Corporate employees of Amazon were asked on Monday to volunteer their time to the company’s warehouses to assist with grocery delivery as it heads into its annual discount spree known as Prime Day.
In a Slack message reviewed by the Guardian that went to thousands of white-collar workers in the New York City area from engineers to marketers, an Amazon area manager called for corporate “volunteers to help us out with Prime Day to deliver to customers on our biggest days yet”. It is not clear how many took up the offer.
I remember when, on heavy days and holidays, you’d get bonuses. Fuck Amazon
Does anyone actually care about Prime Day? Isn’t it a bunch of cheap crap that’s marked up then “down”?
4K 34-inch OLED Alienware monitor for $550 on Prime Day. Originally $1100. Only thing I care for.
A lot of it is, with a few discounts. I’ve never found anything useful in it though.
It’s their e-waste dumping day.
They do that to a degree but its uaully still discounted, just not as much as you think. I work in a store that price matches amazon and we had to resticker 20 times as many products as on a normal day.
I would never volunteer one unpaid minute for any employer. I don’t see them volunteering any money because your personal life is going through a rough patch.
Any time a corporation uses the term “volunteer”, something very fishy is likely going on.
Look at all these volunteers! Why should I pay people?
“No, no, they’re not slaves. They’re highly skilled workers with short-term contracts. And they even get food.”. This is how I see it.
And here’s a reminder that it’s actually illegal to volunteer at the same company you’re employed at. Specifically to prevent situations exactly like this, where employers attempt to pressure their employees into volunteering, so they don’t have to pay overtime. If you’re working for your employer, you’re required to be on the clock.
Given, that only works if the rules are actually enforced. And this administration has done a good job of dismantling agencies that would be enforcing this.
Easy, you’re a salaried employee and “seasonal duty: light warehouse work”
Boom, it’s part of your job.
There are specific requirements for being exempt from overtime, even for salaried employees. There are three big exemptions, and each one has multiple requirements; You need to meet ALL of the requirements for any exemption in order to be legally exempt. I’d advise you to check the requirements here, because employers regularly misclassify workers and lie through their teeth about it to avoid paying OT. Intentional misclassification is one of the most overt ways that employers steal wages, but also extremely common in many industries.
Also, there’s a blue-collar clause that says all manual labor positions are non-exempt. So if they’re dumb enough to write manual labor into your job description, you’re non-exempt no matter how highly paid you are.
next youre gonna tell me something crazy like how the most theft in america is from unpaid wages or whatever
Data is beautiful and goddamn infuriating.
beautifuriating
Its not hard to maintain those requirements though. Sure its used to mislabel positions like you say, but plenty of correctly labelled positions are abused as well. Salary means extra work with no pay regardless of whether you meet the requirements.
You need to read about how salary positions work in the states. Its entirely legal to fire someone who’s on salary for refusing to volunteer extra unpaid time. They also aren’t owed overtime in a lot of cases although there was law passed that limits that to only affecting higher earning people.
I think you’re mistaking volunteering for a different task as them not being paid - these employees are salaried, they’re being paid for this. It’s basically just doing 2 hours of warehouse work instead of 2 hours of their usual corporate job. Potentially some people would have to do additional work after hours to make up for work they didn’t do in those two hours, but I assume busier people wouldn’t volunteer.
If you work without pay that’s slavery
They’re paid a salary, which is probably significantly more than what drivers are paid.
Labor is labor. Stay united, comrades!
Generally this kind of thing would be overtime, though.
Salary workers are exempt from overtime in most cases and its legal to fire them for not working extra hours voluntarily, at least in America.
Let’s see Mr and Mrs Bezos out there volunteering first. It’s a wholesome honeymoon activity!
That’s until the Amazon robots take the jobs and staff are downsized https://www.wsj.com/tech/amazon-warehouse-robots-automation-942b814f
I thought we were boycotting bezos? Why are people still buying on Amazon?
Because we are in the smallest minority of people that care enough to change our shopping habits or willingly pay more for something to avoid Amazon.
I know literally nobody in real life that shares my views and most will think I’m a weirdo for being so vocal about avoiding certain companies, taking part in boycotts, or protesting.
I’d love to boycott Amazon, but we rely on them for food deliveries. Instead, I like to order things individually throughout the day. I don’t wait and collect orders, and send them at once, I send them as I think of them. That way each order is billed separately, making each order as expensive as possible, wasting just a bit of Bezos’ profit, and making sure his employees are working and getting paid.
Relying on amazon for food deliveries? Thats the dumbest shit I ever heard
There are some situations where you gotta do what you gotta do.
The dumbest shit is thinking that everyone has the same access to food as you do. Not everybody has a grocery store nearby, or a way to get to it.
And relying on Amazon food delivery is still the worst and dumbest shit you could ever do. You’re literally ordering individual food items throughout the day from them, what is wrong with you lmao. Furthermore you are enriching Amazon not the opposite like you tried to claim.
You don’t know what you are talking about. The selection is far better than the little grocery that’s near me, and the prices are far lower. In addition, it gets delivered directly to my house, they even bring the order in and leave it in the kitchen, so I don’t have to carry it home.
And who said I’m making individual orders throughout the day? Is that how you buy groceries? Whenever you need an individual item, you run to the grocery store for it? THAT’S the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. I do what most people do, and make a list of things I need, and when it gets long enough, or reaches my budget, I place the order. I do often order non-food things individually from Amazon, just to make them pay extra for shipping. I get free shipping, so that comes out of Bezos’ pocket.
As for making Amazon richer? Yeah, I get it, but I’m not ready to go out and hunt down my own food on a daily basis - in one of the biggest cities on the planet. I have to actually BUY my groceries, and almost every option is enriching some massive evil corporation. But that’s life, my family has to eat. Basic survival before activism.
Better selection, lower prices, convenient delivery - so tell me again why this the dumbest shit you’ve ever heard of? Or are you just running your mouth without a clue of what you’re talking about?
Would somebody please think of the billionaires!?
Sorry, I was distracted be the profits.
Arrr! The profits do be!
The best part of this is that with how scarce jobs are getting, these corpos are going to start incentivizing folks to do this kind of shit by “laying off” workers who won’t stand for this. Like you get brownie points for doing free work and in turn get a little more job security. Think about it, if you won’t do it - someone else will, and people need jobs. Man fuck those people.
Is Amazon too poor to pay their employees now?
Well did you see that wedding? That shit don’t pay for itself.
why would anyone volunteer to do amazon warehouse work
Desperate fear of termination. There’s like a 5% chance this will help.
One of the core rule of business is that you don’t sell what you do not have. Because that is basivally the definition of fraud (at least one of them).
If you don’t have the manpower to deliver “Prime Day”, don’t offer “Prime Day”, as simple as that.
Dude. Like half of our GDP is about selling shit that we pretend exists.
