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Amazon Is Eliminating Bonuses, Stock Awards to Help Pay for Raises (bloomberg.com)
Amazon is eliminating monthly bonuses and stock awards for warehouse workers and other hourly employees after the company pledged this week to raise pay to at least $15 an hour, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. From a report: Warehouse workers for the e-commerce giant in the U.S. were eligible in the past for monthly bonuses that could total hundreds of dollars per month as well as stock awards, said two people familiar with Amazon's pay policies. The company informed those employees Wednesday that it's eliminating both of those compensation categories to help pay for the raises, the people said. Amazon received plaudits when it announced Monday that the company would raise its minimum pay. The pay increase warded off criticism from politicians and activists, and put the company in a good position to recruit temporary workers for the important holiday shopping season.
Amazon actually put out a statement on this that isn't in the TFS. Surveys showed that current employees would prefer more predictable pay to the bonuses. Makes sense when your income is relatively low. Bonuses are nice but you can't count on them. Being assured of a paycheck is more useful short-term. Now maybe Amazon is full of it in their statement but TFS is one-sided in a misleading way.
Everyone gets paid the same regardless of productivity? This should be good news for those advocating the $15/hr minimum wage.
pay raises are more desirable than bonuses since they are cumulative. But of course, total compensation is total compensation and bonuses allow more merit recognition at the cost of lowering the retention aspects of higher salaries.
Since amazon is going to more and more automation it may turn out that those higher paying jobs will be gone in a few years making this non-cumulative and just the same as a bonus from amaazons point of view. The higher they can raise the wages of their non-automated competition the better. e.g. raise the wages of UPS and Fed-ex who, susrprisingly, are not as automated as amazon, then move into their bussiness with cheaper logistics, drone delivery.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Yes, indeed, people mostly prefer being told what they will make, instead of a "we will maybe pay you more if we feel like it, or maybe not, we'll let you know later" salary
I wouldn't mind this. Most places I have been the stock price is essentially flat, with small blips at the most. The RSUs being given out instead of bonuses is a bit of a pain - I have to wait for them to vest, and if I leave the company I don't get all of them. Whereas the cash bonus means I have cash to do whatever I want with.
Often the goal here is to incentivize the worker to do a good job so that the stock goes up. But workers don't have this ability as most of a stock's price has nothing whatsoever to do with how well an individual worker does their job, or even how well a department does their job. The stock price is innately tied to the mood of third party analysts and whether or not the CEO is saying anything to the media.
Employees who've been around a bit have learned to sell when they can. That "15% below the market price on a certain day" stock purchase plan means you should to sell immediately and not hold onto it, especially if you're not a day trader who's constantly watching the price. It's always been good advice to diversify of course, but there's also been advice I've heard many times that you shouldn't put too much into the company you work for (see Enron). You can be too biased towards your own company and hear too much irrational exuberance at the water cooler, so it's a good idea to take that money and put it somewhere else.
You are an idiot. You must think your annual refund is "free money" too? Higher taxes get withheld from large checks such as one that includes a bonus, as each one calculated as if all checks were of that size. However you are taxed on your overall income for the year, so any over-payment or underpayment comes back to you come tax time.
they goal here is to get the two classes of workers (hourly and salaried) fighting among themselves and prevent them from Unionizing.
/.'s audience is and how many layoffs we've all been through that nobody else seems to have pointed this out.
:(...
I"m actually annoyed that, given how old
It usually works. Here's hoping it fails for a change. A guy like Bernie can keep it from happening, but we need a new Bernie. The one we have is pretty old
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I was talking to an Amazon employee today who said it appears that they are definitely performing a compression of lower range employee salaries to implement this minimum - as I would expect.
What this means is that their lowest paid workers will be raised to $15 / hour. Others paid more than that will likely be raised to higher than that. So, for example, someone making $10 / hour might go to $15 and someone making $13 / hour might go to $17.
The employee had no idea how high the salary compression would go, but presumably, there is a stopping point. Perhaps someone at $25 / hour will still get $25 / hour and everyone under some ceiling of the compression range will get something depending on how close they are to that ceiling.
This makes sense because positions that make more should still make more, and it avoids throwing away rewards given for performance and experience.
The employee I spoke to was making closer to $20 / hour and is expecting that this will result in a raise.