Amazon To Pay $500 Million in Bonuses To Workers Most Exposed To Coronavirus (cnet.com) 23
Amazon on Monday said it's paying out $500 million in one-time bonuses to front-line employees -- those most at risk of contracting the coronavirus -- who worked for the company through June. From a report: The move is an apparent reversal for the company following weeks of criticism for it cutting its coronavirus hazard pay even as the pandemic has continued. Amazon had eliminated its $2-an-hour hazard pay for workers at the start of June, after it first instituted the higher wages in mid-March. That hazard pay increases had already cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars. "Our front-line operations teams have been on an incredible journey over the last few months, and we want to show our appreciation with a special one-time thank you bonus," Dave Clark, the company's SVP for worldwide operations, wrote in a note to workers Monday. Full-time Amazon workers, Whole Foods employees and Delivery Service Partner drivers will get $500, while their part-time counterparts will receive $250. Amazon and Whole Foods employees in leadership positions will get $1,000, Delivery Service Partner owners will get $3,000 and Amazon Flex drivers who worked more than 10 hours in June will each get $150.
Pennies for them (Score:4, Informative)
NASDAQ: AMZN
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Amazon has netting a few hundred billion dollars during the pandemic... and are sharing less than 1, only half a billion with their employees.
"Trickle Down Economics" my ass.
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Damn right. We should be thankful for the crusts of bread inadvertently dropped on us by our capitalist overlords from their flying gold plated custom tesla stretch limos full of hookers and the world's most valuable scotch and the country's most powerful politicians just begging to make laws favorable to their businesses, with all of it costing less than what they made that *hour.* We should all get down on our knees and give them a big sloppy thanks.
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$500 million in bonuses is just crusts of bread? Damn. I gotta get a job at Amazon.
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Jeff Bezos, *personally* makes $2,489 per second. He makes $500 million in 2.32 days.
Yes, it is the crusts of bread. You are getting screwed by the economy.
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Re:Pennies for them (Score:5, Informative)
Amazon [wikipedia.org] had $281 billion in revenue last year, but only $11.6 billion in net income (i.e.profit - money left over after expenses and taxes are paid). That's a 4.1% profit margin. Using that as a metric, in order to pay $500 million in bonuses (i.e. shift $500 million from profit into expenses, without decreasing their profit margin), they'd need to be bringing in $12.1 billion in additional revenue (i.e. above their $281b in regular revenue). For it to be pennies on the dollar as you claim (say 3 cents) would require they increase revenue by $407 billion. I.e. increase revenue this year by 147%. Highly unlikely.
Their online store has probably exceeded $12 billion in additional revenue YoY. But historically most of Amazon's profit has come from AWS [geekwire.com] - their cloud services division. I haven't heard much on how that's been impacted by the economic shutdown. If that business is down, it could easily wipe out any gains by their online store.
My criticism for Amazon would be that it has roughly $50 billion cash on hand [macrotrends.net]. That's money (like in a savings account) and assets which can be easily liquidated. You keep cash on hand for liquidity and for emergencies. And this pandemic is one helluva emergency. If you're not willing to tap into your cash reserves to get you through the biggest global emergency in the last 75 years, what the hell is the point of keeping cash reserves? Even if they had zero revenue for the year, that cash reserve is enough to pay all their employees for almost the entire year, longer if you capped executive pay.
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As of mid-May they had spent $800 million on COVID19 remediation company wide (more than the three largest US retailers combined), the removal of the $2/hr bonus pay was because the remediation was in place so they're (nominally) at less risk now. (Yes, I work at Amazon, but nothing to do with the Fulfillment Centers.)
Formerly Amazon was known as "The billion dollar company that can't make a profit" since Bezo's strategy was to plow all that money back into the company rather than distribute dividends, and
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That the is dumbest statistic I've seen to promote Amazon not sharing with their employees. The stock price isn't Amazon's money.
Maybe you are complaining that Amazon employees do not own the stock. Okay, but if they did, they would be allowed to trade the stock. If they were only trading with one another, the price wouldn't move very much. So they'd have to trade to people outside the company. By definition, they wouldn't then be holding the stock.
It is almost as if you missed Econ 101 and believe in a bar
BS, keep the "increased" hourly pay rate instead (Score:4, Informative)
This is BS because its a one time deal, and it rewards others more or less based on their time on the front lines.
the extra $2/hr for working the front lines is better because it would mean that a person that works 40 hours vs someone that only works 20hr get rewarded more for taking more risk.
This current graduating scale is designed to make it look like Amazon is really stepping up when they are just using a single big drop in the bucket to look better than they actually are.
Do the math 800,000 employees...
800,000 x 2 x 40 = 64 million per week. You can see it will not take long to get to $500 million and also blow past it if Amazon kept to the $2 hr extra for as long as Covid-19 is a risk!
Public Opinion is pretty cheap to buy!
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Right. People who are impressed by this are either predisposed to being impressed by corporate propaganda, are confused about a person's intrinsic worth vs their monetary worth, or are terrible at math.
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Amazon paid the extra $2/hr since March while it spent $800,000,000 (yes, that's the right number of zeros) on COVID19 remediation. Now that the remediation is in place they've withdrawn it but are still giving workers a bonus. That's a bad thing?
Kroger didn't even supply workers with **MASKS** until April (they had to get their own) and didn't require that they be used until almost May, they paid $2/hr hazard pay from early April until mid-May, and when a couple thousand employees were accidentally paid
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Half of the things I buy on Amazon I can't buy locally. I know in my state one should pay a Use Tax on items purchased out of state, though I don't because places like Amazon charge me the tax directly. So, I'm sure that you must be one of the very few people that tracks all non-local purchases to pay the Use Tax, right?
I highly doubt you pay Use Tax after the point of sale, so get off your high horse.
You're right that this is peanuts for Amazon and doesn't make up for the $2/hour loss that employees are
To quote Charlie Wilson's War (Score:3)
Is that a joke?
No.
Is that meant to be a funny joke?
No, sir.
Congressman, what they're saying is $10 million from the U.S. to fight the Russian army is such a low figure, that it can be mistaken for a joke.
Amazon earned $4 billion in the second quarter and they said all of it would go to responding to covid-19 such as testing of its workers and speeding up delivery times. Considering Amazon has fought tooth and nail to prevent health departments from examining its working conditions, has deliberately hid its infections and deaths, and has told employees to come to work even if they're sick or get no pay, a one-time, $500 million payout amounting to a pittance per employee is such a low figure, that it can be mistaken for a joke.
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What a steaming pile of horseshit. Here's what I answered a less-pestilental poster above:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
Here's Amazon's COVID19 blog, if you actually want to learn something, as unlikely as it seems.
https://blog.aboutamazon.com/c... [aboutamazon.com]
Bezos needs 30 new yachts (Score:2)
Why else would they reduce hazard pay? Seriously though, Amazon doesn't need any more money (I don't use them anymore, I find their services expensive), but forcing people to work and cutting pay in a crisis is ridiculous.
The danger is... (Score:2)
The real danger to Facebook&co is that the advertisers will realize how little they were getting for their money. If sales don't actually drop, they may just decide to keep their money.
wrong word Amazon/journalist (Score:1)