Inside Amazon's Worst Human Resources Problem (nytimes.com) 66
A knot of problems with Amazon's system for handling paid and unpaid leaves has led to devastating consequences for workers. From a report: A year ago, Tara Jones, an Amazon warehouse worker in Oklahoma, cradled her newborn, glanced over her pay stub on her phone and noticed that she had been underpaid by a significant chunk: $90 out of $540. The mistake kept repeating even after she reported the issue. Ms. Jones, who had taken accounting classes at community college, grew so exasperated that she wrote an email to Jeff Bezos, the company's founder. "I'm behind on bills, all because the pay team messed up," she wrote weeks later. "I'm crying as I write this email." Unbeknown to Ms. Jones, her message to Mr. Bezos set off an internal investigation, and a discovery: Ms. Jones was far from alone.
For at least a year and a half -- including during periods of record profit -- Amazon had been shortchanging new parents, patients dealing with medical crises and other vulnerable workers on leave, according to a confidential report on the findings. Some of the pay calculations at her facility had been wrong since it opened its doors over a year before. As many as 179 of the company's other warehouses had potentially been affected, too. Amazon is still identifying and repaying workers to this day, according to Kelly Nantel, a company spokeswoman. That error is only one strand in a longstanding knot of problems with Amazon's system for handling paid and unpaid leaves, according to dozens of interviews and hundreds of pages of internal documents obtained by The New York Times. Together, the records and interviews reveal that the issues have been more widespread -- affecting the company's blue-collar and white-collar workers -- and more harmful than previously known, amounting to what several company insiders described as one of its gravest human resources problems.
For at least a year and a half -- including during periods of record profit -- Amazon had been shortchanging new parents, patients dealing with medical crises and other vulnerable workers on leave, according to a confidential report on the findings. Some of the pay calculations at her facility had been wrong since it opened its doors over a year before. As many as 179 of the company's other warehouses had potentially been affected, too. Amazon is still identifying and repaying workers to this day, according to Kelly Nantel, a company spokeswoman. That error is only one strand in a longstanding knot of problems with Amazon's system for handling paid and unpaid leaves, according to dozens of interviews and hundreds of pages of internal documents obtained by The New York Times. Together, the records and interviews reveal that the issues have been more widespread -- affecting the company's blue-collar and white-collar workers -- and more harmful than previously known, amounting to what several company insiders described as one of its gravest human resources problems.
All's fair in love and bills. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how when it's YOUR money there are all these problems. When it's THEIR money then they'll count to the penny, and it better be on time.
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While it definitely sucks for the employees, I don't fault an employer for it happening. I fault them for how they proceed after it happens. It should
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Maybe, but remember the company we're talking about. Not Amazon: the retail empire. But Amazon: the cloud and service provider. If they can't keep their house straight, why should companies trust them with their crown jewels?
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Re: All's fair in love and bills. (Score:4, Insightful)
Unbeknown to Ms. Jones, her message to Mr. Bezos set off an internal investigation, and a discovery: Ms. Jones was far from alone.
Amazon is doing the right thing, the only issue is why the employee had to write Jeff Bezos to get taken seriously.
I hope a big part of this investigation focuses on the highly-paid staff of HR and Compensation experts that failed to take this woman's complaints seriously.
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This argument would be a lot stronger if the mistakes were symmetrical, but everyone knows they aren't. There's no way a flaw like this would have remained undetected for 18 months if it resulted in the company paying too much instead of too little. The company has an affirmative duty to pay their employees what they're due, and that includes spending the time and effort to find software bugs that might result in employees being underpaid.
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Software errors unfortunately exist and this kind of stuff happens.
Yes, disgruntled employees writing payroll software might round off values and send the difference to a personal account. I think there was a documentary [youtube.com] about this.
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Well an equally important question is who and why did it get so far. I mean do people not look at their pay stubs? Do they not keep track of what they are expecting in comp at least roughly enough to notice missing 1/6th of their (net?) pay?
Yes yes - this is victim blaming to some extent, but a larger more import question is why such a large population of our is some combination of financially illiterate, overly trusting, and irresponsible with money.
I understand people looking at lines for tax with holding
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Sounds like this problem only really applied to those on leave. Calculating leave pay can be somewhat opaque as well, particularly if you are a hourly worker.
But yes, people should pay more attention to their pay stubs. And agreed, schools don't don't teach nearly enough real life lessons.
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hmm lets see i owed 15.25 and hour - I worked 50 hours this pay period why is AMZN only grossing me $600?
I bet most of these people just pay their Credit Cards without looking to make sure they recognize all the charges too.
Perhaps you should read the summary again. What you're blowing off as people being ignorant has nothing to do with this case.
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hmm lets see i owed 15.25 and hour - I worked 50 hours this pay period why is AMZN only grossing me $600?
The problem is they have to work 50 hours a week, then they don't have so much free time to work for themselves and scrutinize all the paperwork; this is consumptive of time and normally doesn't really have any benefit for the individual to scrutinize all the details - except on the rare case where there's an error not in their favor. Most people will see the amount of the check or the deposit on their
Re: All's fair in love and bills. (Score:2)
The error existed for 18 months, the woman in this story suffered for only 'weeks'.
I assume her first paycheck was wrong, she complained, then the second one was wrong - she complained again, and after the third paycheck was wrong she reached out to Jeff Bezos.
I don't understand the 'leave' aspect of this, are we talking about people taking long-term maternal/paternal/disability leave or vacation time they haven't earned yet?
I applaud Bezos for taking her complaint serious, I hope he resolves the issues qui
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Maybe a little less 'liberal studies' of all kinds and little more basic read, writing, arithmetic is what is in order.
I strongly disagree with this statement and believe it is at odds with your list. They should be focusing more on history and social studies, in fact actually studying situations like this that have actually happened to people so they have a better grasp of it actually happening to them and what it looks like. It's not that people can't do math, it's that they remain blissfully unaware of the capability of others to take advantage of them. Knowing how to read and write doesn't help your situational awarenes
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Historically a liberal Arts degree includes math and science, etc. The only thing it didn't include was metaphysics. https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
Based on the ancient Roman curricula, and still taught at top universities worldwide. You had math, geometry, algebra, science, music, art, language, phys ed, etc etc etc. Liberal meaning "many" hence you learned many arts.
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I wouldn't blame the company employees as much as I'd blame the general public, for allowing such weak enforcement of the law and not giving a damn about the importance of unions. It's really quite difficult to uphold your "rights" without legal council, and that doesn't come cheap.
That also assumes there isn't a ton of fine print in employee contracts. One of my ex employers decided to sign me up to a bank I had never heard of, and offered to send my entire paycheck to this other bank by calling a phone
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"I mean do people not look at their pay stubs?"
The story starts off with someone looking at their paystub.
You are not just assuming that no one noticed their pay problem and never tried to get their pay problem corrected, you are doing so in the face of explicit statements that they did notice their pay problem and did try to get their pay problem corrected.
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As for why (I know I'll get asked) a) because it's annoying to me to have it sitting out there "Pending" and b) it's amusing to me to see them try to fix it and escalate. And escalate. And escalate.
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Amazon refunded me twice last year for the same product return, and when I chatted with customer support to let them know, they said I was wrong. So I'd say that the complexity of their operation leads to edge cases, and sometimes it's more expensive to fix the 'overpayments' than it is to just let them happen. It is common in operations to make that sort of assessment and note it for the auditors.
I also have an order from 2018 that says it was never delivered, so they refunded me the cost of that order a
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At a former company, I discovered two instances where the programs allocating commissions were buggy as heck. Some people being overpaid, others underpaid. In one case, it was pretty small bananas. The other ... not so much. As in tens of thousands (USD), and in a couple of cases, over a hundred thousand.
On a completely unrelated note, the top sellers who were short-changed had all left the company.
And HR decided to 'fix' the mis-payments only for people who were still with the company.
And on another co
It's our old friend, Wage Theft (Score:5, Interesting)
That's right, wage theft. The largest form of theft in the country throughout its history. This paper is from 2014, but further studies have shown this gap has only grown since.
https://www.epi.org/publicatio... [epi.org]
No wonder people are striking or not taking on jobs from known thieves.
Not an accident (Score:3, Insightful)
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i got a check for 1300 bucks 3 years after I left an employer for a error in computing my share of medical benefits when they had to adjust for OCARE as a normal W2 employee.
One way to avoid all this is bill strait time as a 1099 and the employee gets to examine and write a check for every cent removed from gross pay to the 14 governments, inv
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Apparently, at Amazon, the one person competent enough is the guy at the top, CEO Jeff Bezos.
TFA doesn't say Bezos ever even saw the letter.
More likely it was someone in his staff, handling the letter, who had the competence, authority, and will to initiate action to correct the issue.
Which is fine. That's their job. It's great to see this person, at least, is doing it so well.
Re: Not an accident (Score:2)
Right, Amazon intentionally short-changes employees and documents it on their paystub... that how they got to be one of the biggest retailers in the world.
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"Problem" (Score:5, Insightful)
Find me a case in which Amazon allowed someone to be overpaid without addressing it for months and I'll believe it is a problem, otherwise it's a feature.
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Find me a case in which Amazon allowed someone to be overpaid without addressing it for months and I'll believe it is a problem, otherwise it's a feature.
Companies do make overpayment errors sometimes. In fact, happened to me once (summer job while in college. They eventually found it and took the money back).
https://www.fmenews.com/ask-th... [fmenews.com]
https://walletgenius.com/budge... [walletgenius.com]
https://www.fmenews.com/ask-th... [fmenews.com]
Hanlon's razor applies.
Re: "Problem" (Score:2)
Once. TFS discusses a case that went on for a year and a half.
Re: "Problem" (Score:3)
18 months of the same error across 179 facilities is still just 'one' error, just repeated millions of times.
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It's a sideissue. Suppose it gets fixed, Amazon is still squeezing their workers till the pips come out.
Hence, the topic title is very wrong.
Not a feature. (Score:2)
Find me a case in which Amazon allowed someone to be overpaid without addressing it for months and I'll believe it is a problem, otherwise it's a feature.
In terms even a psychopath can understand, business process errors that underpay workers are not a feature.
Regardless of how much money they "save" in the short term, when they're eventually caught all that money will still be paid out, along with additional costs which will dwarf the interest on or other utility of the use of the money in the interim (whi
As somebody who's worked shit jobs before (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks don't realize how few worker protections there are out there.
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Does not working [youtu.be] for such employers count as a "protection"?
The labor shortage is a myth (Score:2)
You'd think
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You're implying malice on the part of what, more employees affected by the bug?
Billing and Payroll are incredibly complex. You complain, they double check the input boxes in their software, hit Apply again, and say 'I think it's fixed'. You don't find out until the next paycheck.
Troubleshooting problems like this takes time because the feedback loop is slow, and their first reaction isn't going to be 'CLEARLY THIS PERSON IN [LOW SKILL LABOR POSITION] HAS DISCOVERED A MAJOR PROGRAMMING ERROR AND ISN'T JUST B
I'm implying malice on the part of the company (Score:2)
Pass laws to protect workers like you do to protect stockholders and enforce them like the laws that protect stock holders and see how long those bugs last. You'll have exception processes built into the system *real* quick.
And yes, occasionally someone will game the system and steal a few thousand or even a few hundred thousand from a mega corporations... before getting caught and going to jail for 20 years (no worse crime than stealing from your betters).
Like that line from Th
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In 2010, a payroll debacle at Queensland Health revealed workers had been underpaid, overpaid, or not paid at all, costing taxpayers $1.2 billion. About $74 million in overpaid wages had to be recovered in the fiasco.
From here [henricodolfing.com].
What began as an AU$6.19 million contract between the State of Queensland and IBM Australia to replace Queensland Health’s aging payroll system eventually led to over 35,000 payroll mistakes and will ultimately cost taxpayers a whopping AU$1.25 billion, which translates to approximately US$850 million.
Now, government employee payroll is pretty high on the priority scale, and it took years and a lot of $$$ to sort out the issues with the new payroll system. For Amazon I find it much more likely that edge cases were simply not catered for correctly.
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Re: As somebody who's worked shit jobs before (Score:2)
amazon needs UNIONS NOW!! (Score:3, Insightful)
amazon needs UNIONS NOW!!
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...The workers do not want to unionize though, so fuck off.
And that's why Amazon spent over 100 million to block the union vote last year. No one wants to unionize...when it will cost them their jobs.
Happens everywhere (Score:3, Interesting)
I think they had maybe 20 stores nationwide, and the sales floor staff we expected to turn up at 8:45am for a "team meeting" before the store opened at 9am. It was not mandatory, be expected, as part of being a "team player". If you did not turn up, then you were slowly pushed out of a job - basically they bullied you into turning up for an unpaid 15 mins of work. Usually, the staff are younger people who do not fully know their rights under employment law.
Until, someone decided to push back - the end result was that the Smiths City had to backpay a lot of money - think about this: let's say a conservative 10 staff per store x 20 stores = 200 people x 1/4 hour = 50 hours per day for a 7 day retail business x years = starts to add up to a considerable chunk of change.
Short changing your staff is a sure fire way to screw your own business on so many levels.
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Even worse problem (Score:2)
This is a very serious issue, but eventually can be solved by reimbursing the percentage of the salary that was not paid.
However, I believe that hire to [slashdot.org] fire [slashdot.org] is an even worse human resources problem. I know a competent engineer, mid-age, that left his company to get a job at Amazon, only to get fired as soon as possible. Accepting an Amazon work can ruin your career!
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Yeah, where's Shatner's... (Score:2)
hazardous duty pay ?
Sense of scale (Score:2)
Amazons WORST human resources problem? Somehow I'm unconvinced that incorrect paychecks for 200 employees out of a workforce of 1.3 million is Amazon's top HR problem.
Seriously? (Score:2)
Since when did Slashdot become a shill for the NYTimes ?
Jesus Christ this site is circling the gurgler really badly now.
WONTFIX (Score:2)
One Takeaway . . . (Score:2)
I'm not excusing any other behavior. I'm not suggesting there isn't a huge problem.
My only point is this is the EXACT thing to do, is always the right thing, and should always be the response. I'm giving them a +1 for having done it (at least this time).
Amazon will have unionized employees (Score:1)