https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/business/amazon-minimum-wage.html One thing this is a sign is a small unemployment rate. There is a demand for workers
Is there a cap on hours per week you can work? Working 50 hours a week, this comes out to 36k a year. That is very respectable for the bottom.
It is a good thing when companies voluntarily do something like this, not so much when it is forced on them.
Anyone have more details on limitations? Is anything over 40 hours, 50 hours, 60 hours overtime, can they work more than 40 hours?
Good for them. If they feel it's in the best interests of their customers, shareholders, and employees then more power to them.
Agreed . . .probably cost them 1 or 2 billion a year at most Does ole boy really need to be 102 billionaire as oppose to just a 100 billionaire? Rocket River
Amazon has got a special problem. They are a monopoly. And eventually the government is going to come and break them up or regulate them. For now, they stay in good graces because they are delivering low prices. I see this wage hike in the same light -- they look like responsible corporate citizens by paying good wages. They want to give influencers reasons to take their side. The wise shareholder should be happy to pay the higher wages in order to perpetuate the monopoly years as long as possible. Interesting article on the Amazon monopoly: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/technology/monopoly-antitrust-lina-khan-amazon.html
This. The call for an increase of the minimum wage has been steadily growing for some time and polls over the last 5-6 years have shown support growing. At some point progressives are going to be in office, of another populist that will call for an increase in wages. So Amazon, can push the need to break up their monopoly further down the priority list.
I think that's exactly it, companies are absolutely free to pay their people more if it is in their best interest to do so. There's no need to tinker with the minimum wage IMO. Increasing the minimum wage isn't giving people a raise, companies deciding to pay more IS giving people a raise. For example, if the government decided to raise the minimum wage to 15 an hour, all of the good done by amazon raising it's minimum wage to 15 and hour would be wiped out and those employees would be worse off than if they were making 10 an hour with a 7 an hour minimum wage.
Just playing Trump's advocate here... I don't think amazon does this without those tax cuts. If we could get all the greedy corps to actually trickle down to the 'forgotten men', everyone, left and right would be down for that. Good for amazon. More should do the same. And as much as I like Bernie, Trump, even if not intentional, got the motion rolling. Bernie might have guilt tripped bezos but Trump made that sob richer to be able to do this. Now if Bernie can guilt every fortune 500 then he'd be man of the millennium.
a large percentage of Amazon's workforce is robotic. Doesn't this just apply pressure on competitors whose workforce is less robotic (Walmart)? smart, competitive strat by Amazon.
Google is far more of a monopoly than Amazon is if we are talking about online titans. FWIW I don't even see how Amazon is a monopoly. I use other marketplaces regularly. Amazon has a major advantage that it pushes with Prime but there are more than a few sellers on their site that a bullshit and you have to be cautious sometimes. I did not read the article, but I might try to later. If you can give me a synopsis why Amazon is a monopoly that would be good.
Minimum wages have been increasing in many states already. The federal minimum wage is a bit of a dinosaur and honestly only dictates the wages of service industry workers. Yeah it needs to be updated and have some sort of inflation and productivity adjustment (I played around with that in another thread here), but it's not that big of a deal. When major corps increase their starting pay that effectively acts as a min wage increase.
No, I don't credit tax cuts, Trump, or Sanders -- except maybe insofar as Bezos fears regulatory intervention from the socialist. Big corporations don't run on guilt. Nor do I believe that being 'rich enough' is some enabling factor. They thought it'd be better from Amazon. Also makes the investment case to buy more robots stronger. Google is in the same boat, imo. Ms. Khan's argument is that Amazon is engaged in predatory pricing. And it makes sense for them because as an incredibly scalable online platform business, they are rewarded by shareholders for sacrificing bottom line profits for topline growth. And, they build and own the infrastructure that their competitors use, which allows them an information advantage over their competitors [equal access to information is one of the basic ingredients to a robust market in classic economics]. Here is the abstract to the academic paper: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox
It's not as good as it sounded at first. Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...g-bonuses-stock-awards-to-help-pay-for-raises
