Since Amazon easily hires and retains people at these wages, there very likely isn't anything wrong with these jobs. At least not compared to similar jobs for the same segment of the work force.
What I think is really going on here is that Amazon has a PR vulnerability that can be exploited. With enough videos and testimony produced contrasting the plight of the poor oppressed workers with their boss, The World's Richest Man, Amazon will need to do something to make this go away.
> Since Amazon easily hires and retains people at these wages, there very likely isn't anything wrong with these jobs. At least not compared to similar jobs for the same segment of the work force.
I agree that there are almost certainly many other examples of inhumane treatment of low-wage workers. We should fix those too. If low-wage workers had unions then you would be able to have those kinds of cross-industry group actions.
But no, the work conditions at Amazon are not acceptable. And to pretend that this a free market transaction -- and not a case of people who are desperate (and probably being forced to work several jobs and depend on government programs due to inhumanely low wages) being exploited.
They only just started paying $15/hour recently, after the whole STOP-BEZOS Act back-and-forth with Bernie Sanders[1]. You appear to be implying they paid a $15/hour minimum wage before October of last year (you can't be a leader in something if you only started doing it 9 months ago because of overwhelming public pressure by politicians) -- they didn't.
My point is that low-wage workers are usually not in a position to quit one of their multiple jobs because they might become homeless or lose their health insurance. In fact, Amazon having higher wages means that low-wage workers are more likely to continue working there despite the conditions, because they have nowhere else they could go. But instead of discussing the point I was making, you are cherry-picking one particular phrase I used -- which applies to almost all other low-wage jobs but no longer (as of Oct 2018) applies to Amazon.
But also, the working conditions are the thing that most people have issue with (now that Amazon finally pays its workers a minimum wage that is reasonable). Not being able to take bathroom breaks without risking the loss of your job is not a humane way to treat people, even if you're paid $15/hour.
The official US employment figures (U3) have very well known flaws when discussing the status of ordinary workers (they don't count people working part-time or casually that wish to work full-time, nor do they count people who have stopped looking for a job). U6 (which includes those factors and thus is a much better indicator of actual unemployment) is sitting around 8%.
More than 70% of Americans live pay-check to pay-check, and 40% cannot afford a $400 out-of-pocket emergency. The rate of people delinquent on their car loans (which is an economic indicator of how ordinary people finances are doing, since car loans are usually the most important credit people have to pay off) is increasing at an alarming rate. Economic problems for US workers didn't end in the 90s.
When you employ hundreds of thousands of people, it’s not hard to find hundreds who are incredibly unhappy. Sure, this only represents 0.1% of their workforce, but news agencies don’t care about that. People just want something to be angry about.
They’ll continue to ignore that $15/hour is within “living wage” for the low CoL areas that Amazon fulfillment warehouses are located in.
They aren't asking for a wage increase, they're asking for better working conditions -- this is explicitly talked about at length in TFA. Also, Amazon only started paying a minimum wage of $15/hour in Oct 2018 (9 months ago) -- in large part thanks to Bernie Sanders[1].
This reminds me of the Foxconn suicides. Lots of press made it sound like a major problem, but the actual rate was lower than both China and US averages.
The averages include non-functioning alcoholics, drug addicts, retirees with no money to live on, who don't want to be a burden on their children, chronic gamblers, people in serious debt, people who are terminally ill, people who are too depressed to hold down a job, veterans with PTSD...
In short, not the same demographics as people holding down 'decent' jobs for the area.
When you employ hundreds of thousands of people, it's not hard to use divide-and-conquer against them, to get them to act against their common interests.
Most of them are not in any position to push back on your demands, even if they'd all be better off from having the freedom to be able to step away from their 'highly important job' to have a piss in peace, without threat of termination.
What I think is really going on here is that Amazon has a PR vulnerability that can be exploited. With enough videos and testimony produced contrasting the plight of the poor oppressed workers with their boss, The World's Richest Man, Amazon will need to do something to make this go away.
Or at least that's what this campaign hopes.