Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren slam Amazon-owned Whole Foods'

[Uncle Joe]

plan to cut medical benefits for part-time workers

(snip)

"Your ability to get insulin or see a doctor shouldn't depend on how generous a billionaire is feeling today," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Saturday in a likely reference to Jeff Bezos, the billionaire CEO of Amazon. "Employers stripping healthcare, either by taking it away or worsening it, is just part of the casual dehumanization of working people to increase returns for the rich."

(snip)

"Your ability to get health care should not be dependent on the whims of your employer," Sanders tweeted on Friday. "It should be guaranteed under Medicare for All."

(snip)

Warren chimed in on Saturday, tweeting, "Jeff Bezos committed to providing his employees 'important benefits' — right before Whole Foods cut health care benefits for hundreds of employees. This is exactly why we need #MedicareForAll."

(snip)

"Amazon's plan to cut healthcare for these part-time employees is one of Jeff Bezos' most brazen attacks on the quality of jobs at Whole Foods and the communities they support," UFCW president Marc Perrone said in a statement. "Too many workers today are already working two to three jobs just to get the hours and benefits they need, and these cuts by Jeff Bezos just made it harder for them. Grocery jobs should be good jobs and one job should be enough to provide for yourself and your family."

https://www.businessinsider.com/aoc-bernie-sanders-whole-foods-cuts-to-medical-benefits-2019-9

[DrToast]

1. Don't agree

Don’t blame corporations for the failure of the government to take care of its people. Corporations shouldn’t be responsible for providing health insurance.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

2. 🍿

[DrToast]

3. You disagree?

What other countries rely on corporations to provide health insurance?

[Uncle Joe]

5. Just for the record.

That's precisely what Medicare for All would do, it would all but eliminate corporations from providing "health" insurance coverage with the exception being elective cosmetic surgery.

Don’t blame corporations for the failure of the government to take care of its people. Corporations shouldn’t be responsible for providing health insurance.

[DrToast]

6. I understand that. But it's not Amazon's fault we can't get our shit together.

If you don’t think corporations should be responsible for providing health insurance (and why would you?), then you can’t blame them for not doing so.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Holding Amazon or any major corporation publicly accountable when they slash

their workers' "health" insurance coverage benefits only reinforces the argument to pass Medicare for All, de facto becoming just more evidence to do so.

[DrToast]

13. If they're not responsible for it, why would you hold them accountable?

[beastie boy]

4. Don't know about AOC and Warren, but this is pretty hypocritical of Bernie.

Amazon is #3 contributor to Bernie's campaign. (https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/contributors?id=N00000528)

I would love to see how these candidates might respond to calls to stop taking contributions from Amazon.

[George II]

9. Ooops.

[DrToast]

10. Employees of corporations donating is not corporations donating

Are you suggesting that if someone works at Amazon they don’t have a right to donate to their candidate of choice?

[beastie boy]

15. If someone employed by Amazon wants to make her $27 donation to Bernie, more power to her!

But I am not clear on whether this will count as an individual or a corporate donation. My guess is the former.

And if this is the case, then the three candidates in question should have no problem rejecting donations from Amazon proper.

[DrToast]

18. Amazon proper can't donate

It’s right there in the link:

At the federal level, the organizations themselves did not donate, as they are prohibited by law from doing so.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

14. "Amazon is a #3 contributor to Bernie's campaign." Well, that's just patently not true.

People that work at Amazon might be more accurate. Maybe they actually want health insurance from the government that doesn't suck?

[beastie boy]

16. Then Open Secrets is a patently untrue web site.

They list Amazon as #3 contributor to Bernie without comment. If you can cite a study that divides this source of donations into corporate and individual, showing how much comes from each, I would be grateful.

[DrToast]

17. "Without comment" uhhhhh...

It’s right there in the link you provided:

The money came from the organizations' PACs; their individual members, employees or owners; and those individuals' immediate families.

Also this:

At the federal level, the organizations themselves did not donate, as they are prohibited by law from doing so.

So the article you linked to disproves your assertion that Amazon is contributing to Sanders.

[beastie boy]

24. Point well taken.

And while the article I linked to doesn't disprove my assertion (it list the corporations' PACs as a donor included in the total, and we know exactly why corporations have PACs), I looked into more data, and It shows Bernie didn't take donations from PACS. This leaves members, employees and owners, along with their family members, as donors. Without going into Jeff Bezos', his family's, members of the Board, top management's and their families' relative contributions, I will concede that the company's total effect on Bernie's contributions is not as significant as it first appears.

[Cuthbert Allgood]

19. Do you even read, bro?

This table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2020 cycle. The money came from the organizations' PACs; their individual members, employees or owners; and those individuals' immediate families. At the federal level, the organizations themselves did not donate, as they are prohibited by law from doing so. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

Emphasis is THEIRS.

In case you didn't see the other part. AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL, THE ORGANIZATIONS THEMSELVES DID NOT DONATE.

Why, you ask? BECAUSE THEY ARE PROHIBITED BY LAW FROM DOING SO.

You made the claim. You come up with the specifics.

[beastie boy]

25. Yes, I read, but apparently not very carefully.

Look at Reply 24.

While generally speaking there is nothing patently untrue in my statement, Bernie's case is an exception. Taking donations from an Amazon PAC would have been the same as taking donations from Amazon, but Bernie didn't do it. This still leaves Amazon's top brass on the hook, but I have conceded that it doesn't amount to much.

[athena]

20. This is a right-wing argument.

Please don't help propagate the right-wing idea that a company's employees donating to a candidate is the same as that the company donating to that candidate.

This is getting really ridiculous and ugly. DU members spent the entire 2016 primary attacking Hillary, and we ended up with Trump winning the presidency. We don't know who our candidate is going to be, so please, let's stop these attacks against our own.

[BlueMississippi]

30. lol .. never let facts come in the way of dreams and slogans... nt

[corbettkroehler]

38. As Usual, Facts Viewed Through A Backwards Mirror

Those contributions are from the AMAZON EMPLOYEES for whom Sanders helped secure a living wage with his Stop Bezos Act, MONTHS before he announced his run for the 2020 nomination.

http://fortune.com/2018/09/05/bernie-sanders-stop-bezos-act

These contributions are the EXACT OPPOSITE from corporate donations. They originate with the workers Bezos exploits.

[madaboutharry]

7. I think a health care system that is dependent on one's employer is immoral.

But that is the reality for many Americans. Until that changes for good, a man who is worth 131 Billion dollars has a hard argument to make in cutting heath care from part-time employees.

[George II]

8. The devil is in the details. Did any of those three actually look into this?

[BlueMississippi]

31. Of course not

they found an issue to exploit and went for it

[thesquanderer]

12. re: "Grocery jobs should be...enough to provide for yourself and your family."

If you bag groceries, should you be paid enough to support yourself, your spouse, and however many kids you might have? You know, maybe not.

[athena]

23. Why not?

If you look up what the top 25 hedge-fund CEO's make every year, and divide it by the number of hours in a year, you will find that they make around $200,000 to $400,000 per hour. Yes, that's more in one hour than a typical doctor makes in a year. And it's assuming that they actually work 40-hour weeks and never take any vacation.

In that context, it's disturbing that someone would have a problem with a person bagging groceries being able to make a living. I hope for your sake that you will never be in a position where bagging groceries is the only job you can find. It can happen to the best of us. You may, indeed, be in that position very soon if Trump's policies push us into an economic depression.

[thesquanderer]

26. Executive pay is a red herring in this case.

When you're talking about huge companies, you could take the company's CEO's pay, cut it down to zero, divide the rest among all the employees, and it STILL wouldn't assure every bagger (or that company's equivalent) enough to support a family, or even enough to make any real difference at all. See https://www.aol.com/2013/08/15/ceos-pay-slash-workers-benefit/
The numbers there are out of date, but the concept is the same.

To answer your "why not" question, I'll adapt from my post in a similar thread a while back:

If you are working 40 hours a week, you should definitely be able to earn enough to live on. But that does not necessarily mean it should be enough for you, your spouse/partner, and your kids to live on. And what if you have 6 or more kids? (I know people who do.) Where do you draw the line as to how many kids (and maybe spouse) a 40 hour job should automatically support?

A single person working 40 hours should be able to live on his or her pay. If there are kids, and you're in a low paying job, maybe you have to take an additional part time job, and/or maybe the spouse/partner has to work too, to earn a sufficient wage to support everyone.

This reminds me of the posts about how there are few if any places in the country where someone earning minimum wage can afford a 2 bedroom apartment. Well, you know, that's why they make one bedroom apartments. And studios. And why people rent rooms or share their 2 BR apartments. A *minimum* wage does not correlate with providing everyone with their *optimum* living situation.

I don't see as a given that a minimum wage job should automatically support a family of whatever size. And this might be where it makes sense for government assistance to come into play, as opposed to giving every single (non-married, no kids) worker a minimum salary that comfortably supports a family of 3, 4, 5, 6, or more.

So re: "it's disturbing that someone would have a problem with a person bagging groceries being able to make a living." My feeling is that a bagger should be able to make a living that supports himself, but not necessarily the whole Walton clan.

[athena]

28. Your message is a red herring.

No one has said that someone working at a grocery store should be able to support a family of arbitrary size. The reality is that it doesn't even support a family of one; i.e., the grocery-store worker herself.

If you're going to rail against grocery-store workers wanting to support families of six or more, you might as well rail against, you know, Black women who buy Cadillacs on their welfare checks. Neither situation exists in reality. And if it did, it wouldn't be a problem. I'd much rather allow the odd woman on welfare to buy a Cadillac than force hundreds of other women who need help to lose their homes and go hungry. And I'd much rather make sure that those five children, who did nothing to deserve their situation, have enough to eat than worry, like you, that grocery-store workers aren't intrinsically worthy enough to deserve to have a family of six.

You have also misunderstood my comment about CEOs making $200,000 - $400,000 an hour. I never said that they would be able to pay their workers more if they made less (although they would). My comment was about the obscenity of a person (on a liberal message board, no less) having a problem with a grocery-store worker who makes less than $8 an hour when, in the same city, a hedge-fund CEO is making hundreds of thousands of dollars an hour. The grocery-store worker is on his/her feet all day and works a lot harder than the CEO. It is cruel, disgustingly cruel, for anyone to sit in front of their computer and argue that the grocery-store clerk is unworthy of making a living wage. The fact that you're bothered by the hypothetical grocery-store worker with five or more children, but not by the all-too-real white-male CEO making more than 25,000 times as much, says a great deal about you while saying nothing about the actual world we live in.

[thesquanderer]

29. You're putting words in my mouth and turning it into a personal attack.

You've made straw man arguments, and then knocked them down. So? You didn't address what I said, and attacked me personally for things I didn't.

No one has said that someone working at a grocery store should be able to support a family of arbitrary size. The reality is that it doesn't even support a family of one; i.e., the grocery-store worker herself.

Of course she should be able to support herself. My post was, as I said, a reaction to the part in the OP where it said "Grocery jobs should be good jobs and one job should be enough to provide for yourself and your family." So exactly how many people should a single minimum wage job support?

If you're going to rail against grocery-store workers wanting to support families of six or more, you might as well rail against, you know, Black women who buy Cadillacs on their welfare checks. Neither situation exists in reality. And if it did, it wouldn't be a problem. I'd much rather allow the odd woman on welfare to buy a Cadillac than force hundreds of other women who need help to lose their homes and go hungry. And I'd much rather make sure that those five children, who did nothing to deserve their situation, have enough to eat than worry, like you, that grocery-store workers aren't intrinsically worthy enough to deserve to have a family of six.

Yes, families of 6 where the breadwinner is unemployed or working at a low-paying job DO exist. And luckily, we have things like SNAP and other programs to help them.

I'm not railing against grocery workers or against people who have lots of kids. But a minimum wage job should not necessarily be expected to support a family of 2, 3, 6, whatever size. And the choice is not to either let them starve or pay every minimum wage worker enough for a family of six. There's nothing wrong with paying enough so someone can support themselves, and provide assistance to those who need more.

So hopefully you see that I said nothing at all that would justify your response, much less make it personal with a phrase like "like you."

My comment was about the obscenity of a person (on a liberal message board, no less) having a problem with a grocery-store worker who makes less than $8 an hour when

Putting words in my mouth. Where did I say I have no issue with people making less than $8 an hour? If it's not enough to support a single person (and it is not), then I have a problem with it.

anyone to sit in front of their computer and argue that the grocery-store clerk is unworthy of making a living wage. The fact that you're bothered by the hypothetical grocery-store worker with five or more children, but not by the all-too-real white-male CEO making more than 25,000 times as much, says a great deal about you

More personal attacks, again based on things I never said. I said cutting CEO pay would not solve the problem. I made no comment whatsoever on the CEO pay itself, which was not the topic at hand (though the fact that I'm supporting Warren, and supported Sanders in 2016, might give you a clue as to where I stand on that). I did say that any full time job should pay a living wage for the person doing it, and that is the topic at hand.

Now if you want to make the case that minimum wage should support, not just the person, but also his or her family, feel free to address that. Because that is the only point of contention. The rest is fiction you invented.

[BlueMississippi]

32. Who cares what CEOs make? Why begrudge their incomes? nt

[Wellstone ruled]

21. The die was casted years ago

with Amazon taking out Whole Foods. The hand writing was on the wall as to Amazon morphing into the Grocery Business.

Whole Foods was loaded with dept by a couple of Hedge Funds who needed to dump their Business because they had zero clue how to run it and they were running it into the ground. Just a damn cheap deal for Bezos and with his Accounting Model,talk about a gift.

Like wise for Super Value Foods. Several years ago the CEO thought he was the Guy who was going to build a monument onto himself as the King of Grocery Wholesale CEO's. Well,that was a Financial burn down with the purchase of the Albertson Company and paying three times true book value.

Again,Bezos saw opportunity to pick up the best run Wholesale Grocery Company in the USA for pennies on the dollar. Again Hedge Funds needed to dump something they had zero clue how to operate.

Wall Street will allow Bezos to destroy anything in his sites as long as it kills off Corporate financed Health and Welfare Benefits for his Employees.

[MichMan]

27. Are there a certain number of hours that qualifies part time employees for full benefits?

Amazon (Whole Foods) is probably an anomaly for providing them all along. I believe there are very few companies that do so.

[BlueMississippi]

33. All these people whining about Amazon or big companies

is like gnats circling a giant bull's tail.

They are annoying but they can't stop the bull.

Far far more people "vote" for Amazon daily by selling products on that platform and buying from it. Amazon is an extremely well-managed company and provides value to the consumers.

If you don't like Amazon, don't buy from their website -- find another. Simple. That is the American way.

The hypocrisy is glaring. BS sells books on Amazon and his campaign buys hundreds of thousands worth of "supplies" from Amazon. If you hate Amazon so much, please stop doing business with them.

[MichMan]

34. Should we also boycott every company for not providing full time benefits to all part time workers?

That would basically be nearly all of them.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

35. bUt bErNIe seLls bOoKs oN aMAzOn!

[George II]

36. Indeed he does, and he also sells them on Walmart's site, too.

[BlueMississippi]

37. Anything for money

and

"Do as I say ... ignore what I do."