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Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California

#171

Post by Brybry »

lupire wrote: post #105
Brybry wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, plenty of fines work this way. It's how GDPR works: percent of turnover (revenue) or a floor, whichever is higher [1]. And worst case scenario define revenue in the fine's terms in a way that it disallows accounting tricks. [1] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-83-gdpr/#:~:text=turnover

That the max fine for GDPR, not the min. GDPR is really a "fine whatever they want" regime, starting small and increasing for non compliance.

> up to 20,000,000 EUR, or in the case of an undertaking [economic entity], up to 4% of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is higher

I think the "whichever is higher" wording does make it a floor but you're right that the "up to" makes it whatever they want. So I guess it's a meaningless variable floor.

It still works out similarly: they could fine a company like Amazon, with a lot of revenue, up to around 21 billion (regardless of profit) while they could only fine a small company up to 20 million.

Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California

#172

Post by Aloisius »

schneems wrote: post #121

Is 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”?

> Where’s our “100x FAFO laws”?

Prohibited by 8th Amendment's ban on excessive fines.

Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California

#173

Post by fwungy »

Mo3 wrote: post #60
dolni wrote: post #44

Earlier 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.

Surely the fines will become exponentially bigger every time they are caught doing the same, right?

From the politicians they funded?

Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California

#174

Post by spaceguillotine »

bpodgursky wrote: post #46
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if Amazon is guilty of heinous crimes for not giving workers a strict written quota The issue isn’t having or not having quotas. It’s having a quota and not telling employees about it.

Why is this a meaningful difference? Any at-will employer could stack-rank and cut the lowest 5% of workers every month. Or adjust the quota every month at the 5th percentile. There's literally no difference to workers, it's always "make sure you are a bit better than the people other people applying for the job.

This is pretty close to what temp agencies do at tech companies, i witnessed it at Google with multiple agencies and production quotas.

Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California

#175

Post by bee_rider »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #110
dolni wrote: post #44

Earlier 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. Not the best analogy... In San Francisco if you steal $950 worth of merchandise from a store, there is no fine or punishment, and you get to keep what you stole.

Would you say that’s a good thing or a bad thing? If you think it is a bad thing, then it seems like a fitting analogy, right?

Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California

#176

Post by rahimnathwani »

bee_rider wrote: post #175
rahimnathwani wrote: post #110

Earlier 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. Not the best analogy... In San Francisco if you steal $950 worth of merchandise from a store, there is no fine or punishment, and you get to keep what you stole.

Would you say that’s a good thing or a bad thing? If you think it is a bad thing, then it seems like a fitting analogy, right?

If GP's point is about the justice system in general, then yes. If GP's point is about this fine in particular, or about how big corporations are treated in general, then it's a poor analogy.

Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California

#177

Post by p51-remorse »

anigbrowl wrote: post #162
Dylan16807 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crime was also not even a rounding error. The important thing is whether the punishment fits the crime.

In terms of profits gained, perhaps. It might have catastrophic consequences for workers who suffered accidents directly or indirectly (eg crashing a car while driving home from an exhausting shift).

The law, wisely, usually doesn’t do the butterfly effect thing. That way lies madness.

Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California

#178

Post by tomoyoirl »

benreesman wrote: post #168
schneems wrote: post #121

Is 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”?

They’ve been doing this for years. It costs less to pay the fines than the loss in productivity would be, the robots didn’t pan out in the timeframe advertised and driving human labor to subsistence level (“loose labor markets”) is both policy and incidentally the reason why all the polls say “the economy is terrible” and all the pundits say “how do we convince the public that the metrics show they should be happy”.

The pundits say the economy is fine, and that the labor market is still really tight (but slackening gradually). They do note that economic sentiment is really, really bad, and it seems to be for non-economic reasons (residual inflation shock, mostly). Avoiding further inflation is the key reason that policy is leaning on the labor market at all.

Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California

#179

Post by schneems »

Aloisius wrote: post #172
schneems wrote: post #121

Is 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”?

> Where’s our “100x FAFO laws”? Prohibited by 8th Amendment's ban on excessive fines.

99x then and call it a day.

(J/k)

If we (America) can find a way to send someone who shoplifted three golf clubs to prison for 25 years to life and have it not be “cruel and unusual punishments” we are certainly clever enough to find a way to charge companies who view fines as “the cost of doing business” enough so they will at least thing twice about it and have it not be “excessive”.

Re: Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California

#180

Post by fwungy »

barnabask wrote: post #6
StarterPro wrote: post #3

That's, what? Half an hour of operation to them?

In Finland, speeding fines are based on your income. Can we have that, but for corporations?

The corporations finance.the politicians, so no. It's all for show, and lines the pockets of the lawyers, who are the primary political class.
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