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Obama Praises Amazon At One of Its Controversial Warehouses
theodp writes "In his first term, President Obama was a big booster of indie bookstores. But on Tuesday, the President chose to deliver his speech on Jobs for the Middle Class at one of Amazon's controversial fulfillment centers in Chattanooga, TN. 'Amazon is a great example of what's possible,' said Obama, who also toured the 'amazing facility' where workers can make $10.50-$11.50 an hour as an employee of Integrity Staffing Group, 'may also be eligible for medical and dental benefits', and 'must be able to stand/walk for up to 10-12 hours' in temperatures that 'will occasionally exceed 90 degrees.' So, are '21st century migrant workers' the new middle class?"
So he likes to shop at indie book stores with his daughter, and somehow this makes him a hypocrite by giving a speech at an amazon warehouse? The speech itself wasn't really about books anyway:
In his speech, Obama outlines the areas he believes the country needs to focus on "if we want to create good jobs that pay good wages in durable industries." Among these priorities, listed in order of mention, are: manufacturing and high-tech jobs, infrastructure jobs, and clean energy jobs
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I'm seriously failing to see what about these jobs makes them "controversial." The pay and working conditions seem to be completely in line with the type of work it entails. It's certainly better than minimum wage or a true "factory" job (in terms of safety).
Keep up the selfishness... Keep buying the cheapest crap from the cheapest place possible, without regard for where you're spending your money, and this is what you get. After all, there's "free shipping", right?
Welcome to the another manifestation of the culture of "I've got mine. Fuck you."
I don't respond to AC's.
Thank God for that. Imagine having a society have to pay for one of these disposable workers to recover from a sick day!
The Middle-Class is being redefined as people who can afford basic necessities like food, shelter, clothing and medicine. Want money to enjoy life beyond that? Tough luck!
When did ~$24k gross a year become middle class? Did I miss a memo or have I been living in fantasy land? (11.50 per hour * 40 hours per week * 52 weeks)
Funny how hard it is to live on one of these 'good, high wage jobs'. Working in tech obviously I'm used to high compensation for my time, but I've done military, machining, making packaging for frozen dinners, etc etc. It's funny how the more physically demanding the job is the harder they want you to work to have to joy of keeping your job while at the same time paying you 1/4th what you make with a desk job. There is a skill difference in the work obviously but I don't think anyone should go home after a 40+ hr week with too little money to live. You can get by on 11 in the burbs but what if your job is in the city? Somehow Starbucks employees are just supposed to "get by". Getting by usually means 25+ year olds still living with their parents because their full time job isn't enough to be able to afford a place of their own.
Funny how Walmart offered suggestions on budgeting recently that excluded the cost of heating (don't remember if transportation was on there or not, but heck bus both ways to a 5 day a week job will probably run you $80 a month at least so you'd be working for your first day and a half of the month just to get to work).
It must be a cold day in Hades.
Relentless war which the globalist elites are waging against any possible middle class opposition - CHECK.
Utter hypocrisy of moving employees off-book, into sub-contractor scams, where hours are guaranteed to be less than 30-per-week so as not to qualify for Obamacare - CHECK.
Big-$$$ campaign contributions and other goodies being laundered from Bezos through Gorelick and into the Chicago Machine - CHECK.
Hypocrisy of Martha's Vineyard vacationing politician, who otherwise would love him some indie bookstores, heading to the mother of all vertical bidnesses for a little facetime on the evening newz - CHECK.
What's next, an honest discussion of why Fuckerberg and Ballzmer and L-Word-ison really want all those H1B aliens?
Might be a good day to go long on some snowball contracts in Hell.
I sold dew worms to fishermen for a year to buy my first computer
And now you can't even buy a cup of coffee with what you'd get from doing that.
Everybody wants it all but doesn't want to work for it. Guess what? It doesn't work that way
You're right, the people who have it all don't work for it, they've already got it and now they spend their days on the golf course making the hard decisions of which division to amputate in order to make this quarter's numbers look good enough for a bonus.
...is not middle fucking class.
worldmobilenet.com -- World Prepaid Wireless Internet plans
The claims of socialist look dumber by the day.
Obama is just more pro-corporate than Bush, Sr... just a tad less than Bush, Jr.
These are shitty, high stress jobs for people near the end of their ropes.
Ah, so these are the new middle class American jobs!
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
What are you talking about?
They're decent, honest jobs that pay a fair wage.
That's about as middle class as it gets.
Ummm, no. Physical working conditions are certainly great, but Amazon fulfillment warehouses are notoriously known for driving workers into a state of constant terror due to managerial abuse. A middle class job used to imply a sort of shielding from such things (not totally but certainly more than what you would see and still see at a minimum wage fast food joint.)
Middle class doesn't imply that anymore. And $10-$12 an hour is $24K. That is not below what is typically considered a low-end middle class salary. $24K was middle class twenty years ago. Not anymore. They are just above the limit that forces people to use social services.
I'm not saying these jobs are decent or honest (and thank God they are not Walmart salaries.) Any job with salaries above the poverty line is better than no job or poverty-line job, anytime, any day. And I'm not saying that for the type of job being performed, these are not fair wages. They are.
But let us not call them middle class wages. They are not. The rising cost of living, education and health care, and the continuous shift towards replacing full-time workers with part-time workers (or contractors) have pretty much made sure a $12/h job is not a middle class job anymore.
I don't see anything controversial about the warehouse. It's hot (or cold) unskilled manual labor. It pays above minimum wage, but like most jobs with unskilled labor, pays no benefits. They do not do so because it would not provide them with any competitive advantage vs. other fulfillment companies.
Breaking the "race to the bottom" to make sure you won't starve to death and have access to things like basic medical care when you are a productive member of society (fulfilling your end of the "social contract") is arguably a useful thing for government to do.
Plain and simple: Obama is turning America into a third world nation.
Don't give him too much credit - he has plenty of help.
You are correct; $11.50 an hour is not middle-class. However, that no-benefit salary is usually enough to make you ineligible for things like Medicaid (even though you aren't buying jack-$hit in medical care on that paycheck) or a Public Defender if you are accused of a crime.
It's a tragedy that a productive member of society that is fulfilling his/her end of the "social contract" still cannot obtain the things we would expect every civilized nation to make sure it's citizens have access to.
... is praising a very conservative employer. Why are we surprised by this? Obama has done more for the conservative movement than Reagan ever could have dreamed of. He gives lots of lip service to raising minimum wage, reducing tax burden on the lowest income brackets, making health care and education more accessible, etc; but his actions counter those promises. He has cut taxes more than Reagan, he has reduced government more than Reagan, we have seen union membership continue to plummet even more quickly than it did under Reagan, and we have seen college tuition rise even more than it did under Reagan. On top of all that minimum wage hasn't increased anywhere near as much as inflation, while employers have continued to amass more power over their employees.
I don't know why anyone is surprised to see Obama praising the Amazon warehouse. It cuts jobs and neglects the value of employees; those are classic conservative values. And don't try to claim that the massive health insurance industry bailout act (aka "ObamaCare") is somehow not a conservative act; Reagan would have crapped himself with excitement over signing a bill into law that forces average Americans to become consumers of for-profit businesses.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
In late August 2008, Then Senator Obama gave a little speech in a airline maintenance hanger in Kansas City. He complained about the Republicans and how much ground the middle class had lost, about healthcare. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xauuo1CvexE Listening to it now it still echos of somebody who didn't have ideas then and certainly has no ideas now. What's ironic about his middle class speech there is that American Airlines closed down that maintenance facility in 2010.. http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20100924-American-Airlines-closes-former-TWA-base-878.ece
Sounds like the same schtick over and over again.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The claims of socialist look dumber by the day.
Obama is just more pro-corporate than Bush, Sr... just a tad less than Bush, Jr.
That's what the Democratic Party has become, "not quite as bad as the Republicans." The difference between the two is that when a Republican gives government money to a business it's to encourage growth; when a Democrat does it, it's for jobs. Neither end up happening.
There isn't a party out there that represents the working class.
this, right here.
Amazon is contracting these jobs out so they are distanced from the managerial abuses, lack of benefits, instability, and poor working conditions.
AND THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES HOLDS THIS UP AS A PARAGON TO BE EMULATED.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
> Most of the people that I know that support him honestly assume that he struggled and grew up in the deep south (instead of Hawaii) like them.
What rock have you been hiding under? Blacks aren't restricted to the deep south. Neither are bigots that think they aren't bigots despite an eagerness to assume some goofy kid is a dangerous criminal.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
i guess he is really just another fucking republican after all. corporations are people and people are nothing.
There was a time in the US when the "working class" actually banded together for higher wages and benefits. There was a time when Americans cared enough about the future of their children to take the necessary steps to guarantee them a better future, whether they were garbage collectors or brain surgeons. The lessons learned from the affects of Robber Baron Capitalism and The Great Depression have been utterly lost. Utterly Lost.
What has happened is(for lack of a better term, and a nod to Queensryche's 1988 masterwork, "Operation Mindcrime") that the 1% that rule America discovered how to "divide and conquer", as if that tactic hasn't been used countless times through history with the same results. Since the 1980s(yea, you've heard this before) the 1% have successfully rolled back the social safety nets, which in the past were mainly affecting the poor. Now the middle class is sliding down into poverty.
This is no "market adjustment" or "realignment of labor forces". This is nothing less that a concerted and tightly executed plan to turn the US into a third world country, where the vast majority of the population is poor, marginalized and has little or no political or economic power, where a small elite controls all facets of society.
The lessons learned from the affects of Robber Baron Capitalism and The Great Depression have been utterly lost. Utterly Lost...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
MAP is nothing more than collusion.
I think they should be flatly illegal. In a totally free market no one would ever obey them.
You don't want a free market you want a market that is ruled the way you like.
The correct solution to amazon paying this little is just to raise the minimum wage for this job. If you don't want to do that, then you think this wage is fine.
But, when said young man fits the description of those commiting crimes in that area (often pictured on camera footage on the news), is it being bigoted to be a little fearful when you see someone of that description approaching you just because there is a race difference?
I think it is more pattern observation, and you tend to be a bit reserved/alarmed/reactionary when you see someone that fits the description of those committing the most crimes in a certain area. Seems a natural self protections reaction more that unadulterated bigotry.
If one observes a pigeon shitting on all the cars in one area (under a statue perhaps), is it bigotry to be a little cautious parking your car and seeing a a pigeon heading your way....maybe you want to park somewhere else ?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
???
I read the part about simple day laborers sorting boxes making nearly $12 / hour and was amazed....that's pretty high pay for manual, no education required, simple work.
I wouldn't have guessed hourly pay was that much for a grunt job like that.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Is it fair? No. Life isn't fair.
That was my attitude until the last few years. After '08 financial crisis, read about the top 1%, the ecnomy improving yet hiring was stagnant, the board members of investment firms getting off scott free & blaming lower level execs for breaking the law, increadible mis-management and wheel sleeping morons at the SEC, the American prison population quadrupling over the last 10 years, the whole-sale gutting of the right of habeas corpus, and the complete lack of caring or understanding of the removal of the many fundamental constitutional rights here, I am of a mind that its beyond "not fair", but the game is rigged and not rigged for me or you. And you'd be a fool to think otherwise.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Obama is, in almost every policy area, a Reagan Republican. This is part of why Republicans hate him (the other part is that he doesn't have an R after his name).