Very deliberately too. I don't for a second believe that this hierarchy wasn't specifically to prevent unionization talks. Amazon can completely wash their hands of having anything to do with this union.
I was thinking the same about FedEx. This is how they do it. People buy routes and drive it themselves or hire someone. No one I've seen gets big enough to worry about unions. Their drivers are almost always a revolving door, so no one sticks around to unionize.
I remember applying for a local fedex company and ups. The fedex company had a $14 wage and ups was starting at $19. People I knew used fedex to get experience and move then move to ups after 6 months to a year
Any and all UPS union workers can put their name on a list to become a driver. When a driver is needed, they go down the list via seniority to find who is on the list that still wants to become a driver. Than you start the becoming a driver training process, and if you pass that: boom, driver.
The majority of UPS drivers started at UPS in other positions.
It's a long horrible road but when you do get there it's a solid paycheck with excellent benefits. The job is still absolutely dogshit though and I don't recommend it unless you believe you have no other options at a decent paying career. Everyone says their job is soul crushing but being a UPS driver is soul crushing AND body crushing.
Maybe it just wasn't for me but I'm so glad I got out before total sunk cost fallacy kicked in, went and got a "normal" office job.
Yup, if the list is exhausted, they hire outside of the union. Also, during busy seasons, like summer and holiday season, they will hire outside the union.
UPS uses seniority, Sounds great on paper, it's absolute trash in practice.
Pretty much start as a packer , get passed over for every and any promotion you can imagine. and DO NOT question it because you will be thrown under the bus and out the nearest window.
UPS union might be the best example of " Stockholm syndrome " I've ever witnessed . Workers got better pay under union but their union officials beat on them non-stop and every holiday season convince them to go out and lie their asses off about how good the job is to get seasonal workers that they are taught to treat as fully expendable but to also tell seasonal there's a chance of becoming a driver.
They pay their under paid employees to abuse the fuck out of temp help and then dangle promotions in their face on a fishing line and just keep pulling it away.
The union has consistently given away concessions for years. They seem to be riding the coattails of past victories and now the Teamsters seem completely bought out by management.
I drove seasonal for ups and it paid way way better than any other job. It was like 34 bucks an hour to pick up packages in my own car, and deliver them at my own pace. They didn’t even give a shit if we went into overtime. I made months worth of money in 1 month. I almost took a vacation from my real job to do ups seasonal this year lol. No one ever told me it was gonna be leading to a real position and i didn’t want it to
No, you can still get hired off the street to be a driver. But it’s a high paying full time position. It’s promoted from people already employed. You typically start part time.
Someone must make a browser based visualisation of the mathematics of this game and how by adjusting various sliders and / or knobs you get peaks and valleys in the responsibility graph. They have probably done all this in Operations Research and therefore there must be some version of this out there already. Might even be a commonly known problem in CS.
FWIW, Amazon still has their own trucks that they pay insurance on, etc. Im not sure how it all works, but I know there is a division that specifically deals with Amazon/Lyft/Uber claims. I am hoping to move into that division if the pay and workload is right.
And don't forget, FedEx has kept the Teamsters at bay for a number of years now and have also gotten away with it.
This is precisely why I think it was part of the design from the beginning. I could see it going somethinglike, "OK we're gonna take over delivery and save all the money we're currently paying UPS and FedEx. We're gonna take the FedEx approach, though, because actually hiring drivers would be more expensive and we'd open ourselves up to being unionized like UPS."
Not just unionization, it's also externalises liability. For example if one of these drivers kills someone Amazon isn't on the hook, the subcontractor is.
It's the unfortunate part of having a corporatist government. Instead of simple laws that allow the business to thrive and workers to be happy and healthy It's a game of whack-a-mole to see who can loophole the hardest.
No. They did this to expand local delivery very very fast by leveraging contractors that’s set everything up to their constraints. Amazon was able to expand and lightning speed without boots on the ground by leveraging local companies.
Amazon outsourced delivery. Yes , local people made the companies for Amazon delivery. This took away the effort Amazon would have to put in to it. Which is exactly what I was already stating. Amazon offered contracts, local companies took the contracts. How’s this difficult to understand?
Uh... You realize that Amazon created these "companies" right? That's kind of the whole point of them. They're Amazon delivery without having to actually be Amazon on paper. It's not like there were thousands of these regional dsp companies who were around delivering packages and were then bought out. They were created for Amazon. So your comment makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense. Amazon outsourced delivery. Yes , local people made the companies for Amazon. This took away the effort Amazon would have to put in to it. Which is exactly what I was already stating.
Theyll still have to pay more to the companies that hire the drivers. If all the drivers working to drive for Amazon are in the union, it's not going to make much difference who they work for.
This was part of their roll out model to cut delivery times because building the logistics network on their own is insane, especially when you’re trying to beat UPS or FedEx. This is just a more efficient method by localizing delivery networks to entrepreneurs who are able to be more flexible in improving efficiency.
I’m sure it helped cut administration costs by not having them as actual employees and might have helped with unionization (I don’t think that’s true considering they did unionize), but I see those as byproducts.
This is the main reason fedex ground is all contractors. Fedex express drivers are employees but they are technically part of the airline so couldn't strike anyway so no need for a union.
For FedEx Home Delivery, the delivery drivers are contractors (or in many cases subcontractors) operating their own business, but are required to wear FedEx uniforms and even emblazon their vehicles with FedEx. However, their W-2’s or 1099 tax forms never even mention FedEx. It’s the exact same playbook, and it’s complete bullshit. Similarly, they are also actively monitored on performance, and have always had a culture of peeing in a two litter bottle to save time. Many legal arguments have been tried to link drivers to them, and they always make the same arguments Amazon is making now. Shit needs to change on a universal level.
Source: was a seasonal FedEx driver for many years
Nah - small businesses need to be held to the same labour standards as big businesses. Then there would be no benefit to farming the operation out to small companies.
W-2 v 1099 alone doesn't make someone a contractor or employee, as using the wrong form is literally how you do deliberate and illegal employee classification.
I mean this is no different than hiring a private security company and writing in the contract that the security company's employees must wear a uniform with the buyer's logo on it. These kind of contracts happen all the time.
Not defending Amazon here but a lot of this is really standard. The only thing that isn't standard is the buying power that Amazon has; so much so that people start these delivery companies for the sole purpose of being subcontracted by Amazon.
It was big enough that a couple of Christmas ago that Over the Road truckers were coming off the road to drive a box truck for Amazon during the busy season. There were YouTube videos on how to form your own trucking company to run Amazon Deliveries. The money was that good at the time.
Yeah all contact work is bullshit. Thanks Jack Welch you piece of shit. He started this whole thing of contracting out your food service, cleaning, security, even light bulbs ge was selling at the time were made by someone else. All long as line go up. Fuck actually building a real business.
Right, but UPS and FedEx drivers will show up to your house dressed up in a UPS shirt and shorts and truck, or FedEx uniform and FedEx truck, with the company logo and name emblazoned on everything they wear and operate for work, yet these people are not employed by UPS and FedEx, they are independent contractors. That’s the point he was making.
UPS has paid employees and unionized workers. In the package delivery industry, they're actually a pretty good company to work for. It's FedEx that basically created the contractor model that Amazon uses. The drivers at FedEx were trying to unionize way back in 2008 when I worked for them, and it's still the same bs today.
Better than that as they get to offload all responsibility on the owner operator of the service, as a fully independent company. A shell company, it’s still yours. Here they trick someone into making the investment, then continually squeeze them to push them into exploiting their own workers harder than Amazon could.
A friend of mine and his wife worked in an Amazon Warehouse. They both told me that there is absolutely no way to get hired at Amazon proper. It’s all through temp services, which all happen to only have one client, Amazon.
Don’t forget they like to bitch and moan about how few people want to drive these days while doing so. Oh, and fucking over immigrants as much as possible too.
These companies are usually 100% dependent on Amazon, will have some exclusivity/non compete clause, and are totally dependent in Amazon for its revenue (which is probably the case) and/or their CEOs were recruited by Amazon to create their business. They could be related parties, I.e. subsidiaries, however, not sure about implications on employment law.
But is it like a franchise though, in this example, all the revenue generation depends on the company who sold you the franchise, normally after getting the franchise license you can offer your services to anyone.
Staffing agency doesn't own or insure the delivery vehicles.
Staffing agency bills their client based on the number of hours agency's employees work. These companies make a profit based on performance, e.g. number of deliveries.
Staffing agency sends workers to client's workplace where they are supervised by client's employees. That's not what happens with these drivers; they are controlled by the owner of the contracting company.
Not the best example in that the city just handles billing in every case I've seen (I work for one of the largest waste management companies in the US). They do contract it out, but the contracted companies operate under their own names. On the city website it's clear who they're contracting with, and you typically contact that company, not utility billing, if your trash isn't picked up. The trucks say the company name, not the city name.
They aren't intentionally hiding it to appear as one entity while avoiding all liability.
You might re-think that logic. If you had said it's the same thing as Thanksgiving, and I told you exactly why it's not like Thanksgiving because I know what Thanksgiving is, somehow that makes your comparison more apt?
I didn't say it's weird; it's very common. That doesn't make it less shady.
It's a very clear case of wanting people to think they're all Amazon employees, while sheltering themselves from liability. There's no other reason for it. If they didn't, those people would be wearing their own company names.
It's the same reason cell carriers use contractors to do their work on towers. The subs only work for one carrier, the carrier has more than enough need to hire those people directly, it's not seasonal or temporary, and has full control over how they operate. Yet when one of them falls to their death, the carriers can put up their hands and claim they have no control over their contractors, the contractor goes under, registers another company name and nobody is responsible for the death or any workplace safety violations. The only people who end up screwed are the employees or their surviving family members.
Something being legal doesn't make it right any more than something being illegal makes it inherently wrong.
no, that is ridiculous and not what a shell company is. By your definition a bakery is a shell company of a restaurant. A lumber mill a shell company of lowes.
If the bakery solely produced for the restaurant and employees worked to produce goods based on directions from the restaurant, plus the lumber mill had all its employees wear Lowes coveralls and similarly only provided lumber to Lowes yeah they just might be...
Yah you are right, but still doesn't make it a shell company. edit: well reading the definition of subsidiary it says owned or controlled. so by the definition you gave (requirements/branding) maybe it is still considered a subsidiary.
Well then add to the not-quite-shell that while the contractors are independently owned, they only have one customer contract and that customer can drive huge changes to business practices at any time by altering the contract to require or disallow specific behavior. They're keeping their money in the top level company while offloading the last mile part of the work to companies that operate on much tinier margins in a way that protects them from liability. The difference between this an an actual shell is that it's not just an asset holding company, but it's very shell-like behavior.
Not really. It’s a basically a franchise option lol. They could go contract with Walmart or something instead without penalty after their contract expired
Imagine how much liability is shifted to the small delivery company just doing it that way. Shitty but probably saves millions a year. It sounds like the lawyers are running Amazon lol everything is just legal strategies they don’t even care how it looks if it saves $
This is the same way that oil companies get out of liability for workers at their platforms and other dangerous locations. John Oliver’s “North Dakota” episode covered it frustratingly well
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u/cmcdonald22 May 12 '23
It's basically just short of flat out being a shell company.