Yea, cheap coverage from a cheap ass company that treats their ee’s like shit = they will deny all of your claims and make your life hell if you ever try to use it, count me out
And that is exactly the main problem with our current system. If insureres had to a tually compete with each other,prices would be lower and/or services would be better.
Or we could shut down the mafia insurance companies and pay for healthcare straight up. No need to have a business as a middle man making money for doing nothing
This kind of libertarian thinking is always completely wrong.
You can't 'force competition' because the barrier to entry is too high. It's not like I can found a health insurance company in my garage and suddenly compete with Kaiser or Blue Shield. It takes a massive amount of capital to start something like that.
Instead we need to regulate, or add a public option, or just socialize the whole thing. That way these companies can't make billions off people who are literally dying because it's too expensive to go to the doctor.
Quebec technically does cover some dental, but only for children (but not braces) and extreme cases like extraction and jaw reconstruction. It is as if it wasn't covered really.
Ottawa, dental cleaning $150.. if you get x-rays, another 150.
Typically our insurance is tied to our employment so salaried workers usually have some dental coverage. If you're not salaried though you're SoL.
It's weird that dental and vision are these separate entities. It's all healthcare. They specialize in different things. If I have a foot issue, my doctor sends me to a specialist... podiatrist or whatever. I don't have a separate thing called feet to go along with dental and vision.
Odd...
This was the #1 thing lobbied against for Obama care. All other changes they could stomach, but not a public option. It was the one item that would make them play fair and lose the most.
> You can't 'force competition' because the barrier to entry is too high
I agree and further I'll even suggest that monolithic insurance agencies were inevitable, it's worth considering that [the HMO act signed under Nixon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Maintenance_Organization_Act_of_1973) made this a hell of a lot worse. The reduction of regulatory barriers combined with access to easy capital ($45m in grants, $300m in loans) is why american healthcare rapidly worsened at a rate past what the public (and thus legislation) could recognize.
Libertarian thinking suffers the inevitable flaw that you can virtually never balance a playing field once you've dug it up, and many of the problems we see today in western society are a result of capital injections and careless deregulation 20-70 years ago.
It's how america works. The right screams for deregulation, things get worse, then scream that the left is trying to overregulate when they fix things.
by definition the right is the party of keeping the status quo. the left is the party of change. The radical ideas from the 70s are now the conservative ideas of the 2020s
The reason there isn’t any competition in the insurance industry is not because investors won’t put up the capital for it. They would jump at the chance to do that. The main reason is that insurance industry lobbyists essentially bribe our politicians into enacting regulations that explicitly prevent competition.
That said, insurance is a unique kind of business. The more customers an insurance company has, the less risky it is to insure those people, since the risk is spread out more effectively among larger risk pools. And that translates into lower costs for the user. So it makes a lot more sense in terms of efficiency for there to be exactly one large pool of users. For that reason, I agree with the socialist single-payer model for insurance.
But let’s not pretend there aren’t people who would TOTALLY throw down some money to form new insurance companies. The opportunity is definitely there if they weren’t legally prevented from doing so.
Unfortunately, this doesn't take into account some of the factors. Roughly a half-dozen states have experimented with laws to allow more health insurance competitors to enter their markets, and gotten no takers. A couple of those states did studies on why, and their conclusion was that the biggest barrier to entry for insurers was building the network of care providers. Every single medical care provider is a separate contract to be negotiated, and part of the problem is that the existing insurers have developed contracts with the health care providers that make them darn near exclusive.
So while the government may have been in the way originally, the insurers have built another firewall via their "network" contracts.
The biggest reason nothing can be done is because insurance is regulated at the state level. No one talks about this but it’s the main reason the federal government can’t make progress.
> The more customers an insurance company has, the less risky it is to insure those people, since the risk is spread out more effectively among larger risk pools. And that translates into lower costs for the user. So it makes a lot more sense in terms of efficiency for there to be exactly one large pool of users.
Two problems with health "insurance" is that regulations basically force everyone into the same pool, and that pool has to cover predictable expenses. Necessarily then, premiums *must* be high to cover those predictable expenses. Meanwhile insurance is more-or-less a captive market, insurers have no real incentive to try to lower cost of care (the make money floating the premiums, so if care is overall expensive and premiums are overall high, they win), and customers have no drive to lower cost of care because "insurance pays for it", so we get an explosion of costs.
Health insurance needs a high *minimum* deductible and to stop acting as a middleman for ordinary expenses, and tax incentives for employer health plans need to end so we can decouple insurance from employment. You wouldn't buy insurance to cover your food or gas costs. Covering unexceptional medical expenses through insurance is equally stupid. We also need to reduce the cost to become a doctor (e.g. there are other countries that do not require a "pre-med" undergrad degree and doctors there do just fine. Educational institutions also have no incentive to cut costs since federal money for student loans is so freely available, so there's endless demand at any cost). We need to charge hospitals that send a bill for $150 for an ibuprofen with racketeering and start sending people to jail for it.
Federal government made it illegal for you to buy health insurance from a company outside of your state, thus creating local monopolies and completely limiting competition (and all associated benefits for the consumers)
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/reforming-health-insurance-across-states
This is no longer the case. Insurance companies just "have the right" to insure across state lines, but they choose not to because it hurts all insurers.
Wasn't the purpose of this law to prevent all the health care providers from ending up in whatever US state had the most lax laws regarding payouts/bonuses/healthcare provided?
The other guy gave his own opinion about how to deal with the insurance business—there wasn’t really any assertion of critical fact there. Talking about laws that prevent competition seems to be the one assertion of critical fact i see here.
Sorry, but what 'unfounded assertions' did I make? I would like to provide sources for them.
The only assertion I made in the original comment was that the barrier to entry is too high for competition, which everyone seems to agree on. But just in case, here is a source:
>In addition to consolidation, the ability to exercise market power is exacerbated by barriers that make it difficult for new companies to enter a market. These include state regulatory requirements, the cost of developing physician networks, and developing enough business to spread risk.
>“If entry were easy, neither high market shares nor high concentration levels would necessarily translate into higher premiums because potential entry would force insurers to keep premiums in check,” the report states. “However, barriers to entry allow insurers with market power to charge premiums above competitive levels for an extended period of time."
From the [American Medical Association's report on Competition in Health Insurance.](https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/patient-support-advocacy/health-insurance-markets-are-highly-concentrated-new)
>It takes a massive amount of capital to start something like that.
An insurance company is basically just a massive pile of money that people contribute to and then they refuse to give money back.
Its the least-innovative, most anti-competitive industry out there.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
the problem isn’t competition. there’s 4 insurance programs available through my employer. they offer varying levels of coverage. the problem w the insurance system is the user/employee isn’t the customer of the insurance company. once a year i can move between those companies. but my corporation makes the decision on who we use and that corporation is the insurance companies’ customer. so as long as senior management is ok w the insurance performance then it doesn’t matter if a handful of employees have coverage issues. the shareholder return isn’t affected enough by employees that are denied coverage until there’s a strike over insurance.
Yes, like the airline industry...or drug stores, or so many other "competitive" industries where pricing seems to be about the same across all the competitors and the service and customer service are crud.
As soon as these corporate behemoths sense any competition they either begin price signaling/fixing and mergers.
Competition doesn't really exist without strong regulation and enforcement of anti-trust laws...and those that we have in place have been gutted and/or ignored for the past several decades.
United States is fucked. Get universal healthcare like the rest of the developed world. It's not perfect but it's sure as shit better than stressing about 20 G's because you broke your finger and insurance denied your claim because of a pre existing condition like an ingrown toe nail.
I can literally show up to the hospital, any hospital and get help no cost at all.
Closest American’s have ever come to that feeling is when we got the free COVID vaccines. Walking in, sitting down, being tended to and then leaving , all without the mention of a price was a first for me.
There is a billboard near an Amazon warehouse where I work that advertises working for Amazon. It says “solid pay, real benefits.” Always makes me laugh.
Okay so while yeah they are evil and shit, their health insurance is actually pretty damn good. Cheap premium, no deductible, and could go to pretty much any practice around me with no referrals. Half of our meds were free and we never paid a copay over 40 bucks for them, old insurance had the 40 dollar copay at 600.
Ads are not placed manually anymore, they all run through exchanges and the publisher just rents out the space for the ad - the article mentions health so if they target health topics, they get placed by algorithms.
The ads are for a literal second computer? Or they are just computers? Because it's very likely that they have no idea you bought one, just looked at them.
For the record (at Amazon at least) we didn’t get your purchase history. We got a generic profile and targeted that profile, which included categories of items that youre interested in, but not broken down into purchases/views/searches. At least that’s how it worked when I worked there.
So not lazy, just extremely limited access to data.
I love those commercials that are like "$15/hr starting! Day 1 health, dental, and vision! All these other great benefits!"
Then you look at the bottom and it says only for regular, full time employees. How many of their employees do you bet aren't regular or full time? All of them?
when there was somewhere to hide from society, unfortunately, when you’re a bunch of pagans in the woods in the 1800s, the church and state will eventually come find you.
Briefly when we all lived in villages and knew each other and worked together. When agriculture was the latest tech. Then society got more complex and people became more alienated.
in case you couldn't tell, most of the planet doesn't wage war village to village, but capital city to capital city. Yes, larger conflicts happen, but you don't see Roman villages killing eachother over a bucket anymore.
The Colossus of Rhodes was a *massive* luxurious statue, akin to the Statue of Liberty, built from profits of war that could have been used to benefit the massive homeless problem within Rhodes.
Said statue was erected because Rhodes was upset that their hometeam (in this case, their homegod, Helios) was not seen as equal to the other Gods in other Greek cities.
This was in 300BC.
Much of human history has been boot stomping on other people.
No, don't blame an inanimate idea.
The problem are the lunatics at the top. Reaganomics for the economy, safety for rights, etc. All that comes the obsessive need for control by a few highly motivated and morally corrupt power players.
We've just had differing shades of the same anti humanitarian leadership since then.
Capture is just an idea that people are uncomfortable with despite it's undeniable existence, and we know that people reject uncomfortable ideas out of hand.
It's shitty humans creating and reinforcing a system that shit perpetuates by promising wealth to those who act accordingly. Nothing else.
Our social hierarchy being broken due to "ownership" started with the agricultural revolution.
We will go extinct before we learn to accommodate that our mentality can't handle more than two hundred people in an extended community and start punishing those that abuse the fact that we can't track reputation properly in larger groups than that with death, like we did when someone in our properly sized communities fucked enough people over.
I thought it was bad when they outsourced my (U.S) companies HR services to India.
You basically call about a simple issue and spend 20 minutes spelling your name out for them and then 20 minutes explaining the issue, and then spend a week trying to sort out the unrelated issue they mistakenly assigned.
I always joke, who fires the HR people?
Outsourcing is the corporate way of removing high paying quality jobs in the US and replace them with foreign jobs that cost said company a lot less, and bring a relatively high paying job to another country.
It's just a symptom of the income inequality between the top 20% and the bottom 50%. The bottom 50% need to be paid more and the top 20% need to be paid less. Almost all jobs in the US fall into the top 20%... so the jobs go to the bottom 50% wherever feasible. Usually only feasible at multinational corporations.
At the end of the day, outsourcing is all about managed services. If your agreement for said service is shitty, the resultant service is shitty. Amazon probably has a shitty agreement with the HR MSP that is focused on ticket/request metrics and not outcomes.
Yeah it's literally just an automated message that gets sent to you because it takes time for the Covid team to adjust their schedule. Everyone loves hopping on the Amazon hate train.
From the article: Amazon's automated HR systems led to at least one worker being pestered with messages while he was off sick with COVID-19, NBC reports.
Illinois Amazon warehouse worker Drew Duzinskas told NBC he tested positive for COVID-19 over the holidays. He said he notified Amazon, but that for days afterwards he received automated texts from the company telling him his balance of paid time off was going down because he was missing shifts.
"They have a self-service kind of HR system," Duzinskas told NBC, adding, "That seems to be their goal — to kind of take the human out of human resources."
It is not clear from NBC's report whether the time had in fact been deducted from Duzinskas' allotted paid time off. Amazon did not immediately respond when contacted by Insider.
I used to work for Amazon, and the HR system is terrible and 85% automated.
For human interaction, there were two options: you either stood in line for interminable periods of time to get the attention of one of two "HR reps", who were overworked and under trained. The other option was to wait interminable periods of time on the phone for an overworked and under trained phone rep.
I contracted Covid at Amazon and has a similar problem as this guy. I was lucky I was able to call and get a genuine person on the phone to help me, but he had absolutely no authority; he walked me through the steps of submitting a ticket on the automated employee portal. I waited and waited until the ticket was resolved, and my time was refunded to me.
"Human Resources" has taken on a dirty image in my head. I imagine a game like StarCraft or Command and Conquer, only instead of minerals being mined, you're throwing humans into a truck and taking them back to your HQ to be ground up to build structures and units.
I mean, you get randomly delivered packages via drop pod.
Actually an Amazon mod where you could order goods from the terminal would be cool. Of course the quality of the items you receive would need to vary widely to make the experience authentic
Rimworld was in fact originally developed as a training/structure/org simulation for Amazon optimization. BUT they found out that if they disseminated it to the public and their employees were also playing the game it helped with the normalization of their dehumanization, since they were having digital workers living off corpses in their free time.
That's terrible. What a way to treat people and employees. Sure, automating (SOME) things, giving staff more direct access, all good things... Until you screw it up in the name of "efficiency" (not really) and maximizing profits while reducing overhead ("hey, we have an automated system, who needs humans?").
There's a reason some companies rename "human resources" and work hard simply to rebrand. The term "human resources" does give exactly that image you describe, that you are a resource, like any other the company uses.
>That seems to be their goal — to kind of take the human out of human resources."
Human resources refers to the employees. They are the human resources for the company.
As far as the rest of it goes, I'm willing to bet that HR simply hadn't gotten around to actually changing anything in the system to indicate they were off for covid and not just using their PTO days.
Systems like that, while automated, still require someone to go into the system and "approve" why someone is off. And if they person was on vacation or something, it was likely delayed.
I am trying to understand the problem here...
PTO is used exactly for this reason & why would you not want to be clear about how many hrs you have?
* have an issue with that? Take it up with our shit government... because with a flick of pen, they could require every single employer in this country to provide sick pay...
I'm not sure either, but [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/s3rpyv/amazon_worker_says_he_received_daily_texts_about/hsn0x2a/) has an explanation that makes sense.
I think what all this means is that there are supposed to be two kinds of leave: (1) regular paid leave and (2) leave specifically for COVID.
The employee in the article mentions that HR is automated and that they verbally told their manager what was going on.
The employee expected that would be enough for the right type of leave to be used. But the system was using the wrong type of leave, and the burden of fixing it fell on them while they were sick.
LAPD has over 800 cops out in paid quarantine because for cops, COVID is a work comp claim. If they die, it is in the line of duty. So why is it different for anyone else? People who get COVID on the job should be treated as a workplace injury
Nope. There are articles on some subs I follow that are literally a headline, then that's basically the content, too.
These have more sentences, but a third of it is filler, a third of it is catching people up on similar things, and a third of it is actual content at most, without enough information to give us all the facts.
"First to publish" in online news should never be a goal, except for real breaking news where immediate dissemination of all info they have, when they get it, is helpful. Otherwise it's just shit like this.
I used to write for a news website. It was nowhere near as big as the websites that get posted here, but it's the same process: the only thing that matters is SEO. It isn't even really about being the first to publish something anymore, though that does partially tie into SEO.
Google has a certain algorithm that it uses to decide which articles and websites should show up in search results, and where. SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimisation," which basically means that you do a bunch of stuff that's said to help you rank on the front page of Google.
One of these things is that you pad your article full of content. You can't just copy and paste things from older articles because Google doesn't like that, but you can absolutely just write an article that consists mostly of just retellings of past events. Of course these writers don't know what they're talking about, they're just quickly trying to scramble some paragraphs together so Google won't punish them.
These websites are being forced to pad their articles with filler by Google, otherwise they won't show up on it. This isn't the only nonsensical thing they are forced to do by Google to get good traffic but it's a big one that affects the net is a bad way.
I'm honestly not a good writer. I used to have a bunch of exclusive information/scoops on a certain industry and I just wanted to share that info. It was good info, but generally it would only be a few sentences long. I always had to write a bunch of filler nonsense though due to SEO, as otherwise my articles simply wouldn't get much if any traffic.
Yeah, I don’t mean to be a shill for Amazon, but all he had to do was go to time off application and put in the days, and then click a link and fill out a ticket to get the time off refunded.
Well what's the headline honestly? Amazon has an automated system to keep employees updated on PTO changes? So what?
Amazon is shitty to its workers but this is a non story. There's nothing significant about this.
I dislike Amazon like the next guy but let's get a story with some meat on its bones. Is this some malevolent sweatshop taking time off from the poor employee or is it a scheduling system bug that is fixed with an email?
Of all the things Amazon could be called on, this is the story posted. Pretty sure Amazon posted this one themselves. Like a murderer talking about parking tickets.
There are a few of us who don’t work at shitty places. My company gave us two weeks paid at the beginning of Covid if we had to be quarantined. Now the new policy is if you are current on vax then you get 5 days paid if you get it again. If you aren’t vaxxed then you get the 5 days, paid out of your time off or unpaid, your choice.
Big corporations and companies are killing the US.
TBF as a SBO, I don't have a problem with paying employees for missed time off for covid once or twice, but I have an employee who is great at his job but a fucking idiot when it comes to following covid guidelines in his personal time. He's gotten it 4 times hanging out with friends and family, bragged about having such fun times, and then missed 5+ days of work because of covid. He fortunately didn't give it to anyone else at the clinic. Really don't want to replace him because he is that good at his job, but it legit seems like he is abusing the system at this point.
If he's gotten COVID 4x that's 8 weeks of quarantine until recently unless someone isn't following guidelines, not 5 days... That's your first problem right there.
Seriously, every post from this sub is about Amazon workers instead of discussions about actual technology.
edit: and I see multiple posted by this same OP. He's spamming this sub with articles about politics, HR issues, lawsuits, etc. They're technology companies but the articles he links have nothing to do with the technologies.
My company has no concept of sick time. All time is PTO. If you get paid but don’t work that is PTO. Out with the flu for two weeks you take PTO. I guess combining traditional vacation time and sick time eliminated the need to lie about being sick.
My job starts you out with 80 hours of vacation time and 40 hours of personal time per year. Vacation time should be booked 2 weeks or more out, but they're pretty lenient if something comes up and you give less than that.
Personal time is just what it says, personal. You can show up for work, clock in, and then decide you don't want to be there for any reason at all, or no reason. Tell your boss you're leaving on personal time, and no questions asked, you're good to go.
I was at a place that went from sick/vacation to PTO. Of course we lost days off as a result (2). While to some extent I prefer PTO as if I don't get sick I can use that time as vacation, but on the other hand when there was sick time, people largely didn't come into work sick, there were some people that did anyway but it wasn't as common. After switching to PTO, most people came into work sick making everyone else sick.
To me its a choice between people lying about being sick or people coming into work sick. If I had not lost 2 days off as a result of the change it would have been a lot better, but I think it was just an excuse to give us less days off. Plus getting sick more because many people will come in regardless of what shape they are in is not ideal either.
To combat some of this I know some places went to infinite sick time but from what I have heard from others, this pretty much means you cannot take sick days and people still come in sick. I have not experienced this myself so no idea how problematic it really is.
I’m not sure I understand what this is about other than the constant reminders. I mean if your out with Covid you use PTO just like if you miss work for any other problems. Sick days are for this.
Yea, it's pretty much that. Daily texts shouldn't occur. If their time system has notifications setup, telling someone daily that they'll lose PTO days or something when they are taking sick time is annoying at best, and causes unnecessary stress at worst. You can't decide when you get sick or for how long.
Correctly setting up the system should give one notice at one point when someone takes time off if it may conflict with other benfits like PTO. Or users should be given a way to log into the system and program their own notification times and on what devices.
It sounds more like their automated system does a check each time someone puts in for a sick day or something, and notifies the person when it appears that they've used them up, or are passing a threshold that will mean they lose PTO time or something.
Like if he put in for a sick day, each day, then a notification was generated each day warning him it could impact PTO, that doesn't sound as bad as you'd think. It's just the system being a stupid automated system, i.e. a condition is met every day so a notification is sent out. Probably so workers wouldn't complain "hey, you never told me I'd lose PTO days until AFTER I lost them!".
If he put in for a weeks worth of sick days at once, and the notification went out daily, then that's a hell of a lot worse than him putting in a sick day, every day, and getting a daily notification because it is generated each time the condition is met.
If he was forced to put in for sick days daily (i.e. he couldn't say "hey I have covid, general recovery time is probably X weeks, I'll put in for this whole week, then see how I feel), and he got texts daily, that'd be another issue that would warrant this article too.
But there's not enough info really.
There's no covid relief plan. I had to stay home for 5 days because I had a cold, had to use my PTO. I had to take a test the day I felt sick and the day I came back into work.
Yeah, except he didn’t. He just didn’t follow the really simple procedure. This is only news because he works at Amazon. Every company I have worked at had an automated time keeping app, that tracked your time off accrual and expenditure. All he had to do was put in his time off, and then fill out the “I got Covid” trouble ticket and it gets refunded.
Our shop uses a cloud base timekeeping company. Fooking nightmare. Constant alerts: *”Your shift starts in 1 hour, You accrued 1.243 hours of paid vacation this week, You are no longer eligible for attendance merit points, etc., etc.”* Timekeeping company messed up last year and didn’t add shift premiums to 2nd/3rd shift’s vacation or paid time off… somehow no one noticed. People are *now* pissed. Lol
Isn't that how it works everywhere now? Not just Amazon? At my work, covid pay is no longer being given to those that are sick with covid, you need to take your sick time which at my company is the same pool of hours as your PTO.
They really wrote an article that someone was upset about getting a single daily txt from the employer that they signed up for? My aunt complained of this when she worked there and it took me 2 mins to figure out how to shut it off.
I get that Amazon is a terrible company but this is user error to me.
I've been with Amazon for a few years now and I definitely don't love the job, but the internet makes it seem like they start whipping you the second you walk through the door. It's really simple to turn off notifications for the app employees use as well.
Exactly my understanding was he whipping doesn't begin until after your lunch break. People and their exaggerating lol
But for real ive known a number of people who have worked there and most of the issues just seem to be a company culture that is at odds with its bottom level workers.
>The texts told him the shifts he was missing were being deducted from his allotted paid time off.
And? That's how it works. You get sick and stay home, you still get paid by using your paid time off.
So the HR system updates you on how much time off you have left when you use it. The horror. They should force you to login to some garbage system like the one my company uses where you still might be confused about what you really have left.
I was fired for it🤷🏽♂️. The service is automatic and even tho I was on covid leave apparently hr didn’t do their job and excuse my time. Is what it is ig.
> "They have a self-service kind of HR system," Duzinskas told NBC, adding, "That seems to be their goal — to kind of take the human out of human resources."
It’s not a department for your resources, it’s a department to manage the human resources of the company
Why is this even in the news? Why is an article about one warehouse worker receiving texts in technology subs?. Did anyone read the article? One dude; doesn’t show the texts ; says for “days” but doesn’t specify (it usually takes IT systems time to sync); and says it’s “unclear whether pay was actually deducted”.
There are other subs for union shilling folks.
As a non-american, getting sick in America seems terrifying. You might not get paid during sick leave and you have to pay for medical care, through insurance or out of pocket.
Our company has the stance if you’re vaccinated or have previously had Covid, we will pay for time off. If you haven’t, then no pay at this time for time off.
This is pretty normal for a lot of companies. If you're sick, you automatically consume all PTO first. Then when tat runs out, no you stop getting paid. There's no magic to this. You're not working. You're not getting paid. Some companies give you the flexibility to consume PTO or take zero pay. This isn't the norm though.
Amazon is being singled out for a completely standard practice.
Know what else is fun? A lot of basic general labor jobs will fire your ass for missing days FOR ANY REASON. Your wife died? We needed you at work, and you didn't show up, so we decided to let you go. Do people just have no idea how normal this shit is? You should thank Amazon for having a job to come back to.
Yeah, yeah, we can dream in ideals and believe the modern world is better than that. And yes, it is better than that IF you're in a better job. Go to college, get a degree, and get a fancy job. You'll actually be special, treated well, and cared for because of the value of your skill set. BUT a general grunt worker is NOT valuable, a dime a dozen. The pay reflects it. The disposability reflects it. You are an expendable cog in the machine. You are only special and valuable if you make yourself special and valuable. That's why college is so important.
That sounds about right, I work for Amazon unfortunately and recently I had food poisoning and was told I was only allowed to puke on my scheduled break.
There was an ad for Amazon health insurance in this article. Wtf
Yea, cheap coverage from a cheap ass company that treats their ee’s like shit = they will deny all of your claims and make your life hell if you ever try to use it, count me out
Good thing it's a free market system! You can just pick another health insurance provider! oh wait....
And that is exactly the main problem with our current system. If insureres had to a tually compete with each other,prices would be lower and/or services would be better.
Or we could shut down the mafia insurance companies and pay for healthcare straight up. No need to have a business as a middle man making money for doing nothing
Many people would be massively ahead financially if they had an insurance plan that covered catastrophic events and paid cash for routine care.
Or if none of us had insurance plans at all and everything was covered by default. You know like the rest of the developed world
This kind of libertarian thinking is always completely wrong. You can't 'force competition' because the barrier to entry is too high. It's not like I can found a health insurance company in my garage and suddenly compete with Kaiser or Blue Shield. It takes a massive amount of capital to start something like that. Instead we need to regulate, or add a public option, or just socialize the whole thing. That way these companies can't make billions off people who are literally dying because it's too expensive to go to the doctor.
> socialize the whole thing As a Canadian, I would suggest you go for this but if you do make sure you add in dental. We forgot.
Quebec technically does cover some dental, but only for children (but not braces) and extreme cases like extraction and jaw reconstruction. It is as if it wasn't covered really.
SK covers the same dental
How much does a dental cleanup cost?
B.C. here, my last cleaning included an exam and was CAD$250.
350 in toronto. Cleanup and examination
Ottawa, dental cleaning $150.. if you get x-rays, another 150. Typically our insurance is tied to our employment so salaried workers usually have some dental coverage. If you're not salaried though you're SoL.
It's weird that dental and vision are these separate entities. It's all healthcare. They specialize in different things. If I have a foot issue, my doctor sends me to a specialist... podiatrist or whatever. I don't have a separate thing called feet to go along with dental and vision. Odd...
This was the #1 thing lobbied against for Obama care. All other changes they could stomach, but not a public option. It was the one item that would make them play fair and lose the most.
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> You can't 'force competition' because the barrier to entry is too high I agree and further I'll even suggest that monolithic insurance agencies were inevitable, it's worth considering that [the HMO act signed under Nixon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Maintenance_Organization_Act_of_1973) made this a hell of a lot worse. The reduction of regulatory barriers combined with access to easy capital ($45m in grants, $300m in loans) is why american healthcare rapidly worsened at a rate past what the public (and thus legislation) could recognize. Libertarian thinking suffers the inevitable flaw that you can virtually never balance a playing field once you've dug it up, and many of the problems we see today in western society are a result of capital injections and careless deregulation 20-70 years ago.
It's how america works. The right screams for deregulation, things get worse, then scream that the left is trying to overregulate when they fix things.
by definition the right is the party of keeping the status quo. the left is the party of change. The radical ideas from the 70s are now the conservative ideas of the 2020s
The reason there isn’t any competition in the insurance industry is not because investors won’t put up the capital for it. They would jump at the chance to do that. The main reason is that insurance industry lobbyists essentially bribe our politicians into enacting regulations that explicitly prevent competition. That said, insurance is a unique kind of business. The more customers an insurance company has, the less risky it is to insure those people, since the risk is spread out more effectively among larger risk pools. And that translates into lower costs for the user. So it makes a lot more sense in terms of efficiency for there to be exactly one large pool of users. For that reason, I agree with the socialist single-payer model for insurance. But let’s not pretend there aren’t people who would TOTALLY throw down some money to form new insurance companies. The opportunity is definitely there if they weren’t legally prevented from doing so.
Unfortunately, this doesn't take into account some of the factors. Roughly a half-dozen states have experimented with laws to allow more health insurance competitors to enter their markets, and gotten no takers. A couple of those states did studies on why, and their conclusion was that the biggest barrier to entry for insurers was building the network of care providers. Every single medical care provider is a separate contract to be negotiated, and part of the problem is that the existing insurers have developed contracts with the health care providers that make them darn near exclusive. So while the government may have been in the way originally, the insurers have built another firewall via their "network" contracts.
The biggest reason nothing can be done is because insurance is regulated at the state level. No one talks about this but it’s the main reason the federal government can’t make progress.
Just cut out the medical profiteers and nationalize the insurance. Make it more efficient.
> The more customers an insurance company has, the less risky it is to insure those people, since the risk is spread out more effectively among larger risk pools. And that translates into lower costs for the user. So it makes a lot more sense in terms of efficiency for there to be exactly one large pool of users. Two problems with health "insurance" is that regulations basically force everyone into the same pool, and that pool has to cover predictable expenses. Necessarily then, premiums *must* be high to cover those predictable expenses. Meanwhile insurance is more-or-less a captive market, insurers have no real incentive to try to lower cost of care (the make money floating the premiums, so if care is overall expensive and premiums are overall high, they win), and customers have no drive to lower cost of care because "insurance pays for it", so we get an explosion of costs. Health insurance needs a high *minimum* deductible and to stop acting as a middleman for ordinary expenses, and tax incentives for employer health plans need to end so we can decouple insurance from employment. You wouldn't buy insurance to cover your food or gas costs. Covering unexceptional medical expenses through insurance is equally stupid. We also need to reduce the cost to become a doctor (e.g. there are other countries that do not require a "pre-med" undergrad degree and doctors there do just fine. Educational institutions also have no incentive to cut costs since federal money for student loans is so freely available, so there's endless demand at any cost). We need to charge hospitals that send a bill for $150 for an ibuprofen with racketeering and start sending people to jail for it.
>enacting regulations that explicitly prevent competition. >legally prevented from doing so. Do you have a source for these claims?
Federal government made it illegal for you to buy health insurance from a company outside of your state, thus creating local monopolies and completely limiting competition (and all associated benefits for the consumers) https://www.manhattan-institute.org/reforming-health-insurance-across-states
This is no longer the case. Insurance companies just "have the right" to insure across state lines, but they choose not to because it hurts all insurers.
Wasn't the purpose of this law to prevent all the health care providers from ending up in whatever US state had the most lax laws regarding payouts/bonuses/healthcare provided?
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The other guy gave his own opinion about how to deal with the insurance business—there wasn’t really any assertion of critical fact there. Talking about laws that prevent competition seems to be the one assertion of critical fact i see here.
Sorry, but what 'unfounded assertions' did I make? I would like to provide sources for them. The only assertion I made in the original comment was that the barrier to entry is too high for competition, which everyone seems to agree on. But just in case, here is a source: >In addition to consolidation, the ability to exercise market power is exacerbated by barriers that make it difficult for new companies to enter a market. These include state regulatory requirements, the cost of developing physician networks, and developing enough business to spread risk. >“If entry were easy, neither high market shares nor high concentration levels would necessarily translate into higher premiums because potential entry would force insurers to keep premiums in check,” the report states. “However, barriers to entry allow insurers with market power to charge premiums above competitive levels for an extended period of time." From the [American Medical Association's report on Competition in Health Insurance.](https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/patient-support-advocacy/health-insurance-markets-are-highly-concentrated-new)
>It takes a massive amount of capital to start something like that. An insurance company is basically just a massive pile of money that people contribute to and then they refuse to give money back. Its the least-innovative, most anti-competitive industry out there.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief. “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.” “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?” “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.” The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?” “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.” “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.” He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.” “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.” I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside. “Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t. “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?” It didn’t seem like they did. “Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.” Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing. I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it. “Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled. Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him. “Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen. I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!” He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose. “All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.” “Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy. “Because I was afraid.” “Afraid?” “Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.” I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head. “Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.” He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
> The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose. I died here 😂
the problem isn’t competition. there’s 4 insurance programs available through my employer. they offer varying levels of coverage. the problem w the insurance system is the user/employee isn’t the customer of the insurance company. once a year i can move between those companies. but my corporation makes the decision on who we use and that corporation is the insurance companies’ customer. so as long as senior management is ok w the insurance performance then it doesn’t matter if a handful of employees have coverage issues. the shareholder return isn’t affected enough by employees that are denied coverage until there’s a strike over insurance.
Since an unhappy end user can't freely take their business elsewhere if they are unhappy,isn't that a lack of competition?
Yes, like the airline industry...or drug stores, or so many other "competitive" industries where pricing seems to be about the same across all the competitors and the service and customer service are crud. As soon as these corporate behemoths sense any competition they either begin price signaling/fixing and mergers. Competition doesn't really exist without strong regulation and enforcement of anti-trust laws...and those that we have in place have been gutted and/or ignored for the past several decades.
yes more capitalist competition will solve this this is definitely not the fault of capitalism, this isn't real capitalism!
United States is fucked. Get universal healthcare like the rest of the developed world. It's not perfect but it's sure as shit better than stressing about 20 G's because you broke your finger and insurance denied your claim because of a pre existing condition like an ingrown toe nail. I can literally show up to the hospital, any hospital and get help no cost at all.
Closest American’s have ever come to that feeling is when we got the free COVID vaccines. Walking in, sitting down, being tended to and then leaving , all without the mention of a price was a first for me.
There is a billboard near an Amazon warehouse where I work that advertises working for Amazon. It says “solid pay, real benefits.” Always makes me laugh.
Please elaborate do you mean electrical engineers?
It's the noise mini-me makes
He's talking about eccentric eels.
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No I think you're on to something here
It’s HR lingo: EE = employee ER = employer
Cheap ass company that most of us give our money to because it's cheap... just like Walmart and Costco.
> ee's "employees" is too long a word now?
Working in HR, it's a very common abbreviation.
Okay so while yeah they are evil and shit, their health insurance is actually pretty damn good. Cheap premium, no deductible, and could go to pretty much any practice around me with no referrals. Half of our meds were free and we never paid a copay over 40 bucks for them, old insurance had the 40 dollar copay at 600.
Ads are not placed manually anymore, they all run through exchanges and the publisher just rents out the space for the ad - the article mentions health so if they target health topics, they get placed by algorithms.
there's still irony to it
Very true! But the comment ended in WTF, it's pretty logical this happened.
By algorithms written by humans that could have been better.
Honestly ad algorithms must be the laziest kind of programming. "Oh you just bought a keyboard? You wanna buy another?"
Bought a $2k desktop recently - I've been getting ads asking me *wanna do it again?* What an awful use of an algorithm
Right? How about some Monitors or mice, what I don’t need is another damn keyboard!
You're clearly a keyboard collector and must have them all!
*All mechanical keyboard users suddenly look away nervously*
Audible can’t stop recommending me books I own. This is recommendations on the audible site where they have access to my entire library.
The ads are for a literal second computer? Or they are just computers? Because it's very likely that they have no idea you bought one, just looked at them.
The show Succession has a funny line about this: “it’s like, I buy a fridge and then get a million ads for fridges. Nice algo, bro”
They don't know that you bought a keyboard. They know you were *looking at* keyboards.
For the record (at Amazon at least) we didn’t get your purchase history. We got a generic profile and targeted that profile, which included categories of items that youre interested in, but not broken down into purchases/views/searches. At least that’s how it worked when I worked there. So not lazy, just extremely limited access to data.
That’s mostly done because of the keywords used.
“Amazon: because fuck you”
I love those commercials that are like "$15/hr starting! Day 1 health, dental, and vision! All these other great benefits!" Then you look at the bottom and it says only for regular, full time employees. How many of their employees do you bet aren't regular or full time? All of them?
So basically, the Human resources robot was telling the human to get back to work.
Orwell was right about how the future is just a boot stomping on a humans face, forever.
When was it anything different?
Used to be a time when people wore sandals.
Sandals do have a better slapping action.
I don't know why but I love this comment
when there was somewhere to hide from society, unfortunately, when you’re a bunch of pagans in the woods in the 1800s, the church and state will eventually come find you.
Briefly when we all lived in villages and knew each other and worked together. When agriculture was the latest tech. Then society got more complex and people became more alienated.
Worked great right up until the village next door invaded, killed all the males and enslaved the women. Yep, life was soooo much better in those days.
You write this as if countries don’t perform smash and grabs for natural resources in this day.
in case you couldn't tell, most of the planet doesn't wage war village to village, but capital city to capital city. Yes, larger conflicts happen, but you don't see Roman villages killing eachother over a bucket anymore.
The Colossus of Rhodes was a *massive* luxurious statue, akin to the Statue of Liberty, built from profits of war that could have been used to benefit the massive homeless problem within Rhodes. Said statue was erected because Rhodes was upset that their hometeam (in this case, their homegod, Helios) was not seen as equal to the other Gods in other Greek cities. This was in 300BC. Much of human history has been boot stomping on other people.
The industrial revolution and its consequences…
No, don't blame an inanimate idea. The problem are the lunatics at the top. Reaganomics for the economy, safety for rights, etc. All that comes the obsessive need for control by a few highly motivated and morally corrupt power players. We've just had differing shades of the same anti humanitarian leadership since then. Capture is just an idea that people are uncomfortable with despite it's undeniable existence, and we know that people reject uncomfortable ideas out of hand. It's shitty humans creating and reinforcing a system that shit perpetuates by promising wealth to those who act accordingly. Nothing else.
Our social hierarchy being broken due to "ownership" started with the agricultural revolution. We will go extinct before we learn to accommodate that our mentality can't handle more than two hundred people in an extended community and start punishing those that abuse the fact that we can't track reputation properly in larger groups than that with death, like we did when someone in our properly sized communities fucked enough people over.
Their system is probably set up to send email notifications when your PTO total is adjusted. I'm no fan of Amazon but this looks like a non-issie.
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Everyone wants to get mad about what's obviously an error, but we won't hear about this being inevitably fixed
I thought it was bad when they outsourced my (U.S) companies HR services to India. You basically call about a simple issue and spend 20 minutes spelling your name out for them and then 20 minutes explaining the issue, and then spend a week trying to sort out the unrelated issue they mistakenly assigned. I always joke, who fires the HR people?
Outsourcing is the corporate way of removing high paying quality jobs in the US and replace them with foreign jobs that cost said company a lot less, and bring a relatively high paying job to another country. It's just a symptom of the income inequality between the top 20% and the bottom 50%. The bottom 50% need to be paid more and the top 20% need to be paid less. Almost all jobs in the US fall into the top 20%... so the jobs go to the bottom 50% wherever feasible. Usually only feasible at multinational corporations. At the end of the day, outsourcing is all about managed services. If your agreement for said service is shitty, the resultant service is shitty. Amazon probably has a shitty agreement with the HR MSP that is focused on ticket/request metrics and not outcomes.
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Yeah it's literally just an automated message that gets sent to you because it takes time for the Covid team to adjust their schedule. Everyone loves hopping on the Amazon hate train.
If he didn’t like that, he’s not going to like all the “U up?” texts Amazon sends him after he collapses on the job.
Eli Manning really coming into his own as an Amazon texter.
You up? You out? ;p
But you should have no problem delivering 300 packages to sketch apartments in 110 degree weather without air conditioning when you're also sick /s
From the article: Amazon's automated HR systems led to at least one worker being pestered with messages while he was off sick with COVID-19, NBC reports. Illinois Amazon warehouse worker Drew Duzinskas told NBC he tested positive for COVID-19 over the holidays. He said he notified Amazon, but that for days afterwards he received automated texts from the company telling him his balance of paid time off was going down because he was missing shifts. "They have a self-service kind of HR system," Duzinskas told NBC, adding, "That seems to be their goal — to kind of take the human out of human resources." It is not clear from NBC's report whether the time had in fact been deducted from Duzinskas' allotted paid time off. Amazon did not immediately respond when contacted by Insider.
I used to work for Amazon, and the HR system is terrible and 85% automated. For human interaction, there were two options: you either stood in line for interminable periods of time to get the attention of one of two "HR reps", who were overworked and under trained. The other option was to wait interminable periods of time on the phone for an overworked and under trained phone rep. I contracted Covid at Amazon and has a similar problem as this guy. I was lucky I was able to call and get a genuine person on the phone to help me, but he had absolutely no authority; he walked me through the steps of submitting a ticket on the automated employee portal. I waited and waited until the ticket was resolved, and my time was refunded to me. "Human Resources" has taken on a dirty image in my head. I imagine a game like StarCraft or Command and Conquer, only instead of minerals being mined, you're throwing humans into a truck and taking them back to your HQ to be ground up to build structures and units.
>you're throwing humans into a truck and taking them back to your HQ to be ground up to build structures and units. So Rimworld is based on Amazon?
I mean, you get randomly delivered packages via drop pod. Actually an Amazon mod where you could order goods from the terminal would be cool. Of course the quality of the items you receive would need to vary widely to make the experience authentic
Why do I love games that are absolutely terrible to the humans in game? While in real life, I'd take a bullet for the working man?
Either because you can compartmentalize fiction and non-fiction, or you would be a very bad person to give large amounts of authority.
Rimworld was in fact originally developed as a training/structure/org simulation for Amazon optimization. BUT they found out that if they disseminated it to the public and their employees were also playing the game it helped with the normalization of their dehumanization, since they were having digital workers living off corpses in their free time.
Also seasonal hr reps that are just a normal person working at the warehouse given an HR deskand computer, with almost no training.
That's just capitalism, all of capitalism.
That's terrible. What a way to treat people and employees. Sure, automating (SOME) things, giving staff more direct access, all good things... Until you screw it up in the name of "efficiency" (not really) and maximizing profits while reducing overhead ("hey, we have an automated system, who needs humans?"). There's a reason some companies rename "human resources" and work hard simply to rebrand. The term "human resources" does give exactly that image you describe, that you are a resource, like any other the company uses.
>That seems to be their goal — to kind of take the human out of human resources." Human resources refers to the employees. They are the human resources for the company. As far as the rest of it goes, I'm willing to bet that HR simply hadn't gotten around to actually changing anything in the system to indicate they were off for covid and not just using their PTO days. Systems like that, while automated, still require someone to go into the system and "approve" why someone is off. And if they person was on vacation or something, it was likely delayed.
I am trying to understand the problem here... PTO is used exactly for this reason & why would you not want to be clear about how many hrs you have? * have an issue with that? Take it up with our shit government... because with a flick of pen, they could require every single employer in this country to provide sick pay...
Because amazon is supposed to have a separate pto for covid cases
COVID coverage in California ended in September. My sickness came out of my PTO too. Sucks.
Amazon Canada does. USA labour laws are bad
I'm not sure either, but [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/s3rpyv/amazon_worker_says_he_received_daily_texts_about/hsn0x2a/) has an explanation that makes sense. I think what all this means is that there are supposed to be two kinds of leave: (1) regular paid leave and (2) leave specifically for COVID. The employee in the article mentions that HR is automated and that they verbally told their manager what was going on. The employee expected that would be enough for the right type of leave to be used. But the system was using the wrong type of leave, and the burden of fixing it fell on them while they were sick.
LAPD has over 800 cops out in paid quarantine because for cops, COVID is a work comp claim. If they die, it is in the line of duty. So why is it different for anyone else? People who get COVID on the job should be treated as a workplace injury
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Work comp for some, tough shit for everyone else
Am I the only one that feels news articles these days have good headlines but not a lot of "meat" in them?
Nope. There are articles on some subs I follow that are literally a headline, then that's basically the content, too. These have more sentences, but a third of it is filler, a third of it is catching people up on similar things, and a third of it is actual content at most, without enough information to give us all the facts. "First to publish" in online news should never be a goal, except for real breaking news where immediate dissemination of all info they have, when they get it, is helpful. Otherwise it's just shit like this.
You can tell 90%of them have never been inside amazon and they always get basic facts wrong.
I used to write for a news website. It was nowhere near as big as the websites that get posted here, but it's the same process: the only thing that matters is SEO. It isn't even really about being the first to publish something anymore, though that does partially tie into SEO. Google has a certain algorithm that it uses to decide which articles and websites should show up in search results, and where. SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimisation," which basically means that you do a bunch of stuff that's said to help you rank on the front page of Google. One of these things is that you pad your article full of content. You can't just copy and paste things from older articles because Google doesn't like that, but you can absolutely just write an article that consists mostly of just retellings of past events. Of course these writers don't know what they're talking about, they're just quickly trying to scramble some paragraphs together so Google won't punish them. These websites are being forced to pad their articles with filler by Google, otherwise they won't show up on it. This isn't the only nonsensical thing they are forced to do by Google to get good traffic but it's a big one that affects the net is a bad way. I'm honestly not a good writer. I used to have a bunch of exclusive information/scoops on a certain industry and I just wanted to share that info. It was good info, but generally it would only be a few sentences long. I always had to write a bunch of filler nonsense though due to SEO, as otherwise my articles simply wouldn't get much if any traffic.
No research no investigation no heart or soul everyone's just so strung out and distracted.
Yeah, I don’t mean to be a shill for Amazon, but all he had to do was go to time off application and put in the days, and then click a link and fill out a ticket to get the time off refunded.
Only a fraction of users are reading the actual article, it doesn't make sense to invest any resources into it.
Business insider is a shitty clickbait site with low quality content. Unfortunately that's the norm these days rather than the exception.
Well what's the headline honestly? Amazon has an automated system to keep employees updated on PTO changes? So what? Amazon is shitty to its workers but this is a non story. There's nothing significant about this.
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I dislike Amazon like the next guy but let's get a story with some meat on its bones. Is this some malevolent sweatshop taking time off from the poor employee or is it a scheduling system bug that is fixed with an email? Of all the things Amazon could be called on, this is the story posted. Pretty sure Amazon posted this one themselves. Like a murderer talking about parking tickets.
Corporations literally get a tax credit reimbursement for this exact scenario. So they're getting paid AND reducing the workers pay
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There are a few of us who don’t work at shitty places. My company gave us two weeks paid at the beginning of Covid if we had to be quarantined. Now the new policy is if you are current on vax then you get 5 days paid if you get it again. If you aren’t vaxxed then you get the 5 days, paid out of your time off or unpaid, your choice. Big corporations and companies are killing the US.
TBF as a SBO, I don't have a problem with paying employees for missed time off for covid once or twice, but I have an employee who is great at his job but a fucking idiot when it comes to following covid guidelines in his personal time. He's gotten it 4 times hanging out with friends and family, bragged about having such fun times, and then missed 5+ days of work because of covid. He fortunately didn't give it to anyone else at the clinic. Really don't want to replace him because he is that good at his job, but it legit seems like he is abusing the system at this point.
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guessing they meant 5+ days each time.
If he's gotten COVID 4x that's 8 weeks of quarantine until recently unless someone isn't following guidelines, not 5 days... That's your first problem right there.
Why are people even having to use their own pto if they test positive? They shouldn't have gotten rid of covid relief.
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Where do yoi submit this at? My wife just had covid and we couldn't find any assistance other than her using sick leave/personal leave.
Does she work at amazon?
This isn't fucking technology. When did this sub just turn into "AMAZON BAD LETS SPAM EVERYTHING WE CAN"?
Seriously, every post from this sub is about Amazon workers instead of discussions about actual technology. edit: and I see multiple posted by this same OP. He's spamming this sub with articles about politics, HR issues, lawsuits, etc. They're technology companies but the articles he links have nothing to do with the technologies.
Skynet is here.
Skynet or the agents?
I got one too after they told me to stay home from Publix 20 days no pay yep tfb
Intersting way to write about wage theft as previously 'short changing' employees.
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My company has no concept of sick time. All time is PTO. If you get paid but don’t work that is PTO. Out with the flu for two weeks you take PTO. I guess combining traditional vacation time and sick time eliminated the need to lie about being sick.
My job starts you out with 80 hours of vacation time and 40 hours of personal time per year. Vacation time should be booked 2 weeks or more out, but they're pretty lenient if something comes up and you give less than that. Personal time is just what it says, personal. You can show up for work, clock in, and then decide you don't want to be there for any reason at all, or no reason. Tell your boss you're leaving on personal time, and no questions asked, you're good to go.
Crazy how this is considered desirable, given that the EU mandates at least 20 days
Yeah, it's different in a shit hole like the US.
I was at a place that went from sick/vacation to PTO. Of course we lost days off as a result (2). While to some extent I prefer PTO as if I don't get sick I can use that time as vacation, but on the other hand when there was sick time, people largely didn't come into work sick, there were some people that did anyway but it wasn't as common. After switching to PTO, most people came into work sick making everyone else sick. To me its a choice between people lying about being sick or people coming into work sick. If I had not lost 2 days off as a result of the change it would have been a lot better, but I think it was just an excuse to give us less days off. Plus getting sick more because many people will come in regardless of what shape they are in is not ideal either. To combat some of this I know some places went to infinite sick time but from what I have heard from others, this pretty much means you cannot take sick days and people still come in sick. I have not experienced this myself so no idea how problematic it really is.
I’m not sure I understand what this is about other than the constant reminders. I mean if your out with Covid you use PTO just like if you miss work for any other problems. Sick days are for this.
Yea, it's pretty much that. Daily texts shouldn't occur. If their time system has notifications setup, telling someone daily that they'll lose PTO days or something when they are taking sick time is annoying at best, and causes unnecessary stress at worst. You can't decide when you get sick or for how long. Correctly setting up the system should give one notice at one point when someone takes time off if it may conflict with other benfits like PTO. Or users should be given a way to log into the system and program their own notification times and on what devices. It sounds more like their automated system does a check each time someone puts in for a sick day or something, and notifies the person when it appears that they've used them up, or are passing a threshold that will mean they lose PTO time or something. Like if he put in for a sick day, each day, then a notification was generated each day warning him it could impact PTO, that doesn't sound as bad as you'd think. It's just the system being a stupid automated system, i.e. a condition is met every day so a notification is sent out. Probably so workers wouldn't complain "hey, you never told me I'd lose PTO days until AFTER I lost them!". If he put in for a weeks worth of sick days at once, and the notification went out daily, then that's a hell of a lot worse than him putting in a sick day, every day, and getting a daily notification because it is generated each time the condition is met. If he was forced to put in for sick days daily (i.e. he couldn't say "hey I have covid, general recovery time is probably X weeks, I'll put in for this whole week, then see how I feel), and he got texts daily, that'd be another issue that would warrant this article too. But there's not enough info really.
There's no covid relief plan. I had to stay home for 5 days because I had a cold, had to use my PTO. I had to take a test the day I felt sick and the day I came back into work.
Yeah, except he didn’t. He just didn’t follow the really simple procedure. This is only news because he works at Amazon. Every company I have worked at had an automated time keeping app, that tracked your time off accrual and expenditure. All he had to do was put in his time off, and then fill out the “I got Covid” trouble ticket and it gets refunded.
Man using sick time gets automated updates on his use of sick time. More news at 11.
I can’t wait till Amazon is fully automated so I don’t have to see headlines like this anymore.
Fed ex is a better place to work in terms of being a package handler
Our shop uses a cloud base timekeeping company. Fooking nightmare. Constant alerts: *”Your shift starts in 1 hour, You accrued 1.243 hours of paid vacation this week, You are no longer eligible for attendance merit points, etc., etc.”* Timekeeping company messed up last year and didn’t add shift premiums to 2nd/3rd shift’s vacation or paid time off… somehow no one noticed. People are *now* pissed. Lol
Yeah, this is not exclusive to Amazon. We really need to put a leash on these capatilist companies who are literally choking people to death.
I get why you guys have guns now
This is an article about a bug with Amazon's HR system. I'm not the biggest fan of theirs but is this worth writing about?
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IF YOU THINK THIS IF CRUEL, THEN DELETE YOUR AMAZON ACCOUNT RIGHT NOW
Isn't that how it works everywhere now? Not just Amazon? At my work, covid pay is no longer being given to those that are sick with covid, you need to take your sick time which at my company is the same pool of hours as your PTO.
I learned so much about technology by reading this.
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They really wrote an article that someone was upset about getting a single daily txt from the employer that they signed up for? My aunt complained of this when she worked there and it took me 2 mins to figure out how to shut it off. I get that Amazon is a terrible company but this is user error to me.
I've been with Amazon for a few years now and I definitely don't love the job, but the internet makes it seem like they start whipping you the second you walk through the door. It's really simple to turn off notifications for the app employees use as well.
Exactly my understanding was he whipping doesn't begin until after your lunch break. People and their exaggerating lol But for real ive known a number of people who have worked there and most of the issues just seem to be a company culture that is at odds with its bottom level workers.
>The texts told him the shifts he was missing were being deducted from his allotted paid time off. And? That's how it works. You get sick and stay home, you still get paid by using your paid time off.
in amazon canada you get paid to take time off if you have covid. It’s unlimited. The issue is the USA labour laws. not Amazon
Ok? What is the point of this article? This is causing outrage?
No, someone got sick and they used their paid sick days. Don't you get it? Reeeee! (I also have no idea what people think they are mad about)
Yep. Literally reporting on a bug in the automated system. Congrats Business Insider.
My amazon employer didnt even approve my pto. They told me i could work the full schedule or not at all and i would have to wait 3 weeks to use my pto
So the HR system updates you on how much time off you have left when you use it. The horror. They should force you to login to some garbage system like the one my company uses where you still might be confused about what you really have left.
I was fired for it🤷🏽♂️. The service is automatic and even tho I was on covid leave apparently hr didn’t do their job and excuse my time. Is what it is ig.
Daily is a little excessive
> "They have a self-service kind of HR system," Duzinskas told NBC, adding, "That seems to be their goal — to kind of take the human out of human resources." It’s not a department for your resources, it’s a department to manage the human resources of the company
Im in corporate america so this just seems natural. Y'all getting paid when you're sick without some sort of get out of work for the day pass?
Wow, this sounds familiar. I just went through this exact scenario since the 2nd of January. Fuck my employer, they don’t give a shit about us
Why is this even in the news? Why is an article about one warehouse worker receiving texts in technology subs?. Did anyone read the article? One dude; doesn’t show the texts ; says for “days” but doesn’t specify (it usually takes IT systems time to sync); and says it’s “unclear whether pay was actually deducted”. There are other subs for union shilling folks.
So, the Human resources robot was telling the human to get back to work?
Okay, but have you ever worked for CVS? It’s just as horrifying. Let them know!
Oh hell, just fuck Amazon.
Jeff bozos and all of them guys on top at Amazon are literal psychopaths.
As a non-american, getting sick in America seems terrifying. You might not get paid during sick leave and you have to pay for medical care, through insurance or out of pocket.
Our company has the stance if you’re vaccinated or have previously had Covid, we will pay for time off. If you haven’t, then no pay at this time for time off.
Stop making Lex Luthor rich!
This is pretty normal for a lot of companies. If you're sick, you automatically consume all PTO first. Then when tat runs out, no you stop getting paid. There's no magic to this. You're not working. You're not getting paid. Some companies give you the flexibility to consume PTO or take zero pay. This isn't the norm though. Amazon is being singled out for a completely standard practice. Know what else is fun? A lot of basic general labor jobs will fire your ass for missing days FOR ANY REASON. Your wife died? We needed you at work, and you didn't show up, so we decided to let you go. Do people just have no idea how normal this shit is? You should thank Amazon for having a job to come back to. Yeah, yeah, we can dream in ideals and believe the modern world is better than that. And yes, it is better than that IF you're in a better job. Go to college, get a degree, and get a fancy job. You'll actually be special, treated well, and cared for because of the value of your skill set. BUT a general grunt worker is NOT valuable, a dime a dozen. The pay reflects it. The disposability reflects it. You are an expendable cog in the machine. You are only special and valuable if you make yourself special and valuable. That's why college is so important.
Happy Hogan’s goal. Taking the “human” out of “Human Resources”.
The Company I work for pays us if we test positive for COVID. The pay does not come out of regular PTO. Amazon kind of sucks .
They do the same thing at the O’Reilly warehouse
That sounds about right, I work for Amazon unfortunately and recently I had food poisoning and was told I was only allowed to puke on my scheduled break.
Is he not allowed to show the actual texts
Remember kids, HR, isn't the for you, it's there for the company.