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Amazon Announces $15 Minimum Wage for All of its U.S. Employees

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 03 2018, @06:34AM   
from the so-EVERY-Amazon-employee-gets-a-raise? dept.

takyon writes:

Amazon announces $15 minimum wage for all US employees

Amazon is raising its minimum wage to $15 an hour for all US employees. The change takes effect November 1 and applies to full-time, part-time and temporary workers. Amazon says the $15 minimum wage will benefit more than 250,000 Amazon employees, plus 100,000 seasonal workers.

"We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and CEO. "We're excited about this change and encourage our competitors and other large employers to join us."

The change applies to Whole Foods and all other subsidiary employees.

Amazon also said its public policy team will begin lobbying for an increase in the federal minimum wage, which has been $7.25 an hour since 2009.

See also: Bernie Sanders praises Jeff Bezos on Amazon $15 minimum wage

Previously: 'Stop BEZOS' Bill to tax Amazon for Underpaying Workers

Related: Injured Amazon Worker Describes High-Tech Dystopia Inside Texas Warehouse

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Original Submission

• Re:What were they being paid before? (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday October 03 2018, @12:48PM

  by khallow (3766) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @12:48PM (#743361) Journal

  Significantly raising base pay at a major employer is also going to cause the base pay of the surrounding community to have to rise to compete, which harms the health of every business and flat out kills those that were barely getting by to begin with. Which means every employee they employed is now out of work. Which makes it even harder to get a job at all, much less a good job, due to the increased competition on the labor end of things.

  Which is a great thing, remember? Labor is a relatively effective market and Amazon is signalling via price, the usual market mechanism that it's demanding better labor. There's nothing to be concerned about. If you are one of those marginal businesses who can't compete for that labor now, then what's the problem? Just end the business. The labor market already would be picking up at higher price the workers from that business and life would move on. We need businesses, but we don't need businesses that can't pay market rate.

  Also, given everything else being equal, nobody chooses the job that pays less. Which means the employer that compensates better gets all of the good employees for a given job and small businesses get the dregs who produce less value for their pay, which means you have to hire more to get the same value of work. This is all as it should be when the larger company actually values the work as much as they're paying but doing it for political reasons fucks shit up for everyone without having any goal except keeping politicos off their asses.

  I disagree. Amazon isn't being forced to do this. They're voluntarily virtue signalling. If as a result, they get commensurate benefits in the political game, then they made a good move and that should be reflected in the market just like any other relevant factor. We shouldn't care why someone chooses to trade at a certain price in a market, as long as they aren't being forced to do so.

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