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Some comments here really had me scratching my head. Remember, it's not just engineers, code monkeys and managers at Amazon. The majority of their employees a

• rochester46 7y ago
  Canadian minimum wage is relatively high (and your statement is only true for Ontario, btw. In other parts of Canada, Amazon warehouse worker minimum pay is 150% minimum wage). When viewed through the lens of the reality that is the American workforce, things look very differently. In the US, Amazon warehouse workers make more than double the federal minimum wage. They make, at minimum, more than double the wage of an average McDonalds worker. They make more than Starbucks store workers, more than most construction workers. Even in Canada, Amazon warehouse workers make more than your average Tim Hortons worker. Warehouse workers also get the same health insurance that Amazon SWEs get, which is better health insurance by far than even most white-collar American workers have. >The majority of their employees are unskilled labour. Unskilled laborers getting double minimum wage and great benefits seems to me to be a good thing for society. It baffles me that people are trying to decry this.
  • retrac 7y ago
    If that's the case and they're making ~$21 CAD an hour, then Amazon's American warehouse workers are paid considerably more than they are in Canada despite the US having a lower cost of living. At least in my local context, their behaviour doesn't seem to be something worth lauding. It's just another grueling underpaid warehouse job. With a union-busting employer.
    • forgotmylogin2 7y ago
      Then quit and find a job with better pay. My guess is most of them can't because they're already getting the market rate for unskilled labor.
      • klyrs 7y ago
        Right. Quitting to find a "better job" means swirling around the bottom of the puddle. Standing up and bargaining for better working conditions at your place of work has historically been shown to be more effective. Labor movements brought us modern luxuries such as the weekend, the end of child labor, etc. Folks didn't make that happen by quitting and finding a better job.
    • blaser-waffle 7y ago
      The US as a whole has a lower cost of living. If you're near any real population center that's just not the case. Twice minimum wage goes pretty far in rural Kentucky, but that ain't gettin you much in Nashville, and gets you fuck-all around DC. The COL is higher in Canada, but at least they have healthcare and worker protections. I'd rather be a Starbucks barista or Amazon warehouse worker in the CAN than anywhere in the US.
  • zrail 7y ago
    In the US do you know how many Amazon warehouse workers are employed by Amazon directly vs 3rd party contractors? Do your statements hold for those contractors?
    • nickff 7y ago
      If you disbelieve a plausible comment, there is some onus on you to disprove them. Please do your own search, and post your own citations. These 'citation needed' comments add no value.
  • claudeganon 7y ago
    That’s because they’re not decrying the wages or health benefits, but the overall treatment and union-busting. You can have good wages and benefits for this kind of labor without firing organizers, plotting to smear them as “inarticulate” in the press, and exposing workers to undue injury and disease.
    • rochester46 7y ago
      >That’s because they’re not decrying the wages or health benefits Speak for yourself. The vast majority of complaints about Amazon on this forum are explicitly referencing pay.
      • claudeganon 7y ago
        The top-voted comment on your thread suggests otherwise. I think the workers should be receiving more in hazard pay, but this whole round of controversy was sparked by their firing warehouse workers organizing for better safety, not pay. Where do you work, BTW? Your account is about a month old and only seems to comment on stories about Amazon.
        • rochester46 7y ago
          The "top-voted comment" anywhere has no bearing on what is or is not the majority argument.
          • claudeganon 7y ago
            You made an explicit appeal to the majority of arguments on this forum as referencing pay, I provided a specific counterexample, and you rebutted with more vagaries.
            • rochester46 7y ago
              You did not provide a specific counterexample. A reference to a sole example says nothing about the majority of arguments. That is not how majorities work. Your original reply to my comment was an overgeneralization, and used that overgeneralization to attack a point that I never made. I'm not engaging in your argument because it was made in bad faith to begin with.
  • danaris 7y ago
    The pay being high is good. It's not a good enough reason to not form a union. Pay is only one piece of worker treatment, and when you're talking about hard manual labour, it's really not the most important piece—workplace health & safety is. Doesn't matter how much you were paid while you worked there if you get killed or crippled because the employer skimped on safety, either in equipment or in allowing you to take your time on dangerous tasks.
    • rochester46 7y ago
      I fully agree with your comment. I see no reason why these workers shouldn't be unionized. In my comment, I am addressing the pay and benefits argument that is being brought up by many HNers, because your statement "The pay being high is good" is a very rare statement on this website in regards to Amazon. And I am also not wholly convinced that a lot of people aren't conflating the two (I see a lot of arguments that these workers need unionization because they are paid 'poorly').
      • Frondo 7y ago
        Yes, agreed 100%. Pay is one of the many things collective bargaining is good for addressing. Workplace safety is another. Greater autonomy is another; maybe these people want a 45 minute lunch break? Who knows? (Well, the workers know what they want...) Another thing I've seen a lot, can't remember off the top of my head if this applied to Amazon too, is doing mandated security searches off the clock when people leave the job site. Imagine you're off at 5, but you don't get to leave til 5:30 because you're in a big line waiting to have your bag checked when you leave. Why should you be obligated to give the company that time? If they wanted, they could crunch the numbers and figure out what would cost them less, employee theft or paying for security checks, but they don't, because they can steal the worker's time at no cost to them. (And I guarantee you the security guards are being paid for that security check time, it's just the rank and file who aren't.) Germany's got another thing I'd like to see here in the states, where the unions have a seat on the board and play a role in higher-level decisions as well. This is something I'd like to see even for high-paid tech workers, especially for morally questionable things like taking contracts with ICE -- there's been walkouts and worker organizing over companies taking contracts with ICE, but better still would be if the workers had a formal lever of power (in the form of a union) to stop that before it started.
  • dashundchen 7y ago
    > In the US, Amazon warehouse workers make more than double the federal minimum wage. And that US federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, $15,080 for a years worth of work. That is not a livable wage in almost any area of the country, especially the population centers the Amazon warehouses are located in. In that sense $15 an hour is nothing to be proud of, from one of the largest and most successful companies in the country, run by one of the wealthiest people in the world. I also would be shocked if your average construction worker or Starbucks is getting federal minimum wage, I have a feeling they are closer to $15 than you would think. One question, do you work for Amazon? Your history consists solely of comments defending Amazon and their labor relations. If you do, it would be nice of you to disclose that before posting about your company.
    • rochester46 7y ago
      >And that US federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, $15,080 for a years worth of work. That is not a livable wage in almost any area of the country, especially the population centers the Amazon warehouses are located in. And that's why it's great to hear that Amazon pays more than double that minimum wage, as I noted. >In that sense $15 an hour is nothing to be proud of I don't see how it's not. $17/hr is an incredibly high wage for the target audience of these jobs. $17/hr may be pennies for SWEs on HNs who think that anything under $100k/yr is oppression, but $17/hr for someone who was previously homeless, or a 16 year old getting their first job, or someone just looking for some extra cash part time during the holidays, is an amazing wage. Amazon warehouse work is an amazing stepping stone for people that have no previous work experience or skills, for them to get a wage and benefits way above average. Indeed, Amazon even offers to pay for 95% of tuition costs for warehouse workers that want to get an associates degree, so that the warehouse work truly can be a stepping stone. The fact that people far beyond their "entry level" stage of their career are stuck working in an Amazon warehouse seems like a problem with society, not Amazon, and there's only so much that Amazon can do there. >I also would be shocked if your average construction worker or Starbucks is getting federal minimum wage, I have a feeling they are closer to $15 than you would think. I didn't say they are getting federal minimum wage. And yet a quick Google will show you that Amazon warehouse workers get paid more than these workers. >One question, do you work for Amazon? Your history consists solely of comments defending Amazon and their labor relations. If you do, it would be nice of you to disclose that before posting about your company. No. My comment history is such because I use a special account specifically for posting about Amazon, because unfortunately this website has become very vitriolic as of late and I doubt some of the posters here would hesitate to try and ruin my life if I attached my main account and real name to statements defending "the evilest company in the world".
  • mikestew 7y ago
    In the US, Amazon warehouse workers make more than double the federal minimum wage. And what does minimum wage represent? A livable wage? An inflation-adjusted wage? Some random number that has no basis in real-life living and expenses? If you chose option C, congratulations, you probably won't be basing any arguments on a number that only represents (if it represents anything) the stinginess and or fossilization of American politics.
• partiallypro 7y ago
  I've heard good and bad things about the warehouse conditions. For many employees (from what I've heard) saying "low skill" is a severe under statement. I've heard from friends at a local Amazon warehouse of employees, for instance, using sex toys in the employee bathrooms (stolen from the carts.) Ex-cons starting fights on the floor, etc. Amazon is in turn has to be incredibly strict with its employees on the floor because of the type of people that it can attract. I know that sounds a bit heartless, but it is an unfortunate reality. That being said, if you can make it off of the floor from the "picker" role you are treated much better (from what I've heard,) because it shows you are competent. Almost anyone else on the floor could be fired and replaced within a day.
  • runawaybottle 7y ago
    You know there are subsets of tech that look at developers as a group that needs to be kept in line also. It’s a very bad way to look at people. Just think about you and your colleagues being seen with a very narrow dismissive lens.
    • partiallypro 7y ago
      I think that's an easy thing to say when you have never worked on a factory floor with unskilled labor with a lot of problems. So, I don't think that's an apt comparison. I have a friend that works for an automotive contractor and someone was beaten with a wrench and hospitalized over some minor very quibble. These things never make the news. You don't see that in development or many other jobs. I have worked on an unskilled factory floor for a short time and there were good people, but you do have to understand that the workers that these jobs attract are sometimes untrustworthy and it's a difficult task to figure out who is who when there is so much employee churn. It is terrible, but it's a reality that I think so many people are in denial about.
• Frost1x 7y ago
  >The majority of their employees are unskilled labour. I've never really liked "skilled" and "unskilled" label classifiers because it implies a relationship between compensation and skill. I'm aware you didn't say this but I see it far too often. I've seen a lot of fairly low compensated work that I know for a fact I can't do. We need to stop dehumanizing people with 'skilled' and 'unskilled' labor. A lot of it just depends on what people choose to do and what demands happen to arise.
  • ngngngng 7y ago
    It's useful. My first few jobs were unskilled labor. Janitorial, food service, department stores. Just getting the job done requires next to no training and certainly no prior experience. It's difficult to push for higher wages or better working conditions when your productivity after 5 years is only 5% more than someone that started a month ago, but that's reality for unskilled work.
  • kbenson 7y ago
    I think that may be a fair critique, as long as there's a better alternative to use. If the distinction is between someone that has done extensive training or preparation for a job, to the point that it requires months or years of experience doing that job or being trained specifically for it, and to a job that essentially anyone can do and they just need a day or so of on-the-job training (if that), what's the better terminology to use? I acknowledge there's a full spectrum between they points (e.g. painting, where anyone can do it, but professional painters have many skills developed over years to make them both more efficient and with a better outcome). Perhaps the problem with the label is that it's being attributed incorrectly? I don't think it's saying the person is unskilled in general, just that the person is unskilled in this job. There are plenty of instances where people that are skilled in one area but unable to find work in that area get a job in another area they are unskilled in to make ends meet, and I think those jobs are generally for unskilled labor. In those cases, they likely are unskilled in the job being done.
  • FireBeyond 7y ago
    Amazon also encourages some of this. Recent radio ads in this region include, as close to word for word as possible. "We are now hiring for X. [Insert some pay, benefit information here]. Apply online. No interview required. Start tomorrow/this week." At that point, you really are looking at 'unskilled' or at least 'not specifically skilled'.
• dang 7y ago
  > Some comments here really had me scratching my head You're probably running into the contrarian dynamic (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22contrarian%20dynamic%22%20objecti&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...): an initial wave of comments making objections, followed by a wave of objections to the objections, which the community then upvotes heavily. What determines the initial wave of comments is not community opinion—it's what's the easiest thing to make reflexive objections to.