60 Amazon Workers Walked Out Over Warehouse Working Conditions (vice.com) 54
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Late Wednesday night, roughly 60 Amazon warehouse workers in yellow vests walked out of a delivery center in Eagan, Minnesota and stood outside in the near-freezing rain waving protest signs. The workers -- mostly women of Somali descent -- demanded increased wages on the night shift, weight restrictions on boxes, and the reversal of a 30-hour weekly workload cap from their managers. The strike arrives during a period of increased worker activism at Amazon among both white and blue collar workers. On September 30, workers at an Amazon delivery center in Sacramento formed a group called Amazonians United Sacramento to protest the firing of an employee who went an hour over on her bereavement leave after her mother-in-law died. Two weeks ago, more than 1,000 Amazon employees staged the first white collar walkout in the company's history.
Striking workers at the Eagan plant also demanded an increase in their hourly wage, which currently sits at $16.25 an hour. They argue they should get paid more on the night shift. The two-and-a-half hour strike in Eagan ended when an Amazon manager committed to resolving the issues in the morning, and all truck deliveries were cancelled for the night. The workers say they "remain prepared to take action if no changes are made." This is the second strike at the Eagan plant in the last two months. In August, 80 employees walked out of the plant to protest parking conditions. Within two hours, management had agreed to expand off-site parking, repay workers for towed cars, and allow workers to clock-in off site so they aren't marked late.
Striking workers at the Eagan plant also demanded an increase in their hourly wage, which currently sits at $16.25 an hour. They argue they should get paid more on the night shift. The two-and-a-half hour strike in Eagan ended when an Amazon manager committed to resolving the issues in the morning, and all truck deliveries were cancelled for the night. The workers say they "remain prepared to take action if no changes are made." This is the second strike at the Eagan plant in the last two months. In August, 80 employees walked out of the plant to protest parking conditions. Within two hours, management had agreed to expand off-site parking, repay workers for towed cars, and allow workers to clock-in off site so they aren't marked late.
That's a doozy (Score:2)
repay workers for towed cars, and allow workers to clock-in off site so they aren't marked late.
Or get up 10 minutes earlier?
The rest is good.
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Found the person who has no kids.
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How does having kids the responsibility of the employer?
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Found the person who has no kids.
My wife and I managed to get to work on time.
But wouldn't getting to work earlier just get your car towed earlier? And just how "off site" are check ins allowed?
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Depends on the state, but it is is significant, the time from getting to the parking lot to your post is often supposed to be paid.
Rules are Rules? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, seriously. If you get fired because you exceed your allowed time off without pay by one hour after a death in the family you are working for a company full of managers that don't know what it costs to replace a worker (and therefore shouldn't be managers).
The bigger a company gets it seems the more they adhere to policies that may make sense on paper but should be followed with a BRAIN included in the equation. I suppose if it's corporate drones all the way down then nobody is using their common sense or feels they are allowed to.
Management: It's actually a skill. Not a f*cking reward for something.
Didn't you read the summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Replacing you and me is costly because we're trained IT reps. These guys not so much. The only leverage they have is to band together into a Union.
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Just because something is tax deductible doesn't mean it's free. People (mostly those that don't understand what that means) thinks that it means free money for a company to do something. It's not. It just means it gets a fraction of a hair cheaper, but you still foot the bill. If I pay for some certification I need, I may be allowed to pay no tax for that money that I spent on it, but that's a fairly small fraction of the total cost, at best you save like 20%.
And given that Amazon already pays nearly no ta
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Obviously you've never run a business. It costs a substantial amount to hire people [investopedia.com]. And all business expenses are essentially tax deductible since businesses are taxed on profit, not revenue. (And no this is not a special privilege enjoyed by companies. If you're self-employed your business expenses are deductible too. And if you work as an employee, your job search expens
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Any employer will bend over backwards to keep good employees. If a business chooses to let someone go for a mere 1 hour transgression, opting to incur the hiring, training, unemployment, and any incidental severance costs, it was because the employee was already problematic and this was the final straw that broke the camel's back.
... or a union organizer?
Re:Didn't you read the summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously you've never run a business. It costs a substantial amount to hire people.
People often talk about the total cost of hiring. But they hardly ever talk about the total cost of having a severely under-performing employee. It's way more than the direct incidents that cause them to piss off a client. It's more than the second-hand effects to your reputation and future business. The biggest hit is to employee morale. Your weakest members of the team are like "okay I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun him" because if you're tolerating this slow, sloppy, tardy, unpleasant guy all you have to do is to be slightly better than that. The strongest members of your team will be like why give it the extra effort, like you cook a perfect medium rare but the customer will have it served with soggy potatoes, overcooked vegetables and burnt sauce so the total impression is shit anyway. Even if you're probably better paid it feels like you should have had double or triple his pay for what you're getting.
That is not to say there's a lot of downsides to a competitive rather than cooperative workplace, for the most part the team is much stronger and more important than the individual members so if it becomes about taking credit, brown-nosing and promoting yourself while tripping up and scapegoating others you typically get terrible results. I really despise the workplaces that makes you rank every team to a bell curve where the top guy is singled out for a big raise and the bottom guy fired. You need some measure of balance where they're working as a team, but every member of the team has to pull their weight. Which is not so say equal weight, but the amount of weight that's expected from someone in their position and pay grade. It's not easy trying to measure everyone with their personal stick in an objective way though, I don't envy managers that part of the job.
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I have seen the devastating effect of this "cost cutting" approach multiple times first hand: It immediately means that even extremely bad performing employees are no longer asked to leave, because even if their productivity was marginal, no one wants their work-load added, and (almost) no manager wants to vo
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If you are already doing a large portion of the work then getting rid of a toxic person, even when no further help will be brought on, still gets rid of that toxicity.
I'm stuck at my job in many ways, but mostly because I don't want to put in the immense effort and cost of retraining and likely taking a pay cut until I can get some more experience and justify higher wages. One of the biggest problems in my work is not my pay or compensation (which I find to be rather good actually) but the handful of terrib
If the employees are desperate & disposible (Score:2)
Again, the points your making (and the GP) only apply at much, much higher levels of employment. The mistake people make with capitalism is ignoring how capitalists will externalize _all_ their costs. Or as
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Some low level "managers" are more like slave drivers. They get a little power and think they're some sort of mini-despot now.
All they really need is a lead pipe. And being replaced with someone who can actually do the job.
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Do the poorly performing workers also need a lead pipe? Just asking for details since we've established what are acceptable tactics.
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Agree with you. Give some one power and THEY WILL abuse it.
Sounds like you had a terrible manager, but what you said isn't some universal truth. I've been in management for over 10 years. It wasn't because I cared about power to prop up my own ego, it's because I outperformed others and I was intelligent and reliable. The first few years as a manager I learned a lot about how to get what you need from people by trial and error, then finally started reading books on leadership and management to learn the craft. It's not the most fun job in the world either. Man
Again, South Park nail is (Score:3)
Once again South Park hits the mark. It's like they can predict the near future!
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Won't work. (Score:2)
Amazon is large enough that they could afford to close an entire warehouses some bogus reason just to "send a message". That said, the most affordable option is to simply ignore protesters and build redundant warehouses and always run under capacity just in case they do need to shutter a warehouse.
It will require government intervention for Amazon to change. In the meantime, they will be busy working toward an even greater level of automation.
Welcome to capitalism at it's finest.
Sending a Message (Score:2)
Amazon is large enough that they could afford to close an entire warehouses some bogus reason just to "send a message".
"And in other news, Amazon announced that they'll be hiring 60 new employees. Story at 11".
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Amazon is large enough that they could afford to close an entire warehouses some bogus reason just to "send a message". That said, the most affordable option is to simply ignore protesters and build redundant warehouses and always run under capacity just in case they do need to shutter a warehouse.
It will require government intervention for Amazon to change. In the meantime, they will be busy working toward an even greater level of automation.
Welcome to capitalism at it's finest.
It "is" Friday night after all.
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Welcome to capitalism at it's finest.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Amazon's purpose, like any other joint-stock corporation, is to increase shareholder value. They're not a charity. If they can improve their efficiency (and shareholder returns) by automation, that's exactly what they should do. So far, they've done an incredible job of serving their customers, and their customers have rewarded them accordingly.
Proud (Score:2, Interesting)
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As altruistic as that may sound, it's a sure way to extinction.
Unions work just fine (Score:3)
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"As altruistic as that may sound"
Isn't that caused by vaccines?
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Hah, no. The fortunes of the union are directly tied to the long-term success of the company - which is not the case for owners, executives and stockholders. Who will happily drive a company into the ground if it means big short term profits and just move on like a pack of vultures to the next target.
Where would you park? (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking up where Amazon has a delivery center in Eagan, MN, there seems to be just one, in an industrial park along Hwy 55. Here is the location from Google Maps:
2811 Beverly Rd, Eagan, MN 55121
4451'11.1"N 9308'08.5"W (44.853092, -93.135705)
https://www.google.com/maps/pl... [google.com]
One of the comments above states "repay workers for towed cars, and allow workers to clock-in off site so they aren't marked late. Or get up 10 minutes earlier?"
Fair enough, but take a look at the map.
The property looks like it has about 140 parking spots for cars. So, if any shift has a greater number of workers, they would need to park off site.
Now, look at what is around that place. Other industrial buildings, warehouses, and so forth. This is not a neighborhood where you can wake up and walk from home, or else park on the street two blocks away and walk. The surrounding properties likely have signs saying "parking for XYZ Co. employees only, violators will be towed". Even if you parked in one of them, you would have to walk a bit to get to Amazon. The biggest private lots you could cheat at are across the street of a 4-lane divided highway. The closest public lot is an airport offsite parking lot which perhaps Amazon could contract some slots (perhaps has).
If Amazon had sufficient dedicated parking, then you could chastise tardy employees for not leaving soon enough, but when there simply is no parking, be realistic. There are some limited nearby lots on which a multilevel parking structure could be built, if anyone cared enough.
In an era when crappy service and support, and "who me?", "not my problem", and "I don't care" seem to rule a lot of retail services and products, I always admired how Amazon has maintained a focus on a good experience for the customer. But, Amazon is ever more in the news for the flip side of that, like unaware of or ignoring crappy merchandise from independent sellers, and not supporting its own employees with that same sense of care and commitment. It seems like they have enough revenue to take care of their own. Why would anyone want to "take it laying down" if they have no choice but to risk every day towing and fees just to come to a low wage thankless job? So, for whoever wrote the comment "That's a doozy", look at the map then tell us where would you park your Deusy.
Re:Where would you park? (Score:4, Informative)
In google street-view, you can see lots of cheap-looking "no parking" signs along the side of the road. Obviously an on-going problem.
No sidewalks, no bike lanes, no bus stops, so I suppose everyone is expected to drive there.
Actually no street-lighting, and the adjacent highway appears to be very badly maintained and sign-posted.
Looks third-world. Is Minessota in serious financial trouble?
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No sidewalks, no bike lanes, no bus stops, so I suppose everyone is expected to drive there. Actually no street-lighting, and the adjacent highway appears to be very badly maintained and sign-posted. Looks third-world.
It is third-world, for those living outside of some gated communities. But people rather tend to ignore their actual surroundings and judge their standard of living from the fantasy world they watch on TV.
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This is the most insidious thing I see (Score:2)
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I know that was one flaw in the ACA/Obamacare bill, but I'm not sure if the part-time definition pre-dated that at 29 hours. They should have reduced it to 16 hours a week or under is part-time, anything over that then they needed to provide full healthcare benefits.
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At which point they hire twice as many people for only 15 hours a week.
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No, they should have decoupled health-care from employment, so that an extra hour of work only costs an extra hour of moneys, up until it hits the overtime threshold, since we actually do want to discourage hours worked over that limit.
Silent protesters packing wrong stuff (Score:2)
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Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
I have an idea (Score:2, Troll)
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They're low IQ so finding another job probably isn't an option.
I see (Score:2)
Pretty sure they can find somebody else for $16.25 an hour.
Better watch your back though, in MN ... you have imported some trouble there ...
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"Better watch your back though, in MN ... you have imported some trouble there ..."
So true: letting Amazon move in is trouble all right. Those guys don't pay taxes.
The full headline... (Score:2)
"60 Amazon Workers Walked Out Over Warehouse Working Conditions..." and were replaced literally within minutes.
Nobody made you work there. McDonald's here is hiring up to $15/hour for some shifts, and they never have issues with parking.
where is their congresscritter Omar? (Score:1)
They can be replaced. (Score:2)
Amazon service best (Score:1)