US and UK Amazon workers get a wage hike – maybe they'll go to the movies, by themselves Amazon, the target of a recently introduced bill called the Stop BEZOS Act, on Tuesday said it would raise the minimum wage for all its US workers to $15 an hour. The change takes effect November 1, 2018, and covers some 250,000 workers at Amazon and its Whole Foods subsidiary, along with 100,000 holiday employees brought on …
It sounds good but the London living wage is recalculated in November, and if it goes up like last year then it could stand at £10.60-£10.70.
So it'd still be less then what they calculate you realistically need to earn as a minimum in London.
So plenty of spin, not so much providing whats really required.
How anyone could live in the south east of the UK, let alone London on £10.50/hour.
People seem to manage it but it really can't be easy.
But once we have Brexit will all the UK nationals currently sitting in McDonad's talking shit about foreigners taking 'their' jobs will be flocking to fill those low paid jobs recently vacated by hard working, reasonably satisfied (?) immigrants who have a good work ethic and have paid taxes which more than cover the 'drain on society' the fucktard burger eating lazy shits in Maccy D's talk about.
I might t have gone off on a bit of a rant there at the end, and maybe at the beginning and middle too.
If some grammar pedants want to have a go at me for a lack of punctuation feel free, I'll take it on the chin.
those low paid jobs recently vacated by hard working, reasonably satisfied (?) immigrants who have a good work ethic and have paid taxes
Most of them are from countries outside the EU, so why should Brexit change anything? The UK is the second most-welcoming country in Europe for refugees (after Germany), even without Brussels attempts to dole out quotas.
Are you sure that's right? I thought Sweden was in first or second place.
As always with statistics you can bend them in many ways, I'll need to dig for where I found the info.
Sweden gets a huge number of applicants (orders of magnitude more than other countries) so although they are in top place for numbers, they are near the bottom of the table as a percentage (under 2% IIRC). IIRC Germany accepted around 24% of applicants, the UK 23%, so near the top for %age of applications accepted. France, for example, took slighly more people than the UK, but as a percentage of more applicants they were lower, in the 18-20% level.
There are other measures which consider how welcoming the population is of immigrants. Places like New Zealand score highly for that, the UK is in the top 3rd. Surprisingly (to me) places like Estonia and the Czech Republic are near the bottom.
The UK is the second most-welcoming country in Europe for refugees (after Germany), even without Brussels attempts to dole out quotas.
Since when? The last quote from UK.gov I heard was that they had agreed to take on as many refugees over 2 years as the German state of Baden-Württemburg was taking on in a month!
He is doing this because:
1, The <4% unemployment rate means otherwise he would only be getting the worst of the worst Xmas temp staff. You can normally deal with this by firing them but if it gets to Xmas eve and you have parcels to get out for same day delivery - hiring a 100,000 new bottom of the barrel employees in time is tricky.
2, It screws Walmart. Amazon can gradually automate warehouses (eg Occado) but Walmart can't automate stores. If $15 becomes the defacto retail minimum wage - Walmart have 1.5M employees all year round.
"1, The <4% unemployment rate means otherwise he would only be getting the worst of the worst Xmas temp staff"
Anything to back up the first point? I thought, historically, Amazon had benefited from CamperForce (https://www.wired.com/story/meet-camperforce-amazons-nomadic-retiree-army/) and other retired workers looking for seasonal work.
According to Sanders, the goal of the bill is to eliminate government subsidies to workers due to low wages. A bit surprising since Sanders is on the far left of the political spectrum. He must be torn between sticking it to Bezos et al and doling out other people's money.
However, once the wages are increased to $15 an hour many workers will no longer qualify for many taxpayer-supplied payments from the government - exactly as intended by Sanders' bill.
While this is a good thing, the article misses the mark by failing to report whether the pay increase will in fact result in a (significant) net benefit for Bezos' army. I highly doubt it will.
Main point is to stop government subsidising companies who pay very low wages - which was essentially what was happening. Employer pays very low wage (so saves on costs), tax payers cash goes to essentially top up employees bad wage via benefits system, whereas if employer pays a decent wage, the employee no longer needs handouts from tax payer, so tax can be spent on something else.
No, Sanders is not for "just doling out other people's money". What Sanders is for is a fair wage without necessarily having to rely on the government to keep your head above water because your shyster of a boss is paying you just about enough to get away from any legislation that could cost him more in fines & reputation. Where he *will* "dole out other people's money" is when people do end up needing assistance from the government (like losing your job, needing healthcare) or for something that universally leaves society better off (like free education). It doesn't mean irresponsibility.
Paying employees a decent wage so they don't need to rely on government handouts makes perfect sense. They will pay their taxes, they will be net contributors to society and the economy, and the government can spend what they save on their handouts on better things (education, not the slush fund that's called the DoD). ;-)
>Now I'm confused. If Sanders is a dirty rotten commie why does this policy sound like Thatcherism ?<
You ARE confused. It's Thatcherism (and its US counterpart Reaganomics) that has led to the situation where large corporations are effectively receiving state benefits rather than individuals.
Good luck explaining to the average Americans on how a proper welfare net actually saves money in the long run because that sick pauper left to dry is going to hit the expensive hospital A&Es much more often because he has no money to get minor aliments treated in time etc...Because they lack any intellectual capacity or curiosity to take in anything other than dumbed down political buzzword of the week.
Sanders is a Left-Liberal or (in European terms) a Social Democrat. That's certainly a bit left wing but "far left" is pushing it.
Saying he's keen on "doling out other people's money" misses the point - the state already does just that when private industry privatises profit but nationalises loss.
Saying he's keen on "doling out other people's money" misses the point - the state already does just that when private industry privatises profit but nationalises loss.
It's a little more complicated than that. Losses by mining or manufacturing (except aerospace) aren't paid back - only finance, and farming.
>According to Sanders, the goal of the bill is to eliminate government subsidies to workers due to low wages. A bit surprising since Sanders is on the far left of the political spectrum. He must be torn between sticking it to Bezos et al and doling out other people's money.<
I think you've misunderstood his motivation. The point is that the state is currently subsidising companies that COULD afford to pay a living wage, by topping up the wages of their employees. State welfare is a great thing to have in society, but it should be there to help the individuals that need it - not to reduce the wage bills of multinational companies.
We have the same issue over here in the UK; I don't know how the figures compare in the states, but in the UK the MAJORITY of our benefits payments are made to people who are actually in work - not to the 'scroungers' that the right-wing media like to demonise. The Labour party have a similar living wage proposal to Sanders', so hopefully the problem will be addressed before too long...
And next week the great god Amazon taketh away but putting all their UK warehouse workers on Zero hour contracts and starting to roll out full automation to their warehouses. Soon there will be only around 50 staff on Amazon's books in the UK and they'll pay even less tax than they do now.
Win-win for Bezos and co...
Stop using Amazon before they wipe out all other retailers. If that happens then you have only yourselves to blame and you will have to pay their inflated prices wether you like it or not.
If someone would like to step up and provide the service I get from Amazon, then yes I'll stop using them. Until then I will not.
In before shouty people: No I do not use Amazon exclusively, I use other retailers but when all else fails Amazon usually fulfills.
> If someone would like to step up and provide the service I get from Amazon, then yes I'll stop using them. Until then I will not.
Agree completely.
You'd think nowadays Internet shops could provide a guaranteed delivery date that's next-working-day or 2 working days. And provide easy, hassle-free returns. But so many don't do that. Fulfilled-by-Amazon usually does. So they get my business.
Agreed. The only way they could achieve this was by revolutionising logistics.
Im not sure about outside the EU, but within the EU most logistics firms are incredibly old fashioned.
Go and visit a bunchbof firms around Colnbrook outside Heathrow...you'll discover hand written documentation, fax machines and single phone offices are still a thing.
For the logistics industry, time stopped in 1975.
It was a while ago but I had to go down to UPS near LHR to collect a delivery as tax was due.
They offered me the option of paying cash or card.
I chose card.
They told me the card machine was broken so I'd have to pay cash.
I really hate UPS, it seems others do too.
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/ups-uk.com
They might be OK in the US, I have no idea, but the USPS do seem to come in for a bit of stick so they might still be crap but better than the alternative, Just guessing on that.
But in my area they are useless and I don't order from companies that use UPS for delivery and I always contact them know why they've lost my custom.
But in my area they are useless and I don't order from companies that use UPS for delivery
Useless in France too. I live in the sticks, and usually get "returned, unable to find address" rejections from UPS together with timestamps that show the package was returned to the depot less than an hour after it left. Even if they drove at the speed limit all the time, it would take them at least an hour just to get to my house from the depot, so the drivers obviously don't even try once they see they have to leave the city boundaries.
It would greatly help if sellers on Amazon would list their shippers, then I could avoid the ones that use UPS and save us both time & money.
This is a Good thing for the workers.
I know people who work for one of the companies "next door" to an Amazon depot who also have large warehousing operations.
When they found out about the pay increase that was coming "Many" of them upped sticks and took a new position. This made the other business match Amazon's pay so they could meet the Christmas deadlines and retain staff. Other "Low skill" jobs in the same area have also started to see decent pay increases as well.
Who'd have thought paying workers more is a way of getting staff.
Anon Obviously
How is it that a pay rise can have so many comments complaining? There are 2 ways to look at this-
1) Full employment leading to that desired natural growth in wages.
2) Pressured into raising wages people will lose jobs.
As for people complaining about amazon, just dont use them if you think they are so bad. If enough of you feel that way then things will end up changing.
The pay rise in the US is really significant - 36% for some people and 250,000 benefiting overall. That's much larger than the equivalent change here.
Huge credit must to Bernie Sanders and the clever piece of legislation he is suggesting. It proposes that for companies whose employees claim benefits, the employer should have to compensate the state directly for those benefits. I hope it also proposed a public register of companies doing this as a hall of infamy.
Who is championing the equivalent legislation in the UK? I suspect, nobody.
The legislation he was proposing wouldn't have survived the process of being turned into law, like most proposed legislation does. Bernie's legislative record as a long-term Washington insider (30 years a Senator) is pitiful. It looked good though, as many things do from a distance.
I've worked in an Amazon warehouse in the past -- the fulfilment side of things was staffed by a few long-term employees usually acting as foremen and team leaders training and supervising workers, the rest were folks who weren't going to be there three months later because it wasn't a career for them, just something to make some money from (and to keep the DWP off their backs for a bit). I stayed for a couple of weeks and bailed because the commute became impossible due to a road bridge being shut for emergency repairs but I'd not have been there myself in three months time regardless.
It doesn't pay well because it's not a demanding job, intellectually or otherwise and the staffing requirements are a race to the bottom. It does provide paid work for a lot of folks who would struggle in other roles for various reasons, at least until the robots take over. The extra money will be nice though.
According to a cousin who works at Amazon - so this is a sample-of-one anecdote - Amazon took out a restricted stock reward to pay for the raise, but most Amazon associates don't hit 2 years for them to get the stock reward anyway.
So, can anyone confirm that Amazon was cutting stock rewards to pay for higher wages?
With most of the Amazon fortune amusing at top, keeping your workers off public assistance is the very least they can do.(this will not quite do that) As much as I would like to think this was a feel good moral decision, I am reminded that we are in a very tight labor market going in to xmas and Amazon is looking and acting like Walmart more and more each day. Smart of them regardless of the motivation.
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