As others have mentioned these workers have so little leverage right now because of the massive unemployment. So even if Amazon was to charge customers more, they could totally just pocket the money and the warehouse/delivery/grocery people would have no position.
It's so completely unfair. Everyone risking their lives to feed us right now should probably be making 2-3x normal pay (and we should be paying a lot more for their services).
Amazon should do what's good for the most amount of people which is keeping prices down. There are plenty of people willing to take these jobs, we have record unemployment. Raising wage 2-3x the normal pay is unfair given how many people would take these jobs today.
I think it's way to easy for us with nice paying jobs, and secure employment to say that we'd pay more for goods and services. There are so many unemployed people that aren't going to be doing good in a month. These people will want any job and will need cheap goods.
If we're going to do some sort of hero compensation for all of our essential works, which I'm in favor of, it should be through the government. Private sector should continue to be fair and act rationally.
Amazon could do this by reducing the amount of profit it pockets and giving that share to its employees.
Jeff Bezos is the richest man on Earth. He can afford it.
In fact, I'd like to see Bezos risk his life commuting to work on unsafe public transit, working in some of Amazon's warehouses where he'd be exposed to other workers who might be sick, handling hundreds of potentially infected packages, and doing deliveries... all this with crappy if any health insurance and virtually no safety net.
There's been a long-standing argument that founders deservedly reap great rewards because they are the ones in a company who shoulder the great majority of the risk.
Now that's been shown to be an utter and complete lie by this epidemic, hasn't it?
Bezos is sitting nice and safe in his mansion, pocketing billions while it's the desperate people who work for him who risk their life for peanuts.
All essential workers during this crisis deserve some kind of additional compensation. Wealth redistribution should happen through the government. One company can't do it all themselves. They have a responsibility to both their shareholders and their employees. It they abandon one of those responsibilities they won't be able to do the other one effectively.
Amazon can be just as competitive without being as profitable to its shareholders.
The hundreds of billions that Bezos has pocketed as profit are not essential for Amazon's success. That profit could easily be redirected in to the pockets of Amazon's employees and towards making a safer work environment instead, arguably with a corresponding increase in Amazon's competitive effectiveness.