Amazon may have pledged to raise its US company-wide minimum wage to $15 per hour, but the other shoe dropped:  The e-commerce mega-giant is eliminating monthly bonuses and stock awards for warehouse workers and other hourly employees.

Most of the workers who stand to lose have been working for Amazon for more than two years, and have been earning close to US$15 an hour before the raise. 

One of the programs being eliminated is called Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) awards, under which full-time warehouse workers usually receive two or three shares each year after a two-year vesting period.  Since Amazon stock is now trading in the neighborhood of US$2,000, that is a substantial perquisite, especially for those who earned shares when they were trading at a lower rate. 

Monthly bonuses, called Variable Compensation Pay (VCP), are also on the chopping block.  The average Amazon worker gets $1,800 to $3,000 a year through the VCP program, and others get as much as 8 percent of their monthly income this way.  VCP is most effective for workers during the busy holiday shipping season when they work more hours; some are bitter that this valuable program is disappearing just before Christmas 2018.

And then there are the workers who were already getting more than $15 per hour before this week's announcement:  They'll lose of the the above, but will get a pay raise of an extra $1 per hour.

HR consultants say that a higher starting wage is better for recruiting workers than the incentive programs.  Amazon claims the hourly raises will more than compensate for the eliminated perqs.