"Sanders plans to introduce a bill in the Senate on Sept. 5 that would impose a 100% tax on government benefits received by workers at companies with 500 or more employees. For example, if an Amazon employee receives $300 in food stamps, Amazon would be taxed $300." Thousands of Amazon workers get food stamps. Bernie Sanders wants Amazon to pay for them by Abha Bhattarai, The Washington Post Aug 24, 2018
Before we dive in, lets look at a chart:
Established: on average, big employers pay more.
So what does it take to qualify for food stamps (aka SNAP)? For one person, a gross monthly income of $1,287, which is about $7.50 per hour, 40 hours a week. But the average wage for an Amazon warehouse worker (and related jobs) is around $13 an hour and that doesn’t count the roughly $1000 a month in perks like health, vision and dental insurance, retirement savings plan, up to 20 weeks of paid leave, company stock, and skills training for in-demand jobs. What gives?
What gives is that the outfit that produced the Amazon food stamp data - New Food Economy - did not look at whether the Amazon workers receiving food stamps were part-time or full-time, or even if they were working for Amazon during the same period they received food stamps. Don't believe me? Check their own report here then.
Maybe these workers wanted to work full-time but Amazon wouldn't let them? Note that part-time Amazon employees receive benefits, so the company doesn't save money by denying them full-time work. So why are these employees working part-time? Because most of them choose to.
Yeah, that's a big claim - but I base it on our very own Bureau of Labor Statistics, which came out with a nice report on part-time workers earlier this year, summarizing findings from 2016. Some highlights:
Slightly more than three-quarters of part-time workers worked part time for non-economic reasons, meaning they did not want to work full-time.
Of these "voluntary" part-time workers, 79% wanted part-time work due to family or personal obligations, childcare problems, poor health or medical disability, school/training, retirement, or Social Security limitations on earnings.
Two-thirds of voluntary part-time workers were women, mostly due to family and childcare obligations.
Should an employer really pay for the government benefits employees get because they choose to work part-time only? How might such a requirement affect the employer's policy about hiring part-time workers? Who would be hurt the most here?