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Let's Talk Amazon
Or used to exist...
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Legomancer wrote: Wages have been stagnant for decades while productivity has been pushed higher and higher.
I'm not touching the "SJW" stuff with a 10-foot pole, LOL, but I did want to comment on stagnant wages. That's absolutely true that wages have been essentially flat for decades now, but total compensation has been growing steadily over the same period. It's an interesting topic, and I only bring it up because the "wages vs. compensation" distinction is easy to overlook, and it was a real eye-opener for me personally.
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I doubt this approach would work in the UK, im not an expert on employment law here but its not that easy just to 'manage' people out. At least not without significant severance pay. I also wonder whether such a system will work for amazon in the long run. Some skill areas simply do not have that many trained professionals in. If you manage those people out for internal political reasons replacing them won't always happen, equally if projects are constantly changing their teams things can easily get lost or dropped. To what extent is amazons current success built off good infrastructure planning made in the early 00s.
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Mr. White wrote: Can one of you economic majors better explain the whole 'wages being stagnant' thing? My salary, and the salaries of everyone I know, have been going up at a decent clip. Is it that we're not outpacing inflation? Is it a problem elsewhere that I'm not experiencing in my area? Why should we be making more?
Yes, adjusting for inflation, wages have been stagnant in the U.S. for many years. Unless you are in the upper 5%, income-wise, in which case your wages have been more than staying ahead of inflation.
That said, Feelitmon may have a point regarding total compensation, which would include things like 401K matching, Simple IRA matching, health and/or dental coverage, life insurance, allowance for relocation, etc. However, companies have been cutting back on the health coverage for years now, due to rapidly increasing healthcare costs jacking up insurance premiums. Plans tend to cover less and/or require more of a contribution by employees via payroll deductions.
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- Legomancer
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- Dave Lartigue
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In addition to wages not keeping up with inflation, they also haven't kept up with productivity. If they get 20% more work out of you but you only get 5% more money, your wages haven't gone up.
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The Brand Ambassadors and other apparent employees of Uber aren't employees either, they are all temps employed by various employment agencies. As such, they also do not receive steady pay or benefits. Scheduling is irregular and often last-minute, and people who aren't available for a given shift on short notice will be less likely to get shifts in the future.
The founders of Uber are tech-oriented millennials who refuse to learn anything about business. Instead of having a company e-mail system, they use a proprietary texting app, possibly to avoid leaving a trail of communication that could be brought into a court of law. The management structure is very decentralized and somewhat resembles the structure of an espionage operation with multiple independent cells that don't communicate with each other. The general strategy seems to be avoidance of conventional structure and responsibility. Uber often makes mistakes, but the outcome always resembles the old joke, "Heads we win, tails you lose."
Why do people keep working for Uber? I think that they successfully prey on inexperienced millennials, who think that anything involving new technology is automatically great. The millennials think that it's cool to work for a trendy and unconventional company, until they gradually realize how badly they are getting screwed compared to normal employees of other companies.
Uber is already sitting on a big pile of investment money and possibly preparing to go public this year. That may be their downfall, as investors and regulatory agencies will put Uber under intense scrutiny and punish them for falling short of quarterly goals. I hope so, because Uber's long-term plan is to develop a driverless car, allowing them to send out a fleet of unmanned vehicles and cut out those annoying human drivers that need money to live.
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Isn't there also some to do about Uber undermining the local Taxi companies? I guess in a capitalist free market this type of stuff should be good to go. However, all I see is more and more un/under-employment but more cash for company heads...
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To be honest, what finally pushed me over the edge with Uber was when they cut my girlfriend's pay recently. They didn't tell her that she was getting a paycut, they simply changed the payroll interface to reflect a lower payrate. When she complained that there seemed to be a mistake involving her payrate, she was told that her "previous payrate was no longer available." Right, like it was some kind of random occurrence that nobody is responsible for and just kind of happened. They keep pulling this kind of shit, they are going to need to become super-efficient at training new employees. Er, contractors and temps.
I grew up working for my dad's small construction company, so I was raised to be biased against labor unions. But labor unions were necessary at one time to push back against the oppressive and unsafe corporate practices developed during the Industrial Revolution. When I was young, unions became corrupt and weak, and lost public support because they made it hard for American companies to compete in an increasingly global economy. But I think that the pendulum has swung too far and we need a resurgence of labor unions to fight corrupt companies like Wal-Mart and Uber and maybe Amazon.
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Mr. White wrote: I thought Google was doing the driverless car schtick? They've had some on the roads here.
Isn't there also some to do about Uber undermining the local Taxi companies? I guess in a capitalist free market this type of stuff should be good to go. However, all I see is more and more un/under-employment but more cash for company heads...
Its hard to root for either side really . The traditional taxi system is more akin to serfs in medieval Europe - the vast majority of taxi drivers don't own their vehicle, but lease it from an owner who bought the medallion ( the permit to operate ) at a high price - in some cities, medallions currently fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars. Taxi drivers don't earn shit. The whole car for hire system really needs to be blown up, but there are too many vested interests at stake. If nothing else, Uber may bring some reform to the whole situation.
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- Erik Twice
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Nobody should be offered the "choice" of working for a company that will fire them for getting cancer or not working 80 hours like Amazon does.DukeofChutney wrote: Interesting article. I'm not sure how i feel about it. Im rather anti social darwinism and wouldn't work for Amazon personally, but if there is a choice of work, and people know what they are going in for at amazon i guess its up to them.
Unless one thinks that there's an underclass of people that don't deserve financial security, sick pay or being able to live outside of their work, these "jobs" ought not to exist because nobody should be asked to leave their humanity at the door just to be able to work. There are millions and millions of people working without any kind of healthcare plan and on minimun wage today and I doubt it was their choice to do so.
Jesus Christ, the United States doesn't have mandatory holidays! It doesn't have sick pay! It's so backwards that everytime I'm reminded of it I have to check Google because I can't imagine it being right, yet it is!
That aside: Boycotts don't work, they are a terrible methodology that only reinforces the inherent differences in power between citizens and corporations. Change can only be effected through law and even then it's an uphill battle. I'm just thankful that Uber is banned here.
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