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Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

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Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#151

Post by FridgeSeal »

ip26 wrote: post #128
FridgeSeal wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also known as "I support Unions, but only when they don't actually have any power".

So how do you create a union that has the right amount of power? When unions are able to, & do, kill the host company through greed & short-term thinking, something is wrong with the structure.

Let me reverse this and see how it sounds:

"So how do you create a CEO and Board that has the right amount of power? When CEO's and Boards are able to, & do, kill the host company through greed & short-term thinking, something is wrong with the structure".

I'd argue that a CEO running a company into the ground for their own selfish, short term gains is far worse than a union ruining a company, because at least when the latter occurs it's because a significant amount of the employees aren't being sufficiently paid, or are being subject to unsafe/inadequate conditions. That is far more important than a CEO getting a bonus.

How many times has this actually happened, and were they even the root cause or would the company have failed for some other reason anyway?

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#152

Post by lovich »

int_19h wrote: post #115
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relationship between labor and management/capital has historically been adversarial in the United States. We can’t just adopt the laws from countries with good labor relations like Germany or Denmark and expect the culture to follow.

The relationship between labor and management/capital has historically been adversarial in all countries, in many cases much more so than US. I mean, US didn't have an attempted socialist revolution, for one - several European countries did. And yet they developed a working system involving unions out of it all. There's no reason why we can't, too.

America didn't get their socialist revolution because the companies and government brutally suppressed every rebellion and even basic strikes. America as a government and capitalist society has been actively against unions since forever, and in the past few decades they've convinced workers to be against unionizing as well

-https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Corn_Rebellion

This one on Blair mountain was big -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

Veterans wanting to get paid in less than 20 years of waiting, so why not beat and shoot them? -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

Just the history of union busting here -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_...

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#153

Post by ardy42 »

sgc wrote: post #149
PretzelFisch wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most cases it's best to get the money today rather then wait for a future, that may not come to exist.

Kill the cow to eat, who cares about the milk of tomorrow.

> Kill the cow to eat, who cares about the milk of tomorrow.

Management is often guilty of this kind of thinking, too. It's not just unions.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#154

Post by manigandham »

cheeze wrote: post #143
manigandham wrote: post #78

This is a direct attack on competitors, designed to enlist the help of the federal government to raise payroll and put pressure on arch nemesis Walmart and any other company that has lots of retail other jobs that are not conducive to automation. Remember that Amazon thinks 5 years ahead, and they waited for the perfect PR and political threshold to announce these changes and capitalize on the news.

> This is a direct attack on competitors, designed to enlist the help of the federal government to raise payroll and put pressure on arch nemesis Walmart and any other company that has lots of retail other jobs that are not conducive to automation. Good. I hope they force their competitors to pay employees better wages.

For warehouse work? As the rest of the comments show, it's never that simple.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#155

Post by Consultant32452 »

sgc wrote: post #149
PretzelFisch wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most cases it's best to get the money today rather then wait for a future, that may not come to exist.

Kill the cow to eat, who cares about the milk of tomorrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS9LCR5P5wI

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#156

Post by mnsc »

ericd wrote: post #137
crooked-v wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet presumably the union would be quite happy with across-the-board raises, so the complaint tries to casually gloss over the implied conflict with management about who deserves a more limited supply of raises.

Why should the union decide who gets raises, rather than the manager whose job it is to monitor and grade the performance of his employees?

Well the manager could decide that the best performance is the people who does their work and don't make a fuss. Those who go to work even when they are sick, do a little extra without expecting compensation. If you reward those "performing" employees you get everyone trying to do the same. The reward then might even be very small but it would be presented as "this year the general pay increase will be 0.69%, but you have broken your back for the company so you will get almost double that, 1.18%". Just to create a divide and something to strive for. Im aware that this is the American Way and as a swede we value the collective more, as a culture. But a divide work force is an obedient work force.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#157

Post by Consultant32452 »

jostmey wrote: post #125
xt00 wrote: post #5

This will help with recruitment, but the sentiment that new workers will essentially get paid the same as older workers is going to immediately be a big sticking point. From watching the Boeing union strikes over many years, I get the sense that once a labor force unionizes they setup their own structure for pay and get that signed off -- where they have seniority and things like that. But it also means the company b…

Unions are probably a good thing in general. But unions can become monopolies and perhaps such unions need to be busted up

Unions are good for the union members most of the time, and generally bad for everyone else: shareholders, management, customers, etc. I'm not saying that's bad, that's the most obvious position for the union to take, to maximize benefit for itself at the cost of everything else. We don't seem to have any problem acknowledging that corporations do this, but unions, while not technically corporations, operate largely like one.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#158

Post by mnsc »

aerotwelve wrote: post #105
ekianjo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if unions were not actively trying to sabotage their own companies most of the time, maybe the sentiment would be different. There are several cases when unions actively push to destroy companies just to get short term benefits.

Why would an organized labor force try to sabotage the company they work for? If their company goes bankrupt, they all lose their jobs. I've yet to see a union contract that guarantees the type of golden parachutes that executives routinely line up for themselves (and only for themselves) when their firm goes bust or they start to run for the door. In general, when a company fails, the rank and file have to find new…

Unions: we think we are getting screwed over and want better pay and a safe work place.

Company: that seem expensive we will shut down and move the capital to another town and try to hire people that will accept this state of affairs.

Company fails

Innocent bystander: how could the union be so evil!?

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#159

Post by s73v3r_ »

rukittenme wrote: post #50
s73v3r_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is a trillion dollar company. They did not have to make any decision.

Amazon is valued at $1 trillion but Amazon does not have $1 trillion. Amazon's total assets are only about $131 billion. $20 billion of that is cash.

So they have plenty of money not to have to choose.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#160

Post by dboreham »

barry-cotter wrote: post #101
dboreham wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you compare the UX at Walmart vs, say, Costco (which pays higher wages) I'm not so sure that paying the lowest is good business. i.e. is 1 Costco employee equal in productivity to 1 Walmart employee? I suspect not.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-08-27/why-walma... Walmart pays less because it has much lower profit margins. It serves far more customers and the average employee is a great deal less skilled. And it’s cheaper, with greater product choice. The average Walmart employee is definitely worse than the average Costco employee but Walmart is clearly the better business. It has higher gross profits, employs mo…

>Walmart pays less because it has much lower profit margins.

Huh? Is that a rule? So when a given corporation's GPM drops, they have to give their workers a pay cut?

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