[jlmorton]

> Amazon is running domestic sweatshops where they don't even provide basic PPE during a global pandemic

It doesn't help your argument to frame it in hyperbolic terms. Amazon pays a minimum wage of $15/hour, every warehouse is air conditioned, they now offer paid time off to every worker who works >20 hours a week, they have substantial career advancement training and education benefits, they have health benefits and matching 401k program, 20 weeks paid parental leave.

I mean, come on. There might be some legitimate problems, but when you call it a sweatshop, you've already lost the argument.

[me_me_me]

and they have employees pissing into bottles because toilet breaks are limited/timed/monitored.

I mean, come on. What would take for you to piss into bottle at your work instead of going to toilet.

[gamblor956]

Amazon pays very well for an entry-level job. Yes, work conditions suck compared to white-collar work. Many blue-collar jobs do, especially now that the 6-figure blue collar factory jobs have all but disappeared.

But that's the price you pay for a job that has no requirements beyond being able to use your hands.

[nabnob]

Who decides whether blue collar workers deserve bathroom breaks? Why do you treat the free market as the sole authority on what working conditions people "deserve"?

You're arguing that shaving off a couple minutes a day is worth the loss of human dignity that these workers experience.

[me_me_me]

That's the problem with economies at scale, a bathroom break for small store owner is not an issue. When you have 1000's of stores its a massive saving area, where its much easier to justify pissing bottles. Any small trivial thing at scale can cost or save huge amounts money.

And when we talk huge sums of money, morality often is tossed out of the window first.

[jlmorton]

You're suggesting that for a small business, because the value of five minutes of a single employee's time is trifling, the small business does not care to regulate bathroom breaks.

I don't really see it that way. In my view, small businesses abuse their employees just dramatically more than large businesses.

For a small business, a single employee may be the only person working the till. The employee simply won't be allowed to go to the bathroom at all except during designated times.

[zentiggr]

"Sire! The peasants are revolting!"

"Yeah, they're really disgusting on ice, aren't they?"

Amazon will keep exploiting everyone they can until they are sued and independently monitored into compliance. Go ahead and pretend all those benefits are the result of Amazon management realizing on their own that they can be good to their people. Every one is either settlements, PR dusting, or mandatory after being caught at prior abuses.

No respect for anyone at Amazon who drinks or spouts the company kool-aid.

[bbarn]

No other job paying as well as the one I had for the skills I had, and a bottle.

[stoops]

Who cares what one person out of 500,000 did one time in 2018?

[galkk]

>20 weeks paid parental leave

20 weeks maternity leave, and that for mothers who were with Amazon for > 1 year (I believe it was 4 week pre-delivery and 16 weeks after). For fathers it was 12 weeks, at least until last December.

[Mizza]

There's a pandemic and they're not giving masks and gloves to their workers, which has already caused a number of them to be hospitalized. That's why they're organizing.

Instead of giving them safety gear, they've fired the lead organizer.

They only reason they have any of the rights and conditions you described in the first place is because of organization and agitation, not their generosity.

The end result of letting authoritarian capitalism into the global marketplace can be seen in the conditions of Amazon warehouses in the United States. I'm certainly not the only person to say this, their own employees do as well. Hint - that's why they're organizing.[1]

BUT - more to the point - why post this? Are you an Amazon employee as well? If not - why? I just can't fathom in a situation like this why you'd feel the need to list - from memory? - all of the employee benefits that Amazon provides to its warehouse workers.

[1] https://nypost.com/2019/11/30/amazon-warehouses-are-cult-lik...

[ThrowawayR2]

> "they're not giving masks and gloves to their workers"

There aren't any masks and gloves available to anyone.

> "Are you an Amazon employee as well?"

Just a reminder that that sort of question violates the HN guidelines.

[luckylion]

> There aren't any masks and gloves available to anyone.

I mean, for N95, maybe. Surgical masks you can buy from China. On Amazon. They'll ship by air mail, but I'm sure Amazon could get them even quicker.