4 ms·

Amazon has a $15 minimum wage, right? Do other companies follow them? Clearly, it's fun to pick on Amazon and not as fun to pick on <insert company name you've

Amazon has a $15 minimum wage, right? Do other companies follow them? Clearly, it's fun to pick on Amazon and not as fun to pick on <insert company name you've never heard of here>.

refurb 6y ago
Amazon is a target for the same reason multinational corporations are targets for lawsuits - money. Amazon has lots of it and meat packing plants don't.
kerkeslager 6y ago
First, let's not pretend that Amazon is somehow doing a great thing by paying their workers $15/hour when Jeff Bezos is making almost $9,000,000/hour[1]. You're proposing that workers should be grateful that Amazon lets them eat their table scraps. Second, just because Amazon does one thing slightly better than its competitors, does not excuse them mistreating their workers in other ways. Third, you didn't address the point of my previous post, which is that other companies doing the wrong thing doesn't excuse Amazon doing the wrong thing. Fourth, before you continue your ad hominem attack where you accuse me of singling out Amazon unfairly because "it's fun", you should know that I've personally been involved in a (unsuccessful) political campaign to prevent a Walmart from being built in my early 20s, for similar reasons. This isn't me picking on poor little Amazon, it's a consistent stance on protecting worker rights against any employer, which I've held for decades. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/what-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-makes-every-day-hour-minute-2018-10?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/what-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-m...
- pb7 6y ago
  >when Jeff Bezos is making almost $9,000,000/hour[1] Please leave this type of intellectual dishonesty at the door. Hacker News is smarter than this. Jeff Bezos also loses $9,000,000/hour some months. He lost billions in minutes after the earnings report a few days ago. That's what happens when you have equity in something. He bore the risk when the company made nothing and was nothing and he continues to bear that risk and reap the rewards. Amazon is attacked because it's an easy target. Warehouses have abused workers long before Amazon and continue to do so while flying under the radar despite being significantly worse than Amazon. If someone is unemployed and another person is employed but wants to get a raise with a new job, you help the unemployed person first. Your argument amounts to "well, just because this person is employed doesn't mean they don't deserve a raise". Sure, you're technically correct, but the net result of your efforts is less than if you find a job for the second person first. It's why a lot of people not in the line of fire don't take these initiatives seriously. It's also why workers from other warehouses flock to Amazon by the 100,000s despite these alleged poor conditions.
  - ezrast 6y ago
    Bezos' current estimated net worth (143B, per Forbes) averaged over the entire 25-year history of Amazon still comes out to well over half a million an hour. Why quibble over a measly one or two orders of magnitude when the amount we're dealing with is so outsized? Also, in what sense does Bezos still bear any financial risk for anything at all? All of Amazon could crash and burn tomorrow and he'd still have enough tucked away under his mattress to last the rest of his life. A few billion at the margins either way is completely meaningless to him. Amazon is an "easy target" because it is incredibly powerful and pervasive. It's reasonable to hold powerful parties to a higher standard because they have more ability to enact both positive and negative change. And most labor activists want worker protections to be not just company policies, but laws, which would also affect all those under-the-radar companies.
    - pb7 6y ago
      >Why quibble over a measly one or two orders of magnitude when the amount we're dealing with is so outsized? I am not quibbling over the exact figure. I am quibbling over the fact that he only "makes" that much by having most of his eggs in the Amazon basket, the basket that he founded and therefore owns the majority. If Amazon had failed and gone bankrupt, say, 10 years in, should all of his employees at that point have paid back their wages from over the years? It's only fair since Bezos lost everything, right? Tell me, if Bezos liquidated all but the minimum amount of equity required to remain CEO, would you still hate him just as much? Who would you hold at fault then? Or is he just your punching bag regardless? >It's reasonable to hold powerful parties to a higher standard because they have more ability to enact both positive and negative change. It's more reasonable to hold everyone to the same standard. If not, then where is the line when you go from "anything goes" to "we expect better from you"? It's only reasonable to go after the biggest one because it has the most cash to bleed. That's not noble, that's just greedy. If you actually cared about the cause of helping people that are treated the worst, you would go after much smaller and dirtier entities. And if you want them to be laws, then why the protests against Amazon specifically? Go to your congresspeople that are supposed to represent your views and make them change the laws. Amazon has zero obligation to you but your representatives do and yet Amazon is at fault here? Maybe you should start wondering why politicians you keep voting for keep getting bought out by big money. For the record, I don't even like Bezos or Amazon.

Amazon has a $15 minimum wage, right? Do other companies follow them? Clearly, it's fun to pick on Amazon and not as fun to pick on <insert company name you've never heard of here>.

refurb 6y ago

Amazon is a target for the same reason multinational corporations are targets for lawsuits - money. Amazon has lots of it and meat packing plants don't.

kerkeslager 6y ago

First, let's not pretend that Amazon is somehow doing a great thing by paying their workers $15/hour when Jeff Bezos is making almost $9,000,000/hour[1]. You're proposing that workers should be grateful that Amazon lets them eat their table scraps. Second, just because Amazon does one thing slightly better than its competitors, does not excuse them mistreating their workers in other ways. Third, you didn't address the point of my previous post, which is that other companies doing the wrong thing doesn't excuse Amazon doing the wrong thing. Fourth, before you continue your ad hominem attack where you accuse me of singling out Amazon unfairly because "it's fun", you should know that I've personally been involved in a (unsuccessful) political campaign to prevent a Walmart from being built in my early 20s, for similar reasons. This isn't me picking on poor little Amazon, it's a consistent stance on protecting worker rights against any employer, which I've held for decades. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/what-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-makes-every-day-hour-minute-2018-10?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/what-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-m...

pb7 6y ago
>when Jeff Bezos is making almost $9,000,000/hour[1] Please leave this type of intellectual dishonesty at the door. Hacker News is smarter than this. Jeff Bezos also loses $9,000,000/hour some months. He lost billions in minutes after the earnings report a few days ago. That's what happens when you have equity in something. He bore the risk when the company made nothing and was nothing and he continues to bear that risk and reap the rewards. Amazon is attacked because it's an easy target. Warehouses have abused workers long before Amazon and continue to do so while flying under the radar despite being significantly worse than Amazon. If someone is unemployed and another person is employed but wants to get a raise with a new job, you help the unemployed person first. Your argument amounts to "well, just because this person is employed doesn't mean they don't deserve a raise". Sure, you're technically correct, but the net result of your efforts is less than if you find a job for the second person first. It's why a lot of people not in the line of fire don't take these initiatives seriously. It's also why workers from other warehouses flock to Amazon by the 100,000s despite these alleged poor conditions.
- ezrast 6y ago
  Bezos' current estimated net worth (143B, per Forbes) averaged over the entire 25-year history of Amazon still comes out to well over half a million an hour. Why quibble over a measly one or two orders of magnitude when the amount we're dealing with is so outsized? Also, in what sense does Bezos still bear any financial risk for anything at all? All of Amazon could crash and burn tomorrow and he'd still have enough tucked away under his mattress to last the rest of his life. A few billion at the margins either way is completely meaningless to him. Amazon is an "easy target" because it is incredibly powerful and pervasive. It's reasonable to hold powerful parties to a higher standard because they have more ability to enact both positive and negative change. And most labor activists want worker protections to be not just company policies, but laws, which would also affect all those under-the-radar companies.
  - pb7 6y ago
    >Why quibble over a measly one or two orders of magnitude when the amount we're dealing with is so outsized? I am not quibbling over the exact figure. I am quibbling over the fact that he only "makes" that much by having most of his eggs in the Amazon basket, the basket that he founded and therefore owns the majority. If Amazon had failed and gone bankrupt, say, 10 years in, should all of his employees at that point have paid back their wages from over the years? It's only fair since Bezos lost everything, right? Tell me, if Bezos liquidated all but the minimum amount of equity required to remain CEO, would you still hate him just as much? Who would you hold at fault then? Or is he just your punching bag regardless? >It's reasonable to hold powerful parties to a higher standard because they have more ability to enact both positive and negative change. It's more reasonable to hold everyone to the same standard. If not, then where is the line when you go from "anything goes" to "we expect better from you"? It's only reasonable to go after the biggest one because it has the most cash to bleed. That's not noble, that's just greedy. If you actually cared about the cause of helping people that are treated the worst, you would go after much smaller and dirtier entities. And if you want them to be laws, then why the protests against Amazon specifically? Go to your congresspeople that are supposed to represent your views and make them change the laws. Amazon has zero obligation to you but your representatives do and yet Amazon is at fault here? Maybe you should start wondering why politicians you keep voting for keep getting bought out by big money. For the record, I don't even like Bezos or Amazon.