Company has a record growth but is trying to shaft workers in any way possible, even erring on the edge of laws.
Utterly disgusting.
Average consumer, however, is does not see the exploitation and happily buys the junk they sell anyway.
What's the solution?
Should minimum wage be tied to the given company revenue?
Should employees be partially paid in shares?
All those giants could easily pay much more, but they don't - how would you make them?
Record growth only because of scummy ways. If they actually play by aome rule book, that growth wouldn't be record setting. I say tie share price to minimum wage workers. I don't get why some lucky dinosaurs should get to burn up in golden rockets, funding the publics hate for the poor. How pathetic.
Drop in the bucket for Amazon. I wish people and article would stop gawking at absolute fine numbers, donation numbers etc and actually put that into a percent relative to Amazon's income, Bezos' networks, etc.
This article doesn't mention how long the executives that approved it are going to prison for. A single count of theft by deception has a year maximum in my state, so presumably it's decades.
Allegedly steal a few golf clubs, get caught? Life imprisonment with no possibility of parole (see Ewing v. California, 538 U.S. 11, 2003).
Allegedly steal a backpack with valuables, get caught? Get sent to Rikers with no trial, held in solitary confinement for 2 years, and up hanging yourself.
Oh and guess what: in both cases the defedendants (Gary Ewing, Kalief Browser) were black.
Fast forward: a certain Jeffery Preston Bezos instructs his minions to steal $61.7m worth[1] of tips from his (essentially) minimum-wage drivers... not only gets off scot free, but gets to launch himself into space at the next convenient opportunity.
It's just how things work.
[1] Per the article: "The $61.7m settlement represents the amount of tips that Amazon allegedly withheld from drivers and it forbids Amazon from misrepresenting the likely income of drivers and from changing how tips are used as compensation without prior driver consent."
I suppose these are examples of the justice system treating black individuals even more unjustly than the average individual (though obviously anecdotal ones)
Contract violations or fraud or whatever this was aren’t the same kind of crime or tort as taking somebody’s property.
For starters, it’s less chaotic - you have to sign up to be a victim. Also, it’s gradual — the driver gets paid less, one trip at a time. And then when you notice you’re being scammed, you can keep doing it, or deal with some other company.
Ewing was a serial burglar and robber who refused to stop stealing stuff.
Kalief Browder was charged with robbery and assault and had bail set at $3000, and would have gotten out, only he was on probation.
(Personally I think Amazon including management up the chain shouldn’t have gotten off so easy, but Ewing is a textbook example of the kind of guy who belongs in jail.)
Also, Amazon's violation was orders of magnitude greater in scale (and enacted against victims who were individually more vulnerable) than, say, Ewing's alleged violation.
Ewing was a serial burglar and robber who refused to stop stealing stuff.
Bezos is also a serial violator who can't stealing in all sorts of other ways (tax avoidance, pushing counterfeit products, etc), also at ginormous scale.
Kalief Browder was charged with robbery and assault and had bail set at $3000, and would have gotten out, only he was on probation.
There's no way you can talk down the harm that was done to Kalief Browder. The consensus among everyone involved was that he was wrongly incarcerated (even given the circumstances you've described) and severely mistreated (beaten -and- sentenced to 23 hour shifts of solitary confinement).
Even the City tacitly agrees - that's why they agreed to the $3.3 million civil finding. (Oh and the charges against Browder turned out to be quite flimsy, btw, and were most likely spurious all along).
Ewing is a textbook example of the kind of guy who belongs in jail.
The point isn't that Ewing doesn't belong in jail - but that Bezos clearly does, by this point.
Tips are kept by employers in many industries. Restaurants. Hotels. Spas. My solution is to always tip in cash to the person who provides a service. Never on a card.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 33.6 ms ] threadAverage consumer, however, is does not see the exploitation and happily buys the junk they sell anyway. What's the solution?
Should minimum wage be tied to the given company revenue? Should employees be partially paid in shares? All those giants could easily pay much more, but they don't - how would you make them?
Allegedly steal a backpack with valuables, get caught? Get sent to Rikers with no trial, held in solitary confinement for 2 years, and up hanging yourself.
Oh and guess what: in both cases the defedendants (Gary Ewing, Kalief Browser) were black.
Fast forward: a certain Jeffery Preston Bezos instructs his minions to steal $61.7m worth[1] of tips from his (essentially) minimum-wage drivers... not only gets off scot free, but gets to launch himself into space at the next convenient opportunity.
It's just how things work.
[1] Per the article: "The $61.7m settlement represents the amount of tips that Amazon allegedly withheld from drivers and it forbids Amazon from misrepresenting the likely income of drivers and from changing how tips are used as compensation without prior driver consent."
Why does that matter?
For starters, it’s less chaotic - you have to sign up to be a victim. Also, it’s gradual — the driver gets paid less, one trip at a time. And then when you notice you’re being scammed, you can keep doing it, or deal with some other company.
Ewing was a serial burglar and robber who refused to stop stealing stuff.
Kalief Browder was charged with robbery and assault and had bail set at $3000, and would have gotten out, only he was on probation.
(Personally I think Amazon including management up the chain shouldn’t have gotten off so easy, but Ewing is a textbook example of the kind of guy who belongs in jail.)
This is a semantic dodge. It is widely acknowledged that fraudulent misappropriation of wages is a form of stealing; there's even a name for it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft
Also, Amazon's violation was orders of magnitude greater in scale (and enacted against victims who were individually more vulnerable) than, say, Ewing's alleged violation.
Ewing was a serial burglar and robber who refused to stop stealing stuff.
Bezos is also a serial violator who can't stealing in all sorts of other ways (tax avoidance, pushing counterfeit products, etc), also at ginormous scale.
Kalief Browder was charged with robbery and assault and had bail set at $3000, and would have gotten out, only he was on probation.
There's no way you can talk down the harm that was done to Kalief Browder. The consensus among everyone involved was that he was wrongly incarcerated (even given the circumstances you've described) and severely mistreated (beaten -and- sentenced to 23 hour shifts of solitary confinement).
Even the City tacitly agrees - that's why they agreed to the $3.3 million civil finding. (Oh and the charges against Browder turned out to be quite flimsy, btw, and were most likely spurious all along).
Ewing is a textbook example of the kind of guy who belongs in jail.
The point isn't that Ewing doesn't belong in jail - but that Bezos clearly does, by this point.
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.