Amazon Raises Minimum Wage to $15 for All US Employees

Mazzspeed said:
Not really interested.

Raise the livable wages of the middle/working class and the bulk of the population has the expendable income to directly contribute to the economy by being able to afford the products being peddled by capitalist USA, this is a fairly undeniable fact. If you want to know more in relation to specifics regarding population, size and GDP - Feel free to look it up yourself.
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Raise those wages and you then raise the cost of the items they are buying, this is true everywhere. Things tend to cost less here than other places, but I guess that is not part of your spiel.. Perhaps you should show all these wonderful statistics and economics that support your theory? Oh that's right, you aren't interested, because you just want to wave fairy dust and make everything magically better...
 
So, the summary is this $15 minimum wage for Amazon, is strictly a PR stunt..

Meanwhile, November 1st, Amazon is ending incentive based compensation program (Variable Compensation Plan)... offered up to a 4 percent bonus for attendance, and an additional 4 percent if a worker's building meet certain production goals.. (not how accurate this is... but if true... this stinks to me)..
 
jlbenedict said:
So, the summary is this $15 minimum wage for Amazon, is strictly a PR stunt..

Meanwhile, November 1st, Amazon is ending incentive based compensation program (Variable Compensation Plan)... offered up to a 4 percent bonus for attendance, and an additional 4 percent if a worker's building meet certain production goals.. (not how accurate this is... but if true... this stinks to me)..
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It is mostly a PR stunt, but even as a PR stunt it will help a lot of employees. They are ending many of the compensation packages they had, but those benefited a few, while raising the wages will benefit the majority. Some people are going to end up making less because of the changes, but overall most will earn more. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out in a few years. I think what people don't get, is companies like Amazon can afford to make this move. But not all companies can, especially small businesses.
 
NoOther said:
This is a huge lie being told right now. Raising the minimum wage to $15/hr will put a lot of mom and pop stores out of business because they cannot afford to even pay some of their employees now the rate that larger chain stores do. This is going on all over the country. My uncle's favorite hardware store closed down because they could not compete with the local Home Depot and they were only paying their workers $10/hr. There are stories like this all over the country, just no one is listening. They are soo keen on being righteous about a livable wage they aren't truly listening to people suffering trying to provide the best they can for their families and their workers.

The problem is complex, if you really want to start finding a solution, then it would have to start with restrictions to large chains. We would have to radically change anti-trust law to curtail the spread of chains all over the place that can cut prices through large scale deals and agreements.

Also as has been mentioned by a newer article out, some workers are now making less because of the min wage increase by Amazon. Amazon ended a lot of the incentives they were provided to help boost wages when they just increased the wages to $15/hr across the board. Most of those incentives were rewards for good work and consistency.
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No it won't. You know why? The average pay of a worker from a small business is already ABOVE $15. Good grief people we have the Internet you can look this stuff up.

"The category of small businesses with the highest average salary is those companies with 50 to 99 employees, which pay an average annual salary of $41,782. The category with the lowest average salary is companies with between five and 19 employees, at$35,801.23." -- Forbes magazine 2014

So what is $15 per hour equal per year? $31,200

For all of the supposed capitalists in the room how do you think small businesses compete with larger businesses when they don't have all of the perks of a Google or Facebook? If you said SALARY increases then you're the winner!

This isn't football people. It's real life. Just because someone on your "team" says something doesnt mean you just go and believe it.
 
kac77 said:
Regardless of the wait they are living longer than us. If it really was what you say then they wouldn't be living longer. Canada is ranked 12th we are ranked 31st. That's a pretty big gap. Political views can change what a person believes greatly but numbers are numbers period. It's like testing hardware, tons of people believe all sorts of things. But you run tests that often disprove common mythical ethos. This is no different.
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That's why I said the part about there being benefits to such a system. All I'm saying is that the system in Canada isn't perfect, and it isn't necessarily the solution to the U.S. health care system.

Mazzspeed said:
Not really interested.

Raise the livable wages of the middle/working class and the bulk of the population has the expendable income to directly contribute to the economy by being able to afford the products being peddled by capitalist USA, this is a fairly undeniable fact. If you want to know more in relation to specifics regarding population, size and GDP - Feel free to look it up yourself.
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We aren't talking about raising the wages of the middle or working class. The working class gets screwed by a minimum wage hike as businesses that have to damn near double their pay to unskilled labor have to raise costs or cut their work forces to remain profitable. The % of pay increase doesn't carry over to the middle class. In fact, they take a hit because their money doesn't go as far.
 
kac77 said:
No it won't. You know why? The average pay of a worker from a small business is already ABOVE $15. Good grief people we have the Internet you can look this stuff up.

"The category of small businesses with the highest average salary is those companies with 50 to 99 employees, which pay an average annual salary of $41,782. The category with the lowest average salary is companies with between five and 19 employees, at$35,801.23." -- Forbes magazine 2014

So what is $15 per hour equal per year? $31,200

For all of the supposed capitalists in the room how do you think small businesses compete with larger businesses when they don't have all of the perks of a Google or Facebook? If you said SALARY increases then you're the winner!

This isn't football people. It's real life. Just because someone on your "team" says something doesnt mean you just go and believe it.
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You do realize what average salary means right? That means at least half the employees or more are making less than $15/hr. And no, salaries don't necessarily increase for companies competing. And then when you extend that out to compare total compensation package the gap gets even wider. As for the competition with companies like Amazon and Google, what you are saying is wrong. Both Amazon and Google pay more for many of the same positions when compared to companies outside. That is why the competition to get into those companies is so much higher.
 
NoOther said:
You do realize what average salary means right? That means at least half the employees or more are making less than $15/hr. And no, salaries don't necessarily increase for companies competing. And then when you extend that out to compare total compensation package the gap gets even wider. As for the competition with companies like Amazon and Google, what you are saying is wrong. Both Amazon and Google pay more for many of the same positions when compared to companies outside. That is why the competition to get into those companies is so much higher.
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Yeah it also means that All small businesses arent going to go out of business. Also adjust your math you can't have more people under 15 per hour and and have an higher average. I hope you arent thinking about median. median and average are not the same thing. Unless your argument is going to run counter to Dan's below.
 
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Dan_D said:
That's why I said the part about there being benefits to such a system. All I'm saying is that the system in Canada isn't perfect, and it isn't necessarily the solution to the U.S. health care system.
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No one said it was, but it is better than what we have. I mean if you want to talk about benefits of profiting off of whether someone should be healed or not have at it . You know what also causes long waits? Not having enough money to get the procedure you need. Also I don't think anything beyond general medicine doesn't have a wait in the US.

Dan_D said:
We aren't talking about raising the wages of the middle or working class. The working class gets screwed by a minimum wage hike as businesses that have to damn near double their pay to unskilled labor have to raise costs or cut their work forces to remain profitable. The % of pay increase doesn't carry over to the middle class. In fact, they take a hit because their money doesn't go as far.
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You do realize we have this thing called inflation right? If the minimum wage was locked to inflation we wouldn't be having this discussion at all. In fact if they had done that at all it would be OVER that now. You're proclaiming doom and gloom for something you have no evidence for. It hasn't been raised it's still at $7.25. Furthermore wage increases haven't kept up with inflation FOR DECADES. Yet getting that double cheese burger costs twice as much as it did 5 years ago.

With regards to the Facebook and Google comparison if you think that small companies in the same industry can't compete based on price then you must also believe they have all of the good people on planet earth. There would be no need to buy anyone out because Google and Facebook have them all. Unfortunately i can't go too much further without revealing peoples identities but sorry you're wrong many small businesses can and do compete with larger companies in terms of price. Company profitability matters more than just the sheer number of employees.

Also this rather odd ascertion that poor people cause all of the problems. Yet there are many red states that have been conservative with the same fiscal opinion as you yet for some reason those are the poorest states with the highest rates of teen pregnancy and lowest ability for upward mobility. Unless you have one of the top 10 most dangerous jobs on Earth I'm still waiting for this fiscal opinion to birth fruit.
 
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kac77 said:
Yeah it also means that All small businesses arent going to go out of business. Also adjust your math you can't have more people under 15 per hour and and have an higher average. I hope you arent thinking about median. median and average are not the same thing. Unless your argument is going to run counter to Dan's below.
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Please show me where I stated that ALL small businesses were going to go out of business.

I am not sure what you are trying to say by pointing out differences from median and average. It amounts to the same thing. To point out the difference is to use semantics. We know that there are people that make well more than $15/hour. Knowing that, you already know that to get the average, therefore must be people that make less than $15/hour. Median is literally just taking the middle numbers in the list of numbers, so that isn't necessarily right either.

In any case, you are just trying to deflect rather than actually respond to the comment.
 
NoOther said:
Please show me where I stated that ALL small businesses were going to go out of business.

I am not sure what you are trying to say by pointing out differences from median and average. It amounts to the same thing. To point out the difference is to use semantics. We know that there are people that make well more than $15/hour. Knowing that, you already know that to get the average, therefore must be people that make less than $15/hour. Median is literally just taking the middle numbers in the list of numbers, so that isn't necessarily right either.

In any case, you are just trying to deflect rather than actually respond to the comment.
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I didn't read the full exchange, I just wanted to point out your point about median v. average getting to the same thing isn't correct, especially when it comes to wages. If you have disproportionate pay, then the average becomes increasingly unhelpful.

Just an example to illustrate the point: 1 CEO gets paid $15,000,000 a year, 100 executives get paid $900,000 a year, 1000 employees get paid 40,000 a year.

Average wage = $131,000
Median wage = $40,000

While the difference isn't usually that extreme, the point is the more top-heavy an organization is, the less the wage average actually represents the average worker.
 
cageymaru said:
Well I would counter that argument with the small business needs to charge more for their services. Say minimum wage increases across the board to $15. Everyone who couldn't pay as much for services previously should be able to pay more for services in that scenario. So that hamburger increases in price, but the average person can still afford it because the minimum wage is now $15.

Just thinking outside the box and having a bit of fun; not starting an argument. :)
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Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. This is called artificial inflation, and it happened twice during Obama's presidency. When he raised minimum wage from something like $5.75 to $6.55 and again to $7.25, everything was fine for about 6 months until the rest of the economy adjusted upwards and then you ended up having the same or less dollar buying power as before the increase. And each wage increase cost the economy jobs, but it wasn't as bad as Obamacare which slaughtered the job market.

But those were small bumps to minimum wage, if it went to $15 overnight, the economy would collapse. It would slaughter small and medium businesses and cost the economy millions of jobs. Large businesses could afford that punishment in the interim until they can cut enough staff to stay solvent.

"Just increase your labor cost" doesn't work, minimum wage going up isn't going to change people's minds into paying more for the same service, you're going to lose tons of business.
 
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2 years ago, my stay-at-home wife decided she wanted to see what it was like to work in the US, so she tried a seasonal job at Target. I think wage was $8.65/hr. Then, just north of us, a HUGE amazon warehouse opened. This year target is hiring holiday workers starting at $13.....

Not sure if related, but I did find it interesting...
 
NoOther said:
It is mostly a PR stunt, but even as a PR stunt it will help a lot of employees. They are ending many of the compensation packages they had, but those benefited a few, while raising the wages will benefit the majority. Some people are going to end up making less because of the changes, but overall most will earn more. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out in a few years. I think what people don't get, is companies like Amazon can afford to make this move. But not all companies can, especially small businesses.
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Those compensation package benefited the people that worked their asses off to get them. Now they have no incentive to bust their ass cause the slackers who didn't deserve it got moved up to the same level. How is rewarding the slackers right?
 
vegeta535 said:
Those compensation package benefited the people that worked their asses off to get them. Now they have no incentive to bust their ass cause the slackers who didn't deserve it got moved up to the same level. How is rewarding the slackers right?
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First, according to reports, the vast majority of employees will be making more. There was an article saying employees were going to make less because of the loss of compensations. That may be true for some employees, but the vast majority will make more.

Secondly, I am not advocating for raising the minimum wage or what they did here. Pretty sure I called it what it was, a PR move.

Third, just because they raised the wages for their workers doesn't mean they are rewarding slackers. Nor does it mean they will not still reward hard work. They may choose to give raises or come up with a new compensation plan that is fits better with the new wage schema. Also, Amazon is well known for firing people who are not performing.
 
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