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Americans Are Lining Up To Work For Amazon For $15 an Hour (qz.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

One of the most important takeaways from Amazon's 2018 fourth-quarter and full-year earnings report, released Jan. 31, had little to do with the usual financial results. Amazon disclosed in the report that it received a record 850,000 work applications for hourly jobs in the US in October 2018 after announcing it would raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour starting Nov. 1. From a report: The company said that was more than double its previous record for job applications received in a single month. Amazon said the new $15 minimum affects more than 250,000 employees in the US and 17,000 employees in the UK (where the increase was 10.50 pound in the London area and 9.50 pound everywhere else), plus more than 200,000 workers who were hired for the holiday season. As of Dec. 31, Amazon had 647,500 full- and part-time employees, up 14% from the same period a year earlier.

5 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. But wait, there's more... by atouk · · Score: 4, Informative

    Don't forget day 1 benefits. Full disclosure, I work for Amazon. And I haven't regretted it for a minute. Yes, the packers/pickers/stowers/etc do work hard, but as for as my FC is concerned, I haven't seen anything at all resembling the urban legend horror stories.

    1. Re:But wait, there's more... by atouk · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not at my FC. Employees are encouraged to hydrate (signs everywhere), bathrooms spread across the building, multiple break rooms, Free coffee/hot choc/etc machines. I can't honestly speak for other locations since I haven't been there, but also I can say that there are people that are never happy doing what they are paid to do.

    2. Re:But wait, there's more... by imidan · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well, here. There are plenty more from plenty of various sources. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/2...
      https://www.recode.net/2019/1/...
      https://www.cbc.ca/news/busine...
      https://www.newsweek.com/amazo...
      https://www.kare11.com/article...
      https://www.vox.com/2018/7/16/...
      https://www.theguardian.com/te...
      https://www.washingtonpost.com...
      https://www.businessinsider.co...
      https://www.wsj.com/articles/a...

    3. Re:But wait, there's more... by atouk · · Score: 3, Informative

      Clicked through most of those articles, and if you read between the lines, they're mostly pro-Union biased political articles. One even starts with an attack on Trump, completely unrelated to the supposed subject of the article. The one line that really made me laugh is "Amazon workers in general have been very vocal lately about their opposition to the companyâ(TM)s lack of diversity " Seriously? Whoever wrote this article has never stepped foot in my building, And I doubt any of the writers of those articles have spent a day in an Amazon facility. My boss two levels up is a woman, I'm the only one in my department with an "anglo American" name, I'm no more than 30 steps away from speakers of at least 5 languages that I can name, plus ASL, I know of at least 14 unique countries co workers were born in, there is a special Amazon group for gay and lesbian employees, Glamazons. And if you close your eyes and walk into the break rooms at meal time when the banks of microwaves are busy, you'd be hard pressed to count the number of different ethnic foods in the air. But hey, why believe what an actual employee says,

  2. Re: Not Americans by dryeo · · Score: 4, Informative

    America has one of the lowest economic mobility ratings compared to most western countries with peoples incomes usually quite predictable based on their parents incomes, though you are ahead of the UK.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    --
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism