A few months ago Bernie Sanders was protesting Disney's wages and Disney eventually adhered to his demands (essentially). Next up was Amazon and I was fairly convinced Mr. Bezos would do the same. I hadn't been working in my actual field and I thought a raise was coming to Amazon so what the hell, in the midst of all the bad press Amazon was getting... I decided to apply. I got the job as a picker here in Canada. We were hired at $14.25 and on the first or second day I told my fellow new hires that the reason I applied was because we were going to get a raise because of Bernie and I wanted to see how much it was. Anyway, I was monitoring the news of course and the next week I remember seeing Amazon clapback at Bernie's criticism with a blog post:

"Senator Sanders continues to make inaccurate and misleading accusations against Amazon... In addition to highly competitive wages and a climate controlled, safe workplace, Amazon provides employees with a comprehensive benefit package including health insurance, disability insurance, retirement savings plans, and company stock. The company also offers up to 20 weeks of paid leave and innovative benefits such as LeaveShare and RampBack,... etc"

I wondered if this meant Bezos wasn't going to give the raise. But surprisingly the next day, two days after the blog post there was an abrupt and surprise meeting in the lunch room. They had a quick powerpoint presentation showing how all the new hires were getting a raise to $15.50... (and I forget the other raises) they also made sure to go over our VCP to remind us of how good we had it with all the perks. I was surprised that in the US the raise wasn't mentioned at all until after one full month. (Oct 1st) I'm curious did people in the US hear about the raise in a lunch meeting or was it from Bezos making the announcement?

To be fair I thought it was already a decent place to work, at least in Canada... but I certainly couldn't speak for the US employees.