Amazon VP Resigns, Calls Company 'Chickenshit' for Firing Protesting Workers (vice.com) 225
McGruber shares a report: Tim Bray, a well known senior engineer and Vice President at Amazon has "quit in dismay" because Amazon has been "firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19." In an open letter on his website, Bray, who has worked at the company for nearly six years, called Amazon "chickenshit" for firing and disparaging employees who have organized protests. He also said the firings are "designed to create a climate of fear." Bray is one of the co-authors of XML specification.
Open Your Eyes (Score:3, Insightful)
Good for him, but did he actually not know he was working for a trillion dollar company? Trillion dollar companies don't get there by being champions of workers rights, they get there by getting the largest margins they can at all times. He had to know he was working for a company that wasn't thrilled with the idea of organized labor.
Re:Open Your Eyes (Score:5, Insightful)
there are some limits to what decent companies can do to employees before the proverbial shit hits the fan.
worst case scenario, people come in at work and start shooting everybody
Re: SAFE FOR WORK, PLEASE? (Score:2)
Do you also whine about NSFW porn sites? Gambling? Shopping? Dating?
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Re: Open Your Eyes (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft treats their people well. Apple doesn't treat them nearly as bad as Amazon.
I don't think we have enough data points to say one way or another, but the evidence suggests trillion dollar companies regularly treat their people well.
Re: Open Your Eyes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Open Your Eyes (Score:5, Funny)
Apple just outsources the bad treatment.
Amazon goes out and hires the guy who invented XML!
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Re: Open Your Eyes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Open Your Eyes (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft treats their people well. Apple doesn't treat them nearly as bad as Amazon.
I don't think we have enough data points to say one way or another, but the evidence suggests trillion dollar companies regularly treat their people well.
Yeah I hadn't thought of Microsoft as an example, which made me leave out another factor allowing companies to become that big. Companies with very shady pasts (antitrust in Microsoft's case) but have reformed their ways could be among the largest companies in the world. I'm not exactly sure how well I would consider Microsoft to have changed their ways, but someone working at Microsoft today could at least have comfort it isn't the same company it was in the 90's.
Apple on the other hand just outsources its Amazon-like practices to other countries. And if any employees think Apple would react well to unionizing efforts at Apple stores, they are being willfully ignorant.
Re: Open Your Eyes (Score:4, Insightful)
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Microsoft sent all employees AND contract workers home before any stay-at-home order even started, all at full pay. This includes contractors such as kitchen workers, still getting full pay, despite not having a job to go to right now. So yeah, those contractors at Microsoft are entirely being treated like shit.
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Sony is going above and beyond for their employees during the lock down. That's another data point.
Re:Open Your Eyes (Score:5, Informative)
Having retired from a multi-billion dollar company (after 37 yrs) last year, I'd argue that your comment is not based on data.
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Having retired from a multi-billion dollar company (after 37 yrs) last year, I'd argue that your comment is not based on data.
I said a trillion dollar company, not multi-billion. If you are among the top few companies in the world, you have along the way cared about profit above all other concerns. You have broke / bent anti-trust laws, you have outsourced work to sweatshops, you have exploited low skilled workers, etc.
I'm sure there are plenty of $100 million dollar companies which haven't done these things. Many of them probably even have the PR from being a good employer as a significant part of their business model. Costco was
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Last year [venturebeat.com] Amazon was a multi-billion dollar company by revenue, and by net worth [gobankingrates.com]. They have been a trillion dollar company by market cap, but have gone above and below that mark. Only four publicly traded companies have gotten above a trillion dollar market cap, and only Apple and Microsoft appear to be able to stay above that mark, so multi-billion dollar companies would be a better metric of how large successful companies get there.
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Last year [venturebeat.com] Amazon was a multi-billion dollar company by revenue, and by net worth [gobankingrates.com]
And if would have made the same post last year, I probably would have used a figure like $800 billion dollar company instead of trillion. Luckily Amazon got over that hump so I could save some keystrokes.
I was intentionally leaving out almost all multi-billion dollar companies when choosing that criteria, although probably a figure closer to $500 billion market cap would have been a more accurate threshold. Since trillion dollar companies only have a few members, all of which with offshoring sweatshop, anti
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Yes, yes, we know, all things should be made by caring, loving people whose only desire is to help their fellow humans, and who are motivated by the common good. [...] Are you my college feminist theory professor from 20 years ago? Because that sounds like something she would have said.
Who says I don't work for one of these large multi-nationals and am completely okay with shady business practices if it helps my bonus? I haven't said anything in any of my posts about my personal opinions on this.
For the record I work for a medium sized financial institution whose primary business model would be considered predatory by your college feminist theory professor, and I am okay with it because I feel these customers still need these services and we have found a way to provide them profitably. I
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You only need one contrary case to disprove a sweeping statement. You're misusing the "anecdote is not data" meaning.
Re:Open Your Eyes (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not forget Amazon is one of the companies profiting from the current crisis. There is no need for them to play hard, but only to play smart, and firing workers who are afraid of getting sick like we all are just isn't smart nor hard. It's dumb and stupid. They could have embraced it and sold it as a virtue to secure their companies' image. Customers don't necessarily want to have parcels come into their homes that were handled by sick workers who might even have coughed into the parcels. A company where workers and bosses truly care for each other makes costumers believe they're also in good care.
Many areas of bad management at Amazon (Score:3)
I see a HUGE amount of poor management at Amazon, on Amazon web pages. For example, often a reasonable price is given, and the shipping cost is FAR more than the actual cost.
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Customers don't necessarily want to have parcels come into their homes that were handled by sick workers who might even have coughed into the parcels. A company where workers and bosses truly care for each other makes costumers believe they're also in good care.
While I do agree this will probably end up being a bad business decision for Amazon, I think you are over-estimating how much people care about this. Almost no one cares about the poor and working class, except some token thank yous / donations every once in a while. If you are even in a group where it is customary to thank them for their service, it is nearly always because no one really cares. If they did care you would be properly compensated financially or with social status and there would be no need f
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Re:Open Your Eyes (Score:5, Insightful)
Some big company do care about their employees (and real ones, not subcontractors). Look at Costco for example.
Indeed. I worked at Amazon for 4 years, and my consistent impression was not that they were margin-whoring. It's far worse. They would consistently make decisions that hurt employees and at the same time hurt their margins, as if they were willing to take a small profit hit for the benefit of hurting their employees. They know they have to pay people more, for some jobs a lot more, because they treat them poorly, but they keep doing it. That was my impression, anyhow.
It's shallow to blame "margins" when there's lots of evidence to the contrary. I think it's actual malice, not a profit motive, and corporate cultures that select for sociopathy over actual ability to run a business.
Re:Open Your Eyes (Score:5, Insightful)
They weren't profitable for a decade.
I don't think most people understand how meaningless that statement is. Amazon, and lots of similar companies, aren't profitable because they invest in growth. Year after year they'd come out ahead on what they were selling, then turn around and spend all that gain on building more warehouses and hiring more people. That's perfectly normal for a growing company, and internally Amazon had little patience for businesses that didn't have that up-front profit to fund their own growth.
You see people trot out "Amazon wasn't profitable" as if it were some sort of scam, or they were selling below cost, or somesuch. It's just what you do if you actually believe in your business, and haven't reached market saturation. You want to grow as fast as possible, since the demand is there and you just need more people to meet it, so you take all your gross profits, and all the money you can borrow, and you do that. Many businesses are so habituated to this that they crash hard once they reach market dominance and can't keep growing at the same pace. It's a known danger.
But "not being profitable" isn't some kind of trick, you know?
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I worked at a Costco once years ago, right out of college, as a temporary job.
They work you HARD ( My back was killing me until I built up the muscles) they're fair: breaks, management is fair, no really jerky employees, push hard to promote from within, etc.
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This is pretty much what I hear from everyone there.
They will work your ass off. You will be compensated and have options for advancement. Health insurance, dental, vision all available. 401k contributions. SICK LEAVE, which I put in all caps because it can't be said enough in this particular time.
My wife works there. although not directly for the store (for the optical, which "rents" the space inside) so she doesn't get sick leave :-/.
Re:Open Your Eyes (Score:4, Insightful)
A Trillion Dollar Company can get there by treating their employees well too.
There are some important factors involved.
1. Turnover is costly. Firing a mediocre employee even to replace them with a good one, takes a lot of time to recoup your loss. On average it cost 150% over a year to replace an employee. So that Good one, better be really good.
2. Silent employees will leave too, when they can. Just because they are not vocal about the problems, it doesn't mean they are happy. Knowing if they feel like they need to speak up, they will get fired, is a sign to often switch jobs.
3. A lot of employees, means you are going to get a lot of personalities. Now that you have thousands of people on your workforce, any additional growth will require you to be able to handle different types of people better.
4. Organized labor happens when the employees feel unempowered.
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A Trillion Dollar Company can get there by treating their employees well too.
I do agree with that, as long as they are in an industry where treating employees well is the standard. Microsoft is an example of this, where I assume nearly all of their employees are knowledge workers. Apple mostly falls in this category within the US, although just because they outsource their low skilled work offshore. Although I'm fairly sure Microsoft and Apple would react poorly to workers in their retail stores complaining about work conditions or trying to unionize.
But in all but the rarest compan
Re:Open Your Eyes (Score:4, Informative)
I do agree with that, as long as they are in an industry where treating employees well is the standard. Microsoft is an example of this, where I assume nearly all of their employees are knowledge workers. Apple mostly falls in this category within the US, although just because they outsource their low skilled work offshore. Although I'm fairly sure Microsoft and Apple would react poorly to workers in their retail stores complaining about work conditions or trying to unionize.
Did we already forget about the class action lawsuit Apple lost from their store employees who were required to wait around for their end-of-shift and off-the-clock Gestapo frisking to make sure the weren't leaving with store property? That's not what I call treating employees well.
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Yet they never make a profit. Kind of like how Aliens never made a profit. Or, how about how Spider Man never made a profit.
Pro tip: Never fall for a company having a profit sharing plan, because no corporation in America actually makes a profit.
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Responsible capitalism should respect workers rights, take good care of them like you would any valuable asset, and look out for the health and vitality of society in general, not prioritize profits for The Few above all else.
Re:Open Your Eyes (Score:5, Interesting)
Then, as Terry Pratchett says, open them again.
Yes, there is pressure in every company to go to the ethical basement, but that doesn't mean they all have the same basement. 3M is not the same as Exxon. You wouldn't want Sanofi or Purdue Pharma in chart of the FDA, but if you had to have a choice, you'd choose Sanofi.
Companies like Amazon and Uber are built around a philosophy of creative destruction. It's not that that philosophy is inherently *wrong*, it's that they get big enough, fast enough that they can't be constrained by law, which moves slowly and is constrained by politics.
It takes considerable political will to reign in a company that's 50% of all online commerce, even when it's breaking the law.
Author of XML (Score:5, Funny)
Bray is one of the co-authors of XML specification.
I suspect he was just looking for an excuse to go into hiding for wasting giga-kajillion CPU cycles and storage space kilobytes around the world for absolutely no reason at all.
Prime Chickenshit (Score:2, Interesting)
Can I get this Chickenshit for "free" with my prime membership? The comments say that it arrived late and appeared to be previously opened box of chickenshit. It may have been counterfeit chicken shit.
there are some great uses for XML. It's great adantage is that (normally) it's in plain text so you can sort of figure it out as you learn it by looking at it. But in my experience almost (certainly not all !) but almost every place XML might be useful, YAML would be almost infinitely better. And it actua
Re: Prime Chickenshit (Score:5, Insightful)
XML has standardized schema, transform and query language.
YAML longer than your screen height and greater three or four levels of indentation is barely "human readable", there is no standard way of templating or transforming, or querying, so there is no good toolchain to assist with that or catch your indentation typo on line 113.
Once structured data reaches a certain level of detail or scale, people shouldn't be asked to just hand edit or eyeball parse it. I've seen YAML usage fail that as often as XML.
Go look at some cloud foundry manifest if you want too see some YAML that XML would have done better.
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YOu will notice I said XML has it's uses. In might experience most uses of XML are not getting any benefit from XML. Notice I said "most" not all.
YAML by the way has formal schema as well so what you are saying is all possible in YAML. Really like all touring complete languages are isomorphic so are complete structured data formats. So there's nothing you can do with XML you can't do with YAML. But just like using Cobal to do javascripts best jobs there's languages that are better suited for tasks and
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If people think the problem with XML is inherent to the language and not the way it's used, I've got some Kubernetes configuration files to show them.
Spoken like an amateur (Score:5, Informative)
Bray is one of the co-authors of XML specification.
I suspect he was just looking for an excuse to go into hiding for wasting giga-kajillion CPU cycles and storage space kilobytes around the world for absolutely no reason at all.
VS JSON? Xml is a sharp tool. In the hand of an idiot, yet, it is very bloated. When I craft it, only using attributes instead of elements when I can, it is pretty much the same size as JSON and has the benefit of a schema standard that actually works plus so many standard tools like XSLT, XPath, etc that are so much more mature and well thoughout than the JSON tools that were quickly scrambled together. Plus I HATE HATE HATE HATE that Json doesn't allow comments.
Any language or encoding scheme that doesn't allow comments was clearly not designed for professional use.
Representing data is one of the last frontiers of business programming...so common, yet sooo poorly solved. And having to deal with large volumes of static data, it's MUCH MUCH easier working with XML than JSON. It's like the difference between Java and PHP. One tool is "close enough" to be useful. The other one is clearly a tool designed for professional use....may be verbose when done wrong, but definitely designed to handle real work.
XML is really underappreciated. JSON is fine for short object serialization, but we've now made it our data standard, something it starkly clear how inadequate it was for the job. We desperately need a new format...something that blends the strengths of JSON and XML....or really maybe just XML without namespaces and better typing (which JSON does extremely poorly as well).
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> Plus I HATE HATE HATE HATE that Json doesn't allow comments.
That definitely is a sore spot there is no official [json.org] support [readthedocs.io] for #, /* ... */, //, etc, -- however you CAN fake it -- just add dummy fields:
But yeah, the lack of a STANDARD for comments is definitely an over-sight of
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But yeah, the lack of a STANDARD for comments is definitely an over-sight of Douglas Crockford otherwise excellent minimal design.
It wasn't an oversight, it was 100% intentional, and he fought hard to keep it that way.
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XML is really underappreciated. JSON is fine for short object serialization, but we've now made it our data standard, something it starkly clear how inadequate it was for the job. We desperately need a new format...something that blends the strengths of JSON and XML....or really maybe just XML without namespaces and better typing (which JSON does extremely poorly as well).
There is always protocol buffers...
Re:Spoken like an amateur (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the problem most people have with XML is because they have to work with XML-cruftiness that originates with Java or Microsoft tools/libraries that generate the stuff. Boutique, free-range artisinal XML is fine and nice to work with. XML fresh from some Java monstrosity's asshole looks like a Transformer exploded and is as readable as David Foster Wallace on a bender.
Re:Author of XML (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect he was just looking for an excuse to go into hiding for wasting giga-kajillion CPU cycles and storage space kilobytes around the world for absolutely no reason at all.
Who forced you to use XML? I only ask because I want to know.
CPU cycles and storage are dirt cheap. Well-formatted data is critically important.
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Who forced you to use XML? I only ask because I want to know.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, the World Wide Web Consortium, ....
Do we need to go on or do you fucking get it yet?
In Java, it's suprisingly fast (Score:3)
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You should only promote sociopaths that can handle "leadership". Engineers are too soft to make the hard choices.
Other side of the story... (Score:2, Troll)
There are two sides to every story. I'd like to hear the other side before I make judgement.
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that's called "reading the news", in particular from the european side of the pond
Re:Other side of the story... (Score:4, Informative)
that's called "reading the news", in particular from the european side of the pond
We lost that ability in the US around the time Cronkite and Huntley & Brinkley retired. The "news" is now mostly opinion or force feeding of what the parent company wants us to hear.
Re:Other side of the story... (Score:5, Informative)
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Not really, our news media went to shitter only a couple of years after American did. Same problem too - as ad money dried up due to shift to internet and de facto monopolization of most lucrative ad sales by google, professional journalism got too expensive for most outlets.
So they shifted to hiring professional twitter users instead.
Re: Other side of the story... (Score:3)
*head explodes*
Re:Other side of the story... (Score:4, Insightful)
The other side is on a private beach on Grand Cayman, not available for comments.
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The fact anyone would mod this guy down for saying he wants both sides of the story is everything wrong with America today.
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While we can say today that they were not, I'm willing to bet a lot of them did not consider themselves evil but actively believed that what they were doing was for the greater good.
Do you want unions? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Amazon doesn't mess around when it comes to union busting... they pretty much lay off anyone who tries to start one in their warehouses.
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Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Bray is one of the co-authors of XML specification.
Is he trying to atone for that?
AWS Support (Score:3, Interesting)
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the only time you get support is
Re: AWS Support (Score:2)
Re:AWS Support[sic] same as Ggle + most others (Score:2)
This has been happening for the past several years. Companies don't do their own support of their own product anymore. From graphics vendors (Nvidia), game vendors (NCSoft et al), Google -- all are contracting support out to "professional support" companies who's employees know nothing about the actual company or software they are supporting.
This started many years ago with such companies doing what was then called 'front line support'. It was their job to handle the dummy calls -- is the device or its
What I don't understand is...... (Score:4, Interesting)
Logically, it seems to me like the thing to do would be to make an OHSA complaint about the working conditions, then just silently watch until the inspection happens and they get shut down. OHSA does not, afaik, need to tell them who filed the complaint, especially if they end up failing the inspection.
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Where did I suggest that the complaint would be anonymous anyways?
I suggested it would be confidential. That's not the same thing.
Unionization is coming to AMZN and will be awful (Score:2)
UFCW was quite complicit in creating a faux-union for Kroger which does very little for Kroger employees besides shave $1/hr off their paychecks. And employees which do not want to be part of the union still pay some union fees which go to UFCW. IIRC, union membership is a requirement t
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That's a dangerous game to play, because it provides a convenient organization for actual workers to take over.
I like this guy more now (Score:2)
And... I'm glad Chickenshit means the same thing in Canada as it does where I'm from. Such a great word.
What sort of person? (Score:2)
Who would leave a company and report it to the news media using vulgar language? Someone I'd never hire. Someone who deserves to be shunned by everyone he's near.
Furthermore, he quit rather than working to fix the alleged problem. Who's being chicken?
Here's your wake-up call, Mister Bezos (Score:2)
So his VP resigns, because he's still human enough to understand the
Guess who just called to testify before congress! (Score:2)
Apparently Tim's soul-endectomy wasn't successful and he is still a human being that can empathize with other human beings.
Not only will this continue at Amazon, but one day it will happen in countries like China.
Good for you Tim! People over profits!
Re:This Bezos/Trump feud is getting out of hand (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This Bezos/Trump feud is getting out of hand (Score:4, Insightful)
Bezos and Trump are probably the two most influencial people in the U.S. right now. Both were elected by the people.
You elected Trump with your vote. You elected Bezos with your wallet.
I know it's been said many times before but the old saying remains true: People get the leaders they deserve.
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You could try reading the article, at least as far as the third sentence:
"What with big-tech salaries and share vestings, this will probably cost me over a million (pre-tax) dollars"
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You could try reading the article, at least as far as the third sentence:
"What with big-tech salaries and share vestings, this will probably cost me over a million (pre-tax) dollars"
There is a difference between losing unvested stock grants when you quit and returning delivered ones.
Re:Will he be giving back his Amazon stock too? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, WTF do you want from him? Are you trying to argue that he's some kind of shithead because he doesn't give back everything he ever earned there? Sheesh.
Re:Will he be giving back his Amazon stock too? (Score:4, Funny)
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> There is a difference between losing unvested stock grants when you quit and returning delivered ones.
True.
Forfeiting options shows integrity.
Forfeiting money you already earned would be retarded.
Re:Bray is wrong, Protesters should be fired (Score:4, Insightful)
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What do you call a walkout? I call it not working. Please, *please* read my message instead of sending a knee-jerk response.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/... [theverge.com]
Re:Bray is wrong, Protesters should be fired (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sickness is involuntary, so genuine sick days aren't "picked" and happen when they must. Faked sick days are common, and that's the employee committing fraud.
Workers do not have a right to pick their vacation days. In some companies vacation is fixed and the business shuts down for a period. In other companies, vacation days are chosen by agreement between employee and employer, with the employee's request usually granted if it doesn't upset the business
Re:Bray is wrong, Protesters should be fired (Score:4, Informative)
Workers do not have a right to pick their vacation days
As a European this kind of attitude of workers somehow being slaves to their employers and that industrial action is totally unjustified just on the concept level sounds like some truly robber baron kind of thinking. As much as it may irk you, even in a country as anti-union as the U.S, walkouts and other industrial action is something workers have a right to regardless if you think. This is particularly true that industrial action is over a very legitimate issue like the hazardous conditions amazon has subjected it's workers to during the current pandemic. We're not talking about something inconsequential like the portion sizes in the employee cafeteria or how overly/imprecise the clocking in and out is.
Besides, even if your goal to quash worker's ability to protest trough industrial action and organize into trade unions was legitimate, all this does is further those things and needlessly antagonize the workforce. Much of the reason why the continuous industrial action that played a big part in the downfall of British industry in particularly the 1970s got so bad was that management took a very non-productive attitude to trade unions and needlessly antagonized them, allowing the biggest rabble-rousers like Arthur Scargill to take them over. When you help people like Scargill into power you're in for a much bigger world of hurt than if you take a productive attitude to their grievances. Just look at where British Leyland is to day compared to their French rivals across the channel.
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"So where you work, you shouldn’t have a right to complain if your boss asks you to do something you think is dangerous and that he doesn’t provide you with adequate protections. If only there were laws and regulations against that."
Don't know about you Americans (you seem to be fucked up beyond all possibility of salvation) but here in the Free World if your boss asks you to do something you can always say "No thank you". If he "tells you that you must do something" (as opposed to asking) that
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Re:Bray is wrong, Protesters should be fired (Score:4, Insightful)
"In fact a business can terminate you for any non-protected reason (cannot terminate on race, gender, sexual orientation...)."
And we as a society can make it illegal for such businesses to operate in the free society they spit upon. Common law is rich with precedent about liability when you force people to work in unsafe conditions. If you're the kind of fuckhead who doesn't understand that threatening people with loss of their homes for failing to work in an environment that leads to the spread of disease is un-American, then you should be first in line to take one of those jobs rather than sitting safely in mommy's basement playing keyboard capitalist. Are you so clueless you haven't noticed that with the economy largely shut down a worker who refuses to work in unsafe conditions can't exactly run out and get another job somewhere safer?
The ultimate hypocrisy is that clearly you have no problem with Amazon "having it both ways"...profiting from all the benefits of operating in America but not paying taxes to support the services it uses every day.
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You think wrong, way wrong. [kiplinger.com]
The standard deduction for filing single in 2019 was $12,200, so, according to Kiplinger, you'd have to pay 10% on anything you earned between that and $21,900 (i.e., up to $9,700 taxable income), and 12% for the next bracket.
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Re: Bray is wrong, Protesters should be fired (Score:4, Informative)
You are close but incorrect, the key phrase is "An employer cannot fire an employee for reasons that would violate public policy". Safety would be part of public policy. Amazon is complying with federal guidelines on worker policy, so Amazon is covered. It doesn't prevent the employees from whining wanting more, but employees always want more.
Let me give you a easier example. A snowstorm hits and the roads are both icy, snowy, and (some) unplowed. The governor has declared a state of emergency. An employee doesn't want to come in because driving is dangerous. Does the employee have cause to sue if the employer fires them for not coming in? No. (I had to fight this one a few years ago, I felt bad for the person, but it had to be done).
The point is "safety" is relative. A job is not absolutely guaranteed against all possible safety hazards. However employers are required to provide *reasonable* protection against known safety hazards.
Re: I wouldn't want to work there either (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: I wouldn't want to work there either (Score:2)