Washington Amazon warehouse workers, get a pay bump

Over the years, Amazon has been criticized for the treatment of its warehouse and transportation workers. Long hours, low pay, no perks. Now Amazon has decided to change that story, (at least a little.) by investing almost, a billion dollars into their workforce. 

According to seattletimes.com,
‘The company said Wednesday that the average pay for a worker in Amazon’s vast logistics empire will increase to $23 an hour this year. The average total compensation, including benefits, will pencil out to over $30 an hour. Full-time employees will see about a $1,600 per year pay bump.’ 

The highest percentage of employees at Amazon are warehouse workers. Total employment around the world, at about 1.55 million individuals, makes them the largest private employer in the world. 

Let's play a little math game. 

If Amazon invests 1 billion dollars into their employees and they have 1.55 million employees. According to my calculator, each employee would get about $645 and change. (I could be wrong; I never excelled at math.) Add to that the cost of lowering insurance prices for individual employees and it's not necessarily as big a pay bump as Amazon claims. 

Keep in mind it takes a lot of money to positively impact the income of 1.55 million people. $1 billion is a lot of money, my mind boggles at the number of zeros. 

The changes to Amazon's entry level health plan in some ways are even more significant. Starting next year, they will be lowering the cost of their health plan to $5 a week with $5 copays. To my way of thinking, that's way more important than the higher wage. Those numbers dropped the cost by about 34% a week and will drop the copay cost by about 87% for primary care, non-specialist visits, and mental health. 

Just one more bit of context. 

Amazon is paying their warehouse workers more than what Walmart's warehouse workers are receiving. 

Amazon bumps pay, lowers health insurance costs for warehouse workers | The Seattle Times 
Amazon workers are striking at multiple facilities. Here’s what you should know | The Seattle Times 
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