Amazon the company made a profit of billions this year. Amazon the store is nowhere near as profitable as AWS etc. but they can still afford it. The lack of profits in retail is from choices of going for aggressive expansion and going for those thin profit margins. They don't need these sort of demeaning gimmicks.

They made no or almost no profit with their retail business for years, that was the only way they could expand so quickly.

Taking no profits in retail was a very intentional decision they made. Bezos has talked publicly at length about it.

They raised base pay across the entire network just to avoid bad PR. I suspect Amazon could find the money if they wanted to.

>>I suspect Amazon could find the money if they wanted to.

Or they can close down the shop if they can't find the money to do the right /required thing.

Which, ironically, is exactly what a lot of people would have predicted had someone said Amazon should raise base pay to $15/hr.

They would have said margins are too thin, that it's impossible to pay more, that menial labor doesn't deserve more, that paying more would result in immediate widespread layoffs, that warehouse employees have little recourse but to accept their lot or quit because that's just how the market works.

But that argument assumes Amazon, or any business, pays some objective measure of what a job is "worth", or as much as the market will allow. They don't, they often pay as little as they can get away with.

So yes, Amazon could close down the shop, but Amazon could always close down the shop. They could also afford to pay their warehouse employees more. They don't, not because they can't, but because they prefer not to.

You've been downvoted a bunch and I can see why but I also somewhat agree with your point.

It's not Amazon that creates this situation. It's the market system itself and it will always exist, because if Amazon doesn't do it some other employer will -- in some jurisdiction or scenario in which they can get away with it -- and gain a competitive advantage. Unless there's a labour shortage, or government action, it's a race to the lowest common denominator or worse. And that's why the formation of a union across the whole sector is imperative.