Obama Praises Amazon At One of Its Controversial Warehouses 435
theodp writes "In his first term, President Obama was a big booster of indie bookstores. But on Tuesday, the President chose to deliver his speech on Jobs for the Middle Class at one of Amazon's controversial fulfillment centers in Chattanooga, TN. 'Amazon is a great example of what's possible,' said Obama, who also toured the 'amazing facility' where workers can make $10.50-$11.50 an hour as an employee of Integrity Staffing Group, 'may also be eligible for medical and dental benefits', and 'must be able to stand/walk for up to 10-12 hours' in temperatures that 'will occasionally exceed 90 degrees.' So, are '21st century migrant workers' the new middle class?"
Re:"Controversial?" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What's your boggle, citizen? (Score:3, Informative)
They're temp workers without benefits, working 12 hour days, and get fired if they make any mistakes or say the wrong thing. Length of employment and available work is not guaranteed, but when there's work you're working overtime. Workers are searched off clock when entering the building, during break, and when they leave. You can't bring anything with you as the shipping center ships everything so how do they know if you're stealing it?
These are shitty, high stress jobs for people near the end of their ropes.
Obama hates America (Score:0, Informative)
Plain and simple: Obama is turning America into a third world nation.
I guess that's one way to help us export more and import less. Except he's also making it more and more difficult for any jobs to even be filled by Americans.
It's less simply more like he just wants to destroy Americans of every class and replace Americans with people actually from other countries. Thank god we can of course trust him. So we are walking into nice pretty shower facilities...err that we aren't walking out of.
Re:What's your boggle, citizen? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:America the beautiful (Score:5, Informative)
Too bad they're not Amazon warehouse jobs, they're Integrity Staffing jobs.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Middle Class (Score:5, Informative)
It's not so much a re-definition of "middle class", it's more a perpetuation of the very pervasive myth that most Americans are middle class, when in fact most are really working class.
First, an accurate definition of "middle class": At a minimum, middle class family is one that can accumulate wealth if they manage their finances reasonably well. That wealth may be in the form of pensions, retirement accounts, investments, home equity, vehicles owned free and clear, bank accounts, or just about anything else, but there has to be a clear upwards trajectory. For example, a middle class family is in a position to save a significant pile of cash that will allow them to send their child to college without their child taking out large loans. By contrast, a working class family is at best capable of paying their bills on time and putting food on the table.
The key facts are:
(1) The average American family has negative net worth, which means not only are they not accumulating wealth, they're losing wealth.
(2) The average American family has, over the last 15 years, cut spending dramatically on entertainment, travel, food, clothing, and almost all other discretionary categories. That means the "out-of-control spending" hypothesis is incorrect.
(3) Personal bankruptcies have been increasing steadily since 1995, and then skyrocketed since 2008. Most involved: extended unemployment, medical bills (even for insured patients), and adjustable rate mortgages bumping upwards.
(4) The average American family does not have the ability to pay their bills if they miss a single paycheck.
Also worth mentioning: If you're a typical /.er with a job in the IT sector, you very likely pull in about 3-5 times what the average American worker makes.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:3, Informative)
Wal-Mart Effect (Score:3, Informative)
The issue with Amazon is while they offer great service and the lowest prices, they are forcing not only other businesses to go under but also dictating the prices of goods in the market. Many companies have a Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policy in order to keep an even playing field for their resellers. Amazon is so large, and buys so much, that do not obey to MAP policies - they do what they please. If the manufacturer doesn't like this, they can choose not sell to Amazon and subsequently lose sales in the millions of dollars.
In the wake of low prices and convenience, we are seeing the extinction of a free-enterprise market and the transition of skilled laborers to box-stuffers....all run by the efficiency of a computer system.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:4, Informative)
No, its not. It may have the same effect as a subsidy, but its not a subsidy.
Oh and calling tax write-offs that oil companies take over employee benefits and such a "subsidy", when every other type of company can use those same write-offs is being disingenuous.
An absolute must-read on the subject (Score:5, Informative)
I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine. [motherjones.com]
"... when you're late or sick you miss the opportunity to maximize your overtime pay. And working more than eight hours is mandatory. Stretching is also mandatory, since you will either be standing still at a conveyor line for most of your minimum 10-hour shift or walking on concrete or metal stairs."
"The gal conducting our training reminds us again that we cannot miss any days our first week. There are NO exceptions to this policy. She says to take Brian, for example, who's here with us in training today. Brian already went through this training, but then during his first week his lady had a baby, so he missed a day and he had to be fired."
It's 4 pages. Take the time to read it. It's depressing as fuck. I buy very little from Amazon anymore, and when I do, it's usually from individual sellers, not "Amazon" itself.
Re:Wal-Mart Effect (Score:3, Informative)
MAP is nothing more than collusion. I think they should be flatly illegal. In a totally free market no one would ever obey them.
You don't want a free market you want a market that is ruled the way you like.
The correct solution to amazon paying this little is just to raise the minimum wage for this job. If you don't want to do that, then you think this wage is fine.
MAP is not collusion, it is the currently best (and affirmatively deemed legal by courts) way to create a fair playing field for all the resellers of a particular product. I know most people feel MAP is a bad thing because as end users we all pay the same MAP price, just like trying to buy an Apple product - price is same everywhere. With this being said, when a company as large as Amazon or Wal-Mart does not abide by MAP, it is simply a race to the bottom with who has the lowest price. Because these large companies get a huge quantity discount, without MAP they could afford to sell for pennies on the dollar for an extended period of time. This action has the very real potential put all the other resellers out of business. When the other competition is gone, Amazon (et. al.) are free to raise the prices as high as they want as they retain complete market control. The manufacturer of the good is forced to sell to Amazon at whatever price Amazon determines. Amazon is so large that they can make or break a company simply by not choosing to sell a product...and you can bet your ass it is on Amazon's terms because they know the power they hold.
A marketplace without MAP, as you suggest, is simply a setup for monopolistic control by companies who can afford to do it. Look what happened to all the Mom and Pop shops in the US with the introduction of Wal-Mart: gone. Without some kind of level price structure, the reseller with the deepest pockets will prevail.
Koch Brothers (Score:4, Informative)
In my benighted Red 19th-century state, the Kochs are running TV ads refuting the 1% / 99% argument, reassuring the working poor that they indeed are well-off and middle class. Pay no mind to your paycheck-to-paycheck, one middling medical issue away from oblivion, dear serfs!
Exerable assholes highly deserving of dying in a fire.
Re:Misleading summary (Score:5, Informative)
It may have the same effect as a subsidy
If it looks like a duck....
If the government agreed to send oil companies a check for $10 for every barrel of oil produced, we'd all agree that that's a subsidy, right?
If the government instead says, "We'll credit your tax bill $10 for every barrel of oil you produce, reducing the amount on the tax check you send us", it's THE SAME DAMNED THING.
Oh and calling tax write-offs that oil companies take over employee benefits and such a "subsidy", when every other type of company can use those same write-offs is being disingenuous.
No one is calling those tax write-offs available to all businesses subsidies. The subsidies are the tax write-offs available ONLY to oil production companies. One example is the ability to write off the "declining value" of oil wells.
So, if you're an oil company, you spend $20 billion looking for oil reserves, and deduct those expenses. Then, you find a reserve, worth say, $100 billion. Then, you spend $20 billion getting that oil out of the ground, and deduct those expenses, and then you sell the oil for $100 billion. This is all the normal way a business would run. For example, someone might spend $20 million researching a new product, $20 million making the products, and then sell the products for $100 million, making $60 million in profits they are taxed on.
But on top of the normal deductions for ACTUAL COSTS, the oil companies ALSO deduct the "declining value of the wells". You know, since the oil in the ground was worth $100 billion, as they pump the oil out of the ground and the "value" of the oil in the ground declines, THEY DEDUCT THE DECLINING VALUE OF THE WELLS TOO!
And that's a subsidy. It's a tax deduction no normal business gets.