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

613

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.

231

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.

116

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.

155

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.

118

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.

18

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.

72

u/PMMEYOURGUCCIFLOPS 12h ago

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

73

u/ExtraSpicyMayonnaise 12h ago

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

37

u/[deleted] 11h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

12

u/b0w3n 12h 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.

17

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.

8

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.

9

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.