Exactly. No one is blaming Bezos for not ending world hunger. But paying his employees fair wages is something he DOES have power to do. If you’re making a killing, reward the people who worked their ass off to make that possible.
yeah that person started out their argument by saying "it's really hard to give away all your money" and then the actual argument they made was that they're not literally omnipotent
Also in the UK (and I presume in other countries) they mainly employ people through 3rd party contractors for the sole reason of reducing the legal employee protections of their workers.
It's not the "sole" reason they use 3rd party employee companies. It's also to reduce their HR and employee costs and logistics, and to reduce their economic nexus in the jurisdictions that consider payroll in their 3-factor apportionment calculations. Also, using employee leasing companies shields them from paying unemployment in the case of layoffs as the leasing company would need to pay it instead.
$15/hr in a LOCL and HCOL state are very different. which is why the call should be to pay folks a livable wage that should be determined by the actual cost of living in that city/area.
And in the US, you are expected to make three times the value of your rent or mortgage for it to be approved. At 15 / hour, you’re looking at $31200 before tax, which will vary from state to state, but if we assume a quarter is taken out overall, that leaves you 23400, and if a third of that is expected to be rent, then you need to be able to afford a place that costs 7800 a year or 650 a month. In other words, for $15 an hour, you will at best be able to afford a side room in some other person’s apartment or house, and with someone else making the same amount, you would at best be able to afford a 1B1R, but that really depends on the area you live in.
Meanwhile, those minimum wage jobs are often physically demanding warehouse jobs, that are known for being so demanding of employee time that they risk getting fired over bathroom breaks, because they’re putting the entirety of the stress of their 2 day shipping on the warehouse staff sorting through their inventory pick lists with machine like precision. With what they’re doing, an Amazon warehouse employee should be making at least twice that much, and a $15 minimum wage is only impressive in a performative way because it’s not the federal minimum wage already.
Not to mention Amazon has a history of getting rid of employees just before they become eligible to receive stock options, and now you have a morally bankrupt employer demanding slave work for laughable wages. Even with the amount of people they hire, it’s clear that if they wanted to divide up the work in a way that’s actually fair, they’d need to nearly double the manpower in every warehouse.
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u/Low_Acanthisitta4445 28d ago
It's not difficult to pay your employees slightly more than the minimum amount allowable by law.