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One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

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Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#451

Post by jacobolus »

nomel wrote: post #354
jacobolus wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has been incredibly hostile to labor rights for their employees, including worker safety, fair compensation, parental leave, provision of basic benefits, reasonable schedules, collective bargaining, etc. They've been cited by federal labor judges for systematic unlawful behavior, and are under congressional investigation. Hopefully there will be some real consequences sometime soon. I'm not holding my breath t…

> Amazon's uncompetitive Could you expand on this? If they were uncompetitive, from a worker perspective, they wouldn't have any workers. Having workers means they are the best choice out of all the other companies competing for those workers. It, quite literally, means all the other choices were even worse!

Amazon's model for package delivery is to hire "contractor" companies who then hire workers to drive around Amazon-marked vehicles to deliver nothing but Amazon packages, working under a long list of rules imposed by Amazon. These workers are effectively Amazon employees, but don't get the ordinary protections that would be afforded to workers hired directly by Amazon. Compared to other delivery drivers they have less training, higher turnover (less experience), higher delivery quotas, harsher schedules, worse pay/benefits, less job security, and no collective bargaining. This puts downward pressure on every other package delivery company, but those companies (and national postal services) can't legally mistreat their employees in the same ways Amazon can. This gives Amazon an uncompetitive advantage by reducing their costs below their competitors' costs, in a way that is unlawful and would be impossible if existing labor laws were vigorously enforced. However, they have thus far managed to evade legal responsibility in many (but not all) jurisdictions.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#452

Post by pas »

parineum wrote: post #312
locococo wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not how it works if there is a monopoly. E.g amazon is the only employer. I think this is where the local and federal governments should step in. If someone is working for 40 hours and needs foods stamps then the companies should be required to reimburse the government. It's a disgrace for society to take advantage of people like that.

Do amazon workers not require house, food, entertainment, etc.? Amazon isn't the only employer anywhere. Those people want and need services.

only doesn't mean they don't have effective pricing power in the local labor market due to their size

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#453

Post by plutaniano »

itslennysfault wrote: post #449
plutaniano wrote: post #446

Doesn't Amazon have to compete with welfare for workers, instead of benefiting from it? The more welfare pays, the worse a job at Amazon is in comparison, is it not? How does Amazon benefit from this?

The point is that they pay such low wages that their workers are still eligible for welfare when working there (despite being hugely profitable). This essentially means that tax dollars are subsidizing their profits.

> The point is that they pay such low wages that their workers are still eligible for welfare when working there (despite being hugely profitable)

I'm not contesting this. This is a valid point.

> This essentially means that tax dollars are subsidizing their profits.

I don't see how this would be the case.

Two scenarios:

1:

- Welfare is now $0/month

- Some people that could get by with welfare now can't. They start looking for jobs.

- Increase in the supply of workers.

- Decrease in wages. (good for amazon)

2:

- Welfare is now $3k/month

- Some people decide that it's no longer worth it to work. They'd rather just live off of welfare.

- Decrease in the supply of workers.

- Increase in wages. (bad for amazon)

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#454

Post by pas »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #232
pas wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

worth of labor is not the worth of product/service. Amazon picks the places where it can hire extremely cheap labor, because usually they are the only game in town. (monopsony market for labor.) it happened without automation and happens with automation too. of course it's on society to help those who are stuck in these unfortunately places.

Isn’t that how the market should work? Economically depressed area has people in need of jobs, companies should come in and satisfy that demand, making the place less economically depressed and eventually raising the cost of labor. No point to put an Amazon warehouse in Seattle’s south lake Union neighborhood, for example.

It is how it works given enough time and size and spherical cows and a bit of vacuum. :)

Amazon does provide jobs, in fact it provides too many jobs, crowding out other buyers on the local market, then after they downside/close, Amazon can effectively set the price of labor there, and it sets it to the minimum. (Meaning Amazon takes all the economic surplus produced, basically those who work there cannot save, cannot really raise children, etc.)

The problem is not that the market doesn't work, the problem is that it doesn't help with the desirable things society wants.

And if we only consider economic surplus, it is better to have Amazon there than not. (Before Amazon we can assume people there had even worse jobs, and the region heavily subsidized by various welfare programs.) But big companies inherently do very profitable things that look like coordination (ie. they look like they are in a cartel), that's why - other factors being equal - they won't open factories/warehouses in already saturated labor markets, instead they pick a place where cost of operation is cheaper (wages are lower).

And then through consolidation the market can get into a (pathological) state where there are only big companies, and they just buy/deter/sabotage new small companies.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#455

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

soco wrote: post #441
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, your theory is that they could double their payroll because grocery stores are so high-margin that this is no big deal? Or is it that you believe they wouldn't have whiny complainoids even at $40/hour, making it expensive but worth the increased cost? What happens when their competitors need to do the same thing just to stay in business... will everyone somehow magically have the top 5% of the wagie class, and ev…

I have an idea: let's try and see - although I know it's against any current business teaching. Seems easier to assume the employees are whiners, especially from a position where the hourly rate is at least an order of magnitude higher. But I digress: of course the first question will be, who's trying first this novel approach? My favorite example is the comparison with Denmark, where the hourly wage of the mac worke…

>My favorite example is the comparison with Denmark, where the hourly wage of the mac worker is more than double yet the big mac price is pretty much the same. Who would have guessed...

Not me! Can someone explain this to me?

I worked in a restaurant for 5 years. It's a notoriously tight-margin industry, the poster child for late stage capitalism. We aimed for labor costs of ~30%. If we doubled wages, holding margins constant, we'd have to charge 30% more. Another ~40% goes to ingredients- I don't know what their labor percentage is, but conservatively assuming 20%, that's an additional 8% if they doubled wages too. If we let margins go to zero (they do have to be non-zero to incentivize opening a restaurant at all, but can be arbitrarily small), we're still a minimum of 28% more expensive.

But even if we ignore all of that, the US notably subsidizes beef to a large degree. If we had salary parity with Denmark, I'd still expect the US Big Macs to be cheaper. And that's all before factoring in Denmark's higher taxes.

So what gives? Does McDonald's have wider margins or a lower labor percentage than the rest of the industry? Does Denmark also subsidize beef?

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#456

Post by Noble6 »

calibas wrote: post #311
Noble6 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon Warehouse positions all pay well above minimum wage, in every state. They also offer benefits. Concluding Amazon isn’t paying enough, because a large portion of their workforce qualifies for food stamps, is the wrong conclusion.

> Amazon Warehouse positions all pay well above minimum wage, in every state Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, so that's not saying much. Going by state minimum wage, your statement is incorrect. According to Google the average Amazon warehouse worker in California makes $17-18 an hour. California minimum wage is $16 per hour.

Wherever you’re getting the pay rate info is wrong. You can go to the Amazon Hiring site and see they’re offering $20.75/hr right now in California. Amazon has always paid high wages for warehouse work, and not even close to the Federal line, so brining that up proves nothing.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#457

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

rickydroll wrote: post #420
ghiculescu wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was that simple then this problem would be solved. Clearly most voters (in your opinion) want a higher minimum wage, UBI, and greater corporate taxation. If elected representatives do what their voters want, why are we discussing this?

Study: Politicians listen to rich people, not you Rich people don't want a higher minimum wage, UBI, and greater corporate taxation. https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-...

That does support both that governments can't be trusted to behave morally and that voting shares is just as good, but your tone suggests that you're disagreeing with the parent. Am I misreading that intent?

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#458

Post by snapplebobapple »

michael9423 wrote: post #182
atleastoptimal wrote: post #129

Here's the thing. This is going to happen to everyone, as in, no person will be valuable enough via the contribution of their labor to survive without subsidies. At the level of automation we've reached in society, low-skilled labor is worth, per hour, a very small amount. As AI and automation improve, the majority of people will have negligible economic utility. The only way around this is to let those people starve…

Actually, it's the opposite. At the level of automation we've reached, labor is worth, per hour, way more than 100 years ago. The problem is just that this value is siphoned off by shareholders who do not have to work to receive the monetary value that should go to the worker. So the issue is simply in how corporations are set up and how the stock market is designed. The entire system is designed to drain as much val…

That's not true. The system is designed to pay least cost to both capital and labor. Labor just notices it more and whinges more because of sticky prices on their cost side, a less equal distribution of payouts because the quality of labor is far more varied than the quality of capital and the value of capital has been exploding over the last at least 5 decades as technology pushes output per worker far higher over time than output per unit of capital (because the technology is basically allowing more capital to be deployed per worker to increase worker output at a higher ratio of capital to labor).

Labor already earns 10-40% of the net income of capital (over and above what they are compensated for for their labor) because of government taxation. It's ridiculous to claim they should be getting even more of the pie or have any say beyond convincing their manager of something.

Also, this idea that a worker should be paid what they provide is stupid. They should be paid the lowest price the market will bear, the same as capital. What matters for labor's salary is not what they did but that a company is willing to pay the market clearing price for their labor set by supply and demand.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#459

Post by gottorf »

jacobolus wrote: post #451
nomel wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon's uncompetitive Could you expand on this? If they were uncompetitive, from a worker perspective, they wouldn't have any workers. Having workers means they are the best choice out of all the other companies competing for those workers. It, quite literally, means all the other choices were even worse!

Amazon's model for package delivery is to hire "contractor" companies who then hire workers to drive around Amazon-marked vehicles to deliver nothing but Amazon packages, working under a long list of rules imposed by Amazon. These workers are effectively Amazon employees, but don't get the ordinary protections that would be afforded to workers hired directly by Amazon. Compared to other delivery drivers they have les…

I get your point about misclassifying de facto employees as contractors, and also wanting as a society to avoid a race to the bottom in this type of stuff, but the fact remains that the delivery workers are voluntarily choosing to work with the compensation and under the conditions described. I presume that despite all the downsides you listed, it was the best possible option for them.

> This puts downward pressure on every other package delivery company

If in fact turnover is as high as you say, it would seem that it actually wouldn't be competitive over the long run; the overall customer experience would be worse and eventually Amazon would run out of people to work for them.

I think you're saying that this is the labor equivalent of the anti-competitive practice of dumping, but I'm not sure if it translates exactly.

Re: One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid

#460

Post by ihumanable »

akvadrako wrote: post #425
ihumanable wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting question. Employees have to generate more value for the employer than the employer pays the employee, otherwise the employer won't employ the employee, or they will go bankrupt. So let's say you have someone that's getting the $2000/mo from the government for assistance. Amazon hires them and pays them $1000/mo, the only way this makes sense for Amazon is if they can extract more than $1000/mo of…

You don't need to wonder or make changes to "fix" this problem. If Amazon or anyone was making $5000 off employees they paid $1000, they would hire more and wages would go up.

That assumes that there is no diminishing return on additional hires. If I run a warehouse that generates $100,000/mo with 10 employees being paid $1000/mo and those 10 employees satisfy the needs of the warehouse, I wouldn't hire more for fun.

There is some finite amount of demand that needs to be processed by the warehouse, the fact that I can satisfy that demand with a small number of low paid workers doesn't somehow increase the demand.

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