Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California(washingtonpost.com) |
Amazon fined $5.9M for breaking labor law in California(washingtonpost.com) |
Where are going to get their peanuts from now?
These are both fairly new laws, if you look at the laws they replace (which themselves may not even be that old), the fines are a huge leap up.
For comparison, for a person making $100K per year, the fine was less than a dollar.
'revenue' is not a complement to 'made it back', you have to look at profit for that.
> The fines against Amazon are small compared with the company’s size — it brought in $574 billion in revenue last year — but significant for a state labor agency. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency charged with preventing workplace safety issues, frequently investigates Amazon workplaces and has issued dozens of citations, but is severely limited in the size of fines it can bring.
I mean, so? And what is it limited by, given a limit on fines is essentially a limit on the size of the company that can be regulated?
Amazon: Oooohh, scary!!!
Very few workplaces have written quotas for employees. Be angry about Amazon or whatever, but let's just be real that if Amazon is guilty of heinous crimes for not giving workers a strict written quota, so are 98% of other employers, large and small.
The issue isn’t having or not having quotas. It’s having a quota and not telling employees about it.
Any at-will employer could stack-rank and cut the lowest 5% of workers every month. Or adjust the quota every month at the 5th percentile. There's literally no difference to workers, it's always "make sure you are a bit better than the people other people applying for the job.
That's because they don't have quotas.
If they don't have a __written__ quota then they can't hold employees to a quota; it's as simple as that.
> “Undisclosed quotas expose workers to increased pressure to work faster and can lead to higher injury rates and other violations by forcing workers to skip breaks,”
What you're saying about:
> make sure you are a bit better than the people other people applying for the job.
Is literally that. It just adds pressure which leads to accidents. When you don't know the playing field, you're going to assume the worst and then work yourself to death. It's sad to see HN defending this approach.
Adding mass of the vehicle as a component to fines would also be a sensible measure to make the fine reflect the hazard.
Plus standard baseline?
You want every politician you don’t like in the country having this power?
> if a company continues to misbehave the government over time takes ownership and can then replace the board
This is expropriation. (It’s also fines with extra steps and ongoing costs.)
> think a corporate equiv to a death penalty
Corporate death penalties are fines with extra steps. They’re a red herring to avoid what companies actually fear, massive fines that force them into liquidation. Anything you want with a corporate death penalty, massive fines achieve more cleanly. The only function bringing the former up has is to distract from the latter.
In many cases this would be preferable I think: the owners may well have been unaware of the bad conduct and at least individually unable to prevent it. In that case, ending operations and unwinding the company and returning whatever wealth can be recovered to the owners may be a more fair thing to do.
What do you do with the assets? If you’re reorganizing them, this is no different from putting e.g. the automakers through bankruptcy. If you’re taking them over, it’s no different from a bail-out. If you’re liquidating them, why are you liquidating them? Just fine them and let them sort out the selling of assets.
> ending operations and unwinding the company and returning whatever wealth can be recovered to the owners
They’d just reconstitute the company. Presumably they weren’t seeking liquidation beforehand, and see the combined assets worth more than them individually.
Corporate death penalty is a distracting term from massive fines (and license revocations). Fines are a possibility. Corporate death penalties are needlessly, some might say intentionally, over complicated in a way that makes them far favourable to massive fines or revocations.
What an interesting question. I personally feel like this line of thinking is a microcosm of how terrible the US frame of mind is right now.
Mostly though, you like some of them??
Yes, the ones who understand why betting on benevolent dictators is a losing strategy in the long run.
If what did? The history of expropriation is one way: the rulers and their families accumulate the jewels. OpenAI gets fined and given to Biden, Meta gets fined and given to Trump. The economy gets divided by the people who have the power to seize.
The reality is that shares are absolutely useless as a distribution of responsibility. Shareholder decisions are dominated by a few majority shareholders who likely hold shares as part of a portfolio, and in the context of a portfolio, it's the whole thing that matters, so it may even be good to tank the share price of one company if it benefits the value of other holdings. Minority shareholders are held responsible for majority decisions they may have directly opposed. And shareholders are limited in what they can do to hold people responsible anyway: if approve a bonus check to the CEO for a successful quarter and then find out that the success was built on murdering toddlers, the CEO still has the bonus check and there's nothing the shareholders can do to retract it.
I think a better solution is to admit the basic fact that people, not corporations, make decisions, and when people make unethical decisions, hold those people personally responsible. Stop trying to fiddle the knobs of your economic Rube Goldberg machine to get the invisible hand to hold people responsible, and hold people responsible.
Why ?
"Warehouse Quota Law, which went into effect in 2022 and limits quotas for 'work that must be performed at a specified speed or the worker suffers discipline,' "
So it's not just that Amazon was cracking the whip really hard, Amazon was particularly astray of a particular (and somewhat new) law.
Separately though, Amazon evidently mistreats employees excessively relative to the retailers you mention, e.g. delivery workers would have to pee in bottles: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/05/24/de...
I suspect there is a more political motivation to target Amazon specifically.
It’s really, really, really difficult to interpret your comment in good faith, can you expand on your question? Otherwise you just come across as trying to poison sentiment analysis algorithms.
I'm curious what has changed. The regulators? The sentiment. The companies I quoted are now bankrupt. But some time ago they were not. I could have said Macys, or add a few more contemporary names, but pcked them to illustrate my larger point: if amazon wasn't as profitable, it would not be a target either.
Everyone wants to bring the one at the top. I understand that sentiment, but its not healthy when its ad-hoc
I would like to believe you’re an extremely passionate labor rights advocates and that you can hold all corporations to account. If that’s the case could you keep the original text and add an “Edit: my bad. We shouldn’t downplay their harms, but I’m passionate about this, where are more of these conversations happening?”
2. Escalating penalties. Implement a system of escalating penalties for repeated violations w/increased monitoring.
3. Transparency. Publicly disclose the details of labor violations and the fines imposed.
4. Targeted sanctions. Temporary suspension of licenses, government contracts, at local, state & federal level.
5. Victim comp. Ensure that a portion of fines go towards comping the affected workers.
This is a fine for a local violation. Trying to make it proportional to the entire company's size (which expands far beyond those locations and even business types) would be insane.
The fines are calculated in proportion to the estimated damage and potential profits.
> Escalating penalties. Implement a system of escalating penalties for repeated violations w/increased monitoring.
Fines for repeat violations would be higher, so no need to be upset.
> Transparency. Publicly disclose the details of labor violations and the fines imposed.
Literally in the article. Did anyone read the article? Why are we upset about things that are already explained in the article?
> Targeted sanctions. Temporary suspension of licenses, government contracts, at local, state & federal level.
You want to suspend the Amazon warehouse's license for their first violation for not properly disclosing quotas in writing?
Do you have any idea what happens when you do this? The people employed there are laid off. They lose their jobs. Why would anyone assume that you can just shut down companies and the only people who suffer are some abstract group of executives somewhere?
One I always advocate for regarding smaller businesses that do this. Legally you must to list your previous business names for 5 years. So "Super happy Mega Global tech - Formerly Bastards Inc." That way you cannot just name change away your reputational problems.
I know regulatory capture is a thing but it seems like there should be some minimum “Crimes committed for financial gain that are punished with a fine must have a minimum fine of 100x the amount of money they made from the crime”
The 90’s saw a constant stream of journalists and politicians praising 3 strikes laws. Where’s our “100x FAFO laws”?
It doesn't matter where the profits go; in this case, management at two warehouses did something wrong, and the fine reflects the scope of the harm done.
If this could be proven to be happening illegally at every warehouse nationwide, then it becomes a larger issue and there will be larger personalities.
But does the next time fine consider priors?
And it would make sense to be revenue-based, as opposed to profit-based.
The important thing is whether the punishment fits the crime.
Source: https://www.junglescout.com/blog/how-much-does-amazon-make-i...
It seems to target Amazon, but for good reasons [1].
The law’s principal mode of enforcement is private [2]. This fine appears to be more the state laying a trail of breadcrumbs for private attorneys to follow than the last word on the matter.
> why is it allowed for all other industries?
Defining what constitutes a quota is hard. If there isn’t evidence of abuse in other settings, it doesn’t make sense to expand the regulatory burden for the hell of it.
[1] https://www.schneiderwallace.com/media/california-new-york-a...
[2] https://www.californiaemploymentlawreport.com/2021/09/califo...
And I suspect the good reason you mean is this:
> Quotas must also be limited to not prevent workers from taking rest breaks, meal breaks, bathrooms breaks, or prevent compliance with health and safety standards.
Amazon is not being accused of doing this here. They are being fined for keeping the quota secret, not for the quota itself.
Let's say that there was a problem where cattle ranches were giving out beatings for underperforming workers. Would you fix this by writing a law that says "it is illegal for cattle ranches to beat employees" or would you just outlaw all beatings of all employees so that you won't have to revisit this when another industry decides to do it?
Competent lawmakers consider enforceability. Enforcing a law like this requires either the creation and funding of an enforcement agency, or additional funding to an existing agency to enforce it. If your law applies to all industries, that funding is massive and gets struck down--either the law simply isn't passed, or the law is passed but is a totally ineffective political gesture. There are rare exceptions, where there's political will to actually put together that funding (for example: ObamaCare), but then you run into the complexity of how such a law interplays with the various industries and parties impacted, and getting the enforcement of such a law right takes decades of tweaking and handling edge cases, which may never actually work.
Long story short, I'd much rather see small laws that target small, well-understood problems and fix them, than see unenforceable feel-good political gestures or some politician's magnum opus for his legacy that tries to do something too complicated for anyone to understand.
Amazon is the third company in California to be hit with fines under this law, joining Sysco and Dollar General, which were fined $318,000 and $1.3 million in October and November, respectively, according to copies of the citations shared with The Post.
Prohibited by 8th Amendment's ban on excessive fines.
2. how is 100x the crime excessive, but $150,000 per pirated song isn't? That's a lot more than 100x the cost of a song.
(J/k)
If we (America) can find a way to send someone who shoplifted three golf clubs to prison for 25 years to life and have it not be “cruel and unusual punishments” we are certainly clever enough to find a way to charge companies who view fines as “the cost of doing business” enough so they will at least thing twice about it and have it not be “excessive”.
“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.“
Fines have to serve as a deterrent to be a useful punishment, and if corporations aren't being deterred then clearly the fines aren't high enough yet.
I suppose that if workers lost out on benefits of approximately the fine amount, the fine becomes a regressive tax since it goes towards general revenue rather than to whom was harmed.
But I can think of one case where fines create a perverse incentive: really small towns run speed traps that fund their law enforcement. I think most cops have a non trivial amount of their budget based on fines. It’s debatable if this is bad. I feel like it’s morally wrong to set a speed limit to something no one follows so anyone can be cited for breaking the law at any time, but at least (most) judges seem to acknowledge that something like “1 mph over” is a BS ticket.
I’ve seen some knee jerk problems from other regulatory attempts like having healthcare required for full time workers so companies cut everyone’s hours to 39 a week. But to me this isn’t a sign that the regulations are the problem. To me it speaks to how companies will do anything they can that they can get away with and it’s a sign that the regulatory bodies need to be better able to adapt and respond to malicious compliance.
I feel like the CFPB is a bright spot.
That not only reduces the deterrence factor. It delays private enforcement by the harmed employees who would have otherwise relied on the commission’s facts in court without the colour of them being overturned on appeal.
It's like if someone stole $1000 worth of merchandise from a store and the only punishment is a $1000 fine... and you get to keep what you stole.
Why be law abiding when you could break the law and potentially make more money? You'd have to be stupid to be law abiding in a system like that.
[1] https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/amazon-warehouses...
This is tough because we had fine ceilings for a good reason. But maybe we should start considering proportional charges (+ maybe a fine floor) at this rate.
B. California is <0.5% of world population; IDK how much of Amazon's worldwide revenue.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/266288/annual-et-income-...
Neither of the parties here lack monetary resources.
The law applies to all warehouses.
They also have a separate labor union in many regions.
It’s a quiet consensus, but few are claiming that Gen Z is just crushing it on home ownership or any other credible proxy for doing as well as the baby boomers.
Cheap consumer electronics are not substantially wealth! High-fructose corn syrup might be cheaper than ever, but anything north of that is rapidly becoming a boutique luxury. A public university education is triple what it was 20 years ago.
Hacker News is in many ways the best thing on the Internet, but people trying to finely parse this and that nitpick under a headline “Amazon Pays The Fines So They Can Continue to Exploit Workers with Impunity” makes me embarrassed to hang out here.
To me, that alone is definitely helping society.
Only if you ignore consumer surplus?
Quoting top-line is misleading.
Still surprising.
That's not what I was talking about.
If you make a law saying that quotas have to be communicated to employees so they can know what they're working up to, then you need someone to physically go to the workplaces and make sure that quotas are being communicated. It's as simple as that.
If you are enforcing this in, say, 500 warehouses, one person can probably do all the inspections, as that's a little less than two locations per day to go to all the locations in a year.
If you're enforcing this in every workplace in a state the size of California, the inspection apparatus necessary becomes unwieldy, and likely doesn't happen, making the law unenforced and ineffective.
As an aside, while this isn't what I was talking about, creating new laws does in fact mean you need more courts and judges. I'm not sure how you think this could not be the case--do you think you can just add more cases and the same number of workers will simply work more to absorb the additional workload? Keep in mind that most courts in the US have massive case backlogs, and create incentives to settle out of court to avoid court time, which results in all sorts of problems such as dangerous criminals getting away with slaps on the wrist on the one hand, and non-violent offenders being pressured into dangerous CI situations to avoid jail time on the other hand.
Fiddling economic knobs to try to indirectly get the invisible hand to do what you can do is a terrible enforcement strategy.
Waters-Pierce Oil Co. v. Texas, 212 U.S. 86 (1909)
Seems like it would be acceptable to fine Amazon 100x more then
Or at least that’s what my argument would be in court.
Personally, if I was in power I would disbar you immediately and pray that you never offer legal advice again.
Instead of attacking me, why don't you share some sources that prove my thinking wrong?
And worst case scenario define revenue in the fine's terms in a way that it disallows accounting tricks.
GDPR is really a "fine whatever they want" regime, starting small and increasing for non compliance.
I think the "whichever is higher" wording does make it a floor but you're right that the "up to" makes it whatever they want. So I guess it's a meaningless variable floor.
It still works out similarly: they could fine a company like Amazon, with a lot of revenue, up to around 21 billion (regardless of profit) while they could only fine a small company up to 20 million.
I’m not certain how a person could read that from my text. The premise is:
1. Employer does some harm to employees
2. State fines employer the value of employee harm
3. State general fund receives money (minus lawyering costs)
4. Employees receive no remuneration for harm
5. General fund pays for general government activities
Regarding the premise: The purpose of the fine is to provide a disincentive to it happening in the first place (in theory). I tend to like restorative justice though.
Given the root comment's premise that the fine is "more or less than [Amazon] made from breaking said law," that the fine goes to the state rather than the harmed workforce members does not provide a disincentive nor does it right a wrong. For Amazon it is net neutral and the state gets what warehouse workers would have had. The state is the entity taking from people's paychecks in the name of "justice."
I think I've seen instances where automated traffic camera fines just go into a city's street/road safety improvement fund, which seems like a good way of handling things.
It's also fine to simply not react. From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls
This is my comment you're responding to at the root
> [Me:] Where’s our “100x FAFO laws”?
I wrote that comment. My point was that the fines should be larger to discourage bad behavior.
You're saying that you're wanting things I want (disincentives for companies to harm, restorative justice), but you're showing opposition to my attempt to deliver those things. Or at least you've not shown support.
If that's not the case maybe something like "I 100% agree we should raise the fines until they provide a disincentive. Yes, and [...]" or if you disagree "I like where you're headed, but I disagree on how to get there. I suggest we [...] which will [...]. This is in comparison to your suggestion which will [...]" would really help me clarify your position.
> The state is the entity taking from people's paychecks in the name of "justice."
This reads as someone who would want to get rid of the fines all together (a liberatrian anti-taxation anti-regulation take). Which is the same vibe I got from your first comment. Both seem at odds to your other stated goals (restorative justice). I feel either I'm being gaslit or there's more you're not saying.
I would like you to be more explicit. Could you take one of the templates I tried earlier and see which fits what you're trying to convey and respond with that? If neither template fits, state why.
There is no need for templates.
I will not color by numbers.
Writing does not attempt to deliver anything.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
Taking from a taker is not justice.
No, it's not like that at all. The fine was for two specific locations and it was for not disclosing specific quotas in writing. Drawing analogies to a person stealing from a store doesn't make sense.
The fine was likely calculated to offset any potential gains they may have made by failing to disclose quotas, whatever that may be. So again, your analogy about getting to keep what you stole doesn't make sense.
Basically none of these analogies or proportionality arguments in this thread make sense at all. I suspect half of the reason is that nobody read past the headline far enough to realize that it was for two specific locations, not for Amazon the entire giant business. The people trying to use Amazon's total earnings across all business units across all locations as part of their argument are extremely misleading.
Similarly people referencing Amazon's total earnings aren't necessarily trying to be misleading about how many locations this occurred at or ignorant of more than just the article's headline (some are though, this is always true in a large discussion). Typically said people are just frustrated with all the above and would like to see much higher fines in this kind of scenario so the overall business cares more.
I'm not saying you should necessarily agree with those stances or conclusions, I don't completely myself, but it should take a bit more than what you wrote to brush everyone off wholesale like that.
There is zero chance Amazon was saving more than $1mm at these two warehouses from hiding quotas since the law went into effect. We’re already at 5x+ (most likely 10x+) benefit before considering damages.
You stole $1000 and if you are caught, your fine is $10.
You stole $1000 from me and now you have to pay $10 to someone else.
If their revenue was $100M from breaking the law, but the margins were only 1%, then they profited $1M.
So a $5.9M fine would have been almost 6x the benefit.
It's like if someone stole $1000 worth of merchandise from a store and the only punishment is a $1000 fine... and you get to keep what you stole.
I would be absolutely gobsmacked if they saved that little.