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Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

• mrhackerpoland 8y ago
  As someone who worked in Amazon warehouse, it's still so crap. Average programmer gets paid $50-100 per hour without any health risk or lifting their ass off a chair. And we workers are paid $15 pittance. Salary of warehouse should atleast be equal to a web developer.
  • johnsushant 8y ago
    Skilled labour costs more than unskilled labour. They're paid more because they cared to acquire skills that a warehouse worker didn't. It could be the coziest simplest job in the world, but if it has a higher skill requirement, it will come with a higher salary.
    • mrhackerpoland 8y ago
      But government can surely fix it? People can only acquire skills if they've time and ability for it, which implies they come from priviledged background. So government can surely implement some policy to tax these privileged class 80% and use that money for welfare of warehouse workers, and make it equality of outcomes.
• ada1981 8y ago
  This is a great way to do it. Much rather have companies adopt progressive policy then lobby for competitors to have to adopt it vs. lobbying to resist progressive policy. Plus, they get the PR bonus, they will siphon off the best workers until it’s mandated everywhere, and when it is, they will have benefited and then be on equal playing field. What are the downsides? (Unless you don’t want $15/hr min wage).
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• crdoconnor 8y ago
  A good object lesson in what happens if you unionize. Edit: Ooh, downvotes. Hi Amazon
  • themoat 8y ago
    I missed this story from earlier. Did they actually unionize? Or were they in the early stages of unionizing?
    • brianbreslin 8y ago
      early stages of it. This was one of their key demands.
    • SolaceQuantum 8y ago
      There were unionization efforts nationwide, including a somewhat wide dissemination of boycotting on the "Prime Day" sale and appropriate lists of demands including proper access to restrooms and raising of the wages.
    • crdoconnor 8y ago
      They haven't achieved recognition yet but they're still winning. The Europeans (for whom there was also a pay rise) are further along and went on strike on prime day.
  • Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    I don't know if that's still the case; I've seen instances where e.g. voice actors were replaced by non-unionized competitors. If the jobs shortage is big enough, people will allow themselves to get fucked over by not joining the unions and agreeing to working below the rate unionized employees have all fought for. Because any pay is better than no pay. Right?
• nebulous1 8y ago
  I mean, they get such bad press for the way they treat their workers it only seems fair to laud them for this. Good move. They have more to do though. I've went through a few articles on this but I didn't see any of them mention what Amazon's minimum actual pay was before this, just the federal minimum wage. Anybody know?
  • EpicEng 8y ago
    For what it's worth, someone on reddit says $12 https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/9kpeal/amazon_raises_minimum_wage_to_15_for_all_us/e70tgj8/ https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/9kpeal/amazon_raises_...
    • shimon 8y ago
      Quick back-of-the-envelope math: Let's assume this raise will affect 250k workers this coming holiday season, bumping their pay from $12 to $15 (+$3). Over 12 weeks at 40h/week, this represents an additional $360M in labor cost. Using AMZN's 2017 revenue of 177.9B, this equates to 17.7 revenue-hours.
      • skrebbel 8y ago
        Why are you comparing 12 weeks with the entire 2017 revenue? You'd have a better argument that this is peanuts for them if you'd make a fair and clear comparison.
        • Dylan16807 8y ago
          > Why are you comparing 12 weeks with the entire 2017 revenue? They aren't. They're comparing to revenue per hour. It doesn't matter what period of time you calculate revenue per hour with, you always get the same number.
          • skrebbel 8y ago
            They're comparing 12 weeks of warehouse work to revenue per hour. Why twelve weeks? It still makes no sense.
• tyingq 8y ago
  Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, recently introduced legislation to end what he calls “corporate welfare” — and it’s pretty clear who he had in mind, since the bill was titled Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (BEZOS). Bernie out-marketing AMZN is pretty funny.
  • justaguyhere 8y ago
    This is hilarious. Would've never guessed Bernie had this sense of humor.
    • tw1010 8y ago
      You do realize it's probably not actually Bernie who came up with the name? (It's one of his underlings.)
      • FactolSarin 8y ago
        First, you mean one of his staff. Mad scientists have underlings. Second, you have literally no idea how much input he had into it. He may have come up with the name himself, or he may have directed his staff to come up with something pithy that spells out "Bezos" or he may have sat around with them spitballing ideas until they came up with something good. But in the end, he was the senator who introduced it, and he gets the credit.
        • coldtea 8y ago
          >First, you mean one of his staff. Mad scientists have underlings. In the real world so do politicians and executives...
          • whamlastxmas 8y ago
            The point is that calling them "underlings" has a clearly negative connotation, and one would hope that instead of just name-calling you'd give arguments of substance against someone. If I referred to HRC's staff as "underlings" no one would question I was anti-HRC.
• kbad1000 8y ago
  Can they do the same in India?
  • ss2003 8y ago
    Does Amazon have a presence in India?
    • worldexplorer 8y ago
      Yes Amazon is huge in India. https://www.businesstoday.in/current/corporate/amazon-india-valuation-16-billion-e-commerce-flipkart-market-share/story/277375.html https://www.businesstoday.in/current/corporate/amazon-india-...
      • intended 8y ago
        Labor in India will be affected by changes in NREGA, over amazon.
    • dilawar 8y ago
      Yes. Quite a large presence and growing rapidly.
  • mrep 8y ago
    Highly unlikely. Minimum wage in India is 9,000 rupees a month which is about 0.75$ USD per hour. Even if they normally pay double the minimum wage which is effectively what they are doing in the US now with 15$ an hour minimum wage, paying 10 times that would easily make them un-competitive with every other company.
  • shimon_e 8y ago
    If Indian consumer can afford the cost increase.
  • SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    Raise their wages slightly and buy a load of positive press? Possibly. Pay people $15/hour? No chance.
• simons_says_99 8y ago
  partially funded by the removal of RSU stock grants
  • itgoon 8y ago
    I agree with their assertion that hourly employees "prefer the predictability and immediacy of cash to RSUs." $15/hr still isn't much. $30K year. Sure, it would be nice to get a fat payday down the road. People living on low wages have much more immediate needs. Why wait for a (maybe) payout, if you can't feed your kids today?
    • MichaelApproved 8y ago
      $15/hour isn't much but it's fantastic for entry level pay. That's the minimum. Most people will be getting paid more. And, yes, of course money today is better than maybe money tomorrow. For example, higher pay today could allow someone replace a car that keeps breaking down on them. That reliability and cost savings of not having to pay for repairs can be worth more than stocks in the future. Edit typo
      • kamarg 8y ago
        Honest question, do those raises amount to anything? Or is it akin to the $0.25/hr that many retail employees see that doesn't even provide them with the equivalent of an additional paycheck over the course of a year?
        • MichaelApproved 8y ago
          Another article mentions all employees will get a raise based on a curve related to the minimum increase. However, it's not clear just how that curve will look. This raise is a good move, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that it won't be a superficial raise until the actual numbers come in.
  • wffurr 8y ago
    What was the effective hourly wage before with the RSUs factored in? Did they have a 1-year vesting period? There's so many details missing from this story that it's hard to assess the real impact of the $15/hr wage.
• allengeorge 8y ago
  They must have automated enough, or shifted enough work to contractors that this is now materially not a big deal.
  • EpicEng 8y ago
    You don't know that, why make things up just to dump on them?
    • syn0byte 8y ago
      History provides a reasonable context to make the assumption?
      • neonate 8y ago
        What history?
      • EpicEng 8y ago
        Such as...?
  • loceng 8y ago
    Economies of scale alone gives them an advantage, however it's probable at minimum they know they won't need many more employees in the future - who can instead be supported by autonomous systems to manage increased throughput.
  • samfisher83 8y ago
    The are raising 350k employees wages: https://apnews.com/222764a6535a4ce7a17c02c7405361f2/Amazon-raising-minimum-wage-for-US-workers-to-$15-per-hour https://apnews.com/222764a6535a4ce7a17c02c7405361f2/Amazon-r... I am sure its going to cost them some money. Suppose they are going from 10 to 15 bucks. That 350k552*40 = 3.64 billion. They might not all be working 40 hours, but it kind of shows how much of an impact it will be be. I think its a good thing. Companies like costco have shown you can pay your employees fairly and still make money.
  • 8y ago
• stirlo 8y ago
  While this is a very welcome development it would be more impressive to see them reform their slave like fulfilment center work practises. Employees are forced to walk massive distances, have their every move tracked and are penalised for taking bathroom breaks. I doubt many people in Silicon Valley would consider $15 an hour a fair compensation for the oppressive work conditions.
  • dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Walking long distances isn't much of an issue. The human body is very well adapted to it (or built for it, depending on who you ask). Having a job that forces you to do it is good for your health. It's forcing people who might not be in the best of shape to be bending over, reaching, lifting, etc, etc all day that results in health problems.
    • kazen44 8y ago
      Also, repitition of movement is killing your body aswell. Doing the exact same movement all day will eventually just wreck you.
  • tudelo 8y ago
    Yet I know of many people now who work hard jobs and make 15 dollars an hour or less. Why does it matter if people in SV think it's good pay?
    • beaconstudios 8y ago
      don't you know? Californian engineers are the arbiters of truth.
    • adventured 8y ago
      This new $15 line means that a very large group of labor in the US now earns less than the lowest paid Amazon worker. It removes one of the two or three primary criticisms of Amazon (at least for a while). It's in fact a labor hammer on mom & pop businesses - who never pay well - at a time when there's an intense labor shortgage. Most likely, Amazon had to raise wages to fill its labor growth demands, and it's a PR benefit simultaneously. Given Amazon's profits are set to explode higher in the next few years, with AWS and advertising (~$20b in profit in 2020 is likely), it'll give them a competitive advantage to continue to raise wages as necessary and crush everyone else that can't follow. Your typical small or mid-size retailer simply can't generate the kind of return that Amazon can from advertising (which has extreme margins), it puts them in a competitive league above and beyond, which will spill over to being able to better compete on labor. It's good for labor, bad for competitors.
• swebs 8y ago
  >In addition, the company also pledges its public policy team will lobby for an increase to the federal minimum wage from $7.25 — it doesn’t identify a specific wage that it’s targeting, but instead says, “We believe $7.25 is too low. We would look to Congress to decide the parameters of a new, higher federal minimum wage.” I'm going to take a wild guess and assume it will be $15/hour. That way they'll get to look progressive for adopting this wage early, while mitigating their competitive disadvantage by forcing every other company to raise their wages too eventually.
  • josefresco 8y ago
    Similarly, my kids don't get credit for "doing the right thing" only when I'm about to storm into the room to lecture them on whatever they were doing wrong.
  • wccrawford 8y ago
    That may be their target, but they probably think it's unlikely and when they end up actually getting $10/hr instead, they'll still be able to call it a win.
  • duxup 8y ago
    $14... gotta look competitive.
    • khafra 8y ago
      If you take "increase to the minimum wage of $7.25" literally, it'd be $14.50
  • Shivetya 8y ago
    $15 an hour will push a lot of people out of being employable. There is a greater tolerance for whom you will accept at current wage points. The other effect of a much higher starting wage is you will have people enter the market who did not think the wage was worth their time. The people who cannot be relied on to show up on schedule, quit and want to come back, have some issues in their credit or criminal backgrounds, and more. Meaning more reliable candidates will come back in and those who dismissed fast food, warehouse, and retail, jobs as not paying enough will now accept those jobs. You will get some retirees, stay at homes, college kids, and even some recent graduates, coming in.
• itamarst 8y ago
  The blog post says "employees". No reporter I've seen has bothered to ask if it applies to contractors.
  • Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    Wouldn't contractors set their own rates?
    • ceejayoz 8y ago
      That's the idea, but considering Uber/Lyft drivers are deemed "contractors" the line has clearly blurred in recent years.
    • swebs 8y ago
      No, the contract itself is with a separate firm, who in turn pays their employees a minimum wage.
    • kennydude 8y ago
      Most contractors to Amazon get paid set amounts for work. i.e 30p per parcel delivered. Will this increase push Amazon to make more people contractors? Time will tell
    • PhasmaFelis 8y ago
      In modern America, many "contractors" are just regular employees in every respect except that they're employed and contracted out by a third party, so they don't get the same privileges, protections, and benefits as "real" employees. A lot of companies (Lexmark is one I know for sure) like to trot out press pieces on how well they treat their employees, leaving out the fact that maybe 80% of the people working for them are not technically "employees."
      • jonlucc 8y ago
        My company does this to an extent, but they claim it's to avoid trouble with "co-employment". As it was told to me when I was myself a contractor (that is a regular employee of another firm who hired me to work on-site at the company of which I'm now an employee), they have to withhold certain benefits because if they treat me like an employee, I could sue to get them listed as a co-employer, making me eligible retro-actively for benefits the regular employees received during my time there. I've never quite understood the system, to be honest. My company pays a contract company for my time. The amount they pay for my service is much more than the cost of hiring me as an employee, because they have to pay my portion of my managers' time along with enough to cover my benefits and some profit for the contract company. The company could have just hired me directly for some portion of the cost. The only downsides I see are that they can tout they didn't fire any employees when things get tight and they slash the number of contractors.
• wonderwonder 8y ago
  Irrespective of if this was done out of altruism or political strategy, its a good move on their part and they deserve applause. It is a very positive step for their employees. Its also going to score points for Bezos in his ongoing face off with Trump. Nice feather in Sanders' cap as well. I see no losers in those directly involved in this situation.
• ralmidani 8y ago
  Amazon should be commended for making a move in the right direction. I personally think people should be paid more. $15 * 40 * 52 comes out to $31,200. Before payroll and income taxes. That's barely enough to survive in a small city like Flint, MI (I live in a suburb of Flint), let alone somewhere like NYC, Seattle, or SF.
  • shimon_e 8y ago
    This is minimum. It should apply to people with no experience, in training, or living in the middle of no where. There is no reason to live in an expensive city if you can make the exact same amount of money in a cheap city.
    • ralmidani 8y ago
      People don't always choose which city they live in. Family, college, etc. might dictate where they live.
      • shimon_e 8y ago
        Those people should be earning more than minimum.
  • zacharytelschow 8y ago
    > I personally think people should be paid more. Great. So start a company and pay your employees more.
  • ttoinou 8y ago
    I think that they should be paid one million dollars each month, because why not, and creating inflation is always good for the economy
    • turtlecloud 8y ago
      You poor soul. You actually think paying workers more creates inflation You obviously haven’t heard of bankers, the federal reserve, and quantitative easing.
• agotterer 8y ago
  How much were amazon warehouse and Whole Foods employees making prior?
  • behringer 8y ago
    12 to 14. 15 probably still won't be enough to stop government subsidies going to Amazon employees.
• WisNorCan 8y ago
  With almost a million employees the decisions by Amazon are impacting a large part of the (150 million) US workforce. The dysfunction in our government is rising at a time that corporations are growing bigger than ever. The obvious result is that companies like Amazon will have an outsized effect on the major issues for our society, like minimum wage and healthcare.
  • adventured 8y ago
    Nothing has actually changed about the scale of corporations. That's just a popular talking point (it's actually always a popular talking point). US GDP in 2000: $10 trillion US GDP in 2018: $20 trillion Largest market caps in 2000: Microsoft & Cisco, about half a trillion dollars. Double that to match the doubled GDP, and you get an Amazon today. Amazon is not more powerful than these companies at their peaks: GM, Ford, Walmart, Sears, Standard Oil & Exxon, IBM, US Steel, JP Morgan, AT&T, Kodak, etc The US Government's spending has more than doubled in size in the last 20 years as well. Its power has dramatically increased as well since the mid 1990s (just the capabilities for control that the espionage improvements and law changes have given them, is extraordinary).
    • WisNorCan 8y ago
      Picking Microsoft and Cisco’s stock price during the dotcom bubble to use as valuation benchmarks seems disingenuous. Picking anywhere outside the bubble makes the original point of rise of corporations clear.
    • shimon_e 8y ago
      How does it look with population increase taken into account?
  • RightMillennial 8y ago
    Is Amazon seriously approaching 1 million employees?
    • CydeWeys 8y ago
• pulsarpietro 8y ago
  It makes you think of Henry Ford.
• czep 8y ago
  Opponents of the minimum wage argue that it reduces employment by creating an artificial floor on wages, that jobs are lost because employers can't afford to pay the minimum. But if you can't pay the minimum, then you didn't really have a job to offer in the first place! By extension of this logic, employers could argue that they are losing jobs because they can only afford to pay someone who will work 12 hours a day, or can only afford to pay child workers, or can only afford to hire if they get a huge payroll tax cut. Granted, in the job market there are people who would take sub-minimum wage pay for a variety of reasons -- desperation, lack of education, lack of options near their home, felony record, undocumented status, etc. But it is disingenuous to suggest that just because there are people who would take such jobs, that our economy should allow employers to get away with it. If you can't pay a basic living wage, for fair hours, in safe conditions, with necessary medical benefits, then you don't have a job to offer.
  • ttoinou 8y ago
    There is no definition of "minimum", "basic living", "safe conditions", "fair hours" etc. Fair hours used to be 10 hours a day 6 days / week. Living used to be able to survive a famine. Safe conditions used to be hunting for animals. All it matters is people interacting voluntarily, that's the only argument against minimum wage. But it is disingenuous to suggest that just because there are people who would take such jobs, that our economy should allow employers to get away with it Ex-felons would also "get away with it" (remember there are always at least two sides in an exchange), but they would be in a better situation if they accepted the job
    • czep 8y ago
      > All it matters is people interacting voluntarily My point is that it is most certainly not voluntary. There are people in the world who are not as lucky or intelligent or resourceful as you, me, and most others on HN. Try to empathize and put yourself in the shoes of the disadvantaged, they do not know the world as we do, they cannot shop around for high paying jobs, and if they miss a paycheck, they may very well lose their housing. Given this asymmetry, society absolutely needs to step in to enforce basic protections that the free market cannot solve.
• flexie 8y ago
  $15/hour is still not much in the international market where Amazon sells its goods. In large parts of Europe it's less than what a warehouse worker makes. It's still barely enough for an adult to be able to pay his/her half of family expenses in the US. A lot of employees will still need a second job. And it only comes now, 20 years after the company's founding, after it has huge profits (and can deduct expenses like salaries in the profits before paying tax), after it has crushed all competitors with extremely low wages that were only possible because many employees received government handouts too (so subsidized wages), and after it de facto has secured itself a monopoly. And many employees are still on temporary contracts. It's too little and too late.
  • mlevental 8y ago
    >$15/hour is still not much in the international market where Amazon sells its goods. In large parts of Europe it's less than what a warehouse worker makes. i don't understand this comment. while i'm all for warehouse workers getting a fair wage i don't understand the point of comparing a us wage, being paid in the us, to us workers, to foreign workers in foreign economies? yes USD 15 is not enough to survive in Oslo but these people don't live in Oslo! $15USD is double the average us minimum wage! before taxes for a full working year that's 30k. again in many places in the us that's enough to get by and even probably save a little. again i think everyone should be getting a fair wage and unskilled laborers should be treated with respect and dignity but that particular line is nonsensical.
    • calvinbhai 8y ago
      +1 And I'm not sure about the actual numbers, but something like $30K per year basically puts one in a top 10% of the world, and more than $50K, you are already in the 1% of the world, by income. (not sure if that factors in cost of living).
      • CydeWeys 8y ago
        You can't just ignore cost of living disparity though. $30K per year is a huge amount of money in some parts of the world -- that's enough to live very well, maybe support multiple wives if the culture allows it. But in San Francisco, that income level for a family puts you below the poverty line and you will struggle to afford housing.
• exabrial 8y ago
  I love to see companies freely choosing to pay their workers more. I oppose any such government regulation however because of macroeconomics. Sad to see they're going to spend as bunch of money on Congress lobbying now.
• kork__ 8y ago
  Socialism has only been tried in third world hell holes like Russia and succeeded so far beyond expectations it ended up being called the second world. A first world country going socialist would be the equivalent of increasing GDP by between 50 to 500%.
  • watwat1 8y ago
    Stop spreading stupidities.
  • DataWorker 8y ago
    By up to 500%? Surely you can provide some external sources of information to corroborate that claim?
    • Dylan16807 8y ago
      I don't know what they have in mind, but that sounds like something you could do by improving income inequality. The top decile gets half the income. If you redistribute half of that, you can double the income of the bottom 60%. If you allocate that new money on a flat per-household basis, the high end gets something like a 50% boost, and at the low end you have millions of people in deep poverty getting more than a 500% boost. Obviously that exact distribution is flawed, but I think it gets the point across.
  • Balero 8y ago
    The very definition of second and third world were created and based off of the cold war. 1st world = USA/Western Europe + allies 2nd world = USSR/China + allies 3rd world = Everyone else. By definition Russia started as a 2nd world country. Now your point about Russia not being on the level of western Europe pre-1917, is a very good point. They were year behind in industrialising (for a variety of reasons, including not being capitalist and competitive). However other countries have tried, such as Eastern Germany. Eastern Germany and Western Germany, whilst not identical (with Western being a bit richer) were not "third world hell holes" except straight after WW2. They then diverged as the capitalist west grew and improved, and the east stagnated under a terrible regime. Other examples could include North and South Korea, Mao-China, and Deng xiaoping- China. Socialism does not work. It does not work in the real world.
• kork__ 8y ago
  Because I don't want to starve.
  • Symmetry 8y ago
    The reason that, back in the progressive era, all the eugenicists were on board with the idea of the minimum wage was that they thought that at a high enough wage "undesirables" wouldn't be able to a job and so couldn't compete away jobs from "desirable" workers. Thankfully these days we have a social safety net that generally prevents people from starving whether they could get a job or not but making people starve was part of the reason for the original support for minimum wage laws back at the turn of the last century.
    • pjc50 8y ago
      [citation needed]
      • Symmetry 8y ago
        During the second half of the Progressive Era, beginning roughly in 1908, progressive economists and their reform allies achieved many statutory victories, including state laws that regulated working conditions, banned child labor, instituted “mothers’ pensions,” capped working hours and, the sine qua non, fixed minimum wages. In using eugenics to justify exclusionary immigration legislation, the race-suicide theorists offered a model to economists advocating labor reforms, notably those affiliated with the American Association for Labor Legislation, the organization of academic economists that Orloff and Skocpol (1984, p. 726) call the “leading association of U.S. social reform advocates in the Progressive Era.” Progressive economists, like their neoclassical critics, believed that binding minimum wages would cause job losses. However, the progressive economists also believed that the job loss induced by minimum wages was a social benefit, as it 212 Journal of Economic Perspectives performed the eugenic service ridding the labor force of the “unemployable.” Sidney and Beatrice Webb (1897 [1920], p. 785) put it plainly: “With regard to certain sections of the population [the “unemployable”], this unemployment is not a mark of social disease, but actually of social health.” “[O]f all ways of dealing with these unfortunate parasites,” Sidney Webb (1912, p. 992) opined in the Journal of Political Economy, “the most ruinous to the community is to allow them to unrestrainedly compete as wage earners.” A minimum wage was seen to operate eugenically through two channels: by deterring prospective immigrants (Henderson, 1900) and also by removing from employment the “unemployable,” who, thus identified, could be, for example, segregated in rural communities or sterilized. https://www.princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/retrospectives.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/retrospectives.pd...
• agotterer 8y ago
  Have there been any studies around the length of time increasing wages is actually beneficial for? I assume we’ve been here before and companies eventually increase prices or inflation kicks?
  • nemo44x 8y ago
    It depends really. It could cause an inflation in prices but not necessarily. It could come out of the profits a company makes as they try and compete by keeping their prices lower while still paying higher wages. This would have an effect on the share price of the company as their bottom line would decrease but could also increase share price if they make it up in volume due to being more competitive. It could also create efficiency in the company since they would incentivized to have fewer employees making more money while producing more efficiently.
• eksemplar 8y ago
  Doesn’t amazon operate as a middle man for a lot of independent service workers, like Uber does for drivers? How does the $15 apply to them?
• RichardHeart 8y ago
  If you're going to bite the bullet and pay your employees more, you mind as well hope that everyone else does as well, so they can afford to buy more from you retail.
• MrsPeaches 8y ago
  A shout out to Organise[1], who have been creating lots of pressure on Amazon in the UK. [1] https://www.organise.org.uk/ https://www.organise.org.uk/
• zygotic12 8y ago
  Got to give it to the guy. I bet that having his peers in court might have helped the decision (regardless). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
• ashelmire 8y ago
  I think this is a big step in the right direction. It'll help keep workers happy and reduce stress. It doesn't solve all of Amazon's problems, but it's an easy fix to something they often receive criticism about.
• outside1234 8y ago
  Call me a cynic, but this must mean they are on the verge of needing vastly fewer, but more skilled, folks in their warehouse.
  • ptbello 8y ago
    This. I just made the exact same comment[1] before I saw yours [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18121684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18121684
• smpetrey 8y ago
  I mean, Amazon could've just as easily agreed to $25 minimum wage. But, hey progress I suppose (or is it inflation?).
• ptbello 8y ago
  Call me cynical, but it could also be that AMZN will be automating all those lower paid jobs - as in: soon they won't even need 7.25$/H employees because they'll have machines. In this scenario, 15$/H would just be their current price point for the following tier of bottom of the chain not-yet-automated tasks.
  • vthallam 8y ago
    This was my exact thought. It's great they increased the wages to $15, but it might also be because now they are in a state to hire fewer humans in logistics and carry out majority of the work through machines. May be with less humans for $15/hour and machines, their average per unit hour cost is still $7.25.
  • patagonia 8y ago
    Wow brilliant analysis. Automate the lower pay jobs away before your competitors can. Push for raise in minimum wage. This is “Walmart kills mom and pop shops” at a whole new level. This is also how I see the robot job apocalypse playing out and why we need political change that can handle both the wealth generation and rapid job churn / requirements for job training that AI and robotics will bring. Either pay more or have the wealth disbursed. The alternative is, as has always been, concentrate the wealth in the owners of capital. But this times it’s different. Current wealth generation by capital is unprecedented. And technology allows control and capture of that wealth in an unprecedented manner. At the same time regulatory and political structures have done nothing to deal the with the negative costs associated with the process. What is the point of having an economic machine the likes of which history has never seen if it all just ends up on a ditigal legder for a few dozen people while automated factories are running in the dark and requiring resources stripping the planet of resources needed for you know like ecosystems and such. Not sustainable. So. Yeah. Amazing move for Amazon. Where does everyone else fit in the picture.
    • maerF0x0 8y ago
      Luddites have always been saying "this time is different" about technology. And economists have always been saying "no its not". I understand that robots+AI will eventually be superior to humans (their evolution rate is faster than ours, extrapolating...) . The question is how many life times away is that. Moore's law ended, maybe AI will asymptote too?
• calvinbhai 8y ago
  IMO, this is a genius move by AMZN - Cuts down on bad PR - Makes employees happy (while they dont get RSUs) - Make the employees genuinely skilled in operating semi-automation equipment - Make competitors bleed, because either they pay $15 per hour or face the PR wrath, while trying to catch up with AMZN in terms of automation. If you think for a moment that AMZN started replacing 90% of employees with automation, they can still afford to give $30 per hour, and get good PR, while making the competitors look bad for paying $20 per hour. I hope this doesn't lead to a minimum wage law that requires AMZN competitors to pay $15 per hour. It'll only mean death to those competitors.
  • dheelus 8y ago
    AMZN is also lobbying to raise the Fed minimum wage to $15/hr
    • calvinbhai 8y ago
      makes sense right? Amazon goes for the kill with it's mostly automated warehouses, cashierless and automated checkouts to make life hard for a lot of retail and warehouse competitors
      • prolikewh0a 8y ago
        Sounds like a monopoly that needs a little breaking up. https://i.imgur.com/IC8Ehgh.jpg https://i.imgur.com/IC8Ehgh.jpg
        • travmatt 8y ago
          This is the sentiment they’re trying to stave off.
      • alexgmcm 8y ago
        Isn't mostly automated, high-wage work what we want though?
• stevespang 8y ago
  Bezos doesn't make a move like this without it benefiting him and Amazon,is he expecting robots to now take 90% of his hourly jobs ?
• csdreamer7 8y ago
  Bezos felt the Burn! I would still support Bernie's bill. Walmart pays the least of any major retailer. The market power they push onto communities undermines much of the social fabric of America. Small retailers really can't compete with Walmart and a lot of small business owners would feel guilty asking their employees to go on welfare. Charging Walmart for employees who apply to welfare would likely lead to pay increases and more small business competition. Walmart struggles to retain people so I honestly doubt they would fire them for going on welfare they would be billed for (regardless if it legal or not).
  • Fellshard 8y ago
    Individual companies raising their minimum wage is perfectly reasonable. They know what their bottom line can handle, and any consequences are fairly limited to the company itself and its competitors, for good or ill. An entire national economy raising a minimum wage is pulling yourself into the air by tugging on your bootstraps - futile, and likely to make you keel over instead. There's no alternatives if it fails or has catastrophic effects. Much like software, businesses work best when there aren't single points of failure - damage is limited when things go wrong. Individual companies can experiment and make decisions that would be dangerous for an entire economy, with nowhere near the same level of risk for anyone except the people at the top.
    • rbg246 8y ago
      It has been pretty plain to see that relying on individual companies to raise minimum wages has failed and that companies see no need to increase wages from their myopic perspective. A country knows what their bottom line can make good decisions as well. They employ economists and other experts who can assess the effects of raising a minimum wage in a way that an individual company cannot assess. Countries can also experiment and make decisions on available data and have controls like inflation and other macroeconomic levers to adjust wage levels to prevailing economic conditions. I think shutting off an entire sector of economics and leaving it purely to the 'free' market is a dangerous suggestion
      • 8y ago
• prolikewh0a 8y ago
  Now they're going from $7.25 with medicaid, to $15/hr with no health insurance and no subsidies. The $15/hr middle is rough.
• specialp 8y ago
  Median amazon warehouse employee pay is 24k a year. Amazon has around 300k warehouse employees. Jeff Bezos's wealth alone is equivalent to all 300k of them working 22 years at their current rate.
  • ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
    Why are warehouse workers entitled to anywhere near the share the creator and owner makes?
    • specialp 8y ago
      I wasn't saying they were. This is far from anywhere near. Bezos was not able to make all his money due solely to his hard work, it was off the backs of others including all of us whom have to subsidize the workers that he is making 300k X their near lifetime earnings.
      • ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
        The whole reason why warehouse workers are paid so little is because just about anyone can be trained to do it. It's simple economics. You are kind of right about subsidizing workers, but that's more of the government's fault for how our social services benefits work. It's not Amazon's fault the going rate for labor is below the rate that the government will provide benefits for.
        • hannasanarion 8y ago
          Since when is "economical" equivalent to "good"? The whole reason children work in coal mines is that others can't fit down the holes, it's simple economics. The reason black slaves work the fields is because white folks don't want to do the work for the going rate, it's simple economics. Economic forces are not guaranteed to produce a just society.
          • ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
• known 8y ago
  Why We Need a Social Wealth Fund https://jacobinmag.com/2018/08/social-wealth-fund-alaska-peoples-policy-project https://jacobinmag.com/2018/08/social-wealth-fund-alaska-peo...
• anoncoward111 8y ago
  I make more as a waiter with absolutely 0 experience. Being a waiter is better, more stable pay than many office and warehouse jobs. Something is severely wrong when food service is more profitable than manufacturing and distribution and tertiary-degree stuff.
  • shimon 8y ago
    What's the wrong here? Waiting tables is a hard job, and not everyone can do it well. It's physically and mentally taxing, and to make money at it you have to be charming which is harder to train than, say, packing boxes in a warehouse. Good-paying waiter jobs tend to be in high-cost cities, so you'll spend more money on housing, transit, and food than a worker in a suburban warehouse. Waiters are also harder to substitute for - due to the small scale and personal nature of restaurant service, it's unlikely a restaurant could drastically improve waiter productivity without impacting the customer experience. Also, to your point in comparing the hourly rate: warehouse and office jobs offer a different type of financial value to workers - relatively predictable schedules. If you're a student, working a few evenings a week and raking in tips is great. If you're trying to support a family, getting consistent full time hours may be more appealing than a higher hourly wage with lower/less consistent hours.
    • anoncoward111 8y ago
      I appreciate your evaluation of waiting tables as being a job that involves physical work (hot plates, standing, walking, carrying) and artful work (verbal skills, kindness, presentation etc). Maybe not everyone can do it, but once I got laid off from my 4th or 5th IT sales job in 6 years, I said to myself, "self, it's time to find something more stable". The very first people to offer me a shot were a very busy italian restaurant, and everything is going amazingly well considering when I started, I didn't know how to make an espresso or hold 3 plates! Still, it is really shocking to me that so many of my colleagues are in the same boat: Reputable college degree, no stable office job. Our customers are all mostly old/retired couples. We appreciate their patronage heavily, but we greatly wonder why their money is being spent on food and entertainment rather than high tech skills. This forces us to specialize in skills that will never deliver a 10x leap in innovation. The market for food service is saturated and we will never make enough to jump to the upper class.
• ck425 8y ago
  Hmm, I wonder how much Amazon expect their sales to increase by if a $15 minimum wage in implemented. Could it be a case that they expect the increase in customer spending to offset the costs?
• zhengwang 8y ago
  The amount of delusional Tech workers attacking minimum wage increases on HN is insane. People who have never stepped out of their sheltered lives at Stanford and Google and post inane shit like "They can just get another job if they don't like their current one." It's so out of touch it hurts my brain.
• arrty88 8y ago
  >“We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in the announcement. “We’re excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us.” Ha ha. This shouldn't have taken much thinking Jeff. It's a no brainer, no? The more you pay your people, the more they can spend on your stuff.
  • philwelch 8y ago
    > The more you pay your people, the more they can spend on your stuff. This is the economics equivalent of a perpetual motion machine.
    • moneil971 8y ago
      But do they also get free Prime membership?
    • hannasanarion 8y ago
      Isn't that what an economy is? Are you telling me that if your employer stopped paying you, you would keep spending the same as you do now?
      • philwelch 8y ago
        If I paid my employer more than they pay me, I would be broke and insolvent.
      • stale2002 8y ago
        No, that's not what the economy is. Here is how it works. Let's say Amazon doubles someone's salary, from 30k a year to 60k a year. And let's say that previously, this person was spending 1k a year on Amazon. Since the worker now has double the salary, let's say it doubled the amount that they spend at Amazon, from 1k to 2k. Doing simple math here, you see that Amazon is now spending 30k more, only to get an extra 1k in revenue, for a total decrease of 29k. Arguing that this person will spend all 30k of this additional money at Amazon is ridiculous. And even more ridiculous would be arguing that this perpetual motion machine actually creates value, above and beyond 30K.
• genericone 8y ago
  I suppose there has been some 'breakthrough' in their warehouse automation stack? I suppose in the rest of the USA a doubling of wages will definitely get them through an awkward longshoreman period, "well I'm being paid more unexpectedly, I suppose I can't complain about the robots". Once the robots are well established in operations, they can start to cut labor back some more.
  • jzymbaluk 8y ago
    Either that, or they want to defuse some of the political heat they've been getting by Bernie Sanders and co.
  • behringer 8y ago
    Robots should be replacing workers. If a robot can replace you then the work you could be better spent on something else.
    • brbrodude 8y ago
      Unless you own means of productions, then you can be a person
  • neonate 8y ago
    Surely the simpler explanation is stronger, that they are reacting to pressure. Bezos even alluded to that in the press release: "we listened to our critics".
  • TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    I think there's a much more simple, and clever, explanation. We're looking in the wrong direction. Bloomberg recently ran a story [1] that Amazon is planning on opening up to 3,000 more cashierless 'grab and go' stores by 2021. They are clearly planning on trying to take over physical retail, and this is quite a nasty attack on current players such as WalMart or convenient store type locations. These companies will not be able to compete with Amazon's cashierless stores. And they absolutely will not be able to compete with them at $15/hour minimum labor costs. This will require these companies to start transitioning to automated systems. But this would be a PR disaster -- firing huge numbers of people earning a hair above minimum wage to replace them with machines? Yeah that'll go over well. By contrast since Amazon is coming in with [relatively] near 0 employees from the get go, they won't face such issues. And an even better side effect here is that this would have a double feedback mechanism. Amazon improves their image of working to do more for their employees at the same time that their competitors are ruining theirs, just to be able to compete! They just fired a huge salvo towards physical retail outlets. If Amazon does manage to successfully lobby (or create sufficient public pressure) to enact a $15 minimum wage, Amazon could practically won the physical retail game before they even meaningfully enter it. [1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/amazon-is-said-to-plan-up-to-3-000-cashierless-stores-by-2021 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/amazon-is...
• cs702 8y ago
  Enlighted capitalism: The more money the masses earn, the more they will spend on products and services, from movie tickets to electronic devices to new automobiles. The more all of us earn from each other, the more we spend with each other. The more all of us spend with each other, the more we earn from each other. Globally, AGGREGATE SPENDING = AGGREGATE INCOME.
• swifting 8y ago
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PNJxdvquvK4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PNJxdvquvK4 A nice piece on the minimum wage by Economist Walter E. Williams
• throwawaymanbot 8y ago
  ...slow clap.....
• ct520 8y ago
  So tell me again how this doesn’t effect someone making 50k a year?
• aurizon 8y ago
  One major function of minimum wages is to offset the fact that union wages keep ratcheting up and in rust belt areas the minimum wage people could not afford the new items made by union people, like cars - so that is why they buy used cars - if any. In a sense there is a need for a maximum wage as well, to limit this factor. This reduced spread between high and low wages is why Germany does so well - in effect the country becomes a large efficient factory. Which is why unions have a management role, board seats etc, so they know when an excess wage is bad for the company and for the country as a whole. Japanese and Korean unions do this as well, but in general do not have board seats. The USA lacks in this respect, so we have a lot of poor at work without enough money to buy much stuff - and selling stuff builds the economy.
• wil_wheat_on 8y ago
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2018/08/30/bezos-unbound-exclusive-interview-with-the-amazon-founder-on-what-he-plans-to-conquer-next/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2018/08/30/bezos-un... everything he's going after is going to cost jobs or create many low wage jobs
• toasterlovin 8y ago
  People often complain about power concentrating in a few companies, but an interesting side effect of that is that it should, in theory, increase the bargaining power of labor. It's a lot easier to unionize a handful of huge companies than it is to unionize a whole bunch of smaller companies. This move by Amazon is probably a reflection of that.
  • tomjakubowski 8y ago
    Matt Bruenig draws the same conclusion here. https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/01/16/small-business-promotion-is-mostly-a-bad-idea/ https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/01/16/small-busine...
• onemoresoop 8y ago
  Perhaps they raised minimum wages with the future goal to lay off staff that can be "robotized". After that the remaining workers would certainly have a HIGHER WORKLOAD of dealing with the robots and would most likely not be willing to work for less than $15/h. This can also can earn amazon a good guy reputation so that their future move can be justified. I hope i'm wrong but my instinct tells me that Amazon will not loose a cent on this move.
• ddingus 8y ago
  This helps in the human struggle a majority of Americans are experiencing right now.
• polskibus 8y ago
  What about Amazon employees in other countries? Will they be given a raise too?
• xutopia 8y ago
  Don't they outsource most of their work to other companies?
• rubidium 8y ago
  There's been similar moves in the past. Most famous of which is Ford's $5 / day. http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/03/blogs/post-perspective/ford-doubles-minimum-wage.html http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/01/03/blogs/post-per... Ford's quote from the time is relevant today: “The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same, and unless an industry can so manage itself as to keep wages high and prices low it destroys itself, for otherwise it limits the number of its customers. One’s own employees ought to be one’s own best customers.”
  • smilbandit 8y ago
    and thus grew the middle class. The middle class is something we truly need to focus on growing again.
    • WalterBright 8y ago
      America has always been a nation of middle class people, even back in colonial times. The exception was the southern slave economy, which didn't have much of a middle class.
      • jrochkind1 8y ago
        it's a pretty big exception, even if the other part is true. (And thanks for acknowledging the exception up front!) At the high points, 20% of the total U.S. population were enslaved. At that point, it's not just an exception, it's a problem with the entire premise, even if the entire rest of the population was 'middle class', which they weren't. What allowed the U.S. economy to function with an unusually large portion of _white_ people being "middle class" (compared to Europe)... was all the African people who weren't. There's no reason to treat those 20% of people as not part of the U.S. economy, they were a _crucial_ part. If we were to look at what portion of the _entire_ population of the U.S. was "middle class", including those 20% enslaved people, for whatever definition of 'middle class', that'd be closer anyway. There's no reason to look at things without them though, as if they were just a footnote. 20% of the population!
• ryanmarsh 8y ago
  This is really great but unless it’s done on a curve people who’ve worked very hard for a long time to get to $14.95/hr will be getting fucked.
• Zarath 8y ago
  Awesome! I still hate Amazon but this is really nice to see.
• throwaway5752 8y ago
  This is a bit of a minor point, but is Sen. Sanders going to rename the bill from "Stop BEZOS Act" now?
  • DonHopkins 8y ago
    "Stopped BEZOS Act"
• ryanmarsh 8y ago
  As far as the HN crowd is concerned I’m so capitalist/conservative that people would probably call me alt-right, though I’m not. That said, I think this is incredible and I don’t understand the (non sequitur) arguments that $15/hr AS A FEDERAL MINIMUM WAGE would hurt businesses. As a capitalist the higher base wages are the less worried I have to be about a socialist uprising of legitimately poor oppressed people abused by a plutocracy. Besides, do we want to live in a nation where someone who works hard is still way below the poverty line? If businesses can’t compete at $15/hr wages perhaps that’s a sign they should have used automation a long time ago.
• tapatio 8y ago
  Now if only they'd shutdown WaPo.
• stevespang 8y ago
  Who is likely Amazon's largest competitor ? Is it Walmart who only agreed to raise minimum hourly for workers to $11 per hour previously ? The world is a giant poker game and everything Bezos does is carefully calculated. If he and his staff believe Amazon is or can be a more efficient workplace and can pressure his rivals (or Gov't intervention forces $15 per hour minimum) to equal his $15 an hour - - - - he can likely weaken their businesses who are not ready or perhaps cannot compete at $15 per hr. minimum.
• dreamache 8y ago
  Get ready for higher Amazon prices. Raising the minimum wage == raising prices, laying off employees, etc == hurts the poor the most.
• Simulacra 8y ago
  Well I don’t agree with unions politically, the threat of unionization does have a positive effect at times ...
  • behringer 8y ago
    You're against employees of a company banding together under the right of free speech and negotiating with a company as a group?
    • Overtonwindow 8y ago
      Woah check out that straw man argument! I think what OP was saying, which you may have missed, is that politically they don’t agree with unions. Neither do I. Unions appear to suppress wages, block people from jobs who are not members of the union, and engage in bullying tactics against those who don’t want to join. On top of the fact they take that money (util recently, forceably) taken from employees and used for political means which go beyond the purpose of the union! A lot of Amazon workers were threatening to unionize, so when I think the original post was saying is that the threat may have worked.
      • behringer 8y ago
        Strawman? I defined a union for you. And we don't know if the "threat" worked. Let's wait to see the full benefits package before we judge ;)
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• maym86 8y ago
  Jeff Bezos in the announcement. “We’re excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us" Is this an attempt to pressure its competition with less money in the bank to do the same, loby for a higher minimum wage and drive them out of business? Maybe it's a reaction to the union organizing taking place a whole foods and they think this will be cheaper in the long run. I don't buy the "automation is just around the corner so we can afford to raise wages for a smaller workforce" argument I've seen here because that remains the same even if they kept the wages at the same level. Happy with the result but I'm curious what the motives are. Bezos wouldn't do this unless he saw a benefit for the business or his hand was being forced somehow.
  • outside1234 8y ago
    He is going to lay off all of the employees through automation. You can have $150 an hour for warehouse employees as a minimum wage if there is only one of them.
    • maym86 8y ago
      Why would he bother raising wages then? No need for him to raise wages to do that. He isn't doing it for the sake of it. There is some other incentive involved. Automation happens either way and they have been gradually doing it for years without raising wages significantly.
      • tyingq 8y ago
        To stop a union from being formed. Unions often institute work rules that contractually forbid automation.
        • go_blue_13 8y ago
          Doesn't automation eliminate the need for negotiating with a union?
          • 8y ago
• daveheq 8y ago
  Finally, it only took news reports of the abuse workers take and the insane money Bezos makes to make this happen. I only wonder why the workers took such abuse... was it really better work than anything else around? Is the local economy around those places so bad that these jobs were highly desirable, or did the workers just not understand there were better things? With a minimum-wage increase comes a higher amount of spending by these workers since the lower the income the higher percentage of spending happens, so that's more money going into the economy and spurning growth and hopefully more competition, school/health/retirement spending, and job opportunities.
  • wutbrodo 8y ago
    > Finally, it only took news reports of the abuse workers take and the insane money Bezos makes to make this happen. A low wage and abuse on the job aren't the same thing. Hopefully they're addressing the abuse claims, but this is more or less irrelevant to those and the coverage they received.
• Scarbutt 8y ago
  What happens or what are they going to do with those that are already earning $15/h?
• drawkbox 8y ago
  Very smart. Amazon and Bezos is one of, if not the, best at reinvesting profits back into the company, mostly for research and development or new products. Increasing employees pay can also boost the machine and the product which many companies have forgotten, wage increases are pro-growth which increase consumer power. Many Amazon employees will probably buy more from Amazon and comparatively Amazon looks good to workers/customers/competitors which may end up in higher sales, all that can be reinvested back into the product. Amazon is hard to beat with product strategy.
  • prolikewh0a 8y ago
    I didn't hear anything about improving working conditions. The employees in Seattle making $15/hr already are still being treated like shit.
    • drawkbox 8y ago
      That isn't an Amazon specific thing though, it is an American workplace thing that is more like a dictatorship/feudal empire than anything with rights. In the US, we live in 'freedom' but then go work on a feudal/sharecropper mini states that act like fiefdoms for corporate overlords. Labor rights are not even along for the ride anymore, they got left at the station somewhere in the early 80s. Look at how companies even see raising wages when they know that is a critical part of growth and as American as apple pie, however wage increases have been efficiently metric optimized and worked out of the system. SCOTUS just recently agreed that forced arbitration is legal [1]. > In a 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court’s more conservative justices ruled that companies can use arbitration clauses to block employees from banding together in class action suits. Corporate overlords, who serve the next quarter earnings only, might even get non-competes to be valid with the way things are going, not looking good for labor. Amazon employees might be able to change conditions if they were weren't locked into forced arbitration. Raises are very American and needed in a consumer economy that requires growth and new demand, those are almost gone. Competition is very market friendly and American, non-competes are everywhere and are the most anti-American, anti-business and anti-competitive thing that currently exist, they only favor established and large corporations over investors, entrepreneurs and small/medium companies coming up. If arbitrators are allowed to determine non-competes validity, competition, entrepreneurship and innovation is over. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court-upholds-workplace-arbitration-contracts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/business/supreme-court-up...
• jxramos 8y ago
  I wonder what the actual cost to them was since a change in rate is only a hypothetical to some extent. You have to multiply the delta rate by the number of applicable individuals. What's the `n` for the number of employees who actually worked minimum wage for Amazon? Is it a vast amount of people?
  • HEmanZ 8y ago
    A quick search shows the average salary was $13/hr according to Glassdoor, with a range of $10/hr-$19/hr. That makes this on average a 15% pay raise, which isn’t something to scoff at, but isn’t as crazy as the pay raise of 7.50 - 15.00.
• chiefalchemist 8y ago
  This is: - 25% PR - 25% free advertising for their openings (i.e., Amazon pays well) - 25% necessity (we're at full-employment) - and 25% ROI (they've figured less turnover and better quality employees are worth the investment) The question is: how will this effect other companies in the markets where Amazon employs a measurable number of people.
  • AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > - 25% PR - 25% free advertising for their openings (i.e., Amazon pays well) - 25% necessity (we're at full-employment) -- and 25% ROI (they've figured less turnover and better quality employees are worth the investment) On the other hand, their stock is currently down by ~$30/share (~1.5%) following the announcement.
    • lhorie 8y ago
      So, time to buy?
      • apozem 8y ago
        You joke but probably yes. Amazon can afford to raise wages because it's still slowly strangling old-world retail and absorbing the business they used to do. The raises don't change that.
        • chiefalchemist 8y ago
          The wage increase also means more money to spend at...wait for it...Amazon. There's just no way this #15 p/o was pulled out of thin air. They have more data than God, as well as the tools and people to analyze it.
    • chiefalchemist 8y ago
      Despite all the bravado, Wall Street are a bunch of pussies. __Any__ change makes them nervous. They have a natural predisposition to over-react. Let's give it a couple days or a couple weeks. Once WS makes up and realizes their options are limited, that Amazon still have plenty of upside, the money will come crawling back, as its done before.
• kidsnow 8y ago
  I was driving past In-N-Out burger yesterday and they offer $16 an hour to start and then goes up to $18 an hour. No wonder the employees there are usually happy.
  • GaryNumanVevo 8y ago
    Branch Managers usually make 6 figures there too! Their food is also pretty good for the price.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
• myth_buster 8y ago
  @dang Looks like a bug [0]. The story has been on top of the page for a while now with over 500+ votes. I believe it got merged with a new story that messed up the vote count. 0: https://imgur.com/kYztZ9T https://imgur.com/kYztZ9T
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • dang 8y ago
    Not a bug, just a manual kludge I did in order to share some karma with the original submitter. The submission that was at #1 before that is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120667.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • deegles 8y ago
      Appreciate it!
• propman 8y ago
  Amazon says no more RSUs in exchange for $15 min wage, can anyone say how much the RSUs were for those employees? I’m curious as to what the difference is?
  • B-Con 8y ago
    Where did you see that? I doubt hourly warehouse workers are getting RSUs to begin with, that tends to be for salaried positions only.
    • phlowbieuq 8y ago
      From a former Amazon employee's blog: "New Amazon Tier One employees receive a small number of restricted stock units (RSUs) within the first month of hire. These shares are set to vest after two years of continuous service. For every year of continuous service, an employee receives another small number of shares of restricted stock, always vesting two years of service later. For example, I received four shares on 8/27/14 set to vest on 8/31/16. I received four more shares on 4/2/15 set to vest on 7/1/17. I received three shares on 4/7/16 set to vest on 6/16/18."
    • philsnow 8y ago
      from https://blog.aboutamazon.com/working-at-amazon/amazon-raises-minimum-wage-to-15-for-all-us-employees https://blog.aboutamazon.com/working-at-amazon/amazon-raises... : > Is anything changing with Amazon’s RSU program? > Yes, we’ve heard from our hourly fulfillment and customer service employees that they prefer the predictability and immediacy of cash to RSUs. We will be phasing out the RSU grant program for stock which would vest in 2020 and 2021 for this group of employees, replacing it with a direct stock purchase plan before the end of 2019. The net effect of this change and the new higher cash compensation is significantly more total compensation for employees, without any vesting requirements, and with more predictability. note, > significantly more total compensation for employees but is that at current AMZN prices or projected prices? Take a look at the chart for AMZN zoomed way out. All I see with this is they want to hold back those high-growth RSUs and they're paying out in cash to distract people from looking into whether this is actually a good deal, long-term.
• eecc 8y ago
  Anyone complaining that this will increase inflation or reduce their “advantage” (bastards), do bear in mind that this means several thousands will get off food stamps and thus reduce the burden on tax funded budgets. So there’s that
• senthilnayagam 8y ago
  Amazon acquired Kiva systems in 2012, now has over 15000 robots in its warehouses. these robot don’t need lighting or air conditioning, no unions , no overtime. Higher salary means quicker ROI. Smart Move. Amazon Rising minimum wages is a “amazing” choice. it’s competitors who use more employees in their store will go out of business soon. Also will be impacted are fast food restaurants chains and coffee and beverage retailers, who are barely surviving in current market.
  • krapp 8y ago
    >these robot don’t need lighting or air conditioning, no unions , no overtime. That's not entirely correct. They need air conditioning because the bins they carry around need to be climate controlled. And they need humans to pick things up from the floors when they fall out of the bins and sometimes drag the Kivas away manually when they malfunction. Automation is at the point now where it can put a lot of people out of work but it also creates its own class of expensive problems that still need human intervention.
• rajekas 8y ago
  Bezos was getting squeezed on both sides. Trump hates him and Bernie hates him. That's got to be unique in the annals of robber barronism. Today's announcement gives him an escape hatch from being a political lightning rod. He's no Elon. I am amazed the commentary across the web is about Amazon's reasoning and almost no coverage of the patient organizing done by the SEIU and countless others to make $15 the minimum wage. Then again, that silence is arguably a good thing, for it hides the fact that socialist ideas are increasingly mainstream in the heart of capital :)
• propman 8y ago
  Let’s say $11 was the previous avg wage for let’s say 300k employees (250k full and 100k part time avg). $4 increase is $8000 more a year. That’s $2.4B yearly transfer to workers which is honestly really really amazing, props to Bezos. $8000 means 15.3% in payroll taxes so this wage increase will result in $367.2M in additional payroll taxes. 12% federal income tax as well for that $8000 is $288M per year. So amazon is paying $655M more in taxes with a stroke of a pen and raising wages by $2.4B for those who make near minimum wage. In terms of taxes, this is equivalent to the US adding 48,000 high paying 50k a year jobs to the economy. Who says Amazon doesn’t pay taxes? It’s much better for the economy if companies higher more people than higher fewer and pay the equivalent in taxes. Great job Bezos and Amazon!
  • slivym 8y ago
    >Who says Amazon doesn’t pay taxes? Can we do away with this now please. Amazon paying the taxes it can't avoid doesn't act as an excuse for avoiding the taxes that they do avoid. In fact, excusing Amazon's tax avoidance with the income tax it's employees pay is even worse. It's still a problem. We still need to tackle it, and if this pay rise acts to dissuade people from real tax reform and real workers rights then forget the 2.4B this move is probably profitable for Amazon.
    • radicaldreamer 8y ago
      Jeff Bezos paying sales tax on his morning coffee is enough for the people looking for an extra dopamine hit by rah rahing Amazon. $15/hour still isn’t enough to live on in many cities and large scale tax evasion by corporations is one of the single most insidious epidemics in our society today.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      • pm90 8y ago
        I agree that corporations are evading taxes on a massive scale, but can we also applaud them for taking steps in the right direction when they do?
• ahmetyas01 8y ago
  I call this shut up money
• beders 8y ago
  What about benefits? Or is the taxpayer going to shoulder that bill? Like it does with Walmart workers?
• meuk 8y ago
  Is ~15 dollars an hour considered good? It seems pretty high from a European perspective. In my country, minimum wage is about 10 eur/hour, and 15 eur/hour is normal for a junior developer.
• danieltillett 8y ago
  Well the smart money sees massive inflation ahead. Combine a enormous deficit, a very tight labour market, rising tarrifs, and now large pay rises for workers, and we are in for a time of high inflation.
  • blazespin 8y ago
    Nah, amazon is planning on investing in robots.
    • danieltillett 8y ago
      You don’t see inflation coming? Even if Amazon plans to invest in robots the knock on effect up the wage ladder will still have a massive effect. You can’t just raise the minimum wage to $15 and leave the people previously on $15 on the same hourly rate.
• nimbius 8y ago
  This was a tactical move, i suspect. Restless employees at Wal-Mart type stores can generally get on with another nickel on their paycheck and an angry-dome presentation on how unions will destroy the world. Not so here. When your employees are filing for food stamps and urinating in plastic bottles, things are only a few war-boys away from Mad Max. No amount of safety meeting shilling is going to convince these people...many of whom source Amazon as the only major employer in the region...that a union is bad. Amazon likely raised wages to prevent the larger thread: mass unionization across its warehouses that could spread to managers, programmers, SRE teams, etc..
  • erikpukinskis 8y ago
    If conservatives want to use "get people off welfare by paying them more" as a political tactic: Great.
• test6554 8y ago
  So now that Amazon's worst employee gets $15 per hour, what happens to the salary of a more-skilled, more-motivated employee who busted their ass to get their salary up to $18 per hour when the minimum was under $8? Does it stay the same or increase proportionally? What happens to the prices at amazon.com? With a 3.8% profit margin, can they really eat this cost without consumers noticing, and if so, will they elect to?
  • dluan 8y ago
    Past economic studies have shown that by increasing the workers' wages, the company can also increase their own revenue and earnings, especially if the company is a sort of baseline goods provider like Amazon is.
• aymeric 8y ago
  So much cynicism in this thread.
• chapekaloco 8y ago
  I'm a front line warehouse associate that has been working in one of their facilities for over 3 years. There are parts to this puzzle that the media isn't focusing on and some insights I'd like to offer on their general pay philosophies. I'm not very smart but perhaps I at least have interesting perspective to offer. https://steemit.com/amazon/@chapekaloco/amazon-com-and-the-move-to-a-usd15-base-wage https://steemit.com/amazon/@chapekaloco/amazon-com-and-the-m... tl;dr, my overall compensation has declined slightly as a result of this change but there are a slew of benefits Amazon will reap from this
  • exotree 8y ago
    This is really good writing, and it is fascinating context. Do not sell yourself short. Thank you for your contribution to this thread.
    • chapekaloco 8y ago
      Thank you. Wish I wasn't late to the HN party. Replies are buried unless you're early to the show. Oh well.
• ggm 8y ago
  Forced to it, because of political downside risks. Forced to it, to try and undermine a widespread unionisation call. But.. I suspect in the end, Bezos cannot stop labour organising.
• myroon5 8y ago
  Interesting to note: "The U.S Bureau of the Census has the annual real median personal income at $31,099 in 2016." https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
• banku_brougham 8y ago
  The wealth of nations is not the accumulated gold in reserves. It is the vitality, health and industry of the people.
• mrhackerpoland 8y ago
  My friend who was goint to quit the warehouse job and become AI researcher is now not going to quit because the wage increased. So what's the net effect? A low income trap. If these people would be layed off instead and goveement offers a minimum wage + housing. They could as well be acquiring skills like programming, AI etc... And making millions. But Bezos will not let them be millionaires or billionaires.
• sg7 8y ago
  So if they work 8 hours a day, they earn 120$ a day. Is this pre tax in the US?
• ksec 8y ago
  Hopefully this will moves the bottom wages up, as well as putting pressure to up the Middle Class salaries. Next US has to figure out how to (much) lower Rent / property pricing.
• sungju1203 8y ago
  this is great. they now have more motivation to replace them with robots.
• manigandham 8y ago
  As usual, nothing is ever that simple. This is a direct assault on Walmart by getting the government to raise wages, which are not viable for retail heavy jobs that cannot be automated or streamlined like warehouses. It's good PR in the face of their recent news, and will definitely help people in the short-term, but it's also a very shrewd business move and may lead to externalities that cause more damage in the long-term.
• longerthoughts 8y ago
  Looks like this isn't great for all of their employees due to removal of existing perks: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-employees-say-will-make-less-raise-174028353.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-employees-say-will-mak...
• e12e 8y ago
  The article states the minimum will apply to seasonal and part time employees - but AFAIK Amazon employs a lot of people on so called 1099 contracts - the nyt coverage seems to imply those will be unaffected: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/business/amazon-minimum-wage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/business/amazon-minimum-w... Only example I've on hand is this ft article from 2013: https://www.ft.com/content/ed6a985c-70bd-11e2-85d0-00144feab49a https://www.ft.com/content/ed6a985c-70bd-11e2-85d0-00144feab... "A global employment agency called Randstad, which had handled the recruitment process for Amazon, was also to arrange his shifts, manage him on the warehouse floor and pay him his near-minimum wage. After three months, if he had performed well, he could apply to be an Amazon employee, though there was no guarantee he would succeed." Still, I seem to recall reading about extensive use of similar contracts at Amazon, more recently too.