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Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California

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

#221
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fine is meant to discourage a behavior. A fine isn't excessive unless (and until) it -effectively- discourages the wrongful behavior. Or at least that’s what my argument would be in court.

Test your theory in your new profession as lawyer, or judge if that's your prerogative, sometime soon in court. Personally, if I was in power I would disbar you immediately and pray that you never offer legal advice again.

No wonder half the comments in your comment history are downvoted!

Instead of attacking me, why don't you share some sources that prove my thinking wrong?

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

#222

Maybe I'm not following, but I'm seeing tons of responses saying that a low fine is alright because this is a local violation. What is the reasoning there? Doesn't the profit go to the corporation as a whole?

The penalty must be proportionate to the crime. Otherwise, there's a good chance a higher court will overturn it. It doesn't matter where the profits go; in this case, management at two warehouses did something wrong, and the fine reflects the scope of the harm done. If this could be proven to be happening illegally at every warehouse nationwide, then it becomes a larger issue and there will be larger personalities.

It seems to me that it matters where the profit goes because part of "proportionate to the crime" means that the fine is sufficient to discourage the behavior.

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

#223
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re being downvoted because the premise of your question would imply that trickle down economics works, it does not. But I can think of one case where fines create a perverse incentive: really small towns run speed traps that fund their law enforcement. I think most cops have a non trivial amount of their budget based on fines. It’s debatable if this is bad. I feel like it’s morally wrong to set a speed li…

> because the premise of your question would imply that trickle down economics work I’m not certain how a person could read that from my text. The premise is: 1. Employer does some harm to employees 2. State fines employer the value of employee harm 3. State general fund receives money (minus lawyering costs) 4. Employees receive no remuneration for harm 5. General fund pays for general government activities Effectiv…

I read your original comment as the company would make less money after being fined therefore take it out of their employees paychecks. Thanks for the clarification that's not what you were talking about.

Regarding the premise: The purpose of the fine is to provide a disincentive to it happening in the first place (in theory). I tend to like restorative justice though.

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

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”.

Jail time is the answer (instead of fines only).

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

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was told that in Monaco, if you are caught speeding in a supercar, your fine is much more than if you are caught speeding on your moped. I thought that seemed fair to me. Whether it is true or not is something I never looked up as I will never be in the situation of needing to know. If it's not true, then seems like a waste of a good idea that people seem to want to be true.

Speeding fines are often based on how much over the limit you are going, which is perfectly sensible given that reflects the danger and discourages petty over-enforcement of very low margin speeding. Adding mass of the vehicle as a component to fines would also be a sensible measure to make the fine reflect the hazard.

while all of that might be true, I'm pretty sure none of that had anything to do with the supercar policy.

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

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

3-5% is a heck of a lot closer to 0 than 100%. Quoting top-line is misleading.

I encourage you to provide examples where a business has 100% profit margin

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If this practice is so bad, why is it allowed for all other industries? Competent lawmakers consider enforceability. Enforcing a law like this requires either the creation and funding of an enforcement agency, or additional funding to an existing agency to enforce it. If your law applies to all industries, that funding is massive and gets struck down--either the law simply isn't passed, or the law is passed but is…

That's nonsense. You don't need any additional bureaucracy. That's just an excuse that bureaucrats use to justify their worthless existence. Do we need new courts and judges every time something new is made illegal?

> Do we need new courts and judges every time something new is made illegal?

That's not what I was talking about.

If you make a law saying that quotas have to be communicated to employees so they can know what they're working up to, then you need someone to physically go to the workplaces and make sure that quotas are being communicated. It's as simple as that.

If you are enforcing this in, say, 500 warehouses, one person can probably do all the inspections, as that's a little less than two locations per day to go to all the locations in a year.

If you're enforcing this in every workplace in a state the size of California, the inspection apparatus necessary becomes unwieldy, and likely doesn't happen, making the law unenforced and ineffective.

As an aside, while this isn't what I was talking about, creating new laws does in fact mean you need more courts and judges. I'm not sure how you think this could not be the case--do you think you can just add more cases and the same number of workers will simply work more to absorb the additional workload? Keep in mind that most courts in the US have massive case backlogs, and create incentives to settle out of court to avoid court time, which results in all sorts of problems such as dangerous criminals getting away with slaps on the wrist on the one hand, and non-violent offenders being pressured into dangerous CI situations to avoid jail time on the other hand.

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

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A business employing 100 people should have at least a General Counsel, if not multiple lawyers who can advise them such that they structure their break schedule to not violate state law. That's literally the purpose of having in-house legal counsel. Heck, a business employing 2 people should have a legal advisor. If I were starting a startup with my own money, a lawyer would be employee number one.

Are you even for real right now? You expect a company of 100 people to have multiple lawyers on payroll pouring over labor statutes? There exists companies outside the frenzied world of VC-funded startups.

What serious company does not have a single lawyer to consult with?

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

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My back-of-the-napkin math: Amazon warehouses run 24/7, so a million divided by 365 is $2740 per day, which turns out to about $114 per hour. Amazon warehouses employ about 1500 people (even though SoCal warehouses probably employ more.)

I would be absolutely gobsmacked if they saved that little.

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