Let them eat sick days
Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos…
When progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders say “now is the time for solidarity” amid the coronavirus outbreak, they likely do not mean that employees of Whole Foods—owned by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos—should be asked to give their own accrued paid sick days to their co-workers who have either contracted the deadly virus or been forced to take time out of work because of what is now a global pandemic.
But that is exactly what executives with the grocery chain are asking its employers to do, even though Bezos could effectively give them unlimited paid sick leave during the current national emergency with
outbarely a scratch in his bank account.In a letter sent to employees earlier this week, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey explained that one of the options available to workers was for them to “donate” their “paid time off” (pto) days to a pool that other workers could draw from.
In other words one of the options available to workers is to have fellow workers give up their pto. For the workers giving up the pto it’s not an option but a sacrifice.
Journalist Lauren Kaori Gurley, who broke the story with reporting for Motherboard, notes that “as a subsidiary of Amazon, the world’s biggest company, Whole Foods could easily afford to pay its hourly employees for sick days taken during the coronavirus outbreak without breaking the bank. Instead, the company has put the onus back on workers, and they’re not happy about it.”
In Mackey’s letter reviewed by Motherboard, the executive stated: “Team Members who have a medical emergency or death in their immediate family can receive donated PTO hours, not only from Team Members in their own location, but also from Team Members across the country.”
Though such labor practices are not unusual—with workers in various sectors and industries pooling accumulated sick leave for a colleague experiencing a long-term illness—doing so in the face of a global pandemic, in which all members of society are equally at heightened risk, the move was seen by critics as shortsighted, tone deaf, and cruel. The fabulous wealth of Bezos only increased the ire for many.
They’re just sore losers.
Amazing. The world’s richest man needs everyone of his dollars and how dare anyone suggest he part with a negligible number of them, but also, his employees happen to be among America’s poorest, and they need to be the ones to pay. He really makes a great display of the moral bankruptcy of the elite class.
How many Whole Foods workers actually have the virus? This is a little silly and premature, the companies will take care of their workers as they see fit, and suffer the consequences if they don’t. Amazon and Whole Foods will very likely ramp up relief as the situation worsens, just as other companies have, but Bezos is not morally obligated to personally take care of everyone out of his own pocket, however deep that pocket is. He seems to be able to make those decisions on his own, and has every right to do so.
twiliter, that might be true except Bezos has gotten rich off the work of his workers, who now may have little choice but to stay home. And not being sick yet isn’t really a good argument, because they won’t have any more leave later when they do get sick.
The plight of the hourly worker is often ignored, and belittled. Why shouldn’t the boss have a moral obligation to take care of those people who are so crucial to his success?
I think Bezos highly values his company and the people that Amazon employs, and he has made efforts to improve the lives of hourly workers, the $15 minimum wage being the example that stands out. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Bezos step up as the situation worsens, but it’s too early to tell. Having been subject to the plight of the hourly worker myself and lived that life, making minimum wage at times, I can appreciate an employer who pays more than twice the federal minimum, I could have used it back then.
twiliter, I have worked minimum wage, too, and also appreciate the idea that he pays his employees better. But it is still not a good enough wage to take sick days, and I still feel he has a moral obligation to do something for his employees. He may do that; I hope he does. But the stories I have heard about the working conditions at Amazon do not fit the image of valuing his employees. It’s apparently a shitty place to work.
Twiliter, that was not a move of generosity, it took place only after pressure was applied. Also, they took some benefits seemingly out of spite.
ikn, warehousing and delivery is shitty work no matter what the company, because people don’t want to spend their time doing it. It’s kind of obligatory to complain about conditions when you’re not toward the top of the food chain in a big company. Amazon is so big, there is going to be bad press and reports of disgruntled workers, it goes with the territory. I think Bezos is demonized much more than he deserves, by Trump, by Sanders, and by a lot of other envious and bitter people. Being fabulously wealthy does not make a person automatically evil in my view, but Bezos’ moral obligations are something I think he has the right to figure out for himself.
Holms, it did come about though, and it was overall a good thing for the employees. Amazon’s investment in their people is not a zero sum game, there is a good amount of win-win from improving your employee’s situations.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Wait, you were serious? I’m going to laugh even harder!
Let me assure you, as a former “$15/hr” employee, he does not.
Sure $15/hr is better than most crappy jobs, but that’s a low bar and hardly praise-worthy.
“It’s kind of obligatory to complain about conditions…” and “… other envious and bitter people.”
QED
Sorry you had a bad experience Mike, good that you’ve moved on then, because ‘reasons’ obviously.
Wow, twiliter, by that philosophy, when an employee complains about shitty conditions, it’s just envious and bitter, and obligatory. Especially if they are making above minimum wage. By that philosophy, I don’t see how we could ever believe any employee (unless they were paid sub-minimum as I was at one job) about shitty working conditions.
In fact, I make a good salary, because my union fights so hard to get it, and the bosses do everything they can to keep from that, but once it is in place, they pay it. And then stand up in an all college meeting and basically say, yeah, but these other clauses in your contract? Well, we aren’t going to actually honor those. The union can sue, of course, but…the lack of respect is indicative of a shitty workplace.
I cannot live by your philosophy, because I do believe that there are times when people are complaining about nothing, but I have been in enough work places to realize that there often is something there…and if Amazon employees think their work is shitty, I refuse to dismiss it with a simple “warehousing and delivery is shitty work no matter what the company”. Yeah, it probably is, and so is cleaning toilets, but I have done the latter without complaining because the boss treated me with respect and dignity. And I only made minimum wage.
As for choosing your own moral code, yeah, you have a right to decide what moral code you will live by, but what is actually right and wrong tends to be societal. Society establishes certain standards of behavior as the moral norm, and people choose to live by it or not, but when they do not, they are often subject to criticism or worse, depending on the severity of their departure. Right and wrong is not objective, to be sure, but a social species must have some agreed upon code of conduct or the society falls apart when everyone determines for themselves what is right and wrong. So, yeah, I think it’s perfectly okay for people to decide if it is or isn’t a moral obligation for Bezos, and it is Bezos’s place to decide what policy he is going to follow. Then those who believe he is wrong will criticize, while those who believe he is right will defend.
That’s why we have philosophy.
I see your points ikn, and I agree that there can be legitimate complaints, but I have worked in situations so often (and seen others) where the conditions were acceptable (to me), and yet working there was miserable because a few people would complain about simply having to work at all. I’m not much for complaining either, and I didn’t appreciate people who did, when there was not much to complain about (again, in my judgement). It is pretty subjective, you’re right, and philosophy helps with perspective. Amazon is just huge and employs hundreds of thousands of people, and that makes Amazon an easy target, and we don’t hear about the employees who are satisfied and feel fortunate to have a decent job with decent pay (if anyone actually thinks that anymore), but we always hear about how terrible things are at the margins. If working conditions are truly bad, people have every right to try and make them better, and have success at it.
There are many articles and a documentary (Amazon Empire) that talk about poor working conditions at Amazon. Here is one such article. They are a big target, but that doesn’t excuse anything.
I don’t buy the line of argument that “most” employees are treated fairly and work under humane conditions. If there is a warehouse where workers are subjected to terrible conditions, Amazon is rightly called to task over it, even if it is not representative. Everything I’ve seen indicates that these problems are widespread, though.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-workers-protest-unsafe-grueling-conditions-warehouse
Nobody deserves the wealth that Bezos has. $15/he may be double “minimum wage,” but even that is not truly a livable wage. The disparity is immoral in and of itself, IMO. Bezos may, under current statutes, have a legal right to decide not to provide paid leave to all his employees in this crisis, but having a legal “right” doesn’t mean it is morally right or acceptable to make that choice. The survival of the little people, who make up most of society, should not be dependent on the caprices of the very few mega-wealthy.
And by the way the US federal minimum wage is grotesquely low.
José Andrés puts Bezos to shame:
(emphasis added)
Twiliter, what you’re saying is downright gross.
Yes Bezos does in fact have moral obligation in this case to provide sick leave.
The obligation is not just to his staff, but also to his customers, because a sick overworked minimum wage employee in a supermarket can be an excellent vector for pathogens.
Part of containing this virus is going to be ensuring that as few people come into contact with it as possible.
Further, leave is part of one’s remuneration package with one’s employer. Imagine for a second if your boss started pressuring you to give some of your salary to another employee – that’s what Bezos is doing.
His contractual and legal obligations are for him and his business to bear, not something he can obligate his staff to help out with.
@ Bruce Gorton #16
Not just sick leave, but leave itself. A lot of what needs to be done is having employees not come to work, even if they are not sick. NONE of the employees should have to give up earned paid-time-off (PTO) to comply with the measures that are best for public health, i.e., stay away from work unless it’s an essential service. Bezos has the ability (and the obligation, IMO) to pay all his workers during this period, working or not, sick or not.
Bruce, what I was saying is that it’s too early to tell what Bezos will do. Your example of an employer pressuring me to give some of my salary to another employee is no different than anyone pressuring Bezos to give his. He is certainly not telling anyone to help anyone else in any way, Whole Foods simply makes it possible for coworkers to help each other, and it’s their decision to help or not. Saying Bezos is any more morally obligated than anyone else is a double standard and I don’t agree with it. Everyone will be affected by this, and everyone has the right to deal with it as they are able, or see fit to. We can look back later and see who did what. I’m sure he’s capable of deciding where his responsibilities lie all by himself, just like the rest of us, and he has every legal and moral right to do just that, whether or not you or me or anyone thinks it was a good or bad thing. I’m not sure what’s gross about that, we can make judgements later, but the prejudgements are as unfair as they ever were.
twiliter, I think it’s difficult to say that is Bezos’s salary. That is money he makes in other ways that is not payment for work done. We err when we assume a rich person’s money is salary, because so little of it is, and they make sure to keep it that way for income tax purposes. Most of that is money he made because there are so many people working for him for so little money. Those workers made him that money.
That’s all I’m going to say now, because the difference between legal and moral should be so obvious we shouldn’t even have to mention it (though Bruce Gorton did).
ikn, yes I didn’t mean salary per se, but financial resources, the comparison still works. There are some obvious differences between legal and moral obligations, but it’s not uncomplicated.
I don’t agree about the workers, they are not working there to make Bezos wealthier, they are primarily (probably exclusively) working for Amazon, et al, out of their own self interest. I don’t think anyone should be vilified or penalized solely based on their level of success. It is a truly staggering amount of success compared to most, but there we are with double standards, and where is the dividing line. I can say I deserve more and he deserves less because it’s more fair that way, but that’s a flimsy argument based on arbitrary (and mostly subjective) ideas about fairness and worthiness. I don’t think people’s levels of compassion, responsibility, or charity change very much according to their financial situations, only their ability to act on them.
At the time of my hiring, I was led to believe I was not just a seasonal hire, and even got $0.85/hr more than most new hires. I “moved on” because they told me to move on since I suddenly wasn’t needed anymore, I certainly couldn’t afford to quit and had just about managed to get back on my feet at the time. There was no job to move on to and I spent many more months scrambling for anything I could find, mostly short “IT” projects and labor for a friend’s business.
I finally gave up on looking for IT work and took a full-time job with a catering/deli business less than a block from my apartment. Today would have been my 5th day, instead I now have at least 2 weeks unpaid time off, assuming they’ll survive this. It paid about half what a typical “IT” gig has of late, but with all commuting and lunch expenses eliminated it wasn’t a huge financial drop, and it would have been steady income vs constant uncertainty.
Oh and BTW the only Amazon employees who aren’t complaining are the ones who aren’t being tracked, as in the useless twits that hunt you down on the floor to let you know your numbers have to improve.
Twiliter, where do you think that Bezos gets his billions from? How does he make so much money?
It gets my goat that people seem to have been brainwashed into thinking that the narcissistic, sociopathic, money-hoarders somehow deserve to keep obscene amounts of money (more than they could possibly ever spend) out of circulation as numbers in bloated bank accounts, but the people who actually generate that wealth by their labour are greedy for expecting to be paid a fair share of it.
Mike, sorry for your troubles, I wish you well.
Tigger, I don’t think anyone deserves it anymore than anyone else. Bezos’ story is well documented. Some people work very hard for it, or are born into the right circumstances, or have had some very good luck. On the other hand there are people who lie, cheat and steal their way into it. Whatever the case, I’m not going to think someone is worthy or unworthy based on dollar amounts. I don’t equate people’s personal value with their financial value, although obviously some people do. If you think you deserve more and someone else deserves less, then I’m going to look at how you went about earning that deservedness, I’m not going to say you deserve more simply because you have less. I can’t do anything about Bezos’ fabulous wealth, that’s up to him, just like I wouldn’t let him tell me how much money I can or can’t have. Being bitter about it is pointless.