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.

Comments

The raises are worth more

[edtice1559]

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.

Re:The raises are worth more

[torkus]

Bonuses don't work better for salaried employees - they work better for employees already making enough and can then treat it as an actual BONUS. Ya know, instead of something they need to pay for food or rent

Re:The raises are worth more

[barc0001]

I'm not sure how Amazon does their bonuses, but for many salaried positions I've been at, a bonus is a tantalizing carrot that appears much larger than when it's finally in your hands - if it gets there at all. The company can have a "bad quarter" or "bad year" and suspend them, they can allocate a certain amount per group and the the manager divvies it up according to their whims instead of using metrics, etc.

At this point in my career any time a manager talks about a bonus, I'll believe it exists when I see it land in my bank account, not before. So others in the company below me pay-wise getting a raise and eliminating some fairy tale bonus that probably wouldn't materialize to cover that? Sounds fine to me.

Re:Isn't this what people wanted?

[CryptoBear]

If you only make $50k a year in a tech-heavy field in Silicon Valley I feel bad for you. Your employer is literally paying you peanuts.

Re:Isn't this what people wanted?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Whoosh...

The "I make $50K/year in Silicon Valley" thing is a Slashdot in-joke

Re:Isn't this what people wanted?

[OrangeTide]

Your employer is literally paying you peanuts.

May 2018 price for Groundnuts (peanuts) is $1,420/metric ton. 35 metric tons of nuts is fucking nuts.

How would an employer even ship and store that many nuts for their employees. It would be the literally worst business decision.

You want to know what you're going to be paid

[XXongo]

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

Re:You want to know what you're going to be paid

[DCFusor]

Yes, they can go deeper into debt slavery that way - constant income is a loan magnet. Which is a key way society as it is tends to keep the poor, poor. Back when there was a Bunker-Ramo, I worked there as a high level engineer. Our new hires, mostly making more than they ever had, were going way deep into debt to get that "good life" they always dreamed of and marketing everywhere sells you.
This kinda bothered me - I liked the people under me - so I went to higher management with kinda WTF, should we educate them better on their options for financial security (we were in a high risk contracting business).
Answer - nope, that way they can't quit so easily....(meaning, we own them now and don't have to treat them well anymore).
I quit...

Re:You want to know what you're going to be paid

[Actually, I do RTFA]

it's called "welcome to the real world", where you need to learn to live and act like and adult, and live within your means.

I agree. And a great way people learn most things is in school or with classes. I mean, no one said to you "welcome to the real world, there's physics, figure it out".

Re:Isn't this what people wanted?

[XXongo]

Everyone gets paid the same regardless of productivity? This should be good news for those advocating the $15/hr minimum wage.

Yep. Defining "productivity" is at the whim of the employer, and "paying for productivity" is a well-proven strategy for lowering wages.

In most businesses, the things that reduce productivity are screw-ups by management, not by the people actually doing the work.

Re:Good move. Bonuses are taxed more

[Moof123]

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.

This is a classic management trick

[rsilvergun]

they goal here is to get the two classes of workers (hourly and salaried) fighting among themselves and prevent them from Unionizing.

I"m actually annoyed that, given how old /.'s audience is and how many layoffs we've all been through that nobody else seems to have pointed this out.

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 :(...