Amazon Warehouse Workers Get Free Prime Memberships

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 19, 6:50AM EDT

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Amazon Warehouse Workers Get Free Prime Memberships — © Courtesy of Amazon Prime

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Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction) is boosting its starting pay and offering workers new benefits.
One of those new worker benefits is a free membership to Amazon Prime.
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Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced it would increase the average starting pay of warehouse workers to $22 an hour, an hourly increase of $1.50. However, Amazon said the total average was actually $29 because of benefits.

The company added, “as one of the largest private employers in the country (we now have more than 800,000 people in these roles across the U.S.), this pay increase equals a total investment of more than $2.2 billion in our team.” All warehouse workers will benefit from the change. However, each one will need to decide which comp numbers best apply to them based on the new plans.

In an odd move, workers will also get a free membership to Amazon Prime, which costs consumers $139 a year. Prime members get free delivery on many orders, special sales of goods and services, and the Prime video service, which competes with services like Netflix. If workers leave, they cannot take this benefit with them. The company said, “Hourly team members in the U.S. will get Prime at no additional cost for as long as they are a part of the Amazon team.”

One study shows that Prime members spend an average of $1,400 a year on Amazon compared to $600 for non-Prime members. That means the workers with this benefit may also increase their shopping at Amazon.com. If so, the company may profit from the new worker compensation plan. Their shopping may offset the amount of their new pay packages.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.