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1. throwa+(OP)[view] [source] 2020-04-17 18:13:29
What are you even talking about? Amazon is paying them $17 an hour at minimum (double federal minimum wage), with benefits, with double overtime pay. This is for totally unskilled and undifferentiated labor. Among warehouse jobs, Amazon is industry leading in wages. Walmart pays, I believe, a minimum of $11/hour. If people don't want to work in either of these places, they don't have to. It's a voluntary system. But clearly people want to work there and prefer that to the challenge of (for example) starting their own business.

I also do not believe that there were no changes made at Amazon's warehouses in response to the coronavirus. Their blog mentions many of these changes and the seem reasonable and practical: https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/how-amazon-priorit.... Obviously, there are limits to what a company can do with a physical operation like this. There are limits to the distancing that can be practiced. Equipment like PPEs are facing huge shortages right now and so obviously it isn't reasonable to expect that Amazon magically can summon up hundreds of thousands of N95 masks that should likely be going to healthcare workers first.

Ultimately, if people don't want to take the risk of working during this time, that's up to them - they are free to leave voluntarily. All this outrage seems falsely amplified, and it comes off as opportunistic activism to leverage this crisis to push a nakedly leftist political agenda.

replies(2): >>Mtinie+u5 >>boombo+Pc
2. Mtinie+u5[view] [source] 2020-04-17 18:52:51
>>throwa+(OP)
"[...]and it comes off as opportunistic activism to leverage this crisis to push a nakedly leftist political agenda."

That may be true, though I suspect it's equally plausible that this outrage is indicative of a nakedly capitalistic agenda promoted by Amazon's competitors via proxies. I don't see any reason why it can't be both.

Edit: To clarify, I should have ended my statement with "...why it can't be both, in addition to legitimate concerns."

3. boombo+Pc[view] [source] 2020-04-17 19:33:46
>>throwa+(OP)
>Amazon is paying them $17 an hour at minimum

Until the end of April, when the $2 per hour "bonus" goes away.

>I also do not believe that there were no changes made at Amazon's warehouses in response to the coronavirus.

It does appear that employees are not being punished for things like adequately washing their hands or getting sick for the time being. They were being punished for these things at the start of the year, and that blog makes it sound like they will be punished for them again when the pandemic is over.

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