Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Amazon Is Raising Some Workers' Pay Further, Adding Bonuses After Controversy (bloomberg.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the can't-please-everyone dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Amazon is sweetening the pay for some of its longtime warehouse workers after employees criticized the loss of bonuses and stock awards as part of the company's pledge to boost all wages to at least $15 an hour. The world's largest online retailer grabbed headlines last week with its minimum-pay pledge -- followed by concerns from veteran workers who feared their compensation would actually decline because the company also eliminated bonuses and stock awards. Amazon said any workers already earning $15 would get raises of $1 per hour. Now, some of those employees are learning their hourly raises will actually be $1.25 an hour. Additionally, Amazon is introducing a new cash bonus of $1,500 to $3,000 for tenure milestones at five, 10, 15 and 20 years. Workers with good attendance in the month of December will also get a $100 bonus, according to the company. "All hourly Operations and Customer Service employees will see an increase in their total compensation as a result of this announcement," Amazon said in a statement. "The significant increase in hourly cash wages effective Nov. 1 more than compensates for the phase out of incentive pay and future (stock) grants."

19 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Wish they would do something about engineer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    pay and benefits. Most of my friends here in Seattle work for Amazon, and they make less than market, are expected to work 60+ hours a week, be on call 24/7, and aren't allowed vacation time unless they're from Asia.

    1. Re: Wish they would do something about engineer... by registrations_suck · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They must like it since they donâ(TM)t go elsewhere.

    2. Re:Wish they would do something about engineer... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      The lack of vacation time except for Asians is pretty normal in the Seattle area. I grew up in Seattle and graduated from Univ of Washington with a CS degree in 1989, and I haven't had an entire week off my entire adult life but most of my coworkers from India have always been allowed two or more weeks off. Yes, I understand the hassle of 24+ hours of travel time and the expense to take you entire family home, but it's unfair to the rest of us. In addition, requesting time off from amazon.com just sucks. I've been trying to see my eye doctor to get new glasses for almost five years. I keep making appointments, and my time off either gets denied or it's approved then later denied since something comes up. It sucks that the company plus myself pays so much for vision coverage, but I can't use it.

    3. Re:Wish they would do something about engineer... by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 3, Funny

      sounds like you need an union!

    4. Re: Wish they would do something about engineer... by registrations_suck · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sounds like he is full of shit.

    5. Re: Wish they would do something about engineer... by painandgreed · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They must like it since they donâ(TM)t go elsewhere.

      Not really. They're gone one way or another in 18 months on the average, either by job hopping, perhaps internally, or by being fired. Much of Amazon is all about putting in that work only to pad your resume for the next job, vacation between jobs, and then repeating the process till they have built up a resume to get the career they want. At least, that is how the people I've known at Amazon have treated it.

  2. $3k !!!!! by rfengr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    $3k bonus after 20 years! Woot! That’ll pay for the knee replacements!

    1. Re:$3k !!!!! by Obfuscant · · Score: 3, Insightful
      This just shows the problem with creating a really high minimum wage. Everyone who was already making that amount will want a raise, too. If half your employees already make $15/hr, and half make the actual minimum ($7 something), then giving half your employees a raise to $15/hr will only make the other half unhappy.

      "I had to work here 10 years to get up to $15/hr. Now they're paying newbs who walk in the door on day 1 the same amount I'm making after ten years ... how unfair is that?"

      And complaining that they get a $3000 bonus after working ten years, oh my, how unfair is that! Paying for knee replacements is a health insurance issue. Worker's comp in many places. Worker's Comp in Oregon is so much better than health insurance because there is no deductable and no "in network" for care. You get a bill for a service for a worker's comp claim you send it to SAIF and they pay it. You have to drive 60 miles to see a specialist? You submit a milage claim and they pay it.) When I got my last worker's comp claim approved, they sent me a stack of reimbursement forms preprinted with my info, all I have to do is fill in the amounts and mail them back.

      I hope Amazon loves the results of their social experiment. It will only prove to them how over-employeed they are and push for even more automation, like the Japanese warehouse that cut its employees by 90% after automating.

    2. Re:$3k !!!!! by skam240 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "This just shows the problem with creating a really high minimum wage. Everyone who was already making that amount will want a raise, too."

      It's only a problem in the immediate context and really it's only a problem because clearly employees were being under paid, thus Amazon's raising their internal minimum wage. If employees were paid properly so this sudden adjustment didn't need to be made this wouldn't be a problem.

      "I hope Amazon loves the results of their social experiment. It will only prove to them how over-employed they are and push for even more automation, like the Japanese warehouse that cut its employees by 90% after automating."

      Of course Amazon's big problem right now is a labor shortage due to low unemployment. Make no mistake, this wage change has absolutely nothing to do with altruism, it has everything to do with making themselves competitive at their lowest levels with McDonald's.

      --
      I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
    3. Re:$3k !!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Just because workers comp is like that where you live, don't assume its like that for most of the U.S. My wife used to work at a nursing home where they chronically understaffed. While lifting a patient that should have been a two person lift (but they only had one person for that wing), my wife hurt her back. Two separate doctors recommended getting an MRI but workers compensation required preapproval and they refused to approve it. They also refused to approve other procedures strongly recommended by the doctors. To this day she has back trouble that multiple doctors have said was avoidable if she had been treated properly. Unfortunately, our health insurance refused to cover it as it fell under worker's compensation.

    4. Re:$3k !!!!! by mark-t · · Score: 2

      Minimum wage hikes do cost some jobs, but most people who get laid off find employment again within 6 months, and for minimum wage workers, at a better rate of pay on account of the minimum wage hike.

      Or do you think that it's right to pay people that work full time hours anything less than a wage that is enough to actually live on?

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  3. Re:Clear solution by plopez · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Give billionares huge tax cuts and they'll still whine about poor and oppressed they are.

    --
    putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
  4. That's not really a problem by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Informative

    it's a tactic management has used for decades to excuse poor pay. You keep a few better paid employees because it keeps everybody from organizing and demanding better pay. I saw this in the call centers in the late 90s/early 00s. Management would tell the existing employees how lucky they were because they started at $10/hr when the new guys started at $7. Nevermind that $10/hr wasn't enough to get by even back then.

    Also before everyone piles in with the old "if you raise wages prices go up" nonsense, if that were true humanity could never progress as a species. We'd still be subsistence farmers and the big mac index wouldn't be a thing. Prices go up slower than wages when productivity goes up faster than wages. And productivity has been raising pretty much non stop if you focus on raw output (yes, an increasing number of low wage service employees replacing high paying manufacturing jobs means that measured productivity growth across the entire economy is flat, but we're still making more real goods with less people, see here).

    Basically so long as you're making more stuff with less or even the same people you can raise wages without price inflation, because that's real wage growth. e.g. there's more stuff for everybody. Well, not since 2008 though. Since 2008 the more stuff part of the equation has gone to the top 1%....

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  5. Re:Clear solution by saloomy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Your sig says "debt is slavery". Are you suggesting those that accumulated debt are putting people into slavery? No one asked them to sign up for credit cards, car loans, home loans, or anything else. Slavery means "without consent". When you apply, sign, and shop, you consented.

  6. Re:$1.25/hr raise! by cyn1c77 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Oh hold me back! /s

    That's an 8% raise for someone earning $15 an hour. Would you not like an 8% raise?

  7. Empirically Need Unions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Cause and effect, no unions in Amazon is like a person without an immune system. This is just anti-biotic shot that is for PR stunt.

  8. This is like... by ytene · · Score: 3, Informative

    ... "Congratulations, peons!!! Your terms and conditions have just been upgraded from abject slavery to indentured servitude!"

  9. Gee, A Hundred Dollars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ezra, you've had good attendance. I bet you thought I'd forgotten your Christmas bonus. Here you go!

    Ezra: "A hundred dollars. Maybe I'll go to the movies... by myself..."

  10. Re: Clear solution by registrations_suck · · Score: 2

    No it isn't. Even if you have a credit card with a 25% interest rate, you still get a grace period before interest is due and you can pay it off and owe NO interest whatsoever. Nothing usurious about that.

    Even so, you can also just as easily use a DEBIT card, avoiding the issue of borrowing money altogether.