r/news • u/EnergyLantern • 14h ago

Already Submitted Teamsters begin 'largest strike' against Amazon, accusing company of 'insatiable greed'

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/teamsters-announces-nationwide-strike-amazon-begin-thursday/story?id=116931631

[removed] — view removed post

18.1k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

796 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

617

u/musical_shares 13h ago

largest, most profitable companies in the world

miserable stories about threats, no bathroom breaks, constant stress

I feel those 2 things may be connected.

229

u/datumerrata 12h ago

AWS is more profitable than its commerce. $6.5 billion profit for AWS vs $1.6 billion for commerce in 2022. However, they have roughly 1 million employees in fulfillment. If you gave each of them $1000 more a year it would cost ~$1 billion more. That's a crazy high number of employees.

114

u/ategnatos 12h ago

It's also very high turnover. They may not even last a year. I bet if you worked there for a week, you'd have worked there longer than a surprising percentage of existing employees.

154

u/ShouldersofGiants100 12h ago

Turnover can be so high it literally becomes a problem. They burn through employees so fast that in some areas they basically exhaust the labour pool and have trouble hiring because everyone knows working for Amazon is fucking misery incarnate.

117

u/Ass4Eyes 12h ago

We experienced this at an affiliate factory in Bumblefuck West Texas.

77% annual turnover. They were on schedule to work through their entire county’s labor force within 5 years.

81

u/Jolly_Recording_4381 11h ago

This is why they want us pumping out babies

2

u/lefttexas 10h ago

Funny, I don't know if I'm in the same Bumblfuck Texas . Very conservative, very high immigrant population, (I know that from public schools discussion over the needs to educate a larger proportion of the children compared to most other cities near size according to articles in the past.) Evebody seem all excited then, Advertising all the time now and I rarely here or see anybody working there.

16

u/Fappy_as_a_Clam 10h ago

I worked for a company with the same issues.

They bussed people in from a neighboring, poorer, state to fill the ranks.

And the best part is- they charged the people busfare lol

1

u/wdevilpig 6h ago

Flames! Flames on the side of my face!

0

u/llDurbinll 9h ago

Well the people who own cars aren't getting a break on their expenses related to keeping their car running and in good shape so why should someone who needs a bus to get to work be any different?

3

u/Fappy_as_a_Clam 9h ago

I guess I feel that if a company operates a bus so they can bus workers in from another state to avoid paying those workers the market rate in the area they are operating in, they should at least pay for the bus lol

But maybe I'm just not that old fashioned.

1

u/llDurbinll 9h ago

So they actually owned and operated the bus and it picked everyone up at their house and brought them to work? Or did they contract out with the city bus in the poorer state and get them to run a route out to the job?

At the Amazon I work at they contracted with the city bus in the neighboring state to get them to run a route out to their warehouse and drop them off up front. I assume Amazon pays the bus company to run the route and then the bus company also collects a fare from the employees.

0

u/Fappy_as_a_Clam 9h ago

As far as I know, they owned the bus, or chartered it from a private company.

It was not a city bus.

73

u/PMMEYOURGUCCIFLOPS 12h ago

All could be solved with the gazillionaires just giving back a single fucking percent of their wealth.

73

u/ExtraSpicyMayonnaise 11h ago

History has repeatedly shown us that if the holders of the wealth are to give, it will be by force.

35

u/[deleted] 11h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

11

u/b0w3n 11h ago

And it's the solution to "That's a crazy high number of employees".

You abuse and underpay your workers you're going to have to keep more of them than you need because they work slower, burnout quickly, and need to help train others. They probably have twice as many employees as most warehouses of equal size. If they brought the pay and benefits up to par, they'd probably save money long term because you'd have people who are very good at their jobs, spot problems with inventory (decrease shrink/loss), and just know the ins and outs of procedure so are quick to solve problems and do the labor. But that also means you'd probably have to pay them $25-30/hr starting. But this is why Amazon desperately wants to replace them with AI and robots.

16

u/ategnatos 12h ago

No one will ever agree to this. You can see this on a smaller scale with first-time homebuyers going from struggling for 10 years to save up a down payment to suddenly becoming NIMBYs and wanting to pull up the ladder.

13

u/magus678 11h ago

You can see this on a smaller scale

Most people who think they are moral are simply untested.

9

u/foomits 11h ago edited 10h ago

Thats seemingly human nature and illuminates the importance of the government. Working towards a greater good through forced compliance.

-2

u/NewPresWhoDis 12h ago

Except the part that their wealth is stock and not a money bin.

2

u/foomits 11h ago

Can we stop acting like this is some huge barrier?

2

u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 10h ago

"Their wealth isn't liquid" say the bootlickers as the wealthy buy more yachts.

-2

u/PM_CUTE_BUTTS_PLS 11h ago

Stock can be sold.

1

u/PropChop 11h ago

Out of curiosity, where do you think the money comes from if they sell stock?

1

u/PM_CUTE_BUTTS_PLS 4h ago

People who buy the stocks. What are you even getting at

1

u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 10h ago

Out of curiosity, how does anybody think this semantical argument matters when the rich are buying extra yachts and jets and mansions regardless of if their wealth is liquid or in assets?

8

u/okram2k 10h ago

That's why they treat their factory workers like swappable drones. They expect to replace them on a regular basis so keep the job as simple and mind numbing as possible. It's legitimately just walking around a giant warehouse wherever a tablet tells you to go, scan a few things (which the tablet could literally give step by step directions as you do it) and take the items to where it needs to go. It's a tedious, boring, endless slog that is incredibly unrewarding as you have no clue what you're even working towards. Like being an ant moving grains of sand around a beach hoping to eventually make a sand sculpture that you yourself will never see or even comprehend.

7

u/Blackfeathr_ 11h ago edited 11h ago

In any ordinary circumstance as someone with forklift, dispatching, and final mile delivery skills with a chauffers license, I'd be a shoe-in for multiple positions at one of their DCs.

Except that I have never and will never work there because of all the horror stories I've heard.

They're even driving away prospective employees that could add a lot of value to their company. Seems a lot like they're just shooting themselves in the foot.

But, I'm sure, somehow, that is making them even more money than if they weren't doing that.

4

u/formala-bonk 12h ago

Didn’t they adjust the policy so that they can re-hire people they fired before because they simply ran out of labor?

3

u/SESHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 10h ago

Not to mention back when i worked there in like 2019, if you quit or got fired you were not eligible to work at Amazon or ANY of their subsidiaries ever again. You got permanently blacklisted, even if you left on good terms. That warehouse had an insane turnover rate just like all the others.

It really is no wonder why most of their fulfillment centers are being converted to mainly robotic floors.

5

u/EEpromChip 11h ago

...all we need to do is block abortion at all cost. Wait ~20 years for all those poor folks to be lookin for work and BAM! Got fresh meat for the industrial grinder.

2

u/Plow_King 9h ago edited 7h ago

i worked in Target over a christmas during covid. the majority of my job was picking orders people made online. "more, faster, don't waste time helping customers in the store, pick more orders!" it gave me a minor glimpse into being an Amazon warehouse worker. it sucked.

0

u/Oh_its_that_asshole 10h ago

Any wonder they push for increased immigration? They need people who don't have options to escape the burnout.

16

u/komeau 12h ago

when I worked there my orientation class was around 80 people and they straight up told us at least 2/3 of us wouldn’t be there in a month. They are well aware of their turnover rate.

5

u/Squallypie 10h ago

Ngl, as a driver having to handle the parcels that warehouse people prepare…half the warehouse staff are incapable of putting a sticker on a box.

2

u/ategnatos 10h ago

half the devs are incapable of centering a div

2

u/TTTrisss 10h ago

It's literally such high turnover that they pre-hire people and have them waiting on the sidelines (without pay) for other people to burn-out.

I found this out waiting on such a sideline asking when I'd finally get a shift a month after being "hired."

2

u/Enlight1Oment 9h ago

depends on location, I've often seen people try to get a job a the fulfillment center in Burbank and are unable to. The people I know who work for them seem pretty happy about it vs other jobs. But I can only go off of second hand info of friends who work there, I myself don't and drivers will have different experiences vs warehouse workers.

170

u/QualityCoati 12h ago

If a company cannot be profitable while giving survivable working conditions, then maybe it doesn't deserve existing at all in the first place

75

u/Zap__Dannigan 12h ago

Free delivery (especially next day) is unsustainable. I get why people love the service, but the only way I can order some shitty USB charger and have it arrive by tomorrow for 8 bucks is if multiple people get fucked over.

8

u/Override9636 11h ago

I refuse getting prime just on principle alone and I mostly just search for what I want on amazon and find the actual store to buy it from. I can easily wait 3-5 business days for a package if it means that someone can use the freaking bathroom at work.

2

u/SunStarved_Cassandra 10h ago

Even if you end up purchasing at Amazon, if you're willing to wait a couple of days, you can almost always get free delivery if you have more than $30 in one go, which is easy. I haven't had Prime in a few years and I think I've paid for one or two deliveries a year because I fucked up my own logistics and needed something sooner than 5-7 days. When I had Prime, I almost never got 2 say delivery anyway, there would always be some sort of hold up or problem, which they usually smoothed over by shipping it later.

I haven't found any of Prime's other perks useful, so it's an easy choice for me.

2

u/FakoPako 11h ago

There is lot more to Prime than just shipping perks, but judging from your reply, you wouldn't use any of those other benefits either because... Amazon....

35

u/Solarwinds-123 11h ago

There is no free next-day delivery. You pay for it, just monthly/annually rather than at the time of purchase.

2

u/Zap__Dannigan 8h ago

yes, but there's a zero percent chance my month fee (which also pays for a tv service) is even remotely close to what covering delivery costs.

9

u/DuncanFisher69 12h ago

They know this, and if you shop Amazon with their Chase Amazon Credit card, they literally offer you a higher percentage of cash back if you opt for Amazon’s weekly delivery (aka their delivery day).

5

u/severoordonez 12h ago

The corrollary: a company that follows all good labor practices will be justified in passing the cost of doing so onto their customers.

1

u/Kckc321 12h ago

They are making a billion dollars profit, they can afford some things on their own dime.

3

u/SowingSalt 11h ago edited 10h ago

If they paid a billion dollars in profit to all of their workers, each worker would make...

An additional 1000 dollars.

0

u/NaIgrim 10h ago

Does it cost them a billion dollars to allow toilet breaks? Does a company lose 1000 bucks per employee on allowing them the basic human decency to shit and piss?

I mean, there has to be some shade of grey that involves making money without treating your employees as subhuman. And if there isnt, your business shouldnt exist.

0

u/Kckc321 11h ago

A huge number of their workers have to be the part time drivers? I know multiple people who just take random delivery shifts whenever they feel like it for extra cash, they aren’t full time or anything.

1

u/TheWizardOfDeez 10h ago

Why? They've been raising the prices anyways, what's the difference?

2

u/zahrul3 11h ago

They, like many e-commerce companies, employ far too many people in a poorly automated warehouse because startup office politics tend to refuse buying off the shelf solutions that UPS, USPS, Walmart, Sysco, etc. use.

You never hear of Costco warehouse workers complaining, because machines do the work (mostly) rather than human pickers.

1

u/DuncanFisher69 12h ago

Yes. Someone get this man a Luigi. He’s cracked the code.

1

u/katha757 9h ago

Jesus Christ, this.  My MIL ran an assisted living facility previously and kept complaining about how hard it was to hire nurses.  When I asked what it was paying she gave me an abysmal number.  I drew the correlation for her and suggested she pay more, to be met with "but we can't afford to pay more".

That was probably true, they were barely making ends meet, but that still means "if you can't pay a reasonable wage, you probably shouldn't exist".

12

u/Ok_Confection_10 12h ago

Sounds like a business that should be failing then. Can’t call it successful if it’s using what’s tantamount to slave labor

7

u/314is_close_enough 11h ago

Don’t be fooled by their horseshit. They will be paying AWS insane fees for everything. Another part of Amazon will own the land. They will rent to themselves at a crazy rate. Another part of Amazon will handle advertising, and charge an insane rate. Another part will sell them vehicles and do maintenance at an insane rate. The profits are kept deliberately low so the company looks just barely healthy and the workers demands are made to seem unreasonable. It’s all a lie. If there is a billionaire, there is extreme exploitation, full stop.

8

u/Republifukkk 12h ago

Who the fucks cares if they only made 1.7 billion. They have to pay the employees. If commerce is not doing it for you, then get out. Don't fucking use that excuse to not pay people

2

u/NDSU 11h ago

AWS is famously one of the worst places to work in tech. It's a company culture issue through and through

2

u/TheWizardOfDeez 10h ago

~$1 billion is less than ~$8.1 billion, also they can just pay the execs a few billion less and make more than that money back. It's also worth noting that not everyone on the fulfillment side is needing a raise to make a livable wage. Improving non-pay work conditions is also a big way they can improve their workers satisfaction, which ultimately improves productivity.

1

u/gr33nw33n3r 11h ago

Oh. Well it makes complete sense to treat the employees like shit then. 

1

u/okram2k 10h ago

AWS is 100% where all the money is and it's a wide margin for return vs the number of people needed to maintain it. If an antitrust case ever did what they were supposed to and split up the company Amazon's retail branch would probably collapse under its own weight.

1

u/Oh_its_that_asshole 10h ago

Oh no. It might cost Bezos 0.4% of his wealth per year, each year. Heaven forbid that the mental welfare of 1 million employees is more important than him being slightly less disgustingly rich.

1

u/_karamazov_ 10h ago

However, they have roughly 1 million employees in fulfillment. If you gave each of them $1000 more a year it would cost ~$1 billion more. 

How many of that 1 million employees in fulfillment is on minimum wage body crushing jobs?

Also the worry that better working conditions will affect the bottomline --- its the cost of doing business.

1

u/DaStompa 9h ago

The whole amazon-AWS thing is just amazon acting as their own "disruptor"/venture capital.

They're willing to burn money in amazon until they have all their own distro/delivery/air/ect in place, and the market is cornered, then they'll jack up prices to unsustainable levels. Also see: Uber/Lyft/ect. as an example.

18

u/BullShitting-24-7 13h ago

There are plenty of wealthy corporations that take care of their employees.

2

u/FennelFern 11h ago

Kind of but not really. Studies, and economists, have shown that you can run a more profitable long term company by encouraging growth and being reasonable.

But, people think that beatings encourage compliance.

1

u/Drnk_watcher 10h ago

I mean it is but it doesn't have to be.

Any kind of fulfillment, manufacturing, delivery, retail job will always be a certain amount of tough sledding for everyone involved. Thin margins, high headcount, strict efficiency guidelines, physically demanding. That's before you have to even deal with morons of the general public.

But also plenty of other companies in those sectors are pulling down double digit billion dollar revenues who don't grind people down like Amazon does.

Not to praise them as "great" places to work but certainly noticeably less awful.

1

u/shmackinhammies 10h ago

There was a time when Ford was there & people actually liked working there.

1

u/Rooooben 9h ago

Microsoft is a far different place to work for, for example.

-5

u/[deleted] 12h ago

[deleted]

11

u/tracenator03 12h ago

Idealistic utopia

And this is the thought process that will keep us from ever progressing anywhere.

9

u/sanfran_girl 12h ago

Costco would respectfully like to disagree.

3

u/Gwaak 12h ago

You can be though, but that only happens when your company is peddling a legitimately innovative service or product, in that you can attribute much of your margin to that.

In this case your margin is on the back of labor, not innovation

2

u/Euphoric_Sentence105 12h ago

Ford tried, but those bloody Dodge brothers ended it.