Re:Amazon warehouse workers 'peed in bottles' fearing punish...
by RockyMcNuts on Monday April 16, 2018 @01:33PM
(#16850916)
Oh, I totally agree... if you can get $13 an hour working at Amazon how much would you need to work in the field or the mine, harder, more dangerous, exposed to toxic stuff. $25 or $50 isn't so crazy.
By the same token, the fact that Amazon retains hundreds of thousands of employees at $13 an hour means working conditions can't be in a different league from Walmart etc. Of course Amazon should be managing this stuff so it's not a Dickensian sweatshop. But of course they know that and they know the worse it is the more they have to pay, and these stories are maybe a little overblown.
Or at least I don't see buying at Walmart instead of Amazon to be a humanitarian necessity or particularly welfare-enhancing.
I kind of see it as a FedEx vs. UPS situation, FedEx pays more and is more brutal, pick your poison as a customer or employee.
Everything you buy that's cheap is cheap because people worked hard in shitty jobs.
...at the rate of pay offered.
Speaking as a software engineer, if you offered me double my salary and secure employment for a couple years to work in a field or mine, I'd do it. Test me. Make me an offer. Slaughterhouses I don't know if I could do, but I'll bet plenty of people would for my current salary or less.
About a decade and a half ago I probably would've done the same for maybe $50/hr.