That would fall under the "they can't afford to deliver the orders they have" bucket if they can't find anyone that wants to do the proposed work. If true, Amazon is selling a service that isn't robust or flexible enough for such a season. Will be interesting to see how it shakes out.
This is still far smaller than other pandemics in the last 100 years. The 1957 "Asian flu" had around 1–4 million dead. AIDS is sitting around 770,000 dead per year and the total is vastly higher etc.
What makes things different about COVID-19 is how people are responding to it in the hope of saving vast numbers of lives.
> This is still far smaller than other pandemics in the last 100 years.
> What makes things different..
We are still in the early days of this pandemic. The history of COVID-19 is still being written. No one knows how long we're in for or what the final death count will be.
Companies that have the ability to price according to the strain on their system, like FedEx and UPS, are presumably far more robust in this scenario. Here's the rub: Amazon Prime is a contract for services at a certain annual price between the customer and Amazon. Amazon cannot easily just ask for more if their end of the deal ends up more costly to deliver than forecasted.
It's a tangent, but at the All Hands where Jeff introduced Prime, he made it very clear that it was actually a money loser for the company at that point. He did it anyhow because it satisfied both the customer obsession and the long term growth principles Amazon has followed from the start.
Because of this, I very much doubt that Amazon will mind losing money on Prime member shipping during this pandemic. I wouldn't be shocked if some of the current management made noises in that direction and that was part of what got Jeff to take the reins again.
Losing money on the two-day shipping in order to make money on the volume of sales is just like saying “we will lose money on leasing planes but make it up on the product sale”. That announcement was certainly divergent e-commerce strategy at the time, but Amazon intends to cover its basis on the overall transaction.
In today’s plight, it’s the sheer scale of money Amazon might lose fulfilling its backlog of orders, and potentially why its delaying shipping with the “essential items” reasoning, that’s of particular interest.
It’s sadly not uncommon for businesses to promise various services and then unilaterally change their minds. While I’m sure that there are some exceptions, most TOS have a ton of “we reserve the right to change our minds whenever for whatever reason, without warning”
Now that’s kind of different from the PR fallout. Amazon is risking a mass walkout of their customers over this; it just depends on whether or not customers see this as a reasonable response to a crazy circumstance, or a greedy move on Amazon’s part to maintain profitability over their commitments to customers.
> It’s sadly not uncommon for businesses to promise various services and then unilaterally change their minds. While I’m sure that there are some exceptions, most TOS have a ton of “we reserve the right to change our minds whenever for whatever reason, without warning”
I was under the impression that one party cannot unilaterally modify the terms of a contract without offering consideration to the other party, and the consideration can't be "we will continue to perform according to the terms of the contract".
Thats what they are doing, and I, the customer, am no longer getting the value I signed up for.
For a "customer obsession strategy," this one should hurt their bottom line, either with cancellation of prime subscriptions or lost sales. I am not saying amazon should be penalized or taken to court. This is just the biggest vulnerability I have seen out of the Amazon machine, and I think its very interesting.
I live in Shanghai. There were two or three weeks after Lunar New Year where deliveries were delayed or more expensive or both for everything and grocery delivery slots were scarce for a month. Things are back to normal with all deliveries now.
It’s entirely possible that they’ve literally bottomed out on the labor pool in some areas, what with the increase of risk to drivers and increased robustness in the social safety net.
It’s kind of hard to plan around the “what if we can’t get more workers” scenario.
Long term is probably a combination of autonomous robots, self-driving vehicles, and delivery drones. The current crisis might even accelerate its development and deployment.
Unemployment compensation is high, so the incentive to show up to work has decreased.
They can solve this problem by paying more, although wage increases are hard to turn back time on. Maybe they should consider "hazard pay" during the pandemic.
You can't collect unemployment if you just decide to stop showing up for work. Unless Amazon formally lays you off (and Amazon hasn't laid off anybody) or you fall into one of the very specific categories of COVID-related exceptions, you're eligible for $0 in unemployment.
You might if you can demonstrate that the employer had a hazardous work environment. Given reports of conditions in some Amazon centers, a person could probably make a strong case, especially if they are someone or know someone who falls into a vulnerable category.
During a pandemic like this, you can definitely quit over fears of the virus and for the purpose of social distancing and be eligible for unemployment. I know a number of people who did.
You just cited the gross income, not what you get after taxes. You still get taxed on that AND you don't have benefits like health insurance - COBRA for continuing health care is expensive as is the alternative, although slightly less so, of paying for health care through an the ACA health care exchanges 100 percent out of your own pocket. For health care all that extra money will more than exceed health insurance for a family of 4. The extra money ends at the end of July.
Again, that is gross income NOT net income. That number is pre-tax income, unemployment is taxed just like income at a job. You can choose when filing to defer paying those taxes until when you file, but you do still need to pay them when you file for taxes come April for the previous year. So when you file you'll end up owing money and have to pay the income taxes you never paid. You're definitely still not coming out ahead.
So again, the additional 600 as part of the CARES act ends at the end of July. And you have to have to wait one week where you're unemployed - receiving no income - to be able to file. So you also lose one week of earnings no matter what. I don't think most people are coming out ahead on this by far.. it seems maybe a very small majority might briefly come out ahead but they seriously risk it all being canceled out if they're unemployed still past July.
Even with the CARES act, Amazon employees can't just quit their jobs and choose to collect unemployment instead. People who quit their jobs aren't eligible for unemployment.
There are a few exceptions under the CARES act if you can't work because of something directly related to COVID, e.g., if you're a parent who has to take care of children because schools are closed. Being afraid you might catch the coronavirus at work is not a valid reason and would not make you eligible for unemployment payments.
> Amazon employees can't just quit their jobs and choose to collect unemployment instead
You're right, they can't.
However, the 26 million Americans who have been laid off from other jobs have negative incentive to sign up for a new job with Amazon because the benefits are tied to staying unemployed. That exacerbates the problem for Amazon.
Perhaps, but I don't know anything about the makeup of Amazon's distribution workforce.
Even among parents, I doubt that all of them would leap at the "opportunity" to quit their job just so they can take home slightly more money for a period of four months (which is all the CARES act covers). Surely most people must realize jobs are going to be extremely scarce four months from now, so if you have a job right now you probably should think very hard before throwing it away.
Speaking from experience in California - if you are fired but not for misconduct, you may still collect unemployment.
There’s certainly a fine line between being bad at your job and actual misconduct, so if someone were so inclined they could probably just be a bad worker long enough to get fired without any specific alleged misconduct. Personally, I’d just quit if that pathway were on my mind, but I understand how people could decided to do this.
Or maybe they could solve this problem by permanently sharing more of their obscene profits with their workers, fully recognizing how essential their sacrifices and contributions (regardless of any 'hazard') are to those profits. If we're not learning that right now, we're rather missing the point of it.
