Amazon has made a major announcement this past week stating that they will be increasing the minimum pay for their employees to fifteen dollars per hour. This was a major leap for the company who has met criticisms time and time again for their business practices leading to lost jobs. The decision came directly from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos immediately following reports of rather low median wages for Amazon employees.

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This change will affect all part-time and temporarily assigned Amazon employees and it marks a major victory, not only for Amazon’s employee unions but for unions nationwide. The groups were putting immense pressure on the company to raise wages to meet the rising costs of living in many US cities. Initially top executives of Amazon were resistant to the change leading to several years of strikes and protests aimed at higher wages. The announcement from Jeff Bezos was a surprise to most as such an abrupt change is typically unheard of. Such an increase would usually be rolled out over the course of a few years to limit the losses to the company and ensure all operations remained intact. However, Amazon is a special case due to their immense size. Economists as well as other executives have speculated that this was a plan in the making for some time but came just as a report of Amazon’s wage rates and employment statistics was released. It was seen as a well thought out strategy to minimize negativity from the public and sustain stock prices. It seems to have worked after numerous articles were released supporting the decision and the ethical arguments behind it.

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The thriving company has been given the reputation as a job killer for their business practices but it appears that is turning around. Their web shopping accessibility has been blamed for putting some major physical retailers like Toys R Us out of business. This seems to be the next logical step in retail evolution but because Amazon has done so well, they were given the bad reputation. Also, the technological aspect of Amazon has created concern for employees and competing employers. The company focuses on innovation and part of that is creating autonomous procedures for conducting businesses. The best examples of this are Amazon’s well-known drone delivery plan and their convenience store built around the idea of having as few human workers as possible. You may see robot workers as a wonderful step into the future but people are concerned that this will take jobs away from those who need them. In spite of these accusations, Amazon has a growing work force of over half a million employees with plans to expand. They are currently allowing cities to bid on the location for their second headquarters to be built. Such a development is set to host 50,000 skilled employees which could aid the economy of whichever city is decided upon.

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Amazon is not the first business to raise wages and surely they aren’t the last. Arguments have been made for both sides of the issue but mainly it comes down to the cost of living around the country and what is truly acceptable to be paying a low or unskilled employee. There is the ethical argument that a company bringing in billions a year can afford to give their workers a decent wage while giving top executives millions. There is also a group of economists that argue raising the minimum wage nationwide would lead to a short period of healthy spending, thus spurring the economy. After this, however, inflation would occur as all retailers and transportation costs would rise to meet the standard of costs established by a fifteen dollar per hour wage. Amazon has made a statement with this decision and undoubtedly others will follow.