Amazon ups the pittance it pays, purely for optics, and because it's still lower than what it should be paying. Does this all while attempting to further vendor lock its employees in its massive monopoly with an attempt to bring back company stores as a "benefit"

Lol, grocery discount is at Whole Foods. A store I'm sure their workers could totally afford to shop at.

Grocery and banking, sounds like the old company towns that drove the people to fight back and start unions in the first place

Then they'll offer corporate housing. Soon you'll be paying them to live there out of your wages. Those will go away then you'll just be working for your necessities directly, no pay. But they'll provide food, housing, basic necessities. It'll be fine. Right? Maybe they'll setup big crops for us to harvest.

This isn't going anywhere good.

They definitely should pay their employees more, but I'd be wary of any 'good tidings' coming from Amazon in the current political climate, this seems like another step towards Technocrat/Oligarch control over the citizens disguised as something else.

Does anyone want to do more work than me? Because I'd be curious who counts as an "employee", but not so curious as to dig.

Like, are all of the people who pick things at warehouses employees, or just a select few? Drivers, etc?

In the announcement, Amazon said it was investing more than $1.5 billion to increase pay for eligible core-operations workers. 

In 2025, Amazon reported $717 billion in revenue.

How gracious of them to share 0.2% of the spoils.