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WaPo Writer Tells Jeff Bezos To Pay His Employees Better Wages In HuffPo Op-Ed

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Amber Randall Civil Rights Reporter
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A Washington Post metro writer called on his boss Jeff Bezos to pay his employees better wages in a Friday Huffington Post op-ed.

WaPo writer Fredrick Kunkle argued that Bezos, who bought WaPo in 2013, needs to focus on making sure his employees are compensated properly.

“But as with other multi-billionaires, Bezos should remember that his vast wealth came in part from labor, and he should do more to share that wealth with workers. As the owner of an institution that’s critical to democracy, he should go out of his way to set a tone of progressive stewardship toward employees in all his businesses,” Kunkle wrote.

Kunkle pointed to Bezos’s decision to cut employees’ retirement benefits two years ago and a subsequent battle for part-time employees to keep their health insurance as reasons Bezos is unconcerned about his employees.

“And it almost overshadowed Bezos’ demand for the right to cancel everyone’s health insurance and his push to take it away from part-time employees,” Kunkle wrote. “Only by making sacrifices was the Post’s union able to maintain health insurance for part-timers — whose cost of coverage was about what the Post spent to send its publisher to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.”

Kunkle argued that while Bezos seemed to like being the reason for WaPo’s current success, he is also hurting his employees by being too “laissez faire” with his employees and their benefits.

“He seems to be enjoying his newfound acclaim as the Post’s savior while displaying a laissez faire attitude to the financial well-being of its employees — especially those who do not have a famous byline but who make its journalism possible by copy-editing stories, driving circulation trucks, mining social media or selling ads,” Kunkle wrote.

Bezos bought WaPo in 2013 for $250 million when the newspaper was struggling; with Bezos at the helm, the outlet boosted its traffic and revenue.

Jeff Bezos did not return The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment in time for publication.

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