Amazon begins layoffs of up to 10,000 jobs, blames “uncertain” economy

Amazon confirms Devices & Services layoffs; warehouse jobs apparently safe.

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[Scary Devil Monastery]

There's a conspiracy theory going around something like this:
After the pandemic created a worker shortage, corporations panicked and started competing with each other offering very high wages for the most menial jobs. (I personally know a grocery food warehouse that pays $35 per hour plus good benefits to start to move boxes of food around.) Suddenly, the 'pandemic' is over and all these employers have a lot of high paid low skill workers on the payroll. What to do?
Right, create a fake excuse, ("the Economy") fire a bunch of high pay people, then quietly re-hire at much lower wages, take it or leave and workers will take it because many of the biggest employers are quietly colluding in the same game. I think it has some merit myself. What do YOU think?

That's not a conspiracy theory. That's just the general trend of a thousand corporations finding a way to cut costs which doesn't require them to cut services or "necessary" assets. The urge, in a libertarian economy, to replace skilled senior employees who have negotiated their salaries to a high level individually or through shudder unions with eager wet-behind-the-ears college grads desperate to perform slave labor for any wage which helps them keep their student debts at bay, is massive.

There's no evil plot. No overarching grand design. No moustache-twirling villain. It's just the logical result of a "free market" which has ensured that the most useful quality in a CEO is sociopathy and pragmatism. Martin Shkreli. Elon Musk. Trevor Milton. Trump. Larry Ellison. These are not aberrations. They're role models for the modern executive and screwing the worker is the natural side effect of their default model of operation.

Firing high-paid workers to replace with lower paid ones? Cuts costs, right?
Trying to keep employees as close to the point of indentured serfdom as possible? If you can do so while still running the business, surely.
Spend a million each year to support lobbying against unions or retaining union-busting companies? Well, if you can show that it saves the company ten times that amount just by cutting labor costs, that's imperative, not an option.

Some corporations - notably older ones - sometimes buck this trend. Usually ones with brands dating back half a century or more. The corporate culture in such places values old silverbacks with decades worth of experience in the business and may be an explanation as to why those companies are still in business after a century or more of operation. But they are getting mighty thin on the ground, the successful ones often being absorbed by some soulless conglomerate eager to strip-mine the company for everything it's worth and, if the resulting piss-poor service offered by the stripped company breaks their model, shuffling the husk off to accountants to serve in tax deduction shell games.

This is what took off with Reagan and Ayn Rand becoming the patron saints of modern money-making. There is no place for human concern in a marketplace where the prevailing philosophy is that of a virus or hungry animal.

 

[willit1016]

amazon made 31 billion in profit last year that is after expenses.....yeah this smells

 

[VividVerism]

I disagree with almost all of your points, but this one is flat-out, 100% factually incorrect no matter how many times it is repeated. Pandemic Unemployment Assistance had a variety of restrictions and required applicants to accept any suitable work offered to them. More importantly, the program ended on September 4, 2021-- well over a year ago. No one has been "receiving more money for not working" for a long time now and if their job came back, they lost benefits even sooner.

I'm not sure if I'm contradicting anything you say here (I otherwise 100% agree) but there was a brief period of a few months where many people (my wife and adult child included) could make more money from staying home due to the extra COVID bonus unemployment from the Federal government on top of state unemployment.

But, as you note, this was time limited. More importantly, it was intentional. This was at the height of the initial wave(s) of the pandemic, before any vaccines or particularly effective treatments were available. The whole point of the extra unemployment aid was to keep people home, not working, and not spreading a deadly disease that was still mostly unknown and had no good treatment or preventative measures available.

 

[VividVerism]

Once upon a time, the understanding was that corporations had a responsibility not only to their shareholders, but to their employees as well as the communities in which they operated. Then Milton Friedman and the whole Chicago school of economics argued in essence that maximizing stock price at all costs was far 'better'. That such an approach hurled executive compensation into the stratosphere was I'm sure just an unintended consequence (/s). It got repeated so frequently, that now people genuinely believe that this is legally mandated (it's not) and is used as a shield for such things and has basically become the norm.

Huh. And here I was thinking it had to do with the decline of labor unions. A little bit of both, perhaps? Or did one help lead to the other?

 

[VividVerism]

I remember when Amazon used to be loved and adored by most, especially for their customer service. That sort of glowing reputation never lasts with companies that voraciously pursue growth above all else.

It was? I don't remember that. My earliest memories of Amazon, it was already a disliked company for killing independent brick and mortar bookstores (which were already reeling from Barnes and Noble's sweep into dominance in the physical space).

 

[VividVerism]

Are they laying off the people that write fake product reviews? Tell me they're laying those people off.

Alexa, are they laying off the people that write fake product reviews?​

​

Amazon layoffs total approximately 10,000 people according to the Associated Press​

I'm pretty sure most of those are working for the 3rd party sellers, not for Amazon themselves.

 

[AmanoJyaku]

It was? I don't remember that. My earliest memories of Amazon, it was already a disliked company for killing independent brick and mortar bookstores (which were already reeling from Barnes and Noble's sweep into dominance in the physical space).

I don't know if Amazon was "loved and adored by most" as the OP asserted, but I do know it was and still is loved and adored by many. Including members of this forum. The ability to get any and everything from one vendor, possibly the same day, appears to have trumped all other concerns. And I think you're overestimating the number of people who miss bookstores, or the in-person shopping experience in general.