Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 560 posts

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

#511

Post by Symbiote »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #309
Symbiote wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the centre of Copenhagen, and haven't ordered anything from Amazon for a decade — on principle. I have ordered from online retailers in Denmark, and I've made 2 orders from AliExpress, and a few more from eBay. Can you give five items you can't buy in central London, but can buy from Amazon?

I have 400 orders on Amazon this year (I think that means I have more than 400 unique items since one order can be more than one items, but it's probably around 450 items total so not far off). Of those, I probably have a good portion which is household goods as I mentioned, like soap in bulk, soda cans in bulk, etc. which is cheaper than any other option (especially because I don't have a car in London). Then I have…

I can't imagine the level of consumption that leads to more than one online purchase every day. You must have a constant mountain of cardboard at your home.

But anyway, shops selling luggage are common. They probably sell scales too. Argos, Tesco and Ryman have them.

Electronics shops like Currys have monitor arms, as well as office supply shops.

I won't guess what a good shower filter is.

Office supply and electronics shops also have label printers.

Moth repellent is available from large supermarkets, DIY stores and hardware shops.

All of these are also available online from British companies that pay their fair share of taxes.

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

#512

Post by Symbiote »

bdangubic wrote: post #229
dns_snek wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> amazon has a business, yes? and if you want to do business with amazon you have to abide but those rules. And if you want to do business (at all) you have to abide by the local laws. In an ideal democratic world, those laws would be set by the people and for the people. Can you make an argument outlining how Amazon's anti-competitive rules help the society, and why their behavior should be tolerated in an ideal dem…

> And if you want to do business (at all) you have to abide by the local laws. In an ideal democratic world, those laws would be set by the people and for the people. which law is amazon breaking and if there isn't one (there isn't, otherwise there would be lawsuits we are all aware of) what's the law going to look like? > Can you make an argument outlining how Amazon's anti-competitive rules help the society, and wh…

You should reread the comments you have replied to, as you clearly haven't understood what was written.

A law would be fairly simple — it would forbid a marketplace or retailer from influencing the price of goods sold outside their marketplace/shop.

There are already laws regulating pricing in some places, e.g. selling below the manufacturer's recommended retail price, or preventing selling products below cost to attract customers.

There's this from California: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32866055 (I haven't read it, I'm not that interested.)

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

#513

Post by vouaobrasil »

infecto wrote: post #441
vouaobrasil wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am working towards that goal, actually. My only reasosn to be on it are economic for now.

That's my point. It feels very hypocritical because you yourself could disconnect today as you suggest in your gospel but you don't.

I am not advocating for a simpler life off grid. If I were, I would disconnect now. I am advocating for the destruction of technology because it destroys nature. And sometimes, you need to use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house.

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

#514

Post by 55555 »

spamizbad wrote: post #301
okokhacker wrote: post #223

I’m not sure why the general sentiment here is that Amazon workers do not deserve a living wage and should be replaced with robots. All the best to the union, I sincerely hope they meet your demands.

What's funny is even if you hate unions, surely the demographics who frequent HN at least has a solid grasp of the capital investments and R&D costs necessary to "replace them with robots" - We are talking about delivery station roles here. You gotta build something that, amortized, can do it for less than $500/day in a climate where Wall Street is putting pressure on tech stocks to control costs. Have at it. We hear…

Amazon warehouses are heavily automated and they’re increasing the automation all the time

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

#515

Post by thaumasiotes »

MoreMoore wrote: post #503
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…

What's your control group? Would other online retailers fare better or worse than this? Most of the time, other online retailers are worse in my experience.

Amazon is much worse on shipping than pretty much any other online retailer. The norm is that the retailer tells you when the thing will arrive, and it arrives on time. The norm for Amazon is that they advertise a deadline they don't plan to meet, and when they slip that deadline, they alter the shipping speed displayed on your order.

A long time ago I assumed that Amazon removed shipping speed options from their ordering process because, if you itemize shipping separately from the cost of the good, the customer can demand a refund on shipping when you don't provide what you sold.

My current theory is that it's a side effect of deciding they needed to provide shipping in-house instead of buying it from reliable sources. They replaced shipping they could control with shipping they couldn't control, and so they stopped letting you specify the shipping speed you needed. But for some reason they continued advertising shipping speeds they knew they couldn't provide.

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

#516

Post by anal_reactor »

_huayra_ wrote: post #488
65uu6 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reddit is no longer a good place to try and get a pulse on general sentiment. comment section is filled with bots and the front page has the most random content i have ever seen, like occasional random creep shots of celebs that get like 3,000 upvotes that gain more transaction than current events.

I used to use search engines with the "site:reddit.com" keyword to get more genuine reviews about products and services. Now it more than not leads to posts where the top comment is some gpt'ed text with a clear referral link and far more up votes than an obscure subreddit on some niche object would warrant.

I still go to /r/meth because it's pure comedy

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

#517

Post by infecto »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #513
infecto wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my point. It feels very hypocritical because you yourself could disconnect today as you suggest in your gospel but you don't.

I am not advocating for a simpler life off grid. If I were, I would disconnect now. I am advocating for the destruction of technology because it destroys nature. And sometimes, you need to use the master's tools to dismantle the master's house.

Hypocrite. Its really sad to see people fall for their own personal gospel that provides them special exclusions.

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

#518

Post by robtherobber »

aio2 wrote: post #478
int_19h wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are working for you full time, but you aren't paying them living wage, how exactly are they supposed to make ends meet?

I don't know, but I think it is unfair to put all responsibility onto the business owner. In theory, a job is an agreement where you work for someone, and they pay you. Certain benefits may be required depending on circumstances, but making companies provide so many benefits is not a fair option. Keep in mind, I'm not opposed to companies providing benefits, but I think regulating this would create more trouble than…

We let businesses exist for one reason, so people can actually live (and I say let, because it is society - that is, its individuals - that has a put a system in place whereby such entities can exist and do what they do). If a job doesn't pay enough for that, the business isn't worth keeping around from the society's point of view. Workers should be paid decently, no matter what — profits or no profits. If an industry or company can't afford to pay fair wages, it’s not worth having, plain and simple.

On top of fair pay, companies owe their employees more. Businesses don't exist in a vacuum—they're tools we use to make life better for everyone. The entire economy is just a system we built to serve people, not the other way around.

Right now, companies often act like mini-dictatorships, where the tradeoff — giving up freedoms in exchange for money — ends up hurting society even if it props up the economy.

In short: if a company isn't contributing positively, it's failing at its purpose and should either disappear, or forced to fulfill its role.

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

#519

Post by bdangubic »

Symbiote wrote: post #512
bdangubic wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if you want to do business (at all) you have to abide by the local laws. In an ideal democratic world, those laws would be set by the people and for the people. which law is amazon breaking and if there isn't one (there isn't, otherwise there would be lawsuits we are all aware of) what's the law going to look like? > Can you make an argument outlining how Amazon's anti-competitive rules help the society, and wh…

You should reread the comments you have replied to, as you clearly haven't understood what was written. A law would be fairly simple — it would forbid a marketplace or retailer from influencing the price of goods sold outside their marketplace/shop. There are already laws regulating pricing in some places, e.g. selling below the manufacturer's recommended retail price, or preventing selling products below cost to att…

> You should reread the comments you have replied to, as you clearly haven't understood what was written.

I sure have

> A law would be fairly simple — it would forbid a marketplace or retailer from influencing the price of goods sold outside their marketplace/shop.

This type of law would make no sense, you are basically saying "I can price gouge the customers on your platform while providing the same product cheaper on mine." That is a F'ed up as it gets...

> e.g. selling below the manufacturer's recommended retail price

This is completely a different thing - if Amazon is actually telling retailers "hey, you want to sell this for $100 but you can't, you need to lower this price" that should 100% be illegal - Amazon should not be telling anyone what the price of their product should be. But that is 1000000% different from Amazon telling same companies "you cannot use our platform to price gouge people and sell your shit for more than you are selling elsewhere."

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

#520

Post by jazz9k »

beretguy wrote: post #507
jimt1234 wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Boomer Dad was a Teamster. I remember there was a several-weeks-long (might have even been months-long?) strike when I was a kid, probably around the late-70s. Shit was real. One day I saw him loading baseball bats and clubs into the trunk of his Buick before he left the house. I was just a kid; I had no idea what was going on. I asked him about it later in life and he just said, "That's how it was back then. We h…

It amazes me how things used to make more sense back in the day.

With this line of thinking, I guess lynchings are acceptable too?
Post reply on HN