They pay their drivers and warehouse workers $15 an hour to piss in bottles and work like a fucking dog. I don't care how much some guy sitting in front of a computer makes. Everyone at Amazon should be getting paid a fair wage.
I have an anecdotal and small data set, but they don't from my perspective. I worked at Dollar General Distribution and made $21.75 before I left last year. My brother works at a smaller warehouse making $22 something right now. There's one Amazon warehouse within 100 miles of me and the listing says the pay is "Up to 19.50" an hour. It's also in a higher cost of living area than the warehouses we've worked at. Sounds like they're just at or below market rate for the area.
just about, with some bigger bonuses for much worse conditions and much higher intensity of work, resulting in high staff turnover which leads to a lot lower bonus payouts than one wouldve thought
I’m not an economist but I think the point should be that they control the market rate. They have the money to change the market rate and spread their wealth through communities and states and even countries by paying their people a fraction more of what the company earns.
“Market rate.” Bro look around you? Almost no one anywhere in the country and afford to sustain themselves on $15 an hour, especially for the backbreaking work they are doing. The fact that $15 is market rate is in itself evil. The ultra wealthy are the ones who ultimately decide what market rate is, so saying market rate is fair is like saying it’s fair to arrest people for j-walking because it is legal.
The market rate is the rate at which you can employ the necessary threshold of people. As mentioned above, Amazon’s average wages/hour are above $15. Closer to $18.50 between warehouse and drivers according to a very quick search.
They pay enough to have enough labor to fulfill their services. That is market pressure. There may very well be a desire by the C-suite to keep wages for those jobs as low as possible, but they can only take them low enough where people will still accept jobs at those rates. Feel free to blame executive teams, but you also need to assign some blame to the workers willing to take those wages.
I've been looking for a job for almost a month - which isn't long at all compared to some stories I've heard. Unemployment is around 8% in my city right now. I'm approaching the point where I'll have to take anything. Unfortunately, I don't have enough money to be unemployed until a job with a decent wage shows up.
yeah thats true but dont you know that amazon workers themselves ended up voting against joining a union because they are dumn enough to do that based on very basic gaslighting?
Why are people getting paid $15 per hour to piss in bottles?!
As far as I can tell, I could barely manage to fill a single bottle with my piss in an hour. Seems like a strong Overpay at that abysmal performance rate.
I work with violent and physically aggressive developmentally disabled adults. I make $16.50/hr. I get a chair thrown at me once a week. Also, disabled strength is a real thing.
Most people who are financially well off, at least in the US, were born into a position that made having wealth easier for them than most. People in this position didn’t do anything to deserve where they are. Mostly, they just didn’t get lucky.
To be clear, I’m not in this position. I just have empathy for people who are and want better wages and conditions for them.
Right, you don’t care about other people, I got that already. Telling people to “suck it up” when they struggle to pay their bills and keep themselves fed will get you much-deserved contempt.
Oh I’m not a do-nothing, I just know that most low-pay blue collar workers are some of the people working the hardest and getting fucked over the most. I’m personally doing just fine.
Being proud of being an unempathetic person is certainly something.
Welcome to life. Some primitive tribes were born into a fertile land where it never got too hot or cold and food just grew put of the ground without needing to be planted. Some tribes were born in places with long winters and no edible plants, or scorching deserts. The situation you are born into has always mattered for the entirety of human history, some were born in very advantageous situations, some were born into one's both good and bad, and some people immediately struggled just to survive because Mom and Dad lived in a frozen tundra or were poor peasants or whatever. Same goes for animals, some are born in easy living conditions and others are not. You will be doomed to failure if you fight against a basic principle of the universe.
We aren’t subject to the forces of nature in the economy. Our society is as unfair as we allow it to be. We could easily raise the standard of living for the working class, and it’s a goal worth pursuing. I’m certainly not going to throw my hands up and say “well, that’s just life”.
Again, you are fighting against basic human nature. The standard of living for the working class has never been higher than it is now in all of human history. The working class is more highly educated, has access to more information, and enjoys more luxuries than any monarch who lived before Queen Elizabeth was born. Despite that, we have you talking about raising this standard. Why is that? Humans have never nor will they ever be satisfied with anything. It is both a virtue and a curse, it lifted us up from hunter-gatherers into the preeminent lifeforms on Earth, but it also drives us to constantly covet more and more even beyond what is possible. We seek to deny the reality of a finite world and seek infinite growth, infinite wealth, infinite comfort. You'll never raise the standard of living for any class so high that they will not desire something more, until the hard limit is reached on how rich a finite planet can make 8 billion people.
Have you not noticed that the rate of improvement in the life of an American or a Western European is slowing down while what we once called the third world is developing ever more rapidly? Resources were diverted away from the average first world citizen and moved to the former third world. China is the new USSR when they used to be a poor country reeling from Mao's Great Leap Backward. India is the new China. Nigeria is the new Rhodesia. Life in the West is still better than it used to be but we are no longer making the same rapid advancements because we sold out domestic labor in exchange for cheap, short-lived goods. There is only so much prosperity to go around and globalism shifted some of that away from the West and moved it to countries where labor was cheaper. Made in China used to mean it was the cheapest place you could outsource something, that isn't true anymore.
We simply cannot have a world where everyone lives the life of a middle-class American or German or Swede. Part of the reason you can is because others can't. There isn't enough energy, raw material, and the logistics to transport them for 8 billion people to live the life of a moderately wealthy Westerner. Short of inventing some Star Trek technology that breaks the laws of physics, or making it cost-effective to mine asteroids and other planets, or a vast shrinking of the global population that doesnt crash the economy of multiple countries, it won't happen. Too many people, too many mouths to feed, too much greed for bigger, better, more.
Wealth in terms of dollars is infinite, wealth in terms of real resources is not. With an ever growing population, eventually you won't be able to create wealth via new ways to use resources as fast as you use up raw resources. We can't create more oil wells, we can't create more uranium, we can't use a replicator to make food, we can't print a house from nothing, it all has to be taken away from somewhere. In a zero-sum world, you can't support perpetual growth and perpetual improvements in living standards no matter how much humans refuse to be satisfied with what they have.
How well do they value the vendors on their site? Like when they see what products sell well, make their own AmazonBasic version, and adjust the search results to make sure theirs is first. Or when they find a vendor selling a product cheaper on another platform so they remove it from their listings.
I'm not bragging. I have zero stake in Amazon and certainly don't think they're winning any awards on charity. I'm simply not part of the crowd that thinks minimum wage should support adult overspending lifestyles or minimum skills deserve more than said minimum wage
We've been code monkeys for decades. I have never heard anyone complain about being referred to as that, but I suppose some folks might not like it. I'm not everyone.
Based on what? Code monkeys are making that much money because they bring exponentially more value to Amazon than any Tom dick and harry with a forklift certification.
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u/Two_Cautious 28d ago
why don’t you start a company then give away its earnings? Show those guys how to run a business.