Amazon Workers Strike In Germany As Christmas Orders Peak 606
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The Washington Post reports that in Germany, Amazon's second-biggest market behind the United States, hundreds of Amazon.com workers went on strike just as pre-Christmas sales were set to peak, in a dispute over pay and conditions that has raged for months. Amazon, which employs 9,000 warehouse staff members in Germany plus 14,000 seasonal workers at nine distribution centers, says that 1,115 employees joined the strike at three sites. 'Amazon must realize it cannot export its anti-union labor model to European shores. We call on the company to come to the table and sign a global agreement that guarantees the rights of workers,' says Philip Jennings of the global trade union UNI. Verdi organized several short stoppages this year to try to force Amazon to accept collective-bargaining agreements ... The union says Amazon workers receive lower wages than others in retail and mail-order jobs and that other retailers pay overtime, but Amazon does not. 'What Amazon is doing is taking this American race-to-the-bottom roadshow to Germany and trying it out on our German brothers and sisters,' says David Freiboth. Amazon has defended its wage policies, saying that employees earn toward the upper end of the pay scale of logistics companies in Germany. Amazon also says it prefers to address employment issues with worker councils at individual sites rather than through negotiations with the union. Amazon says that there have been no delays to deliveries ... adding that Amazon uses its whole European logistics network during the Christmas period to ensure delivery times. A delegation of German workers was set to rally at Amazon's headquarters in Seattle along with U.S. unions. 'We're standing in solidarity with them. We are asking that Amazon respect the union there in Germany and negotiate in a way that is acceptable to Verdi,' says Kathy Cummings of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, which was also attending the protest in Seattle."
Robots (Score:5, Insightful)
I sense a whole lot more of them in Amazon's (near) future...
Re:Robots (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't be surprised if most of the fetching is done via robot. However ,there's still a few things a robot can't or doesn't do. The Kiva systems maintain the stacks and stock in the warehouse, but all they do in the end is fetch a pile of items and bring it to someone who takes the item and packs it.
I would be surprised if Amazon's warehouses in Germany aren't mostly robots - the big army of people are doing the jobs that haven't or aren't automated yet - picking the items off the shelf of goods the robot brings them, stuffing it int the box, adding the necessary filler and then sealing it. Even tasks like assembling the box aren't automated - so the packer has to pick the right box and tape it up or glue it together. And applying all the shipping labels to the box and all that.
And then there's loading the randomly-sized packages onto the truck - as full as possible.
Even though we're talking about 10k+ jobs total, the vast majority of them are doing those things 24/7. There aren't many of them wandering the warehouse searching for items - it's just packing, sealing, labelling and loading.
Oh, and the dozens of people monitoring the conveyor system because a jammed package can mean real chaos - when you're getting what, 300+ orders a second, stopping the line for a few minutes to clear the jam has real repercussions (and it'll take a few minutes since it has to be tagged out before starting the fix). The packers rapidly backup and the loaders run out of packages so the whole system is idle.
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Just let them do it. Once they add up the cost for maintenance, operation errors (because no software is perfect), replacement parts and robot life expectancy (because all machines break down eventually), they will find out that paying their workers properly might be much cheaper.
Re:Robots (Score:4, Insightful)
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You can correct bugs in a robot's operation software, you cannot correct a human. A human is subject to fatigue and emotions whereas a robot never tires, never has a bad day, always operates at peak efficiency. Humans can learn and improve efficiency and accuracy, but this investment is lost when the human breaks down or departs. Robotic can be continuously improved, continuously made more efficient, more reliable. Each new model better than its predecessor. As a human improves their skills they demand
Amazon is getting robot workers for christmas (Score:5, Insightful)
they're already doing it pretty heavily... this sort of thing... striking in the middle of a christmas season... it inspires drastic steps.
Re:Amazon is getting robot workers for christmas (Score:5, Insightful)
With Amazon's margins they can't afford to be either petty or merciful. They'll switch to robots as soon as it is quantitatively advantageous to do so, regardless of what the workers are doing.
American race to the bottom roadshow (Score:5, Insightful)
How apt. It's too bad Americans can't see this but Germans can.
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Re:American race to the bottom roadshow (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans are actually behind Europeans in the "race to the bottom": median income by country [wikipedia.org]. Median household income in the US is 25% higher than Germany, 43% higher than Italy, and 70% higher than Spain. The only European countries with higher median income than the US are oil-rich Norway, or ones that benefit from "don't ask don't tell" banking sectors. So the typical American worker is doing better than the typical worker just about anywhere in the world.
To the extent that the "race to the bottom" means competing with third world nations like China for manufacturing jobs, note that China's rapid economic growth the in the last 20 years has done more to improve the quality of life and reduce worldwide inequality than just about any economic development program. While there are many in America and Germany who end up getting the short end of the stick, when comparing the additional misery of hundreds of thousands of Westerners who lost their livelihood versus the improvement in the standard of living for tens of millions of people in the third world from subsistence farming to a modicum of caloric stability, it is difficult to say that the "race to the bottom" is an entirely bad thing for humanity as a whole, or that America has not done an acceptable job of dealing with this challenge at least as well as other nations.
Re:American race to the bottom roadshow (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference, of course, is the health insurance.
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The health insurance and the strong social nets. I'd gladly trade 25% of my income for this.
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As you point out, there are things that China could do even better, and the question of how China is allocating the investment versus consumption decision, and whether it is depressing its own currency (making it's own people poorer) in order to export more, are all legitimate issues. But remember that the Wealth of Nations is in the productive capacity of the population, not its stores of gold (or US Treasury securities), so a lot of China's growth has come from the elimination of really bad policies that
Re:American race to the bottom roadshow (Score:4, Insightful)
If the workers of the world are unemployed and cannot buy products made by factories, that lack of demand is a severe issue. Henry Ford knew his workers needed to be able to buy the cars coming off the assembly line or else the assembly line will shut down.
Lack of demand cannot be fixed with subsidies to rich people. Those neo-econs confuse demand for money (qualitative easing of interest rates) with demand for products (the thing that actually causes business to hire employees and build factories).
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But sorting stuff to ship is menial labor, and deserves menial wages. This is not a job for a grown adult to have to try to support a fa
Re:American race to the bottom roadshow (Score:5, Insightful)
Jobs like this, with no skills are a dime a dozen, and are the types of jobs (like fast food) that are FIRST jobs, ones for young kids to start with and learn the work ethic and then move up and on to better jobs.
Someone sorting mail or flipping burgers does not rate getting $20/hr or more. That's just nonsense.
I'm not disagreeing with you in principle. However, the reality is, there are tens (hundreds?) of millions of Americans and billions of people worldwide with no real skills whatsoever. None. They're capable of nothing but jobs without a skill requirement. These people rightfully want to sleep, eat, buy stuff, and get healthcare just like everyone else. And yet, they either lack the circumstance, the ability, the willpower, or the mental acuity to grow beyond a job that requires no skills. I am not judging how they came to be in this situation, only remarking that this is their reality.
This is a fact. These people need to be able to survive their whole lives. They need to earn enough not to be a burden on the rest of us. How can this be accomplished? If we aren't willing to give them higher wages, and we're not willing to pay for them to get training to do something more meaningful, then this situation will never change.
Re:American race to the bottom roadshow (Score:4, Interesting)
These people need to be able to survive their whole lives.
This is the big question. Are they surviving? It would seem so. Do they deserve to get paid $20/hr in a country that already has a generous social welfare system? I find the argument dubious.
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Some people exist as a warning to others. Don't make the choices they made.
They haven't been trapped their whole lives. They made really bad choices early.
Like being born from the wrong womb.
Re:American race to the bottom roadshow (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet $20 an hour job is all many people can get. With college education. With having gone through their retirement account. And looking at their remaining productive years.
It is nonsense. So let me have a CEO job and I'll do it for a mere $500,000. You are going to need a LOT of CEO positions to get rid of this "nonsense."
I'm really shocked your comment got karma. If everyone gets paid a living wage -- that's the cost of business. Because then people don't have to beg or use government assistance.
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Intellectual elitism at it's finest - bravo, asshole. Not everyone has the same opportunities, drive, abilities or circumstances.
What's wrong with a living wage, would you rather have them drawing a benefit to support their families? Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to have children?
Merry christmas, fuckhead >:-/
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That's not entirely true.
Yes, it's entirely true.
There are jobs out there, but you have to be willing to move to where the jobs are....
...and be one of three people. And actually, not all of them will get jobs either, because some of those job requirements are written to be unfillable, so that a foreign worker can be hired instead.
Fixed that for you... (This is a good thing, btw.) (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon must realize it cannot export its anti-union labor model to European shores. ... ... powered by lobbying machine KPMG Consulting, their shill Gerhard 'Let's wrap him in barbed wire and shoot him into the sun' Schröder, Hartz 4 cheap-flexible-workforce-supply powered by German taxpayer and so forth. ... There, fixed that for you.
As much as I love shopping for stuff at amazon, I'm totally with these strikers. Kick them where it hurts is my vote on this! Go, workers rights, go! Voll in die Eier! ... I hope this spills over into the US, a notable signal no-holds barred neo-con corporate-socialism disguised as free market capitalism desperately needs. Here and across the pond.
My 2 cents.
Re:Fixed that for you... (This is a good thing, bt (Score:4, Interesting)
A friend of mine down on his luck and desperate for money worked last year for a few weeks at one of Amazon's fulfillment centers during their holiday hiring surge. Told me some stories that were Orwellian in the degree that people were "managed", with a ruthless efficiency that rivaled the mechanical processing of the products themselves. From the moment the trucks rolled in with the goods to the second they rolled out again, every moment of every item including the employees were tracked, itemized, stamped.... It was pretty unbelievable the conditions people were working in a Modern Times [youtube.com]-like cog-in-a-machine way.
The pay was shit, the turnover ridiculous, and my friend like most people there didn't last very long. David Sederis or someone would have a field day with this.
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I had horrible low paying jobs at times. If there are less horrible or better paying jobs available you can move to them. If not, well, it's nice to have a job when you need one.
The people complaining about the horrible, just horrible conditions at Amazon would appear to have never had to work a low-paid, low-skill production-line job.
I did that for a while when I was at school, and would have switched to Amazon without a second thought if they'd been around at the time.
Re:Fixed that for you... (This is a good thing, bt (Score:4, Insightful)
The people complaining about the horrible, just horrible conditions at Amazon would appear to have never had to work a low-paid, low-skill production-line job.
Tell me about it. I worked a summer before college in a recycling plant. Awful, dirty, and hazardous place. Some of the people there were doing it full time for a living. It impressed on me why I was going to college.
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That's not right. Our expression is "(Aber) Man hat schon Pferde vor der Apotheke kotzen gesehen." A translation might be "(But) Horses have been seen vomitting in front of a pharmacy". It's a phrase that's added after describing a very unlikely situation, which may nonetheless happen, e.g. "Given X and Y, I doubt that Z will happen ... but horses have been seen ..."
Tough negotiations, for sure (Score:2, Funny)
In one corner you've got an organisational of thousands with huge financial resources and political clout using its sheer size to say how and when people should be employed, and in the other corner you've got a union.
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That's the joke I was trying to make, yes. Apparently I did not do a good job of it.
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Indeed. Like I say, unions are a very good mirror of the approaches of the corporations they're standing against, good and malevolent.
Very true. I think there is a happy medium to be found. At times the pendulum swings too far towards the union and others too far toward the company. I don't see how anyone could say that unions are the problem in North America today. They have been largely gutted and are fading away.
I have never been a part of a union and probably never will be in my profession -- but I still appreciate the hours, holidays, health and safety etc. unions have given us over the years.
The interesting thing is that wheneve
Re:Tough negotiations, for sure (Score:4, Interesting)
Amazon will implement whatever workaround is necessary to remain the internet's Walmart
I don't know if you wanted to be funny, but in Germany, Walmart came, saw and went home beaten. They never found the leverage to implement their business model in Germany, never became competitive, and finally gave up.
Investigative Report? (Score:2)
The problem is in the subtext (Score:5, Informative)
The union says Amazon workers receive lower wages than others in retail and mail-order jobs and that other retailers pay overtime, but Amazon does not. Amazon has defended its wage policies, saying that employees earn toward the upper end of the pay scale of logistics companies in Germany.
Please note that the union sees the work as a mail-order job, where wages are higher.
Amazon thinks of it as a logistics job.
The union demands that Amazon recognize that the workers are in the mail-order business and pay accordingly.
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That makes sense. From the union's perspective, the workers are doing mail-order work, filling orders to be shipped. From the company's perspective, the workers are just one step in a global distribution network, which is clearly a logistics position.
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Which leads us to the strange point that german unions think that the same job (running around a warehouse taking stuff from shelves, wrap them in cardboard) should be paid diffferently depending on the field the company operates in - mail order or general logistics.
And here's the punch line: workers of both fields are part of the same union!
So why, instead of fighting to raise the general payment for logistics worker to the level that amazon pays them (which is above the logistics level), do they single ou
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Now, are those your definitions, or the German courts' definitions?
Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
FTA....
1. Amazon says that it's pay is already near the top of the scale for logistic centers.
2. German Union Organizers have a problem with Amazon defining their distribution warehouses as "logistic centers" because it allows them to pay less than they would otherwise be required to.
Germany's strike is really a strike against Amazon fulfillment centers being allowed to classify themselves as "Logistics" centers. I'm curious what a better definition would be.
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Informative)
Mail order workers. Apparently if you're in a business that sells items by mail, you're on a different pay scale than one that simply shifts items for other people.
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Wait, what? "Worker councils"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Amazon also says it prefers to address employment issues with worker councils at individual sites rather than through negotiations with the union."
Yeah, I bet they do.
That's actually the reason we have unions in the first place, you know...
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We actually have two systems of worker representation in Germany, related but not identical.
The unions are much the same as everywhere else in the world. They represent all the workers of a certain trade.
The worker councils are small groups of employees of individual companies (or even individual sites for large companies), elected by all the workers. Their job is mostly focussed on day-to-day employee issues, like working conditions. They are explicitly not allowed to discuss wages, as that is union territ
Re:Wait, what? "Worker councils"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't like the job..?? quit.. someone will be forced by sheer financial pressure to take your place..
There. Fixed that for you.
Unfortunate (Score:5, Interesting)
It's sad that Amazon and other organizations in the US have succeeded so much in suppressing Unions.
I guess I'll do a little whistleblowing on a job I had with Joann Fabrics here in the US in one of their warehouses. It was during the Christmas season and they hired many temp employees from temp agencies to fill out their staff to meet orders. I was one of many "pickers", someone who hauls heavy stuff all day (20+ pounds, all day for 8 hours) in a very dusty, dirty warehouse. The air was thick with the dust, so much so that if I didn't wear a mask, I'd be hacking up phlegm within an hour. Most people working there didn't wear masks. One guy said that, because many of the boxes come from overseas, he gets a rash every fall that "is red and itches like crazy". It happens around the same time shipments come in.
They treated us pretty badly, running us hard, as hard as the people who were there for 20 years, and expecting us to perform at their pace or get canned. You had your stats told to you every day. When I started at a whopping $8.00/hr, I was told I'd get a $.25 raise after working for 600 hours. I wanted to laugh in the supervisor's face.
This is the way these warehouses are, generally. As a worker you are paid crap, treated like crap, expected to work insanely hard, and if your health suffers, oh well.
Not Amazon's Fault (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure why Amazon is being singled out here, except perhaps that it's a great example. The root problem is the greed of American-based companies and their total disregard or apathy towards their employees. The only people working for these parasitic companies that make money are the directors and C*s; their inflated value of what the "top people" do and the remuneration they award these so-called "top people" is outrageous. There really does need to a proper evaluation of how wages within a US-based company are distributed amongst the employees. Is a CEO really worth the same as 10000 (or more) "workers"? No, of course not. For a start, without workers there is no company and there is no profit because without workers the damn company can't even make a cent. And don't get me started about boards having to look out for their shareholders; if that was truly the case then proper and fair distribution of remuneration throughout the workers would be exactly the same (it's just the the C*s wouldn't earn 10 (or more) figure salaries whilst the minions earn 5 figure salaries, or maybe 6 if they're lucky.) The greed is sickening. The US culture is sickening. More and more countries are realising this. I fully support the workers; if they don't stand up, who will? It does seem that US workers seem to just accept this shit, but fortunately the rest of the world does seem to have more of a clue.
Re:Not Amazon's Fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Is a CEO really worth the same as 10000 (or more) "workers"? No, of course not.
Yeah actually they are. Every decision a CEO makes is a decision with potentially billions on the line. A hundred workers could do their best to destroy the company and they won't be able to do as much damage as one decision by a CEO. CEOs are paid a lot because there is a high demand for people who won't make billion dollar fuck ups.
Re:Not Amazon's Fault (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens if they do make a billion dollar fuck up? They get a big golden parachute and dismissed. Big deal; i.e. there is no risk for them.
Re:Not Amazon's Fault (Score:5, Insightful)
You sit on the board of directors of a failing corporation. Your investors are starting to sell their shares, and your bond rating was just downgraded. What do you do? The "easy" solution is to hire some well known CEO to shore up the company's image. Of course, you have to convince someone who is probably not a complete moron to lead a company that's headed the way of the Hindenburg. So you offer a ridiculously generous compensation package, meant not only to convince the person to take the job in the first place, but also to cover for any loss of reputation he or she might suffer from being associated with a failing enterprise. So what seems like the rape and pillage of a worker's paradise is actually a last ditch effort to keep everybody from losing their jobs, workers and management included. Of course, this strategy rarely succeeds in the long term, but it does keep the corporation limping along a little while longer.
Everyone derides management, but few people are competent at the task, and fewer still want to do it. It ought to come as no surprise that most managers are incompetent. People see only what they let themselves see, and "workers" are no different from "management" in this aspect.
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Is a CEO really worth the same as 10000 (or more) "workers"? No, of course not.
Yeah actually they are. Every decision a CEO makes is a decision with potentially billions on the line. A hundred workers could do their best to destroy the company and they won't be able to do as much damage as one decision by a CEO. CEOs are paid a lot because there is a high demand for people who won't make billion dollar fuck ups.
And, as we learned in 2008, even when those people make their billion dollar fuckups, they get fucking rewarded, not fired.
What's that? Your piss-poor management decisions cost us seventeen billion? Well, I guess we'll have to fire you (you know, for show), but don't feel too bad - we've got this nice golden parachute and lovely severance package for you. You know, just a couple hundred million to live on while you search for another company to tank.
That said, since CEO pay is obviously not tied to performa
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Plus there is this huge Anti Union movement going on now a days. Not sure why exactly i guess most people like to be door mats or something.
Yeah, it is much better to be a door mat for both the Union bosses AND the corporate bosses than to just be a door mat for corporate bosses (assuming that one does not have the skills and wherewithal to get out from under the bosses, which, of course the politicians are working tirelessly to make ever harder).
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Actually there is kind of major difference between Germany and the rest of the EU.
In Germany, basically every company above a certain size (say 7 or 18 employees or so) can or must must have worker's council (the first size-level is for "can" and the second is for "must-have", but I'm not sure about the size anymore as it changes from time to time). This is the starting point.
For most of the industries, there is also one or more specific unions.
Also, for all large corporations, there needs to be a Superviso
Re:Not Amazon's Fault (Score:4, Interesting)
You have masterfully identified correlation, without a hint of establishing causation.
Detroit's affluence came about because of the voracious demand for automobiles by the rest of the nation. It was this nearly insatiable demand that led to the rapid growth of the automobile industry, and with rapid growth comes excess. Unionization of auto workers began because the workers felt they weren't getting a big enough piece of that pie, and at the time there was indeed plenty to go around. The key point, however, is that the wealth came before the unions did.
As the market became saturated, the crunch began to set in. Detroit was already having financial crises in the 1950s and 1960s. The unions basically mortgaged their current wages on the future of their industry. In so doing, they set it up for inevitable failure. The death blow came in the 1970s and 1980s when foreign auto makers, primarily Japanese, were selling better quality automobiles for a fraction of the price of their American counterparts.
Protectionist policies blunted some of the effect of this economic upheaval at the expense of other industries, but even so the Japanese started producing automobiles domestically in the late 80s and early 90s, and continued to eat Detroit's lunch. At this point, cars were a mature industry, and the union wages which were predicated upon perpetual economic growth were not sustainable.
Indeed, the slow break up of unions is correlated with negative economic changes. But once again, the wealth began to disappear before the unions did. The government only exacerbated this problem by maintaining high tax rates, which under rapid growth were affordable, but under stagnation became onerous. People left in droves, and those who remained had little money to tax.
Finally, the standard of living in the United States is at an all time high. Even Detroit, a city that by any reasonable economic assessment should have been a complete and total wasteland by the end of the 80s, has limped along thanks to the nearly unfathomable explosion of wealth in other parts of the country. Hell, there are still auto workers making good wages, especially for being in such a mature and automated industry, but most of them are not in Detroit any more.
Detroit's government and the auto workers' unions killed the goose that laid the golden egg. The city's recent bankruptcy, predicated largely by the government's inability to pay ex-workers' pensions, ought to stand as a clear monument to the folly of spreading today's wealth around at the expense of tomorrow's.
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Eventually companies realize they will lose their consumers when they don't even give them enough money to buy the very things they produce.
While that is true, in some sense, it must also be counterbalanced against the fact that paying workers more for its own sake has the effect of raising prices, which negates any of the benefit. Moreover, the absolute minimum wage has always been and will always be $0, so wage and price inflation inherently creates, rather than reduces, income inequality.
Plus there is this huge Anti Union movement going on now a days.
Once upon a time, the value created by the manufacture of many products far exceeded the labor costs to produce them. Many workers felt they were not rece
FTA: 14K of 23K Jobs are Temps (Score:2)
Waste of Time (Score:2)
lol unions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:5, Informative)
There is a number of exploitation of cheap labour, mostly from east European countries, some say it's the only reason why our economy is the strongest in Europe. It's basically modern slavery, they earn 5€ per hour, which for them is a lot of money, but would be ridiculously low for German living costs including insurance, health care and other expenses.
Workers in adjacent countries, like France, lose their jobs because their parent companies rather have goods shipped to Germany and processed there. Then shipped back again, because it's way cheaper than processing goods locally in France, where the minimum wage is almost twice as much (9.4something€ per hour).
Our Lobbyist Kiss-asses, err, I meant to say politicians, fear that minimum wages will ruin the economy of Germany, will destroy jobs. Now that a minimum wage (around 8€) was promised to be introduced in 2016 from the coalition of Germany's upcoming government, we'll see how things will develop.
Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_trap [wikipedia.org]
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You don't understand how this works.
In Europe, *we don't want useless workers*. It is better that they are unemployed than that they do work that a robot should do.
Because of this strike, Amazon will accellerate their robot deployment, and that is *exactly* what Europe want.
I repeat, we don't want useless workers. The social security system requires workers to have a certain productivity, and this excludes certain low paid jobs.
Sorry, but those jobs should go offshore.
What many Americans don't understand
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They take the low-end jobs that are still around. The world still needs telephone sanitizers.
Of course, there are few folks who actually "can't" graduate, given a good enough support structure. University becomes a lot easier when you don't have to also work full-time to pay for the classes.
Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:5, Interesting)
Very funny. You think it's still 1950.
Vocational schools are still very much alive and kicking in today's world, despite what you may have been led to believe.
No User Serviceable Parts Inside was the motto of the last half of the 20th Century. Now it's more like Ending is better than Mending.
OK, so maybe your laptop doesn't have any "user serviceable parts," a contention with which I still beg to differ, but you know what does? Your vehicles, buildings, HVAC systems, plumbing, electrical generation, transmission, and distribution, factory robots (like the one that made your laptop), et. al.
Believe me, so long as technology exists, there will be a need for people who know how to fix it.
The old time TV/Radio repair shops are virtually extinct. Last one I saw did primarily replacements on projector bulbs.
A guy in my town opened an LCD/LED/Plasma repair joint last year, and has to continually hire new people to keep up with demand. Kinda seems like the industry is evolving more than "going extinct."
Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:4, Informative)
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If they don't want a particular benefit, whether in general or just Denmark's particular implementation of it, the American can choose to save the money or find an alternate benefit more to his or her liking, while the Danish citizen has no choice but to pay the tax and accept whatever benefits the state chooses to provide.
Ah, the old "freedom of choice" argument. For example, Americans are free to get medical care or insurance that they can't afford, or to be in debt for the rest of their lives to get a college education. Now that's freedom!
I recall the Bill of Rights listing many important freedoms, but I don't recall the "right to get screwed" being in there.
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Useless people shouldn't have to work?
Working people shouldn't have to pay taxes to support them.
Are you suggesting just shooting them in the head?
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Working people shouldn't have to pay taxes to support them.
That's begging the question. We could all just agree to live in a society together, where those who can will do, and those who can't will do whatever they can with the rest of society all helps to ensure that everyone, collectively, has a good life.
Of course, that's looking suspiciously like Communism, and that doesn't mesh well with politicians' us-vs-them polarized view of the world.
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You can either get your workforce to be productive through poverty as in the US, or you can get your workforce to be productive by eliminating unproductive jobs. The latter is what Europe wants to do.
You're stealing a page from our playbook. What a shame we abandoned it 30 years ago. BTW, keep using it - it works very well.
P.S. I just realized "stealing a page from our playbook" is an American idiom that may not translate well. Oddly, I couldn't find a definition on the Internet, but roughly it means using an idea or approach that the other team or group used first.
Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, things are pretty fine in Germany.
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Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:4, Insightful)
So in other words you subsidise underpayment of staff by big business. You reward businesses for undervaluing their workers.
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OMG. If that is what Europe really wants, then they can keep it. Maybe they don't realize that workers don't magically become "productive" out of the womb. Nor do they when someone hands them a diploma. Productivity increases with experience.
Well, I guess someone should point that out to all the US corporations who consider their over-30 programmers to be out-of-code commodities to be disposed of.
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We can't have 90% of the population being effectively "poor". They need to have money and need to be a
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I agree with the trendy bullshitery but no kids? The world population needs to shrink but making it a requirement for people not intelligent enough to "better themselves" to not reproduce shreaks of eugenics. Stupid enough also includes people that screwed up their lives with unplanned parenthood before they went to college, live in small towns were Walmart is THE job, didn't have sufficient savings at the time things went to hell on them (and never will have at part time minimum wage) to move somewhere els
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"But AC!" you cry, "Bettering myself and my position is hard! I'd have to like, study, and not have time to sit around mindlessly consuming mah cable TV while I've got a giant dildo up my asshole!"
Baaaaaw.
Sigh.
Yes, rest of the world, we really do have people so stupid they literally believe this kind of crap. Not only that, those same wastes of flesh piss and moan endlessly about "class warfare" anytime someone tries to make a change that would better the lives of our nation's poorest citizens.
On behalf of all thinking, reasonable Americans, I would like to apologize for this douche-muncher and his ilk. Let's all pray he's too busy staring in a mirror and wanking to ever go out and vote.
While this is what is the core of the conservative mindset it by no means is limited to the US so there's no need to apologize.
If the mainland European conservative parties said in clear terms that they believe in an elite and that everybody is equally able and should strive to become part of that elite then they would lose each and every election. That myth has been dispelled. Hard graft by no means does guarantee you a living anymore. In fact if you wokr as hard as your parents did you will still not be
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So what you are saying is that the minimum wage jobs are working out quite well for them?
I agree that welfare in the US allows companies to not pay a living wage to employees and it effectivly subsidizes those companies. But that is the result of half assed socialism not the companies taking advantage of it. Without those social services making up the differences, those jobs would either be relegated to extra money jobs, jobs for kids looking for experience, or gone altogether. It only becomes a problem whe
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The minimum wage is/was *supposed* to be for kids in or just out of high school, college students, etc.
The real cause of this, the point at which we jumped into the race to the bottom was in the 80's, when two things happend:
Union busting actually became popular. Reagan busting the air traffic controllers, and the unexpected level of approval from Americans, was a tipping point. Upward pressure on wages fell away across the economy.
Supply side economic policy has been the norm since (under Reagan) taxes on the super rich was basically cut in half.
Income inequality is the real devil here. The flatter the line is the better off everyone is, even the super rich. To fix it we need two things, upward pressure on labor wages, and an artificial friction to acquiring wealth. By that I mean the more wealthy you are the harder it is to get more wealthy. A progressive tax system does this, but maybe there are other methods.
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Lol.. you have so many misconceptions it isn't funny. The minimum wage was created to curb minority companies under bidding bloated established white companies. It created a base level that barred those willing to work for less from taking well paying jobs. Mandating a prevailing wage in government contracts was much the same. In more modern times, the minimum had been used to stealth tax increases as both the employee and the employer has taxes associated with pay that does not get refunded.
Second, union b
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And if Amazon doesn't want to pay them that sort of wage, they can get out of Germany. Nobody's forcing them to do business there.
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Their model is to cut all possible worker benefits to the bone; maintain a tax presence in only the friendliest, most cowed regimes while selling to people in better countries with functioning goverments and put a shiny face to the world in their shitty website.
Mail order (web shopping is mail order) is only useful in these circumstances - if you have a stay at home spouse, if you work at home, or for items small enough to fit through your door
I bought a 450lb bandsaw mail order (Score:3)
If it breaks, the company pays a local repair guy to come to my shop to fix it.
If I know exactly what I want, what's the point in paying more at a local store? If I need some assistance though, then buying local makes sense.
Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:4, Interesting)
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Or they could create separate staffing companies and hire temp workers with few regular workers.
But it is no wonder companies have so much anymosity towards employees when they pick the busiest time of the year to stop work. It completely smacks of the we want to hurt you vibe that is generally met with hostile return. I bet someone is attempting to find ways to fire the lot of the strikers without violating law.
Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:4, Informative)
But it is no wonder companies have so much anymosity towards employees when they pick the busiest time of the year to stop work.
Of course they did: If you're going to strike, you pick the time that will have the most impact. Just like how a corporation tends to have lockouts and contract negotiations when there is high unemployment in the region near the factory.
As far as the animosity towards employees, the fact is that workers and management have an inherently adversarial relationship: The worker wants to maximize the amount they are paid for the work they do, and minimize the work they have to do to earn it. Management wants to maximize the amount of work performed, and minimize how much they have to pay to get it done. To pretend that these are other than diametrically opposed is just plain silly. And if you feel thoroughly dedicated to your job, know that management loves people like you because you'll work those 16-hour days without complaining or demanding any kind of compensation.
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When the marriage is based around resentment and getting one over the other, it is often best to just end it with a divorce. This is no different, it is just an unhealthy relationship and breads discontent.
Just an observation. No saying one is right or left or anything. Just that it carries a lot of negetive baggage with it.
Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:4, Funny)
I just hope they continue to stand up to the unions. The time for unions is long in the past, and they do nothing but distort the market now.
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Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, if you don't want the work don't take it. Nobody forces you to work at Amazon
And, what the hell do you think a strike is, anyway?
Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:5, Insightful)
And, what the hell do you think a strike is, anyway?
Posted here already, so I can't give you mod points. But really, this American attitude is quite idiotic. Wages are always negotiated. Sometimes one side is more powerful, sometimes it's not. Walmart left Germany with its tail between its legs, and what a loss is it for the country! (If anyone thinks Walmart makes low prices, Aldi and Lidl do that a lot better while actually providing quality products _and_ paying their employees decent wages). Nobody will shed a tear if Amazon does the same.
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Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should a worker be grateful to their employers? They do work, they get paid for part of the value of their work (if they got paid the full value of their work, it wouldn't be profitable for their employer to hire them). While this might be a mutually beneficial business arrangement, I'm hard-pressed to see why the employer is doing the worker a favor or otherwise giving them something that they aren't earning, which is my usual standard for being grateful.
Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:4, Insightful)
Business is war, not a matter of "gratitude" because employment isn't a "gift".
Collective bargaining is the only way otherwise valueless workers have leverage. One ant is nothing, but an army of ants is very different.
Americans are carefully indoctrinated nowadays to lick corporate boots, no surprise since business owns the US. Mistakes by unions (who BTW were FORCED to get in bed with the Mob back when business utterly owned the politicians and the cops leaving them zero alternative) certainly hurt them, but that in no way invalidates the utility of collective bargaining. Some of us bothered to read more labor history than is taught in school. I suggest that to others so you can draw your own conclusions.
Workers are not the enemy, business is not the enemy, but to have an equitable relationship to BARGAIN each must have power. The only way workers can have power is collective bargaining unless they are specially skilled AND in short supply.
Re:Ungrateful krauts (Score:4, Interesting)
Americans are carefully indoctrinated nowadays to lick corporate boots, no surprise since business owns the US.
Do you live in the US or have you just been told this? I grew up in Texas which is pretty conservative and the education I received was that unions where the worker's hero. My daughter receives the same information from her schools. I am trying to recall a recent movie (outside of Atlas Shrugged) or show where a big business was the hero and the unions were the bad guys.
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The robots are coming no more faster than they were already, because amazon does not want to have to pay you a dime in the first place.
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FYI, that is a made-up phrase that means absolutely nothing. [songfacts.com]
(Yes, I used to listen to Def Leppard, back in the day.)
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In relative terms, AWS is not the cheapest nor is it the fastest. It might have the 'best' api (a subjective measure) and undeniably it's the most familar to most of its customers and the cost of the work to leave might be higher than the reduction in cost). It doesn't take a large volume of staff to get those qualities and the stuff that might warrant a large set of technicians is the stuff that Amazon won't commit to.
AWS seems cheap to companies that are either so small that they can't get economies of