I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/17/amazon-warehouse-bernie-sanders

by kanelbullar • 8 years ago

242 198 8 years ago

nemo44x• 8 years ago

The people who work in these warehouses should unionize. They have a strong case and their roles can not be outsourced. These things have to be local for it to work - it needs people for it to work. Automation may come eventually but it's not as close as people think.

This is the perfect environment for a union to operate in.

baxtr• 8 years ago

They are in some countries as far as I know. For example here in Germany there were strikes by amazon warehouse workers.

It would be interesting to see a comparison of working conditions between the different countries.

free652• 8 years ago

Amazon can afford to close warehouses where workers are trying to unionize. Walmart does the same:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/union-walmart-shut-5-stores-ove...

FullMetalBitch• 8 years ago

How are the conditions through Europe? I know they went on strike or were about to in Spain, any news from other countries?

beat• 8 years ago

Yes, it's definitely ripe for some old-fashioned unionizing. As for automation, though... large parts are already automated, and they're constantly automating anything that can be automated. Humans are really the "last mile" here.

Spooky23• 8 years ago

Right to work, baby. It makes divide and conquer pretty easy.

Between that and the use of contractors, unionization is very difficult to achieve.

2-m3m3n70• 8 years ago

Apparently Walmart forces workers to watch anti-union videos and will entirely shut down a store at the first hint of union activity (and then later re-open it few months later with new staff). Amazon likely does the same with the anti-union propaganda and can also afford to shut down factories or fire the entire staff.

honkycat• 8 years ago

The federal government and these huge corps REALLY do not want unions to form, and they will do anything in their power to prevent it from happening.

It seems simple: Do the smart thing, form a union! But the reality is that the people working in these warehouses and these types of jobs are so terrorized economically, medically, and in just about any way you can imagine, that it's unrealistic for them to stick their neck out to try and improve things.

chrisseaton2• 8 years ago

After unionising, why would Amazon listen to any of the union's demands? Would the union call a strike? Presumably there will be other employees waiting to take their place as these jobs do not require a lot of training and workers can be replaced quickly.

I would guess that Amazon would simply not even speak to any union representatives - there's no advantage to them in doing so.

war10253• 8 years ago

The whole point of a union is to protect the rights of people who are doing things that don't take a lot of skill.

Gatsky• 8 years ago

There are many problems with unions. But, every time there is no union, the company screws workers. Screws them to within an inch of common decency. This just seems to be a basic law of human interaction - those that can be exploited will be exploited. With the right legislative environment, unions can be very effective, especially for logistics industries where down time is very costly for the company.

Not sure there is an amicable solution to this. Company v union battles obviously harm productivity, but not sure how else to avoid the not-so-slow march towards inhuman exploitation of workers.

camtarn2• 8 years ago

Agreed.

But if you watch the discussions on the Amazon internal Facebook groups, you constantly see somebody in the US bring up the case for unionizing, and immediately get shot down with anti-union tirades, talking about corruption and protectionism. There's a lot of anti-union bias in the US.

Rotdhizon• 8 years ago

A company as big as Amazon doesn't make as much as it does by treating workers fairly. They are the modern day version of old industrial factories. They take down and out people who they know they can exploit and push them to their limits. I've seen a few places in the poorer section of states where most of the locals are forced to work in a small number of factories/plants. Even in these cases though, they are at least treated like humans. The atmosphere at some of these Amazon warehouses serves to dehumanize the workers. You are not a person, you are an object that is expected to obey very strict rules like a dog. The management at these warehouses is even worse, because it's often very abusive people who wind up in those positions.

grecy2• 8 years ago

So the question we have to ask is do we want to live in a society where this treatment is legal?

Obviously Amazon make a lot of profit... if we forced them to treat their workers better surely they'd still make a lot of profit... just slightly less.

LitFan5• 8 years ago

As a society we've decided that we do, because we are. The shoddy treatment of Amazon's employees has been publicized repeatedly for years.

The issue is that while the average person is lead to believe the notion that they can work hard and make enough to have a comfortable living, they can only afford it at the expense of others. The wealthy will not let that be at their expense - they want it to be at the expense of other poor people.

Pitting middle class people against lower class people is a proven tactic, and that's what's happening here.

Most products and services provided by companies are subsidized by providing poor working conditions or wages for their employees, in an attempt to maximize profits.

If all of those subsidies were to vanish, the standard of living for most lower to middle class people would drop substantially - while the upper class would be unaffected.

prolikewh0a3• 8 years ago

So the question we have to ask is do we want to live in a society where this treatment is legal?

Because we live in this fantasy land of the [dead] 'American Dream', where if you work hard, absolutely bust your ass and kill yourself for 70 years, you'll get to be Jeff Bezos too. If you're complaining about your job, just get a new one, or pull your boot straps up and accept it, it's that easy. We're constantly told to suck it up and accept it. We're constantly told that these businesses are job creators and should be praised for it and when we criticize them, it's not their fault, it's the workers. We don't criticize because we can lose our job and it's extremely easy to get into homelessness now, or default on the enormous amounts of credit everyone has. The propaganda and indoctrination start from birth and is built into society. The atmosphere changed from workers having control, to businesses having full control. Businesses can't exist without workers, so workers should have control. Anyone who says workers shouldn't have control is a shareholder or business owner.

To change things will take a lot of work, and possibly a major fast economic decline. People have ignored the economic decline of the working class since the late 60's, early 70's. Mainstream media and newspapers work to suppress any workers movements and tell you how great everything is (Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent goes over how this works).

sorenjan• 8 years ago

It comes down to what kind of freedom you want. Freedom for companies and their owners to treat employees however they want, or freedom for all citizens to make a living without being mistreated. It's the same thing with health care, freedom to not pay for others than yourself, or freedom to not have to worry about sudden large expenses and personal bankruptcy in case of sickness or injury.

TimPC• 8 years ago

I think the problem is Amazon makes a lot of Revenue at very small margins so they have built a culture around squeezing out every last drop of margin they can. Historically they've had a lot of negative profit years and some very tiny % profit on very high revenue. Not every large company is like this.

war10253• 8 years ago

I think the problem is working-class people are sufficiently our of sight, out of mind for the comfortable upper-middle-class people with enough sway to actually change things.

When you reduce people to numbers and abstract ideas, you can treat them pretty poorly and still sleep at night.

amyjess2• 8 years ago

Amazon's treatment of sick people is horrifying: https://sites.google.com/site/thefaceofamazon/home/harassing...

I have an online friend who used to work for an Amazon fulfillment center. I say "used to", because she got fired. For being sick. She got food poisoning one day and had to take a week off. When she got sick, she put in a request via MyLeave. Two or three months later, Amazon retroactively denied her request and fired her because she went negative on UPT. That's right, months. As far as she knew, everything was going well, and all of a sudden she was called into HR and unceremoniously dumped because Amazon decided months after the fact to deny her sick leave.

majewsky2• 8 years ago

To me (as a European), the concept of "denying sick leave" is just bizarre to begin with. When I present a sick note from my doctor, there is literally nothing that the employer can do about it.

Ricardus2• 8 years ago

I live a few miles from a Walmart distribution warehouse, and had a good friend who worked there. It really started to affect his health. The working conditions are horrible, and the culture promoted is toxic and demeaning. The money was a little above average for the area, but that's about the only thing positive he could say about it. When he left, his migraines went away.

badpun2• 8 years ago

Tough physical labor is not for everyone. For example, I would not last 6 months in a construction job (I easily get colds when I work outside). As long as the majority of people working in that warehouse are ok, then maybe your friend was just not suited for the job.

la64702• 8 years ago

TFA is written by a guy who took the job to collect anecdotes to write a book to show how miserable life is for low wage earners and now it is time to market the book. Sorry but I am skeptic about this article and think it is an exaggeration. At the same time if it is true why are folks not simply resigning and going to a better job? It is a free country isn’t it? Why is minimum wage still so low and why are all political parties not coming together to raise it?

wetpaws2• 8 years ago

Just because you don't like it it does not mean this is not true.

zaroth2• 8 years ago

That’s just a jab with zero informational content.

It is reasonable to be skeptical if TFA is an advert for the author’s book on low-wage jobs. Since the whole article reduces to an anecdote, doubly so.

I really want trustworthy primary source reporting on conditions in the warehouses, but it’s really hard to find a neutral source who doesn’t either have a job they want to keep or an axe to grind.

I strongly suspect the working conditions are much harsher than they should be, but I also strongly suspect this is becoming a meme and people are dog-piling or even virtue signaling to some extent.

newshorts3• 8 years ago

Easy to reduce things to at will employment or “free country!”

Harder to find solutions when you look at the complexity of a person’s life situation (I.e. medical bills, debt obligations, children, etc).

devit3• 8 years ago

The problem is caused by society/government, due to the lack of universal basic income, or alternatively a ban on having children if the parents can't provide an equivalent payment.

If everyone had access to the basic necessities of life without having to work, then nobody would accept jobs like those, and Amazon would be forced to either automate everything or substantially improve working conditions (much less hours, higher pay, ways to make the work more fun).

Even if you were to force Amazon and the like to "treat workers better", what about those who can't find work?

EpicEng3• 8 years ago

or alternatively a ban on having children if the parents can't provide an equivalent payment.

Yours is the stuff dystopian literature is made of. You want to severely limit freedom for the greater good, a tactic which never works.

devit3• 8 years ago

I don't think people should be entitled to the freedom of having children no matter what, since having children forces significant externalities on society, especially if there's an agreement that everyone should have a good standard of living (as implied by this article) or even just that there's a right to healthcare; and even without those, since the children may become criminals and harm others.

The root causes of poverty and violent crime are people who have children but are not able or willing to properly educate them and support them financially, so the simplest fix is to prevent that from happening (by forcing them to have an abortion).

That said, an alternate solution is for the state to step in if parents can't or unconditionally, although some sort of population control might be required anyway.

fatalVoltage2• 8 years ago

How is this dystopian though? If you can't provide for your children why have them in the first place?

dreamache2• 8 years ago

UBI is an absolutely terrible idea by the way. The problems you speak of would only get worse.

devit3• 8 years ago

Assuming UBI is feasible and denominated in goods (i.e. you get an house, food, clothes, etc. rather than X dollars that may inflate), then I assume most or all people would not choose to work in an Amazon warehouse at the conditions described.

s73v3r_11• 8 years ago

No. While I'm completely in favor of UBI and stuff like that (although entirely against your call for deciding who can have children), shifting blame to society completely ignores that Amazon is the one who bears all the responsibility for what they pay workers, and how they treat them. This problem is entirely Amazon's to own.

andrewla3• 8 years ago

There are two main points of information here that make Amazon the target.

One is its abuse of workers: limiting breaks, to the point of penalizing bathroom breaks, and setting unreasonably high performance demands. The latter, I think, being attributed as the source of the former. Setting a wage floor here does not seem to be intuitively helpful, as Amazon will still fire employees who fail to meet their performance metrics and hire new at the same wage. If they have no problem doing this at the current wage level, at a higher wage level it will be even easier to find new people willing to meet their strenuous performance demands. Here it seems like unionizing or passing worker protection laws would be necessary to improve working conditions.

The other is the issue of Amazon employees receiving food stamps (now called SNAP, apparently). This one seems particularly odd to me, because I'm not sure how to interpret it.

Is it that Amazon is more willing to employ marginally-skilled workers, or is there a bias in which individuals actually receive SNAP as a subset of those who would be eligible to receive the benefits? Closest thing to a primary source for the data about food stamps appears to be this [1], with this [2] chart representing the breakdown in five of the six states that they were able to get information for.

Quotes like "Amazon was the 28th largest employer in Arizona last year, but it ranked fifth for the number of employees enrolled in SNAP" are also ambiguous, because this could be seen as Amazon willing to give jobs to the lowest strata, with the other 27 employers not willing to even give them a job. Or even that well-intentioned policies of the other top employers to ensure that their workers are well-paid means that they hire fewer workers for the same total spend.

[1] https://newfoodeconomy.org/amazon-snap-employees-five-states...

[2] https://newfoodeconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SNAP-e...

dragonwriter7• 8 years ago

The other is the issue of Amazon employees receiving food stamps (now called SNAP, apparently). This one seems particularly odd to me, because I'm not sure how to interpret it.

You should interpret it as sign that even among much of what passes for the left in America, corporate feudalism is deeply entrenched in consciousness. Instead of meeting basic needs being seen as a responsibility of public authority, to be addressed out of tax revenue, it is seen as the duty of the feudal lord (employer) to whom peasants (employees) are bound.

andrewla3• 8 years ago

corporate feudalism is deeply entrenched in consciousness

Is there anything about Amazon being a corporation that really touches on this, as opposed to their simply being an employer? I feel like an analogy like this is of limited utility anyway. It's too easy to point out all the myriad ways that the existing system is different from feudalism, and it's unclear whether the negative aspects of feudalism continue to apply after having undergone such a radical transition.

Instead of meeting basic needs being seen as a responsibility of public authority, to be addressed out of tax revenue, it is seen as the duty of the employer to whom employees are bound.

I mean, isn't the point of feudalism actually the former -- that the public authority (the feudal lords) address the basic needs? It is much easier to switch to a different employer than it is to switch to a different public authority. So it seems like what you are advocating is a return to feudalism, rather than trying to remove it.

badpun2• 8 years ago

Define “basic needs”. People can survive (have shelter and not die from starvation or malnutrition) on way less than the minimum wage. So, it’s already about more than the basic needs.

s73v3r_11• 8 years ago

No, not at all. It's that, if you are employing someone full time, those people should not need public assistance. If they do, then taxpayers are subsidizing your labor costs. And for a company as big and as rich as Amazon or Wal-Mart, that's completely unacceptable.

dlgeek• 8 years ago

One thing to consider - it could mean Amazon uses more part-time/seasonal workers than those other companies, since I believe SNAP benefits are based on annual income, rather than hourly pay.

jklinger410• 8 years ago

I always feel like a stick in the mud with these convos but you are hitting on exactly the points that I first think of.

1 - Let's target warehouses across the country for this, and raise the average cost of American production. You're right, Bernie. When we take down Amazon warehouses, as the big bogeyman, a litany of other businesses will also get dinged for this. Walmart, Target, FedEx, UPS, so-on. Shitty warehouse conditions and employee abuse is only a shock to you, and you only see Amazon as a big target for this, if you have never worked at or known someone who has worked at any low-wage factory work.

2 - Your point about food stamps is dead on. I have asked everyone I know how they feel about Amazon paying someone more just because they have 5 kids. Regardless of what work they perform or, their experience, usefulness, or quality that they do their job with. Accepting food stamps has very little do with your employer, and more to do with your job and financial obligations.

I can't see Bernie's perspective any more. The pie in the sky legislation that he proposes make me believe that he actually doesn't intend to win the presidency. He's just here to make loud noises.

archi42• 8 years ago

That kind of misbehavior is why I usually try to stay away from Amazon. It might not be a huge dent in their bottom line, but maybe one day it becomes big enough for a change of policy.

LitFan5• 8 years ago

Why is this downvoted? The only way to make this change is for people to boycott the service.

swarnie_3• 8 years ago

I'm not even sure why people work there. The warehouses are universally known to be shitty places but people sign up anyway.

Surely if its terrible and no one will work there they will have to improve or pay more? Or am i misunderstanding basic economics?

paulus_magnus2• 8 years ago

FAPP, a company is a bunch of people (mostly a bunch of managers who make the decissions) so at some point some manager decided to squeeze his workers beyond reason - this would be bottom up opression. Or perhaps a higher manager wrote the inhumane procedure and a lower level manager implemented it - top down opression.

camtarn2• 8 years ago

From all the stories I've heard, it seems to be a combination of the two: most of the really inhumane stuff comes from local managers rather than global policy. However, those managers are just acting to meet unrealistic targets of their own, and when they're reported, nobody above them in the hierarchy seems to care.

ElBarto4• 8 years ago

"Sanders has introduced a bill designed to force companies such as Amazon to pay their workers higher wages."

Instead of picking on Amazon perhaps politicians should look at the actual root cause here.

If there are minimum wages laws (and there are) and people paid minimum wage still need food stamps then perhaps the problem lies with minimum wages and those who set them... Politicians.

QuotedForTruth• 8 years ago

"If there are minimum wages laws (and there are) and people paid minimum wage still need food stamps then perhaps the problem lies with minimum wages and those who set them... Politicians."

If by "politicians" here you mean the one politician the article is discussing, Sen Sanders, you should know that he is for increasing the minimum wage. [1] Of course he needs other politicians and/or their voters to agree.

This corporate welfare angle he is currently attacking is just an attempt to point out the problem with a different argument. An argument that some people may be more receptive to. We've already agreed that we as a society will pay to support poor people. Corporations take advantage of this to lower their payroll costs. Whether they foot the bill for the government costs via corporate taxes or just pay a living wage in the first place is worth arguing about once we fisrst decide to stop letting them take advantage of people.

[1] https://berniesanders.com/issues/a-living-wage/

dennisgorelik• 8 years ago

Corporations take advantage of this to lower their payroll costs.

... which is a very good thing for low-wage workers. Because if corporations would not benefit from these "no benefits" savings, then these corporations will be more likely to fire these low-wage workers.

xamuel2• 8 years ago

Unpopular alternative interpretation: the market is distorted by food stamps.

Imagine if the government announced it will pay for lightbulbs for workers whose workplaces don't provide lightbulbs. Inevitably, certain workplaces would stop providing lightbulbs. Would you really blame them?

This will sound unintuitive, but what if one of the requirements for welfare was that the recipient NOT work? Suddenly, companies would be forced to make jobs more desirable than welfare. In this age of automation, where it's less and less true that everyone ought to work, maybe this would be a better way to do welfare.

adjkant• 8 years ago

Suddenly, companies would be forced to make jobs more desirable than food stamps.

Revised:

Suddenly, companies would be forced to make jobs more desirable than food stamps without housing.

In order for the not working stipulation to work, the social safety net would actually have to be expanded to cover housing as well, since I would much rather have a job where I can have housing and ramen every single meal than slightly better food but homeless.

ElBarto4• 8 years ago

I don't really know how food stamps work as I'm not in the US.

But, having lived in a few different countries, I can tell you that if a loaf of bread costs 50c then left on its own the market will tend to pay only slightly more per day for unskilled work. People can live in a cardboard box but they have to eat.

JoshuaDavid• 8 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap

The welfare trap (or unemployment trap or poverty trap in British English) theory asserts that taxation and welfare systems can jointly contribute to keep people on social insurance because the withdrawal of means-tested benefits that comes with entering low-paid work causes there to be no significant increase in total income. An individual sees that the opportunity cost of returning to work is too great for too little a financial return, and this can create a perverse incentive to not work.

LitFan5• 8 years ago

Companies will not pay a wage that supports a reasonable standard of living for unskilled work. It would be less expensive to automate those jobs away than to pay those people 17 dollars per hour (based on half of the median household income in canada for 2015 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/170913/dq170...).

I have a different perspective on this:

Countries want people to have children - it's good for the country. However, people expect companies to support people's lifestyles (in exchange for work). With local companies, it makes sense for the company to want to support the people working there - they at least have a stake. Large companies are often global entities. As a result, they may have no stake in the people in certain countries - or even any countries.

Shouldn't be the country's people (through paid taxes) and government (through support programs) support the lifestyles of the people?

dv_dt2• 8 years ago

Isn't this law just another way to specify a minimum wage?

ElBarto4• 8 years ago

It's a very hypocritical way to blame companies for paying minimum wage, which is set by law...

lostapathy2• 8 years ago

But raising minimum wage at what cost?

It's already gotten really hard for high school kids to find work. Raising minimum wage will just make that worse.

s73v3r_11• 8 years ago

I'm far less concerned about high school kids than I am about people needing these jobs to survive.

mrnobody_67• 8 years ago

Raising minimum wages could just raise the ROI of investing in fully automated warehouses... law of unintended consequences.

JD already has these in China - see Youtube

llamataboot• 8 years ago

You get the society that your systems incentivize. There may very well be a perfect version of capitalism and a free market that allows for free movement of employees between firms and a virtuous circle. Instead, we see a vicious spiral of incentivizing externalities (including treating workers like a never-ending powerless resource you can run into the ground and break and then find new ones) and a person with more money than most of his laborers put together.

Until we can talk frankly about how capitalism actually works instead of having arguments about how it "should" work, until we can admit what it does really well (allowing a dynamism and technology growth that raises the global standard of living) while also talking about what it does poorly, especially when combined with our current models of corporations and governance, I don't think we'll solve this.

(Basic income could be and end run around many of these things if people could opt-out of the labor force and still be able to live)

SketchySeaBeast• 8 years ago

What's funny is that the system encourages this society and those who are able to take full advantage of it become so rich they are able to completely opt out. The goal of capitalism, of supply and demand, labour and capital, is to have so much that all goods and services are within your grasp for no effort or time.

newshorts3• 8 years ago

Ordoliberalism seems to work pretty well

sokoloff4• 8 years ago

IMO, it is never proper for the legislature to target an individual or individual company. It's perfectly fine for enforcement agencies (OSHA, FDA, IRS, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc) to enforce policy/law on individuals/companies who have been found in violation, but to originally target individuals with the force of government lawmaking is a dramatic overreach of power, IMO.

If Senator Sanders et al want to target all companies who pay below a certain wage or offer/don't offer a certain benefit or whatever broad category of social/economic ill that the legislature wants to end, have at it. Just so long as you don't torture a combination of such factors that, low and behold, it happens to only apply to the individual / company that you have it in for.

When you come up with a bill with an acronym "STOP BEZOS", I am pretty certain you've left the path of light and reason.

la64702• 8 years ago

While all political parties are sheding alligator tears over this why are they not coming together to Raise the minimum wage?

geezerjay5• 8 years ago

Minimum wage is simply a constraint that prohibits the creation of some jobs that are available to the most vulnerable members of society in economically depressed regions.

Therefore, making lower-paying jobs illegal just because their salary falls below an arbitrary threshold only stops or hinders those jobs from being created, at the expense of higher unemployment rates.

I'm sure people working on shitty minimum wage jobs would not stay in the same minimum wage job if there were better higher-paying alternatives available to them. If they have no better alternatives than those jobs I don't understand how eliminating them by arbitrarily raising the minimum legal salary limit would leave them better off.

mc32• 8 years ago

I think Gov Cuomo is right. That whilr progressives had an explosion of light and a fervent base, they don’t represent the majority of the Dem party and will not own the party if they stray into Chavista territory too far.

Many of their candidates lost to moderate dems because most dems are not so different from moderate repubs on most issues, save a few. In any case, they are not willing to go too far from orthodoxy.

Now, in general i agree these cos. should pay their contract and temps better, but I’d rather he use other tactics.

souterrain• 8 years ago

I wonder if the direct nod to Bezos is an attempt to gain favor with a wing of the President's base who already have a target on the Amazon CEO, a long shot to combine forces from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.

sandworm101• 8 years ago

That is the theory. The reality is that at these scales a great many laws target only a single company. To target the leader in a given industry all a legislature need do is put a lower cap on enforcement: only companies beyond X number of employees need comply. At the other end, local governments certainly provide special legal treatment to individual companies (zoning/tax incentives etc). So while I agree it isn't a good idea, I'm not naive enough to say that every law targeting a specific company is delusional.

newshorts3• 8 years ago

Is it the job or someone with power to help, to try and help, when it’s clear the normal regulating authorities will do nothing?

I’m sure Trump isn’t keen on any government agency regulating amazon.

Besides, it’s just a political stunt. This bill will never be passed, it’s just calling attention to the problem.

frgtpsswrdlame• 8 years ago

Just so long as you don't torture a combination of such factors that, low and behold, it happens to only apply to the individual / company that you have it in for.
When you come up with a bill with an acronym "STOP BEZOS", I am pretty certain you've left the path of light and reason.

Except that the content of the bill is quite broad and definitely doesn't "torture a combination of such factors" to target Amazon. It will impact Amazon but it will also impact all of Amazon's competitors too, and companies completely outside of the sector. The dubiousness of your 'path of light and reason' aside, it seems quite irrational to decry a bill for its name and not its content.

amyjess2• 8 years ago

I agree with you, but the name of the bill could provide Amazon with a legal case to try and get the law struck down as a bill of attainder. The bill has good intentions, but Sanders shot himself in the foot with the execution.

Of course, that's purely hypothetical. There's no way this bill is going to pass, not with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress.

rando444• 8 years ago

Your point is valid, but other than the acronym used to get people talking about the bill, Amazon is not targeted directly.

Wal-mart would actually be impacted much more than Amazon as they employ 5x the workforce, and has arguably been the larger target of such legislation considering the majority of their workforce relies on government subsides to make ends meet.

3945495• 8 years ago

If Senator Sanders et al want to target all companies who pay below a certain wage or offer/don't offer a certain benefit or whatever broad category of social/economic ill that the legislature wants to end, have at it. Just so long as you don't torture a combination of such factors that, low and behold, it happens to only apply to the individual / company that you have it in for.

Sorry, but what you're advocating for a is a barrier towards fixing these problems.

If the legislature only talks in terms of abstract situations, all of it will feel theoretical and will be far less likely to spur real action. On the other hand, if you have concrete examples of problems, that makes the problems feel real. Real problems motivate real action.

Rest assured, whatever bill Sanders writes will target the broad problem at all companies, because he's forbidden from writing a law that would only target Amazon explicitly.

LarryDarrell• 8 years ago

It's not for no reason HQ2 will be in the Washington DC area.

briffle• 8 years ago

In Wisconsin, when the legislature wanted to target Milwaukee for things, without actually naming them, they would say things like "This law applies to metro areas/counties with > xxx,000 people". Things like "the state takes over some of the mental health operations because they bungled it so bad", etc.

In the next Census, Madison, WI (and/or Dane County) is expected to hit some of those same limits. All sorts of things that were never intended will start applying.

ameister14• 8 years ago

it is never proper for the legislature to target an individual or individual company. It's perfectly fine for enforcement agencies (OSHA, FDA, IRS, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc) to enforce policy/law on individuals/companies who have been found in violation, but to originally target individuals with the force of government lawmaking is a dramatic overreach of power, IMO.

I don't agree. It's been done before, many times, and to the benefit of the people. Look at what was done with JP Morgan, Standard Oil, Rockefeller as an individual person, multiple Railroad companies and trusts to start.

jdpedrie• 8 years ago

"To the benefit of the people" and "does violence to the rule of law" are not mutually exclusive, at least in the short term.

gowld• 8 years ago

What wsa done to these entities, with individually-targeted laws?

Antitrust law applies to the entire economy (except Major League Baseball and a few other bad cases).

zaroth2• 8 years ago

The bill is not targeted at Amazon and, for example, Walmart could be hit even harder.

Even good bills need public support and public support needs good marketing. Don’t confuse what’s on the label with what’s inside the tin.

will_brown4• 8 years ago

it is never proper for the legislature to target an individual or individual company.

In general what you are talking about is a Bill of Attainder and it is unconstitutional.

Notwithstanding the - not so clever - name of the Bill, it doesn’t exactly sound like anyone is being targeting so much as a legal framework is being proposed for recipients of corporate welfare to have to reimburse the government, based on corporate financials. Sure if it ONLY applies to Amazon there is a problem, but that isn’t likely.

Seems to me when you have employers like Walmart who rely on taxpayers to subsidize their employees benefits and simultaneously are the beneficiary of 20% (or $14B) in taxpayer funded food stamps annually there is a problem. Basically you have a single low paying employer who has dug a $14B taxpayer moat around any potential competition which would potentially drive up wages.

Shouldn’t lawmakers be able to look at employers as a whole and say...wow certain companies are really taking advantage and benefiting from corporate welfare and we need to take action to close the unwanted and unforeseen loopholes? I don’t think anyone is looking at Bezos and the Waltons and saying how do we target these rich people, they are saying these welfare programs are not fulfilling their intended purpose and the program needs to be re-evaluated.

sokoloff4• 8 years ago

That $14B in SNAP benefits is because Walmart is a significant market share grocer and people who receive SNAP benefits buy food at Walmart with those benefits.

I'm not sure how that makes Walmart a villain in the current discussion. Target takes in about $5B revenue from sales under SNAP, Aldi about $4.5B, and Kroger just under $4B. Companies who serve SNAP recipients should be lauded not vilified, IMO. They're serving a generally underserved constituency.

notacoward2• 8 years ago

In general what you are talking about is a Bill of Attainder and it is unconstitutional.

That's highly debatable. Does "attainder" as used in the constitution apply to corporations? To a large extent that depends on whether corporations are persons in the context of that prohibition, but there are other concerns as well. You're assuming that the answer to all such questions can be answered in favor of corporations, but that's hardly settled.

faster• 8 years ago

The idea of employees receiving food stamps seems like a clear case of manipulating the system. But I think there is more nuance than the 20%/$14B numbers describe.

Imagine a single mom who wants to be home when her kids get home from school. She's working part time, and not making enough to feed her family. Who is responsible for her shortfall?

In a community where Walmart is a big employer, many people may work part time and one consequence of that is that more people have jobs. Walmart benefits from that but so do those employees, even when they don't make enough to eat well.

Sure, the system can obviously be manipulated. Yes, people (and company leaders) make bad choices. Who decides who pays?

notacoward2• 8 years ago

As others have pointed out, the text of the bill does not target Amazon and will likely affect others more. You're complaining about a name.

On the broader point, I think it's highly debatable whether bills should target individual companies. Certainly the arguments against bills of attainder do not apply, because corporations are not people and any doctrine to the contrary is loathsome. They are already given every right that people have, in addition to being immortal and shielded from full liability. The bargain under which they are even allowed to exist has become very one-sided since the abandonment of specific time-limited charters, so allowing them to be regulated individually seems like the least we could do to even the scales.

downrightmike• 8 years ago

Trust busting was all the rage back with Teddy Roosevelt and Taft against standard oil

toss1• 8 years ago

Generally good in concept that companies should pay enough that a full time job puts people above the poverty line and above eligibility for govt benefits -- anything less means that the companies themselves are effectively freeloading on govt welfare (externalizing their costs to the govt, which makes it tolerable to work at these companies)

Much easier solution is to simply increase minimum wage as required, and probably set it at the locale level (more in the urban/high-cost areas and less in the rural/low-cost areas).

Such specific targeting simply invites companies to game the system.

didibus• 8 years ago

Ya, I'm not sure why we're nit just talking about raising the minimum wage. I suspect they're worried it would hurt small mom and pop shops who also rely on paying their employees below the poverty line.

dragonwriter7• 8 years ago

If Senator Sanders et al want to target all companies who pay below a certain wage or offer/don't offer a certain benefit or whatever broad category of social/economic ill that the legislature wants to end, have at it.

That's exactly what the STOP BEZOS bill does, Amazon isn't uniquely effected by it.

ousta• 8 years ago

I guess people just realized that blue collar jobs were horrible? Guess what it is same for many other of those jobs , construction, healthcare, army,...

LyndsySimon5• 8 years ago

It's significantly more difficult in some cases.

I grew up (and have moved back to) a very poor area. I've always been a nerd, but had some mental health issues after high school that led to the loss of my college scholarship and I spent several years afterward working traditional blue collar jobs - stocking, loading and unloading trucks, farm labor, construction, electrical, etc.

It was a rough time in my life, but I can honestly say I'm thankful for it. It played a big part in making me who I am, and it's always somewhat shocking to see how much the perception of those around me now who have never experienced such things differs from the reality of most of the country.

I can only assume that my own conception of how things are elsewhere in the world is similarly incorrect. I look forward to getting to the point in my my family and financial life where I can spend some time traveling and seeing how others live first-hand.

0xmohit• 8 years ago

    Illness was punished as a misdemeanour by the company. I took
    a day off sick and was given a point for it – despite
    notifying Amazon several hours before the start of my shift
    that I was ill and offering to provide a note from the
    doctor. When I returned to work I asked an Amazon manager how
    they could justify such a policy, which effectively punished
    people for being ill. “It’s what Amazon have always done,” he
    replied blandly.

gagege3• 8 years ago

Why does everyone ignore the fact that employment at Amazon is voluntary? When the employee was hired, they made an agreement that the payment was a fair trade for the work to be done. If it turns out that the pay was not fair after all, which it sounds like it isn't, then the employee should simply stop working there, because Amazon isn't holding up their end of the bargain.

The reason this continues to be an issue is that the government is stepping in and saying "$7.25 per hour is what's fair, plus we'll provide food stamps, etc."

Amazon says, "this work isn't actually worth $7.25 to us, so we'll have to cut corners to keep growing since we're a publicly traded company."

So Amazon cuts out lunch breaks and whatever else to try to make the $7.25 back, and the employee is able to just barely scrape by with this crappy job because they're making $7.25 plus food stamps.

zippzom2• 8 years ago

The issue is not that the employee is being underpaid (although that is a problem), it's that the underpayment is only possible because the government (i.e. taxpayers) is also giving money to that employee. If that safety net weren't in place then Amazon wouldn't be able to employee these people at these rates since it wouldn't be enough for people to survive on. Essentially, the government is subsidizing Amazon.

Also I'm not sure that someone accepting a specific salary or hourly wage is evidence that they thought it was fair. Employers (especially ones as large as Amazon) can afford to wait far longer for employees than most employees can afford to wait for an employer. I certainly don't think getting paid $20k a year to be a programmer would be fair, but if there no other jobs available to me at that rate then I would be forced to accept it, since I wouldn't survive otherwise.

And if I made $7.25 an hour, I highly doubt I would be able to build up a financial cushion large enough to allow me to quit a job because it didn't pay enough. Even a couple weeks without working probably isn't feasible for somebody trying to support children on $7.25. Leaving a job because it's underpaid and taking the time to find a better one is feasible for professionals, but almost definitely not for many service workers.

gagege3• 8 years ago

I think your first paragraph is saying the same thing I said. Amazon-like companies can pay less because of the safety-nets.

I get what you're saying in the rest of your comment and I can confirm that it's easy to take less pay because of time constraints. Maybe "fair" isn't the right word exactly, but I will stand by it being voluntary.

archagon• 8 years ago

"Why does everyone ignore the fact that <selling your kidneys> is voluntary?"

Some business arrangements are exploitative by their incentives, even if they are "fair".

gagege3• 8 years ago

Working at Amazon != selling your body parts.

Some things are immoral and necessarily harmful, working for Amazon is not one of them.

LyndsySimon5• 8 years ago

I'll take that bait.

What exactly is immoral about selling one's kidneys? Do individuals not own themselves? Are they capable of using or disposing of their own property as they see fit?

If your argument is that people who are forced into such decisions by economic necessity are not capable of making rational decisions, then what criteria do you use to determine if someone is able to make such decisions for themselves? If they fail to meet that bar... who makes those decisions for them?

s73v3r_11• 8 years ago

"Why does everyone ignore the fact that employment at Amazon is voluntary?"

Because it absolutely does not matter.

"then the employee should simply stop working there, because Amazon isn't holding up their end of the bargain."

This makes a whole lot of assumptions about things, namely that the employee has the ability to go somewhere else, and that Amazon is entitled to treat their workers like shit.

"So Amazon cuts out lunch breaks and whatever else to try to make the $7.25 back, and the employee is able to just barely scrape by with this crappy job because they're making $7.25 plus food stamps."

And for a company of their size, with their resources, this is entirely unacceptable and pure evil.

mikestew• 8 years ago

If it turns out that the pay was not fair after all, which it sounds like it isn't, then the employee should simply stop working there, because Amazon isn't holding up their end of the bargain.

It's as if you've willingly chosen to ignore over 100 years of collective bargaining, and the reasons for it, just to poorly make a point. If it were as facile as you make it out to be, we would have never had unions.

geggam• 8 years ago

If you have a business in a country and cannot afford to pay your workers high enough wages that they can afford to live without society subsidizing them. Then you cannot afford to run your business and are stealing money from the society you are in.

This concept that people are welfare bums when they are working is incorrect. Their employers are the welfare bums.

If you want to use the infrastructure to run a business pay your people enough to live.

jnordwick2• 8 years ago

It isn't the businesses fault that people don't have high margin skills. There effort should be on improving workforce skill and productive. Not villianising those who employ them.

s73v3r_11• 8 years ago

It is entirely the business's fault that they are not paying their workers enough to live on.

erikpukinskis2• 8 years ago

You are assuming they don’t have the skills and that hiring is a perfect, fair process. This is not so.

There is clear evidence that even something as simple as being black might prevent someone being rejected over a less skilled white applicant.

jnordwick2• 8 years ago

Umm... None of his complaints are about pay, which is what Stop BEZOS act's largest piece.

The article is a massive non-sequitor.

unstatusthequo• 8 years ago

My guess is Amazon is working as fast as possible to automate the warehouses. Then people will complain they lost their jobs...

docker_up• 8 years ago

Full automation is likely impossible. Ask Elon Musk about his problems with trying to fully automate Tesla production.

y-c-o-m-b• 8 years ago

Full automation is not necessary. That's one of the easiest oversights I've ever seen in the business world.

I was part of a team once that desperately needed to do quality assurance testing as quickly as possible on a massive influx of software product. They were about to outsource quality assurance testing - and for a 6 figure amount - because we couldn't fully automate it in house. When I pointed out that we could automate 75% and split the remaining work among our staff of 5 people, they treated that idea like it was ground-breaking when in reality it's just common sense. We ended up not spending a dime on testing, accomplished the goals with the 75% automation, and completed it with only 2 of our people doing manual work.

michael_h2• 8 years ago

If the Amazon warehouses become fully automated and a big group of people lose their jobs and there's no safety net, the warehouses will be burned to the ground within 24 hours.

LyndsySimon5• 8 years ago

Well, that'll certainly solve the problem of housing and feeding those people.

_zachs• 8 years ago

"Stop Bezos Act"...are you kidding me? If you support a bill dedicated to targeting a single company...please get out of government.

dreamache2• 8 years ago

Do you want to pay more for Amazon products? Because that's what you'll get if Mr. Socialist Sanders has his way.

perfunctory• 8 years ago

How can anyone be so naive as to believe the bill would target a single company.

bensonn• 8 years ago

A few unrelated points-

1. This is an article to sell a book. "I took the job as part of the research for my book" This isn't unbiased factual research. The author is obviously going to cherry-pick the the craziest things he saw- with 1200 people over six months you are going to see crazy things. If the author didn't do this is would be bad marketing for a boring book.

2. The nice thing about low paying jobs is they are normally easy to replace. These workers didn't spend a ton of money going to school to specialize in Amazon warehouse work. If Amazon is that horrible work at McDonalds, Walmart, etc.

3. The nice thing about low paying jobs should be low bills. If you only make $1600 per month your bills should only be ~$1400 per month. Big houses, lots of kids, debt, etc should not be part of a formula to figure pay.

4. This reminds me of the Trump travel ban. Can judges now say based on Bernie's intentions (using the bill's name) any legislation he now tries to pass regarding this is obviously mean spirited and targeting Amazon? This isn't a factual point looking for legal analysis, a similarity just struck me.

5. I worked in a WH where a guy crapped his pants and kept working. This isn't because the company forced him- people do weird things.

Points 2 and 3 are personal- not trying to force my views onto others. I am not trying to tell people that work at Amazon they need to be happy and satisfied because from my view it looks like they should be. My point is that I always liked the idea that if my main career fails I can pay all my bills with a 35 hour week at minimum wage. Outside the urban centers this is not too hard. My grand total monthly bills including food, netflix, housing, car insurance, cell phone, food, etc is about ~$1400. (no, my parents do not pay any of my bills or give me an allowance.)

$1600 per monthly is a perfectly "ok" wage. Sure it isn't great but you can live happily on it in many locations. A single parent with 5 kids and a ton of debt can't, but I don't think laws should target a company based on the worst scenario.

I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

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