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>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

• 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.
  • rc_mob 8y ago
    This sounds like good problem to have. Companies can pick from a larger pool and find better workers.
    • kodablah 8y ago
      Well, I guess that's one way to put a positive spin on unemployment.
      • toomuchtodo 8y ago
        It's putting a positive spin on paying people a living wage. Unemployment goes up, support the unemployed with safety nets and raising taxes. The problem is not the cost; the money exists in the economic system, clearly. It's simply an allocation issue. But pessimists can keep carrying on with "the sky is falling" while progressive economic policies continue to march forward, bringing the US to parity with the living standards of other first world countries.
        • refurb 8y ago
          while progressive economic policies continue to march forward March forward? If anything there has been a dismantling of "progressive" economic policies over the last few decades. To the benefit of the economy.
          • toomuchtodo 8y ago
            You must admit, this is a significant win for Sanders (Disney first, now Amazon). I agree with you that progressive policies have been dismantled over the last few decades, but would argue that the electorate is engaged enough now to claw back those losses (majority of Americans support universal healthcare now, for example). My point was this is not the last win for Sanders and those who align with his progressive policies. Efforts will continue to drive up the minimum wage in all 50 states.
        • rc_bhg 8y ago
• ajross 8y ago
  > 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. That's deeply cynical. In the process, they're actually paying real people more money. Which is sort of critically important if you care about this issue and not just taking pot shots at Amazon on HN.
  • bostonscott 8y ago
    Exactly what Amazon did on "sales tax." Against it, until their growth created a nexus in most states and required it. Now they have been one of the most forceful lobbyists advocating for it. They call it, "Main Street Fairness."
  • mikeq101101 8y ago
    He's right though. It's a great thing they voluntarily decided to pay their workers more. Forcing others to do so by the state's monopoly on force is immoral.
  • Ericson2314 8y ago
    If you critically care about this issue, the extent of which this is labor-driven vs PR-driven is crucial to the war in which $15/hour is just the first battle.
    • austenallred 8y ago
      What do you mean by “labor-driven?”
      • jonwachob91 8y ago
        I'm assuming it relates to the tight labor market giving workers the power to choose where they work at (as opposed to "this is the only job offer I have")
        • prolikewh0a 8y ago
• pkulak 8y ago
  Wow, does the top comment always have to be cynical? This is exactly what everyone wanted Amazon to do. Maybe it's time to suck it up and give praise where praise is due? There are also benefits to paying more salary than your competitors (no hiring shortages, best employees, low turnover, etc), so I'm not going to blindly accept that it's now in Amazon's interest to drag the rest of the industry along with them. But even if I did, there's absolutely no guarantee that this kind of lobbying would ever work. And if it did, it could be decades from now, $0.50, or both. In the meantime, Amazon has already put their money where their lobby is.
  • wjnc 8y ago
    Well in this respect: Amazon chooses to link the two discussions themselves. They could have easily made their communication less open to an easy attack by pledging $15 an hour while lobbying silently, or at least communicating that on another moment. They could have noble intentions with both moves. I'd even expect them to have noble intentions since $15 seems an unreasonable large increase from $7.25. Why link to two discussions? It's an error of their communication department IMHO. You've got to think as the receiving party. The receiving parties of both messages are separate: communicate them separately.
    • YorkianTones 8y ago
      While it would be in Amazon's interest to get the federal minimum wage increased after setting their internal minimum wage at $15/hr, why is this negative? Aligning business interests with the public good is brilliant IMO and I strongly feel a $15 minimum wage, plus regular increases, is for the public good. Kudos to Amazon for making the wage increase and aligning their business interests and lobbying efforts to a federal wage increase.
    • IgorPartola 8y ago
      Wait, why is it bad that Amazon is lobbying for this? Would you say it was bad if, say, ACLU was lobbying for a $15 minimum wage? My guess is that from Amazon's point of view, they are winning political points by not just raising their own minimum wage to $15, they are also using their standing in the industry to increase quality of life for non-Amazon minimum wage workers. If they succeed, I am happy to grant them the credit they are due. If a big corporation doing the right thing results in more profits for them, I don't see that as grounds for criticism. Did we criticize Starbucks when they offered a competitive wage and free college education? Or any of the other companies that chose to pay above the minimum?
• dantheman 8y ago
  This is disastrous for low skilled workers. It removes the bottom rung of the economic ladder -- if you have no skills or little skills, the best way to develop skills is to be employed. If you don't provide more than 15$ per hour of value then you won't be able to get a job. This also helps create a moat around amazon - if they can get the costs of everyone to go up, when they unleash better picking/warehouse automation no one will be able to compete with them.
  • wlll 8y ago
    I don't think that's how employment pools work. Sure, there's an element of "this job is only worth $7.5/hour, so if we have to pay someone $15/hour we won't do it", but I'd suggest that those jobs are actually not that common. I'd instead suggest that most jobs need doing, and they will just cost more. Ditches still need digging, burgers still need flipping, and it will just cost a bit more now.
    • simula67 8y ago
      You don't need to speculate. There is a research that shows it does hurt lower skill workers : http://www.nber.org/papers/w12663.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w12663.pdf
      • wlll 8y ago
        That's an interesting read, in summary it seems that rises in the minimum wage have a small negative impact, mostly for low paid young people. That makes sense, there's going to be jobs that just aren't profitable when the wages go up. If I can make $4 on a box of shleem, and the kid who packs the shleem's wages go up $5 I have to pack the shleem myself, or stop selling it. One thing that the report mentioned, and is maybe a possible cause of this negative increase, was that kids will leave school sooner when the minimum wage is higher. Perhaps to counter the issue there could be some sort of means-tested grant system to help keep kids in school?
    • conanbatt 8y ago
      Lots of interesting things happen when you play with price. Sometimes its higher-paying workers that benefit the most: if you can handle data management manually at 7.5U$S you hire cheap labor. If it costs 15U$S you hire an engineer to make a permanent and scalable solution. I am not enamored by the concept of minimum wage, and to this day its a fight among economists.
• nostromo 8y ago
  I think this is a calculated move against Walmart. Amazon could easily survive in a $15 minimum wage environment, but it'd be a much larger blow to Walmart (which employs many times more low wage workers), which would have to increase prices or reduce profitability. "Your margin is my opportunity" - Jeff Bezos. This quote also works when thinking about raising your competitors' expenses.
• azernik 8y ago
  Which is how the system should work. Raising wages puts you at a cost disadvantage against competitors, but if all employers take collective action they only have to pay more for wages (rather than lose market share). That's why the early American robber barons lobbied for government regulation of child labor at times - they wanted to be able to abandon it without giving opponents an advantage.
  • conanbatt 8y ago
    But if it lowers unemployment because people that are worth less than 15U$S/hour cant get a job, you just created a poverty machine.
• loceng 8y ago
  The problem is that minimum wage shouldn't be the end of the conversation. With an increase with minimum wage, rent and other costs will go up to match whatever pressure people will as near as sustainable without collapse as possible (indirect costs going up of course), along with other for-profit layers providing for basic necessities also increasing their prices.
  • jyounker 8y ago
    People at the bottom of the wage scale getting a few bucks more an hour will not drive up costs. The additional demand is spread across categories of goods. You also assume that businesses are incapable of increasing production (or improving production efficiency) to handle moderate increases in demand.
    • loceng 8y ago
      Of course it does. It's known when there's more money made available (e.g. student loans) then cost goes up (e.g. education tuition).
• golergka 8y ago
  I'm confused, because it seems to me that your tone implies that it's something bad or unethical on their part. If I'm mistaken - I'm sorry that I've misunderstand you. But I do think that I'm not alone in this, and that a clarification for tone-defa people like me would be welcome. If I'm not mistaken, and you indeed imply this, can you elaborate further on why do you think so?
• Notorious_BLT 8y ago
  If Amazon should be paying $15/hour, why should other companies not also pay that much? They are literally doing exactly what was asked of them. Do you not want the same for employees of other companies? I can understand that its fair to be cynical of their motivations, but they are doing exactly what people have been demanding of them.
• stephengillie 8y ago
  Amazon knows most of that $15/hour will be paid into Amazon - regardless of employer - as they have 51% of American commerce. They're turning America into a huge company town.
  • bootlooped 8y ago
    I think that is a bit of an exaggeration. Housing, utilities, groceries, insurance, transportation, education; all major areas where Amazon has zero or negligible presence. eCommerce is not a major family budget item for most households.
  • sib 8y ago
    They don't have anywhere near close to 51% of American commerce. * Total US Retail sales in 2018: ~$5.4 Trillion * Amazon trailing 12 months revenue as of June 30, 2018: $208B. This is a little less than 4% (and that's assuming all Amazon revenue is US-based and retail sales, rather than AWS or other...) You may be thinking of share of growth of US eCommerce.
• fipple 8y ago
  Amazon is good at getting ahead of the political winds. They started collecting sales tax just before it would have become a legal requirement.
• nbardy 8y ago
  Raising the minimum wage to what they know they can afford looks more like an anti competitive manuever than a PR move. That would be a massive strain on most large retail chains.
• jinfiesto 8y ago
  It's to their advantage to do this on their clock, so I agree. If they push this through, they'll be much more prepared than any of their competitors.
• mfourcade 8y ago
  US ±100 years ago: "If we will not endure a king as a political power we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_antitrust_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_antit... ) Feels like AMZN is becoming a political power, a king of production, transporation and sale... Is it too big ? Any risk Trump answers with a New Deal à la Roosevelt ?
• adrianmonk 8y ago
  You seem to be saying that you think Amazon's lobbyists will advocate for Congress picking $15, though the article quoted them as saying they'd defer to Congress. Did you not get the same thing out of Amazon's words, or are you saying that they're not telling the truth and will push for $15 despite saying otherwise?