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I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

theguardian.com

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Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#71

Post by Ricardus »

Rotdhizon wrote: post #6

A company as big as Amazon doesn't make as much as it does by treating workers fairly. They are the modern day version of old industrial factories. They take down and out people who they know they can exploit and push them to their limits. I've seen a few places in the poorer section of states where most of the locals are forced to work in a small number of factories/plants. Even in these cases though, they are at le…

I live a few miles from a Walmart distribution warehouse, and had a good friend who worked there. It really started to affect his health. The working conditions are horrible, and the culture promoted is toxic and demeaning. The money was a little above average for the area, but that's about the only thing positive he could say about it. When he left, his migraines went away.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#72

Post by newshorts »

la6470 wrote: post #8

TFA is written by a guy who took the job to collect anecdotes to write a book to show how miserable life is for low wage earners and now it is time to market the book. Sorry but I am skeptic about this article and think it is an exaggeration. At the same time if it is true why are folks not simply resigning and going to a better job? It is a free country isn’t it? Why is minimum wage still so low and why are all poli…

Easy to reduce things to at will employment or “free country!”

Harder to find solutions when you look at the complexity of a person’s life situation (I.e. medical bills, debt obligations, children, etc).

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#73

Post by tengbretson »

prolikewh0a wrote: post #67
tengbretson wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because we live in this fantasy land of the [dead] 'American Dream', where if you work hard, absolutely bust your ass and kill yourself for 70 years, you'll get to be Jeff Bezos too. This never has and never will be the American Dream. The American Dream isn't a rags to riches fairy tale. The American Dream is about inter-generational class mobility. If you bust your tail all your life, you can raise your children'…

>The American Dream is about inter-generational class mobility. If you bust your tail all your life, you can raise your children's quality of life to a higher standard than your own. Nope. You're just proving my point too. Thanks. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/american...

If you care to read it, your article doesn't refute anything about what I said.

> An American born to a household in the bottom 20% of earnings, for instance, only has a 7.8% chance of reaching the top 20% when they grow up.

Again, this article is about intra-generational mobility. The American Dream is about inter-generational mobility.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#74

Post by prolikewh0a »

tengbretson wrote: post #73
prolikewh0a wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The American Dream is about inter-generational class mobility. If you bust your tail all your life, you can raise your children's quality of life to a higher standard than your own. Nope. You're just proving my point too. Thanks. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/american...

If you care to read it, your article doesn't refute anything about what I said. > An American born to a household in the bottom 20% of earnings, for instance, only has a 7.8% chance of reaching the top 20% when they grow up. Again, this article is about intra-generational mobility. The American Dream is about inter-generational mobility.

It shows that your idea of the 'American Dream' is nearly completely dead and a thing of history. The 'American' Dream exists in other first world countries far more than it does here.

If you need another source that social mobility is 'poor' in the USA [1]

[1] http://www.poverty.ac.uk/report-usa-inequality-social-mobili...

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#75

Post by swarnie_ »

maxxxxx wrote: post #60
swarnie_ wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure why people work there. The warehouses are universally known to be shitty places but people sign up anyway. Surely if its terrible and no one will work there they will have to improve or pay more? Or am i misunderstanding basic economics?

A lot of people don't have other options so they take whatever they can get in order to survive. Why don't victims of domestic abuse leave immediately but stay for years?

> Why don't victims of domestic abuse leave immediately but stay for years?

Yeah never understood that one either if i'm honest.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#76

Post by LarryDarrell »

sokoloff wrote: post #36

IMO, it is never proper for the legislature to target an individual or individual company. It's perfectly fine for enforcement agencies (OSHA, FDA, IRS, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc) to enforce policy/law on individuals/companies who have been found in violation, but to originally target individuals with the force of government lawmaking is a dramatic overreach of power, IMO. If Senator Sanders et al want to target all compani…

It's not for no reason HQ2 will be in the Washington DC area.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#77

Post by zippzom »

gagege wrote: post #70

Why does everyone ignore the fact that employment at Amazon is voluntary? When the employee was hired, they made an agreement that the payment was a fair trade for the work to be done. If it turns out that the pay was not fair after all, which it sounds like it isn't, then the employee should simply stop working there, because Amazon isn't holding up their end of the bargain. The reason this continues to be an issue…

The issue is not that the employee is being underpaid (although that is a problem), it's that the underpayment is only possible because the government (i.e. taxpayers) is also giving money to that employee. If that safety net weren't in place then Amazon wouldn't be able to employee these people at these rates since it wouldn't be enough for people to survive on. Essentially, the government is subsidizing Amazon.

Also I'm not sure that someone accepting a specific salary or hourly wage is evidence that they thought it was fair. Employers (especially ones as large as Amazon) can afford to wait far longer for employees than most employees can afford to wait for an employer. I certainly don't think getting paid $20k a year to be a programmer would be fair, but if there no other jobs available to me at that rate then I would be forced to accept it, since I wouldn't survive otherwise.

And if I made $7.25 an hour, I highly doubt I would be able to build up a financial cushion large enough to allow me to quit a job because it didn't pay enough. Even a couple weeks without working probably isn't feasible for somebody trying to support children on $7.25. Leaving a job because it's underpaid and taking the time to find a better one is feasible for professionals, but almost definitely not for many service workers.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#78

Post by geggam »

If you have a business in a country and cannot afford to pay your workers high enough wages that they can afford to live without society subsidizing them. Then you cannot afford to run your business and are stealing money from the society you are in.

This concept that people are welfare bums when they are working is incorrect. Their employers are the welfare bums.

If you want to use the infrastructure to run a business pay your people enough to live.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#79

Post by briffle »

sokoloff wrote: post #36

IMO, it is never proper for the legislature to target an individual or individual company. It's perfectly fine for enforcement agencies (OSHA, FDA, IRS, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc) to enforce policy/law on individuals/companies who have been found in violation, but to originally target individuals with the force of government lawmaking is a dramatic overreach of power, IMO. If Senator Sanders et al want to target all compani…

In Wisconsin, when the legislature wanted to target Milwaukee for things, without actually naming them, they would say things like "This law applies to metro areas/counties with > xxx,000 people". Things like "the state takes over some of the mental health operations because they bungled it so bad", etc.

In the next Census, Madison, WI (and/or Dane County) is expected to hit some of those same limits. All sorts of things that were never intended will start applying.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#80

Post by dnomad »

swarnie_ wrote: post #40
LitFan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this downvoted? The only way to make this change is for people to boycott the service.

I'm not even sure why people work there. The warehouses are universally known to be shitty places but people sign up anyway. Surely if its terrible and no one will work there they will have to improve or pay more? Or am i misunderstanding basic economics?

You're not misunderstanding anything, the problem is there's really nothing true about the anti-Amazon media propaganda. It's important to separate the media fantasy from the facts in the real world.

In the media fantasy:

1. Amazon workers are so desperate for jobs they have no choice but to work for Amazon under prison-like conditions.

2. Amazon warehouse jobs are targeted at "left behind" workers who have no other options.

3. Amazon doesn't pay a living wage. Bezos' luxurious lifestyle is subsidized by taxpayer dollars.

In the real world:

1. US unemployment is so low right now that even employers of unskilled labor are looking at severe shortages. See the severe labor shortage in retail but also the real wage pressure across the board.

2. Amazon warehouse jobs are highly sought after. Amazon is unusually generous towards its warehouse associates offering them full benefits including healthcare, retirement, and even equity. Many investors really, really want Amazon to offer benefits comparable to their warehouse competitors (ie no benefits) but Bezos refuses to cut benefits for his unskilled employees every year.

3. America's minimum wage is criminally low but even still Amazon pays well above the minimum wage.

All of this obvious to anybody who does even a tiny bit of research [1] but it's not obvious to people who want to be deceived and so they buy into this baseless narrative.

Again, this is not about Amazon, or even about workers, this is about a media-political complex in which there is zero accountability. Like most things, from Iraq to China to basic scientific theories like climate change, you'll have to learn to separate the American media-political narrative (which is a fantasy that exists only to justify extreme inequality and the mass-murder of foreign brown people) from the actual facts in the real world.

[1] https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2017/08/08/amazon-benefit...

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