rise wipe it off the map, there is nothing of value there.

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

#288

Post by throwaway0a5e »

hokumguru wrote: post #278
Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of rural communities have no other viable options for some items as well. I sometimes fantasize about what it would be like to live in a mild-to-moderately isolated community - moving to Hawaii, northern Alaska, some random island. It's fascinating reading blogs by people who live there, and many of them have a "So You Want to Move to _____" type of post. In virtually all of them, there is some comment along…

After having just taken my first trip to the big island I was actually very surprised how sparse the retail was. Felt very much like rural America.

They're probably using highly restrictive zoning/permitting to keep it out. Local businesses that are charging tourist prices don't want big box stores (who can't get away with a very big local markup) to compete with and local consumer facing businesses hold basically all the influence in that kind of economy.

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

#289

Post by tharkun__ »

brutus1213 wrote: post #194
wil421 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t forget that Amazon still needs almost $200 billion more in revenue to beat Walmart. They have $550 billion in revenue and don’t have something like AWS. Amazon has only recently pioneered last mile logistics. It still isnt that great. I’m in a large metro area and 25-50% of my packages do not meet the prime delivery dates. I’d argue Walmart is still the king of logistics, for now.

Out of all the retailers I have experience with, the pandemic winner was Walmart (Canada) hands-down. They kept iterating their app and pickup experience (order via app and they put the groceries in your trunk) .. I am an extremely satisfied customer and have increased my spend there! Losers for me were Home Depot and Canadian Tire. They iterated slowly and when they did, made things worse it seemed.

Opposite experience here. Walmart is always a drab experience. I have never been in a Walmart store that I felt good in. Some Walmart's beat others in how disgusting they are but that's about it.

Home Depot on the other end was great. When there was a shortage of disinfectant (and government mandated clean hands before allowing people into stores) they just added actual washing basins with regular soap and paper towels and I could go get stuff to do projects. I have never been to HD as often as during 2020.

I used online ordering literally once at HD and CT each during that time. HD made me call/text a number with my order# when I arrived and they brought the items out for me but I really only used that because something was low stock in the one of many HD stores I could go to that had any of the item at all and I wanted to "reserve" it. No app needed which is a big big plus for me. I abhor all these apps for everything.

CD wasn't bad either. Same deal, reserving an item with low stock until I could go get it. I just picked it all up at the online order desk where it had already been put in a cart.

I don't like ordering food online. Had to do it once while waiting for a negative covid test result. You don't get to pick the actual items you want (fruits/veggies). Not great. I already don't like how cashiers throw your sensitive veggies around all the time. Never mind how they're being handled in the rest of the chain. Before anyone asks, yes I do choose which line I choose by who is the cashier/packer over length of line.

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

#290

Post by throwaway0a5e »

tharkun__ wrote: post #289
brutus1213 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the retailers I have experience with, the pandemic winner was Walmart (Canada) hands-down. They kept iterating their app and pickup experience (order via app and they put the groceries in your trunk) .. I am an extremely satisfied customer and have increased my spend there! Losers for me were Home Depot and Canadian Tire. They iterated slowly and when they did, made things worse it seemed.

Opposite experience here. Walmart is always a drab experience. I have never been in a Walmart store that I felt good in. Some Walmart's beat others in how disgusting they are but that's about it. Home Depot on the other end was great. When there was a shortage of disinfectant (and government mandated clean hands before allowing people into stores) they just added actual washing basins with regular soap and paper towe…

Varies by locale.

Walmart doesn't "try" where they have to compete with upscale options because even if they do good the rich people will still shop there.because of the Walmart stigma. And the poor people only care about price so they won't be turned off if Walmart doesn't try hard.

Also, there are some really crappy Home Depots out there. In my experience they're the ones without appreciable competition.

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