[ITB]

I don’t understand why all these comments are about who buys or doesn’t buy at Amazon. The article is about unionization and strikes. I expect a conversation about the merits of unions and their negotiation tactics. In my opinion, events like these will just accelerate job elimination. The goal of a logistics company is to be reliable. Humans are unreliable and more so when they are purposely and collectively unreliable. I’ve lived in a country with very powerful unions and it sucks— miss every 5th flight because the union decides to strike.

[benterix]

> I don’t understand why all these comments are about who buys or doesn’t buy at Amazon.

The logical connection is as follows: Bezos decided to optimize everything to its limits, including human behavior, to the very limits of law. To literally track every movement of employees and abusing the power the company holds over them. This is an ongoing process that we are all painfully aware of. Because of that, there is a growing negative feeling towards them that causes people not to give them their money. That's why instead of unions we are talking about boycotting Amazon.

[yoyohello13]

> I’ve lived in a country with very powerful unions and it sucks— miss every 5th flight because the union decides to strike.

I'm willing to accept inconvenience if it means strong workers' rights.

[Fin_Code]

Keep saying that when a vacation get ruined because your connections got messed up and your out thousands of dollars.

[willismichael]

Many of the folks in the unions can't even dream of spending thousands of dollars on a vacation.

[yoyohello13]

Poor guy. I'll be sure to let them know their selfish need for fair wages is affecting rich peoples vacations.

[maccard]

Where are you based?

> Keep saying that when a vacation get ruined because your connections got messed up and your out thousands of dollars.

Travel Insurance?

[ITB]

No longer there, but Argentina. The current government is squashing that fortunately.

[ternnoburn]

Because people want to feel connected, and recognize that Amazon is an unethical entity.

If you read about Amazon mistreating workers to the point that they strike, you can feel good by saying, "I won't support that company!"

The general term is "solidarity", and it's a mix of empathy and action and encouragement for others to do the same.

[vel0city]

> In my opinion, events like these will just accelerate job elimination

Sure, probably. The jobs that can be automated will eventually be automated. But while they're still needed, I'd hope they have some basic protections and decent wages.

If my online shopping costs go up 0.5% but now a thousand workers don't have to have the mental stress of "I really need a pee break, can my metrics take the few minute hit this week or will I lose my job and go homeless?", I'll take that trade in a heartbeat.

[nickff]

Most companies’ largest expense is labor/wages (usually somewhere on the order of 25-50%), and profit margins are usually on the order of 0-5%. Increasing pay or benefits substantially would increase costs by a lot more than 0.5%.

[vel0city]

Sure, 0.5% is hyperbole on my part. Sorry. It's not like a 20% bump in costs for these workers would result in a 20% bump in prices or anything like that.

Their margin on that retail item is probably 30-40% of the cost of that product though. Let's assume the workers' benefits and wages in question here are 35% of Amazon's costs. If there was a 20% increase of that labor cost, that's going from 35% to 42% of the total share of costs, or an increase of 7% of the total costs. But that's 7% of the 30-40% of their markup. For a product with a 40% markup and they were to just pass that entire cost along to the consumer, it's a 1.6% increase in price.

So like in this hypothetical, which is not anywhere near real numbers for Amazon, we could give these workers a 20% benefit bump for increasing prices 1.6%.

[nickff]

I don't understand how you got down from 7% down to 1.6%. I think you are not counting COGS as an expense, and that's where the error comes from. If your assumptions are otherwise correct, I think you'd get roughly a 7% increase in prices to sustain the 20% bump in wage expense.

[vel0city]

I am including COGS in this; that's the retail price minus the markup. The markup is all the rest of Amazon's costs, of which I agree wages for workers are probably somewhere around 30%ish.

Are you suggesting the warehouse worker's benefits and pay is really 25-50%+ of the final purchase price of the good?? That'd be an extraordinarily high amount of cost.

[nickff]

Yes, though I am including delivery and support staff with warehouse workers (basically everyone who is working 'on the floor'). More than half of their employees are categorized as "laborers and helpers", and there are a number of other categories that seem similar. https://assets.aboutamazon.com/64/79/d3746ef14fd99cc6be94532... (I only found this after your latest comment).

The largest categories of employees tend to dominate most companies' cost structures. I would like to run some numbers to see what the likely distribution is here, but the annual filings are quite sparse (in terms of income statement details), and I don't have the time to do an extensive analysis.

[hirako2000]

unions and strikes are not illegal.

The merits of unions, not always but their goals are, multiple. a/ compensation and working conditions leverage in negotiations b/ structure that can directly address all sort of issues the employer don't care about and isn't obliged to deal with.

That it makes your service experience particularly painful is exactly the goal, bad (or better, no) customers experience hurts the employer, guaranteed.

Disclosure: raised in France.

[ITB]

But it’s also not illegal to get fed up and go above and beyond to automate everyone.

[hirako2000]

Was responding to the sufferings of travelers who disliked the strikes.

Unions are at war using any effective and legal weapons they can find. The same stands for "the capital".