Amazon’s $2-an-hour bonus pay for frontline workers will end in June

Amazon will extend its $2 an hour hazard pay for warehouse workers of in the U.S. through the end of May, but the wage hike will end at the beginning of June. Workers currently making $17 an hour working due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic will go back to making $15 per hour at the start of the month, Recode first reported. “We’re going to do one more extension on it and push it out until the end of the month,” Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations, told Recode. When asked why the wage hike would be ending in June, or whether the company thought that the risks presented by the coronavirus pandemic would be lessened in a few weeks, an Amazon spokesperson told Digital Trends they were also extending double overtime pay in the U.S. and Canada and “providing flexibility with leave of absence options.” “We continue to see heavy demand during this difficult time and the team is doing incredible work for our customers and the community,” spokesman Timothy Carter said in an email. In a statement to Digital Trends, Amazon warehouse worker Monica Moody said she was glad Amazon was listening to worker demands for more hazard pay, but it wasn’t enough. “Let’s be real: two weeks of extra pay isn’t close to what we need,” Moody said through the Athena Coalition, a conglomerate of social justice groups lobbying for better pay and conditions for Amazon workers. “We are literally watching each other get sick every day, and it’s not slowing down. “At a minimum, hazard pay should be extended for the entire length of this pandemic,” Moody continued. “If we are putting our lives at risk to pack and deliver Amazon packages, we deserve to be paid for it.” Amazon first announced it would institute this wage hike in mid-March, as well as hire 100,000 new full- and part-time workers across the country, as the online retail giant was ramping up shipping. The company said that it would institute these wage hikes through the end of April, and the later twice extended the policy to ultimately last through the end of May. At the time when Amazon first made the announcement, the country was shutting down and life was moving inside and online as the U.S. went into quarantine due to the spread of COVID-19. The subsequent increase in ordering volumes also meant increased demands on workers, who circulated an open letter last March to CEO Jeff Bezos demanding better worker protections, not just more pay. Bezos has been under pressure on several sides from his workers, especially in regard to community health and climate change.
Audi is currently holding cars that arrived after the tariffs took effect, on April 3, in U.S. ports. But it still has around 37,000 vehicles in its U.S. inventory, which should be able to meet demand for about two months, according to Reuters.
Automakers on average hold enough cars to meet U.S. demand for about three months, according to Cox Automotive.
Audi should be particularly affected by the tariffs: The Q5, its best-selling model in the U.S., is produced in Mexico, while other models, such as the A3, A4, and A6 are produced in Germany.
Holding shipments is obviously a temporary measure to buy time for Audi and parent company Volkswagen. If tariffs stay in place, vehicle prices would likely have to go up accordingly, unless some production is shifted to the U.S. Volkswagen already has a plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is planning a new plant in South Carolina. That latter plant, however, isn’t expected to be operational until 2027 and is currently dedicated to building electric vehicles for VW’s Scout Motors brand.
Other global automakers have also taken drastic measures in response to Trump’s tariffs. Jaguar Land Rover on April 5 said it is pausing shipments of its its UK-made cars to the United States this month. The British sports-luxury vehicle maker noted that the U.S. market accounts for nearly a quarter of its global sales, led by the likes of Range Rover Sports, Defenders, and Jaguar F-PACE.
And on April 3, Nissan, the biggest Japanese vehicle exporter to the United States, announced it will stop taking new U.S. orders for two Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs, the QX50 and QX55. On X, Wong unveiled an unreleased version of Waymo’s privacy policy that suggests the California-based company is preparing to use data from its robotaxis, including interior cameras, to train generative AI models and to offer targetted ads.
“Waymo may share data to improve and analyze its functionality and to tailor products, services, ads, and offers to your interests,” the Waymo’s unreleased privacy statement reads. “You can opt out of sharing your information with third parties, unless it’s necessary to the functioning of the service.”
Asked for comments about the unreleased app update, Waymo told The Verge that it contained “placeholder text that doesn’t accurately reflect the feature’s purpose”.
Waymo’s AI-models “are not designed to use this data to identify individual people, and there are no plans to use this data for targeted ads,” spokesperson Julia Ilina said.
Waymo’s robotaxis, which are operating on the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin, do contain onboard cameras that monitor riders. But Ilina says these are mainly used to train AI models for safety, finding lost items, check that in-car rules are followed, and to improve the service.
The new feature is still under development and offers riders an opportunity to opt out of data collection, Ilina says.