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Leaked memo reveals Amazon’s plans to combat the Teamsters in California

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Re: Leaked memo reveals Amazon’s plans to combat the Teamsters in California

#71

Post by verall »

macintux wrote: post #52
suby wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your two sentences in this thread is hardly debunking anything. What is Amazon maximizing if not profit? It certainly is not employee share of revenue or employee well being.

The point is that there’s no law that says companies must maximize profit at the expense of everything else. The fiduciary duty is to be responsible with shareholder’s money, not to maximize return on investment.

It doesn't matter if it is the law or not if Amazon is made up of a large group of managers with competing interests that all boil to maximizing profit in order to meet their individual key goals. The GP said nothing about it being the law, simply that it is how Amazon, as a giant megacorporation, acts in practice.

Re: Leaked memo reveals Amazon’s plans to combat the Teamsters in California

#72

Post by arrosenberg »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #67
suby wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your two sentences in this thread is hardly debunking anything. What is Amazon maximizing if not profit? It certainly is not employee share of revenue or employee well being.

Corporations are allowed to exist to create a positive net good. ie: the social contract works so long as we can plausibly reason that they, you know, actually benefit people more than they harm. Maximizing profit is a lie told to children for reasons I won't get into, but when it displaces the social contract, the end result is a justification of all sorts of socially pathological behavior, this included.

Everything you just said stopped being true in the 70s and 80s. Yes, B-corps are a thing, but the laws as currently constructed encourage profit extraction above nearly everything else.

Re: Leaked memo reveals Amazon’s plans to combat the Teamsters in California

#73

Post by verisimi »

chrisseaton wrote: post #60
verisimi wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I gave to a charity. Why don't local politicians give me tax breaks?!? Honestly, this sort of idea is such an anathema to the idea of fairness, and an indictment of politics. Be a big enough company, and then you can effectively bribe politicians into giving you money from local tax payers that you can then use to destroy those same local businesses and communities. Genius.

> Hey, I gave to a charity. Why don't local politicians give me tax breaks?!? Aren't charitable donations tax deductible?

I don't think that amazon is doing that. Nor Elon.

They have offshore tax operations AND demand special treatment, subsidies or tax breaks for deigning to operate in some area.

Re: Leaked memo reveals Amazon’s plans to combat the Teamsters in California

#74

Post by therouwboat »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #21

Next time you're at a union meeting, ask them about any boxes they own at sports stadiums. Ask if you as a paid union member can use the box that you are paying for with your dues.

Not american, but our union owns summer cottages that members can use. Otherwise unions are really simple, they get % of my pay, so more I make, more they make and its other way around with my job, less I make, more they make.

Re: Leaked memo reveals Amazon’s plans to combat the Teamsters in California

#75

Post by colinmhayes »

kolbe wrote: post #68
Retric wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many warehouses pay well over 20$/hour and others significantly less. What’s rarely mentioned is while Amazon’s compensation is roughly in line with industry norms, the workload is however much worse.

Care to give some support for this intangible and unverifiable complaint?

Just take a look at amazon warehouse worker turnover rate. No other company in the industry comes anywhere close. Amazon's strategy is to gamify work and force the workers to put the pedal to the metal until they burn out and quit.

Re: Leaked memo reveals Amazon’s plans to combat the Teamsters in California

#76

Post by colinmhayes »

baskethead wrote: post #47
dave_sullivan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will spend money on literally anything else except wage increases.

Most people that work for Amazon in the warehouse like working there. All you're hearing are from the union plants that are coordinating with media that both want to see Amazon fail. Meanwhile the fact that unions are having such a hard time gaining traction show that most of the members feel like they don't need it. The idea that you can intimidate hundreds of thousands of workers across the US is ludicrous.

Because everyone else quits after a month?

Re: Leaked memo reveals Amazon’s plans to combat the Teamsters in California

#77

Post by pjmorris »

suby wrote: post #40
oarsinsync wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when it's literally a companies goal to pay people as little as is functionally possible The meme that “fiduciary duty” means “maximise revenue at all costs” needs to die. This is a falsehood that has been debunked repeatedly.

Your two sentences in this thread is hardly debunking anything. What is Amazon maximizing if not profit? It certainly is not employee share of revenue or employee well being.

Corporations have no fiduciary duty to produce a profit. Thinking that they do has been attributed to Milton Friedman's 1971 NY editorial [0], but some argue that the notion can't be pinned on him [1] It's more accurate to say that fiduciary responsibilities are to ensure the corporation doesn't violate the law and that the firm doesn't go out of business [2].

[0] 'The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits', Friedman

[1] https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Shareholder-Value-Myth-Shareholders-C...

Re: Leaked memo reveals Amazon’s plans to combat the Teamsters in California

#78

Post by onethought »

colinmhayes wrote: post #69
oarsinsync wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when it's literally a companies goal to pay people as little as is functionally possible The meme that “fiduciary duty” means “maximise revenue at all costs” needs to die. This is a falsehood that has been debunked repeatedly.

The only point of a company is to maximize shareholder value. You're right, that doesn't always mean "maximize revenue at all costs.” It usually does though, because especially as a growth company that's what shareholders want. Obviously there are competing priorities, but overall most shareholders want to maximize discounted profit, and all their priorities reflect how that should be done.

That’s not true though. The shareholders are people so what they want are as varied as what people want.

Does Elon want SpaceX to be super profitable or does he want to make life multi planetary? (They aren’t mutually exclusive, but it’s weird to think that he is just trying to make as much profit as possible).

Re: Leaked memo reveals Amazon’s plans to combat the Teamsters in California

#79

Post by [deleted] »

pera wrote: post #8
CSMastermind wrote: post #3

I really dislike sensationalized headlines like this. A more accurate one might say: > Amazon's plan to counter pressure from the Teamsters Union focuses on investing in non-profits. For those who didn't read the article: A leaked Amazon memo shows that the Teamsters Union is effectively putting pressure on Amazon by convincing its members to pressure politicians into not granting Amazon tax breaks, land grants, etc.…

Why do you consider the headline sensationalist? They are using the same language used in their memo: > provide political cover for local policymakers, neutralize organized labors’ attempts to grow their coalition of third-party validators and spokespeople [...]

[deleted]

Re: Leaked memo reveals Amazon’s plans to combat the Teamsters in California

#80

Post by michaelchisari »

stevenjgarner wrote: post #21

Next time you're at a union meeting, ask them about any boxes they own at sports stadiums. Ask if you as a paid union member can use the box that you are paying for with your dues.

Are you saying this as an argument against unions? Or as an argument for better, more democratic unions?
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