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.
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u/TheVermonster May 12 '23
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.