- Safety precautions at no cost to workers — PPE (at minimum hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes/sprays and soap).
- Hazard pay — an extra $5 per order and defaulting the in-app tip amount to at least 10% of the order total.
- An extension and expansion of pay for workers impacted by COVID-19 — anyone who has a doctor’s note for either a preexisting condition that’s a known risk factor or requiring a self-quarantine.
- The deadline to qualify for these benefits must be extended beyond April 8th.
honestly, i'm surprised that their demands are so few and so modest. i was expecting significantly higher numbers for the hazard pay portion of their demands.
i can't understand what might prevent amazon and instacart from assenting to these demands as soon as they have the logistical ability to provide the necessary items to their staff.
the national situation isn't permissive of corporations dragging their feet when essential services are down at the moment.
on the other hand, workers treated to a hopefully quick victory will not forget this when the pandemic ends. if we're lucky, the balance of power will shift to their favor.
>honestly, i'm surprised that their demands are so few and so modest. i was expecting significantly higher numbers for the hazard pay portion of their demands.
"Shhh... don't let the Plebes know they're still getting robbed. We're going to fight this, negotiate something a little lower and still come out way ahead." -Our Corporate Lords and Vassels
In all seriousness, it goes to show you how little people have come to expect. Some of these strikes historically have had unrealistic expectations in requests from what I recall. Labor rights have declined so far in this country that demands from strikes are now almost fully reasonable, leaving little room to negotiate back from.
An extra $5 per order might be a lot... I don't know how many orders per day is typical, but it wouldn't take that many orders for this to add up to a pretty significant amount.
We're talking about someone seriously increasing their likelihood for contracting a potentially life threatening illness. 5$ per potential exposure is not exactly that much considering the gravity of the situation.
A delivery of instacart containing $100+ in groceries is different from the average food delivery since the food delivery personnel will very likely be delivering more orders per hour compared to the instacart workers; the $5 extra per delivery might end up meaning more to the food delivery workers than instacart, making it a pretty impossible demand if they want universal integration. Something like "hourly pay increase of $20" would be better.
I also think instacart workers might be at higher risk of virus exposure because, as I understand it, they need to go into the store and pick out groceries - while food delivery workers only really interact with the food bag at the counter. I'm also not sure how often the different contactless delivery options are chosen, but instacart would include more exposure if you needed to hand every grocery bag to the customer compared to one or two food bags.
Aren't the people who prepare the order different than the people that deliver it? The preparers are the ones who need the hazard pay and protections imo.
Not always and I'd suspect that being a "Full-Service Shopper" (vs "In-Store Shopper") pays better so a large percentage are likely both preparer and deliverer.
FSS are paid by the order–you see a preview of how much you'll make before accepting an order (broken down into IC pay, mileage pay, and customer tip). ISS are paid by the hour and sign on with an hourly wage agreement.
Haven't worked as an ISS, but I presume that they have no say in their orders as they aren't paid per order. I actually have no idea if they even get a portion of tips.
Agreed. At that price, I'll go to the store myself. Assuming I'm not totally alone, it might be reasonable to expect that this strike will therefore increase the number of people going to central meeting places during the outbreak. Interesting.
I agree with you. I live with a women who is 70 years old and a women who is 65 on chemotherapy and only has 1.5 lungs. I tipped my Costco delivery person $50 yesterday for the luxury of me not having to go out and potentially expose those women to more danger in my household. In normal circumstances, I would say its too expensive, but I am more then willing to pay someone else extra for incurring those health risks. Frankly they deserve it during these times.
Does your grocery offer pickup? Normally it's $5 at mine, but free for now, and you don't have to get out of your car or interact with anyone, just pop the trunk.
Delivery is already quite expensive for me to rely on for regular usage. To conserve resources, my strategy has been to buy a bunch not very frequently, which minimizes my trips to stores and doesn't incur the surcharges. $5 can feed me for a meal, so that money does make a difference to me, at least over time.
I wasn't advocating one way or the other. It was a genuine question. If 10 orders per hour is typical, that is $50/hr on top of what they are already making. Even just 4 orders per hour is an additional $20/hr. That could put the total pay to at least $30/hr? I think maybe that's fine for a luxury service like this, but that kind of pay probably shrinks the market for this service considerably, I can't imagine the margins in this business are very high.
Personally, I would be fine with paying $5 extra per order of groceries, but I'm not a user of services like this.
Fair enough. Sorry for the hostility. I agree with you on the luxury angle. I think some portion of the cost should be passed to the consumer, but I am also in favor of the drivers being on payroll to "flatten" variability in order cost and provide income (among other things) protection for the worker. To me, the natural response to even a modicum of front-line exploitation (especially in turbulent times) should be met with scrutiny.
It will probably be a relatively opaque increase in cost. A lot of the cost of using IC/Shipt/etc. is actually in the cost of the products rather than in the delivery fee. Each service has its _own_ cost for each product (in fact, as a shopper it is suggested to download the customer app so you can answer questions about prices).
True "delivery fees" are only enacted for non-subscriber or small orders.
Workers can only demand what the market will bear, and considering there are a lot of people looking for any sort of work right now, and training up to become one of these workers doesn't take long, these workers aren't in a position to demand much.
Hazard pay is moot for workers who have already caught COVID-19 too, which I would guess is a reasonably chunk of delivery workers by now.
With the federal government putting what is essentially temporary UBI (as part of the "CARES Act" stimulus program) in place for those who have lost work or hours due to COVID, this is the best time to flex your labor muscle. If Amazon does not meet their demands, these folks can fall back to unemployment insurance for up to 10 months.
I apologize for the wall of text below, feel free to minimize this comment ([-] sign next to delete above), but it is crucial to demonstrate how broad this support is to the working class.
> Benefits will be expanded in an attempt to replace the average worker’s paycheck, explained Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a public policy research group. The average worker earns about $1,000 a week, and unemployment benefits often replace roughly 40 to 45 percent of that. The expansion will pay an extra amount to fill the gap. Under the plan, eligible workers will get an extra $600 per week on top of their state benefit. But some states are more generous than others. According to the Century Foundation, the maximum weekly benefit in Alabama is $275, but it’s $450 in California and $713 in New Jersey.
> Are gig workers, freelancers and independent contractors covered? Yes, self-employed people are newly eligible for unemployment benefits. Self-employed workers will also be eligible for the additional $600 weekly benefit provided by the federal government.
> If you’ve received a diagnosis, are experiencing symptoms or are seeking a diagnosis — and you’re unemployed, partly unemployed or cannot work as a result — you will be covered. The same goes if you must care for a member of your family or household who has received a diagnosis.
> What if my child’s school or day care shut down? If you rely on a school, a day care or another facility to care for a child, elderly parent or another household member so that you can work — and that facility has been shut down because of coronavirus — you are eligible.
> What if I’ve been advised by a health care provider to quarantine myself because of exposure to coronavirus? And what about broader orders to stay home? People who must self-quarantine are covered. The legislation also says that individuals who are unable to get to work because of a quarantine imposed as a result of the outbreak are eligible.
The general public is only going to support strikes to the extent that they look like protests against unacceptable treatment. If the strikers start "flexing their labor muscle" - if it looks like they're exploiting rather than responding to the crisis - the millions of unemployed Americans are going to sour on it very quickly.
We can re-evaluate in a few weeks when the healthcare system and supply chains are failing under extreme load (hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions infected). Why work a terrible job when the federal government will compensate you to remain home in safety? Meet their demands or experience pain. It's not emotional, it's economic cause and effect.
I will admit I'm enjoying the schadenfreude of workers finally having some power due to a Congressional response to a pandemic, much to the chagrin of "but that's how the free market works" apologists.
For better or worse, your schadenfreude will only last as long as the aid package. When the money runs out, the power dynamic reverses, and the economic aftermath may well leave poorer Americans in a worse bargaining position than they were before (as economic downturns often do).
Let's see what the electorate looks like, and its appetite for change is, after 10 months of a raging global pandemic.
We're only a few weeks in, and we've already drastically expanded benefits to those in need (the stimulus bill I mentioned upthread) much more than we would've under normal circumstances. Quite a bit of change can occur in a year, no?
There is that possibility, and while I can understand the desire for a change of administration after all of this, I can't understand why socialists are so positively gleeful. The federal government (not just the administration, but the CDC and the FDA as well) have failed in every conceivable regard in this pandemic response (somehow after 3 global outbreaks including 2 respiratory diseases in recent years, the CDC couldn't be bothered to secure a supply of masks and ventilators, never mind the testing debacle) while private industry and state/local governments are picking up the slack (scaling up testing capacity, innovating on treatments and interventions, lobbying for aid, scaling up supply chains, etc). Maybe the media will take care to spin this as a "failure of capitalism" somehow, but as far as the truth is concerned, it doesn't strike me as favoring more government.
> Maybe the media will take care to spin this as a "failure of capitalism" somehow, but as far as the truth is concerned, it doesn't strike me as favoring more government.
The Fed is predicting 47 million unemployed [1], at a 32% unemployment rate. That's a lot of folks without health insurance. 68k people in the US die every year because of lack of access to healthcare, and 50% of bankruptcies are due to medical debt, under "normal" circumstances. That is a "failure of capitalism" not replicated in other developed countries.
Sometimes, to fix a system, you must break it. This is the "break it" part. [2]
Right, that's the framing that will make people lose sympathy. "Give us what we want or you'll be in a world of pain" is an obviously sociopathic response to a pandemic; if the organizers took such a stance I honestly think strike-breakers might be resurrected to deal with it.
I think there's a misunderstanding here. "Strikebreakers" aren't people who beat up strikers to make them go back to work; they're people who are hired to replace the strikers after the strikers are fired en masse. (It's generally illegal to break strikes this way, the company must instead negotiate with the people striking.)
I agree it would be terrible to compel anyone to work through violence.
We're not fine with that, which is why Amazon has significantly increased their pay for the duration of the lockdown. If Instacart hasn't I agree they should.
Wages are largely a function of supply and demand. This downturn favors critical workers because the demand increased faster than the supply can increase, so their wages/perks should go up accordingly, but nothing happens over night.
Who is "them" and how are they pushing on the supply side? The supply is only increasing insofar as workers from other industries are able/willing to transition, and even for "menial" jobs such as these, there is surely a fair amount of training that must be done. Moreover, corporations will probably prefer to temporarily increase wages for their current workers rather than take on a glut of novice workers and then do layoffs or wait for attrition afterward, so the supply side seems limited in my view.
> if the organizers took such a stance I honestly think strike-breakers might be resurrected to deal with it.
That'll sell well in an election year with states and the federal government overextending themselves already due to a woefully inadequate initial response. We can't even get masks and ventilators manufactured at the necessary rate, and we're going to send force to assist Amazon Fulfillment? We're not even sending in force to assist first responders and medical practitioners.
Amazon workers have options during this, including just going home. That's Amazon's problem, not the country's. No one is entitled to cheap delivered ecommerce services. If Amazon can't make the economics work without coerced labor, good riddance.
We're absolutely sending in force to assist first responders and medical practitioners. The National Guard has been building overflow facilities across the country, and the Navy's landed in LA and New York with hospital ships.
You’re getting downvoted, but this is absolutely correct. There is no reason at all you would expect the pay of low-skilled workers to increase during a period of increasing unemployment. For every union member that refuses to work without increased benefits, there’ll be a queue of newly unemployed people willing to work for less. The unions have no sway over the supply of labor here, the only thing they can exploit is the threat to temporarily disrupt service during a crisis. Something which won’t go over well with all the country’s unemployed, and everybody who’s going to have to pay the increased prices.
As a counter, low skilled workers absolutely should get a pay increase because their work is more valuable and the hazards they face are more extreme - "professional class" workers should expect a real income pay reduction during this crisis since their labour is relatively lowered in value compared to during a normal world state.
Additionally, we, as a society, should value minimizing the number of people working in these roles and their interactions to ensure they remain healthy and don't become transmission vectors.
It depends on the job. For warehouse employees, they are absolutely necessary since packaging is both hard, tedious work, and also specialized enough that you can’t have customers do it for themselves.
But Instacart is just grocery shopping. At a certain price point, people will go into stores themselves, or self organize to do bulk purchases for a small group. Right now in NYC, some people have started a charity to deliver goods to older residents in apartments for free. Instacart can’t compete with that.
That’s an abstract view of value, based entirely upon your own personal views and opinions. The labor is only worth the equilibrium point between what somebody is willing to pay for it, and what remuneration somebody is willing to accept for it. The truth is that for all of these low skilled industries that are seeking pay rises, there is currently an influx of available labor that could fill those positions. If they are not willing to work for that level of pay, there are most certainly others who would be willing to do so. They do not have the power to prevent people from applying for those roles, should they become available. The only card they have to play is to exploit the threat of a temporary disruption to service. They may have some luck exploiting this, but it can only get them so far. It’s also no different from any of the other price gouging that’s often derided here on HN. When huge portions of the population are facing unemployment, there is no reasonable basis for demanding pay rises, especially in low skilled industries, where the labor can be so easily replaced.
OK I usually agree with this but the elephant in the room is- what if some large number of those let go and also employed drop dead and people perceive it's because of Instacart/Amazon's callous attitude towards their safety?
Serious question, not being combative with you.
Doesn't Amazon have a very real hazard here which could result in burdensome regulation and or customer defection?
As Amazon or any of these other companies aren’t organisations devoted to the study of epidemiology or medical expertise, the only thing they can possibly do is follow the guidelines/regulations imposed on them. I’m not sure what that has to do with compensation though.
You're talking compensation not going up because too many people want the jobs and Amazon employees quit or strike because of COVID-19 working conditions so it's all connected.
I appreciate that you either can't see that or don't buy it so I end my participation here having tried to make the point as clear as I could. That is not a sly way of saying "I'm right, you're wrong" by the way. I am just out of words and ideas and time to re-express the relationship again.
Your thesis seems to be that the conditions that would lead these workers to strike would be sufficient to also deter all of the millions of newly unemployed people. A proposition which is unfounded and completely defies logic. Your question about how these companies should ensure business continuity with the threat of their workers getting sick is both unrelated to remuneration, and not a question those companies are in a position to answer themselves. That responsibility would fall upon a regulating body.
> honestly, i'm surprised that their demands are so few and so modest
The biggest problem here is that this is one of the most "expendable" workforces we've ever seen–hiring cost is rock-bottom, training is done through an app (requiring no human interaction or pay), and shoppers are just sent a shirt and prepaid card (Shipt) or a lanyard and card (Instacart).
I feel like the organizers understand this and know that if the overlords decide they don't want to deal with the strike, their accounts can be deactivated with the click of a mouse, wasting less than $50 in resources (though usually less because of the ROI they've already exhibited). All the company has to do is ramp up advertising or add some new hire incentives.
Keeping the demands reasonable is how they're self-preserving. Anything too extreme, and they just get replaced with no change. It's a good _starting point_, but there definitely need to be more protections for our gig economy workers in the future.
I hope you realize that this is a sided marketplace. One side having demands means the other side has to pay for it. Now imagine all those families who are at home with many of them jobless - and them paying all these additional costs.
This ignores how far the market place has listed to one side already. At this point in time I find it a little hard to summon empathy for billionaires.
Just stop with this billionaires argument please and framing it as workers vs. billionaires. I am more talking about families who will have to pay more now to address some of the Union's demands.
It's a time of emergency - the fact that the US government is AWOL when it comes to helping to subsidize necessary services like these is the real issue.
I agree that they're reasonable demands, but I'd also state that the business models were never really sustainable in the first place, so prices probably need to be raised in order to do so. I used to have a view into their delivery economics and they looked insurmountable. My friend, who currently works for Amazon's delivery program for Fresh and Now, tells me that only a few markets have achieved profitability, and even then we're talking about averaging cents per order. An increase in costs of >$5/order would mean either an increase in prices or a huge hit to cash flow.
It's reasonable to me. Maybe not so reasonable to someone unemployed, diagnosed, and only buying online because they're responsibly self isolating. It's probably the right thing to do in the end, because the business model was never sustainable in the first place, but I would still think hard about how to prevent people from infecting others in an attempt to save money.
This is what inflation looks like. If this continues, the US is going to be in a world of hurt (if workers demand more, guess what is happening prices). Inflation would utterly ravage the economy right now.
Just generally too: if Amazon announced they were hiking prices 50% overnight, how would you react? This move is pretty scummy.
Instant grocery delivery is a luxury. Customers can and should be asked to pay more for the service. Otherwise do it yourself. It is completely unsustainable to expect an hour's worth of labor for $5.
It says additional $5 per order. I don't know how many orders per hour is typical, but this could easily be $20-50/hour if the deliveries can be batched by location?
For the record, I'd be perfectly happy with the price of these delivery services increasing by $5 if it went to the gig worker fulfilling it. That's already a lot less than I tip food delivery drivers.
This. So much. People are behaving like it's an essential utility for the broader public, rather than a luxury for the (upper) middle-class. Usually sounds very similar with Uber and other low-paying services.
Er no. It is waiting for a pandemic, and then removing your labour to demand a significant wage hike (I have no idea how this will work out but it is clearly significantly beyond 20%+..."modest" is not an accurate description). There are likely vulnerable people who rely on this service to feed themselves, removing their food so you can make a quick buck is pretty scummy.
Again, how would you feel about Amazon hiking the price of hand sanitizer 50%?
It will be great to see this play out though. I live somewhere (unf) that had unions running govt for a period of decades. The US never really had this so is under the illusion that this kind of thing achieves it aims. It doesn't. What happens is most of these people don't have jobs anymore, you have to hike interest rates so most people lose their homes (and bye bye, VC funding...that will just stop overnight...I would guess the majority of the people on here will lose their jobs, and modify their opinions too late), and the price of food starts increasing daily.
And btw, this should be obvious but apparently isn't, this is going to go on for at least a year. At some point, people are going to have to learn how to go about their daily life without infecting other people. The alternative is: most of these jobs stop existing, and the economy shrinks significantly (10%+). Lockdown and people deciding they need "hazard pay" to do their normal job isn't a permanent solution (central banks will be watching this closely and will be ready to hike rates as soon as it starts).
As I specifically mentioned: this is going to last for a year (probably more). Everyone is going to have to learn how to continue doing their job with that.
There is no other option: the govt doesn't have enough money, business doesn't have enough money, consumers don't have enough money...everyone is going to have to do their job with this happening.
Not equally. You can't possibly be saying that someone who is able to completely self-isolate by working at home is in the same position as the person who is out grabbing groceries?
I am sure it must be a great luxury to have the choice of being able to "completely self-isolate"...but that is not going to cover the majority of the population and even those who do are not going to be able to do that for a year. It just isn't rational.
As a result of our enjoyment of this luxury I think it's perfectly rationale that the market responds by increasing compensation for these jobs that don't have that luxury and maybe correct the insane wage disparity between folks that need to continue doing manual labour and all of those that can work through our computers alone.
As a bonus, we might just start addressing the extreme and ridiculous levels of wealth inequality we have in society today through that process.
As a customer who really appreciates these services in these times, I think these demands are super reasonable. I recently tried to give a tip to an Amazon carryout person, but they said they couldn't take it.
Completely reasonable. I got an Instacart order yesterday, and paid 15% tip. That worked out to about $2 per item on average. I think that if I can't afford to pay an extra ~25% for my groceries then I have no business ordering them.
Yep, I figure I'm easily saving that money anyway by not going out to eat, not going out for beer with friends, hardly any driving, and so on. So I figure it's the right thing to share generously as long as I'm in a position to do so.
The only one I’d change is the 10% tip should be named as a fee.
I think our tipping culture is okay but I’d like us to move to calling them delivery fees so we can keep the idea of the tip as a pure bonus between me and those serving me.
I don’t like feeling like I am required to tip but I like tipping. Especially when not expected but socially accepted.
Delivery fees are already a thing here, in addition a tip, sadly. And the fee almost never goes to the delivery person. I mostly paid my college by working at Domino's Pizza and there is a large "THE DELIVERY FEE DOES NOT GO TO YOUR DRIVER. IT IS NOT A TIP" On the front fold of every box.
The computer system notifies drivers when they are delivering a first-time order for a specific address or phone number. This is intended for security purposes (you are supposed to always call when outside for a new order to ensure it's not a robbery or scam). But for myself and other drivers, the main function of the "first time delivery" notification was to let us know this person would not be tipping. Anecdotal evidence purely, but first-timers would almost never tip, and then would always tip every time after. I imagine because they saw the notice on the box.
I do wish it were as you described. Because of the wage laws in Florida when I was in college, a delivery at the edge of our radius that didn't tip basically cost me money. I was never compensated for gas or mileage, and tipped workers are allowed to be paid a separate minimum wage. If I remember correctly it was about $3/hour when I was working? I was lucky enough to deliver for a store that had coverage in a very rich neighborhood though and I'd say on average I made way above what the average pizza driver did. Jobs are weird.
Up here in Canada one of our chains, SaveOn, has a self-hosted delivery service with a 10$ flat fee for delivery and no tipping allowed. I much prefer that and, if that fee isn't sufficient, I'd prefer them raising the flat fee rather than add any ridiculous tipping option.
I'm generally with you, but... this is just a crazy situation, with a lot of people out of work. I've been happy to tip Instacart people generously the times we've used it in the past few weeks.
I’m all for the tip I just want us to keep our semantics clean and encourage/require companies to keep the base pay worked directly into the cost of services.
I see some people have different definitions than me but defining tips as discretionary and optional. Required costs are fees and should be called such. It’s pedantic nitpicking based on a goal of explicitly paying workers and not hiding it in mandatory tipping. I hope they get what they want.
a fee and a tip are very different things, and ti would be bad to conflate them. A fee is something mandatory and a tip is supposed to be optional. I think their are also differences between how the two things are taxed, so you really can't start conflating the two
No, they are different. The delivery fees do not go to the delivery person in most cases, and is an additional amount of money going to the company hosting the delivery (whether it's something like Instacart, or in-house delivery like a pizza place). Instacart keeps the entire 10% "Service fee" for orders, for example.
The commenter above incorrect about the taxing, but are correct that tipped workers don't have precisely the same wage laws. Tipped workers are allowed to be paid a lower minimum wage that varies by state. In NYC is is $10/hr as opposed to the standard 15/hr minimum. In Florida it is $5.54, while regular minimum wage is $8.56/hr.
Yes employees are supposed to be compensated in missing tip pay to reach the actual minimum-wage. But also yes, this is the fastest way to get yourself fired from a company. If you are the only employee asking for compensation due to low tips you're effectively admitting you do not offer customer service to the same tier as other tipped workers and should be fired.[0]
[0] I don't personally believe this. But every manager I've ever had while doing tipped work has believed this. And good luck getting a lawyer to fight for you when your salary was previously $5.54 / hour.
Considering that hospitals are barely able to get PPE, I think they should be given first priority over delivery people who don't necessarily have to interact with anyone on the receiving end
Yes and given they are doing “contactless delivery” now how much risk is there really in contracting this virus from just being outside (especially since most people are inside)?
They still have to go to the store, walk around with everyone else shopping, interact with the checkout employees, and travel to their dropoff location. Just because the person receiving the delivery doesn't contact them doesn't make an entire delivery contactless.
I understand there is still some elevated risk, but shelter-in-place orders aren’t issued because it is dangerous to go outside—it’s to keep sick people from going outside.
Sanitizers are made with alcohol, which are presumably in low supply. It doesn't take that much labor to actually make the sanitizer. All you need to to is mix two ingredients together and bottle it.
Many places have facilities to make the alcohol, in UK at least the barrier seems to be legislative -- companies need licenses for stills to make the requisite alcohol (they're licensed for other alcohol production), and those licenses aren't available.
> Sanitizers are made with alcohol, which are presumably in low supply.
Amazon has the global logistical supply chain to make it happen. Bezos can send an email and have a grain-to-alcohol pipeline in the works by the end of the week.
> An extension and expansion of pay for workers impacted by COVID-19 — anyone who has a doctor’s note for either a preexisting condition that’s a known risk factor or requiring a self-quarantine.
This should be done by the government. It feels unfair to pass this on to consumers, but there should be some sort of "voluntary unemployment" for people with pre-existing conditions right now.
How is it unfair to demand that a business puts some effort in keeping their workforce healthy?
These workers were forced to work during quarantine because the government deemed Amazon an essential business.
As a result, Amazon stock's price relative gain to the S&P 500 tumble during this crisis is ~80%, that's almost a doubling of the stock valuation due to the uninterrupted business that these delivery workers made possible.
I repeat: AWS basically doubled their relative stock valuation, withstood one of the biggest stock market tumbles in all history, because their lowest level employees went to work at a point when everybody else stayed at home safe.
Businesses don’t have “effort”. They have costs and revenues and if costs exceed revenues they just raise revenues (aka the price to the consumer).
If you think of a business as a machine, and the person who bought the machine as a stockholder, you would understand that a machine does not suddenly work harder because the person paid more for the machine.
A machine has inputs and outputs. It’s inputs have to of some level of quality to get outputs of some other correlated level of quality. A consistent supply of quality inputs is correlated with a consistent supply of quality outputs.
The trouble here seems to be maintaining a consistent supply that is sustainable.
What if that's 25% of their workforce? What if it's 50%? Is it up to them to validate the veracity of the doctors' notes? Does Amazon pay full salaries for people who aren't going to work for 18 months? Does Amazon basically create an entirely privatized welfare system?
It just seems to be well outside the scope of things a business should be trying to solve and into the realm of what we have a government for.
If you leave the costs to the businesses then the businesses that find the most effective ways to cheat will have huge advantages over the ones that do not.
"This should be done by the government. It feels unfair to pass this on to consumers"
Where do you think the government gets its money?
We tip our delivery / pickup people 5 bucks for orders which are well south of $100. Masks and hand sanitizers and gloves are what they need to do their jobs. That and customers keeping away from them 6-10 feet. You can't let yourself just walk up close to someone you see working in a store to ask them a question, like you could in the beforetime.
The take away is this- truck drivers, stocking clerks, checkout people are essential to a functioning society. Hollywood stars, entertainers and media personalities are not.
Absolutely, agree with the other points. But the one I specifically disagreed with was paying all of the at-risk employees. These are people who cannot and should not be making deliveries. And I don't think Amazon should be paying their wages for potentially 18 months. As an Amazon customer, you would essentially be paying to fund a completely privatized unemployment program.
Without entertainment or entertainers we’d all probably be killing ourselves from deaths of despair during a quarantine like this. They are essential, just not immediately essential.
InstaCart experimented with stealing tips like DoorDash does, but they backed down when drivers and customers both got really upset about it. Now all of the tips go to the shopper, and the tips are not considered when calculating base pay.
"Amazon will never disclose any information about specific deliveries beyond what you see in the app before and after the delivery. They will not tell you who tipped or how much. The only ways to tell if a customer tipped are cash tips and blocks with only one order completed, including instant offers, for which the earnings exceed the initial offer."
"If an offer shows a pay range, the base rate is never more than the low end of that range. For example, if you accept an offer for a 2 hour block with pay of $36-50, anything you earn for that block beyond $36 is from tips."
"Amazon does not technically steal tips, but the end result is the same as if they did. They call it variable base pay. They state in the contract that 100% of tips are passed on to the driver. This is true. However, they often lower the base rate enough so the net earnings is the minimum stated in the block offer. Think of it like a piece of string. The entire length of the string is your earnings. The right side of the string is tips and the left side is base pay. They promise never to cut the right side of the string. They cut the left side instead. It still results in a shorter piece of string."
"If the base pay plus tips ends up being more than the offered pay for the block, you will get paid the full amount. So if you accept a 2 hour block for $36-50 and get $55 in tips, you will be paid at least $55. They don't lower the base rate on every block and they don't always lower it the same amount. They say it's based on demand. For a 2 hour block, after tips, you might be paid $36 or you might be paid $80. It just depends."
"I'm not sure how Amazon determines the suggested tip for orders that include tips. I just played around in the Prime Now app and it seems like the suggested tip is a percentage of the total item cost, before shipping and tax, but is a minimum of $5. Customers can, of course, change it to whatever they want."
If Amazon is promising to pay you at least $36, then the "base pay" must be $36 - that's what you'd be getting if there was $0 tips - and either you're getting all the tips (i.e. if there's any tips, you're paid more than $36), or Amazon is lying and stealing tips (i.e. if there's $2 in tips, they reduce ("steal") your base pay to $34 so you're still paid just $36).
I see when ordering online with whole foods /amazon a note saying that drivers get 100% of the tip.
Something strange by the way, is that tipping is variable. Eg my ~$110 order yesterday automatically tacked on a $7 tip, my ~$50 order of three days had a $5 dollar tip automatically added. Anyone have an idea how they are calculating this?
(1) Drivers are paid in 2 factors, a tip provided by the user, and a per delivery fee provided by doordash thats variable, and generally in the industry is between 10 and 20% of the basket cost
(2) doordash additionaly guaranteed a total "minimum compensation" per delivery up front that was like ~20% of the cost of the basket
(3) Doordash would use the tips users paid to offset the amount they would pay drivers in order to meet the "minimum comp guarantee", so if you ordered 100 dollars in food, and tip 20 dollars, and the minimum compensation on the order was 20 dollars,doordash would pay the driver nothing, and your whole tip would sub for driver pay. If instead you tipped 0 dollars on your 100 dollar basket, doordash would pay the driver 20 dollars out of its own funds to meet the minimum comp. Likewise if you tipped 10 dollars, doordash woud pay 10 dollars.
>I see when ordering online with whole foods /amazon a note saying that drivers get 100% of the tip.
If I remember correctly, the prior controversy was that DoorDash (or whomever) would give them the tip 100% but then take an equal or weighted portion from the company's contribution.
The way it has worked in the past is that drivers get 100% of the tip, but the tip amount is subtracted from their base pay.
Company tells the worker a delivery pays $15, you tip $5, the company reduces their portion to $10, the worker gets $15 total. You tip $10? The company pays $5, worker still walks away with $15.
This framing would certainly be more transparent. I doubt though that DoorDash would want to explicitly adopt a compensation practice that's illegal in seven states including their home state of California (https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped).
That controversy never made sense to me. Most restaurants in the US "effectively pocket the tips" in the same way. In fact, any servers that are being paid roughly minimum wage up to minimum wage + $5 could have their tips pocketed in the same way.
Here's a question for people who were so upset by this. Let's say you have a bunch of tipped employees that you directly pay $10/hour and with tips they average $20/hour. You have two problems though, (1) your employees complain that during some shifts they are making barely over their base pay and (2) potential new hires are worried that they won't make as much in tips as you say current employees make. The question is: would it be taking advantage of those employees to change the employment to include a guaranteed $15/hour minimum, for any shift where they make less than that you'd pay them extra to hit the minimum?
It blows my mind how many people don't understand why what DoorDash did was bad.
The comparison to DoorDash isn't table service in a restaurant, it's ordering food for delivery to your house and then giving cash to the driver. Where does that cash go? The driver's pocket. That process & the cultural understanding of it has literally been around as long as the concept of tipping.
Here's the real question that answers why people are "upset". If you did a poll of 100 people ordering on DoorDash, and asked them "when you tip on your order, where does the money go", what do you think people would say? 99/100 of them would ABSOLUTELY say "to the driver" and that is everything that is wrong with what DoorDash did. I struggle to engage sincerely in argument with anyone claiming otherwise.
> If you did a poll of 100 people ordering on DoorDash, and asked them "when you tip on your order, where does the money go", what do you think people would say? 99/100 of them would ABSOLUTELY say "to the driver" and that is everything that is wrong with what DoorDash did.
How is that different from servers in a restaurant? If you asked that question of people who give a tip to their servers at a restaurant they would also say that that money goes to their server, despite the fact that the federally mandated earnings guarantee (assuming the restaurant doesn't have its own higher one) means that that money, effectively, might just be going to the restaurant.
> it's ordering food for delivery to your house and then giving cash to the driver
And would you be upset if Domino's gave an earnings guarantee to their drivers?
>How is that different from servers in a restaurant?
I fail to see how that is relevant. I think the closest comparison to DoorDash is ordering delivery from an Italian restaurant – not driving to the restaurant, sitting down at a table and getting table service. And yes, I think many people are aware that it is common for kitchen staff to pool tips at a restaurant, in the same way that they know the same process doesn't exist for delivery drivers.
>would you be upset if Domino's gave an earnings guarantee to their drivers?
I would have no problem with that, but if they have a button on their app that says "tip your driver" it had better all go to the driver.
> it is common for kitchen staff to pool tips at a restaurant
I'm not sure where you got the idea that that is what I was talking about?
Do you not understand what an earnings guarantee means in the context of a tipped job? It means that you have a base pay + tips. If those tips end up not meeting the earnings guarantee, the company will pay you extra to hit that guarantee. That effectively means that the first $x of your tips are going to the company to cover the earnings guarantee. That's what doordash (and most restaurants) are doing.
The US federal minimum wage laws require a minimum wage of $7.25/hour. Tipped employees only require a base rate of $2.13/hour but the employer must guarantee that they earn $7.25/hour w/ tips, if they make less, the employer must pay them the difference. Effectively, the first ~$5/hour of tips goes to the employer.
Instacart was doing the same, but they changed course. Doordash is/was doing the same, said they would change course, did not, got call out on it and in the end I don't know if they every actually changed their policy or found some other slimy way to technically abide but still take advantage of their partners.
Amazon I believe tends to do everything through third party companies and there really isn't tipping with Amazon as far as I know, but that might have changed since I haven't ordered an Amazon Fresh order in ages. From other comments here, it sounds like they now having tipping.
I discovered I was accidentally undertipping people because of this. I had set it to 20% and it got reset at some point. I felt like a shitty person for it, but systematically underpaying people who work on tips is such a fucked up thing to do.
even if they technically do, i can almost guarantee you the product managers are looking at the total income per hour going to these workers inclusive of tips, and tuning their base pay or whatever they call their contribution to hit a specific total based on average/median/etc tips.
true, i dont know for sure, but i used to work in the space and it's how everyone i knew thought about courier compensation. theres only so many dollars a customer will pay for delivery[during normal times, its probably less elastic now] whether it's tips or delivery/service fees, and after cost of goods only so much left.
Did a quick search and "Trader Joe’s and Walmart employees have received bonuses, while Target, Whole Foods, Amazon, and the Texas grocery store chain H-E-B are offering $2 per hour raises."
Customs workers, corrections officers, and a ton of other jobs also negotiating it. In Philly, among them are police, firefighters, sanitation workers, health care workers.
Typically, very few industries are exposed to enough uncertain risk to warrant it. It's meant for workers who are exposed to an unusual level of risk compared to the job typically. The typical risk profile for delivery workers is robbery or animal attacks. I think it's reasonable to say that being exposed to people who may be carrying a deadly disease is unusually hazardous. Especially in cities with a stay at home order.
As for "who typically offers this" I would argue that this isn't quite like a "normal" time. Many people are putting their health on the line to come to work which is not something that is normally part of the decisionmaking process for their regular wage. As a result of that increased risk and because of the huge demand for their labor a large increase in pay makes a lot of sense (even if we take the "combat pay" stuff out of the equation. Demand-alone would increase their wages)
Sounds like the government’s job. Isn’t that what minimum wage is for? Kind of cruel to put their livelihoods at the hands of the whim of generous customers.
>I want the people delivering my food to be healthy, stable, and financially secure. Don't you?
Sure, but obviously we also want cheap stuff and free delivery. Particularly in cases of low income/layoffs, since everyone depends on grocery delivery right now.
The people who are in line to take their jobs as-is probably don't want that. They'd prefer that they get fired, so that they can work instead of the people who don't like the job as-is.
Striking generally only works for skilled workers. Unskilled workers going on strike in the middle of some of the highest unemployment figures recently seen is not going to end well for those people. They'll simply be replaced by those who are more hungry.
This is not a problem with the workers, or with the employers, or with the current situation: it is a problem inherent to unskilled, undifferentiated labor.
I know what you mean and in ordinary times there's a lot to say for this kind of attitude. But just the raw force of supply and demand applied to this situation is amoral and ultimately feeds the anti-capitalist rhetoric. That's bad since capitalism lifts people out of poverty like nothing else.
There's lots of truly terrible things that could be allowed to happen "naturally" if we just let anyone work under any conditions for any wages. Then we're China or some really terrible place. But one of the main values of the West is exactly we're NOT China and we don't do ruthless things to people and we don't suffer those things to be done by others.
In the end, and make no mistake about it, that's the general neighborhood we're playing in for the moment, a civilization is more than the price of its aluminum or labor or even its stocks. Now is the time when we enact our deepest values.
I'm not sure where I expressed any attitude or opinion in my comment, positive or negative (other than perhaps the "not going to end well for those people" - although I think my opinion that "not end well" is a good description of their likely summary dismissal that would meet broad consensus). Them's just the breaks.
It seems you may be advocating for government intervention to prevent these people from being fired and replaced during their strike. Is that what your comment means? Or do you simply expect the employers to meet their demands, and not replace them? I don't think that's very likely, considering the already extremely-high turnover in these unskilled, low-wage positions.
Number 2 - I expect Amazon to meet some of their demands depending on what exactly those demands are and how long the adjustments are demanded to be in effect. I don't expect Amazon to accept this as a union's chance to get its big camel nose under its tent and I hope they don't.
I don't expect the government to intervene because that's not their expertise.
In short I expect Bezeos to apply the same level of creativity and innovation to his employee's and fellow American's well-being and safety during this crisis as he's applied to the task of creating the greatest buyer/seller/supply chain marketplace the world has ever seen. I expect that and so does everyone else, even if not in those words.
Nothing could be clearer than there's a universal and urgent need to identify and then do the decent thing during this emergency.
Everything I've read suggests that there are many, many people eagerly competing to get access to work for Instacart. I imagine the situation is, or will be very soon, much the same at Amazon.
What incentive do they have to meet these demands, versus just replacing the staff that doesn't like working under those conditions?
Supposing a total lack of basic human good will towards their fellow human- which I don't assume they do not have- they are dependent on the good will of the public which is not absolutely bottomless. Serious answer, not snark.
> Supposing a total lack of basic human good will towards their fellow human
I don't think that replacing someone who is unhappy with their job with someone who is eager to have it is a lack of basic human goodwill, unless you are the only employer in the world, which Amazon is not.
I agree normally. 100%. At the risk of double posting from a thread above, what about Amazon's hazard of customer defection / new regulatory burden if people taking, and quitting these jobs, both, start dropping or spreading it? What if public perception becomes: "Amazon could have done a lot to prevent this tragedy, but didn't".
A cynical person might even float the idea that Amazon WANTS that to happen so that there IS a regulatory burden because it can bear it and its would-be competitors / start-ups can't.
But that's too dark even for me... for now.
So back to original question- what about the risk of future, widespread #AmazonHate ?
I've worked lots of these jobs in my time. Here is what I would feel better about:
1.) Everyone gets fever checked at the door starting shift. Fever people go home.
2.) Scheduling is devised to segregate employees into non-overlapping groups. We're a work family and we work together in some area. Whatever has to be done to the schedule or even the job details itself to effect this, as far as possible, is done. The goal is to make each family unit as small and physically localized as possible.
3.) Obviously, everyone gets a mask when they become available. If you happen to have access to a mask, then bring it and use it- you're protecting yourself and everyone else around you (from you). (Woodworkers, potters, construction and cement workers etc. normally had a ready supply of N95 and N100 masks on hand in the beforetime).
4.) Hourly hand washing-sanitizing or whatever your skin can bear.
5.) Social distancing rules apply to customers and employees both (thinking of grocery stores here) communicated through signage, flyers and serious verbal intervention if needed.
4.) Employees are authorized and ordered to do what they have to do to keep their personal distance from obtuse / heedless / intruding public without respecting usual rules of "courtesy" and without fear of management discipline. So also between employees.
5.) Delivery people live outside, w/ exception of bathroom breaks, which can also be taken at delivery people's residences, where practical.
6.) Deliveries are assembled and placed outside by inside people.
7.) Inside people do not get close to outside people.
8.) Outside people do not get close to customers, including inside customers homes, enclosed porches, etc.
In addition to the healthcare workers, we're going to look back a few years from now and recognize all the delivery drivers, package handlers, and grocery store cashiers as the "First Responders" of this crisis.
Ideally we automate as many of those jobs as possible so that as few people as possible are put in harms way and contribute to ongoing spread of the virus.
You imagine that in the span of weeks to months that picking oddly shaped items from bins, packing them into boxes of varying sizes, then driving on multiple legs can be meaningfully automated? I'm just not seeing it.
Not for this crisis, to be sure, but w/in OP's timeframe of a few years? They're throwing enough money at this exact problem that it doesn't seem out of left field
Wouldn't it be a better idea to pressure the state Govt to pass laws or executive orders to mandate that Companies provide benefits such as Hazard Pay, PPE for workers, Paid Sick Leave instead of striking and attempting to pressure Instacart / Amazon ?
There's a record number of unemployed people right now [1] and, if some workers strike, wouldn't it be easier for companies to just hire more people ?
It's not an either or, it's a yes and. Everyone should be contacting their representatives in government as much as possible AND these workers should strike to leverage their labor's clear value to get basic essential protections.
If you use these services you are impacted by the health and safety of the workers that make the services possible. You have a stake here. Call your people:
Organized labor has traditionally driven those changes in laws from the bottom up. So, if you want to get to that legislation, this is a good place to start.
This pandemic could possibly be an historical event for labor policy in the U.S. akin to the miner's strikes in the early 1900s. Laying the groundwork for labor protections, unions and the New Deal.
It also could do the opposite, as small businesses get crushed and only larger businesses recover -- creating more income inequality and leading to the most powerful having even more power over our economy. Workers may have less ability to negotiate for raises, thankful just to have any job at all. Unions themselves may see losses as people are laid off and have even fewer resources to put into organizing workers, etc...
Even non-union protections directly by government like sick leave could be harder as businesses lobby that they can't afford to provide it at this time. (In my view, this pandemic shows we can't afford NOT to. But it's a debate to be had.)
I think people have a lot of control over how this goes, I'm not saying it's hopeless. Just saying that I don't think it's a naturally-occurring phenomenon. The Great Recession wasn't great for the labor movement.
That is fundamentally a political issue. Amazon, and Instacart and other direct to consumer business models could easily be nationalized. This event is fundamentally different that the structural issues that undergird the 2008 financial crisis. This is a supply shock followed by a demand shock, not a structural financial shock as we witnessed in 2008. Conflating the two does not do anyone any good.
That this is a different type of shock than 2008 doesn't change the reality that things only happen if enough people work to make it happen. If you don't think a really bad path is possible where things get worse (just like a good path is possible!) then you're only fooling yourself.
Not necessarily because the monopolies themselves are then more prone to disruption.
If Amazon’s the only game in town and Amazon workers go on strike, you have problems that can’t be resolved by competitors rushing in to fill the gaps.
My experience is that the more powerful the employer, the harder it is to organize.
To your direct point, this is why you organize entire industries within a given geography for service work rather than employer by employer. (It's also why there's been a big push over the last year towards sectoral bargaining.)
Let's hope so, but frankly I doubt it. I see more concentrated wealth/power in fewer hands after this turns around.
I really truly hope all the light this pandemic sheds on huge systemic issues in this country are realized by the population at large and acted upon.
The sad state of healthcare in the US being the most obvious issues on the forefront, but also the decline of labor in general, rampant cronyism, and disgusting societal priorities/incentives favoring concentrated economic growth above all else. A vibrant economy is important but it's not the most important aspect of a society, not when it comes at a cost of physical/mental health and pitiful standards of living for massive portions of the population.
I was born in the early 90s so I don't think I don't think I'll ever understand the earlier 20th century on a personal/emotional level, but do older folks feel that some of these issues are neoliberal attitudes becoming a bit long in the tooth? I feel like they've likely resulted in a lot of growth, but the pain points of their paradigms are starting to seem really apparent to me.
I can understand how those visions of the world felt fresh a few decades after the New Deal, Keynesian economics, etc. (especially due to big events like hyperinflation or the oil shock). These days though whenever I hear a neoliberal demagogue online saying that we need to press the gas pedal of the market to the floor and it feels so tone-deaf. I can't tell if it's my lack of experience or I'm looking at the progressive era and New Deal with rose-tinted glasses.
Can anyone who isn't part of the über elite in tech actually provide a point of view on this? It is very easy for the well-off to always comment with "Not paid enough and so i always add a 25% tip on top".
Let's get this straight, out of the possible jobs that exist that require no experience, no education, very little mental or physical risk or exhaustion, this one ranks probably near the very top.
There are very many jobs that have the same requirements that don't pay as well or are very demanding physically, mentally or both. Why are some of the other jobs that have to exist quickly forgotten? Is it because of the exposure to the healthy and wealthier techie crowd?
I work in the labor movement. How can you say, in this moment, that they aren't facing physical risk? Their demands are specifically focused on the exposure they face to this virus.
Also, I don't know if you've ever had a job that's underpaid where you work with the public, but it's incredibly exhausting and frustrating and nothing like my comparatively stress-free job where I get to sit at a computer all day. Now imagine doing that in this moment of crisis where you're doing deliveries so that others don't have to risk themselves!
To your specific question, obviously something about Instacart will get more play on a tech site than, say, sanitation workers. I don't think that's odd. But there's no reason to assume that one needs to come at the expense at another -- if you start a thread about sanitation workers, I'd be first to upvote it.
They should be paid for their work and for the risk they face, however that price is built into the market, and weighed against people who also need jobs right now. By artificially raising the wages for some, you would have to deny work altogether for others. You cannot employ everyone and also raise their wages (a thermodynamic impossibility).
As far as tipping goes, nurses are not tipped for their work. Nor are doctors. Tipping should not be part of the equation as it puts too much variability in the pay for these people. They should be paid based on the risk and the need for their work, not based on the whims of some people.
Strikes are a negotiating tactic. It's not independent of the market. It's a part of it. Workers can use their collective power, too. They get a say in their worth and they're exercising it here.
The market isn't whatever corporations tell you that you're worth.
>As far as tipping goes, nurses are not tipped for their work. Nor are doctors. Tipping should not be part of the equation as it puts too much variability in the pay for these people. They should be paid based on the risk and the need for their work, not based on the whims of some people.
Nurses and Doctors make a lot of money and have better health protection. At least, they have full health insurance, compared to food delivery drivers. On top of that, medical professional are expected to be at risk.
If you are coughing and you expect someone to risk their lives, by catching whatever you have, while delivering your food, then, be prepared to shell additional for your delivery.
This isn't a techie thing. Everyone in service gets paid more than similar skills in back of house, because humans are social. No one tips their factory workers.
There needs to be a corporate framework for this type of gig economy. Some structure that allows companies to pay into general benefits on a as-earned basis, without forcing the definition to be a classic "employee" which no-one (except unions) wants.
Ideally it should be across corporations. I know a ton of people who drive for both Uber and Lyft, depending on who pays better. Thats a critical element - there needs to be a market of companies for people to work for, but they still need solid benefits and protections.
Think of this as a next generation union type structure.
>Some structure that allows companies to pay into general benefits on a as-earned basis, without forcing the definition to be a classic "employee" which no-one (except unions) wants.
I don't know why this doesn't come up more. People get hung up on whether contractor or FTE fits gig workers better, without ever suggesting there's a categorization issue here that could best be solved with a new category.
From my understanding, this structure already exists in some form, where a hiring hall is used. Essentially, workers are employees of the the union, and are contracted out to companies as needed. The union typically handles qualifications, and benefits.
You just invented the "temp agency" and the "contracting company".
Why do you believe no taxi drivers want to be employees? Why is it different from pizza deliverers or restaurant servers as regards wanting to be an independent contractor?
Socialism tends to be implemented the government doing things ineffectively, which is part of the reason Socialism has the reputation that it doesn't want.
I don't understand the obsession of unions on HN (majority are most likely tech workers without unions or have participated in one. I guess it could be exotic or the grass is greener on the other side)
Could I please have some papers shedding more light on productivity, societal gains, monopolistic behaviour etc resulting from unionizing an industry?
Not just perceived benefit but what happens in practice.
Ignoring whether unions are good or not. I find it odd that people here want another level of management and bureaucracy in their work environment when simpler solution like universal income exists.
Universal income will allow low paid workers to stay at home while not worrying about grinding to put food at their plates. Allowing them more power individually to negotiate better terms with their employer rather than having to go through a middle management layer which may or may not be receptive to your request.
I have a dumb question, what happens when an industry is controlled by one segregated group by their sex, age, race or any differentiating factor that is permanent.
Would that not be a challenge with unions?
How do you enforce "diversity" in unions whatever that may be?
Would universal employee benefit from the government not encourage more growth as small businesses don't need to factor in a lot when hiring workers and will only need to pay simple tax to the government based on any factor ranging from employee count to revenue?
Can someone with knowledge in Labour protection explain to me why we shouldn’t let that labor market decide how much these workers are paid?
After all, these technology platforms are making supply and demand more transparent, and theoretically, market pay rate should adjust quickly to reflect those changes.
> After all, these technology platforms are making supply and demand more transparent,
What do you mean? I don’t see any transparency from these platforms on either end. Workers often don’t know how much the customer paid and the customer doesn’t know what the worker received (or even if their tip “made it” to the worker). These gig economy markets are entirely artificial and centrally planned by the corporation in charge.
The "labor market" is a social construct created by laws and customs. Collective action is one of those customs, and it's supported by laws. That the company paying workers has an app shouldn't matter.
That's kind of a false equivalency. The purpose of the government is to step in when the market fails, so of course it is going to do things that support businesses and individuals which would normally have failed. However that is not generally the purpose of businesses, they generally just pay whatever the market decides, so paying people more even when they don't have to would be deviating from this.
Labor is a market too. I see no reason why we should support government action for one part of the market and accept ruthless market mechanics for the other. Both are important to the health of our society.
The concept of "the market" is so all encompassing as to be meaningless. It's just system justification at this point. We could just as easily call it economic duress. Very often people accept what they do because they lack the power to do otherwise.
This is necessary. Is there was a way to show support for this cause as an Amazon customer? Ditching Amazon as a single individual doesn’t send a message.
> Is there was a way to show support for this cause as an Amazon customer?
Yes:
* During the strike, show solidarity by not crossing picket lines. Don't use the service, and don't patron the business for the duration of the strike. This is because during the strike, the workers that are filling in for the strikers are scabs and crossing the picket line.
* Spread the news, their demands, and encourage solidarity with these workers.
Strength is in numbers and solidarity. When that breaks down, the movement breaks down. It's why many States and companies do everything in their power to prevent the wage-earners from organizing effectively.
> the workers that are filling in for the strikers are scabs
This skips a step. Who gave the strikers the right to choose this for the entire workforce? If my coworker says "I strike" and I stay at my desk, does that make me a "scab"? The article gives no information about who the workers are, how many of their fellow workers they represent, how long they've been doing the job. I'm not sure what would qualify them to speak for everybody, but it's got to be more than giving a quote to NPR, and surely it depends how many of them there are, relative to their coworkers.
> If my coworker says "I strike" and I stay at my desk, does that make me a "scab"?
Yes. Call it scab, strikebreaker, whatever; you are undermining your coworkers' demands and weakening the strike. Of course it's not easy to strike, but it's necessary if you support their demands. You show solidarity and support by striking with your coworkers. It's most powerful when done as a whole block.
But that is the point of the other person, right? Why does the striker get to call the tune and not the non-striker.
You assume the striker always has the moral high ground, why?
That's a big assumption. I've lived this. When I worked in a union job, I was forced to hand over a part of my paycheck to my union who did absolutely nothing for me when management went hostile without cause. As far as I could tell, the union was a gigantic executive/manager pyramid which was supporting its lifestyle on our backs. No bathroom break, no breaks at all- literally law breaking- no protection from management abuse of any form.
This is the case in a lot of jobs. The facts on the ground as I lived them are- unions do nothing for workers. They run campaigns for Democrats. Democrats empower unions. The worker still gets screwed.
Give me a right to work state and enforcement against past jobs badmouthing former employees - which is something no one ever enforces or in any way patrols for employers doing and which is ruinous to working people's prospects- and I'll be fine.
What's the ultimate goal- to serve and support unions or make life better for the working person? Because they aren't the same thing.
The main benefits of a union tend to manifest in the collective set of workers actually being able to set up infrastructure for command, control, and communication. Things like retaining legal representation for members, emergency war chests, and collective bargaining.
>I was forced to hand over a part of my paycheck to my union who did absolutely nothing for me when management went hostile without cause.
How do you mean? Did they not get you representation? We're you not afforded any protection? Did your Union rep stone wall, or just figure you were a lost cause?
I'm genuinely curious. I've been trying to find examples of Union failure states to compare with the pre-Taft-Hartley era unions. The statistics are clear that Unions worked for the group's amongst which they gained traction. At least when the tables weren't so tilted that even an outright failure was better than not trying.
>The facts on the ground as I lived them are- unions do nothing for workers. They run campaigns for Democrats. Democrats empower unions. The worker still gets screwed.
How? Gory details please. I'm aware that there is generally some level of "the Union didn't do enough"; but again, without details it's hard to try to posit what one can do/not do in order to get the best out of a collective bargaing unit.
Also, as some historical evidence to prop up your case, back during WWII, I think it was the steelworker's union that ended up giving organized labor a black eye. I think what these folks are asking for is reasonable; and the expectation at large is going to be the firm's need to accomodate
I'll bite. I am not going to give you enough information to ID me. I'll tell you some of the details but not the union name, sorry.
Forced to hand over == I had no choice. Forced to.
Do nothing for me == I was "reassigned" after someone accused me, without anything even remotely resembling proof, of something people in my position were accused of every day in every workplace covered by this union. Enduring baseless accusations are a part of this job. That's why we have CCTV cameras.
This was not an unusual accusation. I was not fired; I was reassigned to a place the company keeps for the specific purpose of making people quit- it's physically unendurable by anyone, generated no revenue for the company and existed as I said to make people quit.
So the company had a reliable supply of pretenses from third parties they were free to ignore- or act on- and a location whose existence was malignantly designed to force people to quit.
Unions play this game with the employers. We will pretend we don't know what you're doing and represent to our members there's nothing we can do.
They could have, for instance brought to bear the fact that this reassignment place had zero value to the company and had never been manned, ever, and generated no -zero- revenue , but did have the redeeming quality of making anyone who was assigned there quit.
They could have referenced the fact that the company receives 100s of complaints per year all of which they dismiss for total lack of evidence and this was one exactly like those except for the fact that the CCTV evidence exactly contradicted the complainant's assertions. They could have said that.
But that would create an antagonistic relationship between them and their partner and to what ends? What good would it do them? Besides, there's more than one way to skin a cat, right?
In highly unionized workplaces, all that happens is the employer antagonizes and provokes the employee until they quit. That's clever, but sometimes it backfires if the employee digs in. Then we all read about it in the papers; we know this as "going postal".
That's right.. the postal office, that bastion of union strength has a managerial policy of continuing to turn up the heat on an otherwise un-fireable employee until they quit, which most do but now and then one of them "goes postal".
Just have decent working condition laws, a right to work, and vigorously enforce the laws against smearing past employees and you'll have a market where employees are truly free to leave and be hired elsewhere.
Since you're interested in management-labor relations you might also want to know I was working in Silicon Valley when the whole Apple-Google-HM-and-Every-Other-Company-Known-To-Man / Do-Not-Hire scandal went down. Actually, I could have become a claimant in that.
Here's the deal. Companies are going to do whatever they want. Getting caught and fined is cheaper than obeying the law and to the extent that isn't true, then we have a container ship worth of dirty tricks we're willing to play on our employees, just like they did me. They have "labor shortages" and "narratives about how Americans aren't interested in STEM and all the rest of this garbage... it never ends.
No cop of any form is going to stop them; policing them just gives false hope to employees, and creates a false trail for researchers to fumble over. Unions shops and Amazon, both, do whatever they want.
So let them- within clear safety strictures (but see Amazon's forklift scandal in Indiana a few months ago to see how THOSE laws all worked out). Then we all know what reality is and we can negotiate it. Just let employees move on unmolested- which is what the aforementioned Google et. al. scandal was trying to prevent- and the market will work.
You had a terrible union, but you seem to be saying that the worst the union did is th same as it not existing. In a competetive market, since you accepted the job with the union cut, you would have accepted the job if there was no union and management just offered to pay less.
And what if their movement is hurting my employment, and thus my livelihood? The attitude you're suggesting is basically holding me hostage to your demands, regardless of if they're reasonable or not.
Any movement where continuing my expected duties considers me a "scab" and views me in an unfavorable light, simply for showing up, doing my work, and providing for my family. Under your description, that covers any movement
Yes, but the goal of any movement is once the demands are met, it should be a net positive to you. Can you give an example of a movement, where if the goals are met, it will be a net negative to you?
This assumes the outcome is indeed positive. What if the striker and scab disagree on this, though? What if someone believes the strike will result in lost jobs or closure of the company?
Just one person's declaration is enough to make me a 'scab'? No group functions that way. To use a dumb analogy, if I declare that HN is at war with Reddit, and you don't join in, that doesn't make you a 'traitor' to HN. A single member doesn't get to arbitrarily declare a high-stakes situation for an entire group just by saying so.
The question is, what are the actual norms that determine it, and are the current strikers meeting those norms, or have they simply gotten some media attention? By the way, I'm not saying their demands aren't reasonable.
It's like living in a country. If you disagree with the democratic government and actively oppose it's efforts are you traitor? That's a question of morals. No definitive answer.
No that's not how strikes work. First you have to form a union, and then the union has to vote with a majority deciding to strike.
Then you have a strike.
If a few coworkers get together and declare a strike, you are not obligated to join them. Even if the majority get together, you are not obligated, because you had no say in the matter. That is the point of the union.
Don't know if you've been on amazon lately but they're so full of orders that delivery dates are almost impossible to secure. I don't think they'll mind a few less orders these days.
This is sadly, not terribly surprising. With most stores not grocery stores closed, people have to turn to online ordering to get what they need/want. And with Amazon having established themselves as the main entity to go to for online ordering, of course they are going to be overwhelmed with orders at the moment.
I feel like "not using Amazon" doesn't actually do much because they there's no way to send the signal that you're not buying because of the strike as opposed to a million other reasons you might not be spending.
I think a more effective solution would be to keep buying like you normally do but if/when your service is worse due to being short staffed send a message to their support.
> Whoever is fulfilling your order during the strike is a scab
Wait, but I'm not supposed to actually get the order in this hypothetical. I place and order, the workers don't actually fill it, I complain and get my money back, cost Amazon money, and tell their customer service that I'm upset that the strike is inconveniencing me and they should treat their workers better.
The number of non-Amazon workers that are aware of this strike will never reach critical mass so if there's enough non-strikers to still do business as usual the strike is already over, right?
You could just call support without placing an order. That checks both boxes, wastes their time, and deprives them of money until they acknowledge their workers' needs.
the workers here are not unionized. it therefore isn't a strike. we can safely assume that not all workers are participating in the walkout, and those that don't presumably still want work (orders) to come in.
i understand your pro-labor position (i am also pro-labor), but because this isn't a union effort, ie voted on and carried out by a singular work force, there aren't scabs. there are those who agree and those who don't. applying a disparaging label to those who chose not to participate is promotion of a one-sided message; a political bias.
also, wrt the amazon part of this news, it's a single warehouse in NY, and given that it's now 3PM there, and there is no news story of an actual walkout, it's safe to say that the effort fizzled.
You're attempting to shame and villainize people that disagree with the movement, and trying to justify that using meaningless buzzwords like "solidarity".
Why should the strikers not show solidarity with the non-strikers by stopping the strike? Or show solidarity with the health care workers by enduring difficult times for the common good?
Why do strikes always seem to be surrounded by such emotional rhetoric? To me, that's a warning sign that there's no underlying logic.
> This is necessary. Is there was a way to show support for this cause as an Amazon customer? Ditching Amazon as a single individual doesn’t send a message.
Maybe call Amazon support to tell them you support it, and try to get escalated as high as possible?
Also, at one time emails sent to jeff@amazon.com would occasionally be read by Jeff Bezos, but now I think they're only looked at by some high level support team.
How many workers are actually involved in this strike? The news and medium articles don't give any indication as to whether this is just a few dozen workers putting out a statement, or a larger group.
It's obviously bad PR to deny their claims right now, but I can't imagine this working. Sets a precedent that Amazon will go to great lengths to not set.
PrimeNow stopped for me a week ago. A considerable portion of amazon (maybe as much as 2/3) now sets delivery dates to 30 days out. I have multiple packages that are a week late with no reason reported or explainable by amazon support. I live in Austin, tx.
Given their warehouse is striking that's a BIG problem for Amazon (and instacart obviously too). Do they expect to have to shutdown deliveries to new york or stop instacart deliveries nationwide for this or future strikes?
Crazy to be seeing these Amazon workers go on strike headlines!
Every news article I've read (even articles published this morning) says that they "plan to walk out" on Monday, but have they actually started to do that? Instacart is still letting me place orders (estimated delivery Thurs of course)
Mercury news article from 11:15am says:
"It’s not clear when the strike would start Monday or how many workers would participate."
- Safety precautions at no cost to workers — PPE (at minimum hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes/sprays and soap).
- Hazard pay — an extra $5 per order and defaulting the in-app tip amount to at least 10% of the order total.
- An extension and expansion of pay for workers impacted by COVID-19 — anyone who has a doctor’s note for either a preexisting condition that’s a known risk factor or requiring a self-quarantine.
- The deadline to qualify for these benefits must be extended beyond April 8th.