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Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#331

Post by nickff »

vel0city wrote: post #308
ITB wrote: post #210

I don’t understand why all these comments are about who buys or doesn’t buy at Amazon. The article is about unionization and strikes. I expect a conversation about the merits of unions and their negotiation tactics. In my opinion, events like these will just accelerate job elimination. The goal of a logistics company is to be reliable. Humans are unreliable and more so when they are purposely and collectively unrelia…

> In my opinion, events like these will just accelerate job elimination Sure, probably. The jobs that can be automated will eventually be automated. But while they're still needed, I'd hope they have some basic protections and decent wages. If my online shopping costs go up 0.5% but now a thousand workers don't have to have the mental stress of "I really need a pee break, can my metrics take the few minute hit this w…

Most companies’ largest expense is labor/wages (usually somewhere on the order of 25-50%), and profit margins are usually on the order of 0-5%. Increasing pay or benefits substantially would increase costs by a lot more than 0.5%.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#332

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

greesil wrote: post #302
SoftTalker wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone deserves the opportunity to earn a livable income, but not all jobs can or should be paying a "living wage." Some jobs by their nature are part time and some people only want to work part time.

Uh sure. Then why are they striking? I honestly don't know.

Some large number of them have been "agitated". You can't acknowledge that propaganda exists which is capable of manipulating people into doing things they wouldn't do on their own (or that they shouldn't do), and then say that the left does not create that sort of propaganda.

They're striking not for better wages, but so that some local or state politician wins an election in 2026.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#333

Post by kakuri »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #217
driverdan wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you care about providing your credit card number to order something? You're not liable for fraud and most banks will replace the card quickly. In 25 years of having credit cards and using them extensively online I've had them compromised only a few times. It's really not something to worry about.

"not punching in my credit card number to random sites" Not sure about OP, but for me it's about convenience. My pet peeve is credit card forms. Do you know what % of websites I've used that have at least minorly broken credit card forms? It's literally 99%. Random common issues that are annoying but can be fixed: - autocomplete doesn't work at all - autocomplete only fills in half the fields - autocomplete only fill…

This is what you get when "frontend devs aren't real devs" and every job wants a "full-stack dev" (surprise, they can't do frontend!).

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#334

Post by tharkun__ »

criddell wrote: post #250
Glyptodon wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ease of returns is probably the main feature that makes my household have some degree of Amazon preference. But that's increasingly offset by an inability to find quality products.

I'm always surprised how often I contact Amazon to do a return and they refund my money and tell me to keep the item.

I suspect it's just cheaper for many things.

You not only have to consider the money spent on shipping it back to them at their own cost but also then deciding whether the product is still in good enough condition to be resold or most likely it would just go wholesale directly to a business that sells returns at a cheaper price and they handle that checking / repackaging. That by itself still probably costs money to handle. At Amazon scale, all of that together is a lot of money.

If the amount of profit they made from selling to you is offset by all those costs, why not let the customer keep it and get free goodwill and repeat business?

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#335

Post by sumOne00 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #296
greesil wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum wage != Livable wage I don't think it's worth considering the comparison. But sure, maybe working at a distribution center pays well enough where you're located. Likely that's not the case where these strikes are happening. It's expensive out there. Also, what you wrote gives the impression of "I've got mine already so I don't care what happens to you."

Everyone deserves the opportunity to earn a livable income, but not all jobs can or should be paying a "living wage." Some jobs by their nature are part time and some people only want to work part time.

Negative. All jobs should be paying liveable wages. One off type of jobs for 'this and that' sure, but showing up every day and expectation for deliverables or being on time? Absolutely, pay a liveable wage. Too many Ferrari, BMW, new speed boat from the PPP loans greed to show that employees mean nothing. All jobs deserve liveable wages. We should be advocating for a more peaceful society.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#336

Post by thaumasiotes »

hirako2000 wrote: post #315
thaumasiotes wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, I have an active order right now. I ordered three things simultaneously on December 15 with a stated delivery date of December 20, also called out by the website as "arrives before Christmas". One of those things shipped the next day and is currently reported to be arriving tomorrow, which happens to match the stated delivery date. The other two have yet to ship, but their delivery date has slipped to "December 2…

Big day in 4 days. Amazon is currently dealing with hundreds of millions packages. Those not using fulfilment have less but even worse on them.

Update: between my comment above and now, Amazon has marked the other two items shipped, and un-slipped the expected delivery date back to the 20th.

Interestingly, the "shipped" status is matched to a tracking update that says "package left the shipper facility" with no time or location information. All further updates have a location and a timestamp. (Everything is shipped by Amazon.)

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#337

Post by switch007 »

snikeris wrote: post #319
mschuster91 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the world doesn't need a particular task to be done by humans, then the task should be performed by robots. The problem is, our society isn't ready for that shift, not even close. Employment opportunities for the low skilled have all but gone down the drain - there is a reason why Walmart, Amazon and the other usual suspects love to set up shop in devastated communities: they have a captive audience that has no…

I worked for a Walmart store as a young man. It was well run, and they were adamant that you took your breaks throughout the day. I faced no exploitative or abusive conditions and was well paid.

How long ago?

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#338

Post by mindslight »

vel0city wrote: post #241
a12k wrote: post #102

I’ve found that the rise of Apply Pay as a payment mechanism on random sites has been helpful in getting me off of Amazon. Often it’s just as easy to order something direct if they have Apple Pay (or ShopPay, but I have other issues with them) and the same price as Amazon. Plus discoverability is awful on Amazon anyways. Still don’t get the Whole Foods return ability when not shopping from Amazon, but not punching in…

> Still don’t get the Whole Foods return ability when not shopping from Amazon Free returns aren't free. We need to de-normalize this practice of people buying so much junk just to immediately return it.

Well the first step is retailers and manufacturers needing to de-normalize this practice of playing continual games with pricing. These days if I see a "good sale" (aka non-sucker price) on something I'm in the market for, I will hit buy and then make the actual purchase decision over the next few weeks. Or if I'm unsure how many of something I will need, I will buy extra and then figure out how many I need later. Because I'm sure as shit not going to buy one or two for an honest price and then feel like a sucker later when I end up needing more but they've got me over the barrel. My main consideration is whether I've already got pending returns using the same method, or if I'm making a new task for myself.

It feels like this is part of a larger dynamic where companies are basically arbitraging consumers' feeling bad about waste and environmental destruction to increase their own bottom line. Like Target is abjectly terrible at packing items in boxes, such that things often get crushed in shipping. So then you're left with the dynamic of either complaining and accepting that return/resend creates a bunch more waste, or just shrugging off the damage they've caused (willfully, at this point). Now that I've seen the pattern, I just call that bluff too.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#339

Post by switch007 »

asah wrote: post #172
a12k wrote: post #102

I’ve found that the rise of Apply Pay as a payment mechanism on random sites has been helpful in getting me off of Amazon. Often it’s just as easy to order something direct if they have Apple Pay (or ShopPay, but I have other issues with them) and the same price as Amazon. Plus discoverability is awful on Amazon anyways. Still don’t get the Whole Foods return ability when not shopping from Amazon, but not punching in…

For me, Amazon cuts delivery times, improves reliability and makes returns 10x easier.

They're also 10x more efficient at providing counterfeits

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#340

Post by mschuster91 »

quickthrowman wrote: post #322
mschuster91 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the world doesn't need a particular task to be done by humans, then the task should be performed by robots. The problem is, our society isn't ready for that shift, not even close. Employment opportunities for the low skilled have all but gone down the drain - there is a reason why Walmart, Amazon and the other usual suspects love to set up shop in devastated communities: they have a captive audience that has no…

> The problem is, our society isn't ready for that shift, not even close. Percentage of US labor force working in agriculture by decade: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teacher-reso... 1950 was 15.2%, 1970 was 4.7%

Yeah, but manufacturing picked up a lot of the slack... until that went down the drain when China came, so Amazon et al picked up the slack, but now there is nothing left.
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