Tells you a lot about why "the market" won't always give you the outcome you're looking for. People value delivery more than ever right now. It's literally saving lives. However that value does not result in the people taking risk to provide the delivery getting any more money.
As others have mentioned these workers have so little leverage right now because of the massive unemployment. So even if Amazon was to charge customers more, they could totally just pocket the money and the warehouse/delivery/grocery people would have no position.
It's so completely unfair. Everyone risking their lives to feed us right now should probably be making 2-3x normal pay (and we should be paying a lot more for their services).
Amazon should do what's good for the most amount of people which is keeping prices down. There are plenty of people willing to take these jobs, we have record unemployment. Raising wage 2-3x the normal pay is unfair given how many people would take these jobs today.
I think it's way to easy for us with nice paying jobs, and secure employment to say that we'd pay more for goods and services. There are so many unemployed people that aren't going to be doing good in a month. These people will want any job and will need cheap goods.
If we're going to do some sort of hero compensation for all of our essential works, which I'm in favor of, it should be through the government. Private sector should continue to be fair and act rationally.
"Amazon should do what's good for the most amount of people which is keeping prices down."
Amazon could do this by reducing the amount of profit it pockets and giving that share to its employees.
Jeff Bezos is the richest man on Earth. He can afford it.
In fact, I'd like to see Bezos risk his life commuting to work on unsafe public transit, working in some of Amazon's warehouses where he'd be exposed to other workers who might be sick, handling hundreds of potentially infected packages, and doing deliveries... all this with crappy if any health insurance and virtually no safety net.
There's been a long-standing argument that founders deservedly reap great rewards because they are the ones in a company who shoulder the great majority of the risk.
Now that's been shown to be an utter and complete lie by this epidemic, hasn't it?
Bezos is sitting nice and safe in his mansion, pocketing billions while it's the desperate people who work for him who risk their life for peanuts.
> I'd like to see Bezos risk his life commuting to work on unsafe public transit, working in some of Amazon's warehouses where he'd be exposed to other workers who might be sick, handling hundreds of potentially infected packages, and doing deliveries... all this with crappy if any health insurance and virtually no safety net.
Amazon operates within an existing system, defined by government regulation, and competes within that system exceedingly well. If you're upset with the outcomes, blame the real culprit: utterly ineffective government policies. Corporations are by definition not altruistic entities. They're not supposed to be, and it's the job of government policy to tame the negative possibilities of their profit-driven pursuits.
Why can't corporations seek profit and altruism at the same time? Because you can model your business as a function that optimizes for profit, which is easily quantifiable. I've never seen any way to optimize for altruism.
Say you wanted to optimize for altruism and profit: how would that work? Is 3x wages really enough if employees still have shitty health insurance? Should Amazon provide its own medical services in warehouses so they don't depend on bad private insurance? How many doctors should they hire? Should they treat non-workplace health issues? What if they find someone has cancer? You get into fuzzy, grey territory very quickly with this line of thinking. Profit is always a number and it's better when it's higher. How do you measure altruistic behavior?
If you're upset with the outcomes, change the system that's incentivizing that behavior. Don't penalize the players for succeeding. This is the role that government is supposed to play.
"If you're upset with the outcomes, change the system that's incentivizing that behavior. Don't penalize the players for succeeding. This is the role that government is supposed to play."
Great idea, except that the government has been effectively coopted by the very corporate and wealthy interests they are tasked with regulating.
Government officials regularly come from high executive posts in industry, and when they retire from government work are hired in to cushy, well-paid jobs at the very corporations they had regulated and assigned government contracts to while they were in office.
The "pro-business" faction has been busy deregulating as much as they can and selling off government assets to private corporations. Anti-trust enforcement has been a joke for decades. As we speak environmental regulations are being rolled back with the excuse of making life easier for polluting corporations in the wake of the cornavirus crisis. With the successful capture of the Supreme and lower courts by conservatives we can expect to see even more corporate and wealth dominance.
At this point in history I don't have much hope in the government reigning in corporations or the wealthy. The trend towards ever more wealth concentration and ever greater inequality in the US is crystal clear.
> At this point in history I don't have much hope in the government reigning in corporations or the wealthy
I would agree with that. But I still think it's probably easier to fight that fight than to try to shame corporations into achieving unquantifiable, often mutually exclusive goals to everyone's satisfaction. I'm not hopeful government will change any time soon, I just want to make sure we're directing the resentment to the right place.
Jeff Bezos is not Amazon. Amazon wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't relentlessly competitive. Workers are not risking their lives for peanuts. They're paid a competitive wage for people that have their skill set. There are lots of people that want their jobs.
All essential workers during this crisis deserve some kind of additional compensation. Wealth redistribution should happen through the government. One company can't do it all themselves. They have a responsibility to both their shareholders and their employees. It they abandon one of those responsibilities they won't be able to do the other one effectively.
"Amazon wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't relentlessly competitive."
Amazon can be just as competitive without being as profitable to its shareholders.
The hundreds of billions that Bezos has pocketed as profit are not essential for Amazon's success. That profit could easily be redirected in to the pockets of Amazon's employees and towards making a safer work environment instead, arguably with a corresponding increase in Amazon's competitive effectiveness.
Right. There's no point in making sure your workers are healthy or are well compensated for the risks they take slaving away to make you ever richer, when you could pay them the absolute minimum you could get away with and replace them with more if they get sick or die.
No, there was a record high in the number of people filing for unemployment insurance in a week, which is not the same as a record high unemployment rate.
We certainly might be heading for 10% unemployment rate or more, but we aren't there yet.
The only thing important and is the practice in civilized countries is universal health care and payed lives for sickness, child birth etc. The USA is a hell hole and this is why people need to fear loosing their livelihoods or their lives. These should not be the only two options available in any civilized country.
>Tells you a lot about why "the market" won't always give you the outcome you're looking for.
I think we're seeing the market work exactly as intended. It goes both ways. If workers strike (with solidarity), the market will respond accordingly to find a price at which people are willing to do the work. But no, it won't happen instantly. The capitalists won't just give in and say "You're right guys, we're sorry.". Their hand must be forced, and that is the history of all organized labor.
> I once thought that militaries must be paying fortunes for what those people do...
The vast majority of people in modern militaries will never see combat. They are all somewhere relatively safe and merely supporting that small minority of troops who will see combat. Consequently, it is no surprise that pay is fairly low.
But in the private security world – people guarding Western and Chinese interests in unstable developing countries – those people are likely to get involved in some shooting, and so their salaries and benefits for loved ones are very high.
Isn't that WWII thinking? The 'tooth to tail' ration has come a long way. Used to be 1:50 or some such. More like 1:10 or 1:8 now? So 'vast majority' is a reach.
Again, this is wrong. Governments can change in all sorts of ways. In the current hyper-polarized political reality in the US, it may seem like a revolution is required, but just look at the number of changes that have actually occurred under Trump and Obama.
If we could muster the political will to actually address corruption, then it would change, and it wouldn't require a revolution.
The crisis has provided a lot of leverage for these workers, but large-scale unemployment has also made replacing them easier than ever before. Will be interesting to see what happens here.
No one cares that their products are made possible by literal slave labor. Most people care so little, they aren't even aware which of their belongings are made possible through slave labor. You really think anyone is really concerned with how companies treat human life? Concerned enough to sacrifice their own benefits instead of just parting with pretty words? I don't think so.
It's just that things break down in hyperefficient settings (factories, warehouses etc) when unpredictable events hit them. These environments aren't great at adapting quickly to things they haven't faced before.
Before anyone with decision making power or imagination, can be pulled in to deal with some issue, (that no one has training or experience to handle on the front lines), it's already all over social media and the news. That's just how things work currently.
Give it a few days before reacting to whatevers on the net or on the news.
That's just an excuse to shift responsibility. In a kill or be killed situation, you could always choose to be killed instead of killing, you'd just have to sacrifice your life. It's just that people don't actually care enough to give up their life or any of their benefits.
It always comes down to the fact that people will not give up their own benefits for someone else. If you want people to do something you have to appeal to their self-interest, not their morality.
The reputation hit that Amazon is setting itself to take due to the ongoing treatment of some of its staff might do more harm to it than just keeping the company's staff happy.
This is a company that pays almost no Federal taxes, whose employees are forced to seek aid from the Federal govt. The least they could do is offer paid sick leave for those affected. Hardcore capitalism is doing as much harm to the US during this crisis as the virus itself.
> This is a company that pays almost no Federal taxes
Indeed, if you reinvest almost all your profits in the business instead of taking them as earnings you pay very little in taxes. Taxing investment would be a very stupid thing to do since it would discourage what makes society richer in the long run.
Do you think Bezos did not pay taxes on his earnings? His "fortune" is majority equity in Amazon, not cash sitting in a bank account. Any income he received was taxed
I would argue the income tax issue is that simple. The bet Amazon made was that profits didn't define the valuation of the business. The part that wasn't black & white was that folks were split on whether he was a genius or a scam artist running a book retailer with a 400+ p/e ratio.
Gaming the system is what I'd call their sales tax treatment. They didn't collect it everywhere until they got so large that they're warehouses and datacenters were everywhere. And depending on jurisdiction I think its the 3rd party sellers' responsibility where possible.
Please explain how Amazon has gamed the system, or how Bezos being rich is incompatible with Amazon paying little in tax because it reinvests almost all profits.
Amazon was one of the original “disrupters”, taking out regular retail by not charging sales tax for the first decade of its existence. One might argue this gave them an unfair advantage over conventional retail, allowing them to gain a foothold faster than they might have otherwise.
Anecdotally, I absolutely and conscientiously used Amazon as a way to avoid paying sales tax when I was younger and less financially stable.
No federal taxes is false. Amazon pays lots of federal taxes. In some years, they’re paid almost no federal income taxes in the US. One specific kind of tax in one jurisdiction. Our system is set up to incentivize companies and innovation with various mechanisms that change how taxable income is recognized. Not only are Amazon’s taxes legal, but also they are desirable for society at large. The alternative is that there wouldn’t be an Amazon or many other companies.
There is a "Fight club" feel to this crisis. All the "key worker", necessary job that need to be done regardless the catastrophe society is facing are literally the least desirable job on the market and often the least paid too.
Hopefully there is going to be wake up call in society. Surely a large scale demonstration like this would convince people that your "free market capitalistic assigned worth, i.e. your salary" is not a sufficient measure of your value in society and external adjustment (eg: government regulation or welfare or ...) is actually quite reasonable.
It's like the opposite of the Galt's Gulch strike by the titans of industry in Atlas Shrugged. Unfortunately for the workers, the sudden spike in unemployment might make them easily replaceable, though there will be a training cost incurred by the companies. Their best hope is that enough unemployed people are comfortable with their government checks (stimulus and unemployment) combined with hope that their jobs will come back in a month or two, to not bother picking up jobs at Whole Foods or Amazon.
Only on Hacker News could you find some describing strikes, which were invented by workers, predate everything Rand wrote to cynically invert history and reality, as the “opposite of Galt’s Gulch.”
HN and any other place software developer types gather. If we didn't exist Rand would have had to invent us. We're practically perfect consumers of her work. We do a very cushy job for which a small amount of labor can produce a vast amount of value. It's easy to believe that it's a level playing field, so we're being rewarded purely for our own skill and hard work. We've changed the world on scales not seen since the age of the railroad tycoon.
We read Atlas Shrugged and see ourselves. Let us run the world and everybody will do great. We don't read The Jungle or Nickel and Dimed, and if we do we don't see ourselves. We enjoy the benefits of the labor movement as natural rights -- or even dismiss things like weekends and sick leave as unnecessary.
That's not everybody on HN; in fact HN seems to be better than many. Slashdotters, last I saw, seemed quite convinced Rand had written scripture.
I've read both The Jungle and Nickel and Dimed, but not Atlas Shrugged. To this day I have never hired anyone to clean my house or fetch and carry for me, it's a direct influence of that book. One day when I'm old and infirm, maybe. On my last 20-ish visits to Wholefoods, I saw more and more gig shoppers. In the beginning I didn't think much of it, but as the number of gig shoppers approach regular shoppers, I have become convinced that we are living in Brave New World, there's a whole class of people who we will never come in contact with, other than through these arms-length service exchange. I hazard to think that this stratification of tasks will shape us, shape me in how I think of my place in the world. And this is the stuff I do see, I hate to think what I'm blind to.
Is our world now more like 1984 or Brave New World?
Those gig shoppers are having a moment right now, and I hope people (especially people like us) are listening. They work hard; hard enough to merit a living wage. There are lots of ways to accomplish that, with different merits, but it is more apparent now than ever that they're literally risking their lives and deserve better than "I'm sorry your job shut down but you haven't earned enough to eat while carrying me my food."
Rand gave us a picture of a just world where everybody earned what they got, and where misfortune was your own fault. The Invisible Hand self-corrects. It's easy to support that when you come in the top 1% of the world and therefore must have earned it, and conversely everybody else didn't.
At the very least, if one is sending a gig shopper to Whole Foods... tip like crazy. (Or don't break the strike at all.)
Why would it be reasonable? If you're not willing to perform a job at the current pay grade, just quit your job. Either you get replaced immediately or you've got yourself a chip in your salary negotiation.
Switching jobs right now would cost you:
a) Income you need to provide yourself food and shelter in a time of insecurity.
b) Healthcare loss during one of the worst global health crises ever.
The switching cost is near infinite and not reflected in the pay.
If you haven't saved enough money to survive for a year without income, you really only have yourself to blame. Just live a frugal life until you have saved enough. I lived my life frugal for so long, I don't even know how to spend the money I make. I've went years without buying stuff that isn't needed for survival and only spend money on shelter and food. If people can't do this simple thing, they can't expect pity from me.
It's called solidarity. You acknowledge that more vulnerable people can benefit from your support, such as the fulfillment centre workers being supported by the SREs in this case. But if you only care about yourself and never worry that you might need support from others some day, then yes, I suppose it's not really for you.
These strikes just seems opportunist. For those saying “workers should get PPEs” - how? There’s a shortage and medical workers are a higher priority since they’re more likely to be infected. And clearly, online shopping is popular these days and important to keep operating while there are shelter in place orders. Grocery stores are also important to keep operating.
These workers are free to forego their jobs and go home. Amazon should just replace them and move on. There will be many others who are willing to work.
As others have mentioned these workers have so little leverage right now because of the massive unemployment. So even if Amazon was to charge customers more, they could totally just pocket the money and the warehouse/delivery/grocery people would have no position.
It's so completely unfair. Everyone risking their lives to feed us right now should probably be making 2-3x normal pay (and we should be paying a lot more for their services).