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Many Amazon Warehouse Workers are on Food Stamps (theintercept.com)
Many of Amazon's warehouse workers have to buy their groceries with food stamps through America's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, reports the Intercept.
In Arizona, new data suggests that one in three of the company's own employees depend on SNAP to put food on the table. In Pennsylvania and Ohio, the figure appears to be around one in 10. Overall, of five states that responded to a public records request for a list of their top employers of SNAP recipients, Amazon cracked the top 20 in four.
Though the company now employs 200,000 people in the United States, many of its workers are not making enough money to put food on the table... "The average warehouse worker at Walmart makes just under $40,000 annually, while at Amazon would take home about $24,300 a year," CNN reported in 2013. "That's less than $1,000 above the official federal poverty line for a family of four."
In addition Amazon uses temp workers who may also be on food stamps, notes the article, adding that in 2017 Amazon received $1.2 billion in state and local subsidies, while effectively paying no federal income tax.
"The American people are financing Amazon's pursuit of an e-commerce monopoly every step of the way: first, with tax breaks, subsidies, and infrastructure improvements meant to lure fulfillment centers into town, and later with federal transfers to pay for warehouse workers' food."
Though the company now employs 200,000 people in the United States, many of its workers are not making enough money to put food on the table... "The average warehouse worker at Walmart makes just under $40,000 annually, while at Amazon would take home about $24,300 a year," CNN reported in 2013. "That's less than $1,000 above the official federal poverty line for a family of four."
In addition Amazon uses temp workers who may also be on food stamps, notes the article, adding that in 2017 Amazon received $1.2 billion in state and local subsidies, while effectively paying no federal income tax.
"The American people are financing Amazon's pursuit of an e-commerce monopoly every step of the way: first, with tax breaks, subsidies, and infrastructure improvements meant to lure fulfillment centers into town, and later with federal transfers to pay for warehouse workers' food."
Don't be silly. With all the hours they work, what Amazon Warehouse Worker has time to have a family of four?
Guillotine the billionaires.
Quote "You’d hardly recognize Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos in the super-heavy makeup he wears as an alien Starfleet officer in “Star Trek"."
They cast him as the wrong alien...
They pay the same minimum wages under the same rules as all of the other big and small companies. It's the "system" and laws
There was just a post last week on the conditions of one Amazon warehouse in the UK.
Why is it the worst jobs pay the least?
I hear the executives and those in the top 5% always whine about lower paid workers about how hard the big players have to work compared to them and how much stress they have hence why they need $200,000+ salaries etc. They need the money because they work hard. But Walmart, McDonalds, and Amazon show the opposite apparently.
I see a trend too in the I.T. industry for non programmers. We are expected to take calls 24x7 and be polite at 2am when youtube looks funny and call me on the emergencies only I.T. outage line. If I say can we do this on Monday at a reasonable hour it is grounds for termination. But these big players would not accept a call at 2am for a question on a spreadsheet and would get to keep their jobs if they tell them to fuck off I am sleeping.
http://saveie6.com/
We had NCOs who were on foodstamps and going out on weekends to pick up cans along the side of the road to sell to recycling services.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Most warehouse workers are performing jobs that require little skill or talent. These jobs donâ(TM)t pay well. Itâ(TM)s always been that way. Iâ(TM)ve done these jobs. Moving up generally means going from picker to a forklift driver, or moving from night shift to day shift. Not a lot of opportunity here, but there is typically consistent work to be done and thatâ(TM)s what keeps many of these folks in these jobs.
Though the company now employs 200,000 people in the United States, many of its workers are not making enough money to put food on the table...
Can we say the following: -
That folks on food stamps somehow easily find work at Amazon instead of the narrative that the [little] income at Amazon, forces them to employ food stamps?
That Amazon [probably] goes out of their way to employ those who would otherwise be unemployable; these coincidentally happening to be on food stamps?
That those on food stamps get some benefit working at Amazon in terms of other perks they may be getting?
Look, I have heard of the argument that in some jurisdictions, not earning enough qualifies one to get benefits that those who make more may not necessarily qualify for.
In all the above, I stand to be corrected.
Underlying reasons are:
1 -
2 -
3 -
4 -
Any ideas? Human life counts nothing, environment, future life of our decedents are not a topic or even thought to consider.
If I look at commuter traffic stuffing freeways and thick black smut coming out of trucks exhausts when they accelerate.
Particle matters go in your lungs for good and stay there....
Well, look at something more important, will you?
This is one of the main arguments for the left pushing "Fight for $15." If you're working for minimum wage, then you qualify for food stamps and other government assistance, so the government is essentially subsidizing employers who pay minimum wage.
Here's the math: The federal minimum wage is $7.25. If you work 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, that's $14,500 a year. The Amazon wage listed in the summary of $24,300 correlates with $11.68/hour for 40 hours/50 weeks. Of course, the Amazon hourly rate is probably lower, but with overtime depending on demand.
Painting a turd doesn't make it smell any better.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How the hell is it legal to pay someone SO little money for a job that they qualify for food stamps?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Seriously, we need a minimum wage in each area that equals what it takes to support an adult AND a single child. We should have few ppl on snap and NONE that are working.
Sadly, so many idiots around here fight common sense.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The calculation used to officially determine the 'poverty line' in the USA is bullshit and thus it shouldn't be utilized for anything. Here's how it works: a low-cost diet is tallied to $X, it's then assumed that food will constitute 1/3 of a poor person's expenditures, so then $X is multiplied by 3 to give the 'poverty line'.
Ok, food IS about 1/3 of my expenditures... but the cost of food nationwide is relatively constant, particularly in comparison to the cost of housing. Depending on where you live and your housing arrangement, one might pay between $300 and $1200 a month in rent/mortgage (assuming you're not in a place bursting with UMC residents like Manhattan or San Diego).
So, a much better poverty line calculation would be $W transportation costs + $X food + $Y average rent & utilities for 1-bedroom apartment in your ZIP code + $Z average Bronze-level health insurance plan for someone your age. However, any recalculation of the poverty line that raises the dollar amount will never be used officially since it'd make it look like more people are poor now than before during the previous administration. That's why laws say e.g. 'below 130% of the poverty line' instead of using a better calculation.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
It is well know that minimum wage, at the level set by the federal government, can only fund a single person. As soon as a minimum wage worker has one dependent, then they are at the level to receive government assistance. So two workers can support one dependent, but not two.
The solution to this is not to complain that amazon is supplying jobs. If these people could get better jobs, they would. You average mom and pop retail main street establishment is not going to provide a high wage or benefits. I know enough of these small employers to know that their unskilled or semiskilled employees are paid minimum wage, and maybe commission if it is a sales job. There was one local establishment, for instance, that converted all their wage employees to tip employees so they could pay them even less. Yes tips have to equal minimum wage, but then they get to keep anything that is over.
If we think that provided social assistance to working people, that the employer should pay a wage that is sufficient to cover all normal costs, then we need to consider solutions that level the playing field, not just attack a certain company or industry is abusing the rules. For instance, in the 1990's MS and some other computer companies were able to inflate profits by pretending some employees are contractors. Today many companies, such as Trump recreational clubs, inflate profits by using immigrant labor, paying them well below wages that local would demand. For instance there are no shortage of workers around Trump properties on the East and Gulf coast, but still they routing ask for hundreds of visas so that foreigners, who will work for less and without benefits, can be hired.
The other option is simply to look at tasing the minimum wage. This will, obviously, increase prices, but the current administration is on board with increased inflation if it is necessary to meed other goals. For instance, no one denies that the trade war with china is going to raised prices and even cost profits for industries such as farming, but it is necessary to reduce the trade imbalance. Likewise, if we want to reduce the number of people on program such as SNAP, the the most direct way to do this is increase the minimum wage and have it linked to a realistic and generous consumer price index. We may actually increase the unemployment rate, we may actually put ourselves in an inflation spiral, but we will fulfill the moral imperative of having a working family able to sustain itself.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It's called Corporate Welfare.
Since our gov is owned and directed by the Satanic Witch family owned corporations, who must legally follow the deadly sin of Greed, your and my taxes go to supporting them in almost every way/manner that can be imagined by the vile minions of evil, and since 1980 corporate profit has climbed but wages and salaries have not increased and purchase power because of inflation have been reduced.
Years ago I read that the properly adjusted buying power of minimum wage would have to be $24/hr to be the same as when it was introduced. Imagine .. pumping gas was a living wage and one could consider starting a family.
Now taxes educate their workers, maintain the infrastructure and corporate legal preference, and go to supplement the pay of their workers so they don't starve to death while working their (and often camping for housing...)
It's called corporate welfare.
SO you want 1 in 10 to have enough food or do you want a good price on your amazon product, packaged and delivered in 2 days?
This measurement is bullshit, and I expect it'll cause more harm than good.
Apparently 14% of Americans are on SNAP assistance. On the one hand, yes, that's terribly high and it'd be great to have every American be able to support themselves... but at the same time, it's pointing blame at Amazon for daring to offer low-paying jobs. Again, 14% of Americans are on food stamps. Those 14% are going to need help with or without working for Amazon, so I, for one, am at least glad they're employed and partially offsetting their expenses.
I'd be happy to see studies about how many folks are employed full-time and still need SNAP, or the impact of SNAP participation on economic recovery, or the like, but this seems like a hit piece against one company in particular. Apparently in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the SNAP participation rate lowers to only "around one in 10", but it's phrased like a bad thing to be better than the national average.
Overall, of five states that responded to a public records request for a list of their top employers of SNAP recipients, Amazon cracked the top 20 in four.
From TFS, a perfect example of poor research... How did this result compare to the lists of top employers of non-SNAP recipients, or the count of employees for each company? Amazon is a huge company, and they employ a lot of people. I expect they'll be on the top of a lot of lists.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
In 2013, Mother Jones Magazine reporter Mac McClelland wrote an investigative piece called "I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave" recounting her experience working as a "picker" in an Amazon warehouse in Ohio. In it, she points out that many of her fellow laborers were getting food stamps (aka "SNAP"), because they could not otherwise feed their families on their take-home pay.
It's worth noting that those workers would qualify for Ohio Medicaid - also at taxpayer expense - in addition to SNAP. And HEAP, and an Ohio utilities payment assistance program called PIPP+, as well ...
Check out my novel.
Yeah, I have to wonder... Have Walmart's pay and benefits improved to the point where Amazon warehouse work actually looks worse in comparison?
Or, have people just gotten sick of hearing nearly identical stories of Walmart employees living off of food stamps and Medicaid to survive and we need a new corporate villain to go after just to keep things interesting? I guess that Jeff Bezos is now worth more than most of the Walton family, so now he's got a big target on his head.
19th century employee management and working conditions are back in vogue! Wasn't the world beautiful, almost 200 years ago? /s
-- Cheers!
while trump is fascists, he is NOT supporting Amazon or Bezo.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...that Lord of the Rings show though. Priorities.
Judging by your comment, you live in a country where only the government has guns, which are used to force productive people to pay leeches money they haven't earned.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
While you've got some good points, I think they belong to a different story. E.g., many of the workers talked about (summary didn't say what proportion) are temps, and definitely wouldn't have health care through their employer.
FWIW, I oppose the minimum wage, and instead support the "possibly negative income tax". In the simple form your tax burden is: tax = income * rate - base
The base should be set so that if your income is zero, you are paid a "minimum wage". There should be NO exclusions, capital gains, or any other fripperies. Income is all the money you take in from every source, including gifts of food. (That makes it a bit difficult to figure, of course. Perhaps gifts with a value of less than some amount shouldn't be counted.) If they want to pay some business to stimulate their business, do it separately, and keep it out of the tax code. (But payments by the government for any reason, except as a tax refund, are themselves income, and thus taxable.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I shudder to think that we are being defended by idiots who cannot find the building where you get fed for free.
Ignorant asshole. Many soldiers have families and live off-base. Wives and children don't eat with the soldiers.
I don't know about the comparison, but many different companies have had stories about paying some of their employees so little that they had to live off some form of welfare. This implies that the problem is something in the design of the system.
That said, some companies definitely appear to be worse. I've already been boycotting Amazon for years for other reasons, but this is an additional one that confirms me in my decision.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Is there a story here other than liberal click baiting? If your "career" is packing boxes, I think it's reasonable to expect to live south of the poverty line forever.
I am not an accountant, I know nothing about the internal workings of Amazon other than what I can read in public media, and I probably do not know what I am talking about. But, I can do some arithmetic.
1 - The summary states that the Amazon warehouse worker makes $24,300.
2 - Amazon is famous for foregoing profits during its first 15-20 years in favor of expansion of services.
3 - There is financial information at the following links:
Amazon revenues: https://www.statista.com/stati...
Amazon income: https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/...
Amazon employees: https://www.statista.com/stati...
Amazon profits: https://www.theverge.com/2016/...
Based on these numbers, Amazon's performance in 2017 was:
Revenue = $178b
Gross profit after cost of revenue = $66b
Income after operating expenses = $4b
Net income after taxes et al = $3b
Employment = 566,000
For prior years:
2016: $2.4b net on $136b revenue, 341,000 employees
2015: $0.6b net on $107b revenue, 231,000 employees
You can see the trend - Amazon is only recently profitable as employees expand with general revenue and profit.
I have no idea how many of the employees are warehouse or fulfillment center employees. I have seen reports that would place the number between 130k and 200k.
For the sake of this analysis, assume that other low skilled employees are included, and we will go with 200,000 bottom wage employees.
Assume that Amazon had a fit of good will toward its workers and payed them a liveable non-stressful wage.
If in 2017 the $24k current wage was upped to $34k, that is an extra $10k/person/annum x 200k workers = $2 billion extra in wages.
That is 2/3's of profit, so Amazon could have afforded it (at the expense of shareholder return).
In 2016, assume a pro rata fewer number of low wage employees, 341k/566k x 200k = 120k.
Then, $10k x 120k workers = $1.2 billion = 1/2 of profit, so it was affordable.
In 2015, estimate low wage workers at 231k/566k x 200k = 82k.
Then, $10k x 82k workers = $0.82 billion = 1/3 greater than profit, so it was not fully affordable.
Going back farther, there was less profit to fund higher wages.
I am not arguing for or against Amazon, nor for or against minimum wages or workers rights or any other sociopolitical point of view. Being in a human services profession, I tend to side with the workers, and it pains me to hear of such situations. However, I also buy from Amazon, and call me a hypocrite if you will, but so do you.
Emotional or political or social points of view aside, it can be seen that Amazon's push to expand did not permit unfettered generous wages during periods of unprofitability.
Of course, the counter argument must be made that the higher paid employees, which are greater than half the workforce, could have had reduced wages and bonuses for a more equitable pay scale.
Now that Amazon is coming into the black, the righteous thing to do would be to raise wages. Even better, given how long they operated in the red, and were famously proud to do so, they could do so for another year or two and turn their profits into stock or cash bonuses for the low paid employees, to thank them for their sacrifice during the formative years.
Judging by your comment, you are just another overprivlaged asshole with no idea about real life. We dont want or need guns to have a civilised society, with far better worker conditions than your armed society.
10% is not Many. That's Few. It's not really all that surprising that 10% of the workers are going to fall at the low end of the curve, especially in a low skill type job. Simply looking at the new workers in training would account for that.
"at Amazon would take home about $24,300 a year," CNN reported in 2013. "That's less than $1,000 above the official federal poverty line for a family of four."
That's a typical bad statistic. If you have a family of four it is typically including two adults. They both have the option of working. So if both are working and getting $24,300 that means a household income of $48,600 which is quite respectable. Heck, $24,300 is very good to be honest. Realize that a lot of people who are at the lower end of the wage tier are NOT FAMILIES OF FOUR. And if you're not a family of four you don't have the expenses of a family of four. You can SHARE an apartment, live frugally, etc. I do.
People earn what they earn primarily because of choices they make. Sometimes they do have bad luck and we have social safety nets, like food stamps, that help with this. It's not a crisis.
Amazon uses temp workers who may also be on food stamps
Temp workers qualifying for SNAP benefits?!?! I don't understand, if they have a job, no matter the skills involved not the hours worked, shouldn't their part-time temporary job meet all their financial obligations, no matter how big their family or where in the country they choose to live? /sarcasm
Ken
The average salary of a school teacher in the US is $38K, and you have to have a Bachelors and (usually) a Masters degree to get that job. This is the person who is teaching your children and went to college for at least 5 years to do it.
Is it really unreasonable that someone who literally pushes boxes for Amazon and does not need any advanced degree would make $14K less than that?
What we should be upset about is how the salaries in the US have spread out in the past 30 years, which basically kills social mobility. My grandparents could work their factory jobs (with no college degrees or even high school ones) and then come home to their house (which they owned) and afford to send their kids to college. There's no way that you can do that nowadays as a factory worker and you are lucky if you can even do that as a teacher or police officer.
Salaries for those lower skilled jobs need to come up, way up, even if things need to cost more to make that happen. Otherwise we are effectively sliding back into a form of indentured servitude.
Why in the world would you pay more for a job to be done than the workers are wiling to take? My bosses have never come to me out of the blue and said they bumped my wages just because, I'm paid for my skills.
I don't by a gallon of gas and tell them here's 20% more because i don't think you're charging enough. I'll bet no one else does. And I'll bet most people shop where the prices are lowest. Amazon does it as well. The only difference is we're all shopping for gadgets and they are shopping for workers.
I will agree minimum wage isn't enough money for a family of four to life on. Mostly because someone who only makes minimum wage shouldn't be having kids they can't support.
If you keep feelings out of it, answers appear pretty quick.
And what about Walmart? Oh right, Wally and his family donate to Republicans and Trump is doing everything he can to attack Bezos because of a personal vendetta.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
If I shop at Wal Mart, I'm importing poverty into my neighborhood. If I shop at Amazon, I'm exporting the poverty to shitholes like Arizona. That's a big win.
Israel: land of security and freedom.
Because red states can't compete with blue states. They haven't been able to for a generation. The red states are in a downward spiral race to the bottom to stay afloat. Their pro-business, rising tides policies are coming to bite them in the ass. Now, the welfare queens running the red states have to prostitute themselves on the (Wall) Street, sucking Amazon's giant dick for a bit of promised tax revenue.
Amazon could not operate on their current margins if their workforce can't afford to take the job and eat. Any subsidy on an Amazon employee is a subsidy on Amazon's labor costs.
Think of it this way. If we had UBI, some people would do warehouse jobs for $1/hr. to make some extra cash. Amazon benefits from that cheap labor.
I also buy from Amazon, and call me a hypocrite if you will, but so do you.
You're delusional if you think that everybody shops with Amazon. Some of us still have morals. Not everyone is a selfish piece of shit that knowingly causes other people harm for their own convenience.
I don't respond to AC's.
Hello, what parallel universe did you just wander in from?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Maybe if CA wasn't paying to keep FL and AL afloat, they would be in less debt. The truth is people leave CA because CA is so successful in generating money, basic services and especially housing are more expensive. People leave not because they want to but because they aren't successful enough to cut it in a productive state.
CA's debt is rising, but it's rising slower than that of the federal government or Europe.
A few years ago it was reported that a high percentage of college students at Michigan State were on SNAP, kind of odd that they can afford/borrow tens of thousands of dollars for tuition & board, but need help buying food - perhaps they should borrow a bit more to sign up for the meal plan?
https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/...
Apparently Michigan questioned the appropriateness of students collecting SNAP benefits and dropped 30,000 students from SNAP.
Ken
It's simply false that Amazon didn't pay taxes.
As a public company, their balance sheet is made public, and it shows they paid hundreds of millions in taxes every year. You can read for yourself at the link below.
So Amazon paid taxes to governments, and the governments decide how to allocate those tax revenues around programs that help the people. That's the right way for this to work as that allows policy makers to do their best to design programs to best help those who need it while not laying a cost on those who can't afford to pay it.
These sensationalized stories don't do society any good.
Amazon filing: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/ph...
Don't worry, the middle class will pay with their tax dollars. HOORAY CAPITALISM
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
So the proposal is: Nobody pays taxes anymore. But the government prints money to redistribute wealth to the poor?
That would theoretically hurt people with large savings accounts, like a middle class retirement account. A wealthy person would move assets out of currency that is under moderate inflation and into investments. That's not to say anyone with an IRA or 401K couldn't also move their retirement into investments as well.
It's especially handy if you owe credit card bills. You get to pay back with inflated dollars. Not that the inflation will be significant against the 22% APR you find with credit cards these days.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Or is it "food stamps expanded so much that employees at X qualify"?
Worth asking, anyway.
This is very important because Amazon is currently asking for big things from the cities it is courting right now for its second headquarters.
This is what the cities that give away taxpayer money in the form of explicit tax breaks, infrastructure upgrades, land deals, etc. can expect to get in exchange: they get to pay the workers as well.
Isn't it amazing that big business has an obligation to take care of unskilled workers, while at the same time workers are not expected to have developed any skills?
If you don't want to work a minimum wage job then you need more than a minimum wage skill set. There's no excuse for going through 12 years of public education and having developed no marketable job skills. Private business is not a charity. Minimum wage is enough to live on, but you're not going to be able to afford your own place, a car, kids, etc. We've got way too many people who think they are entitled to things they haven't earned.
Before you bash Amazon (also realize Amazon is rapidly staffing its warehouses with mobile work forces of RV dwelling retires that need the job to make ends meet) https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod... consider that a lot of pilots early in their career would have wages low enough to qualify for food stamps. They often make less than the flight attendants on their flights who also make low wages.
Would you please provide the WHOLE story?
How about including related info for all sides of this issue?!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
So some of their tax money is used to pay a bureaucracy to provide them with a handout to buy food? Really?
Do I need to ask the obvious question? Oh, let's save some time. I'll ask it now.
Why is someone who is making so little money they qualify for the dole being taxed in the first place?
What's wrong with letting them keep the money they earned, and cut the government (and the welfare bureaucracy) out of the loop? So politicians can look generous with other people's money?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.