Maybe if they signed up for Amazon Prime…
3 Likes
I’m arguing that all jobs have some BS to them, some waiting, some unpleasant part, some unpaid piece of work.
No. You are paid for the time you spend doing the work for which you are hired, and the tasks and protocols associated therein, regardless of how unpleasant or boring the work, tasks, and protocols may be. If your job requires you to stand in a line for 30 minutes, you should be paid for your time.
3 Likes
Perhaps? “The workers of Amazon collectively getting their employer to improve the situation” is what this lawsuit is about. Are you arguing against a point that you apparently agree with out of loneliness?
5 Likes
I work as a part-time non-exempt engineer (with benefits) on radio telescopes, and part-time as a self-employed producer of boutique wristwatches.
My wage-slave job is so loose that it would make the Amazon warehouse employees drool with envy. But sometimes they make me work an extra day after I’ve filled in my time sheet. So it’s a tradeoff. At least they trust me to fill in my own time sheets.
Perhaps if I spent a few years working at a more typical wage-slave job, it would humble me.
Yet more evidence that Amazon is basically Walmart for the smart set. Same exploitation, outsourcing of labor and shitty labor practices for the majority of workers.
2 Likes
So they have to wait up to 30 minutes, but it’s over 30 minutes, but up to 30 minutes, over 30 minutes and nearly 30 minutes? Technically that rules out the entire number line.
[quote=“nixiebunny, post:66, topic:42434, full:true”]Perhaps if I spent a few years working at a more typical wage-slave job, it would humble me.
[/quote]
I think if you’re capable of realizing this, then you should be able to also take that next step along the road to empathy. Another thing: I doubt anyone was told of this before getting hired.
4 Likes
You may not get paid that time, but you ARE repairing a telescope, which is pretty fucking cool.
The important thing to understand about many of these workers is that they don’t work for Amazon. Many of them are going through a temp staffing company, who sends a bunch of workers to work for ‘Company A’ which has been hired by ‘Company B’ to do the work. Company B is one manager paid by Amazon to get the work done. There are NO benefits, and if warehouse workers don’t meet goals or return late from a bathroom break they are let go on the spot. And the moment a worker is let go, as @shaddack’s song says, twenty more unemployed rush to fill the spot. In most cases these warehouse jobs are the only thing available. There isn’t something better or worse to pick, and we can’t just decide where we live.
8 Likes
walmart hires droves of data scientists and operations researchers to line their owners’ pockets with penny shavings.
anyway, amazon seems marginally less shitty than walmart to work at, though it’s kind of an apples-to-oranges comparison.
Seems pretty typical of a large company to blame the worker for its own eccentricites. How about this simple maxim: hire trustworthy employees. It is pretty daring for a company to be bold enough to claim that its own hiring practices are substandard requiring security that the workers then pay for with their time.
If your company is stupid enough to hire someone to do a job and they don’t/can’t do it. Then fire your hiring manager. Problem solved.
2 Likes
do you value your own time similarly? is that what -you- would do?
its not that it would humble you, its that it humbles them today. it is a humiliating requirement for a job, to have a half hour a day stolen, every day. far that half hour they are wage-less slaves. aka, slaves.
6 Likes
i’m not sure you’ve met the american workforce. we’re a great bunch, step up to most challenges, but we generally do shitty jobs poorly.
There’s also the problem of a lot of employers expecting you to work during your thirty minute lunch break.
I just hit my 1 year anniversary doing internal tech support. I’m the only person there who refuses to take a single call during my lunch half hour. Not backing down on having my own lunch is one of the little things I do to maintain morale. We’re understaffed, and the department doesn’t actually have any standard procedures manuals knowledge base or even a weeks worth of standard training. This isn’t a start-up either.
So I have decided that if the company won’t prioritize my success or anyone else’s, I’m not going to make a single unnecessary sacrifice to benefit the company. I do not work, whatsoever, during lunch. I do not take phone calls or answer email when I’m off the clock, and I absolutely will not attend company functions outside of doing my job. Screw the company baseball team, screw attending company barbecues, and screw employee shopping events. It’s not as if the company is trying to make improvements where it actually counts day-to-day.
4 Likes
I know a lot of fine people who work shitty jobs, as I’m also into the music world. But they do shitty jobs well.
Oh, so in addition to all your other fields, you’re an expert in All Jobs Everywhere? Good to know.
1 Like
I was wondering what would happen if, after the end of a shift, a worker just walked out. They are not paying the worker for that time so how can they compel them to do anything?
I suspect if this was attempted the worker would both be fired and prevented from leaving until the worker was searched.
5 Likes
According to the department of labor fact sheet #22
Waiting Time: Whether waiting time is hours worked under the Act depends upon the particular circumstances. Generally, the facts may show that the employee was engaged to wait (which is work time) or the facts may show that the employee was waiting to be engaged (which is not work time).
Waiting for Work: Time which an employee is required to be at work or allowed to work for his or her employer is hours worked. A person hired to do nothing or to do nothing but wait for something to do or something to happen is still working. The Supreme Court has stated that employees subject to the FLSA must be paid for all the time spent in “physical or mental exertion (whether burdensome or not) controlled or required by the employer and pursued necessarily and primarily for the benefit of the employer of his business.”
It looks here like the DOL thinks the employee should be but amazon isn’t paying for that time. Fire someone for leaving when you fail to compensate them sounds like lawsuit bait to me.
I never have and I never will work even a single minute without pay. All jobs may have some BS to them, but not compensating an employee for their time should never be on the table. That it happens is not a valid argument for the practice. People do all sorts of terrible things. Don’t use that as a reason to excuse their behavior.
3 Likes
Yeah well, I didn’t say it would be legal.
1 Like
Generally should but working conditions here in Greece are not very well regulated, not to mention that unless you are working for a BIG, international or well organized company, things like schedule get a bit fuzzy.
