Retail has had labor quotas (with serious health/mental consequences) since time immemorial, but i don't see any outrage against Sears, ToysRus, or BedBath. Why ?
Did they have secret quotas that were not revealed to their employees? That's why.
Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
131–140 of 253 posts
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#132Why taxes are proportional to income but fines aren't?
Because you create a loophole where non-profitable companies commit the offense and get cash back (if fines were connected to revenue, negative revenue would become a reward)
we're talking about it being tied to __gross__ revenue, not net revenue (profit)
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's like if someone stole $1000 worth of merchandise from a store and the only punishment is a $1000 fine... and you get to keep what you stole. No, it's not like that at all. The fine was for two specific locations and it was for not disclosing specific quotas in writing. Drawing analogies to a person stealing from a store doesn't make sense. The fine was likely calculated to offset any potential gains they may h…
On a more general note, fines need to be something like 5-10x of the benefit, not 1-2x. Of course the gov has limited resources, limited ability to win trials, etc, so they need to be far beyond just compensation.
> fines need to be something like 5-10x of the benefit, not 1-2x
There is zero chance Amazon was saving more than $1mm at these two warehouses from hiding quotas since the law went into effect. We’re already at 5x+ (most likely 10x+) benefit before considering damages.
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#134Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fine doesn't even amount to a slap on the wrist. It's like if someone stole $1000 worth of merchandise from a store and the only punishment is a $1000 fine... and you get to keep what you stole. Why be law abiding when you could break the law and potentially make more money? You'd have to be stupid to be law abiding in a system like that.
> It's like if someone stole $1000 worth of merchandise from a store and the only punishment is a $1000 fine... and you get to keep what you stole. No, it's not like that at all. The fine was for two specific locations and it was for not disclosing specific quotas in writing. Drawing analogies to a person stealing from a store doesn't make sense. The fine was likely calculated to offset any potential gains they may h…
"The fine was likely calculated to offset any potential gains they may have made by failing to disclose quotas" sounds an awful lot like what I got out of the analogy made by GP. I.e. it wasn't about saying it was literal theft of goods but that the risk is no greater than the reward and so the worst case return on breaking the rule is you're back to where you would have been had it been followed.
Similarly people referencing Amazon's total earnings aren't necessarily trying to be misleading about how many locations this occurred at or ignorant of more than just the article's headline (some are though, this is always true in a large discussion). Typically said people are just frustrated with all the above and would like to see much higher fines in this kind of scenario so the overall business cares more.
I'm not saying you should necessarily agree with those stances or conclusions, I don't completely myself, but it should take a bit more than what you wrote to brush everyone off wholesale like that.
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good idea, I think that’s a healthy minimum. If C level fellas were aware of the violations or didn’t do their due diligence then let’s say a 5 year minimum prison sentence.
This is how you get sky high CEO salaries. If they are going to help criminally liable, their salaries are going to have to rise to reflect the increased risk. If you got your way, C-level compensation would go up 10x or higher? I'm sure then you would be asking why CEO salaries are so high and we need to do something about them.
You’d eliminate the CEO position and delegate to a management company. Family businesses would, in practice, have been outlawed. In summary, a panacea for private equity.
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#137[deleted]
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#138Amazon made $64,809,782.60 in revenue every hour in Q3 2023. Source: https://www.junglescout.com/blog/how-much-does-amazon-make-i...
"If the penalty for a crime is a fine, that law only exists for the lower classes"
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#139Is this more or less than they made from breaking said law. I know regulatory capture is a thing but it seems like there should be some minimum “Crimes committed for financial gain that are punished with a fine must have a minimum fine of 100x the amount of money they made from the crime” The 90’s saw a constant stream of journalists and politicians praising 3 strikes laws. Where’s our “100x FAFO laws”?
Is there a term similar to “regulatory capture” but where the government becomes dependent on fines?
I suppose that if workers lost out on benefits of approximately the fine amount, the fine becomes a regressive tax since it goes towards general revenue rather than to whom was harmed.
Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California
#140Amazon made $64,809,782.60 in revenue every hour in Q3 2023. Source: https://www.junglescout.com/blog/how-much-does-amazon-make-i...
A. Amazon's retail margin is nearly zero. B. California is <0.5% of world population; IDK how much of Amazon's worldwide revenue.
I see this parroted around a lot, but Amazon's retail margin is not nearly zero. It's 3-5%, and accounts for over half the profit the company makes. And that's even before you account for the "profit" AWS makes from retail's purchases