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Amazon To Hire 100,000 Warehouse and Delivery Workers Amid Coronavirus Shutdowns (wsj.com) 39

Posted by BeauHD from the unprecedented-times dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Amazon plans to hire an additional 100,000 employees in the U.S. as millions of people turn to online deliveries at an unprecedented pace and Americans continue to reorient their lives to limit the spread of the new coronavirus. Amazon plans to deploy the new workers to fuel its sprawling e-commerce machine and is raising pay for all employees in fulfillment centers, transportation, stores and deliveries in the U.S. and Canada by $2 an hour through April. In the U.K., it will go up $2.45 per hour and approximately $2.24 an hour in many EU countries, according to the company. Amazon now pays $15-per-hour as a starting wage to workers in its fulfillment centers around the U.S.

The tech giant's decision to go on a hiring spree and boost worker pay shows the dual challenge companies such as Amazon face as they seek to meet surging demand for food and key household items and also take care of employees at the front lines of the pandemic. Amazon employed nearly 800,000 full and part-time employees as of Dec. 31. More customers are turning to online shopping for everything from grocery delivery to paper towels, cleaning supplies and daily needs. Amazon, which also owns grocery store chain Whole Foods, was one of the companies Mr. Trump mentioned Sunday during his update on the coronavirus outbreak. Amazon accounts for 39% of all online orders in the U.S., according to eMarketer, and is shouldering a lot of those needs. Last week, Amazon asked employees at its New York and New Jersey offices to work from home. This came soon after the company told employees at its offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Seattle area to work from home, following reports that an Amazon employee in Seattle tested positive for the virus.

"On Wednesday, Amazon expanded its sick-leave policy to include part-time warehouse workers and set up a relief fund, with an initial $25 million for delivery partners such as drivers and others affected by the outbreak," adds The Wall Street Journal. "The company earlier eased its policy for unpaid time off, offering workers the option to take unlimited unpaid time off through the end of March without penalties."
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Amazon To Hire 100,000 Warehouse and Delivery Workers Amid Coronavirus Shutdowns More

Amazon To Hire 100,000 Warehouse and Delivery Workers Amid Coronavirus Shutdowns

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  • I wonder how many of the UK workers hired for this will be No Rights Employees (what HMRC calls "employed for tax"). That is they're paid via payroll, pay all the same taxes as permies, but receive *no rights* of any kind. Yep, they can be fired for anything, no reason or notice given. No holiday/sick pay, no pension, no redundancy protections. If you thought zero-hours was bad, this is waaay worse.

    For those not aware, the "No Rights Employee" was created in Finance Bill 2017. Before then, you could only be

  • Where are they going to get 100,000 workers?
    • All the laid off hotel staff can apply at Amazon
    • In case you hadn't noticed, there's a lot of businesses which are closed. Normally they employ people. Many of those people could use a job right now. In my town, grocery stores need people to stock shelves and clean the stores hourly, so they're hiring a ton of people who normally clean hotels.

    • Where are they going to get 100,000 workers?

      If you think there aren't 100,00 people that have been put out of work by now, wait another five minutes.

      Sadly, I can assure you this won't take long. If you thought people were overreacting, wait until businesses start laying off by the thousands.

    • Guess you would rather see people not working, in the streets, with no food.

      • Um, we already have that.

        • In the streets means not having any place to live. But, hey. You don't appear to be the sharpest tack on the wall. People have food. I work for a utility, we are turning back on everyone's service. No matter what they owe. But hey, if you don't have a place to live. I guess that doesn't matter. And quite obviously, you don't give a fuck if people can have a place to live or not.

          • Do you assume much, asshole? I see them every day, and help feed them. My comment is to the fact that this country should be ashamed of itself. Richest country in the world, can't do universal healthcare, can't do social safety net, can't do anything except corporate welfare. All because this country is owned and operated by sociopaths who have no shame. Notice that I did not say one party or the other -- it is both.

  • Unionize! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dixie_Flatline ( 5077 ) <vincent@jan@goh.gmail@com> on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @08:26AM (#59840064) Homepage

    First, that they can make this decision confirms what was already obvious: they can afford to pay more per person, and they can afford to pay more people. This is an enormously profitable business, and if they're not going to pay any taxes, they should at least pay more in wages.

    Second, turns out workers willing to take these jobs aren't so disposable after all, eh? Form a union and strike some fair terms (like not having to work without goddamn bathroom breaks, or when you're injured). People are already willing to pay for this service, and I don't think the demand will drop off *that* much after this is all over. People are going to get used to having 4000 rolls of toilet paper show up at their door without having to fight some soccer mom and a retired general at the Costco.

    • My side career of porch pirate is extremely lucrative recently.... I'm looking to grow my crew as well.
    • Unfortunately I think you're overlooking the fact that, while the economy / labor market has been pretty strong, the economy is now taking a huge dump. Unemployment is shooting up.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Unionize! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @09:07AM (#59840238) Journal

      they can afford to pay more per person, and they can afford to pay more people.

      Which has fuck all to do with the actual value of labor in the marketplace. The wage is set but what the entire market place can pay for that type of work not what Amazon *could* pay and still be profitable.

      Second Amazon can hire now precisely because they are already profitable and have access to either reserves or credit. Do you think Sears or anyone else could add 100K people to the payroll today? You are basically complaining Amazon is a well run company.

      Finally Amazon is liking expecting to 1) take market share from brick and mortars during this crisis, as places are either closed or people don't want to go out. 2) The probably want to offer excellent services and fast deliver because my guess is their intent is to hang on to that market share after the crisis. There are people who still preferred traditional retail that will now be pushed toward Amazon. There are people that used to prefer traditional retail for certain classes of goods they wanted to see in person that will now be pushed toward amazon. If they have good experience they might not go back to traditional retail.

      Amazon might well be anticipating these are permanent hires.

      • ...Amazon can hire now precisely because they are already profitable and have access to either reserves or credit. Do you think Sears or anyone else could add 100K people to the payroll today? You are basically complaining Amazon is a well run company...

        Amazon is a Federally-recognized and supported monopoly who doesn't have to play by the same rules as their competition (no federal taxes, no B&M overhead, etc.), which is the entire reason Amazon IS doing so well as it consumes 1 out of every 2 American consumer dollars. People have plenty of legitimate reasons to complain about Amazon, which you cannot readily dismiss.

        As far as those delusions about permanent hires, let's also remember Amazon's intent with automation. If Amazon could deliver everyth

    • My understanding is that Amazon makes almost all of its margin on offerings like AWS (where most employees are already making much better than average salaries + very valuable options) and that the margin on product deliveries is very low and sometimes negative - losing very significant amounts of money in many years.

      Amazon can only afford to pay more now because AWS is pretty much able to print money. Subsidizing one part of the model (fulfillment of goods orders) with another (web services) isn't a viabl

  • My Girlfriend (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Arthur, KBE ( 6444066 )
    She majored in Lesbian Dance Studies at Brown and is a waite^H^Hperson at Chilis, and she's $150,000.00 in debt. Meanwhile, I just out of the army with $45K to throw at my education.

  • Or are they one crash away for losing there home if they get sued when the auto plan does not pay out.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It's probably just temporary work while the coronavirus pandemic continues on. Once that's over things will tend back to the way they were and Amazon won't have as much need for these additional employees. Even if Amazon wanted to keep all of them, they'll only be able to do so if those people can't get better pay elsewhere. If there's more competition for their labor later this year then it will result in an increase in wages.

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