zlacker

> An extension and expansion of pay for workers impacted by COVID-19 — anyone who has a doctor’s note for either a preexisting condition that’s a known risk factor or requiring a self-quarantine.

This should be done by the government. It feels unfair to pass this on to consumers, but there should be some sort of "voluntary unemployment" for people with pre-existing conditions right now.

>>legits+(OP)
How is it unfair to demand that a business puts some effort in keeping their workforce healthy?

These workers were forced to work during quarantine because the government deemed Amazon an essential business. As a result, Amazon stock's price relative gain to the S&P 500 tumble during this crisis is ~80%, that's almost a doubling of the stock valuation due to the uninterrupted business that these delivery workers made possible.

I repeat: AWS basically doubled their relative stock valuation, withstood one of the biggest stock market tumbles in all history, because their lowest level employees went to work at a point when everybody else stayed at home safe.

>>legits+(OP)
"This should be done by the government. It feels unfair to pass this on to consumers"

Where do you think the government gets its money?

We tip our delivery / pickup people 5 bucks for orders which are well south of $100. Masks and hand sanitizers and gloves are what they need to do their jobs. That and customers keeping away from them 6-10 feet. You can't let yourself just walk up close to someone you see working in a store to ask them a question, like you could in the beforetime.

The take away is this- truck drivers, stocking clerks, checkout people are essential to a functioning society. Hollywood stars, entertainers and media personalities are not.

>>DevKoa+t1
Businesses don’t have “effort”. They have costs and revenues and if costs exceed revenues they just raise revenues (aka the price to the consumer).

If you think of a business as a machine, and the person who bought the machine as a stockholder, you would understand that a machine does not suddenly work harder because the person paid more for the machine.

>>david_+y2
Without entertainment or entertainers we’d all probably be killing ourselves from deaths of despair during a quarantine like this. They are essential, just not immediately essential.

>>DevKoa+t1
What if that's 25% of their workforce? What if it's 50%? Is it up to them to validate the veracity of the doctors' notes? Does Amazon pay full salaries for people who aren't going to work for 18 months? Does Amazon basically create an entirely privatized welfare system?

It just seems to be well outside the scope of things a business should be trying to solve and into the realm of what we have a government for.

>>david_+y2
Absolutely, agree with the other points. But the one I specifically disagreed with was paying all of the at-risk employees. These are people who cannot and should not be making deliveries. And I don't think Amazon should be paying their wages for potentially 18 months. As an Amazon customer, you would essentially be paying to fund a completely privatized unemployment program.

>>DevKoa+t1
If you leave the costs to the businesses then the businesses that find the most effective ways to cheat will have huge advantages over the ones that do not.

That's the opposite of what you want here.

>>chrisc+47
A machine has inputs and outputs. It’s inputs have to of some level of quality to get outputs of some other correlated level of quality. A consistent supply of quality inputs is correlated with a consistent supply of quality outputs.

The trouble here seems to be maintaining a consistent supply that is sustainable.