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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 pres

• 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?
        • remontoire 8y ago
          Only if you can automate everything at once
        • chimeracoder 8y ago
          > Doesn't automation eliminate the need for negotiating with a union? Not if the union literally forbids you from introducing automation in the first place. This is how the Transit Workers Union prevents the MTA from using technology that's been standard across the industry for decades. An alternate strategy is to require the employer to pay the union when new technology is introduced. This drives up the cost of technology to the point where it costs more money than simply hiring the manual labor, thereby preserving the union jobs (at the cost of the taxpayers, in the case of the MTA).
          • throwawaymath 8y ago
            Could you share some reading material about your MTA example? I've never heard that before.
            • chimeracoder 8y ago
              > Trade unions, which have closely aligned themselves with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other politicians, have secured deals requiring underground construction work to be staffed by as many as four times more laborers than elsewhere in the world, documents show. > The critics pointed to several unusual provisions in the labor agreements. One part of Local 147’s deal entitles the union to $450,000 for each tunnel-boring machine used. That is to make up for job losses from “technological advancement,” even though the equipment has been standard for decades. ...and so forth. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
            • jrockway 8y ago
              The TL;DR is that the L (and soon 7) line is automated with something called "communication-based train control". They still have an operator and conductor on every train, even though the train is perfectly capable of driving itself and making station announcements itself. I think the MTA thought they could kill off the conductor's position when the trains were fully automated, because the operator could take on the conductor's role now that they don't have to actually operate the train. The union did not allow that. In the end, this is not really the MTA's biggest problem. CBTC was supposed to increase capacity on the L, but it didn't in reality because the MTA doesn't own enough rolling stock to actually offer that capacity, and the terminals on the L don't allow them to turn trains quickly enough to make the signalling system the bottleneck. (The 7 will be better, though, as at least the Hudson Yards terminal has tail tracks that allow the trains to enter the terminal at full speed. The same cannot be said of 8th Ave. on the L, where trains have to crawl into the terminal because the track ends a few feet after the end of the platform.)
      • maym86 8y ago
        This would be bargained between management and the union and is not automatic. Maybe it's a threat but not necessarily an issue Amazon would face even with the formation of a union if this is something Amazon really wanted to keep out of a contract. At the end of the day both the company and the workers/union have to agree on the terms and people may not be willing to strike over this single issue if the rest of the deal was good. There are plenty of other reasons for Amazon to want to prevent a union from forming including increased pay, benefits and time off but a union's ability to prevent automation may not be huge issue as Amazon is still growing and hiring workers faster than the jobs are being automated.
    • fnovd 8y ago
      He's making too much in nominal profit and needs to put money somewhere productive. Today, that place is his workers' wages.
    • colemickens 8y ago
      Uh, good publicity? A cheap way to wash off his name? (the attitudes I see about him in Seattle are surprising, even to me, even after being here a while). A great way to buy good publicity before steadily reducing your workforce through automation over the next decades as is surely the plan? Bezos has shown few, if any, signs of altruism and the one instance I can think of would be roughly the monetary equivalent of me giving a homeless person a penny.
    • thaumasiotes 8y ago
      http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2018/10/amazons-15-minimum-wage-proposal-is-a-brilliant-way-to-get-the-government-to-hammer-amazons-competition.html http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2018/10/amazons-15-min... Summary: the raise in Amazon's wages isn't just something that happened. It's part of a lobbying push for a higher legal minimum wage. Amazon's outsized profits-per-employee, compared to other retailers, mean that raising the minimum wage will hammer competitors.
• manfredo 8y ago
  Even if it is motivated by an attempt to gain competitive advantage, it's still a good thing. If the competition can't find labor at less than $15 an hour, then they'll either go out of business or start offering competitive pay. It's an example of capitalism working both for business and employees.
  • maym86 8y ago
    Agreed. Capitalizm works best when the incentives are not all in one direction. It appears in this case some other incentives are at play be they looking for good PR, the threat of workers organizing or government regulation. It helps when the workers have some leverage on their side.
  • philliphaydon 8y ago
    So once competition is gone what happens?
    • criddell 8y ago
      Regulate or break up the monopoly if they abuse their monopoly power.
      • philliphaydon 8y ago
        The monopoly exists because competition cannot begin because of minimum wage, so how is that an abuse of power? You couldn't argue that in court to regulate it.
        • criddell 8y ago
          Being a monopoly isn't the problem. It's when monopoly power is abused that the government steps in.
          • philliphaydon 8y ago
            So my original question was. Once the competition is gone... what happens? This a government regulation problem not a monopoly problem.
• khawkins 8y ago
  "Bezos wouldn't do this unless he saw a benefit for the business or his hand was being forced somehow." I don't like this type of knee-jerk suspicion towards people running corporations. Don't forget that they have conscience too, and can make decisions for the better or for the worse. In fact, by not giving credit where credit is due, you disincentivize them from trying to do good things. Yes, business people need to make hard decisions to stay competitive, and yes, they have an obligation to their investors to make a profit. But these investors are people as well and might be proud of owning the stock if the company makes positive decisions. Further, if there's a certain amount of leeway that is afforded a very successful company to do something like this, but still stay competitive, then capitalism doesn't force that person's hand. I'm sure the full fallout of such a policy has been considered and it wasn't made impulsively. But immediately dismissing altruism as a partial motive is unfair and sets a bad precedent.
  • maym86 8y ago
    I don't think it's a "knee-jerk" suspicion. It's from experience and knowledge that companies don't generally behave altruistically. Amazon historically has not acted altruistically. There is a considered business reason for this and I was trying to understand it. Suggesting that they likely have a strategic reason is in no way "knee-jerk".
  • taysic 8y ago
    We've seen that its easier to act altruistically once you're a billionaire. I think there can be an element of that - but why lobby to force other companies to do the same?
    • catach 8y ago
      If you think that conditions in your group would be substantially better off if everyone in the group did a certain thing, you're likely to both do that thing and advocate that others in your group do that thing.
• dayaz36 8y ago
  Pretty sure it was in response to Bernie Sander's BEZOS bill
• matchagaucho 8y ago
  Totally a response to Bernie Sanders campaign against Amazon, and impending unionization.