There are a couple mentions but no top comments:
Amazon has installed a mailbox at their facility, this mail piece specifically says to use it.
AND this mail piece says 'BE DONE by 3/1' when workers have until the end of the month to vote (context: amazon must stop anti-union mandatory meetings etc during voting).
This could be a legal violation & is a big deal. I think at a minimum breaks the spirit of the NLRB mail-in voting ruling.
HN seems to consider big tech = oppressive surveillance. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
This is also the latest in a long list of extreme tactics some aren't mentioned in this article. To name a few:
Amazon also fired an activist who was speaking out. It's been reported Amzn has been penalizing pro-union employees with baseless and unfair management penalties/'strikes' and purposeful last minute over-time demands as punishment. Digital surveillance. Management basically stalking associates in break rooms, asking if they are only there to organize and attorneys and consultants drawing graph person relationship research charts to map their employees. A big propaganda push online & a pretty successful press drive - most of these articles Amazon gets many inches of positive talking points.
Perhaps you are unaware that the Pinkertons have a long history of union busting behavior. The most infamous being their involvement in the 1892 Homestead Steel Strike.
Thanks I've spent more than a decade working with civil society groups including union organising. The comment was made to highlight that Pinkerton are working with Facebook (amongst others) thus Facebook may also be concerned about union organising. Esp with Pinkertons past record.
Thanks I've spent more than a decade working with civil society groups including labour organising ones. The comment was made to highlight that Pinkerton are working with Facebook (amongst others) thus Facebook may also be concerned about union organising. Esp with Pinkertons past record.
I wonder why multiple people read his comment as pro Pinkertons (pro AMZN etc.)
I read it as "Yep and Amazon are not the only large company that use them, so watch out! If Facebook employees ever want to unionize, Pinkertons might/will be sent after them too".
People read what they want to hear. I’ve posted comments that make it clear I support stuff, but because I (essentially) argued devil’s advocate, I was downvoted. I can only assume it’s because I’m supposedly showing sympathy to the other side (even if I’m not).
Ugh. Yes, that sucks. Benefit of the doubt, patience/curiosity to understand, and fair view are rare as supermodels with PhD's flying jet aircraft these days.
Up/down vote I think is too ambiguous: there ought to be an agree/disagree metric and a relevant-interesting/irrelevant-uninteresting one too. Maybe even get rid of displayed karma and simply vote on multiple properties (insightful, agreed, brave, well-reasoned, informative, primary source anecdote)
No, not pro-Pinkerton; not appreciating the historical infamy of the Pinkerton's. They are like lobbyists - true scum: tools of the rich harming people for money.
The comment was made to highlight that Pinkerton are working with Facebook (amongst others) thus Facebook may also be concerned about union organising. So watch out if you are trying. Esp with Pinkertons past record.
> Pinkerton are the corporate security company of choice for a lot of organisations...including Facebook
> I wonder why multiple people read his comment as pro Pinkertons
It was stated as a whataboutism, which is a defensive tactic.
If the point was to indicate that the Pinkertons are not unusual, then that would be the subject. Instead, it reads as "this is not unusual", which is incorrect, regardless of intent.
Author of comment here. No it wasn't stated as whataboutism. It was stated with the intent to highlight that Facebook uses Pinkerton so perhaps Facebook also has very deep concerns about union organising also. Especially as Pinkerton is historically well known for this sort of counter activity.
The core of the issue is that people don't believe a company that big would break the law so easily. In reality it's the opposite: When you're that big breaking the law becomes really easy because you have the strongest legal defence. Amazon won't see a single minute of court time for this.
To add to that, fines can and do bankrupt small businesses. I cannot remember the last time a big company went bankrupt by fines. Breaking the law poses existential threat to small businesses, not large enterprises.
Companies play a lot of games to minimize income for tax reasons. Allowing them do do the same with fines is unreasonable.
It’s actually fairly difficult to get an objective measurement of a companies size. Go by total sales and industries with high profit margins look much smaller. Go by number of employees and retail looks vastly larger than tech companies etc.
There's tens of thousands of publicly traded companies worldwide, and one company having some weird fluctuations for a period of a few days at a time is a tiny little rounding error. This is the exception that proves the rule. All the other metrics proposed by Retric have worse edge cases than this, which they pointed out.
Market cap has several issues. Most companies are private. The market cap is likely to tank before any major fine. Company size is a proxy for how much stuff their doing so a minor fine for an individual restaurant is wildly overkill applied all of McDonalds revenue.
Finally, it promotes using lots of subsidiaries to firewall risks from fines which adds a lot of pointless overhead to the economy.
I'm not saying it's perfect, I'm saying it's the best we have. What alternative are you suggesting? The problem of private companies applies to every metric you can think of, as none of those metrics are private!
I've been saying this for years. It's refreshing to see someone else hold the same opinion.
Having arbitrary amounts that don't scale is both bribery and slavery. A speeding ticket for example that cripples someone with low income for weeks is just the cost of doing business for someone with enough wealth. It's really not that far off from actual bribery.
I agree with this idea and think it should extend to personal fines like speeding tickets, but I can see large companies offshoring illegal work to small contracting companies or shell corporations.
This is why surveillance capitalists tried to rally the Valley against the GDPR: fines based on global income could be effective, which is unacceptable to companies used to treating breaking the law as a minor cost of doing business.
This is such an important point. And sadly it appears that they have been successful. The sentiment on GDPR in SV seems to be overwhelmingly negative, for all the wrong reasons I believe.
Actually the biggest issue I have is all the amateur having misconceptions about gdpr and inventing stupid rules, because of it. For example my daughters kindergarten decided they can't do a class photo anymore because of gdpr. Even as all parents agreed, we had to leave the property to make the photo. Funnily, my older daughter had a school picture taken that is even published in a book and distributed to all parents at the school.
On a committee recently we had a large argument if we could email some professors to nominate their PhD students for a price. We had one person very strongly arguing that we can't "because gdpr". Because of people like that many people think that they personally can't do things anymore that they were used to.
> The only people who hate GDPR are ad-industry parasites. To that I say: good riddance, and don't let starvation hurt too much on the way down.
Broad generalizations are nice, but my experience on HN shows that it’s also people who don’t understand the law. Complaints about cookie banners and popups that you’re powerless to stop as an American do exist.
Even in the EU anyone savvy enough gets a filter. A cookiebar isn't mandatory - ignoring it just means you don't want their "analytics" and "targeted advertisements" cookies. That should be the default. Cookiebars are a conscious choice by the companies in question, explicitly designed to annoy you. The fact that it does should make you hate the companies, not the law protecting your rights.
Speaking as a European in NA, I love the GDPR but it doesn't actually do much for us here. Many services are GDPR compliant but only for people living in GDPR relevant countries. That is very unfortunate.
they just claim they are "job creators" and if they were fined it would force them to lay people off... then magically the public is behind them again because no one wants someone to lose a job. its a vicious circle that only benefits ultra large corps.
And then everyone unironically agrees how terrible it is that the overworked and underpaid warehouse worker won't be able to feed his family anymore. Like these jobs were ever doing a good job of feeding anyone on the $30k they pay.
As well as penalties diminishes as size grows. A small company might go bankrupt by a medium to large lawsuit or a large fine, while a large company can easily weather it off.
If a small to medium company invests heavily in something illegal and they are forced to stop with all the lost revenue that follows it would be devastating. For a large company, not so much. They can afford to fight a legal battle that delays when they should stop, in the meantime their illegal activity might have already yielded success.
And when Amazon dodges everything that gets thrown at them the burnt-out regulators will probably find some mom-and-pop store to take out their frustration on instead.
Care to explain or elaborate? I'm in utter confusion at every hacker news discussion that touches on unions. I live in a country that is heavily unionised. Its almost unheard of to not be in one. And, y the benefits are so prevalent, that I'm just confused reading the things I read on hacker news. It's just, weird. I have my suspicious, but I'd have to keep those to myself due to the guidelines here.
Key word in your comment: “different country.” Unions in the US tend to have an image of bureaucracy and not actually helping. For example, I worked at a union grocery store job a few years back and the union did jack squat for quite a lot of us. No benefits, minimum wage (well, 10¢ or so over), etc.
My experience is obviously not representative of unions as a whole, but experiences such as these do taint one’s view of them in a bad way. Especially if they’re your first experience.
Surely that is the fault of that union, and not the concept of it in of itself? There seems to be such a heavy effort put to make unions look bad, that I don't doubt for a second that it isn't effective.
But the basic idea of it is that the employees have a lot more negotiation power collectively than alone. The whole goal is to have a fair compensation for work. Why would anyone work for a wage that isn't livable? It's more a hypothetical mind you, but with a collective bargaining power, no one would. I don't think there is a minimum wage in my country, but I'm pretty sure store clerks make enough to live a decent life.
> Surely that is the fault of that union, and not the concept of it in of itself? There seems to be such a heavy effort put to make unions look bad, that I don't doubt for a second that it isn't effective.
For sure: it’s the union, not the concept. But humans are a finicky bunch and let single experiences affect our view of the bigger thing. Such as when an employee at a grocery store is rude and you blame the whole company. Maybe you and I don’t do that, but some do.
When a union takes ~5-10% of your paycheck but then provides nothing of value (that you see), you aren’t going to go “well maybe there’s something behind the scenes?” If you already had a bad view of unions (possible due to the vast majority of the GOP), and then your union is bad, your negative opinion is going to be reinforced with “they’re doing nothing! Unions as a whole suck!”
Ok. I once took a massive pay cut to go from piece-work to union hourly wages. The days were longer and overall crew production was around 1/3 of what it should be. Work availability was based on seniority within the union instead of performance.
Unions are all about receiving more for doing less, and are very detrimental to businesses.
In my experience union workers are a lazy bunch that talk more then they work, killing time is their main job description.
And union administrators are just parasites. It's all political. I've seen teachers unwillingly have to go on strike for months then be stuck with a worse deal afterwards.
Anyways I think if people aren't happy with their job they should go work somewhere else or better yet start their own business.
Data point: wages are higher in the US than most other countries, even for equivalent jobs. I routinely see development jobs in Europe offering 40-50k Euros that would pay double that in dollars in the US, and the US also tends to have lower taxes.
How does your country's wages compare? I do think the US works more hours (look at OECD data for this) but I think US companies are managed better in general, and the general non-unionization of the US workforce (only about 15% overall, with the majority working for government) is a big part of why pay is higher.
What unusual metrics and arguments. What do you mean wages are higher? I took a quick look, and there are indeed laws for minimum wage, but depends on fields, and various criteria (education level, etc), but generally speaking at around 25 usd.
Taxes is a confusing point, because, paying taxes can (should?) distribute wealth. We are after all talking about minimum wage here... General high taxes is something that benefits this group of people the most. You pay comparatively less of income as tax, and you get to spend it on other things than health care, or education (as its mostly handled by tax money).
I work at Amazon. My father-in-law is a union pipefitter. We both make 100k a year. Except he has a pension and I have to pay into a 401k.
Further, the culture at Amazon is such working harder would require sacrificing physical and mental health. Especially on the retail and warehouse side.
Bueno. Thanks for sharing your perspective. You seem to be making relatively decent money there. If you want more, make some moves.
I should have been more clear in that while I'm against unions I'm all for paying workers twice the going rate. And firing them if they don't perform.
And my comments about working harder for more money was about pay based on performance. ie produce more, make more. Go hard or go home. Not sure how that can fit into retail and warehouse there exactly but it probably could be done.
Pensions, 401K. Not my cup of tea. I prefer to watch trees grow. And have you seen how easy it is to launch a product these days? Well, actually nothing's easy.
Detailed, 6 step instructions on how to open a ballot and mark no? Thanks, amazon. This is almost as scummy as asking the city to change traffic lights so union organizers have a harder time talking to workers in between shifts.
Wow, just wow. "Don’t buy that dinner, don’t buy those school supplies, don’t buy those gifts because you won’t have that almost $500 you paid in dues." It seems Amazon's main argument for why people shouldn't join a union is that Amazon's wages are so low that they cannot financially afford to.
That's almost like saying
"You're too poor to fight for your rights. Know your place."
But see, when your union negotiates, the result is uncertain. It might end up with you getting more money, with you getting the same amount of money, or with your union rep murdering a baby and then framing you for the crime. Do you really want to take that chance?
People will lose their jobs en masse regardless of unions. The concentration of wealth and capture of surplus that we will see in the coming decades will probably make feudalism look like child's play
If you are unhappy with the terms or products of a company, you are free to shop or work elsewhere. That is the difference. "Capture of surplus" is hate speech - without those companies, there would be no surplus to begin with, that anybody could capture.
If you believe those companies will capture so much surplus, you could also buy some of their stock and participate.
> If you are unhappy with the terms or products of a company, you are free to shop or work elsewhere.
If you don't work you starve, or at the very least lose your house, car, maybe even your kids. There is no "freedom" of choice, and this is painfully obvious to anybody who is not stuck neck-deep in dogmatic ideology.
> If you believe those companies will capture so much surplus, you could also buy some of their stock and participate.
Sure, let me just get a small loan of 300 mil a month to build my competitor to Uber.
If you're not independently wealthy you probably cannot even get 100k of credit to open a restaurant or a similar small business. Again, that access to capital (nevermind to education, connections, etc) is profoundly unequal, and thus that "just start your own business" is am absurd statement, is also obvious to anyone who isn't blinded by ideology.
This argument is made often and is patently in bad faith. You understand and I hope your readers understand there is a power disparity and a prevalent culture that has a certain effect on your ability to "be free" (of what? To go elsewhere and have the same shit done to you? To have your family go hungry because some HR shithead blackballed you?).
On a personal level I would ask you to stop actively trying to make the world worse by parroting capitalist propaganda built specifically to disempower workers.
This rhetoric is bad, but even worse is how the $500 is portrayed. At first glance, I interpreted it to be $500 over a much shorter duration, like on a monthly basis, versus ~$10/week, which even at $15/hr seems manageable enough if it means higher wages, better treatment and/or benefits.
That Amazon is fighting this so hard should signal that there is something meaningful to be gained by the workers. Hopefully they recognize this and succeed in organizing. The biggest question I would have is does Amazon pull a Walmart and just shutter the FC if they succeed?
> I love this: "Make your voice heard! VOTE NOW AND VOTE NO." Those posters are all over the warehouses and it really feels like some 1984-esque parody.
Make your voice heard! Tell Big Brother you love him!
HEY BHM1 DOERS, why pay almost $500 in dues? We’ve got you covered* with high wages, health care, vision, and dental benefits, as well as a safety committee and an appeals process. There’s so much MORE you can do for your career and your family without paying dues.
*Applies to regular full-time employees.
IF YOU’RE PAYING DUES… it will be RESTRICTIVE meaning it won’t be easy to be as helpful and social with each other. So be a DOER, stay friendly and get things done versus paying dues.
(sic)
---
Couldn't even include a stock-statement like "we got you covered" without a disclaimer.
"won’t be easy to be as helpful and social with each other" What the hell does that even mean? In a union you can't talk? As though you could be totally chatty before?
Which is hilarious, because talking during a shift is frowned upon even if it doesn't impact productivity. And if it does? Expect a call within the day
It also refers to work rules that are designed to make sure that workers doing a task are the ones who have been trained for it. Sometimes the rules seem to get in the way: Do you have to call in an electrician to plug in a PC? Or can the guy in the next cube, who saw Norm use a plug strip on PBS, plug it in? The movie version of "A brief history of time" has Dr. Hawking telling an anecdote about nailed down chairs on a set.
I kind of want a parody site, like "doitwithoutshoes.com", my first thought had been "doitwithoutjews.com" given it sounds the same, but obviously it would have to be very tastefully done to not come across as cheap or anti-Semitic.
The shoes idea works as you have to pay for them. Why pay for shoes? You know you get exactly the same benefits at Amazon while barefoot?
A classic similar example used to be the "godhatesfigs.com" parody of the Westboro Baptist church's similar slogan (sadly gone now) - with a bible passage where Jesus curses a fig tree.
But what would be in it for union leadership under such a structure? (Not to mention that unions also have some unavoidable expenses, even if you didn't have a bunch of highly-paid union leader mouths to feed.)
Amazon would still find a way to argue. "If you're not a lowest performer, don't let a union negotiate for you and force your wages down to the lowest performing among you." or many other phrases that would appeal to those who think they're above the bottom already and plant fear that bargaining with the collective would lower their outcomes.
> But what would be in it for union leadership under such a structure?
An ego boost? I mean this seriously -- people love being moderators of Subreddits and admins of online communities largely deep down for the ego boost.
A union really needs not much more than a Discord server and maybe a Zoom membership to organize strikes and whatever else they need to do.
Unions need more than a Discord to organize. They may need to compensate union leadership for time taken to organize away from their work duties, pay for events, pay for mailers and other communications infrastructure, and of course pay for professionals like labor lawyers.
No union will have much luck performing collective bargaining against Amazon without working alongside experienced lawyers.
These costs don't have to be huge, but they aren't zero.
What events? If it's to discuss a certain issue, that can be virtual and almost free. If it's a social event, meh, there are enough of those already and people can self-organize them. Hell for $500/month I could organize social events where everyone goes to Michelin 3-star restaurants every month and rants over gourmet dinners about their bosses.
> pay for mailers and other communications infrastructure
Use e-mail. I don't even check my snail mail box anyway unless someone tells me to expect something by e-mail, and even then when my snail mail box gets too full I usually just dump it all in the recycle bin, so it's not an effective way for a union to communicate with me.
> and of course pay for professionals like labor lawyers.
What if they just split the lawyer fees evenly?
Assuming an experienced lawyer charges $1000/hr and spends 100 hours on a case, and there are 1 million people in the union, that amounts to about $0.10/person/case, a far cry from the $500/month they seem to be charging. Even if my numbers are off by a factor of 100 it would be only $10/person/case, and if the union won the case Amazon would probably have to pay the legal fees anyway.
Although this may sound a bit naive I feel like $500/person/month sounds like there is some massive inefficiency in use of resources.
I think the $500 figure is the number that AMZN pulled out of a hat, and I think it is a yearly number, not a monthly one.
That said, it sounds like you haven't dealt with the real world logistics of large groups of people. From both a practical and legal perspective, there is a lot to cover. The finances need to be kept up to date and audited. You mention, in jest, that you could bring all these people together for a dinner at that price. Getting 15 people to agree on a time and place for dinner is close to impossible if you've ever tried it. Nevermind getting a warehouse full of people to show up.
100 hours (2.5 weeks of labor) for lawyers to come to an agreement for the 1mm workers you cited? Not possible, especially with an adversary like amazon.
Email as communication? Maybe, but does it qualify for legal matters? Voting? Have you ever tried to send a million emails? There's a reason that there is an entire industry built around bulk emails.
A union is more like an independent HR office than anything else. Think of how many resources HR uses, and that gives you an idea of what a union needs
> I think the $500 figure is the number that AMZN pulled out of a hat, and I think it is a yearly number, not a monthly one.
A coworker in a non-unionized position said that the didn't like unions because of the dues. When I told them what the dues were, their opinion quickly changed. The funny part is that unionizing would only bring about small benefits in our case since the existence of unionized positions with the same employer reaped benefits for all employees.
And for what it's worth, paying $500/month in dues implies an income of about 30,000 to 50,000 per month. Not only is this outside of the target demographic of unions, but it ranks up there with taxation levels (with much richer government services). Suggesting union dues of this level is either an unintentional mistake or disingenuous anti-union propaganda.
>Getting 15 people to agree on a time and place for dinner is close to impossible if you've ever tried it. Nevermind getting a warehouse full of people to show up.
Any reason why "show up at 8" wouldn't work? It doesn't have to work for everyone if they can be recorded, summarized, or otherwise disseminated.
Alright, split the fees! Now you need someone to count the days paid out, calculate how much each member has to pay, send payment requests, follow up, manage the account, ...
A professional Union needs funds to do its work. Over time the benefits members get more than pay for the union dues. If there's a strike at least in Europe the union will also use the dues to cover the salary for the days striking.
The imaginary alternative would be to have somebody do this for free in their evenings and on their weekends. Have you ever tried to manage even a class representative and budget for your kids' school or a little league or any other kind of long-term engagement? Already at that small scale things tend to break down quote easily and few stay involved more than a few years. How can you expect volunteer union reps to work 8h+/day, spend their nights writing legal briefs, researching, organising events, managing members and expenses, etc while being up against an army of professional lawyers?
Unions brought the five day work week, end to child labour, 40/38 hour weeks, the right to breaks, vacations, medical leave, ... If you don't have those right now then that's likely because you are in a non-union workplace (and/or country).
> A professional Union needs funds to do its work.
Absolutely true.
> Over time the benefits members get more than pay for the union dues.
That strikes me as an opinion that could use some supporting facts. It might be the case, but union fees are the same order of magnitude as many workers' savings rate. If the prospective member saved those fees over a lifetime, would they be better off?
> If there's a strike at least in Europe the union will also use the dues to cover the salary for the days striking.
That means that union members are buying insurance against there being a strike declared. Would they be better off to pay smaller dues and bear the risk themselves? If all possible strikes are union-wide, it seems like this insurance can only be a losing gamble for members, all the while creating a fat piggybank for union leaders to raid/drain.
Numerous studies say union workers make more on average even accounting for dues. I'll give you 1.[1]
Unions have to disclose financial statements. Leaders can't just raid the strike fund. And there won't be a strike fund unless most members vote for it.
If I'm reading that study correctly, those figures have an R² of around 0.23, which is quite low for explanatory power of wages as dependent on union membership (quite low as in the "none" or "very low" range)
>If it's just a town hall to discuss a certain issue, that can be virtual.
Virtual isn't the same as free.
>Although this may sound a bit naive I feel like $500/person/month sounds like there is some massive inefficiency in use of resources.
Nobody knows what the union dues will be if the union wins, but they will not be 500 per month. It might be a fair guess that they're 500 per year. About 20 per check if you get paid biweekly. The dues will be decided on by union members through some kind of democratic process.
Meh, I don't think so. You probably couldn't pick a random union member but there's gotta be someone smart, driven, and mad enough to do it for free and do a good job at it. Hell, if I had the skills and resources to, I would.
Doing something that helps you and helps your similarly-situated fellow worker seems like something that would qualify you for a union leadership role.
Further: People do all kinds of unpaid work to make their community or shared experiences better without (most of?) us accusing them of advocating for slavery.
Crazy idea: Decentralized DAO platform on blockchain that essentially has an automatic union for all companies and all employees. Pick your company/union join get access to anonymized matrix chat, feeds, emails, meetings, etc... your id and employment status would be validated by verifiers, and you can organize without anybody knowing who you are if you want.
There could be optional dues, as well as some built in DeFi applications for investing in blockchain that could pay a dividend to the unions and their leaders.
How will your second union enforce the contract you negotiate without lawyers? When you want to file a grievance, the shop steward walks you down to the nearest free legal aid office?
At this point, there are probably at least some firms that fear Amazon more than unions. They could financially bootstrap a union for a few years as a destabilization effort.
I'm thinking of the line "the capitalists will sell you the rope you use to hang them."
The Pinkertons have been fighting workers for more than a century, I'm sure Amazon is disappointed Pinkertons can no longer gun down troublesome workers without consequences.
Then I don’t understand the outrage. What’s offensive about instructions on how to fill out a ballot above and beyond the fact of them asking you to vote no?
The GGP seemed to think that there was something particularly bad about the detailed six page instructions. But the GP correctly pointed out they do the same thing in regular government elections (to milk as many voters as they can).
> What’s offensive about instructions on how to fill out a ballot above and beyond the fact of them asking you to vote no?
Nothing. The outrage is about them telling you to vote no. If they were trying to help you fill out your ballot in good faith, there wouldn't be a problem.
No. The OP was complaining about something already assuming they're telling you to vote no, meaning the OP was adding something on top of that. I was asking what that thing-on-top is. So it has to be something more than:
>The outrage is about them telling you to vote no.
Which, indeed, you correct yourself on in the next sentence, to say that the issue is that it pretends to be neutral ballot instructions, but, if followed, end in you voting no, and are thus misleading (just guessing -- again, no one here seems to be making it easy to understand what they're objecting to).
If so, it would have been helpful for the OP to communicate that the first time around. Remember rtpg joined in to clarify, but actually objected to something else, the power imbalance -- and yet s/he seemed to believe s/he was agreeing with the initial comment!
Not everyone can read minds about what a speaker thinks is the most salient part, and we don't deserve to be ridiculed for asking.
If you want others to be outraged, it helps to clearly communicate what they're supposed to be outraged about -- starting form a clear model.
I didn't correct myself. Did you look at the article? It doesn't purport to be neutral at all. There's a giant yellow sign that says "VOTE NO" with five bullet points about why you should vote against the union. The step-by-step instructions encourage you to vote no in three different places.
There's no assumption or mind reading needed. To be honest, I don't see how OP could have been more clear:
> Detailed, 6 step instructions on how to open a ballot and mark no? Thanks, amazon.
I'm not objecting to the article. I'm asking what the original comment was objecting to.
We all know, before that comment, Amazon wants you to vote no. The OP was adding to that, in criticism of Amazon, by saying there are detailed six page instructions on how to vote the way they want. But that doesn't tell me what's to be outraged about -- as the first response noted, that is exactly what every other campaign does.
If the OP wasn't claiming Amazon was outrageous beyond the mere fact of asking for no, then why even bring up a six page instruction set?
Someone noted that it's different when your employer tells you to vote in a certain way vs. a random political party. That's where you entered the conversation, so I'm not sure how that's getting lost.
I guess what's "getting lost" is the fact that the original comment says nothing about that, and how that part has nothing to do with all the kvetching about "omg six detailed pages!" -- you know, the focus of that very comment.
All such people are so blinded by the outrage they can't take a few seconds to make clear what they're actually outraged about in way that can convince others to join them? Yeah, sounds about right.
Have you considered that you simply aren't understanding the reasons, which are quite clear and unambiguous to a relatively large population? That is, maybe the issue here is your difficulty understanding, rather than anybody else's ability to explain.
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. Can you please not create accounts to do that with? We're trying for something different here.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...
The original comment (at least, I think I went far enough up-thread) said that teaching somebody how to vote and to vote in your favour, when you have power over them, is sleazy.
Maybe you didn't understand because you're focusing on a bit that the original comment didn't emphasise. The complaint is not about six pages of instructions. The complaint is about combining education with manipulation.
Imagine a handy guide from your bank that included instructions for how to wire money to its author.
Can you please stop? I know these tit-for-tat exchanges are hard to pull away from but they're exceptionally tedious, and not what HN is supposed to be for.
Your analogy is off: if you suggested that government officials sent police offers with instructions on how to vote it'd be closer to what is the case when an employer instructs its employees to do something work related (vote "no" on the union, in this case).
Unions are at least nominally directly elected by their constituents and beholden to them, which is why they are protected when engaging in politics.
If you think they do not represent them, then maybe the solution is to develop better union structures that are more democratic and representative.
But by and large, teachers do not support the Libertarian party and instead favour the Democratic party, quite heavily in fact. So why is it wrong that their alignment follows their base?
However, using that line of thinking people voluntarily join a company too.
Often to work for a company with union rep one HAS to join, whether one agrees or not, so it’s not entirely voluntary in a strict sense.
All this said, I do believe Amazon is treating their warehouse workers unfairly and they deserve pushback though I admit I do not favor bringing in a Union due to my past member experiences with them.
I agree but I have yet to see a better solution than unions. Companies will constantly use their influence to erode workers' rights and unions do levy a constant cost on society but it's a cost that's being paid to counter that otherwise imbalanced influence.
To repurpose a famous Churchill quote "Unions are the worst solution to labour equality except all the others that have been tried before."
Unions do not rent seek. They provide value to society via higher wages and act as a counterbalance to externalities from capital.
They are indeed not a cure, but the cure to the symptoms we are seeing is nothing short of a total overhaul of the capitalist system, which is both not politically feasible, and requires something like unions to make politically feasible to begin with. That is because by definition such a changé even if it was in the larger interests of society wouldn't be in the interests of capital.
"There were and are workers’ unions in communist countries." Most independent unions in those countries were/are destroyed. The "unions" in China, etc. or the former USSR were/are essentially arms of the Stalinist Communist Parties, and rarely if ever have any political independence or ability to oppose the employer (the state, or a company that the state has given privileges to).
Those activities only fit the definition of rent-seeking if you consider the value of labor as only what the market will bear. By that logic, if I offer a job at $5/hour and someone takes it, any attempt by that employee to get paid above $5 is "rent-seeking".
But that brings us right back to my original point: if my choice is starvation or $5/hour, I'm going to take the $5, but that's a coercive choice. I was forced into it by the threat of death. Now explain to me how that's different from holding a gun to someone and forcing them to work? You didn't determine the value of my labor, you determined that I don't want to die.
So an attempt to increase the cost of labor (minimum wages, credentialing/protectionism) is an attempt to extract the true value of labor, even though the threat of death-by-starvation remains. Like a previous commenter said - unless we want to radically re-org our society - that threat of death is irreducible. For example, if every person was granted enough arable land to subsist off of by the state, we'd see a very different labor market.
There were and are workers’ unions in communist countries. They didn’t always have their worker’ best interests in mind. Often they were a tool of the communist state to control workers. In addition sometimes you had student movements pitted against workers’ unions and so on.
Exploitation or at the minimum the potential for it exists in every economic system. It’s not a feature exclusive to capitalism as much as people dream it to be so. Even in a barter economy, can I not take advantage of another worker? Of course I can!
I never said that we should install Soviet socialism/state-capitalism, it's not a good system.
Workers unions in socialist countries were basically illegal, there was only one legally allowed union pretty much. In the Soviet Union the role of labour unions were mostly for the state to resolve interpersonal problems, and in theory to allow the state to receive feedback from employees to optimize production, but not in practice due to dysfunctions because of the broken political and economic framework.
The one time I worked in a union shop, I was told that I didn't have to join, but I did have to pay dues. If I chose to join, there were certain benefits provided by the union to members (optical coverage IIRC).
One thing I'd like to see is competing unions. The UAW supplies labor to the big three US automakers, putting them in an unfair negotiating advantage; the UAW can easily bully them around. The UAW ultimately hurt themselves because it put the Big Three at a big competitive disadvantage. Some manufacturing left for right-to-work states, and some business left for (mostly) Japanese automakers.
I think that could help. Some unions at least, like the UAW shoot themselves in the foot. It’s very adversarial from both sides and often the worker in the middle is the one who loses out. Example the steel industry. They made labor so expensive the companies folded. Admittedly the industry ran aged inefficient systems that made their process uncompetitive. But the Union only cared about protecting itself. The companies only cared about immediate profits.
That's not at all what happened to the steel industry. 50% of all US steel production capacity has been built in the past 30 years and steel production has seen continuous and massive improvements in productivity. In 1920 it took 3 man-hours of labor to produce 1 ton of steel in the US, now 1 man-hour produces 300 tons. The contraction in steel employment during the 70s coincided with a recession and the development of the electric arc furnace. From 1974 to 1999, global steel industry employment fell by 1.5 Million people with large decreases both in developed countries and developing countries like Brazil and South Africa as employment per ton of production fell everywhere. The actions of one union in one country had nothing to do with it.
Old outdated technology (not sure about the stance the unions had back then on productivity improvements that would lower headcount) plus outsized pay demands for the given the productivity.
Old and outdated compared to what? Outsized pay demands compared to whom? Everyone around the world switched to the new technology at the same time. Employment per production fell everywhere simultaneously. This was not a case of labor becoming too expensive, it was a case of labor becoming unnecessary.
The libertarian party supports School Choice, Actual Education for children, and less protectionism based on "seniority"
So it is no wonder that unionized teachers would oppose the Libertarian Party, libertarians want children to get a good education and allow parents to choose the type of education their child gets, taking away large amounts of power from Teachers who believe they should supplant parents and "know better".
This has never been more clear than in the Age of COVID where the hypocrisy of Teachers and their union has been on full display with their refusal to teacher (aka their job)
I dunno. School isn’t primarily about academics. It’s mostly about moulding pupils, their minds to their current society. It’s mostly political in that sense. Whether it’s patriotism, community building, stressing this over that, etc.
The three Rs are kind of incidental.
Now to be clear, we do need to grow up to be functional adults, but public schooling is not the only one option to achieve that.
To be clear — when people refer to "school choice", they usually mean a system that funnels taxpayer dollars to private schools based on student attendance. Similarly, when people oppose "school choice", they usually oppose that appropriation of public funds specifically, not public school alternatives in general.
It's a sneaky name designed to make you conflate the two.
I always thought that school choice means a system that funnels taxpayer dollars to any school, public or private, based on student attendance. Parents can choose to send their children to public school, if they feel the outcome will be superior to alternatives.
Public schools are by definition taxpayer funded, so I wouldn't describe allocating tax money to them as "funneling". And of course, absent school choice policies, parents are still free to send their children to private school — they just wouldn't receive public funds to do so (which is why the name is sneaky). But yes, you're correct.
It is important to note that that voucher only has a fixed value so those parents choosing to send their children to private schools still need to make up the difference out of pocket. That results in a wide variety of school choice for the rich and a smaller number of choices for those less well off. This voucher results in funds being diverted from public schools while the capacity requirements on those public schools may not be impacted but there is a larger issue IMO. If the more influential parents move their children to private schools then the amount that voucher should cover becomes less important and various parties can argue to shrink the voucher as a cost saving measure - that will end up strongly effecting those residents with less wealth since the money they are paying toward the value of that voucher is being multiplied due to the effect of progressive taxation brackets - while the more affluent residents will end up paying less money overall the smaller the voucher is since their tax revenue is going to subsidize school vouchers at large.
School vouchers can easily lead toward incentivizing minimizing education spending.
Oh also, private schools are often not held to the same standards of avoiding religious teaching as public schools are (by virtue of being a public service). The result is that the vouchers can end up funding religious education, but that's a whole other can of worms.
It is worth noting that many area;s where this has been tried the private schools were more than capable of providing better education for the same money that the public schools do since the public schools are wasteful and have no incentive to spend tax payer money wisely
It is completely false to charatice a school choice program as "more choices for the rich" as the rich already have those choices, poor and middle class people have zero choice because their money has already been taken to fund the public schools. redirecting this money to better more efficient systems is preferred and gives the poor and middle class choice that is normally reserved for the wealthy
>> This voucher results in funds being diverted from public schools
yes, that is by design and the desired outcome of libertarians.
>>Oh also, private schools are often not held to the same standards of avoiding religious teaching as public schools are (by virtue of being a public service). The result is that the vouchers can end up funding religious education, but that's a whole other can of worms.
Another red herring and strawman, but I (and most libertarian) are fine with the limited amount of religious education that would result from school choice if it means dismantling the failed and unethical public school system we have today.
I am sure you are a huge supporter of the Public School System and see nothing systemically wrong with it. We disagree with this position
> I am sure you are a huge supporter of the Public School System and see nothing systemically wrong with it. We disagree with this position.
I do actually see a lot wrong with the school system, I think the fact that education is largely funded from local property taxes goes strongly against most ideals around American opportunity and that the highly localized management means that a cartel of local officials can run a system into the ground with only limited options available to the DoEd to address is quite problematic.
There's a bunch of things wrong with the school system, certainly, but I can't see how partial privatization would do anything but exacerbate the issues.
People here are already set in their political tribes, if you were already a libertarian (or republican) then you just agreed with my post. If you are an Authoritarian you just down voted it.
Nothing I say will change anyone's minds on this topic, it is one of those things where no amount of data or facts will change minds. You either believe in a unionized Public school that only fails because we do not spend enough money, or you recognize that giving a monopoly over education to a group of people based on geography will always result in bad outcomes no matter how much money you spend.
I had heard Libertarians are bull-headed, self-righteous, think only they understand the facts, think everyone who disagrees with them are Authoritarians. I heard wrong.
By definition anyone that disagrees with Libertarianism is an Authoritarian.
While Libertarian and Authoritarian do exist on a spectrum in some ways, you are either on the Libertarian side of that spectrum or the Authoritarian Side.
It’s a very large tent party though sparse in density.
Some of us see the need for aspects of regulation and frameworks, others prefer the more idealist semi pastoralist view of the world. I’m more in the Johnson camp ;)
>It’s a very large tent party though sparse in density.
I'm not so sure about that.
I have strong libertarian (small 'l') leanings, specifically that government should stay the hell out of people's lives and bodies as much as possible. And that humans should be free to do pretty much whatever they want as long as they don't interfere with others doing the same.
But that's where I part ways with the Libertarian (big 'L') Party.
Because I do believe that, human nature being what it is, that the government does have a role to play in helping those who are disadvantaged in our society.
What's more, I believe that government has a role to play in evening the playing field and attempting to make sure that everyone has equal opportunity to succeed in our society.
The Libertarian Party doesn't believe in any of that, so I have no interest in supporting them.
I'd note that privatized everything (not saying you support that) isn't libertarian at all. Rather it's anarcho-capitalism[0], which would completely destroy our society.
While the implementation of the idea that minorities should be protected against the "tyranny of the majority" by the government has been pretty poor in the US, it has improved somewhat in recent years.
I look forward to that progress continuing. And the Libertarian Party won't be the one's that help us do that.
That's pretty much precisely where I stand as well. When you talk about personal freedoms the right to unlimited action is something that could only potentially be given to a single person, since at a certain point your actions begin to encroach on the freedoms of others. As an example the right to freely murder requires that other persons surrender their right to not be murdered - so, like most of life, the two extremes are extremely detrimental and sanity lies in the middle path.
Why would the TU endorse the Libertarian Party when the LP has done exactly zero for teachers, and has never said or done anything to imply it has any interest whatsoever in the lives of teachers?
It's a very revealing tell that this is even being asked.
Generally, why do Libertarians seem to act as if Rest of World owes them, but relationships are solely for their personal benefit with no reciprocity of any kind?
If we argue that what is wrong about the situation is the 'balance of power'... would that mean then no employer should be able to make their case when it comes to such situation because the balance of power wouldn't be fair?
That seems weird.
And unions once established have their own balance of power, and that's not in favor of the individual.
The literal purpose of a corporation in all its varieties, for profit, non-profit, co-op, S Corp, C Corp etc. is to pool the resources of its owners and serve their interests.
Unions serve the interests of the people with power in the union. If those interests don't align with yours, the union may be working against you and you may not want to get involved.
> On the other hand, the employer never ever serves your interest.
Their interests may align to mine even if they're doing it for their own benefit. And if the union's interests don't align to mine, then I'm better off without the union and with the employer.
I don't think that's a hypothetical scenario, either.
For example if the union wants to pay by seniority and the employer wants to pay by results, and I have low seniority but good results, who am I better aligned with?
Common experience is that performance reviews are bullshit and that scores are determined by warm fuzzies and management's political needs. Rachel has story after story. If you are politically astute, by all means don't join the union, but all this talk about "results" doesn't sound as if you are.
Do you not have the imagination to think of any situation where the majority of workers may want something that's not in your interests?
For example you morally support allowing new people to enter your field but the union is mostly comprised of more established people and they vote for credentialism to restrict supply.
Probably I'm very aligned with my employer on wanting to lower barriers to entry for the field!
> Probably I'm very aligned with my employer on wanting to lower barriers to entry for the field!
Well... until you start looking at advancing into upper management and realize that seniority-based hiring decisions and credentialism are very often in the best interest of the established managers and higher-ups.
In most large companies, the people making hiring decisions in upper management probably don't want to lower barriers of entry for their fields. They want to hire people who look like them, who have gone to the same schools as them and worked the same jobs as them, and they want to set up a performance system that makes it hard for them to get fired or demoted.
It's easy to make the mistake of thinking of corporations like they're some kind of impartial oiled machine, but the reality is that they're made of people who are just as biologically prone as anyone else is to forming cliques and gatekeeping their own jobs.
Do you not have the imagination to think of any situation where the majority of workers may want something that's not in your interests?
Consensus-building and making of viable compromises has always been part of governance, any institution comprises people with diverse, sometimes competing interests.
That said, the usual workplace conflict between employee and management is about working conditions and promotion. And for that it's useful to have a paid witness on your side, because HR is always working for the employer.
Codes of conduct are fashionable these days, but at the end of the day they are upheld by HR, which will always work in favour of the company.
> And for that it's usuful to have a paid witness on your side
But I'm not sure the union is going to be on my side. I know that's their pitch, but lots of people claim they want to act on my behalf - I'd be a fool to trust most of them!
The union will always be on your side, it's their reason for existing and what you're paying them for. They will support the most indefensible position you can throw at them because it's their job.
I’d recommend talking with employees of my local unionized Kroger, especially younger employees. The union is not always on their side. Benefits are heavily skewed to older employees by virtue of having more working-age years.
If I'm a junior worker in a union with a pay-by-seniority agreement because the majority of workers are senior, then they aren't on my side are they? They're on the side of the majority senior workers. They're on the side against me and my aspirations to get paid more.
In that situation, you have a clear way of getting paid more: Keep working, same as everyone else did. You're not getting special treatment, but it's not like they're working against you either.
> These are contracts with enforceable terms and are upheld.
Stop and think this through for just a second.
Try this thought experiment:
If I want dogs in the office and my colleague wants dogs banned, you’re telling me you think the union will simultaneously negotiate for both our positions with our employer?
Does not compute. It is not possible for them to be on everyone's side.
I'd also note that you appear to demand 100% alignment with your ethics from unions in return for your support ("think of any situation"), but are fine with being somewhat aligned with your employer.
You seem to already have chosen a tribal affiliation.
You said I since I didn't agree with you I must not be politically astute so I returned the favour!
> I'd also note that you appear to demand 100% alignment with your ethics from unions in return for your support ("think of any situation"), but are fine with being somewhat aligned with your employer.
But my employer pays me. And they're an essential part of the agreement. The union wants me to pay them, and they're optional, so yes I expect them to do a better job aligning to me otherwise why bother with them? What is the point joining a union, lending them what little power you have, as well as actually giving them money, if they aren't very aligned?
My current work negotiation is me and my employer. I have what I want and my employer has what they want. Why involve a third party, who may want something completely different, possibly morally offensive to me? Why do that?
I guess you're going to say 'because the union acts in your interest'. Well, let me tell you - there's a whole world of people out there offering to 'act in my interest' in return for something. Most of them are charlatans. Beware.
You can leave a company and get a new job. That’s a good time to renegotiate your terms of employment. You can even use the impending threat of your departure as a negotiating tactic.
Unions complicate an otherwise cut and dry relationship of your employer trying to extract value from you and you trying to extract value from your employer until you reach an equilibrium.
As a worker, you want "complications" in that relationship, because in its natural form, the balance of power is extremely lopsided toward the employer.
Why should I? You can start an organisation if you want, but you'd need to argue why it's in my interest if you want me to lend what little individual power I have. And the employer can present their arguments as well, which is fine. But if you think I'm going to trust you've got my interests at heart just because you're not my employer, then you're delusional. Why should I trust you more than them?
Subject to antitrust law is not an inherent property of a corporation. Antitrust law is a statutory construct, as are the tax benefits of incorporation.
What you’re failing to understand is that while there are different types if corporations as legal constructs, with differing advantages and disadvantages mostly related to their overall tax liability, a corporation in the general sense is just a group of people come together for a common goal. Usually that goal is profits. You join up with 5 people putting in 20% of the money, you are entitled to 20% of the future proceeds.
So if you take a distribution of $1000, all other shareholders holding equal shares, they must also take a distribution of $1000, or equal to their share of equity in the company.
A union has a different structure, different legal privileges and burdens, and different goals, but fundamentally it is a group of people with a common goal. I think where they tend to fall down is that unions can grow so large that the power is so diffused amongst individual members that even people in unions may come to resent the union more than their employer, particularly if they are always in the minority on union issues. In which case they might find they are actually more in alignment with their employers rather than their union leaders.
Is that even true? Quick Google searches seem to show several instances of antitrust accusations against non-profits including trade unions and professional associations. There does seem to be a basic exemption for trade unions, but it seems that trade unions can lose that exemption for behaving in certain ways.
With or without a union, there are no laws I am aware of that prohibit workers cooperating to get higher wages from employers.
That does not violate anti-trust law in the US. It is not a special exemption the union has, it doesn't violate anti-trust law in the US even if there isn't a union involved, for employees to "collude" to get higher wages.
Or if there are such laws I'm not aware of, feel free to share. But I gather you think it ought to be illegal? Why?
Can you elaborate on that? I don't understand what's inherently anti-competitive about labor unions, unless you think that any time humans organize themselves is anti-competitive and the only thing that counts as competitive is a total lack of organization and cooperation above the level of the individual.
Correct. People who hold more equity have more control. This is easily seen in small businesses on the Balance Sheet with only one or two owners, you can quickly determine who put more money into the business, assuming no investors.
This becomes more complex as you go from small business to startup with investors to a larger business, but the principles remain the same.
Nobody starts a business to have others dictate to them what to do with their business, and to be told whose interests they should really be serving. I’m not sure why you would expect that to change just because the company in question is valued at over a trillion.
There may be a line to walk here, but the balance of power really does matter. The Republican Party might send me a flyer saying "if you vote for Democrats, it'll be very bad for you" (or vice-versa), but they're not in an explicit contractual relationship with me that my income depends on. If my employer sends me a flyer saying "if you vote to unionize, it'll be very bad for you" that's clearly got some very different implications to it. They may both be raising the spectre of what happens if the vote doesn't go their way, but only one of them carries an implicit threat.
Should employers be able to make an anti-union case? I'd have to say yes on free speech grounds, but I'd also say that they really should be subject to more restrictions on what kind of anti-union organizing they can do than the union should be on what kind of pro-union organizing they can do. Yes, that's deliberately giving the union an advantage -- but, again, management has the advantage of being the side that literally writes the checks.
> unions once established have their own balance of power, and that's not in favor of the individual.
I mean, that's kind of the point, in a way, isn't it? The employee/employer power balance is almost always weighted toward the employer, because the employee alone is one individual and the employer is a corporation. Employees acting as a collective are theoretically on more equal footing. That doesn't guarantee every single individual employee will support every collective action the union makes.
I thought it was weird, but I can't imagine a basis for not allowing that.
Even if it was someone's boss... they too get to talk / have an opinion... even if I think it is wrong. I've certainly worked for employers who I thought had some very wrong ideas, I still did my own thing voting wise.
IMO the key difference is that you were getting mail from political parties. I think the correct comparison would be if the US government were sending you mail instructing you on how to vote for the party already in power. There's a big difference between the party pleading its case to you and the government itself endorsing that party. I think Amazon's power over employees makes it more like the latter, although neither is a perfect analogy.
If I had gotten mailers last year directly from the United States government instructing me "how to re-elect Donald J. Trump", I would have been livid. Individual within the company should be able to make their case for why they think unionization is bad, but I don't think the company itself gets a say in this.
I think an important detail that's needed here is how long the traffic back up issue has been a problem and when amazon requested it be change. If this has been an issue for years and amazon only recently requested the change, that's pretty scummy.
“This action was taken on Dec. 15, 2020 after being notified by Amazon of traffic delays. The action taken is routine for traffic signal operations, in that signal timing plans are adjusted to be as efficient as possible.” Doesn't say how long it was a problem though.
This site has an anti ad-block pop up that stops you from closing the browser window in iOS. Had to close the whole HN app to leave the in-app browser.
Unbelievable. This is petty shit you'd expect from 100+ years ago when companies were breaking strikes by killing people. Might as well rename this country to the Corporate States of America. No level of government has any backbone against the private sector.
That's a bit too far. Ignore unions; and amazon fixed traffic congestion leaving their complex. If a unionization effort is reliant on an unnecessary traffic jam to form - it's destined to fail.
Amazon is strong-arming workers into voting no with propaganda posters, unions typically hurt amazon (else why would they fight so hard against it), and typically help the workers. Do you not see the problem here? I don't mean to say unions are always right. I see anti-union sentiment from the very company that would be hurt by it to be very much allowed. But since I believe in worker's rights and can see firsthand how poorly they are treated, I see it as scummy.
>Just to be clear, this is a double standard based on your priors.
>Vote No propaganda is bad because unions are good.
>Vote Yes propaganda is good because unions are good.
Double standard? Not really. Definitely not the peak of critical reasoning, though. But I'm not judging anti-union vs pro-union propaganda by anything but their motives.
>If you are not convinced that unions age good in the first place, then it all falls apart.
Ah, but I do. Not inherently, and not always. But net positive in my opinion. Sure, if I change my beliefs to contradict, it will not make sense. Just as if I believed unions were bad and net negative, union propaganda would be considered scummy but amazon propaganda wouldn't.
I always try to judge critically, and in my personal opinion, pro vs anti has a clear benefit for the worker on one side. This doesn't mean I think the other shouldn't exist. I don't think that means a double standard, since in my eyes they aren't the same. If they were literally the same, say Amazon wanted the Yankees to win and the workers wanted the Red Sox to win, and I insisted on one side over the other, then it would be a double standard (like 1984, they do it = bad, we do the same thing = good).
Full disclosure: I've always been anti-union for my own personal approach to life. I do see the value in unions, I've just always, to this point, been a go-it-alone-and-fight-my-own-battles kind of person. I don't want to be beholden to a union or their rules any more than I want to be beholden to an employer beyond my contractual obligations for which I'm paid.
That said, people should take note of what happened when Walmart used these tactics. Employees then went on to suffer such things as zero hour contracts, contracts where time was just shy of the legal requirement to give them benefits, pay was no more than the minimum required in any given state/province and people became slaves to their jobs because they couldn't afford the time off to find other jobs because then they wouldn't be able to make ends meet or there were no other jobs so Walmart had zero incentive to pay any more than absolutely required to by law. etc. etc. etc. because humanity is only afforded if legally required [which I personally find disgusting].
These are tactics to prevent a coalition of employees from having their rights heard and maintained... even with this coalition someone is fighting to maintain and win your rights(!!!!!) There's something very wrong with anyone having to fight for their rights to be given, but that's another discussion. In a commercial environment that allow employers to behave this way, where the only advantage to winning your rights is in a coalition of the workforce holding employers to account, unions absolutely must not only be allowed but must also be protected.
Its okay if you're bullheaded enough or within your means enough to walk away if your rights aren't given fair consideration and honoured, but if you're in a position where you're a prisoner to your job, i.e. can't afford to take time off to find another job/other income, or there are no other jobs in your area and you don't have the means to leave etc. you don't have any bargaining chip.
No employer should ever have the privilege of keeping you prisoner, nor preventing you from having a means to bargain for your very right to fair treatment.
Amazon needs to be severely reprimanded for this and taught a lesson about what it means to honour employees' rights.
Something that adds insult to injury is the amount of moral posturing Amazon engages in when it comes to social justice issues.
What could be a bigger social justice issue than paying working class people proper wages and benefits? It just screams out to me how hollow and PR driven their support of social justice organizations and initiatives is. And more importantly, the silence from these same social justice initiatives is deafening.
I strongly suspect that paying working class employees more money would have a far higher positive impact on black communities than donating money to activist organizations.
Almost like identity politics is used by those in power to distract us from real issues that have concrete impact on people's lives, instead fostering an us vs them attitude to keep us ignorant that both sides are being played by the same people.
Or… they actually do mean what they say, but don’t connect the dots and ultimately have a bigger incentive to cognitively shift their perspective when it comes down to their own bottom line. Amazon as a company is about low prices made up by scale, and is famous for continuously optimizing costs. Humans are just one cost to optimize, and are likely a big one given the number of people involved for their business model. These are also not “corporate employees,” which are also infamously not treated well, but the grunts that are low skilled and highly replaceable.
If it's destroyed, another retailer will take it's place. I worked at Target back in the day, and I still remember the onboarding videos they showed us. Half of it was ridiculous drivel about how much they love employees and support LGBT and minorities, and the other half was literal anti-union propaganda and fear-mongering. When it came right down to it, Target is just as happy to treat human workers as disposable tools as anyone else. Most every succesful retail company treats workers as unworthy of decent pay, benefits, or even human friendly scheduling.
I used to do extensive data science work with various retailers, including Target, Walmart, and Amazon.
Compared to Walmart, Target is absolutely abysmal on many fronts. The amount of wasted fuel caused by their horrifically inept logistics makes Walmart look like the Sierra Club. And they were the model for substituting low-impact inclusion messaging in place of actually treating workers decently.
I live near Boulder, Colorado, and it was infuriating seeing friends of mine protesting and proudly stopping the construction of a Walmart, while happily shopping at Target and Amazon. People are absolute lemmings when it comes to "feel-good" activism. Hearing my rather hippyish and moralistic friend talk about "Walmart destroys small businesses" while noticing the pile of Amazon packages at her door is absolutely infuriating.
I also live near Boulder (Lyons what’s up!) and also had a really hard time understanding all the vitriol towards building a Wal-Mart when Target is packed day in, day out.
You're right about both - their marketing is really on point. But allow me to propose a few additional reasons for Target's popularity among suburban liberals:
1. Prices are slightly higher that Walmart, which keeps away the most budget conscious shoppers (ie, couponers & low-income people will go to walmart to stretch their money). Because lower-class shoppers are less visible at Target, middle-class shoppers flock to it, and even non-middle class people who can swing it may prefer it because it confers higher social status. (This is also why the common nickname for Target is "Tar - Jhey", aka, "Target" with a fake french accent to mock the aspirational bougieness of the brand).
2. Target has fairly aggressive policies about how long customers should have to wait in line (if there's more than 3 people waiting, the manager is supposed to call a sales floor person up to assist) + a policy on how long checkouts should take to complete (they actually give the cashier a pass/fail score that everyone can see after each checkout, and if the average is too low, it's grounds for dismissal). For the customer, this does mean a faster checkout. For the employees - it means more work interruptions and ultimately more work to do at closing.
3. Target doesn't even attempt to provide certain products and services that are culturally associated with rural/poor America. They don't sell guns, they don't cash checks, they don't have gardening centers.
In my area, Target is far less crowded and has very short waits at checkout because they actually have people staffing the registers.
Walmart will have one cashier at the special register line where they sell cigarettes, during the dinnertime rush when there are 30 people up front wanting to check out.
Then there will be somebody telling you that if you don't need cigarettes, go wait in the massive line at self checkout.
I don't mind paying a couple percent more for goods if they are paying cashiers with that cash so I can go home sooner.
If those same couple bucks are what is keeping the store and parking lot less crowded... I'll take it. Walmart is a hellhole over here.
> Compared to Walmart, Target is absolutely abysmal on many fronts. The amount of wasted fuel caused by their horrifically inept logistics makes Walmart look like the Sierra Club.
I suppose this explains why my orders from target.com always seem to come in an absurd number of separately shipped boxes. Once I ordered a small set of nonperishable grocery items and they were delivered in maybe 7 boxes - including one toasted sized box that held only a single can of tomato paste and an air pillow. It seems to me like they must lose money on many orders.
1. Walmart provides as much data as possible to it's suppliers, and expects the suppliers to use this data to then advise Walmart on projected sales and inventory in a collaborative manner. Target, on the other hand, has a data feed for it's suppliers, which is VASTLY inferior, unreliable, and the data isn't nearly as complete. A few years ago, they switched this feed from one system to another, and didn't think it was a big deal that the new system barely worked. This made the suppliers/CPG companies I advised scramble and have extreme difficulty in planning. The buyer teams at Target didn't care, and still expected the suppliers to do the same analysis.
2. Walmart has a religion of keeping items in stock and on the shelves. It's not easy to achieve, and they drop the ball at many stores on this, but it's CLEARLY not a priority at Target. They just don't have logistics as a core focus there, and it shows. My wife's experience of expecting a core item that was on the shelf last week at Target to be out of stock is typical.
3. Hearing trucking companies describe what it's like to ship goods to Target vs. WM is sad. Truckers charge extra for Target because they frequently find themselves waiting hours, sometimes days, at Target distribution centers to get their cargo offloaded. This NEVER happens at Walmart DCs. When trucking companies negotiate contracts with Target, this is something they have to "bake in". It's horrible when you hear stories from mom and pop truckers who get suckered into doing business with Target.
4. Target coporate vs. Walmart corporate: Walmart corporate has a shocking number of very high ranking executives (often in their 30s) who never went to college and worked their way up from working in stores. Bentonville, Arkansas is filled with these folks. They have a real "gut level" understanding of the stores/DCs and this is probably the only reason Walmart hasn't collapsed into gross mismanagement. Their worst executives have always been external hires. At Target, it's rare to see people who worked their way up internally in high-ranking roles. Much more typical corporate environment there.
Well, wrote a novel anyway. But yeah, that sums it up.
Identity politics and corporate posturing are two separate things. Everybody is trying to get an edge, including corporations trying to keep themselves prosperous. Identity politics is an idea about your identity playing into how you perceive politics. How this idea is used by different players is a whole different ballgame.
> Data collected in the heat map suggest that stores with low racial and ethnic diversity, especially those located in poor communities, are more likely to unionize.
You appear to perhaps be from the UK (saw "honour").
Employees in the UK have quite a lot more protection by default than they do in the US. I do respect your go-it-alone-and-fight-my-own-battles position, but consider that you might feel differently if you were in a US "right to work" state.
You're both a little right. I grew up in the UK and lived there until I was 25, I've since worked and lived in the U.S. but now live and work in Canada.
I don't know what it means to live in a "right to work" state. I assume that means that everyone has a right to reasonably paid employment?
I don't understand how this situation could come to be. What if there were no employers? That situation can only occur if there are enough jobs to maintain gainful employment of every citizen of the state. In such a situation I would likely only remain around as long as there was work willing to pay me what I need to maintain a lifestyle to which I was attracted.
I left Kamloops, BC in 2001 because the only jobs available there sucked (in my eyes). I was frowned upon as a snob because I turned down 3 union jobs which appeared to be the pinnacle of success in Kamloops at the time. I couldn't understand why that seemed to be the height of ambition there. I moved to Vancouver Island in the hope of better. I loved it there, but I left there in 2004, because again the only jobs available had shit pay and I couldn't afford any kind of enjoyable lifestyle. Now I live outside Toronto and enjoy a much more financially comfortable lifestyle... at the cost of an almost complete lack of scenery admittedly. I've never been one to stick around when the economic situation wasn't viable. I couldn't see myself sticking around in a "right to work" state if that's what it meant. I don't really see how it would change my opinion either.
Btw, in other countries that use sectoral bargaining systems this law wouldn't stop unionization, because the union contract applies across the industry rather than one company at a time. This makes it more impersonal, but companies are no longer motivated to stop unions because they'll become less competitive, and it works well enough in places like Denmark that they don't have minimum wage laws.
I don't know how things work in the UK, but here in the states various bills/acts are often given misleading names because politics. In this case, "right to work" means, basically, the right to take a job without either having to join a union or being prohibited from joining a union.
There's debate over what the impact of "right to work" is, and of course, what role unions should play.
Another term that might interest you is "at will employment". This one means that your employer can fire you at any time for any reason that isn't illegal; and, you can leave your employer at any time for any reason that isn't illegal. This one is also argued intensely as to whether it is more favorable to the employer, employee, or neither.
Right-to-work effectively weakens unions, but is sold under the reasonable sounding rhetoric. The common pitch is something like...
> Right-to-work means that you can work in a union trade without joining the union. Otherwise you have to join and pay the union to work in your profession. Why should you have to pay to work as a <insert profession here>? Support right-to-work!
That's how I often see it sold. In the end, it means unions get weaker in industries that need them.
“In the context of U.S. labor politics, "right-to-work laws" refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions. Under these laws, employees in unionized workplaces are banned from negotiating contracts which force employees who are not union members to contribute to the costs of union representation.”
So, in such states, the (union, employer) combo cannot force every employee to pay the union (employees can choose not to become a member, but still would have to pay them)
I don’t understand how that fits in the story, though. I guess the OP meant “at will”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment): “In U.S. labor law, at-will employment is an employer's ability to dismiss an employee for any reason (that is, without having to establish "just cause" for termination), and without warning, as long as the reason is not illegal.”
That is an incomplete and misleading definition of "at-will employment". The most important part of at-will employment is that the employee is allowed to leave their employer for any time, for any reason; i.e., they can't be forced to work for their employer even by contract. It is literally just an anti-slavery law, and yet somehow some folks have turned it into a bogeyman. Imagine being against an anti-slavery law because ____?
How is that the most important part? Slavery is already illegal outside of prisons. You know very well this is so companies can cut employees whenever they need to and not face legal repercussions.
> That is an incomplete and misleading definition of "at-will employment". The most important part of at-will employment is that the employee is allowed to leave their employer for any time, for any reason; i.e., they can't be forced to work for their employer even by contract. It is literally just an anti-slavery law, and yet somehow some folks have turned it into a bogeyman. Imagine being against an anti-slavery law because ____?
Honestly, I'd say you're being more hyperbolic and misleading. At-will employment is "just an anti-slavery law?" I'm pretty sure that was already illegal before these laws, and at-will employment wasn't the mechanism for its abolition.
My understanding is that the actual effect of at-will employment laws wasn't to free employees from jobs they didn't want, but to make their positions more precarious (e.g. previously employers had to give a good reason for termination or it was invalid, or at least give notice).
It mostly means that you are not forced to be part of a union to work. Which is something I agree with. But I highly encourage people to be part of an union.
You can never be forced to join a union. Federal law forces unions to represent non members. "Right to work" means non members can force them to do it for free. Other states let unions force non members to pay for what the union is forced to provide them.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't this law simply prevent a situation where a non-union employee would be forced to pay the union fees even if he doesn't want to be a part of the union in a unionized workplace? If yes, how is it a bad thing for employees?
Genuine question, because I don't understand the issue. If they want to join a union and pay the associated fees, they are welcome to. If they just wanna work a job without joining a union and paying their fees, they can do that as well. How is it a bad thing, unless you consider forcing those employees who don't care about unions to still contribute fees a good thing?
It isn't simple because federal law forces the union to represent non members still. Free riding is good for free riders. It's bad for people who pay for it.
In that user's defense, the practical outcome of right-to-work from the perspective of someone who doesn't have it is that you can quit or get fired without notice.
The definition of US gun laws isn't "you can have most semi-auto rifles unless you've gone to jail, you live in California and the rifle looks scary, or the barrel is too short", but it's probably how someone would explain the practical outcome.
Anti-union tactics are so... nasty. It's crazy to me how any of this is even tried in the 21st century. It's so obviously wrong and in a ton of cases illegal, the only reason I can think of that this is done so aggressively is that these tactics are "effective" based on their invention in the early-to-mid 20th century, and nobody's bothered to try and innovate since.
Does Amazon really see unionization as an existential threat? Surely at some point, a company as large as Amazon or Walmart can handle a worker's union.
What other perceived "existential threats" are they handling with these kinds of tactics, that we just don't know about because it's not as public?
(Disclaimer: I benefit substantially off of Walmart's continued ability to make money.)
The weird thing about this anti-union stuff is that there is fair argument to be made that Amazon would do just as well if they let them unionise and get what they wanted. Australia has a long history of strong unions and the result has been a strong economy and effectively run state. Same kind of thing in many other countries. Those of us outside of the US are often surprised by how little rights are given to workers there.
When you’re paid minimum wage in the US, and you’re not permitted to perform a full-time job, you probably have to hold down multiple jobs; you probably also don’t get things like healthcare from any of them.
Zero hours contracts in theory mean you can refuse work (at least that’s how it works in the U.K.), but obviously you’re going to be fired for doing so, so you’re essentially constantly on call for both/all your jobs.
If you have multiple jobs and must take every hour they ask of you, you clearly do not have time to find another job; you are very likely working more than a full-time job without adequate protections.
Look, here’s how it goes:
1) you have no job
2) you take the first job that comes your way, even if it doesn’t actually pay enough to survive - a little money is better than no money
3) you take the second job that comes your way so that you can survive
4) you have no time to actually do anything towards getting a better job
Understand?
This is why jobs that pay less than what is needed to survive are bad for individuals and bad for society; people have to take them. Nobody is going to help you survive otherwise.
The difference here is that the second job you have is likely going to be just as terrible as your first, where the improvement comes not from having a better job but simply having access to more hours and therefore more hourly pay.
Searching for a job that is _mechanically better_ (think office job versus min-wage retail) is significantly more challenging than finding a min-wage job. For example, most salaried or otherwise higher paying jobs require multiple rounds of interviews while many min-wage jobs will hire you on the spot to fill a staff position.
No. It means it’s possible to find a second job when you only have one. It doesn’t mean that once you’ve found a second job you still have time to search for an improved job.
You’re intentionally not getting it. I don’t know how to make this clearer than what I wrote, especially as you haven’t actually responded to what i wrote.
I'd would say that you are intentionally not getting it.
I wasn't responding to you, I was clarifying for your benefit.
As someone who's worked minimum wage jobs, I know exactly how it is, so I really don't need to be told. I'm also my union rep at work, so this isn't coming from a anti-union stance in the slightest, I absolutely see the value.
So when you were working multiple minimum wage jobs because one didn’t cover your living costs, did you have time to find something better? Could you quit them to find something better? My friends sure don’t and can’t.
Many times, if you're having to take on another job, you don't have the luxury of "time" to find the best one, e.g. pays well, has benefits, etc. You take the first or second job that comes to you and work for as much time as possible at that one as well. Speaking from experience, people don't take on multiple jobs just to work them for an hour or two a day.
I'm responding to what's written.
If you have a job at walmart, they can't both have zero time to find another job because of being beholden to their job at walmart and have another job.
...but they can have zero time to find another job because of being beholden to their job at Walmart, and to the other job?
You're saying they should keep the Walmart job and get rid of the other, and spend the time freed up searching for one that's full time and paid enough to replace both, right? But if you can't support yourself and your dependants on the Walmart job alone, then that's risky.
if they have the other job already, then they clearly had time. I'm not saying they should do anything. I'm saying it doesn't make sense that you can be beholden to a job because of too many hours, and have reduced hours. It's one or the other.
This is covered by search theory in economics. (economists do not use "supply and demand" for jobs, rather they consider things like search time and monopsony power.)
>Its okay if you're bullheaded enough or within your means enough to walk away if your rights aren't given fair consideration and honoured, but if you're in a position where you're a prisoner to your job, i.e. can't afford to take time off to find another job/other income, or there are no other jobs in your area and you don't have the means to leave etc. you don't have any bargaining chip.
This is the core issue. Would a federal level solution work? Maybe then people won't feel like the only solution is to form a union.
Some people are privileged enough to be able to get jobs where they don’t need collective bargaining to get decently fair compensation and decent working conditions.
From a non-US point of view, this whole anti-union strategy from Amazon is somehow hilarious to witness on top of being sad. This kind of propaganda feels like its coming from another age, or dimension.
Amazon literally employs a union busting company from the last century (edit: from two centuries ago, apparently):
> The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was founded as a private police force in Chicago in 1850, and quickly expanded its reach; its detectives initially focused on catching thieves and burglars, but soon became the bane of the labor movement for their work as enthusiastic, vicious strikebreakers. Throughout the Civil War era and in the decades after, Pinkerton operatives left their bloody mark on strikes, protests, and massacres, and gained a ruthless reputation for protecting the interests of capital by any means necessary.
> [...]
> The Pinkertons, who are now a subsidiary of Swedish security company Securitas AB, are reportedly cozying up to 2020’s version of the Gilded Age robber baron: Silicon Valley tech bosses like billionaire vampire Jeff Bezos, who has hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to reportedly surveil workers in at least one of Amazon’s European warehouses and infiltrate its worksite, according to documents obtained by the publication.
I do get the joke, but to balance it a bit, the writer is a freelancer, and does appear to have pretty good chops around labor issues. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmkelly
I'm genuinely not sure if this is sarcasm or not. Teen Vogue is certainly surprisingly serious, but my standard for "solid journalism" involves some attempt at neutrality and objectivity as opposed to hyper-partisan ideology marketed to children. To be quite clear, the overall modern media landscape is highly partisan and sensationalist; Teen Vogue mostly only stands out in that they're marketing their divisive ideology directly to children.
EDIT: This is unsurprisingly attracting downvotes. I'm curious if people are objecting to the characterization of Teen Vogue as partisan and ideological or the implication that marketing divisive ideology to children is a social ill? Or perhaps that journalism should aspire toward the truth and not partisan advocacy?
Journalism was rarely feigning objectiveness: during the 1920s through the 1970s, some of the strongest voices in favor of labor were journalists. "Neutrality" is largely a construct, or meme, that has been pushed by Rupert Murdoch since he founded his "news" network. Naturally, his own properties are nowhere near objective, despite some people claiming WSJ magically escapes bias.
Everything is naturally biased, the only distinction is whether an entity is open about their bias. This goes for anything: whether it was the New York Times and FOX hawking for nearly every war during the 2000s, or it was Newsweek favoring MLK Jr. and Life describing his speeches with phrases like "demagogic slander" during the 1960s, everyone's naturally got an opinion. This doesn't stop applying when writing about a subject.
Granted. The extent to which journalism is valuable is the extent to which it is neutral and objective. When it abandons even the pursuit of truth, it becomes a social ill.
> Everything is naturally biased, the only distinction is whether an entity is open about their bias.
I don't think this is true on any level of analysis (though it is one of the most popular and obvious of mistruths). At the individual level, one can choose to counterbalance his biases or commit himself to them. He can choose to lean on rhetoric or reason. He can debate against his most competent opponents or he can choose stooges. He can choose between straw men and steel men. He can choose to be honest (if fallible) or dishonest.
At an organizational level, we can choose between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. We can have an ideological monoculture or a diverse culture. We can build a culture that calls out rhetoric and favors reason. The net result of a heterodox organization isn't the absolute lack of bias, but the bias is severely attenuated compared to the modern newsroom.
Sure, I’ll bite. I downvoted you because it’s not partisanship or divisiveness that should be decried, but the immense wealth inequality in the United States. And perhaps Teen Vogue is progressive because that’s where their readership already is, as opposed to them simply preying on a vulnerable population.
Thanks for responding. For what it's worth, I fully agree that wealth inequality is one of the most important issues in America. On many policy issues, I'm progressive. But I just can't get behind political propaganda ('advocacy', if that's easier to swallow) billing itself as 'journalism', which I believe should ultimately be about seeking the truth (and ergo a pursuit of neutrality and objectivity). Journalism is most valuable when it hosts a robust debate; when one party to the debate is consistently a stooge or a caricature, the "debate" is less than worthless. The ideals of neutrality and objectivity are particularly important when children are the audience--the objective should be teaching children to think for themselves, not teaching them what they ought to think. Once upon a time I understood these to be progressive values.
> ’journalism', which I believe should ultimately be about seeking the truth (and ergo a pursuit of neutrality and objectivity)
This doesn’t exist. I haven’t yet given up hope that it could someday exist, but as far as I can tell it doesn’t currently. Would love to be proven wrong though.
A perfectly neutral and objective journalism hasn't existed, but the aspiration toward neutrality and objectivity have existed and even been mainstream at points in our history. In my lifetime, it's a relatively recent phenomena that media outlets were openly biased, viewing their function as "activism" rather than truth-seeking.
Maybe I'm just being cynical but I disagree. It may have appeared so outwardly, but I'm skeptical that the core motivation for mainstream journalism has ever been objectivity. I mean Manufacturing Consent is from 1988 and covers much of the 20th century, and it's not like things have improved since.
Do you think the media landscape of the 90s and 00s was just as partisan and sensationalist as today? Can you imagine the media reporting outright, easily verifiable falsehoods on their front page? Where were the 90s reporters standing in front of a burning building talking about “mostly peaceful protests”? Or the Damore memo being called “an anti-diversity screed” or the whole Covington Catholic affair? That was once the realm of parody. Before 2014, I think BLM coverage would have been “The left is angry about disproportionately black police shootings, but the moderates point out that blacks commit more violent crime and also here are some heinous anecdotes of police killings of white people. Everyone agrees that there are too many police killings. Stay tuned for a story about a dancing bear after the break.”.
The media helped the Bush administration manufacture consent for the second gulf war. The infamous lies peddled on every major news channel and newspaper are recorded for all time.
Parenti wrote Inventing Reality and Chomsky wrote Manufacturing Consent in the 80's. Your examples of lies that that you believe demonstrate how especially bad media is today just reveal that you only notice certain exaggerations or interpretations of news that go against your politics.
My politics are left wing. I could no doubt pick some fox news examples if I watched/read that outlet. The media may have helped Bush’s war, but they weren’t uniformly conservative and they also didn’t tell overt, easily verifiable lies. It’s one thing to report that the intelligence community says there are WMDs, and quite another thing to outright lie about the contents of a memo or a video which are publicly available.
> I presume you think yourself unbiased too.
0/2 on your assumptions about me. Of course I’m biased; everyone is biased. The difference is that I don’t double down on my biases, but rather challenge and evolve them by reading and debating other points of view. Note that the stark contrast between that and the folks (esp in the media) who persecute others for ideological transgressions.
Liberals are left of center in American politics, but whatever. I like liberalism and I favor policies that are frequently associated with progressives.
Fox News was notoriously famous for having extremely negative coverage on African Americans during the 1990s through 2014. They still are famous for that. National Review was extremely famous for it, too. The New York Times was also a conservative outlet, as I mention elsewhere, having hawked for every war since Vietnam.
Even the person Damore was inspired to write his manifesto because of (SlateStarCodex) admitted it was too far.
Biased reporting isn't new, it's always been universal, and it'll never go away. You just sound like you want more conservative outlets. Here's a tip: Turn on your local news. Local news in America is almost always owned by one of three conservative companies (Sinclair and Nextstar come to mind most immediately), and all of them have an extremely conservative bent.
That's not even getting into the bias of media on scientific issues. HIV/AIDS never got proper coverage, and the coverage it did get was usually outright wrong and hostile during the 1990s. Climate change? Completely debatable! A matter of emotion! They were still pushing that up until a few years ago. Encryption? Can be government-crackable and still secure! That's been a constant topic since the 1990s, too!
According to a report by the progressive research center Media Matters, New York City television stations give disproportionate coverage to crimes involving black suspects.
The Media Matters study found that between August 18 and December 13, 2014, the stations (WCBS, WNBC, WABC, and WNYW) used their late-night broadcasts to report on murder, theft, and assault cases in which African Americans were suspects at rates that far exceeded African-American arrest rates for those crimes.
There's always bias. Always will be bias. The above issue was even worse in the past.
Yes, Fox is part of the problem and there will always be bias, but again, there’s a difference between being biased but aspiring for the truth and committing oneself to one’s biases (partisanship). The media landscape of yore was mostly the former even though Fox and other outlets were exceptions to the rule. Today’s media landscape is almost entirely partisan with few outlets that seem to aspire toward neutrality and objectivity.
You seem to be conflating neutrality and objectivity with bipartisanship. It's pretty obvious that there is only one party in the USA that even pretends to value neutrality and objectivity, and it's not the party that elected Donald Trump.
I'm going to assume you're not in the UK, because this is straight out of UK government's playbook during the 70s and 80s when they were union busting the mining and engineering unions. The page on Wikipedia about the union leader Derek Robinson is an eye-opener ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Robinson_(trade_unionist... ) ... pay close attention to the work of MI5 in bringing his union activity to an end.
The depressing part is that this is actually an improvement over the violence and intimidation tactics of America's past. The US has never been a particularly union supportive country.
Yes, this is a good reminder that the first areal attack on US soil was not Pearl Harbor, but was against striking workers in 1921 at the Battle of Blair Mountain.
"By August 29 battle was fully joined. Chafin's men, though outnumbered, had the advantage of higher positions and better weaponry. Private planes were hired to drop homemade bombs on the miners. A combination of poison gas and explosive bombs left over from World War I were dropped in several locations near the towns of Jeffery, Sharples and Blair."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
Someone else in the thread mentioned a revived push for "company towns", which is exactly what these workers were fighting against. Being fired from their company meant losing their job and their house, since it was owned by the company. Honestly, it's not much different from being fired in 2021 and losing your job and your health insurance.
What's more is that it isn't some sort of ironic twist of circumstances, it's just that there aren't a lot of organizations you can call for that kind of work at scale.
In Europe, at least in some countries, forming a union is a right and there is no need to organise a ballot so companies can do much less to prevent it but they obviously still do all they can.
As long as they act within the law it's fair game really because it's obviously not in a company's interest to have unions.
The US has enterprise level bargaining (as does UK). In enterprise bargaining anything that helps workers hurts enterprises against their nonunionized competition. It's a bad system to have as a main method.
Most other countries have versions of sectoral bargaining system, sometimes with some national and enterprise level aspects. Once you understand the difference, it's easier to understand why in the US unions and enterprises have so bad relationship.
In the US, almost everything boils down to money and special interest. Amazingly enough, unionization hasn't been outlawed, despite the massive efforts from industry.
Not so amazing when you look at DNC backers, July 30, 1975, etc. More radical unions (e.g. IWW) tend to look at the 'mainstream' unions as 'bosses unions' or 'controlled opposition', and the more libertarian minded often similarly view the relationship between unions and capital as power plays by big corps to raise the 'free market' price of labor and consolidate power.
Are the Pinkertons fair game just like they are in Red Dead Redemption 2? Oh, my: but I don’t have a horse. Hope this won’t prevent me from taking part.
The back of the union movement in the United States was pretty much broken when Ronald Reagan broke an air traffic controllers strike by firing 11,359 of them and replacing them with members of the military. He also imposed a lifetime ban on rehiring any striking worker. Then they decertified the union. Sent a message.
Their justification for this was that the strike was illegal, after Reagan himself declared it illegal via an executive order.
This Amazon union vote is one of the few things I see around me in the world where things have a chance of heading in the right direction. Truly hoping it succeeds and creates a nucleation event to stop our march into ever-more-innovative methods of worker exploitation.
I felt this was about Uber being told they had to treat drivers like employees in California too, and look how that turned out: A dystopian rule that lawmakers can't overturn to enable worker exploitation.
Have you taken a look at a public health insurance exchange recently? Buying your own health insurance is a terrible deal. I'm self-employed so have had to deal with this myself. Nothing solidifies deep disdain for any politician who doesn't support Medicare for All faster than looking at that webpage of health insurance plans.
There are a lot of reasons health insurance is way too expensive, but one of them is that many individuals are shielded from the true price because it's provided through their employer. This essentially removes downward price pressure from individuals.
Having insurance tied to employment is bad for workers. It makes switching jobs far more difficult and stressful, and makes losing your job that much more of an issue.
Yes, I agree having insurance tied to employment is bad for workers. The conclusion is "therefore M4A", not "therefore everyone should buy their own insurance on a public exchange, paying half as much as their rent". You can use COBRA to stay on your job's health insurance when you leave it, which is not notably more expensive than the public exchange plans.
The insurance market model for healthcare coverage is such a fractally broken failure that if you're still stuck on the stage of twisting some knobs and adjusting some levers in the hope that second-order market effects will improve things then there really is just nothing that will convince you to move on.
Normally people create downward pressure on prices by not buying the product when it becomes overpriced. However with healthcare there is a captive market. Are you not going to get a cast put on a broken leg because the doctor wants to charge too much? Are you going to just opt out of cancer treatments and die?
Healthcare is an area where market forces are inherently perverted because people often don't have a choice of not buying the service. This is why every sensible country uses a socialized system instead. Not only does it provide better service, but without the perverse market incentives and multiple layers of middlemen infesting the system it is much less expensive.
That would be true iff prices were disclosed upfront and the pricing model was clear. I had a hospital experience recently where the surgeon provided one bill, the hospital a second, and the anesthesiologist a third.
Only the surgeon's pricing was available ahead of time. The hospital provided an invoice at the time of surgery, marked as "SUBJECT TO CHANGE". The anesthesiologist himself didn't know how much his services would cost.
Three weeks later, we're still watching invoices and insurance claims roll in.
Medical tourism is a direct testament to inflated charges as a systematic problem. Finding a hospital with non-inflated costs requires crossing international borders.
The real problem is that health insurance is overly expensive - mainly thanks to the relationship between gov / insurance. You should fix that; thinking that nationalising health care will fix the problem is just some politician's dream.
The extra money needed for nationalised health care will have to come from somewhere - and because poor people don't have money and rich people are too good at eluding their tax obligations, the usual middle class will pay for it.
I'd rather have a fully private market without national entities messing with the prices and charities for those who can't afford it.
Of course, no politician will ever champion such a system, because it removes the gov from the equation, making them less powerful and needed by the masses that keep paying taxes.
I'm sorry but this is just a complete fantasy. The "extra money" for nationalized healthcare can come from taxes instead of premiums, and enormous efficiency gains with the elimination of N x N redundant billing departments & business units. It has worked all over the world. Your scheme has not, and is also immensely cruel to people who can't afford health insurance. Charity has never solved a social problem.
I honestly never paid any attention to the law, but I really don't understand how it would be feasible to treat Uber drivers as W4 employees in the first place.
What other sort of W4 job lets you chose both how many and which hours you want to work, and let you skip any assignments you don't want to complete? That honestly is so totally backwards to even how part time jobs work that I'm not convinced it would be viable.
Assuming you mean W-2 job. This arrangement is actually quite common for software engineering contractors. There are a number of "proxy" contracting companies (ex. iWorkGlobal) of which the independent contractor is a W-2 employee, but the contractor really works on an hourly contract for a third-party company that is contracting with the proxy company. It has all the trappings of independent contracting where you can choose your own hours, renegotiate/modify the contract, whatever. It's common when contracting with tech giants.
These kinds of takes are always weird to me. Shouldn't it matter, at least a little, that the rule was what a 17-point majority of voters wanted? You don't have to personally agree with every democratic outcome, but it almost sounds like you're saying the results of a vote aren't legitimate if they go the wrong way.
Well, this is where we see inequality as a force that perverts democracy. The side of capital has an enormous quantity of resources (by definition) that they use to influence electoral outcomes. So in a way, yes, the votes aren't very legitimate when the side of capital out-spends the side of labor by thirteen to one: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-16/skelton-...
Do you think there's any chance that this was actually what a majority of Californians wanted? You seem very confident that you know better what the voters wanted than they did.
While differences in spending surely have some effect, spending isn't the only way to get the word out. I didn't measure, but I feel pretty confident that no more than 60% of the total communication about Prop 22 that I heard from any source was pro. I think it could have been a minority actually. For every PR firm the pro side hired, there were thousands of unpaid activists on the con side (which does say something positive about the con side!).
I noticed you brought out the "lawmakers can't repeal" line. This is true, but also effectively standard for ballot measures in CA. In fact the default is that you can't repeal or change the law under any circumstances. This was one point that initially swayed me to vote "against", but once I learned that this was basically how all ballot measures work (including ones you support, I'm sure), I swung back to voting "for".
For me, this was a difficult call, but I voted "for" on the basis of the net good for the entire pool of current drivers, admittedly at the expense of the smaller number of drivers who would have been able to drive under a better deal had this passed.
The net effect this would have had on driver welfare is far from obvious, so it always bugs me when people assert that the only reason this passed by a 17 point margin is that people were tricked and confused by the ride sharing companies.
I think there's definitely a good chance a majority of Californians wanted it: Because a lot of Californians are blatantly unaware or unconcerned about how Uber takes advantage of their workers.
All that most people, unfortunately, care about, is that they can open an app that solves a problem for them, and it's solved. They don't care about the people who are hurt in the process.
And then, yeah, incredible spending on Uber's part is going to slide the scale a bit too.
Look, if you put a vote out to say that Amazon workers are now indentured servants of Jeff Bezos and have to work for free and can never leave, but their Amazon purchases will all be 15% cheaper... the vote would pass, because the majority of people don't work at Amazon.
This is just an anecdote, but perhaps other people can comment, since the plural of anecdote is data...
I personally know several people who voted for the proposition under the impression that it was a pro-worker proposition that would guarantee benefits for drivers. There were 3 other people for whom I explained the context around it (including the fact that it was preempting a flawed bill from the legislature) before they mailed their ballots in and they changed their vote.
I also know several people who think that we should eliminate the rules for treating workers as employees in general, and they voted for the bill as well, so there's definitely some support. Its definitely clear from my point of view that a significant fraction of the people who voted for the proposition did so because they misunderstood what they were voting for.
OTOH that's probably true about all ballot measures ever, and probably most legislation as well.
I mean, that’s exactly what these companies spent $204,222,779.20 on. And that’s just what was spent. All of these companies also advertised for free in their apps and on their mailing lists as well. Valuable space that would have likely cost millions more.
Not OP, but the dystopian part about it to me is that it’s essentially a few corporations pooling their money together to buy a law that overrules one passed by elected officials. The previous law was one that could be iterated on and improved. Instead, we now have something equally (or even more) imperfect and unlikely to change.
The people voted on it. If that isn't the highest authority, then it isn't Democracy. If corporations can buy elections, then they also would have bought the elections for the state legislature, so, if you decide to go down the path of claiming manipulation to de-legitimize results you don't like, there is no way out.
This looks bad but companies with unions do this a lot. I remember seeing welcome packages for Delta Airlines employees where they tell them to not join the union and explaining why on their perspective is bad to do so.
I'm not saying this is correct, but unions are rarely aligned with companies, so there is always going to be a perpetual fight between unions and companies that have them. You can't really expect Amazon to embrace unionization. They are in their right to try to disincentivize unionization if they believe it could be damaging for their business.
Again. I'm not saying this is correct, but I guess that's the whole point of unionizing. If it were an easy fight, it wouldn't make sense to unionize.
For the sake of transparency, I would disclose that I'm in principle anti-union but I understand why they exist and how can they be helpful, especially to employees who work low wage jobs and who could be vulnerable to abusive employment practices.
I've yet to work for a big non-union company that didn't have some anti-union literature or speech once in a while. It didn't even matter if unionizing was in the employees best interest or not. The company knew it was not in their best interest, and so they spoke out.
I'm not at all surprised that Amazon is doing the same.
They are quite literally not within their right to stop unionisation, as that is illegal. Also it looks bad because it is bad.
btw, the line between 'disincentivising' and 'forcing' is decided arbitrarily by you. If they send text messages, block traffic lights, and screw with people's mailboxes, i think amazon crosses the line.
Definitely not illegal. You think Amazon, one of the largest companies in the world, will engage in any anti-union campaign without consulting their lawyers on what's right and what's not? It's ok if this is doesn't sit well on you. As I said in the parent comment, if unions were easy they wouldn't make sense.
Things companies that have unions or are dealing with unionization efforts can do [1]:
- Describe the good features of working for your company, such as existing benefits, job security and steady work.
- Remind them that signing union authorization cards doesn’t mean they must vote for the union.
- Inform them of the disadvantages of belonging to a union, such as the possibility of strikes, serving on picket lines, paying dues, fines and assessments.
- Explain the meaning of the phrases “dues checkoff” and “union shop.”
- Inform them of any prior experience you’ve had with unions and what facts you know about the particular union that’s trying to organize them.
- Tell your employees how their wages and benefits compare with other unionized and nonunionized companies with less desirable packages.
- Disclose the names of known gangsters or other undesirable elements who may be or have been active in the union, provided this is accurate information that can be verified by official sources.
- Inform them that, insofar as their status with the company is concerned, they are free to join or not to join any organization they choose.
- Express the hope that your employees vote against this or any union.
Special emphasis on the last point. This is not me "arbitrarily" deciding anything. I don't even care that much about this.
This is simply the other side of the coin. Companies can do this and therefore they do it. I have no personal feelings or strong opinions regarding unionization. I'm just showing the facts.
> You think Amazon, one of the largest companies in the world, will engage in any anti-union campaign without consulting their lawyers on what's right and what's not?
What? You could conclude that anything that Amazon does is legal by this logic. I'm sure they /did/ consult their lawyers - not for lessons on "right" and "wrong", but to find exactly how to skirt or cross the legal line with an acceptable level of legal exposure.
What you said is not very different from what I said. Read the other thread under the parent comment where we expanded/discussed with another commenter on some of your points.
> You think Amazon, one of the largest companies in the world, will engage in any anti-union campaign without consulting their lawyers on what's right and what's not?
This is staggeringly naive about both how large companies & the legal system operate.
Really? So you think corporations don't use their lawyers before they do things? They just go and do whatever without assessing the risks?
I think is actually naive to think otherwise. You can still feel something is illegal even though you have the clear of your legal team. I'm not debating that. Also you could take decisions on gray areas against the advice of your lawyers. I'm not debating that either.
I would like to understand your side? How is my take staggeringly naive?
If you've ever interacted with a lawyer you would know that "right vs not" is not a binary and all advice is tempered with discussion of risk. In this case, the risk is Amazon has action brought against it by the heavily neutered NLRB and possibly faces consequences many years down the road - consequences that clearly, to them, pale in comparison to the cost of having their workforce unionized. What you've said above basically amounts to "if a corporation does something, it must be legal, because corporations employ lawyers to tell them whether something is legal". Which is just straight false on the facts of history, and naive.
That’s not what I said. I’m saying that the baseline behavior is not illegal. The fundamentals of disincentivizing unions are legal. I don’t know if this particular instance is illegal. On print doesn’t sound good.
I was replying to the parent commenter who seemed to think that desincentivizing union formation/joining is illegal which is clearly not.
I agree with you that law isn’t binary, but the final interpretation of a law is a binary decision. You engage on what you think is lawful behavior or you don’t. If they did this, they clearly think that the pros outweigh the cons, and they believe they are operating within their legal rights.
> If they did this, they clearly think that the pros outweigh the cons, and they believe they are operating within their legal rights.
No, they don't necessarily believe they are operating within their legal rights. They believe the penalty for noncompliance with the law is low enough to be worth it. This is an important distinction, because it means we need much greater penalties for labor violations.
When you break a law, you don't immediately go to jail. Its not a video game. There are about a million dollars and hurdles in the way of suing amazon for breaking labour laws. They are engaging in far more than just informing their employees of a no-vote. These are facts too.
Things an employer can't do:
- Engage in surveillance of employees to determine their views on the union.
Christ dude, read the article and your own source.
Amazon's tactics in response to unionizing efforts been extremely revealing. Even if unionizing fails, I'm happy that it forced Amazon to show us all the level of contempt they have for their workforce.
That’s literally every company though. Amazon is no different than any other company with respect to fighting against things they perceive as not being in the companies benefit.
Not because some corporations are moral, but because happy workers are a good long-term strategy and many corporations are stuck with rolling short-term-ism. They reward the top tier on a three-ish year cycle, so executives only need to make the numbers go up for three years before exiting with a higher paying job and compensation via stock sales.
The US has a massive issue in general with rolling corporate pump & dump. The whole stock market basically encourages it. That's why we see things like customer retention strategies that actually reduce re-subscriptions and hurt the long term reputations remaining popular (because the short term matters more to executives than the long term, even if the company burns down after they leave).
It varies because different industries and corporations have different power relationships with their employees and potential employees. If you work in tech, for example, then your statement of 'happy workers are a good long-term strategy' might be generally true, and you will work harder to retain talent both because supply of people who have the required skills is below demand and both losing an employee and taking a new one on is expensive due to the value of the institutional knowledge they hold. These workers hold a lot of power over their employer (both individually and as a whole), and they know it, so they can demand good compensation and treatment and get it.
However a corporation which has a large amount of jobs which require little skill or job-specific training but a lot of effort may actually find the opposite is a good long-term strategy: they have a vast supply of potential employees and hiring and firing is cheap so they can work their employees hard to the point of burn-out and then fire and rehire the next batch. These workers have basically no power over their employer individually. Unions are effectively a way for these workers to exercise some power over their employer as a collective, to get what some workers essentially have automatically due to the labour market in which they work.
I always see this cited as a reason but it so rarely happens that it might as well be a Horatio Alger fable. It's not instructive or useful in our current reality and it would be like taking lessons from the workplace successes of Santa's elves.
It depends on where in the world you are, what kind of work the company does, etc. It even depends on where within a country the company has its principal activity.
Of course it is not necessarily the case that what works here in Norway would work in the US even if the legal framework were changed to support it.
>“We are troubled by [American’s] wealth transfer of nearly $1 billion to its labor groups,” Baker wrote in a note to clients.
Treating employees well is punished by the market and neither Costco or American Airlines treat them particularly well, just less terribly than their competitors. A company necessarily has to treat its employees like shit in order to succeed.
Nearly every corporation has naked contempt for its “human resources”, that's why it calls them, and the department responsible for minimizing the cost of exploiting them, “human resources”.
Amazon has particular contempt. It's not limited to the floor workers; engineers get punted if they look like they may be more short-term trouble than they're worth. Contrast with a company like Google, that goes out of its way to hire the best they can and then retain them under the belief that an engineer invested in pays dividends down the road.
Steve Yegge's accidentally-published blog post isn't the whole story, but it has a ring of truth to it.
That's pretty much every employer ever in our economic system. Your labor force is a necessary evil and means to an end in far too many business leaders' minds. Any way they can reduce labor cost, the better, unfortunately they have to tiptoe around laws to do it and invent new clever approaches to achieve the same ultimate goal: labor rights and wage supression.
It's not just businesses though who are employers. If you've ever hired someone to do a contract job for you, say a plumber, electrician or some other small construction project, you probably thought about and devised all sorts of ways to reduce the time and material costs of their efforts to save you money. I see this happen with a lot of people. Our culture has a deep seated disregard for other humans when money is involved. For those who can easily afford the cost, I don't understand. For those who have to pay someone out of necessity but can't really afford the costs, I understand.
Successful businesses fall into the former category. They are not charities, they have a profit motive and margin so they can afford it otherwise they have a failing business model. It all becomes a matter of how much success of that model they want to share with those who make their model possible and how entitled they feel in deserving of reward for their models success. To me, a lot of it is sheer coincidence and luck. I say you should contribute back to those who enable and make you successful. It's all about balance though, again, a business (well, most) isn't a charity and its reasonable to expect them to garner rewards for their efforts and success, whether it be luck or innovation and hard work based. A business also shouldn't be on the other extreme operating as a sweat shop driving down others rights to benefit those in charge.
There's a healthy balance somewhere in between and many captains of industry or investors holding the purse strings seem to have forgotten this. In addition, hyper competitive markets have forced these sort of optimizations. If you take two identical businesses with identical cost structures, products, etc and one decides to better compete and lower costs to consumers, they can reduce their labor costs, then other participants in the market will have to follow suit to remain competitive or fail in a low cost driven society. So even if you understand the value of people and want to share the wealth, it would be quite difficult.
The way to protect against this is through baseline legislation like minimum wage, overtime limits, etc. When all competitors in a market have to comply or be fined a cost with too high of risk (the punishments for violation need to be high to dissuade abuse), it's not possible to undercut your competitors in these aspects because you can't optimize beyond these constraints. We need more robust labor laws and enforcement to fix this issue, IMO. Let businesses optimize outside of labor because labor is already incredibly optimized as is and will only reduce quality of life for most if it continues the ongoing trend.
Lots of analysis could be done around the macro-socio-economics of the why, but in general I believe it’s because of the availability of remote, work starved populations, historically concentrated capital, and ease (from a cultural and legal perspective) of moving businesses and doing intracountry trade, have meant there was generally always a place industry could move, get what they want (including cheap labor), and sell to the same customer base or maket. Labor loses a lot of power when the company can just up and go somewhere else. This has historically been harder in Europe due to historically hard border controls and strong national identities - it will be interesting to see how this shakes out in the EU!
This is obviously not absolute (or Labor would not have gotten the power it has now, which is still non trivial in the US), but it is much more the case than Europe, where Labor has been able to dictate terms for awhile, and movements related to this problem were major contributors to the world wars.
One could also make arguments around shortage of labor in Europe due to deaths from the many world wars (which had only a minor impact on the US), or the world wars weakening the established sources of Capital or control in Europe more than the US, or shifts in population phenotypes due to mass migration to the Americas and susceptibility to certain types of working conditions or living styles (are children of folks who immigrate for work more like to move for jobs and take harsh living conditions as part of the deal?).
Overall, it’s hard to not notice that no one seems to actually be enforcing labor laws designed to protect workers, or that Labor isn’t organizing effectively and using it’s muscle. That may be changing, but especially on the low end it seems kinda unlikely right now.
Union Avoidance Consultants, historically, have been Pinkertons with machine guns that would not hesitate to gun down union leaders, so, if anything, this is a soft touch approach.
Amazon's union avoidance efforts involve Pinkertons; they haven't brought out machine guns yet. Though, to be fair, that's probably not kindness on Amazons part so much as a change in the legal environment since that was common.
do you have any idea how big the num_workers number is? I'd wager for the average employee the benefit will be neagative, as in paycheck - union dues. The real benefit goes to the union bosses as num_workers * union_dues.
Now, I am not very up to date on statistics, but unionised workers have traditionally earned about 10% more than non-uniomized ones in the US since at least the 80s. The article mentions 11%, which seems in line with what I know since before.
I doubt any union would charge anywhere near that much.
Amazon's own literature says "almost $500" in dues[1]. If they get a 10% pay increase, then everyone making more than $5k comes out ahead. Everyone making $10k or more comes out more ahead than the union. The union bosses probably come out the most ahead because that $500 * (a lot of workers) goes to (a small number of union management types).
It's hopefully obvious that the union makes it better for at least the lower 50% of performers. It seems likely to me that it makes things better for more like the bottom 90% of performers or more. A lot of anti-union literature is based upon the fact that most people think they are above average.
$500 in dues per year is around $20 per paycheck if you're paid twice a month or every two weeks. The increase in benefits and working conditions might well be worth that, depending on the job.
My father used to work at a facility that actually paid non-union employees more than union employees. It was at a remote location, so any sort of strike would have cost tons of money with no way to get replacements in. Any time the union negotiated a raise, the company gave the non-union employees a bigger raise, because the extra cost was worth not having to worry about a strike shutting everything down.
Unions are so unpopular even with people that in theory support unions. Look at the normal, non in power, peoples response to unions at any mid/large tech company.
100%. Not all unions are created equally. Most people who have had union employees have stories about employees who knew they were not going to lose their job, easily, so they didn't do a lot.
But if unions were more common place would there be more efficiency or more in the average union? Would it be better for many people to have some job security instead of a company having efficiency?
Disclaimer: I've a pro union Vermont raised Bernie loving person. But its impossible to see any recent unionization effort and not see the majority of people who are skeptical at best and sucking in and repeating the company propaganda at worst.
Back then, titans of industry hired Pinkertons to attack and kill striking workers. Now, they buy media companies and tech companies that are designed to incentivize viewers to violently threaten the politicians and organizers who support striking workers. It's the same continuum, just evolved in subtlety.
I don't think that's caused from the culture around unions so much as it's caused by the culture around capitalism. There are plenty of scummy niches that people have found ways of getting paid for. Everything from consultants to show your company how to layoff people to religious leaders and snake oil salesmen and conmen. It's a big spectrum.
In the US, when a company unionizes a job class, all applicable employees must then pay the union for representing them in negotiations. Only one union can represent a class of workers.
In 27/50 states workers who opt out of union membership loose the power to vote in union matters, but still are governed by union negotiations and must pay the unions "agency fees" for representing them. They no longer have to pay for political campaigning and lobbying by the union on other activism.
In 23/50 states, workers can not opt out of union dues and the union can spend the dues to campaign for political figures and issues.
Unions generally support Democratic politicians and agendas, and unions have high approval Among members of the Democratic Party. Republican Party members disfavor unions and resent obligatory union dues used to fund the party they do not support.
I much prefer the European concept of unions, where employees can pick and choose between different options
You're confused. 27 states allow non members to pay nothing. 23 states allow private sector unions to charge agency fees. Charging non members for political activities is illegal federally. And the Supreme Court decided everything public sector unions do is political.
Thank you for the correction, I misremembered the definitions
27 states are "right-to-work" states [1]
The remaining 23 allow "Union Security Agreements" between employers and unions where all employees are required to be members. [2]
The 23 states without right-to-work allow agency fees.
However, these 23 states also allow "union shops", where non-membership is not an option, so everyone can be charged for political activates.
Another big change since I last looked is that the US supreme court struck down agency fees for all government employees in 2018, including the 23 states.
Union shop is illegal federally. Some people say union shop when they mean agency shop though. The Wikipedia article says agency shop is a form of union security agreement.
Are you sure you aren't thinking of a closed shop?
My understanding is that closed shops where you need membership to apply are illegal, but union shops (post-entry closed shops) are legal in states without right-to-work.[1]
That said, I was wrong before and may be wrong again. It is really hard to understand the specifics of union law as many sources are sloppy with their terms and there are state-to-state differences?
"Full union membership thus no longer can be a requirement of employment. If a new employee refuses formally to join a union and subject himself to its discipline, he cannot be fired. Moreover, no employee can be discharged if he initially joins a union, and subsequently resigns."[1]
I guess the main difference is that in the US (as far as I understand) there is no official workers representation outside of unions, thus some characteristics of workers' representatives are done by the union in the US (you get represented even if you did not vote for them).
Much like the role of the party and State organs in one-party state vs many parties democracies. In the former the roles are much more muddied between the two.
1) Many unions are govt unions - think police, prison guard, teachers.
2) For closed shop states, if a union wins election, EVERYONE has to join the union.
3) A history of corruption in unions in some cases.
4) There is a perception in the US that unions and lazy workers overlap.
Teachers unions, prison guard unions, police unions - they need to have some real good examples of the successes unions can bring. Internationally (at least in EU in my experience) there really are those. In the US it's a bit muddied.
The latest example I saw, a parent wanted to try and get schools to reopen. Union called them racist -
"she was being racist and not considering “the needs of brown/black families who 'predominantly want to stay home' as evidenced by the several months old OUSD survey that was sent out to all district parents."
Stuff like this is kind of eye rolling. The union starts calling folks racist for wanting their kids in school? Do the black/brown folks they are speaking for even agree with these claims?
> Do the black/brown folks they are speaking for even agree with these claims?
For the most part, yes. Black/brown communities have higher COVID infection and death rates, so sending children to school disproportionately harms Black and brown people, and a lot of them have expressed this exact concern.
Not knowing what country you are in, I would bet that the situation of unions there ultimately is a result of the global labor movement of the 19th and 20th centuries, which came to be via strikes and grassroots union organizing activities.
Of course, yes, I am trying to say that what you are describing as US-style unionization is closer to how unions have historically worked. It would be your country's situation that is exceptional, because apparently workers there have won so much power, that militant/grassroots organizing is less necessary.
How does this not backfire? At Google I'm just sitting on the sidelines with the whole union thing, but if they sent me something like this I'd join and support the union immediately.
This is a pretty interesting question, and I think prods at other questions about the actual form that tech worker unions will take - especially in big companies like Google. Will they be actual organized units capable of orchestrating coordinated action to withhold labor for improvement of material conditions? Or will they just be a sort of caucus that issue statements about political issues at work and occasionally organize an afternoon walkout? If the latter, this isn't the sort of thing that will bother management very much. Certainly not at the existential level of "some of the stock dividend/buyback money will have to be redirected from shareholders to workers, my GOD"
That doesn't make any sense. You're saying you have made some sort of value judgement, presumably based on logic and information, but if someone sends you a piece of propaganda you'd totally change your position? You don' t play poker, do you?
> That doesn't make any sense. You're saying you have made some sort of value judgement, presumably based on logic and information, but if someone sends you a piece of propaganda you'd totally change your position? You don' t play poker, do you?
Sending out propaganda is a new piece of information. When someone is trying really hard to get you to believe something, or act in a particular way, that in and of itself is informative. You don't play Magic The Gathering, do you?
Forget Magic (though I appreciate the reference), this is like basic strategic thinking. Especially when there is a clear motive for the opponent (Amazon) to behave the way they are with little but trust they will do the right thing for you (worker).
It makes sense if you consider your company sending you propaganda to be additional information relevant to whether you can trust them, and so you review your decision, which is a perfectly rational response.
Many humans, when treated with contempt and addressed as if he's a gullible moron by someone who patronisingly tries to lead him into a decision explicitly to that patronising jerk's advantage, often dislikes it to the point of generating what we might call the "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" response. People who play poker yet somehow aren't familiar with humans will struggle playing against them.
Interestingly, there is now a global union, based in Switzerland, that's organizing multinationals. They're up to 20 million members.[2] They've been able to organize two US gig-worker companies, Manpower and Kelly Services.
They have a brochure on Amazon: "Essentially irresponsible".[3]
The way FC workers are treated is not ok. It's the main blemish on a company I otherwise respect. "Other companies treat FC staff like shit too" is not an excuse.
Disclaimer: Work for Amazon (corp / tech side). Opinion my own, obviously.
It's not just about wages. I think Amazon has actually made great strides by raising their minimum wages to $15/h. According to US stats the monetary benefit from unionising is about +11% on average. By offering twice the federal minimum, it's possible that Amazon is already above that. Now, you can argue that minimum wage should be higher still, but that's a separate discussion.
I don't think we should pretend that FC jobs will ever be super high paying or enviable jobs, but there are other ways to improve worker conditions. e.g. In some FC's, people allegedly have to walk for 20 minutes to reach a toilet. That's easily fixed. Making sure people don't have to choose between feeding their families and casting a vote in the election is another example. In general, even for a low skill job, pressure shouldn't be so high as to burn people out.
I think some FCs might actually have decent worker conditions. Others don't. As you alluded to, a company has financial interests that may not align with worker interests, which is why I think this needs to be approached in a structural way. Like Bezos himself once said: "Good intentions don't work; you need good mechanisms to make anything happen."
>which is why I think this needs to be approached in a structural way.
The answer is federal legislation. How break time, overtime after certain # of work hours in a day, parental leave.
If we want people to have a certain quality of life at work, I don't see any purpose directing any energy at certain large employers. All efforts should be direct to politicians, who we can vote in, to provide that quality of life at work.
> If we want people to have a certain quality of life at work, I don't see any purpose directing any energy at certain large employers. All efforts should be direct to politicians, who we can vote in, to provide that quality of life at work.
The US did that and the governments solutions was to pass laws allowing for unions. By unionizing these employees are doing the thing the government has already determined will help them.
I wonder how price sensitive Amazon shoppers actually are. I know I buy from there mostly because of the low friction and wide selection. I rarely check prices.
I'm assuming the people working at Amazon are capable of figuring that out, and since the prices on Amazon are not higher than the other retailers, they have concluded their customers are price sensitive.
Otherwise Amazon is leaving money on the table by not already charging higher prices, which is a bet I would not make.
I have many times found things more expensive on Amazon than other sources. Most of that I put down to shipping being factored into their prices, vs added in at the end for online retailers or just being aggregated across the whole inventory of physical retailers. But a big factor is time to me is time. I can get this thing for $2 cheaper at the store, but then it would be a dedicated trip out for something I can have on my doorstep in the morning.
Amazon used to offer corporate employees the opportunity to work in an FC for a few days. Have you done that program? If so how were the working conditions?
All employers are making their case at all times, throughout hiring, with pay rate consistency or discrepancy, communication, management, and culture. Union votes are an outcome of the case an employer has already made for themselves. Once the vote's on, it's going to be very difficult to refute the case they've been making for years.
Taking ownership of the failures that led to the conditions which created support for the union vote in a substantial, committed, and convincing fashion is hard, but potentially an effective way for employers to change the direction of the case they've made to employees.
Directly instructing employees to vote "no", lying about how unions work in their area, lying about the voting timeline, installing an easily surveillable special mailbox for union votes, and pressuring the government to alter traffic controls to prevent employees from being able to spend time outside the workplace during the union voting period - this is how Amazon has chosen to make their case.
'lying about how unions work'. I've seen unions do the same. I was in a union where they promised to accomplish some things... didn't even try. Zero effort to do so, they simply chose not to.
Amazon or any employer should still be able to make their case, even if they're wrong about some things ...
There's a world of difference between making their case and instructing their employees on how and where they should vote and surveilling them while they do it.
> 'lying about how unions work'. I've seen unions do the same. I was in a union where they promised to accomplish some things... didn't even try. Zero effort to do so, they simply chose not to.
Indeed, a lot of unions, especially the big, old ones in the US, have become lazy and more interested in making nice deals with management than with sticking up for the workers.
That said, the experience the workers get from the process of unionizing in the first place can give them the confidence they need to realize that the union bureaucracy isn't doing everything it can, and to pressure it to be better (by things like wildcat strikes, as the teachers in Virginia did very successfully a few years ago).
> Amazon or any employer should still be able to make their case, even if they're wrong about some things ...
I recommend re-reading the post you're responding to, which addressed that the first time you said it.
You really think the only reason they increased their labor costs by billions is because a now irrelevant populist from Vermont doesn't like rich people?
Bernie Sanders is now the Chair of the Senate Budget Committee. He's not irrelevant, that's a position with actual power. His committee is the one from which the current 1.9T stimulus bill originates, for instance. That bill doesn't get passed without going through him first. That's far from irrelevant.
> The only reason Amazon raised their fulfillment pay was because Bernie Sanders shamed them into it
I don't think this kind of claim, especially without evidence, is helpful. How do you know what their reasoning is? You're telling me on the one hand that this is a big powerful company and on the other hand saying they are easily cowed and susceptible to something as toothless as 'shame'. So which is it? My take is that companies are complex and make decisions based on many factors typically. You have no idea why they did or didn't do certain things, and it most likely has nothing to do with Sanders.
Also consider that trillion Dollars is their market capitalization not liquid cash on their hand. I don't think being a trillion Dollar company changes what they can afford or who they should reward with their profits. Amazon is already paying market-leading wages for unskilled labor and provides benefits. I don't really expect them to pay any more than minimum wage if they have enough workers interested in their jobs, since this is not differentiated work. So the fact that they're doing anything more should be appreciated. I don't think it makes sense to twist that into a criticism.
By making any case other than robust worker rights and fair compensation, they have demonstrated their culture and priorities as a corporation. But, by all means, I agree that one shouldn't stop their enemy when they're pointing a gun at their feet (edit: to clarify, this implies Amazon is making a strategic failure by fighting unionization efforts, at it reflects poorly on them).
> I don't expect people to agree with their case, but they should get to make it.
Yeah, though the problem is that "case" is likely professionally polished FUD (if American Factory is any guide) hammered home in mandatory meeting after mandatory meeting. It's like if every voter was required to attend mandatory info sessions by Republican advocates for 20 hours in the two weeks before an election, while listening to the Democratic advocates was voluntary and optional.
Read TFA - it's not just that Amazon is encouraging workers to vote no, they've set up mailboxes on-site that they're encouraging people to send their ballots with, making union organizers wary that Amazon is trying to keep tabs on who votes, even though it's supposed to be anonymous.
> making union organizers wary that Amazon is trying to keep tabs on who votes, even though it's supposed to be anonymous.
heh if it passes and a union is formed i wonder how many "tabs" are going to be kept on employees who dare choose not to join. There's plenty of precedent for unions doing their own threatening and pressuring of employees to increase the coffers.
The fact that it is unknowable does not mean that Amazon is guilty.
I think we are both retreating to our priors, but it also seems speculative that amazon is using a sealed ballot drop off location to somehow track who is voting yes or no.
I think this is pretty standard and if they didn't have drop onsite drop off locations, the story would be that they are discouraging organizers by not providing them
They have a right to. They just can’t stop people from doing certain things. The purpose of unionizing is to say “this company has been treating us unfairly and we’re powerless to stop it. But together we could.” If Amazon was treating its employees fairly, they’d be less inclined to unionize.
I don’t think there’s a single labor activist who disagrees with you. We aren’t saying Amazon is forbidden from making their case, but rather that their specific behavior is unacceptably intimidating and misleading. We agree Amazon is allowed to argue that unions are bad (although I think the rank condescension and borderline dishonesty in the mailer is a legitimate news story - the thing about dues is a lie, Alabama is right-to-work).
The problem as I see it are the two other things:
- telling employees to vote by March 1st in a specific mailbox, even though the deadline is March 29th, is blatant intimidation (since management is clearly surveilling the mailbox and will know if you don’t comply). If that’s not illegal it really needs to be.
- “Protect what you have” is a very suspicious and threatening message that suggests retaliation if workers unionize (especially given the last page in the mailer). I would say this is paranoid if we weren’t talking about Amazon - they lost all presumptions of decency with the traffic light shenanigan.
Equal grounding would be that no one is in a union, or that the employees are in a union, and the companies are in a union of their own. So Amazon, Target, Walmart, etc all get to form their union to negotiate with Big Labour.
Its not fair that Walmart and Amazon must compete against each other to buy labor but the sellers of labor can form a cartel protected by the federal government.
I'm talking about things like the employer being able to put a mailbox at the place where employees exit, mailing things to their home addresses, putting posters on the walls at work, and so on.
Yes, for shame! When will America get to hear the side of the employer?
Mabye the executive of Amazon could be allowed to post a little column in paper like the Washington Post. Maybe the owner of that paper wouldn’t object to that idea.
Imagine we lived in a world with moral consequences, perhaps the sort of world where evil people burn in hell or something like the twilight zone, where supernatural events strike down bad people, rather than the real world.
Lying to people to try to get them to vote against their economic interests seems the sort of thing that lands people in hell or haunted by an evil doll in such a universe.
"He's just making his case" doesn't really seem like sort of reasoning that would follow in a moral universe. The import thing is "is that case moral?"
I can't believe some of these actions being taken by Amazon don't violate the NLRA. Maybe they've done the math and have concluded that any protentional penalties will cost less than allowing a fair shake at a union or maybe they think the recently packed courts will tend to favor corporate interests over workers' rights.
How is Amazon allowed to say "A union cannot deliver greater job security or better wages and benefits"? It's presented as a factual statement, but, at best, it's the company's opinion, and at worst it's a blatant lie.
Personally I like the idea of worker representation on the board of directors, with enough representation that they don't just get steamrolled by other board members as a potentially viable solution to worker concerns.
I think people should be treated pretty well in a job setting, my thought is that well treated employees while costing more actually wind up producing for the business well in excess of the expense and much more than when treated like parts as well as it imo just being the ethical thing to do.
I've only heard negative things from friends who have worked in unions or with unionized employees and I understand things vary greatly union to union so I'm skeptical of how overall beneficial they are to normal workers, high performing workers and the business which ultimately they work for. They largely seem like ways for certain outspoken individuals to consolidate power and become another vehicle for corruption and stagnation, much like already broken corporate structure.
All of that said this may be the only avenue possible at the moment as nothing in the US screams major labor reforms to me and no larger business seems willing to try to experiment with other solutions.
High-performers (read: well-payed workers) like to complain about the nefarious corrupting influence of unions but seldom consider the case that the high-performers (read: upper-middle class) might have a vested interest in the corrupt status quo where the majority of workers facilitate their high-performing (read: privileged) lifestyles.
I mean all the anecdotes I have come from electricians and county paid groundskeepers and who also happen to be my close friends so I'd have to say your assertion if not false in totality is false in this case for certain.
I am, but my friends are not and they are where I've formed my opinion on unions. I don't sort myself on my money, that is a poor way to choose all of your friends.
One of the instructions not caught by the article asks that you write your name on the envelope else it won't be counted. Is that really the case? Alongside the new mailbox it looks like a way to track who has voted.
I have mixed feelings about unions. While there’s no question that unions played an important role in labor rights during the 20th century, in the 21st century unions now seems to be more a part of the problem rather than a part of the solution.
Someone needs to write the new version of "Moral Mazes". The original one described a noname chemical corp (DuPont?) full of execs that had sold their souls. Now someone we need something similar for Amazon.
Imagine if the person who was assigned or in charge to do the printing and distribution of these instruction leaflets was pro union.
There is an odd aversion to unions in the US. I find the "do not book that dinner" metaphor fitting. Bezos and Musk will book it for you instead. How do people not see a pattern that some of the richest people out there exploit the workforce the most(urinate in bottle at Amazon, safety and hours at tesla etc) are fiercely opposing unions?
You know who has pretty good unions? The police departments, ask them about it.
What happens to the people who didn't want to pay in, if the union does get set up? Will they be forced to have money taken from them to continue working there?
I'd probably quit if some organization suddenly started siphoning my paycheck. Sure unionize if you want, and I'll strike with you over issues, but that doesn't require my payment to accomplish.
I am very thankful to live in a right to work state where nobody can forcibly steal the fruits of my labor.
Unions don't ask for dues just to grift you. At a minimum, any half-competent union should be able to tell you how they're going to get you more than your dues in value from the union. This could be actual increased pay, benefits, or other value from collective organization.
No one is trying to steal anything from you. Unions are for workers. If you think Amazon is in your corner more than a union would be, I would consider reevaluating that idea.\
All that said: almost no unionized workplace that I know of has a situation where you are required to be part of the union to work there, so no, you won't be forced. For example, U.S. federal employees have huge, long-lived unions with a lot of prominence, and only 26% of federal employees actually belong to a union.
Thanks for clearing this up for me. I was under the impression that if a union was started where I work, I could be forced to pay in if I want to remain employed there.
Amazon certainly isn't on the side of its workers. No company is. They want maximum work for minimum pay. Workers want maximum pay for minimum work. I've always found the labor market to be an entertaining fight between the two.
I think the part hanging me up most is what the dues could go to. Theoretically speaking, I'm down to pay some folks to represent me and fight in meetings with <employer>. But, I don't believe in paying dues to keep members afloat when they're not working (striking, etc.). I believe that's my responsibility to stay solvent. All my life I've forced myself to spend far less than I make in pursuit of this.
I'm absolutely not a lawyer or a union expert; I'm just some guy on an orange website, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
But the sentiment you're expressing is one of the #1 tools in the anti-union-propaganda belt, and for good reason: nobody wants to be forced!
Honestly, you're the kind of person who would be really helpful in a union meeting! You bring up great points: some industries really need to be able to pay people to strike, but others don't. Where do we fit in (whoever "we" is)? And knowing where your dues are going is important; anybody trying to hide that kind of information is immediately suspect.
> All my life I've forced myself to spend far less than I make in pursuit of [solvency].
Not to go totally Marxist on you... but some would say that this is because you live in a deeply capitalist, anti-worker society, and that strong unions are just one piece in a potential society-wide safety net that would mean people could just spend the money they make without having to worry about sudden and catastrophic destitution.
In an ideal world, I personally would love if people who found themselves out of work had a third party (potentially comprised of other workers in their field) that could support them while they got back on their feet.
A slim majority of 27/50 states.
Even in those states, non-union employees can be forced to pay the union "agency fees" for representation costs, but not dues which can be spent on political agenda.
Are Amazon employees really going to even read those leaflets? This is just too rich on Amazon's site. Like they really give a flying fuck about people saving those $500 in dues. C'mon, tell it to your house cat. It might actually believe you.
People should really watch the Oscar winning documentary "American Factory", totally eye-opening in regards to the practices of union busting, among many things.
I often see mandatory dues being brought up as arguments against unions in the US. I've never heard of that practice here, so I looked and it is in fact illegal here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop#Council_of_Europe based on the freedom of association (which also covers freedom of _not_ associating).
There's also no requirement for employers to negotiate or recognise unions. Usually if sufficient members of the company are in a union the employer will negotiate pay terms with them - they don't have a requirement too, though of course the union can strike to bring them to the negotiating table. Some employers might make a single negotiation with the union and use that as the basis for their pay grades or other terms, though again, there's no requirement for them to do so.
What I don't understand is why US unions don't embrace that - if they don't adopt the "mandatory membership" part, surely the opposition to their existence has less to argue for. You don't need a big vote, members just join, and if there's enough of them they can bring employers to the negotiating table. Yes, you can get freeloaders, but that seems preferable to having no union for the employees that need it most.
I'm in tech, so there's not much call for the unionisation of tech in my country. But that's because it's a seller's market, an individual tech worker often has more leeway to insist on improvements to their pay or conditions than a factory worker and both sides know it. it's why e.g. you get management apologising for 9:30am meetings if a visiting exec is in town and they want to impress but arrive at 9:10am to the factory or mcdonalds and expect an unpleasant meeting with your supervisor. (Also if you were lucky, you knew that you were rosted for 9am the week before)
Most people from my school days, and even my father are in jobs like this. If I was too, I would totally be in a union. Part of me wonders if in tech we really should be too to have the infrastructure in place if a time comes when the market for tech work is dramatically different. Certainly given the state of unions and low wage employment conditions in my country, if I hadn't been lucky to have something I was interested in and had aptitude for pay so well, I would join a union if I had to work on it.
I know people like to harp on about examples like the US auto industry or UK mining industry where strong insistence of worker's rights was arguably a contributor to the industry in those countries going under, but it's not clear to me that industries like call centers or retail where that didn't happen have had much better outcomes for employees. Better outcomes for the businesses operating them, sure, employees, ehh...
Voting to unionize means the employer is required to negotiate with the union. And strikers have rights during and after strikes.
US labor law doesn't recognize members only unions. Employers don't have to negotiate with them. They have less incentive to negotiate because the outcome isn't binding. Strikers are just AWOL. And the prevailing legal opinion seems to be a union can't represent more than 50% but less than 100% of a bargaining unit.
Some colleagues asked me when I will start a company 'cause they want to join me. My dream of that company is that if a union is even needed, I have failed and that company needs to close.
I understand why some people want unions. I also know about a very long history of unions either completely destroying companies or having a negative influence over them, including the countries in Europe like my own. Long term unions become a parasitic entity that has the main purpose to continue its existence for the profit of the union leaders and nobody else and using all the influence to achieve that goal, even if the host is negatively impacted.
1. You get outcompeted by other companies that look out for Number One, namely the bottom line
2. You get surrounded by an entourage of corporate sycophants that nurture your lie about how your company is so benevolent that no worker representation is necessary
I am of the firm belief that Unions are a thing that are extremely good in theory, but rarely work out in practice. They kill innovation, profits and skills and turns a competitive workforce into a mediocre one. :-(
At a minimum, the credible threat of unionization is necessary to protect worker's rights. Amazon treated employees in a way that made it clear that they did not see the threat as credible. If Amazon gets destroyed by unionization, maybe the next company will treat their employees better.
Innovation and profits aren’t the only things that matter in life. Unions are the result of the same movement that gave us things like 40-hour workweeks and two day weekends.
It's amazing how little HN readers understand about unions. A company is an organization that has some positive and some negative aspects.
And believe it or not, a union is also an organization with some negative and positive aspects.
The difference is, once you have a union in an organization its very hard to dislodge it no matter how dysfunctional it gets.
I would suggest HN readers read about what UAW did in the auto industry, particularly the way the auto union functioned at the Toyota NUMA plant in California.
Then they should read about the corruption at the Teamsters (I'm sure you have heard about the collusion between union bosses like Hoffa and the Mafia). The high profile corruption is just the tip of the iceberg. Even your local teachers union has a tremendous amount of nepotism and corruption ... its not at all meritocratic.
And the worst part about a union is that it turns the workplace from a zone where we are evaluated based on our output into a zone where politics dominates when it comes time for compensation and promotion discussions.
I will never again work in a unionized workplace ... and thanks to getting an education and learning how to program I will thankfully not have to do it ever again.
If we're going to go back in time to talk about Hoffa era unions why stop there, companies used to prefer gunning down their striking/organizing employees with Pinkerton agents rather than give benefits of any kind.
With a union there's some democratic influence. You're only option for changing the company is to leave if you're anywhere below VP level.
>I would suggest HN readers read about what UAW did in the auto industry, particularly the way the auto union functioned at the Toyota NUMA plant in California.
Link some, first results I get for UAW + auto industry are propagandized anti-union sites and Toyota's own press release about how they're proud to give more money to the team.
AND this mail piece says 'BE DONE by 3/1' when workers have until the end of the month to vote (context: amazon must stop anti-union mandatory meetings etc during voting).
This could be a legal violation & is a big deal. I think at a minimum breaks the spirit of the NLRB mail-in voting ruling.
HN seems to consider big tech = oppressive surveillance. I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
This is also the latest in a long list of extreme tactics some aren't mentioned in this article. To name a few:
Amazon also fired an activist who was speaking out. It's been reported Amzn has been penalizing pro-union employees with baseless and unfair management penalties/'strikes' and purposeful last minute over-time demands as punishment. Digital surveillance. Management basically stalking associates in break rooms, asking if they are only there to organize and attorneys and consultants drawing graph person relationship research charts to map their employees. A big propaganda push online & a pretty successful press drive - most of these articles Amazon gets many inches of positive talking points.
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18277322/amazon-fired-warehous... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/22/how-amazon-is-fighting-back-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/02/amazon-...