Amazon Gives Workers Insulting Raise Before Replacing Them With Robots

"We bust our asses in here bruh and all we get if FIFTY CENTS! You all make so much money...this is sick," one angry worker posted on company's internal message board

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Amazon, the world’s fifth largest company with a total value of 2.4 trillion dollars, is giving the workers it exploits and abuses a raise…as it prepares to toss them to the streets in favor of robots.

Of course, the mainstream media is reporting Amazon’s pay raise and expanded benefits in a positive light—eh hem, I’m sure it has nothing to do with Amazon being a major advertiser on most networks and newspapers—but the actual reality is quite bleak.

“JFK8 workers got a raise of 50 cents which they’re not very happy about,” a worker at the massive Staten Island warehouse—which for three years Amazon has illegally refused to negotiate a contract with after they won the company’s first unionized workforce—told Status Coup.

Amazon Labor Union, the union who represents JFK8 workers and joined with Teamsters in 2024, slammed the company for the pathetic “crumbs” it provided to workers on social media.

“Every year before Prime Day, Amazon dangles a tiny raise to try to shut us up. At today’s JFK8 all-hands meeting, a Senior Operations Manager bragged about Amazon’s “compensation philosophy” — base pay, benefits, step-plan raises — then announced a 50 CENT cost-of-living raise. Amazon’s “compensation philosophy” = record profits for them, poverty wages for us. Amazon thinks 50¢ will buy our silence. We built this company. We create Prime Day profits. We will not be silenced. We will not be bought off. We will fight until we win a real living wage.”

The warehouse, for which Status Coup reported ON-THE-GROUND for a year covering workers’ union fight before their historic victory, is the size of 15 football fields; workers have routinely fainted during the summer months due to inadequate air conditioning; there is also a constant buzz of ambulances to and from the warehouse as workers are hauled out due to a variety of injuries.

And as Amazon Labor Union President Connor Spence explained during our coverage of workers’ 2024 NYC Christmas strike (watch clip below), the Staten Island warehouse—one of Amazon’s most profitable nationwide—has a stunning 150 percent worker turnover rate due to the company hiring and firing workers so rapidly (to avoid paying good full-time wages and benefits).

“Every employee who is brought in now is brought in as a temporary employee,” Spence told Status Coup as workers striked in the freezing cold days before Christmas. “You make less money, you get no benefits; during our union election, one of the biggest talking points was ‘we’re such a great place to work, who else gives you benefits day one…so we won the election and then they got rid of that. So now you can be a temporary employee for the first year of your employment. You make less, you have no benefits, if a family member dies and you can’t even put in for a bereavement leave, you’re treated like a second-class citizen.”

Another worker complained on the company’s internal messaging board over a paltry 50 cent raise.

“We bust our asses in here bruh and all we get if FIFTY CENTS! You all make so much money...this is sick," the worker wrote.

Making matters even sicker: Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy recently foreshadowed replacing these same workers with robots and AI. “Like with every technical transformation, there will be fewer people doing some of the jobs that the technology actually starts to automate,” Jassy told CNBC.

And in a memo to workers essentially outlining that robots will eventually be replacing them, Jassy added insult to injury, telling them to…”be curious about AI.”

Translated: be curious, from your couch—if you can still afford one—after we lay you off in favor of assembling a robot army to deliver yoga mats in 2 hours to suburban moms (well the ones still employed).

All of this is occurring within the broader context of an accelerating economic hunger games—where workers and the diminishing middle class suffer from the final battle scars of neoliberalism and corporate greed run amok. See below:

• U.S. billionaires reached a record breaking $7.6 trillion in wealth as of September 2025, an increase of $4.7 trillion in the less than eight years. Most of that wealth hasn’t been taxed and won’t be taxed under our current system.

• Since 2000, average rent has increased by 139.4% compared to 112.3% for median full-time wages, meaning the growth in rents has outpaced wage growth by roughly 24.1%, per StatisticUrban:

• The bottom 60% of U.S. households don't make enough money to afford a "minimal quality of life," according to a new analysis in May.

• Priced out of traditional housing, more Americans are living in RVs.

• U.S. homelessness hit a record high last year (and the number is likely an undercount).

• A U.S. household now needs to earn $114,000 annually to afford a median-priced home.

• U.S. foreclosures are rising, up 14 percent in May from the same period the year before.

• Billionaire wealth surged three times faster in 2024; the world is now on pace for at least five trillionaires within a decade.

• AI is replacing entry-level jobs and top AI executives warn of 10-20 percent overall unemployment in the next five years.

• Mortgage applications are down 34% from pre-pandemic levels. And is even worse than 2008.

• Less than half of Americans with jobs say they have a sense of financial well-being.

Despite all of this, the mainstream media—and frankly most independent media—barely cover, much less acknowledge, the worsening economic abyss ravaging most working people.

Status Coup will continue to investigate and dig into these critically important stories. If you’re a worker who has been laid off, facing layoffs, or experiencing some type of worker exploitation, please reach out with your story at info@statuscoup.com

Status Coup is currently LEADING THE CHARGE among independent outlets covering the AI apocalypse headed for workers’ jobs and livelihoods. Please support our INDEPENDENT REPORTING for as low as $5 bucks a month.