If the union had won, I would have said. “Companies that get unions generally deserve them”
Amazon starts at $15/hour, they offer a variety of healthcare plans with premium that range from $33-80/month and top at $550 month for a low deductible family plan. 401K matching, stock grants, an entrepreneur program, a 10% employe discount and a 3.8 rating on GlassDoor. While it is easy to find horror stories about Amazon work conditions, I’m placing a lot more weight on 73,000 review on Glassdoor and now a more than 2-1 vote against unionized than the anecdotes.
There’s arguments against unionization, though I don’t think they’re particularly good ones. That said, it’s easier to go for change when you can afford risk. For a lot of folks there, they can’t afford risks.
This is just globalized capitalism chasing low-cost labor. The answer really isn’t (in the end) going to be labor organizing across various political boundaries.
It’s a big company, with a lot of different positions. The pay is good for low level work, sure, but it doesn’t pay for the long term body damage people are terrible at evaluating, and which will solely be on the worker for long after they’re no longer there. To improve efficiency that Amazon doesn’t need to rule the market, or to make every shareholder profit tremendously.
Ironically, if M4A is ever a thing, you’ll be paying the externalized cost that I’m profiting from via an index fund, and I’m arguing against it.
Lol. Yes I’m sure plenty of employees making $15-20 an hour (under $42k at most) are able to participate in a 401k plan. Glassdoor also lists the average warehouse worker pay at $15 an hour, that’s not the floor. Nationwide ZipRecruiter has the average warehouse worker salary at $32k while here in Orlando Florida it’s $28k.
Furthermore, when you look up job listings a lot of them are seasonal, and even the non-seasonal ones say they may be full time or part time (which means you won’t even qualify for most of the benefits anyway).
But yes, I’m sure working at Amazon warehouses is great and the media is just overly harsh about it. Just because it may be better than local alternatives for some people doesn’t mean they treat their workers right, or is a good gig to work for. We shouldn’t just wave everything off because “well it’s not so bad, they could be working in even shittier conditions making even less money!”
Glassdoor and other sources say 25% make less than $15 an hour. Maybe that’s old but still, a lot of jobs list a max of $17 an hour that I just pulled up.
Do you really think that working at Amazon warehouse is worse either in the moment, or long-term than working on a farm, meat-packing facility, as cocktail waitress (and having to wear heels), fry cook, porta potty cleaner, dry-waller, garbage man or bunch of other dirty jobs?
I know plenty of people that hate being bored on their jobs, which absolutely can happen in a lot of service jobs. So while, I personally was fine with my retail job working a pet shop in high school, I know plenty of folks who are bored silly during slow periods in retail. At an Amazon warehouse, you get good exercise , walking, you are always busy, you aren’t suffering from repetitive stress like many jobs, or breathing toxic chemicals like so many low skill jobs, constructions, farming. Yes, it is high stress, but so are call center jobs and fast food, at the low end, and air traffic controller, bomb squad and surgeon at the high skill level. People are different, if it was so awful Amazon they wouldn’t have 1.3 million employees with above average ratings, and reject unionization by wide margin.
Do you really think that either of these jobs are worse either in the moment, or long-term, than being being homeless, scavenging for food, sat for years in a refugee camp, starving or a bunch of other bad situtations?
The fact that there are worse conditions under which to work, or live, does not mean we should be satisfied with the conditions in, for instance, the Amazon warehouses. It’s exactly “because of the implication” that things could become worse, that workers accept terrible conditions in the workplace.
Did… did Jeff Bezos write this?
Again, that’s a problem with worker protection in those jobs, not a reason to accept Amazon workers’ conditions.
Isn’t this just a kind of whataboutism, though? Of course there are other shitty jobs, but if improving conditions with one employer can’t be done when there are other shitty jobs around, then all jobs are going to be shitty jobs and it’s a race to the bottom.
I think it’s easier to unionize (or any other political effort) a 1.3 million employee first than a bunch of separate small companies. Because it sucks, and, financially, it’s clear it’s not needed.
And Glassdoor is gamed both ways, who knows how many bots and turks are there.
Many places have “seasonal” jobs that last all year. It allows them to avoid some things as I understand it. Also you don’t look bad when you do lay off employees if they were hired “seasonally”. Even the government does that. They have jobs called “perm seasonal” so they don’t have to hire you as a perm.
