Amazon Offers To Help Train Workers For Other Jobs 148
itwbennett writes "Amazon, which has come under attack for harsh warehouse working conditions, on Monday announced a new training benefit program for fulfillment center employees. The program will cover 95% of the cost of vocational training for jobs that Amazon determined to be in high demand and that pay relatively well, including aircraft mechanics, computer-aided design, machine tool technology, medical laboratory science and nursing."
Two limitations of note: the maximum Amazon will contribute is $2,000/year for four years, and the employees need to have worked full-time for three consecutive years before they can take advantage of the program.
Of course they don't have to keep you employed (Score:1)
Really, nothing stopping them from temp employees being tossed.
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If experience isn't benefit, what's stopping that from happening anyway?
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Not much except potential backlash from human customers. Amazon still depends on very many human customers. So they have to boil the frog slowly and carefully.
They're not far from being able to get rid of most human workers in their warehouses:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/123765-automation-warehouse-robots-come-of-age-as-amazon-buys-kiva/3 [extremetech.com]
You don't need that much brains to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWNuaPE4DTc [youtube.com]
So a more fancy pick-n-place robot could replace the human in that job.
Yikes... (Score:5, Insightful)
Three full years in an Amazon.com warehouse? From the stories, that sounds like a death sentence.
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6 months would have been more fair; generous, even.
3 years is absurd!
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erm After 3 months you would consider paying your employees to learn skills needed to leave your service?
At this point you wouldn't even have covered the cost of training let alone the cost of hiring new employees, and you're already ensuring that they will have a very short tenure with you.
Reasonable and generous? Hell I've never heard of someone being paid to learn something unrelated to their current career by their current employer.
Re:Yikes... (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you expect Amazon to do? Give a free full ride to anyone who asks? In order to stay in business, amazon must turn a profit, and in order to do that, it must maintain a level of productive throughput at an affordable price.
Sure, the work sucks, but it is the work that customers are willing to pay for. Sure, it takes three years before the education options become available, but were it not for this offer, people who can't find any better-paying work would only have lifelong debt as their alternative.
The only thing forcing Amazon to do this at all is public sentiment. If you don't think it is enough, feel free to tell Amazon that as you boycott them.
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I think what most people would "expect Amazon to do" would be to act a bit more humane, even if the prices were slightly higher (even by US$5 or $10 for inexpensive items). I would recommend everyone considering responding similar to how you have to read this story by a reporter who worked there to find out what the working conditions on a daily basis were actually like:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor [motherjones.com]
I hope that after reading the story, you t
Re:Yikes... (Score:4, Insightful)
If Amazon improves working conditions and/or pays more, and must charge more to cover the costs, then competitors like walmart, sears, target, etc can suddenly start undercutting Amazon in price. Of course, they will do so by having the same low-waged working situation that Amazon does now.
In order to compete against them despite the higher prices, Amazon will basically have to convince droves of potential customers to buy humanitarianism along with their products. Do you think they can pull that off?
Maybe a few noble souls are like you, and don't mind paying more. The majority of people are too ignorant to know the difference, or too apathetic to care, and just buy cheap.
If you can figure out how to make the masses care (and act), you could accomplish a whole lot more than the improving of working conditions at Amazon.
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I will agree with your comment that government involvement, however imperfect, is probably needed. A free market requires full information and it is almost impossible for people to understand how things are produced without somebody outside the companies following up, checking and ensuring that information gets from the production to the consumer. Unfortunately, the current situation is that the people in government are of the "government is for the companies" or "government doesn't work" persuasion and a
Re:Yikes... (Score:4, Insightful)
I always chuckle when I see "buy local" signs because it is such a naive idea that is completely detached from reality. How do I know that when buying local that I'm really creating any benefit?
Seems like a cynical view to me, and almost certainly incorrect. I often buy local if I can, for various definitions of local.
I tend to buy local (same county) for bread, flour, beer (often), cider (occasionally--I don't drink much) and a few other things where possible. The products are frequently fresher/better/more unique and interesting first, and secondly, I happen to like living somewhere where not everything is homogonised into a few very large national brands.
I buy fruit and veg local if possible, frmo my home country next and wider Europe next. I try to avoid buying much from further afield. The benefits are that actually, if you restrict yourself to seasonal stuff it tends to be better and it just seems wasteful to eat asparagus air-freighted from Peru.
It means I also have a smaller environmental impact and support local and regional businesses.
I also avoid Tesco and Sainsbury's because they're evil, and I let the presence of independent shops and other supermarkets influence my decision on where to move house to.
There's not point in complaining about such things going bad if one isn't prepared to do something about it.
If you don't act on them, then principles are merely fond notions.
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That's actually up for debate. Transportation costs are only a small fraction of the environmental effect of agriculture, and spreading farming out into lots of smaller, less-efficient operations doesn't necessarily reduce transportation costs.
There's actually a lot of potential problems with the "buy local" movement... Freakanomics [freakonomics.com] wrote an article about it last year, for instance.
That being said, if you PREFER local products (I think the Sausage at my loc
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Then you have to contend with people for whom Amazon would become ridiculously expensive if they upped the prices any more. We already pay $13USD shipping on a fucking book thank-you-very-much, no they damn well may not raise prices.
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$13USD shipping
Then select a cheaper shipping option.
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But dear lord, do you know what UPS workers have to put up with? I can't imagine they are paid much more than the Amazon workers... So you are saying you should pay more for Amazon to treat their employers better, but screw those damn UPS workers, pay them at little as you can.
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I was trying to make a point by indicating that shipping companies' warehousing jobs are probably no better than Amazon's warehouse jobs. If you are willing to pay more to give Amazon's warehouse workers a better deal, then why would you try to cheap out on the shipping option?
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Well good luck with getting people to pay exorbitant worker salaries to warehousing labor where cheap temporary laborers will suffice. Also that Super Saver shipping by the USPS sure isn't making the postal service any money... http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/310002/usps-prepares-default-reform-stalls-robert-verbruggen [nationalreview.com]
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There are no cheaper shipping options.
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You know, that is an awesome idea. Make it an optional charity thing like McDonald's does. At the check-out page have a box saying "Do you want to contribute to the Amazon Education fund?" At worst, it would produce some interesting statistics about generosity.
And before I see anyone else do it, I'll bring up unions. This is why they were spread across an entire occupation. That way, no matter where a company went to hire a professional 'X', the comp
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I think what most people would "expect Amazon to do" would be to act a bit more humane,
Huh? It would break a too high number of rules [wikipedia.org] (try 144, 211, 261, 284, 285 and numerous unlisted others).
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What I expect them to do is this - have an education benefit for their employees, or not, it's their business, but before going off tooting about how great it is, maybe look at just how far that education benefit actually goes in the current education market, and what other companies who have education benefits are doing.
$2k per year? If that was per semester, I'd still expect them to avoid making a big announcement to the press.
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Re:Yikes... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Anything and everything it can get away with. It's a corporation, it has no capability for conscience or empathy.
Sure, why not? That has worked perfectly fine wherever it has been tried, with the Nordic welfare countries being perhaps the most triumphant example. It turns out that in a reasonably healthy culture the slackers will ultimately consume little (lacking the ambition for truly epic leeching schemes) so those who use the opp
Re:Yikes... (Score:4, Interesting)
What do you expect Amazon to do? Give a free full ride to anyone who asks?
But that's the thing, their temps didn't ask for a full ride, nor did they ask for extra training. They only asked for the dock doors to be opened so they get could get some ventilation in.
So not only, Amazon didn't respond to the issue at hand, the fact that their people are getting heat strokes. They're not even addressing the right people. It's not their "full-time employees" that are getting heat strokes, it's mostly their temporary employees that are getting them because it's their temps that are the most vulnerable in the company.
And not only, are they not addressing the main complaint that managers are routinely bullying their employees during the height of their heat strokes to sign papers saying that the root cause of their heat strokes are not work-related, but now they're trying to regurgitate those same manufactured statistics back to the public -- in the form of even vaguer comparisons -- as if they had not even read the original complaints against them.
What the hell are their PR people doing? Are they so out of touch? There are a thousand ways the company could have responded better to these criticisms.
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Amazon has already rolled out a $52 million plan to install air conditioning [theverge.com] at their warehouses.
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Yes. So what Amazon should do is to lobby for a law that regulates this type of work. If everyone who does retail has to treat their packbots in the same way, there is no advantage in mistreating them, and the race to the bottom is stopped. Competition can then move to something el
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Sure, the work sucks, but it is the work that customers are willing to pay for.
Probably not. If Amazon is like most companies, if you doubled the money spent on all hourly workers (either doubling wages, or spending money on improved working conditions, or hiring more workers, etc) involved in the product, it would probably make a difference of maybe $0.20 per item (I can't provide exact estimates here since Amazon refuses to tell anyone how many workers they have, but that's not an unreasonable guess). The effects of this would probably amount to each item being on average $0.10 more
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All employers should pay as little as they possibly can. All employees should demand as much as they possibly can. That may sound harsh, but the result is that people have a strong incentive to work where society finds the most benefit from one more worker - and the benefit from that is immense. (Working conditions may be a different story, which is apparantly the main complaint against Amazon, but that's separate from wages.) And employers are stongly incented to find cheaper ways to make products, w
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This assumes you're hiring permanent employees. I'm assuming that you are not based in the USA.
Salaries - N/A. You cut a check to the temp agency and they pay THEIR employee. Since they take their cut, there is that much less to pay the worker.
Taxes - 100% of what you pay a temp agency is deductible as a 'business expense'. You don't ev
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NOBODY in the USA gets ANY KIND of bonus anymore, unless you're a C-level executive at a big company
That is completely untrue.
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True of most people who do actual work for a living, not executives who leech off the productive work of others.
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Without a single example to prove otherwise. LOL
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Vacations - Temp employees don't get vacation days. Or any other paid time off. You want a sick day? You're fired. You come in anyway, even though you're so sick you can't do your job? You're fired. Your child dies in an auto accident and you want to go to the funeral? You're fired. You're in an auto accident and are in the hospital with three broken limbs? After you go bankrupt because you can't pay the hospital bill (because of course, you have no health insurance), you're fired.
None of this has been true for the temp employees I've overseen. It sounds completely made up to me. Unless you're talking about unskilled labor where much of that is normal for everyone?
NOBODY in the USA gets ANY KIND of bonus anymore, unless you're a C-level executive at a big company, in which case you can get a bonus for keeping expenses down (for example, creating an atmosphere in which you can pay the temp agencies as little as possible, since they're desperate for clients.)
I've never been a C-level anything (except perhaps student) and I've gotten bonuses most every year for the past 15 years - sometimes unexpected and quite large bonuses. You seem to just be making all of this stuff up. I suspect you read it all somewhere and found it convincing.
I have literally been told, to my face, when I asked why I was being fired, "We don't have to tell you."
It's usually better not to, as it invites
NYT: Self-Congratulatory Move by Amazon? (Score:3, Insightful)
An Amazon Education [nytimes.com]: "Sucharita Mulpuru, the retail analyst for Forrester Research, was unimpressed. "It seemed self-congratulatory," she said in an interview. "Most companies, when they treat their workers well, that's just what they do. They don't say, "This is a reason you should do business with us.'"
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I guess that analyst's check still needs to clear, unlike another... [slashdot.org]
This just discourages hiring full-time workers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This just discourages hiring full-time workers (Score:4, Insightful)
That is probably already the case.
Hiring people for 39 hours instead of 40 hours a week is the oldest trick in the book for avoiding health coverage costs.
Hiring temporary/contract people is also fairly standard for shitty working conditions. Such people tend not to have the resources to fight back.
Sounds like lowes (Score:1)
They just staff the place with tons and tons of 'part-time' workers.
Who were hired and told it was fulltime and then the hours slip down. And ohhh now you don't get full benefits and all that. Complain, ask for more hours? try to get more hours somehow? overtime? ohhhhhhh... you are so fired. For some minor complaint we documented months ago just in case of this.
Didnt happen to me directly. But i saw it happen to alot of employees.
Seems like a very corporate thing to do.
Amazon knows they can p
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And what make you feel awful is you knew what was going on, had it happen to you, and you said nothing. Because you really need this job...
Oh Wow! (Score:2)
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[SARCASM]Where can I sign up[/SARCASM]
Try this [mturk.com] first, you may earn your extra $2000/year easier and earlier.
I work here (Score:5, Interesting)
I was a temp, got converted, then hired into IT. Luckily there was a career path I was interested in... Due to what the company is and does, there just isn't much room for upward mobility or different career paths. They listened to the warehouse workers and gave them this option, which everyone loves. You put in your time and do your job, and after three years you can do what you want, and Amazon will pay for it.
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Go to school in California - a full load (15 credits) at a community college for in state residents is about $1400/yr plus student fees (maybe a couple hundred). You'd be out book costs and some exceptional class fees.
So, in comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
How well or poorly does NewEgg treat its warehouse workers? How about Overstock, or Buy.com, or any of the other comparable online retailers?
And really, while people here will complain about Amazon's treatment of its workers - if they have the lowest price, will you truly not buy from them because of it? Or will you just dodge the question and say "XYZ.com always beats them on price anyway, so I shop there"?
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Two wrongs don't make a right,
It is enough that any company being shitty to people is brought to light - even if the all aren't
People buying by price is natural and is not the problem,
Bezos who is in the headlines every few months contemplating doing rich man stunts can afford to take a LITTLE bit of his profits to treat his workers like decent people AND keep Amazon's prices competitive.
Re:So, in comparison (Score:4, Insightful)
How well or poorly does NewEgg treat its warehouse workers? How about Overstock, or Buy.com, or any of the other comparable online retailers?
Most warehouse work is well paid with reasonable working conditions. An honest day's pay for an honest day's work is something that's fallen out of fashion in the Great Recession - Amazon just took it to the next level, and leveraged its considerable IT expertise to wring every last dime out of people desperate for work. Once the recession fades, they are going to be in real trouble when there's competition for their workforce, their reputation as an employer is permanently stained. If it doesn't fade, the workers will unionize and take what the company refuses to give - fair wages and decent working conditions - and they'll be in even deeper trouble when they can no longer meet their obligations to Prime customers, as the local distribution center is on strike.
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I don't shop at Walmart. I know lots of folks who won't. So there are a good number of folks who will avoid the bad players. Just a lot of others who will gladly deal with them if they can save a buck.
That does not compute. (Score:4, Interesting)
"The program will cover 95% of the cost"
"the maximum Amazon will contribute is $2,000/year for four years"
2,000 $/yr * 4 yr = .95 X
X = $8421
So apparently you can become a trained aircraft mechanic for not much more than $8,000. Which is about 1/3 to 1/4 the cost of a common Bachelor's degree.
Yeah, either the summary dropped a zero somewhere, aircraft mechanics are trained far less than you would think, or that 95% figure is *way* off.
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Re:That does not compute. (Score:5, Informative)
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Well, it isn't for Bachelor degrees. It specifically says it is for "technical and vocational certifications or associate's degrees"
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Noticed Between the Lines (Score:5, Insightful)
"You should buy stuff from us instead of WalMart because we treat our employees about 50% better than they do."
separate matter: the folks here who are saying that working three years in a warehouse is a death sentence should get out and meet some real people, and try a bit harder to not be entitled pricks. One caveat: if you do meet a real warehouse worker (or dock worker, or other transportation/inventory logistics person), watch out for your teeth.
Here's another angle: people who have the self-discipline to work in a tough job like that for at least three years without quitting and going home to live in their parents' basement stand a good chance at managing the demands of the work/school balance and will likely complete their coursework.
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Not a warehouse, an AMAZON warehouse. Certainly warehousing is an honorable profession, but by some accounts working in an Amazon warehouse is a tough job made awful. I suspect one of those warehouse or dock workers would take a particularly dim view of Amazon's reported extensive use of temp agencies.
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As the guy who said it originally, someone who worked in a warehouse, and someone who is surrounded by people that work in warehouses all day, that's precisely what I was getting at. It was about Amazon's working conditions, not a slight against anyone based on their job description.
I'm not worried about anyone punching me in the mouth, or some random slashdotter getting all indignant about it, but it was worth clarifying. Thanks.
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It should be noted that one of the reasons why it's made awful (and one reason why the OP's "not a death sentence" may be wrong) is because Amazon likes to melt their employees by saving money. For many years they refused to air condition their warehouses, and refused to open garage doors to get some cross-breeze going citing "theft concerns". The result? 110 degrees Fahrenheit working environment, with 15 employees in one warehouse fainting of heatstroke in a single day.
It was only after there was a big th
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Great points, but it sounds like you are the one with the attitude problem.
I've seen a number of news articles about the lousy working conditions at Amazon over the years so I tend to think that those conditions are real and really bad, not an exagerration of an overpriveleged bacon eating basement living libertarian IT worker.
Given that it is likely conditions at Amazon are that bad, your anger should be directed at Amazon, not people commentators on Slashdot...........but that wouldn't be as easy.
Only $2k? (Score:4, Informative)
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Well... they're spending less in taxes than they would if they deducted that much tuition. It's more likely they'd just rather have more money.
Re:Only $2k? (Score:4, Insightful)
Er, the tax rate is less than 100%. So it is always better to pay tax, than to give away money. In this, case by keep the rest of the money, $3250, they pay a tax of 15% on it, which means they get to keep a lot it.
harsh warehouse working conditions (Score:5, Insightful)
sorry, I had been a box monkey for most of my 20's, the work is mindless, dirty, hotter than hell during summer, cold as shit during winter and requires long hours of physical activity and standing on your feet all while getting meh pay...
and yet whenever you see an amazon warehouse, they have padded mats to stand on, roller tracks, and fairly new equipment and the place is pretty organized and clean... I only had one warehouse job during that time and I considered it pretty cushy ... though a honest days work.
harsh is trodding a 1,100 lb palette of car batteries 50 yards in 112 degree heat on a palette jack with a lumpy wheel that liked to drag, but I did it for 3 years to keep the rent paid while in school. I would love to see what is harsh is in a state of the art warehouse that's not ran by two hillbilly brothers and only 1 forklift in the building that's busted half the time and a leaky roof.
yea get off my lawn, but at the same time quit being a pussy, there are a lot tougher jobs out there than box monkey #21.
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Dont believe it (Score:1)
Don't forget there is always approval wall. Reasons ive been given, heard from colleagues
1. Theres no budget (then they send someone using the same budget to an introductory course to java programming)(yah he was a java programmer %$&*&*)
2. You are well qualified and dont need training (contradict with promotion time , you dont have the qualifications that the other guy has)
3. You are in a critical role you need to train back up to cover( righhttttt)
4. Budget is used up
5. Not Your Turn
Besides after
umm (Score:1)
Amazon is switching to robots (Score:5, Informative)
Amazon just bought Kiva Systems [youtube.com], which makes warehouse fulfillment system robots. Kiva already powers orders from major brands including Crate and Barrel, Soap.com, Dillards, Drugstore.com, Gap, Office Depot, Saks, Staples, Timberland, Toys-R-Us, and Walgreens. This [youtube.com] is what order fulfillment is like with those robots. It takes about two minutes to learn the job and there is no chance for advancement.
The people being "retrained" will be laid off soon.
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I really don't think this has anything to do with personal development as much as it has to do with the upcoming cattle call for peak season.This is more or less another carrot to dangle since it's getting harder to get people to come back. People don't like being led on and generally treated like shit from managers that act as if they are running a military operation.It gets old after the first week or so. I spent a few years there and still feel bad for the way temps. were treated. I've seen Kiva in actio
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plenty of other technologies exist in this market to make picking very efficient, for the purpose of minimizing employees.
True. The big win for Kiva is standardization and simplicity of installation. Conveyors, stacker cranes, and similar machinery have to be built as semi-custom products for each warehouse. All Kiva has to do for installation is put bar-code squares on the floor. Everything else is a standard product. Kiva systems thus require far less engineering expertise in the field. They don't even have to provide much field service; all the little robots are interchangeable, and you can just ship failed ones back for
McDonalds, UPS.... (Score:5, Informative)
Educational assistance is fairly common...
McDonalds, UPS...
http://work.lifegoesstrong.com/article/don-t-turn-your-back-free-education [lifegoesstrong.com]
"McDonald's tuition assistance program will reimburse up to $5,250 a year (which is the maximum IRS exemption), and $2,000 for part-time employees, which in effect adds two dollars an hour to someone's earnings. UPS has a program called Earn and Learn where students can have their tuition, expenses and transportation paid for if they work a part-time schedule; since 1999, UPS has paid out more than $47 million in tuition assistance alone."
B&N
http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/jobs/benefits/benefits.html [barnesandnobleinc.com]
"Continuing Education
Our continuing education program offers full-time booksellers tuition assistance if you choose to further your business career by taking courses toward a job-related degree. "
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Many companies that employee lower skilled workers realize that there isn't room in the company for everyone to advance. They make these benefits available to attract people that want an education and need a job to help pay their way through school. The know that even having someone on board for 4 years both can benefit. The company gets someone that is stable and they can count on for 4 years. The employees get paid and tuition.
Toot toot (Score:2)
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Id rather take a 2k/yr raise than this BS.
Re:astounding generosity (Score:5, Informative)
For some community college programmes that might be reasonable.
http://www.alameda.peralta.edu/apps/comm.asp?$1=20092
Lists aviation maintenance technology as a total cost of 3200 dollars including tuition and tools. Which presumably you could do in 1 year straight out of school, or in 2 or 3 if you're working at amazon, but hey, it's better than minimum wage at the end of it, and if you can't get student loans, or don't want to have them or whatever it's a better than nothing option.
You have to consider what 2000 dollars is relative to their existing pay. Amazon claims their fulfillment centres pay '30% more than a retail job', which are, apparently (http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes412031.htm) 25k. So an employee making ~ 32k is getting offered 2k (tax free? not sure how that's like in the US), so 6% of your pay for a chance to get out of it. And at 32k you can at least live, not live well, but live, and not be in debt at the end of it. It's not spectacular, but it's still a lot of money.
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when you only make 30k 15% of 2000 = 300 bucks is a lot of money.
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Depends how much those programmes usually cost. If you can get airline mechanic training for 3200 dollars one place and 32000 another down the road amazon is making clear it wants you in the 3200 dollar one.
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Not to mention that it requires you to stay employed with Amazon for three years. There's two big caveats there - first, how many people working in the warehouses actually work for Amazon (as opposed to whatever temp agency they're contracting out to)? Second, considering how many US states have at-will employment, what's to stop them from punting you out the door at 35 months? (And if they're particularly screwy, waiting two weeks, then offering your job back - it says "consecutive", so any break in your w
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It's a diploma mill. Amazon sends their employees to a diploma mill, gets a kick back from the mill, some of their workers pay for training they should've got on the job, and gets a nice tax break to boot, so the whole thing's paid for by the taxpayer.
You know... it's sounds line a good business proposition (successful corporations are always experts in externalizing the costs - otherwise how are they going to meet their legal obligations and make money for the stakeholders?)
and people goto full time colleges and come out th (Score:2)
and people goto full time colleges and come out the same way lot's of debt and big skills gaps.
We need a middle of the road system building on the training system and add apprenticeships to it. College is to far to the theory side of things and is loaded with stuff from the past and lots of filler.
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I'm not going to argue the intangible benefits to society of traditional College because I think the phrase 'intangible benefits' is shorthand for 'I'm too lazy to quantify the bene
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Amazon sells 'how to' books doesn't it?
Education....solved.
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Actually, those jobs may very well be in demand - aircraft mechanics (remember, Amazon is headquartered in Washington, home of a rather well-known aircraft manufacturer).
And a good A&P will never be out of work - if you're not working on big iron, there's tons of jets or even little single engine pistons going around.
These are trade jobs - and for a lot of university bound students, they may
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These are trade jobs - and for a lot of university bound students, they may be better off doing a trade than getting a university degree and debt. Depending on the trade, you can make quite a bit of money at it as well.
Considering a warehouse fulfillment job is a no/low-skill job, being able to get trade education is extremely valuable. I'm sure Amazon would allow you to learn to be an electrician, plumber, as well.
And many of those trade jobs are hard to offshore. Electrician can be a pretty decent job, and it's always hard to get good machinists and tool makers.
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Re:Scam (Score:5, Informative)
Did you even read the article?
It's not a diploma mill. Amazon is funding tuition for any accredited school, as long as the coursework is in the list of in-demand fields. There aren't kickbacks (Although if there were, so what? It would just mean it's not as generous, not that it's a scam.).
Amazon is also willing to pay for 95% of the cost, up to their annual limit. At a community college, that will generally cover everything. There is no saddling anyone with ridiculous debt.
This is a genuinely good program. There is no scam or any taking advantage of anyone. How did you even invent this in your imagination?
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Both community colleges in my area offer all three -- "Aircraft Mechanics, Engineering, CAD". Sure, the engineering isn't a 4-year degree, so you won't be eligible for a P.E., but it is the requirement for a lot of positions out there.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it basically reads *many if not most community colleges*.
I don't know where you got the idea that these kids of classes weren't available at community colleges (or other lower-cost/public vocational schools), but it certainly wasn't through research.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)