It's unfortunate, but not all manual/hard jobs are valued equally and often because they are simply not of equal value. Item pickers are going to eventually go the way of cotton pickers in developed countries. One of my best friends works for a startup developing AI controlled robotic pickers. There is a ways to go and it'll start with human augmented AI's but eventually AI's will be picking, sorting, and packing everything.
I disagree; a counter argument would be Costco. Almost all of Costco has very little service interaction with their union employees. They have warehouses, distribution, and procurement that has little consumer interaction. It is difficult to find people to point what is what in aisle numbers and the lines in checkout can be very long. As far as I know all of the people who work in these facilities are union and they pay living wages and benefits.
The nice service workers who handle out free samples are contractors, not union employees the last time I checked.
(Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/costco-wholesale-teamsters/u...)
Sam's club couldn't just crank the pay of everyone and expect to remain profitable.
Ethically, I agree with you. They shouldn't treat their employees like shit. Some things are worth more than money.
But financially, it's 100% untrue that Amazon would be more valuable if they focused on employee happiness over cutting costs. It's not an accident that Amazon generates more revenue than any other Internet company in existence.
Isn't that because Amazon is (practically) the only one selling actual "stuff" that always has a value?
Everyone else is (big # of users) * (small profit/user by selling ads or whatever), Amazon is (big # of users) * (big profit/user and also selling data).
Or it very well could be (an accident). Survivorship bias and all...
Imagine Lebron James — Could he just be lucky every play he goes out onto the court? It's possible. But I'd say the more likely explanation is he knows what he's doing. He's got a fundamental understanding, an underlying theory, and a set of skills that map well to reality and give him an edge that contributes to his success. So does Amazon.