Amazon Rising

[frahse]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Reason Number one is why the MLBPA, the strongest union in sports, does nothing for minor league players and has actively worked to minimize signing bonuses for young players; to free up more money for the high-profile free agents who survived the "hazing" of the sweat shop minors and proved themselves at the bigs.

A variation of that is probably part of the reason for the hostility towards indies (and their facilitators): "I'm stuck with a predatory contract I had no choice but to sign and they dare flaunt their freedom, control, and 70% take?!"

Upstarts, all!
How dare they?

[frahse]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Provided you're allowed to hydrate on company time

Most places I have been have lots of water fountains.

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Hubby worked at a factory and was on what is called the hotline where they bake enamel onto the inner tanks of water heaters. He worked near a 1500 degree furnace. He started out at $10.75 and he was there 5 years as was making close to $15 an hour by the end.

That seems low. Was it a union-free shop?

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Shane R

That seems low. Was it a union-free shop?

No United Steelworkers union. The benefits were great though specially health. $150 Deductible/80% expenses Covered. $25 co payment. He worked 8/9 hour shifts and there was overtime and there was double time which was lovely when they worked Saturdays. He had that job for 5 years before we moved here. It was hard work but it paid the bills. We're hoping to find something like that here in Raleigh as the job hunt continues.

[Namekuseijin]

to me, Amazon is a godsend

never before I read so many books as now, be it public domains classics or copyrighted books. Ironically, I finally met King thanks to the Kindle.

they should quit the whining and let dead trees rest in pieces

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by petrucci

I can certainly understand the sentiment that has been expressed regarding work ethic and working conditions. However, I believe that the outrage at Amazon and other such employers relates to inequities in working conditions and in pay. It is ironic that the jobs that have some of the worst working conditions also have low pay. Things like garbage collection and fast food come to mind. If we truly had a free market economy these undesirable jobs would have to be better paid or no one would do them. This was actually coming to pass in the USA, but the government quickly imported people from other countries who were willing to do the work for less. A surplus of workers is certainly what the companies desire.

In Amazon's case, the outrage also lies in the fact that it is a large company, and could, if it so wished, make the working conditions better. The warehouses could be cooled, and design changes could save the workers from walking long distances. Amazon could also pay the workers more. None of these things are done, and it smacks of greed.

Lastly, some companies make money off of discoveries, inventions, etc. Others make their fortunes off of the backs of poorly paid workers. People generally dislike this. It is a race to the bottom to see who can pay their workers the least.

I am not quite understanding what you are saying. Does Amazon pay significantly less than the national average for unskilled jobs? Are the majority of warehouses cooled? Is walking long distances considered a hardship condition?

Of course Amazon could pay the workers more and raise the prices they sell goods at. Not saying they shouldn't but a 10% wage increase for the majority of their employees would possibly mean a 25% hike in prices. Customers have historically resisted this kind of measure by buying elsewhere. Halving the wages of the upper management might make some people happy but not likely to amount to enough raise the wages of the lower echelons by more then a dime or so if that much.

I think Amazon pays more than most large retail companies for unskilled labour positions, but I can only judge by what large retail companies pay in Canada which is rarely above $11.00 and generally only that high if minimum wage is that high with no benefits. And many US based companies in Canada go through hoops to pay less and hire, then fire employees when they are in danger of having to pay benefits. Or only hire part time employees because they aren't eligible for benefits. I haven't heard of Amazon doing this but perhaps you have proof that they do?

I rarely buy from Amazon but I don't hold their size against them or think that they should pay people more because they are bigger. It seems to me they have a reasonable starting wage and that there is some chance for advancement and bonuses etc. if one performs well unlike most large companies, but maybe not.

Helen

[Rizla]

When I was a lad, I used to lick road for tuppence. Duh.

[Rizla]

Edit: Because it's not worth my time.

[Sydney's Mom]

I think $12.50 for an unskilled position with no experience is wonderful. I actually think highly of Amazon for paying so much above minimum wage.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

I think $12.50 for an unskilled position with no experience is wonderful. I actually think highly of Amazon for paying so much above minimum wage.

I've been doing job searching for hubby and seen a few warehouse jobs in the past weeks as in Raleigh it seems the average pay is $10-$11 an hour. So $12.50 is very good pay for such a position.

[MattW]

Folks here on MobileRead sure are a one-sided bunch when it comes to Amazon.

Is Amazon the incarnation of evil? Of course not. Is all criticism of Amazon unjustified? Of course not.

Let's state a few facts, then. For most of its customers, Amazon is a great company. Customer service, prices, availability, user experience... everything's as good as it can possibly be. So we as customers tend to be pretty happy which translates into a certain loyalty. If we'd agree that Amazon is indeed an unscrupulous quasi-monopoly that destroys entire industries and treats its workers poorly, then, yeah, we'd have to admit that we are shopping at a "bad" company. That somehow would make us complicit in Amazon's wrongdoing.

So our incentive for seeing Amazon's bad side is quite low. This is a well established psychological fact: members of the majority, the rich, the nobility etc rarely see their priviliges as privileges but as something earned (by being born in a certain country or into a certain family, by having "worked hard") and it takes a lot to even notice when things go wrong for others. Legitimate concerns are easily dismissed (often smugly); the richest one percent, for example, often tout the value of hard work and self-discipline when almost none of them have ever earned their money through work.

In the case of Amazon, the arguments run along similar lines. Amazon is good for me as a customer, ergo any company that suffers under Amazon's market dominance must be doing something wrong, otherwise they'd obviously do better (there can only be a very small number of big players in any market, otherwise they would no longer be considered big; and for smaller players matching the price of the bigger ones tends to be a real problem that can't be solved by goodwill). Amazon has air conditioning in most of its warehouses anyway (most? does that not even raise an eyebrow?). Back-breaking manual labour was the best part of my life (why didn't you stay with it, then? Maybe because it's not so much fun after 20 years or when you're older or when you have to raise a family after you come home? Or maybe it seems great now in retrospect, viewed through the tinted lens of nostalgia?). There's a reason why folks don't pay for vacation where they are working in a road crew: it's not a lot of fun for most.

No publisher or author is forced to sell through Amazon, people argue; in fact Amazon accounts for a large part of their profits. So they should either stop complaining or stop doing business with Amazon. Which is akin to saying "You either commit commercial suicide or you keep your mouth shut". Precisely BECAUSE Amazon accounts for a large part of their profit, they are complaining, because any change in their relationship to Amazon (like the new UK contract negotiations) impacts their bottom-line more than anything else.

I am allowed to raise workplace-related issues with my employer instead of just quitting. You're allowed to voice your dissatisfaction with your goverment without leaving the country and anyone can talk with their spouse when things go south instead of divorcing immediately.

And like so many of you have noted, Amazon doesn't need any single traditional publisher, but they all need Amazon. Does that mean that they're not allowed to voice their discomfort with one market player getting too big? Of course, we shouldn't take everything they say at face-value either, they're arguing their self-interests, of couse, just like Amazon.

But if history teaches us anything, it's true that when any player in a market gets too big, problems tend to follow. Not just for the competition, but for the customers too. Equally true is that times and industries change and that sometimes traditional industries need to make way for new technology (so maybe Amazon is indeed destined to preside over the death of the traditional publisihing houses).

I don't know whether we really need BPH for literature to survive (I doubt it, though). But I wouldn't sing Amazon's praises quite so loudly; they are as ruthless as most big corporations (and while they may pay $12.50 in the US, they treated their workers in other territories like Germany quite badly and when they were called on it, moved their wharehouses to Poland). They have the power to force small publishers into contracts they can ill afford (but can't really afford not to sign) and they, like all big companies make liberal use of tax-loopholes and lobby for law-changes that would suit them (and, yes, some of Amazon's behaviour might very well be illegal -- when the courts decide that it was; -- like their treatment of foreign workers in Germany).

For a really big player like Amazon, barely keeping within the letter of the law might be good enough for its customers, but don't act so surprised when the competition isn't as enthusiastic as you are. Ironically stating that Amazon [in the eyes of its opponenets] might very well have caused the stock market crash of 1929 dismisses the arguments of the other side out-of-hand. Pah, they're just insane lunatics, you're saying, next thing you know, they're saying Amazon caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

I know that most folks here disagree with the views I have expressed; I just find it amusing sometimes how vigorously people defend Amazon (or Apple or Google, for that matter), almost with religious fervour. The very simple reason might very well have not only to do with the facts of the matter, but with the simple truth that if something benefits me, it must be good. Because if it's not, where would I be and what would that make me?

And that's why this thread goes on for page after page, one person after another patting each other on the back, reassuring each other that Amazon is great and noble (and, by proxy, so are we) and everybody else just a sore loser in this wonderful new world of technology.

Matt

[DiapDealer]

Your bias about our bias is biased.
So it goes.

[jersysman]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Your bias about our bias is biased.
So it goes.

Here! Here!!

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by petrucci

I can certainly understand the sentiment that has been expressed regarding work ethic and working conditions. However, I believe that the outrage at Amazon and other such employers relates to inequities in working conditions and in pay. It is ironic that the jobs that have some of the worst working conditions also have low pay. Things like garbage collection and fast food come to mind. If we truly had a free market economy these undesirable jobs would have to be better paid or no one would do them. This was actually coming to pass in the USA, but the government quickly imported people from other countries who were willing to do the work for less. A surplus of workers is certainly what the companies desire.

In Amazon's case, the outrage also lies in the fact that it is a large company, and could, if it so wished, make the working conditions better. The warehouses could be cooled, and design changes could save the workers from walking long distances. Amazon could also pay the workers more. None of these things are done, and it smacks of greed.

Lastly, some companies make money off of discoveries, inventions, etc. Others make their fortunes off of the backs of poorly paid workers. People generally dislike this. It is a race to the bottom to see who can pay their workers the least.

There was a time that fast food jobs were mainly held by teenagers looking to make some extra cash and learn about work. The idea that anyone is trying to make a living in a non-managerial position strikes me as insane. I worked at Carl's Jr and it was not easy. It wasn't hard but it was hot, repetitive and boring. I would not want it as a full time job but it gave me spending money and let me save for college. The people who were there who were not management and not in school were pretty much all people who dropped out of school or only had a high school degree. They were unskilled and were not able to compete for better jobs. I am not saying that they do not deserve a living wage but to expect that a job at a fast food place is going to pay the bills for an individual or a family is a huge stretch.

Garbage collectors in the DC area make a very nice wage. I read an article about it a few years back. I was surprised at how much they made actually.

Yes, Amazon makes enough money that they could do a ton to make life better for everyone but they also have to post a profit for the stock holders. I have never worked in a warehouse but I have never thought of them as being comfortable work places. Part of the reason manufacturing left the US is because factory workers were paid a good deal more then any where else in the work, the cost of running a factory in the US was a good deal higher, and workers simply did not have to be as productive as workers in other countries due to labor laws and state/fed law. Manufacturing jobs returning to the US are paying far less and the standards at those factories is very different.

As others have pointed out, I would suggest that $12.50 an hour is 1) above the minimum wage and 2) higher then similar wages in similar jobs in many of the locations that Amazon operates. People who make a good amount of money normally have some type of valuable skill (plumber, electrician, metal smith, dental technician) or have graduated from college or have climbed the ranks starting as the lowest person on the job.

This means that the people who work at a fast food place who are struggling should survive really should be looking to get the training needed to move to another job or excel at their job and be promoted into management. Same for folks working in a factory.

Capitalism isn't always pretty. My time delivering newspapers, working at Carl's Jr, working at a clothing store, working at a bakery sure as hell made me want to do well in college and get my degree so that I could make more doing things I thought would be more interesting. Junior College's are not that expensive. There are online courses that can be completed in free time. People have made it work and improved themselves and their situation for an awful long time because they were desperate, motivated, wanted more or whatever.

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Provided you're allowed to hydrate on company time

Are there rules that prevent you from wearing a camelback at work? Heck, load up one of those in a back pack and sip away as you walk. 15 miles a day is a lot, I walk about 6 miles day right now. I could do 15 miles a day if needed. Good shoes, a camel back and a little bit of time to adjust and I would be good to go.

Originally Posted by Blossom

I've been doing job searching for hubby and seen a few warehouse jobs in the past weeks as in Raleigh it seems the average pay is $10-$11 an hour. So $12.50 is very good pay for such a position.

Yup. It is, but goodness knows we won't focus on that. They should be paying more because the company makes more.

I know that there are some companies that do pay more (COSTCO comes to mind) and are great with their benefits. Perhaps the people working for Amazon should work hard, get good references and try and get hired by companies like COSTCO that pay more. They are out there.

I want everyone to make a living wage but not all jobs are meant to be careers and pay the bills for a family or individual. Not all jobs are going to let people take nice vacations, buy the newest car, Iproduct, a house and a lot of other things. If you want those things, then do what you can to get yourself to a place where you can get those jobs. There is an element of individual responsibility that is missing from this picture.

Maybe instead of blaming Amazon or other companies for doing what they are suppose to do, maximize profit, we should take a longer look at why people drop out and find ways to help people graduate from high school or allow more kids to go to votech school and gain valuable skills that pay more or make junior college and college more affordable for folks. But that would cost more in taxes and require a certain amount of political pain and we don't want that so let's just go back to blaming the greedy corporations.

[eschwartz]

to what DiapDealer said.

Originally Posted by MattW

Folks here on MobileRead sure are a one-sided bunch when it comes to Amazon.

Is Amazon the incarnation of evil? Of course not. Is all criticism of Amazon unjustified? Of course not.

Let's state a few facts, then. For most of its customers, Amazon is a great company. Customer service, prices, availability, user experience... everything's as good as it can possibly be. So we as customers tend to be pretty happy which translates into a certain loyalty. If we'd agree that Amazon is indeed an unscrupulous quasi-monopoly that destroys entire industries and treats its workers poorly, then, yeah, we'd have to admit that we are shopping at a "bad" company. That somehow would make us complicit in Amazon's wrongdoing.

We will stop shopping at Amazon at the same time we stop shopping at every other large multinational, who does the same thing. Meanwhile we acknowledge that Amazon is no saint, that they are quite clever at toeing the line to avoid outright illegality far better than their competitors (so they are intelligent, but that doesn't mean we think they must be good people as a result) and in this particular incident they are doing nothing wrong.

So our incentive for seeing Amazon's bad side is quite low. This is a well established psychological fact: members of the majority, the rich, the nobility etc rarely see their priviliges as privileges but as something earned (by being born in a certain country or into a certain family, by having "worked hard") and it takes a lot to even notice when things go wrong for others. Legitimate concerns are easily dismissed (often smugly); the richest one percent, for example, often tout the value of hard work and self-discipline when almost none of them have ever earned their money through work.

In the case of Amazon, the arguments run along similar lines. Amazon is good for me as a customer, ergo any company that suffers under Amazon's market dominance must be doing something wrong, otherwise they'd obviously do better (there can only be a very small number of big players in any market, otherwise they would no longer be considered big; and for smaller players matching the price of the bigger ones tends to be a real problem that can't be solved by goodwill). Amazon has air conditioning in most of its warehouses anyway (most? does that not even raise an eyebrow?). Back-breaking manual labour was the best part of my life (why didn't you stay with it, then? Maybe because it's not so much fun after 20 years or when you're older or when you have to raise a family after you come home? Or maybe it seems great now in retrospect, viewed through the tinted lens of nostalgia?). There's a reason why folks don't pay for vacation where they are working in a road crew: it's not a lot of fun for most.

By that logic, ALL jobs are illegal. I wouldn't go to work for my vacation no matter what my job is; no one wants to have to work. Even the lucky few who enjoy what they do would rather do it for their ends.

I don't think anyone has said manual labor was "the best part of my life" just that it was not really horrible in the slightest, and was quite fair besides. Because people will have to do what they don't want to do in order to make a living, and the monetary reward is worth the effort put into it.

A teenager will often mow lawns, and consider it well worth it and a good source of money. That doesn't mean they will stick with it when they are 40. Situations change. Mowing lawns is no longer worth it when you need more than pocket money.

No publisher or author is forced to sell through Amazon, people argue; in fact Amazon accounts for a large part of their profits. So they should either stop complaining or stop doing business with Amazon. Which is akin to saying "You either commit commercial suicide or you keep your mouth shut". Precisely BECAUSE Amazon accounts for a large part of their profit, they are complaining, because any change in their relationship to Amazon (like the new UK contract negotiations) impacts their bottom-line more than anything else.

I am allowed to raise workplace-related issues with my employer instead of just quitting. You're allowed to voice your dissatisfaction with your goverment without leaving the country and anyone can talk with their spouse when things go south instead of divorcing immediately.

You are also allowed to go on strike if you cannot come to an agreement and want to show your employer that you are serious. If your employer is doing *it* to everyone, chances are everyone will go on strike with you. Some people leave their country because they disagree with their government and do not feel they can change things. If a couple simply cannot come to an agreement, they will eventually divorce rather than spend the rest of their life in a malignant relationship.

Things are not working out for the Big 5 Publishers. Perhaps they should go on strike to show they are serious. In the meantime, when Patterson Rowling and any other author comes out and slams Amazon for their actions yet continues to happily sell on Amazon, it gives the impression that they aren't really serious about their beliefs. At this point, they know Amazon is serious about wanting their way, so it is time for Big Publishing to up the ante.

And like so many of you have noted, Amazon doesn't need any single traditional publisher, but they all need Amazon. Does that mean that they're not allowed to voice their discomfort with one market player getting too big? Of course, we shouldn't take everything they say at face-value either, they're arguing their self-interests, of couse, just like Amazon.

Sure they can. And we will search their words for the signs of self-interest. And there is no law on the books that says Amazon cannot be as big as it is. It got there through market force, by deserving the business every step of the way. Above all else, it is legal.

But if history teaches us anything, it's true that when any player in a market gets too big, problems tend to follow. Not just for the competition, but for the customers too. Equally true is that times and industries change and that sometimes traditional industries need to make way for new technology (so maybe Amazon is indeed destined to preside over the death of the traditional publisihing houses).

Allow us to be shortsighted if we so wish.

I don't know whether we really need BPH for literature to survive (I doubt it, though). But I wouldn't sing Amazon's praises quite so loudly; they are as ruthless as most big corporations (and while they may pay $12.50 in the US, they treated their workers in other territories like Germany quite badly and when they were called on it, moved their wharehouses to Poland). They have the power to force small publishers into contracts they can ill afford (but can't really afford not to sign) and they, like all big companies make liberal use of tax-loopholes and lobby for law-changes that would suit them (and, yes, some of Amazon's behaviour might very well be illegal -- when the courts decide that it was; -- like their treatment of foreign workers in Germany).

... just like every other large multinational. By all means, call Amazon out on it. But why is it my job to penalize Amazon (with my wallet) for being a large multinational in support of the other large multinationals who do the same thing?

For a really big player like Amazon, barely keeping within the letter of the law might be good enough for its customers, but don't act so surprised when the competition isn't as enthusiastic as you are. Ironically stating that Amazon [in the eyes of its opponenets] might very well have caused the stock market crash of 1929 dismisses the arguments of the other side out-of-hand. Pah, they're just insane lunatics, you're saying, next thing you know, they're saying Amazon caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The competition has every right to be less than enthusiastic when their business interests conflict with that of another large multinational. But when they hysterically start accusing Amazon of all kinds of wild moral crimes, I reserve the right to dismiss their arguments out of hand.

As a joke.

Presumably the same joke James Patterson was making when he claimed that Amazon is the worst threat to literature, and wants the government to step in to protect the future of literature:

James Patterson: "Read four of the most important paragraphs I'll ever write."
(I will agree that in comparison to his usual writing, this is actually quite good.)

http://www.vulture.com/2014/05/james...book-expo.html

Originally Posted by Patterson's speech

[...] and I think it's important that major players involved in publishing, as well as the press, and our government, step up and take responsibility for the future of our literature and the part it plays in our culture.

Or for J. A. Konrath's highly amusing (as ever) fisking: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2014/0...-bea-fail.html

And Stephen Colbert's sensationalism, which surely was for the sake of making people laugh: http://lunch.publishersmarketplace.c...chette-author/

I know that most folks here disagree with the views I have expressed; I just find it amusing sometimes how vigorously people defend Amazon (or Apple or Google, for that matter), almost with religious fervour. The very simple reason might very well have not only to do with the facts of the matter, but with the simple truth that if something benefits me, it must be good. Because if it's not, where would I be and what would that make me?

Speaking of religious fervor... See Above (Colbert and Patterson) for religious fervor (as opposed to reasoned argumentation) looks like.

And that's why this thread goes on for page after page, one person after another patting each other on the back, reassuring each other that Amazon is great and noble (and, by proxy, so are we) and everybody else just a sore loser in this wonderful new world of technology.

OMG IT"S A BIAS!!!