[hpoe]

Can I just point out that I think the "horrible working conditions" things is a little played up.

You want to know terrible working conditions dancing with a sign for 5 hours a day in the sun when it's 90+. I did that for 3 years and was happy to do the job, mind you this was only 10 years ago so it isn't forever. I made 7.50 an hour. I would've killed to get a job at amazon back then.

People are getting payed $16 that is incredible for an unskilled labor position.

[arichard123]

> People are getting payed $16 that is incredible for an unskilled labor position.

That's one view, but it's only informed by "the way things are". Another view is based on the way things should be, that no one should have to work for less than the wage it takes to live a reasonable life. https://livingwage.mit.edu/ offers values for this.

I don't see why someone should work full time and still end up poor.

[clarky07]

>I don't see why someone should work full time and still end up poor.

no offense, but this assumes too much about a person. you could make minimum wage $100 an hour, and there will still be poor people because some people make bad decisions. (not even taking into account that that would cause massive inflation etc). just giving a person $100 an hour doesn't guarantee they won't end up poor, as evidence by all the professional athletes that made millions and ended up bankrupt

another note, your link above gives massively different outcomes based on life situations (1 adult, 2 adult, 0-3+ kids etc). Do we need to make minimum wage such that it works for 1 adult with 5 kids who somehow got there with no skills whatsoever such that they are still working for minimum wage? Some people make poor choices in life, and we can't just raise minimum wage to a point that makes up for that. It's simply not possible.

Now, we can talk about other safety nets, such as a universal basic income, and universal healthcare, etc which I'm 100% for. The gov't should help these people, they shouldn't force small businesses to pay people more than the value they bring to the business. This is just picking winners, amazon will get bigger, and small businesses will get killed. Let the free market decide how much people are worth in the market to a business, and let gov't help keep people out of poverty.

[hollandheese]

If a business can’t afford to pay its workers a living wage it can’t afford to exist.

Why should the government have to bail out business that can’t afford to operate?

[clarky07]

they can afford to operate. workers have agreed to do the job for the price set today. you want to raise that number arbitrarily, which they can't afford.

[trefoiled]

This thread is very specifically about how Amazon workers have agreed to do the job for a certain price, and how Amazon is trying to stop that process from proceeding. Even by your own perception of the situation, Amazon is in the wrong.

[hollandheese]

People being able to feed and house themselves and their children is arbitrary?

That “agreement” to work for the current price is compelled by the threat of hunger and homelessness. It is not a fair and free agreement when one party has all of the power.

The very very very very least a company could do is pay all of their workers a living wage.

[rufus_foreman]

32K a year is poor?

World average is 18K, that's adjusted for purchasing power parity. 32K is at least 2nd quintile, maybe top. Poland is a little less than 32K average, Japan is around 38K, OECD data from 2019. Somewhere between Japan and Poland is where the average worker starts to be poor. Interesting.

And that is at the present time, every generation going back to the invention of agriculture had it worse. Someone making 32K a year - PPP adjusted - is in what, the top few percent of all humans that have ever lived? Poor bastard. Learn to code.

In the same way that if everything is about politics, nothing is about politics, if everyone is poor, no one is poor. And if these people aren't making a living wage while making what the top few percent of humans have ever made, how did our ancestors manage to live and have children on a sub-living wage? Shouldn't they have died out?

I think in this case, "living wage" is just a propaganda term. "Poor" is too I guess. I guess maybe that propaganda term works on people, "living wage". It seems to be effective propaganda, seems to be working. I just cringe every time I read it. Adjusted for inflation, I made $7 an hour working in a factory. Decades later you're going to tell me that isn't a living wage, more than twice what I made back then wasn't a living wage? Was I lucky to survive?

That's bullshit by the technical definition of bullshit, and its propaganda.

Anyway, these arguments usually split people into two camps, people who worked warehouse or factory jobs before, and people who haven't.

[malandrew]

> I don't see why someone should work full time and still end up poor.

Then focus on the right problem which is cost of living.

Focusing on salary doesn't fix the problem when you have markets that are heavily housing constrained and massive government meddling in education and healthcare that drive up the cost of both well in excess of inflation.

Increasing wages without addressing housing shortages, just puts more money in the pockets of landlords as those higher wages drive up rents.

Whether someone gets $1 or $2 matters not if you can buy the same amount of stuff with it.

In the overwhelming majority places in the country $16/hour is decent amount that goes a long way. That's over $40k at 50 hours a week. That's enough to live on your own in most places. If you have roommates, it goes even further.

The problem isn't the $16. It's the circumstances in very very few geographic markets where $16/hour isn't enough because cost of living is out of control in those few markets.

[jmnicolas]

I worked in a factory building car bumpers. The work was so alienating that one day I "woke up" in the factory with literally no recollection of the last 2 hours. From all I knew I could have been taken by ETs but since my bumper quota was good I guess I just zoned out and became a bot.

And I still call Amazon "horrible working conditions".

The fact that it is better than being poor isn't saying much.

[eropple]

$16 per hour, at 2000 hours a year, is $32,000. The poverty line in the United States is around $26,000. "Slightly above poverty wages" is still pretty dang poor.

(And to forestall the inevitable adjustment of one's pince-nez to well-actually: that it'd be median or even above-median wages somewhere else does not mean that it is not poor in America, nor that the two situations can be reasonably compared.)

[pyuser583]

The purpose of the poverty line isn’t to demarcate who is poor and who is not.

It’s purpose is to establish a level at which poverty is 100% ensured.

Being below the poverty line means you are certainly poor. Being slightly above the poverty line means you are very probably poor.

[djsumdog]

My first job in IT was back in 2005 and I was only making $25k/yr ($30k by the end). That did grow to the point where I can make six figures now though. But it took a lot of experience building.

What tracks are available for Amazon warehouse workers who want to move up?

[harlanji]

I’ve been living in my car in SF for about 915 days, on less than $18k/yr take home. I’m so poor that I can barely get hired to a minimum wage job (“but you have a car,” “but you have an iPhone”). Everything I have is left over from a time when I made $200k/yr as a software engineer, and thankfully I’ve been given a lot of benefit of the doubt given my upstanding ways. (I was slandered, so people I meet see a good guy but when I interview they’re told of a violent bigot during the reference check, false).

I’m working on a book, or books, on the subject. It seems surprising to people that something happens called poverty with less than a certain level of income, that makes things get extremely hard and require great care to recover from. I was on track to get off the street and nearly did last year but faced a setback, and the pandemic threw a big wrench in my system this year (which is adapting, harder mode). My working budget has been $55/day or $375/wk or $18k/yr.

[djsumdog]

I went to your blog and listened to your post on "Interviewing Without Resources" and it feels like a non sequitur.

It felt like you see yourself as a victim. I've been out of work before, but I never saw myself as a victim or powerless. I knew what I was worth and yes, it does take a lot of work, but I found work based on my own skills and merits.

America is increasingly growing into a nation where we cloth ourselves in victimhood as virtue. We are literally in a space where no-body is in the office today. You could pick up a $130 ~ $160k job anywhere and move out to a suburb in Texas. All you need is half-decent Internet, and you'd basically be living as if you were making the $200k you had in The Valley.

Stand up for yourself. If you only see yourself as a victim, that is all you will ever be.

[heavyset_go]

> America is increasingly growing into a nation where we cloth ourselves in victimhood as virtue. We are literally in a space where no-body is in the office today. You could pick up a $130 ~ $160k job anywhere and move out to a suburb in Texas. All you need is half-decent Internet, and you'd basically be living as if you were making the $200k you had in The Valley.

You're talking to someone who is homeless, who probably hasn't been able to bathe in a while given the pandemic, and who is probably wearing clothes that they've slept in for several years now.

Yes, there are employers that will hire people literally off the street, but they aren't hiring for $130-$160k IT jobs, they're hiring for manual labor jobs without benefits that are probably off the books and can't offer steady hours.

[TurkishPoptart]

You've been slandered by whom?

[badRNG]

"You are unreasonable for calling out a bad thing, since I can conceive of an even worse thing."

[cle]

It’s not unrelated, when talking about pay and working conditions it’s all relative to the rest of the economy and sits in that context, pointing out other parts of that context is perfectly relevant (though it obviously can’t paint a complete picture).

We should of course be mindful of whataboutism when discussing these things but I think it’s a good idea to consider the economic and social context when talking about these issues, they don’t exist in a vacuum.

[badRNG]

The discussion is about Amazon hiring Pinkerton operatives to spy on employees suspected of organizing even when they are off work. This was an interview with the journalist who broke the story as a continuation. [1]

Deflecting criticism with "some workers have even more upsetting conditions than these" doesn't help either party, moreover it actually shuts down an important discussion relevant to both. We shouldn't tolerate any business crushing dissent the way Amazon does; that's what is being discussed here.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dp3yn/amazon-leaked-reports...

[cle]

I'm not talking about deflecting the conversation or shutting down discussions, nor am I even taking a side here (personally I don't have enough information about this topic to have an opinion). I just don't agree with pretending like the relationship between employers and employees exists in an isolated cultural/economic bubble. There are many ways it can inform what actions we should take--at the very least it lets us know if this is a systemic problem or an isolated one, which alone could dramatically change what course of action to take.

[hpoe]

My point is that if we are interested in helping people in geniuly terrible working conditions there are plenty of people who have it far worse than those at Amazon and those should be the focus of these efforts and outrage rather than people making $16 an hour in moderately decent conditions.

[badRNG]

People can care about multiple issues at the same time.

This discussion isn't explicitly about the working conditions of Amazon, it is about the highly unethical methods they use to crush dissent and workers organizing, namely the leaked documents that detail actions including the spying on workers suspected of organizing even outside of work by the Pinkertons.

This isn't the 19th century, this deeply upsetting and unconscionable behavior should not be tolerated in the 21st century.

[boomboomsubban]

How about we let those Amazon workers help themselves and form a union?

[natpalmer1776]

It is incredibly played up.

10 years ago, warehouse conditions were the same or worse as they are now except you would be lucky to get $16/hr without a forklift operator certification or some other credential that made it more than just 'unskilled labor'

[mrguyorama]

And ~160 years ago we had literal slavery, doesn't mean that people's working conditions currently are good, just because others were bad or even are still currently bad

[macintux]

> You want to know terrible working conditions dancing with a sign for 5 hours a day in the sun when it's 90+.

While dancing with a sign in the sun does lead to heat exhaustion risks, it's unlikely to lead to permanent disability, which seems like the inevitable outcome of working at an Amazon warehouse for too long.

[dogecoinbase]

https://www.wweek.com/news/business/2020/12/02/workers-riski...

> On June 10, the Oregon Health Authority announced a COVID-19 outbreak at Amazon's Troutdale warehouse that has now lasted 25 weeks and infected 97 people with the virus, making it one of the largest workplace outbreaks in Oregon.