BOYCOTT AMAZON!!! Christian Smalls is fighting for black workers and living wages! (SUPPORT HIM)

[Johnny Kilroy]

And those systems evolved into what we have now. I don't know why you all try to mythologize some shyt that never existed.

You're wrong. Capitalism evolved DIRECTLY from Trans-African chattel slavery.

 

[lamont614]

I work there part time
Sat and Sunday’s
I make 18 because of shift diff been there 6 months
Get paid every week
Get dental and vision free
Doing 401k match
Doing stock purchase program
I pick so it’s super easy
I had to invest in some better feet wear tho feet was killing me

I couldn’t do it full time tho
Gotta drive 30 mins out maga meth country lol
Soon as I get off the freeway big ass trump sign on someone’s porch


I look at Bernie sideways he was applauding Jeff when he raised the min wage for amazon to 15


But check this when amazon did that they took away employees getting free stock


You know they stock worth 3 racks

We do get 10 percent discount



We should get free prime tho for working there
At least 90 days in


The people I started with I think I’m the only one still there

the job is definitely saving my life right now because my first job cut overtime

I doing self lending and credit strong
I’m going have 2 grand saved automatically

plus another 1,300 me doing the weekly save challenge

 

[Prodyson]

Humans have survived tens of thousands of years without capitalism. There are many other ways to run a society without exploiting people.

In Africa there is a term called Ubuntu. It roughly means "I am because we are." The TRUTH is we are all connected, and our purpose in life is to look out for each other. The resources belong to EVERYONE. Socialism is a much more human approach. Capitalism is based on greed and exploitation. How we take care of our families, with love, is how we should take care of everyone. But capitalism breeds disdain as well as everyone is simply out for self.

Black people need to move far away from these devilish ideals. Stop trying to be Amerikkkan. This wasn't built for us, nor should we want to be a part of it. We know FIRSTHAND what Amerikkka is.

Fair enough. But the “boss” framework doesn’t disappear in socialism. It just makes it easier to leave without having to worry about losing everything. But even in socialist societies, there are going to be a poorer class of people. Bosses can still fire you and you then rely on the support of the government. This also doesn’t negate corruption, which is why a lot of socialist countries are in the state that they’re in.

At the end of the day, the larger issue is the PEOPLE within the systems, not the systems themselves. In a perfect world capitalism would be fine. Let the markets decide. Enforce the laws equally. The problem is with American capitalism, we don’t let the markets decide. We let politicians, billionaires and corporations decide... and then claim it’s the market. Then when people try to level the playing field, those same entities wield their power to silence us. As long as people are flawed, it doesn’t matter what system we implement. If that was the case, there would be more countries thriving using systems that work. That’s we we need better actual communities like what you mention, where you don’t have to depend on corrupt and greedy governments and corporations. Then you have freedom regardless of whether a company can fire you. Because you don’t depend on them. But as far as institutions... eventually, humans ruin everything.

 

[voltronblack]

 

[voltronblack]

I work there part time



I look at Bernie sideways he was applauding Jeff when he raised the min wage for amazon to 15


But check this when amazon did that they took away employees getting free stock


You know they stock worth 3 racks

For the past few years, Amazon has increasingly pushed data-driven quotas and warehouse and delivery efficiencies that workers say are dangerous and inhumane, while at the same time actively lobbying Congress to increase the federal minimum wage to $15.

In fact, Amazon is one of the few major employers in the U.S. that already pays its employees $15 an hour. Amazon has been lobbying in support of a $15 minimum wage for years, but has redoubled its efforts in early 2021: It’s advertising on podcasts, tweeting videos with workers, and publishing full-page newspaper ads saying that “It’s time to raise the federal minimum wage. Actually, it’s past time.”

To many, this seeming contradiction between its apparent commitment to a fairer hourly wage (a policy supported by many on the left) while hyper-exploiting its workers doesn’t make a lot of sense. According to experts Motherboard spoke to, the reality is that Amazon workers are still struggling and the company is actually pushing wages down in the warehouse sector while convincing people who might otherwise work retail to take on backbreaking labor. On top of this, the move has been a PR boon at the same time the company is escalating its war against unions.

Over the past few weeks, raising the federal minimum wage to $15 has become one of the main points of contention in negotiations surrounding Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. Many have seized a recent Congressional Budget Office report to kill the proposal, pointing to the study’s projections that raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would cost 1.4 million jobs. There's mounting evidence, however, that "the report's assumptions about job losses are problematic—significantly out of step with modern research on the subject."

In October 2018, after months of intense public criticism—including a bill introduced by Senator Sanders called the Stop BEZOS Act that proposed to tax large employers whose workers relied on social welfare programs—the company announced that it would begin paying all US employees $15 an hour.

"We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided to lead," said chief executive Jeff Bezos in a statement accompanying the announcement. Amazon did not immediately respond to Motherboard’s request for comment about its $15 minimum wage campaign.

PR statements, however, are largely useless for illuminating a company’s motivations. At the time, some commentators suggested the move was concerned with not only hiring and retaining employees ahead of peak demand during holiday shopping seasons, but also with increasing demand among low-income customers by giving them more disposable income. Meanwhile, right-wing commentators trotted out the belief that higher wages hurt companies and have argued that Amazon had "weaponized" higher wages against competitors like Walmart, which would also be forced to pay its employees more under a federal law.

According to Stacey Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self Reliance, a non-profit advocacy group that works to defend communities from corporate power, Amazon killed two birds with one stone: attracting new workers even though unemployment hovered at 4 percent while alleviating some of the never-ending negative coverage its labor practices garnered.

"My read of it all is that they—for purely labor market reasons—needed to go to $15 an hour to meet their huge staffing needs,” Mitchell told Motherboard. “Recognizing that they were going to need to do that anyways because of market conditions, they decided to parlay it into a publicity move.”

It would be a mistake to stop the analysis there, however, Mitchell added. While Amazon is paying more to its warehouse workers than Walmart pays its shelf-stockers, warehouse jobs typically pay much more than $15 per hour. Amazon is pulling off a trick where it appears to be paying more than its competitors, but the job in question is not the same as those it’s being compared to when we talk about Walmart. In other words, as Bloomberg recently put it in a headline, “Amazon Has Turned a Middle-Class Warehouse Career Into a McJob.”

In that December 2020 article, Bloomberg reported on how new Amazon warehouses drag down wages in the local area, even though the company is paying more than minimum wage. In New Jersey, for example, warehouse workers were making $24 an hour before Amazon moved in, paying $15 an hour. In 2019, warehouse workers in New Jersey earned about $17.50 per hour.

"In 68 countries where Amazon has opened one of its largest facilities,” Bloomberg notes, “average industry compensation slips by more than 6 percent during the facility's first two years.”

And despite instituting a $15 an hour minimum wage, thousands of Amazon workers are hardly any better off. In November 2020, a Government Accountability Office study found that more than 4,000 Amazon employees are on food stamps in nine states—a record beat only by Walmart, McDonald's, and two dollar store chains.

Overall, it seems that even with a $15 wage Amazon only brings lower wages and more precarity with it. The natural backstop to this slide is labor unions, and a $15 wage gussied up to seem like a benevolent gift could be one more weapon in Amazon’s total war against unionization efforts in its warehouses.

“Employers traditionally prefer to pay more to preserve their power and autonomy. That’s why it is common for employers to offer raises when workers start an organizing drive,” Georgetown history professor Joseph A. McCartin told Motherboard. “In Amazon’s case they have been trying to get ahead of the curve in supporting this wage hike. They’d much rather pay more to try to keep a union out so as to continue to make unilateral decisions about pay, working conditions, and the organization of the work.”

Amazon’s push to support a $15 minimum wage is yet another example of how the massive company can throw its weight around on multiple sides of an equation in order to secure a better outcome for itself.

Critics have long argued that Amazon is a monopsony, which is a situation where a firm has enough market power to set prices for its suppliers and also wages for its workers with less outside pressure. In 2014, economist Paul Krugman made the case that Amazon enjoys the power of a monopsony by looking at how it shook down the publisher Hachette for a larger cut of its sales on Amazon’s platform. Or, for a more recent example, the 2020 House antitrust subcommittee report showed how Amazon's control of nearly 50 percent of the e-commerce market and nearly 200 million customers means that for countless third-party sellers, it is the only real buyer of their goods.

In the labor market, Amazon has nearly 800,000 employees and in many towns is either the major or sole employer of warehouse workers. In an insightful piece for The Bull & The Run, McGill’s student-run newspaper, Julian Robinson wrote that if Amazon were indeed a monopsony, we would expect to see a few things: unilateral wage increases (check) coupled with long-term downward pressure on wages (check), but also horrible working conditions because Amazon’s labor monopoly allows it to unilaterally impose those terms as part of the price of working there (check).

"It seems to me that talking about $15 an hour is a way to avoid actually talking about the inhumane conditions inside Amazon's warehouses," Mitchell told Motherboard. "When you talk to Amazon workers, a lot of what the concerns they raise have to do with are the punishing working conditions. The grueling pace, the fact that they're physically taxed to the point of injury, that they don't get adequate breaks, that they don't have a lot of control over their schedule. It's all of those things that workers raise—this mechanization in a way where they're treated like robots as the rates they must meet keep rising."

Workers should get $15 an hour minimum wage, of course, because there’s little to no evidence it actually hurts businesses or the economy. But they should also get a workplace where wages, working conditions, and benefits are not unilaterally decided by their employer. Wages are important but if you are getting paid for dangerous work that might permanently injure you, perhaps the solution requires you get enough power to improve both your wages and working conditions.

"When I say it's about power, it's not only the union but also the degree of government interference," McCartin added. "If they're paying $15 an hour and supporting that, what they really want is to be able to draw a curtain around their operations and hang on that curtain ‘We're paying $15 an hour and we support the wage for everybody.’ But what's really going on behind that curtain? The true cost of working in these places are things that they want to keep from being transparent—something a union would do and subject to negotiation.

 

[Johnny Kilroy]

Fair enough. But the “boss” framework doesn’t disappear in socialism. It just makes it easier to leave without having to worry about losing everything. But even in socialist societies, there are going to be a poorer class of people. Bosses can still fire you and you then rely on the support of the government. This also doesn’t negate corruption, which is why a lot of socialist countries are in the state that they’re in.

At the end of the day, the larger issue is the PEOPLE within the systems, not the systems themselves. In a perfect world capitalism would be fine. Let the markets decide. Enforce the laws equally. The problem is with American capitalism, we don’t let the markets decide. We let politicians, billionaires and corporations decide... and then claim it’s the market. Then when people try to level the playing field, those same entities wield their power to silence us. As long as people are flawed, it doesn’t matter what system we implement. If that was the case, there would be more countries thriving using systems that work. That’s we we need better actual communities like what you mention, where you don’t have to depend on corrupt and greedy governments and corporations. Then you have freedom regardless of whether a company can fire you. Because you don’t depend on them. But as far as institutions... eventually, humans ruin everything.

Good post. I agree the issue is with humans. Ubuntu solves all of these problems though. Knowing we're all connected, understanding that we are each other, would eliminate man's greatest ill, which is essentially selfishness.

Capitalism, specifically, is detrimental because it actually promotes and rewards selfishness. It's like "the worst of humanity" if you will. It will always put the wealth of few over the many, while exploiting those many.

Working for the collective community is one thing, but working solely to enrich someone is power is corrupt. If I ever had to work for somebody again, I'd be a public servant so my efforts would at least go to helping people. fukk these corporations who view people as nothing more than cattle.

 

[surv2syn]

You're looking at certain extreme elements of slavery. They won't whip you but they'll fire you, in which case you can't buy food, in which case you'll die.... Unless you find a new master to obey.

What time do you go to bed? Your job determines that. What time do you wake up? Your job determines that. When do you eat? Your job determines that. What clothes do you wear? Your job determines that.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. You're stuck in a slave state and don't even realize it which is the whole point of slavery. It's ALWAYS been mental. Slaves didn't wear chains because their mind was already locked down. Much like a dog who no longer needs a leash.

I'm not making light of anything, friend. You're in bondage and don't even know it.

we all slaves to something. we all slaves to the universe. yes, slavery is mental as well as physical. but I aint comparing workin a 9-5 to chattel slavery. no one owns me. I can make my own choice of who to work with/for or not work with anyone at all. everyone is a fukkin slave by your definition but make that shyt plain about wtf you comparing it to in actuality otherwise its clown shyt.

 

[Johnny Kilroy]

we all slaves to something. we all slaves to the universe. yes, slavery is mental as well as physical. but I aint comparing workin a 9-5 to chattel slavery. no one owns me. I can make my own choice of who to work with/for or not work with anyone at all. everyone is a fukkin slave by your definition but make that shyt plain about wtf you comparing it to in actuality otherwise its clown shyt.

I was very specific. Amerikkkan capitalism is matured slavery. This entire economy evolved from slavery. From obvious slaves in the south, to manufacturing of goods made with raw materials gained through slavery in the middle states, to the building of ships to transport goods made by raw materials picked by slaves and slaves themselves.

So the emancipation proclamation says we're "free", but what does that mean? We still right back to the SAME PLANTATIONS for what was no called "work." Instead of room and board, we were given a "wage" to go find our own room and board. The people at the bottom still do the most work for the least pay while the people at the top do the least work for the most pay. It's exploitation. And fear driven, just like slavery. Slaves feared the whip like Americans fear termination. The whip hurts your back, termination hurts your tummy. And your kids tummy. So you really don't have a choice but to get back to that plantation, or warehouse, or office or whatever you wanna call it. Change the terms, its' the same game.

You think picking the field you work in or the shack you live in makes you free? That means the plan is working. You'll accept a tiny bit of freedom and mistake it for actual freedom. This will keep you a slave for a long time, my friend.

 

[killacal]

If people were smart; they wouldn't do a huge 15hr push to millions of random businesses that cant afford that.
They would Push a 20 to 25hr min wage for fortunate 500 companies.

This

 

[surv2syn]

Both valid points. It's not just Amazon.

The simple answer is,, don't take unsafe minimum wage paying jobs.. I know jobs that'll hire you and pay you just as little in safer working conditions and I've often question people older than 21 that work those jobs. I would never let my kids work for Amazon, UPS, Cricket, boost mobile when Footlocker, nightstocker for heb and ChicK-filA are hiring without a hs diploma. Unless you live in NY or LA where it's hard to get a job and those jobs will hire you for nothing.

minimum wage in NC is $7.25. Amazon starts at over $15 hr. there are VERY few jobs around here that pay that for people fresh outta HS or 40-50 y/o plus with no skills.

 

[Arithmetic]

 

[surv2syn]

I was very specific. Amerikkkan capitalism is matured slavery. This entire economy evolved from slavery. From obvious slaves in the south, to manufacturing of goods made with raw materials gained through slavery in the middle states, to the building of ships to transport goods made by raw materials picked by slaves and slaves themselves.

So the emancipation proclamation says we're "free", but what does that mean? We still right back to the SAME PLANTATIONS for what was no called "work." Instead of room and board, we were given a "wage" to go find our own room and board. The people at the bottom still do the most work for the least pay while the people at the top do the least work for the most pay. It's exploitation. And fear driven, just like slavery. Slaves feared the whip like Americans fear termination. The whip hurts your back, termination hurts your tummy. And your kids tummy. So you really don't have a choice but to get back to that plantation, or warehouse, or office or whatever you wanna call it. Change the terms, its' the same game.

You think picking the field you work in or the shack you live in makes you free? That means the plan is working. You'll accept a tiny bit of freedom and mistake it for actual freedom. This will keep you a slave for a long time, my friend.

you can move to another country, live off the land and off the grid COMPLETELY. you have the freedom to leave this capitalistic society. you can get away from this tax system. you do know not everyone in the world lives like this dont you? the slavery you speak of we still have some control over it and agreement to be under it. if you make any excuse to say you have zero control then you are more enslaved mentally than I am my friend.

 

[Johnny Kilroy]

you can move to another country, live off the land and off the grid COMPLETELY. you have the freedom to leave this capitalistic society. you can get away from this tax system. you do know not everyone in the world lives like this dont you? the slavery you speak of we still have some control over it and agreement to be under it. if you make any excuse to say you have zero control then you are more enslaved mentally than I am my friend.

I never said I don't have control. I'm trying to free your yassabossin ass.

 

[surv2syn]

I never said I don't have control. I'm trying to free your yassabossin ass.

some of you coli nikkas is weirdos for real. justify yourself having a slave mentality brehs.

 

[Peter Popoff]

minimum wage in NC is $7.25. Amazon starts at over $15 hr. there are VERY few jobs around here that pay that for people fresh outta HS or 40-50 y/o plus with no skills.

Is that part-time or full-time?