Washington DC drags Amazon to court for 'yoinking' driver tips Amazon again stands accused of stealing delivery drivers' tips, and using the money to cut into workers' pay, this time in a lawsuit filed by Washington DC's Attorney General Karl Racine on Wednesday. Amazon Flex allows folks to make money by delivering packages for it using their own cars. The service has been running since …
colour me surprised, a major Corp, possibly the biggest with a consumer facing side, trying to rip off the TIPS their people get ffs, you couldn't make this up, if thus was a film scene, NO ONE would believe it
the sooner they are forced to pay PROPORTIONAL fines the better, not a million, as that is just loose change to them, less than the cost of 'doing business'
rip them for BILLIONS in fines, see if they get it then
scummy Co, think they are bigger than the law, bigger than anything
The sad thing is that the best the govt can come up with is that they misled the customers.
Not that the corporation stole from the staff, and not the richly deserved charges of conspiracy and racketeering against the managers who plotted to do so.
It is time to gun for those responsible, even if they can't get convictions.
"It's like bribing the state."
Sort of. It's about maintaining eligibility to continue to participate in government contracts. Something one is not permitted to do with a criminal conviction on their records.
It's sad that our justice system pursues some people into court and eventually prison to demonstrate that "justice has been done". Even when such efforts result in a net cost to society. But others are allowed to pay some amount to be determined to erase that bad mark. Payment as a punishment is OK, but wrong is wrong and that should stand on a record by itself.
So they just paid some money to make their legal problems go away? It's like bribing the state
It's just BAU. Keep the 20% tip you're supposed to pay to the state, they might get upset. Keep tips that are supposed to go to the people, and punishment? What punishment?
Also suspect this problem will continue to grow as more transactions go cashless. Also why I don't like inclusive service charges, and if I get good service, I still give the person who's provided it some cash.
(stop sniggering at the back. Not that kind of service)
I also blame the lawyers. They bring a case, they often collect most of the settlement. So unless people in class actions then try to sue the lawyers, they get screwed twice. See also the latest in the Post Office saga. Even though lawyers are supposed to act in their client's interests, it doesn't always seem they act in them.
Right. Simply paying back money owed is not enough, there should be a punitive deterrent. They should pay at least treble damages to the victims, and also be forced to cooperate by naming the guilty executives so they can be criminally prosecuted. When executives know they can go to prison for misbehavior that benefits their company is when the practice will end.
"Wage theft is very common in the U.S."
True. But the tax and financial systems here have a vested interest in maintaining the idea that labor and wages are two separate things. If labor was afforded a value*, then a shortchanged worker could just file a contractor's lien against the employers property to recover the agreed upon amount.
*A bit of a Marxist idea, granted. And it would devastate our tax system in that my giving an employer $100 worth of labor in exchange for the same in wages could be written off as an expense, making my income tax liability zero.
Or better still don’t habitually tip for people just doing their job, averagely.
Tipping for service >good is my threshold.
…though there is a lady in Montreal Airport Holiday Inn Express who disagrees and thinks getting 2 (overpriced) bottles of beer out of a fridge, uncapping them, putting on the bar and ringing them through the till in < 60 seconds deserved a flat 15%.
Get tae fuck love !!!
OMG, I can so relate.
One night when we were in Key West, me and the misses walk into a bar, Order 2 beers, the bar maid walks away and grabs t out of the cooler, I lay a twenty on the bar to which she takes it and returns my change, laying it on the bar. I do nothing, I'm talking to my wife. She walks away muttering about not getting a tip. (I ussually tip bartenders at the end of the night or before I leave). Needless to day, "no tip for you bitchypoo!"
The answer is obvious - just ask the service person what their wage is. Factor in the incedibly low cost you just paid for something. Determine who's hide that "cost effectiveness" is coming out of. Then decide what kind of society you want to live in, you are ok living on the comfort of slave labour.
Pay people a proper living wage. That is the problem at the bottom of the food-chain.
If you don’t earn enough there, stop begging and get a better job. With constriction in the labour market - esp. entry level - never been a better time.
Why social-care workers in the UK are leaving to go work for Aldi, Lidl and Amazon.
I admit to finding the American tipping culture strange, but tipping the delivery driver seems to me an extra level of bizarre. Where is the added service that you're rewarding - that the box wasn't used as a football and/or stolen?
Do you tip the FedEx person too? The UPS person delivering your letters?
As far as I can tell, the tipping system works as follows: someone decides to hire people but pay well below what they otherwise should, and they label this with a tip box on the interface that people correctly translate to "You wouldn't want the person doing the work here to be paid almost nothing, but unless you give money here, they will". Then that box never moves, even when things change such as wages increasing or the company deciding it will make the part they pay dependent on how much tip there is. In the end, the user has no clue how much the person will get paid if they don't tip.
On a side note, I ordered some electronic components from a small site about three years ago. After selecting my components and paying for rather expensive shipping given this was before the COVID-snarled transportation times, I was brought to a page asking if I wanted to tip. I don't know who would have been paid if I selected to do so. I wonder how much free money they got by putting that option into their otherwise completely standard online checkout process.
Dunno,I was on a team call with Canadian’s and they were discussing Christmas and gifting their mail-man as being a normal thing. They always gave a Tim Horton’s gift card and were after ideas for something different to get.
My British ‘you gift the mailman at Xmas…. Seriously WHY!!’ was not particularly appreciated.
The postman has always had a Christma box and despite the strikes this year he's still getting one. Anyone who provides a personal service gets a tip or a Christmas box --- apart from the Amazon driver who threw my parcels down on the drive, outside my front gates. His tip is that I haven't yet sent the security video to Amazon.
20 years ago, before the automated trucks came along, I always tipped the garbage guys. All year, through our brutal South Texas summers, they cheerfully picked up my trash, even working holidays. One year the supervisor came along and asked that i quit giving them cases of beer as the Christmas tip, apparently they would get drunk while still on the job. After that I gave Walmart gift cards.
My (suburban) binmen can fuck off.
Our dry recycle wheelie bin is still sitting outside after (yet another) missed collection 2 weeks ago, and despite a promise twice of an ad hoc collection it’s still sitting there.
They were also on strike for 2 months earlier in the year and eventually got 10% from my local council … so they can doubly fuck off.
My British ‘you gift the mailman at Xmas…. Seriously WHY!!’ was not particularly appreciated.
I have never received a satisfactory answer to "why?" - only outrage at daring to ask and for challenging the tradition or practice.
I am not sure anyone could convince me tipping workers is anything but a means to address an otherwise morally repugnant situation which I am therefore obliged not to support nor indulge in.
When I do tip workers it is not so much to benefit them but to avoid criticism from those who believe I must.
I would probably also keep my thoughts to myself if I were worried by forum downvotes.
When I was a kid, almost 60 years ago, my parents would tip the postman, bin men and possibly a few others for a "Christmas Box". They weren't rich, just factory workers. It was the done thing. I can't pinpoint when the custom ended.
Speaking to my USA cousins about tipping, it's a kind of accepted thing - hence all those "tip calculator" apps that used to be on freeware sites. Because the staff are all on minimum wage. In effect the price on a menu was $n+12% with the extra percentage hidden away as if it wasn't effectively built into the cost - ( unless you were mean enough to not pay it).
It's hypocrisy, and it's demeaning to the staff members.
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They could also do with legislation that makes it clear that if you use a "contractor" then the contractor's rate must cover all their reasonable employment costs - wage, expenses (vehicle costs, maintenance, insurance, PPE, etc), professional insurances, accountancy fees, holiday, sickness and pension allowances, etc. Any contracts that drive the rate below what would reasonably be expected for such a contractor would be made illegal, as would "voluntary" opt-outs and any other strong arm tactics on the part of the "client" to force the "contractor" to work at employee rates for contractor terms.
It’s not wages though (unless you have some weird local legislation around tips).
Just wondering ‘who’ in the Amazon supply chain who touches a customer order thinks the tip (or a percentage of it) is the theirs ??
Delivery driver, local aggregated sack filler, packager, picker, shelf filler/delivery break-down, the inventory clerk, the IT guys in AWS, the customer service people resolving mistakes… and many-many more - some of these are in different countries too.
Same self-interest as many table waiting staff think they deserve more than the person who actually cooks the food, or cleans the place/toilets at the end of the night.
Just get rid of tips completely (as in Japan) or it’s discretionary (UK) and pay people properly.
If there is local legislation that says a tip must go to the service provision staff - yes that’s fine.
As someone noted above… for an Amazon fulfilment and delivery … please advise who that should be. Amazon probably may well have the scan data to apportion the money, but some formula would need devised to correct for effort input.
See title.
Has anyone talked to the delivery people and confirmed they've been paid back? And if so, was it equal to the stolen tips?
My personal experience is that it takes years to get your money and often it is NOT equal to what was stolen.
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