Posted on 12/20/2020 2:13:34 AM PST by Libloather
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday said Amazon's jobs are a "scam" because they're not creating financial security for workers.
"A 'job' that leaves you homeless & on food stamps isn't a job. It's a scam," she said on Twitter.
Ocasio-Cortez referenced a Bloomberg News report detailing how many Amazon warehouse workers struggle to pay bills, with as many as 4,000 on food stamps.
The report said Amazon has turned logistics work from a professional career option to "entry-level" work for many. As Amazon's workforce has soared during the pandemic, safety conditions in its warehouses have failed to keep pace, according to the report.
"This is why 'Amazon jobs' aren't it & we should instead focus our public investments + incentives on small businesses, public infrastructure, & worker cooperatives that actually support dignified life," said Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter.
"Bloomberg's conclusion is false - it violates over 50 years of economic thought, and suspends the law of supply and demand," an Amazon representative told Bloomberg.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Marry me, Alex. I can fix you.
Even a broken clock is right 2x a day. And scarily, brutal Amazon fulfillment center jobs are all that’s hiring in certain parts of the country.
The change from stable well-paying middle-class jobs pre-CCP virus to the majority of available jobs being lower-class part-time entry-level minimum wage with no benefits jobs is absolutely breathtaking.
Most people formerly from these well-paying jobs can’t last a week there (including myself). All while Scamazon outsourced most of its white-collar, customer service and development jobs to India.
Bezos needs his trillion.
Yeah, you know, I hate to say it, but there’s a kernel of truth in what AOC is saying here. Amazon has made off like a bandit during covid19, and a lot of folks have lost their jobs at brick-and-mortar businesses that have shut down by bureaucrats while Bezos gets to operate with a free hand. It’s like, “Your job at a small business has been eliminated as the politicians and petty bureaucrats, but, hey, no worries you get a job doing fulfillment for Jeff Bezos’ racket.” I’m kinda reminded of the George Bailey speech in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, “This town needs this measly one-horse institution if only to have some place where people can come without crawling to Potter.”
I’m no Basis fan but it is hard to fault him for running his business in the which benefits him the most.
A successful business has a plan which pays “market wages” which are those dictated by the law of supply/demand. As long as no rules or laws are violated he is within his rights to run his business as he sees fit. This includes hiring the best qualified help at the lowest possible wage.
Basis s/b Bezos.
Who wants to bet AOC buys from Amazon all the time?
If all of AOC’c policies are implemented the whole country will be on food stamps
Because we operate in a free market?
Ordinarily I would agree with you 100% but let’s look at what Bezos and Amazon are doing....
He has accumulated more wealth that anyone in history, he revolutionized how retail works in this country that part I have no issue with...
However, he purchased the Washington Post and turned that into a 100% propaganda arm for lunatic liberal policies and to work overtime in getting rid of Trump...
He spends millions buys lobbyists and politicians to keep them from passing laws that might affect his billions...
He was allowed to operate as an essential business while all his small competitors were crushed during this faux virus scam...
Basically what I’m saying is, I have no love lost for a man who has accumulated great wealth in a free enterprise system who now wants a totalitarian system that benefits only him.......so if he gets cut down to size and is forced to pay his workers higher wages, it the long run it would be a good thing....
Why not?
Regards,
Amazon was proposing to build a corporate headquarters there, not a giant fulfillment center. There would have been thousands of people working there, and the average employee would have been paid in excess of $100,000/year.
I follow trends in industrial real estate development as part of my professional work, and I can assure AOC that she won’t have to worry about those Amazon workers on public assistance for very long. The latest trend in warehouse/distribution facility design is the development of massive, highly automated buildings that employee hardly anyone. Even semi-rural areas around me are seeing planning board applications for 100-foot tall warehouse buildings that are completely out of character with the most recent giant warehouses that have been built over the last 10-15 years.
Without a plan for those workers, we are moving towards a serious problem.
As long as Bezos runs a near-monopoly that’s pretty much the only game in town for jobs - the other options are just as bad. Fast-food McJobs, Walmart and Target and grocery stores. All part-time, minimum wage manual-labor intensive starter jobs with no benefits. There is a huge issue.
With 40 to 75% of all small businesses closed (some permanently) due to the CCP virus, depending on the state/ locality, and Amazon not affected, his near slave labor environment needs to be heavily regulated. He runs his fulfillment centers a little too much like the Communist Chinese-run factories he gets a majority of his goods from.
So no comment about Bezos sending the best, highest paid Amazon jobs over to India or bringing in Indians to the US to replace the few Americans left with decent white-collar Amazon jobs? All while leaving the slave labor type jobs in the US and other locations (huge problems in Europe over working conditions)? Not surprising.
“Most people formerly from these well-paying jobs can’t last a week there (including myself).
Why not?”
I am sixty-seven. Recently, a moving company sent several teams of men to pack up and move a relative. Each team was three men. For the most part, they were built like linebackers. They worked non-stop at a pace I couldn’t maintain for even an hour. (Even though their company was charging $150 per hour for their services, we tipped them each $20. They said they were making $15/hour.) The point is, I am physically incapable of keeping up.
At my first part time job, clerking in a grocery store, even though I was in great shape and eager to be as good as the others, I couldn’t keep up with most of the stock clerks. That fact kept me plugging away at my engineering degree because for some reason I don’t understand, I couldn’t stock as fast or as accurately as the pros. To this day, I don’t understand how they could be 25% faster than me. (I took some data and was appalled.)
In my final years at my white collar job, I believe I was a top performing employee. But starting in my late fifties, I could barely make it through a full day. The symptoms I was experiencing started much earlier, but I was able to compensate by going to bed earlier, special exercises which I did rigorously, and an increasing regimen of prescription drugs.
My point, and this shocked me when I realized it, not everybody can do just any job. I feel fortunate that I was able to find a job I could do exceptionally well that didn’t require me to do things I couldn’t do. By my final days I had to arrive early so I could take a nap in my truck during lunch. (I have finally been diagnosed with severe fibromyalgia. The symptoms were always there. They simply got worse with age.)
Only valid in a free market.
There is no more free market, just fascism.
Worked a white-collar desk job my whole life (similar to those in the shutdown service industries)
Bad back and knees. Can’t lift the required 49 lbs on a constant on-going basis.
It’s like asking a blue-collar warehouse worker to solve quaternion rotations using transforms in real-time. It’s not gonna happen.
Why is there the expectation here and elsewhere that white-collar workers can start doing brutal manual labor work? When there is not the same expectation that someone that has only done manual labor muscle-intensive work solve advanced physics or astrophysics problems (just an example)?
There are some remedies, which won’t happen, to fix some economic issues.
1. End lockdowns
2. Send all Indians and Chinamen back home.
3. Kick out illegals
As for automation removing jobs, I’m not sure what the fix is.
No middle class or a path for people to better their lives will lead to serious societal issues. (As if we don’t already have them)
Which begs the point.
Since the middle class white collar industry was more than decimated (not the 10% definition) by Indian foreign labor, and
Since the mostly decent-paying middle-class service industry (sports, entertainment, media, events, hotels, restaurants, bars, travel, etc) was shut down and a good number of SMEs ceased to operate, and
Since incoming automation will render most labor-intensive jobs in fast-food and warehouse distribution centers redundant, and
Since many remaining service companies are going to an only pick-up/ delivery model, and
Since Mexicans and others dominate the lower-end labor intensive jobs
Where does that leave about 50 million of us?
This is definitely an inflection point. And it’s not good.
Did she consider that maybe the scam is the food stamps — that Amazon employees are taking them when they shouldn’t?
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