[HN Gopher] Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form C...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First
U.S. Union
Author : jimmy2020
Score : 306 points
Date : 2021-01-15 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| ibudiallo wrote:
| Unions were proponents for worker safety, fair wages, anti-
| discrimination. They are the reason why such thing as OSHA exists
| today. They are the reason some laws were passed to protect
| workers in the US.
|
| But once these mandates became law, corporations used the
| arguments of "why do we need unions if the law already protects
| workers?" This and following Reagan's firing of the air traffic
| controllers changed the image of unions. They were now corrupt
| middlemen that charged you a fee to be part of the club.
|
| And it worked. Trying to form a union is now news instead of
| being the natural course of things. I wager that most people in
| the tech side of Amazon have a hard time grasping why their
| coworkers are trying to unionize. (we get paid well, what's the
| fuss all about?)
|
| I hope they vote in their interest, but I'm doubtful it will pass
| (I hope I'm wrong). These laws that are supposed to protect
| workers are enforced by the company's HR department[1]. The
| problem is that HR will side with the company before siding with
| any employee.
|
| I think we need to start looking into reforming HR and making it
| a public service.
|
| [1]: https://idiallo.com/blog/unions-are-not-coming-back
| schoolornot wrote:
| Grew up in a union family where I benefited greatly from the
| protections provided. But it seems to me that they really only
| help blue collar workers get higher, some would say reasonable,
| wages. As someone who worked their ass off for 10 years since
| graduating and negotiated my way to a senior role, I haven't
| seen one compelling reason to let someone negotiate on my
| behalf. Think of the smartest engineer you know. Are they in a
| union? Probably not.
| mitchdaily wrote:
| I make way more in my unionised engineering role than I did
| previously working at a multinational software firm, and more
| importantly when I have problems with the company I have
| access to support and legal advice. Making bank working on
| software is great until the company starts to stuff you
| around, or some executive takes a dislike to you
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers
|
| It was illegal for the controllers to strike.
| wincy wrote:
| It's pretty smart to make the things that benefit the weak
| and hurt the powerful illegal.
| atmosx wrote:
| Following the 2017 "Power and Politics" lectures at Yale[1] on
| Youtube (lecture 5) I came across this graph[2] showcasing the
| relationship between inequality and union membership.
|
| I know that correlation does not imply causation but here there
| are at least two strong narratives offered at the lecture
| supporting the relationship.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&list=PLh9mgdi4rN...
|
| [2]: https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-and-the-
| rise-...
| partingshots wrote:
| I just realized the 4D chess move Google was making in announcing
| union formation.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Care to share it with the class?
| twox2 wrote:
| Google has nothing to do with it, their employees do.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I asked this in the google union thread, but was too late to the
| party to get any answers. Copy pasting it here:
|
| Everybody here seems to agree that unions have the potential to
| do good or bad in every thread on it. The next logical step to me
| is that there needs to be a selection mechanism in place.
|
| For companies, the selection mechanism is competition. If someone
| else does better, the consumer or worker can choose someone else.
| And we have anti-monopoly laws to make sure that that someone
| else exists, to foster that competition and choice.
|
| Is there such a mechanism for unions? My ideal scenario wouldn't
| be me on my own as it is today. I'd want a handful of unions to
| pick from to represent me, not too differently from my choice of
| medical insurer. Five unions to represent 575,000 amazon
| warehouse workers would still average 115,000 members each, so
| it's a huge step forward in collective bargaining. And then
| people can change unions if one of them ends up how folks are
| worried about in every union thread.
|
| It seems like it would get at all sides of the issue. We'd get
| collective representation and a safeguard against the potential
| pitfalls.
|
| How could this scenario come about? Could it be something like
| medical insurance with an open enrollment season? There would
| need to be something akin to anti-competitive behavior built in,
| so you couldn't end up with an agreement saying you can only hire
| from our union. What else would it take?
| kieselguhr_kid wrote:
| Why would people want competition on a union? They don't work
| like corporations - competition weakens them.
|
| I think this fundamentally misunderstands the purpose and
| function of a union.
| pingpongchef wrote:
| I can think of a few reasons competition can be beneficial.
|
| 1. Exert downward pressure on union fees
|
| 2. Offer alternatives in the case of union corruption
|
| 3. Offer alternatives in union priorities/mission
|
| Also, I don't follow how competition in the two spaces, firms
| and unions, is necessarily different in kind. To the degree
| that competition "weakens" unions, the same should apply to
| firms.
| moate wrote:
| So they can pose hypothetical arguments about the corruption
| of the as-yet unformed union in an effort to undermine
| support for it. "What if the union is BAD!? We should
| consider other things before we lock ourselves into a
| democratic power-structure that allows greater agency for the
| laboring class against management because _reasons_! "
| edent wrote:
| This is how it works in the UK. I have a choice of unions in my
| workplace. Some are targeted more at one job sector than
| another - but all of them will gladly take my (cheap!)
| subscription.
|
| I get a vote in the union's policies. Employers can't require
| you to be a member of a specific union - or any union at all.
| You ccany join at any time - or leave whenever you want.
|
| What does it take? Just join a union and get others to do so.
|
| That's all union is, people working together.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I'm curious how that works with regards to your contract. Do
| you get to pick a different contract, with different terms,
| benefits, etc., depending on which union you join, or are
| contract terms not negotiated directly by your union in the
| UK?
| pmyteh wrote:
| In most UK workplaces with union recognition, the contract
| is negotiated between the employer and the (recognised)
| unions, but applies to all employees. Closed shops are
| illegal, so free-riding on the union is quite
| straightforward.
| edent wrote:
| In my current and previous workplace, the unions negotiate
| the group contract. For example setting pay bands, group
| benefits, etc. The union can also represent you during
| disciplinary proceedings. There's nothing stopping you
| negotiating more if you want - or can.
| WitCanStain wrote:
| >Is there such a mechanism for unions?
|
| Unions should be democratic. The workers in the union should
| collectively decide how it is run, and it should have a fairly
| flat hierarchical structure. So if you feel that your union
| does not sufficiently represent your interests, you can get rid
| of the leadership and change the union for the better. As
| opposed to companies where you essentially have the choice to
| tolerate it or leave if you don't like what's happening
| (without unions, that is).
| Sodman wrote:
| The problem is that democracy is imperfect, it can be (and
| is) frequently gamed and manipulated. Many people are worried
| about the following scenario:
|
| - Software engineers unionize
|
| - Some "bad" rules get implemented, perhaps passing vote by
| misleading slogans or over-represented groups etc. Maybe it
| was a narrow 51% vs 49% vote.
|
| - Top talent leaves, over time that 51% in favor of the bad
| rules becomes a larger and larger majority
|
| - Now your option is essentially tolerate it or leave if you
| don't like what's happening. So it's the same as before,
| except now you owe union dues.
|
| - "Top talent" starts new company that's more focused on
| "work" and has fewer rules.
|
| - Company grows...
|
| - Software engineers unionize... repeat
|
| When I say "bad rules" I'm thinking things that are the
| software equivalent to existing union rules like "Only union
| members can plug in that HDMI cable" etc etc.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Well that's a convoluted mess. Here is the game plan on the
| other side of the bargaining table:
|
| - Conspire with others to not pay top talent market rate
| and not poach employees
|
| - The end.
| Sodman wrote:
| This particular scandal involved FANG companies... While
| obviously bad for employees, I don't think "we don't get
| paid enough" is a primary complaint amongst the FANG
| workers currently trying to unionize.
|
| Outside of FANG, poaching and competing on salary are
| common, at least in the startup space.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| After the lawsuit, within FAANG, they poach and compete
| on salary. Take a look at levels.fyi and compare to
| startup salary bands.
| moate wrote:
| So we agree that "nothing is perfect".
|
| My question is why did this group unionize if nothing has
| changed for the better (in your words "its the same as
| before except now you owe union dues")?
|
| Wouldn't it be more likely that the group makes some gains,
| some losses and is better for most of the people in the
| group overall? That tends to be what happens in real
| unionization efforts (I'm more than happy to provide case
| studies).
| Sodman wrote:
| I should clarify that I was talking specifically about
| unionizing as tech workers. Warehouse workers are a
| totally different situation. My opinion is admittedly
| strongly influenced by the fact that at most tech
| companies I've worked for, the conditions have been
| great, and any strong employee feedback and reasonable
| demands were usually listened to and acted up by
| management. The same can obviously _not_ be said for
| warehouse workers, so unionizing would almost certainly
| benefit them.
|
| I'll agree that there would most likely be some gains and
| some losses. I'm just not personally convinced the gains
| will outweigh the losses for software engineers
| specifically.
|
| I think the key difference here between warehouse workers
| and tech workers is that if non-union talks with
| management break down, most tech workers can move jobs
| and keep similar benefits/comp/location without huge
| effort, the same can't be said of many warehouse workers.
| bawolff wrote:
| Perhaps a small number of unions can work. I think if you allow
| arbitrarily many unions you're kind of back where you start
| because owners can just entice people to join small enough
| unions that they lack the power.
|
| In a sense, the monoply power of a union is a counterbalance to
| the monopoly of management in a single workplace.
| Veserv wrote:
| No, IANAL, but my reading of the relevant law indicates that
| such an arrangement is illegal in the US. Unions in the US are
| legally enshrined as the exclusive representative of all
| members of a "unit" which has a precise legal definition which
| is approximately a group of non-management workers with a well-
| defined role (e.g. line workers in a factory, butchers in a
| supermarket, teachers in California) [1]. When a union is
| formed, _all_ members of the unit are represented by the union
| including individuals who are not members of the union [2].
| This also means that once a union is formed representing the
| unit, all non-official unions of the form you are suggesting
| are legally superseded by the official union.
|
| I believe this to be an accurate reading of the law as, as far
| as I am aware, there are no competing unions anywhere in the US
| unlike many countries in Europe which appear to have competing
| unions, though I am not particularly familiar with European
| labor markets.
|
| [1] https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-
| materials/nation... Sec. 9 159 (b)
|
| [2] https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-
| materials/nation... Sec. 9 159 (a)
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| Amazon is a private company. They should be able to stop
| unionization if they so choose.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| What a repulsive thing to say.
| kieselguhr_kid wrote:
| Why should a private company be able to break the law? Why
| should workers give up rights that thousands of us died for?
|
| This is a frankly disgusting sentiment.
| kieselguhr_kid wrote:
| I worked at and organized a local grocery store in 2015 into the
| UFCW local. Workers there have six weeks of vacation after a
| year, much higher than average wages and excellent health
| benefits. They also have a real shield from arbitrary discipline,
| which had been a rampant problem.
|
| Seeing all the anti-union propaganda makes me wonder how many
| people spreading it have ever been in a union. It seems like most
| of it is just buying into the ambient pro-business propaganda
| without direct experience.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| Positions on unions should not be absolute. There are many
| people who are these anti-establishment, universally pro-union
| types, as if they improve everything they touch and there are
| no downsides. The reality is that unions are a big tradeoff.
| For grocery workers and warehouse workers and other low skill
| positions, they tend to make sense. Labor laws are definitely a
| better way to handle things.
|
| Unions should also be a last resort. Folks need to stop
| assuming that their employer is oppressive and give them a
| chance to accommodate their grievances, and they should be
| reasonable in what they expect from an employer/employee
| relationship. The best possible outcome is having an employer
| who gives you what you want (within reason) without a union.
| Folks who make hundreds of K per year, get unlimited vacation,
| flexible working time, free gourmet meals, the best health
| benefits on the market have a lot less reason ti resort to such
| a blunt instrument than a factory worker in a one factory town.
|
| They should also be sincere in their evaluation of rebuttals.
| It's import to build trust on both sides. Sometimes threats of
| a plant closure are bluffing as a negotiating tactic, but
| sometimes they aren't.
|
| For what it's worth, I have been a union member and many of my
| family members are in unions. I do not have good things to say
| about them at all, but it's true that some places are even
| worse without them.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I wonder what percentage of otherwise very liberal Amazon devs
| read sentences like "The company for years successfully fought
| off labor organizing efforts in the U.S." and come away thinking
| "we're definitely the good guys."
| nostromo wrote:
| Honest question: does the Democratic Party care about labor
| anymore? It feels like anti-Trumpism, identity issues (race,
| trans issues, etc.), and immigration have sucked all the oxygen
| out of the room. I can't remember the last time I saw a
| Democrat run with supporting labor as their headline issue.
| vdnkh wrote:
| On the off chance you're serious, here's Biden's union stance
| https://joebiden.com/empowerworkers/.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Actions > Words
| the-dude wrote:
| You left out _climate_. In NW Europe it is no different :
| anything goes as long as it not labor.
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| As far as I know they very much do support labor issues, they
| just haven't been as much of the flavor of the month lately
| due to the headlines of racial, transgender, and other
| related political issues since those usually garner more
| views in the media.
|
| Part of the reason may be that the divide between Democrats
| and Republicans is much wider on those issues vs labor
| issues.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Obamacare got a lot of workers at places like amazon
| warehouses healthcare.
|
| Cancelling student debt will help a shit tonne more workers.
|
| He has a section on his campaign website addressing Union
| specifics:
|
| https://joebiden.com/empowerworkers/
|
| Well see what he can actually does, but with the senate in
| democrat hands, the sky is the limit.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| "Cancelling student debt will help a shit tonne more
| workers."
|
| I will feel terrible if that ever happens for folks that
| were smart with money and didn't incur tons of debt. It's
| gonna be a real bummer when you learn that you paid off
| your educational debt or never had any and that now you get
| to pay off debt of others that made bad decisions.
| kuang_eleven wrote:
| I, as someone with no outstanding student debts anymore,
| would be ecstatic to have universal student loan
| forgiveness. It is the right thing to do, and part of
| being a conscientious citizen is advocating for issues
| that help society, even if they don't help yourself.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| Have you considered reaching out to some students or
| grads with debt and writing them a check to help them pay
| off their debt?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| You're describing me.
|
| I agree emotionally. But that's life, if you actually
| believe in education you can only really pay if
| forwards...
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > I can't remember the last time I saw a Democrat run with
| supporting labor as their headline issue.
|
| Bernie Sanders and AOC would like a word. Most of their
| platform is based around supporting the working class.
| pydry wrote:
| I rather thought that the function of these other issues
| _was_ to suck the oxygen out of the room so they didn 't have
| to talk about labor issues. Their donors tend to be wealthy
| and anti-union.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Generally the point of most social wedge issues from the
| point of view of the moneyed and political elite is to not
| have to talk about any kind of economic issues that affect
| the bulk of society, yes.
| asdff wrote:
| And also to divide the working class vote. Could you
| imagine how progressive this country could be if the
| working poor was united and consistently voted in line
| with their economic interests? FDRs ghost would be
| dancing in the street.
| myownpetard wrote:
| The Democratic Party is too large of an umbrella these days.
| Anybody whose primary concerns are among fiscal
| responsibility/the deficit, public education, effective
| foreign policy, civil rights, human rights, political
| corruption, science based public health/policy, climate
| change, domestic extremism, an independent judiciary etc. has
| moved into the democratic party.
|
| The Republican Party is for people whose primary concern is
| one of a theocratic judiciary, paying less taxes if you make
| more than $400k/yr, white nationalism, extractive industries,
| military contractors, unrestricted access to any/all classes
| of firearms.
|
| In both of those groups there are large pro-business, anti-
| labor contingents.
|
| Hopefully one day we will move to ranked choice voting and
| other mechanisms that allow 3rd parties to compete and we can
| have more meaningful and direct connections between parties
| and specific policies instead of these two loose coalitions.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| Have you ever talked to a single Republican? You're way off
| base, especially with the race baiting.
| moate wrote:
| What do you view the Republican platform as being? What
| specifically is he wrong about?
| edmundsauto wrote:
| OP is wrong about unrestricted access to all weapons. And
| not all Republicans are anti-abortion, although that is a
| big part of their platform due to the control it gives
| over evangelicals. (That is to say, I think if there is a
| schism, the more centric version of the party would not
| be anti-abortion.)
|
| Also, white nationalism is only embraced by a small
| percentage of the party. It's not really part of their
| platform, it's just what the loudest shouters in the
| party want.
|
| (Disclaimer: I do not identify as repbulican, but if this
| is your best faith effort to define their platform, you
| lack empathy for them which means you'll never understand
| even their lucid ideas. Granted, many of their ideas are
| vague and not lucid.)
| pugets wrote:
| There are a lot of liberal/leftist communities online with
| that same gripe. Democrats pander to "pop politics" but have
| no plans for labor reform, healthcare reform, etc. that would
| go a long ways to helping the majority of the people in this
| country.
|
| It's all theater.
| [deleted]
| logicslave wrote:
| You arent aloud to say this!
| amzsdethrowaway wrote:
| Why would you think any of us think that?
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Well, let's see some solidarity with the warehouse rank and
| file to prove it.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| It doesn't matter if there's a union or not. It matters what
| actually is being done. From the news it seems that Amazon has
| been consistently improving conditions of its warehouse
| employees. For example, making the minimum wage $15/hour.
| robert_foss wrote:
| Even if unions are affecting no change, their are able to
| give the workers at least some power.
|
| Who knows, maybe they'll make Amazon to allow unmetered
| bathroom breaks one day.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Bathroom breaks aren't metered in Amazon warehouses.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| DenisM wrote:
| Sometime during the last year the usually heavily statist left
| became heavily corporatist. I'm not sure what to make of it.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Because leftists became liberal centrists as the left was
| thoroughly destroyed during the 70s-90s.
|
| This process was, ironically, only made possible by the
| destruction of unions which were the most important leftist
| institution.
| jskell725 wrote:
| To this point - Lately I've found myself arguing for Medicare
| for All from the "right", against e.g. classifying gig
| workers as employees so they get corporate benefits from the
| "left".
|
| In a universe where public social programs are impossible; I
| find many of these corporatist-redistributionist arguments
| sort of interesting. But in this one; I really do think we
| should tax corporations more and fund State programs.
|
| If everyone has medicare for all and eviction protections; do
| we still care whether amazon can fire a worker from a
| warehouse?
| MaslowsPyramid wrote:
| Based on purely anecdotal evidence, I agree. I've seen an
| increased number of supposed "eat the rich" types voicing
| support for corporate interests, to an almost laughable
| degree of irony. For instance, Twitter users who have
| "#eattherich" in their bio saying that social media should be
| left unregulated because the owners of the platforms should
| be able to do whatever they want with it.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| From personal experience, I can say working in a closed shop UFCW
| grocery store was better on almost every level than when I worked
| in a non-union grocery store. I count that as a positive
| experience but I've also seen unions that are little more than
| extortion rackets. There's one particular union active in my area
| that protests any job site where they wanted their members hired
| exclusively and didn't get their way. The members of the union
| don't themselves protest, instead they hire minimum wage workers
| to harass passersby. They line both sides of sidewalks, leaving
| only a very small path through. Each person on both sides of the
| sidewalk will push a sheet of paper in the face of anyone trying
| to get by, being careful to not actually touch the person. The
| paper is their demand that the job site hire them. These lines
| can be twenty or thirty people deep, with each participating in
| the just legal enough harassment. They also issue whistles to
| these faux protestors to blow throughout the day in order to make
| life as miserable as possible in the area. They know the limits
| to what they can legally get away with. Doubt anyone who has had
| to run that gauntlet more than once came away with a positive
| view of unions. Not sure what's the solution to this type of
| behavior and this is an extreme example but in general unions
| often take the public hostage in their disputes which makes their
| image with the public negative.
| paul7986 wrote:
| They should and should be making no less then $20 an hour to
| start!
| ryanmercer wrote:
| I don't even make 20$ an hour after 15 years at my job... when
| I was 18 I was doing the kind of work Amazon workers do for
| _minimum wage_ which was 5.15 an hour IIRC. I was happy to have
| a job and fully understood warehouse work is _not_ a career.
|
| 20$ an hour is 2.75x the minimum wage here in Indiana. A
| significant portion of the people I know don't even gross 41k a
| year.
| sct202 wrote:
| Other people getting their employer to pay them more doesn't
| harm you. There are already people in warehouses that make
| that much. The warehouse I used to work started at $18 (for
| general labor, and like double that for mechanics and machine
| operators) and that was a decade ago.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| >Other people getting their employer to pay them more
| doesn't harm you.
|
| It does when it drives cost of goods and services up that
| their employer provides.
| filoleg wrote:
| > They should be making no less then $20 an hour to start!
|
| This is a noble goal, and I am all for seeing it happen. But if
| you think it won't just give Amazon warehouses a stronger
| foothold, you are mistaken. I, personally, don't think it is
| necessarily a bad thing if Amazon warehouses gain more workers
| due to their conditions becoming better as a result of
| unionization. But quite a lot of people will disagree with that
| statement.
|
| You know why, despite all those current awful-sounding
| conditions, people are still signing up to work at Amazon
| warehouses in droves? And no, it isn't because those workers
| are dumb and don't know what's better for them or because they
| are that desperate. It is because warehouse jobs are usually
| always somewhat hellish, and Amazon warehouse jobs tend to be a
| bit less hellish than other warehouse jobs, while paying quite
| a bit more. Bumping the pay up to $20/hr will make it even more
| not worth it to work any other warehouse jobs, when Amazon ones
| give you a no-brainer choice that is even better all around
| than before.
|
| Again, not commenting on whether it would be a good or bad
| thing, just an observation. I, personally, think it would be a
| good thing if those workers got paid more and got better
| conditions. But the externalities of that decision (giving
| Amazon more power) might be a bit too much for a lot of people
| to swallow. I will admit, I haven't thought about those
| externalities much past what I have already described in this
| comment, so I definitely could be missing something. In which
| case, I would love to learn more about those, if someone has
| meaningful points to contribute to this discussion in the
| comments.
| maxerickson wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25795459 links an
| article about Amazon driving average wages down.
|
| Seems likely enough that people working in other warehouses
| mostly aren't the ones filling Amazon jobs. Do we have some
| anecdotes about people leaving logistics jobs to go entry
| level at an Amazon warehouse?
| gruez wrote:
| >https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25795459 links an
| article about Amazon driving average wages down.
|
| That doesn't disprove gp's claim that amazon is better than
| the existing warehouse jobs, because it could be simpson's
| paradox at work. eg. let's say before amazon moved in your
| warehouse jobs you had in an area were the following:
|
| * 20 forklift drivers @ $20/hr
|
| * 100 pickers at @ $10/hr
|
| The average warehouse wage would be $11.67/hr. Now, let's
| say amazon opened the warehouse and created higher paying
| jobs (like gp claimed), and the jobs now look like the
| following:
|
| * 30 forklift drivers @ $22/hr
|
| * 500 pickers at @ $11/hr
|
| Every job's wages went up by 10%, yet the average wage
| slightly fell to $11.62.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Yeah, I didn't say it disproved anything.
|
| I wonder what explains _A Bloomberg analysis of
| government labor statistics reveals that in community
| after community where Amazon sets up shop, warehouse
| wages tend to fall. In 68 counties where Amazon has
| opened one of its largest facilities, average industry
| compensation slips by more than 6% during the facility's
| first two years, according to data from the Bureau of
| Labor Statistics. In many cases, Amazon quickly becomes
| the largest logistics player in these counties, so its
| size and lower pay likely pull down the average. Among
| economists, there's a debate about whether the company is
| creating a kind of monopsony, where there's only one
| buyer--or in this case one employer._ though.
|
| The 'warehouse wages tend to fall' cuts out a bunch of
| variables, you end up with 'warehouse worker pay', and it
| goes down. It could be that warehouse jobs tend to pay
| for tenure or something, but that goes to the question I
| asked; are people leaving other warehouse job to go work
| at Amazon?
|
| After your edit: I guess picking for $11 is worse than
| driving a fork lift for $20, so they probably aren't
| improving overall work conditions if they are hiring so
| much that the structure of the workforce changes.
| paul7986 wrote:
| If their wages rise then others will be force to as well!
|
| I worked answering phones at Verizon in the early 2000s and
| their pay there due to being union was top pay for customer
| service. Comcast was paying me $9 to $12.50 for that work
| while Verizon paid more then double of my highest wage at
| Comcast. Overall I got fed up with being yelled at on the
| phone by customers' of monopoly companies and taught myself
| web development and design. I'm glad I did so, yet am pro-
| union per my experience at Verizon vs. Comcast.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The median wage in Alabama for _all_ jobs is $16 /hour. Paying
| warehouse workers _well_ above the median wage would have
| fairly negative economic implications.
| bequanna wrote:
| > ... should be making no less then $20 an hour to start!
|
| Why?
|
| A company should have the right to pay whatever they deem
| appropriate and an individual should have the right to choose
| to pursue whichever job they wish.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Can anyone outline what unionisation means in this case?
|
| If they vote yes, is everyone at this location required to join?
| Are amazon required to negotiate with the union? Can amazon
| simply close the plant?
|
| Presumably if unionisation works for these workers (better pay
| etc) then other centres will follow suit...
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Alabama is a right-to-work state so I don't think a union can
| require all employees join in order to work. Back during the
| big UPS strike in the 90s, the Montgomery, Alabama warehouse
| had the highest picket crossing rate in the entire country.
| This location is probably a best case scenario for Amazon
| because even if the union succeeds in forming, it has a high
| probability of failure, especially in any labor action it
| attempts as finding replacement workers will be easy and there
| is little public support for unions in the community. They
| won't be able to get away with any intimidation or below board
| retaliatory actions on those who don't go along with the union
| action.
|
| The situation is almost so ideal for Amazon that I wouldn't be
| surprised if someone high up in the company planned for this to
| be the location to try to unionize in order to poison the whole
| concept. They won't even need to play games with shutting down
| the warehouse as union failure at this location is highly
| probable.
| kieselguhr_kid wrote:
| Hi, I was a union organizer before I was a software engineer.
| I'll try answer your questions without much commentary:
|
| Is everyone required to join? No. Following Janus, they might
| not even be required to pay dues. However, the union contract
| will apply to everyone in the bargaining unit (generally all
| non-management) regardless of membership.
|
| Is Amazon required to negotiate? Yes, they're legally required
| to make good faith negotiations. Whether or not they actually
| do this is an open question, as companies regularly stall here.
|
| Can Amazon simply close the plant? Not legally, no. They would
| probably end up owing the workers quite a bit of money if they
| did. Whether or not they take that course of action may be a
| business decision.
| fat_pikachu wrote:
| Janus was public sector unions only.
| notJim wrote:
| See this related article, which suggests that Amazon is dragging
| down wages for the sector:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-17/amazon-am...
|
| Discussed here previously:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25463000
| jandrese wrote:
| Given the multiple reports of deplorable working conditions in
| Amazon warehouses it seems like they would be ripe for
| unionization. Unions can be seen as the backpressure on
| corporations mistreating the workers, which Amazon has become
| notorious for.
|
| It's one of those things businesses have to take into account
| when trying to compete. You can abuse your employees to gain
| competitive advantage over your rivals, but in the long term such
| tactics tend to result in the formation of a union which is a
| major competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace.
|
| It's bad news for Amazon if they can no longer honor next day
| delivery for Prime members because of strikes at the warehouses.
| The workers have some leverage with strikes. It's not like coal
| miners where strikes were rather abstract because the lights
| never went out. This pain will be felt by the customers, and it's
| not like there aren't other businesses out there where you can
| mail order stuff. Maybe not all from the same shop and maybe you
| have to pay for shipping, but if Amazon doesn't know when it will
| be delivered because the product is in the warehouse and labor
| negotiations have stalled it's a reasonable tradeoff.
| jamiequint wrote:
| I have family that has worked in Amazon warehouses who say
| these claims are either grossly exaggerated or only a
| representation of how they were run in the past. Amazon has
| hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, it's inevitable
| there will be exceptions, but that doesn't mean the mean
| experience is the same.
| telaelit wrote:
| Tech company unions are going to be the most powerful
| organizations in the next 10-20 years.
| simpixelated wrote:
| Along with the unionization at Google, I think it's a good trend
| to see them happening at big tech companies. As it says in the
| article: "Unions are a prominent presence at Amazon in Europe,
| but the company for years successfully fought off labor
| organizing efforts in the U.S."
|
| It's sad that Amazon, along with FB and Google, etc. have managed
| to squash unions so completely here in the US. There's a lot of
| propaganda around unions that helps prevent them from every
| gaining much power. Obviously Amazon warehouse employees
| desperately need unionization much more than software devs, but I
| think both are needed.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| what I'm astonished by is the degree to which American firms
| are allowed to sabotage unionisation efforts despite, as I
| understand it, the US actually having similar protections for
| workplace assembly as other Western countries.
|
| If you tried interfere with unions here in Germany you'd run up
| against the law, the media and so on very, very quickly, it's
| one of the things you don't want to screw with.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rjstreur wrote:
| There's a long history here. The American labor movement
| secured a lot of those protections in the early and mid-20th
| century, and they were strong for several decades. It was a
| hard, violent fight. People died at strikes for those
| protections.
|
| As we entered the 80's and 90's with the rise of Reaganism
| and then neoliberalism, however, US businesses as well as the
| federal and state governments started chipping away at them.
| Now, between insufficient oversight, "right-to-work (spare
| me)" laws, lack of NLRB enforcement, and a robust cottage
| industry of private-sector union-busters, labor has less
| power in America than it's had in a long time.
|
| It's good to see it start to change.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > It was a hard, violent fight. People died at strikes for
| those protections.
|
| Just a personal anecdote, my biological grandfathers trunk
| was firebombed by the Philly Roofers Union (UURWAW) due to
| a dispute with them. The K&A gang in that area is well
| known to be tied into the union[0] and was known to fairly
| regularly engage in violence like that to prevent "scabs".
| My point being, the violence was omni-directional and this
| fact is often omitted by those in favor of unions.
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%26A_Gang#Roofers'_Uni
| on_corr...
| [deleted]
| slg wrote:
| It isn't surprising once you reframe the issue. These unions
| are successfully suppressed for the exact same reason that
| people are inclined to form them. The labor class in the US
| simply doesn't have (or perhaps more accurately doesn't
| yield) the political power that the labor class does in many
| other countries. The forming of unions will help them get
| more power, but the act of creating a union already requires
| a certain level of power which many US workers haven't yet
| achieved.
| asdff wrote:
| That is by design, really. The working poor in this country
| have been ideologically divided by moral wedges such as
| abortion for decades now. Few poor republicans and poor
| democrats would like to admit that they are in the same
| economic boat, and as a result typically the former votes
| against their own economic interest on the grounds of their
| moral principles.
|
| For the wealthy in this country, the political footballism
| is the perfect machine to ensure their position on the
| economic ladder remains at it's lofty heights, and
| inequality continues to widen by the year. I really don't
| think republicans like Mitch McConnel care at all about an
| issue like abortion, they just use it to drum up votes from
| their base in order to further their economic policy goals.
| [deleted]
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Few poor republicans and poor democrats would like to
| admit that they are in the same economic boat
|
| They might agree that they're in the same boat, but
| they'll disagree with why they're there.
|
| Poor democrats will blame corporations for keeping wages
| low and sending jobs to China and lack of government
| assistance programs. They think the solution is to
| increase taxes on the rich to provide better social
| programs.
|
| Poor republicans will blame illegal immigrants for
| stealing their job, or they somehow think the government
| is in their way. They think the solution is to cut taxes
| on the corporations to create jobs (regardless of the
| fact that this never works).
| kortilla wrote:
| The labor class has tons of power. The labor class just
| doesn't care much for unions in the US.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| I'm not, most politicians receive large campaign
| contributions from large corporations and lobbying groups.
| It's a largely quid pro quo system that's one step away from
| legalized bribery.
| bbddg wrote:
| Lots of states in the US have "right to work" laws which make
| it much harder to workers to organize unions.
| jariel wrote:
| Google and Amazon unions represent quite fundamentally
| different kinds of organizing principles.
|
| The Amazon union is of the much more classical form, is well
| past due, it's not entirely necessary, but it would be
| beneficial.
|
| I don't actually think that regular Google employees should be
| unionized, rather, it should be the non-technical staff,
| contractors and so many people not in privileged positions that
| should be probably be unionized to the exclusion of the talent,
| who want to form their union for entirely different reasons. I
| do not believe that the Google Union is oriented towards
| helping those who actually are powerless.
|
| Google technical staff are the most privileged and well taken
| care of workers literally in the entire world.
| rjstreur wrote:
| So whether workers should be allowed to unionize should
| depend on which changes they are fighting for? Where's the
| line of powerlessness a union's beneficiaries need to be
| under in order for the union to be valid in your perspective?
|
| It seems like the main actions taken by the Google employees'
| union so far have been to push the company to behave more
| ethically, not to enhance their already-significant (indeed,
| outrageous) privilege. I see that as using their privileged
| positions as leverage for positive change, and I hope they
| succeed.
| jariel wrote:
| The Google Union is being formed so that specific employees
| to try to parlay _their version of ethics_ - the assumption
| being that what they think of as 'ethical' is universally
| applicable, but this is definitely not the case.
|
| I don't trust Google Employees one bit more than I trust
| Google Management, as far as certain issues of ethnics, I'd
| much rather have intelligent and pragmatic regulation.
|
| Also, I didn't really hint at 'what was within their
| rights' or not.
|
| Finally, and ironically, if we're going to be concerned
| about 'ethics' it might start with tidying up their own
| household and using the tools of organizing like Unions for
| which they were intended, which is to say helping those who
| have no power i.e. the gazillion of 'secondary' actors at
| Google.
|
| If Googlers want to have more influence I'm not sure the
| Union model is it, because far more often than not, it's a
| system of entrenched power that will use their base to
| carry out the wishes of the vanguard. Student unions for
| example, tend to take positions that are wildly
| inconsistent with what the average student would want, but
| voter participation is low, the system is opaque, and many
| students don't pay any attention and are just resigned to
| the system. I don't know what the answer is, but it's
| probably not a union.
| random5634 wrote:
| The propaganda unfortunately also comes from folks direct
| experience with unions. In the US, most unions are public
| sector. So folks see that
|
| Police unions may protect bad apples via union.
|
| Teachers unions may care more about teachers including bad ones
| then teaching kids. We had a famously terrible teacher at my
| school - unfirable - as kids we thought it was hilarious. As a
| parent now - not so cool. Non unionized schools seem to be
| coming up with innovate workaround during pandemic (outside /
| park / hiking classrooms etc).
|
| Absolutely horrendously drafted laws that make life miserable
| even for folks trying to do right (AB5, schools not allowed to
| keep reserves) that are union drafted, and require endless
| exceptions and modifications.
|
| Google employees unionizing and striking and walking out and
| otherwise throwing very highly paid fits over things that don't
| connect with average person.
|
| When you call what people have first hand experience of
| "propaganda" they may immediately will discount everything else
| you are saying.
|
| The real rule should be all poorly compensated folks paid
| $14/hr or less should automatically be in unions. That's where
| the real need is.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Many/most supporters of unions argue that police should not
| be able to form or join unions. "Cops are not workers" is a
| common phrase I've seen.
| munk-a wrote:
| Given that the police budget is formed by public allocation
| and the nature of the job I think that policy absolutely
| should have the ability to form unions. Being forced to
| work long shifts in dangerous work environments (whether
| dangerous to you or others) is pretty unsafe. The issue is
| that, whether intentionally or not, the public has
| bargained away some pretty valuable things over the year to
| the union including employment record availability and
| retention requirements.
|
| That union needs some serious reform and it isn't going to
| come from the inside, but there are some really good
| reasons for police to have good bargaining power.
|
| Honestly, this probably all comes back to the US massively
| underfunding public services as a general rule - if the
| policing budget had been slashed like the education budget
| regularly is then we'd have nothing but vigilantes in the
| police force.
| opinion-is-bad wrote:
| Why only cops and not all public sector employees? I don't
| see how you can make an argument that police work isn't
| work.
| spiznnx wrote:
| The argument that cops are not workers, in a Marxist
| sense, is because they work to protect the interests of
| capital, rather than do "productive" work that is useful
| to the rest of the working class.
|
| It's not a broadly held view, even among communists.
| _jal wrote:
| Voting this down is nonsense. It is useful contextual
| information explaining why some people make the claims
| they do.
|
| The groupthink runs deep; people who don't even
| understand what they're downvoting. Sad.
| munk-a wrote:
| As a worker I appreciate the fact that when I was burgled
| a decade ago there was someone to call to inform about
| the burglary.
|
| I also very much appreciate the fact that "having police"
| (even vaguely, and even ineffective ones) is a pretty
| good deterrent to (most) random folks murdering other
| folks[1].
|
| There is a hell of a lot wrong with American policing but
| they do productive work just like managers (that don't
| produce anything themselves) and HR and all the other
| "non-productives" people like to point out. I think it's
| perfectly fair to question just how much value police
| (and other "non-productives") are actually producing and
| a lot of businesses could do with trimming a bit of
| labour out of middle management - but there are reasons
| these jobs exist and they can add a lot to team and
| societal productivity.
|
| 1. I don't ascribe to theories on anarchist utopias where
| if everyone _can_ kill everyone else no one does out of
| politeness, I 've played Rust.
| geofft wrote:
| What did informing the cops about the burglary do,
| precisely?
|
| One specific feature (at least in the US) is that a
| police report is required for an insurance claim - but
| there's no fundamental reason this system requires a
| _police_ report, as opposed to, say, a sworn statement to
| a clerk of court or a public prosecutor. And even so,
| that 's about getting some form of recompense after the
| crime happened, not stopping the crime (the burglary
| still happened to you, did it not?).
|
| Along the same lines, I don't believe that the presence
| of the police prevents people from killing others. I
| certainly believe that the presence of _the legal system_
| does, by imposing strong penalties against murder. I 'd
| believe that detective / investigative work (which a
| small fraction of the work the police do now, yes) aids
| the legal system by making those penalties actually
| happen. But I think you will find that there are very few
| potential murders where a cop is around and able to
| respond (by shooting first, I guess?) in time to prevent
| the murder from happening.
|
| Even if you think of the favorable portrayal of cops in,
| say, _Law and Order_ , they're generally investigating a
| crime that already happened, and it's pretty rare that
| they end up in a position by the end of the episode to
| stop a crime in progress and find themselves in a
| shootout.
| munk-a wrote:
| > What did informing the cops about the burglary do,
| precisely?
|
| It mostly just made me feel better - the chances of
| recovering items after a theft or burglary is nearly nil.
| However, after having my home invaded by a stranger and
| my personal belongings rifled through it was quite
| cathartic to report the crime, give all the information I
| could to try and make sure the criminals were eventually
| caught, and help restore my sanity by just seeing a
| system in place for these issues.
|
| I received no recompense for the crime and, at the time,
| I wasn't insured, but I was also dirt poor and didn't
| have much to lose except my privacy.
|
| On the topic of murders I agree that detectives and
| investigators are the ones that will end up catching
| murderers and beat/patrol police do very little to
| apprehend criminals but they do make the system
| dramatically more visible and do a lot to de-escalate
| situations[1] from becoming as dangerous. The chances
| that you will be mid-being-murdered and be rescued by the
| police are nearly zero - the chances that someone who may
| have murdered you decides not to do so is more
| significant and, I think, aided by a visible patrol
| police force - even if they don't significantly
| contribute to resolving justice.
|
| So I both agree with you that police are pretty useless
| when it comes to dealing with crimes after the fact - but
| disagree with you about their general efficacy. They
| should exist to de-escalate situations before they become
| real problems and make visible the rules of society that
| we should all abide by.
|
| Oh, this is all very much my opinion so I've not got a
| lot of sources or references to pull on as to how to make
| police into a force that does that.
|
| 1. In this point I'm speaking as a now-Canadian - I don't
| really feel qualified to speak on the US system as 1) I'm
| white and 2) I haven't lived there in over a decade. So
| please do excuse this statement if you (the reader) have
| personally suffered unreasonable escalation of force.
| kortilla wrote:
| What a profoundly disconnected notion of what police do.
| Stopping violence and reckless behavior (e.g. driving
| drunk) has nothing to do with protecting the interests of
| capital.
| worik wrote:
| True.
|
| The right to strike is tricky for essential services.
|
| Perhaps a underlying problem is the adversarial nature of
| many of our social relationships.
| koolba wrote:
| I take it a step further and reject all public sector
| unions. Teachers, cops, firemen, dog catchers, you name it.
|
| There's just too many perverse incentives for politicians
| to give in to union demands in exchange for buying votes.
| Unlike the private sector, the ones agreeing to the union
| demands care little about the long term costs associated
| since they're not the ones paying them.
| moate wrote:
| I don't understand. Unions, private or public, represent
| a massive special interest voting bloc. Instead of "I
| will be able to directly raise your pay if you vote for
| me" it's "I will directly benefit your company/industry
| if you vote for me".
|
| Why do you think Mitch McConnell cares so much about
| coal?
| nicoburns wrote:
| > There's just too many perverse incentives for
| politicians to give in to union demands in exchange for
| buying votes
|
| If politicians were looking to maximise votes, wouldn't
| they target parents not teachers: there's a lot more
| parents than teachers.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Teachers are alot more likely to be single issue voters
| over important aspects of their job than parents will be
| about things they might not even know about, I'd imagine
| _Qeomash_ wrote:
| I'd say they are allowed to have unions, local governments
| just need to be able to exert meaningful oversight even
| with the unions.
| munk-a wrote:
| Well I think the issue is that the policing unions form
| state and national agreements but local governments are
| left to negotiate on their own. The DOJ (or something at
| the national level) really needs more oversight when it
| comes to policing so that we can have collectivized
| bargaining on both sides. Local councils can't
| realistically stand up to police unions in a meaningful
| way since the national charter can drop a ton of money on
| elections to get troublesome members ousted... Again,
| another side effect of terrible election finance laws.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| The situation with police union contracts in the US is so
| bad I think it will lead to courts needing to overturn
| them as they are not in the public interest.
| jariel wrote:
| Unions are like corporations - there is good and bad,
| benefits and drawbacks.
|
| One thing I've noticed, is that where 'new unions' are
| forming, there is' probably a good reason for it.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| I used to think that, but then some new grads at Google
| decided to start one. I think the head of their union has
| only been in the workforce for about a year.
| underseacables wrote:
| There is no good reason for it. Employees at top companies
| are forming unions because they think that will allow them
| to say whatever they want on the job, and if Google says no
| don't talk about politics at work it creates tension and
| conflict, they will say sorry where are union you have to
| listen to us now. It's spoiled, overpaid techies upset they
| can't use work time to preach political and social issues.
| tyre wrote:
| Read anything about amazon working conditions.
| jjulius wrote:
| >There is no good reason for it. Employees at top
| companies are forming unions because they think that will
| allow them to say whatever they want on the job... It's
| spoiled, overpaid techies upset they can't use work time
| to preach political and social issues.
|
| ... you do realize you're making those broad, blanket
| statements in the comment thread of an article that's
| about the unionization of Amazon's _warehouse_ workers
| who aren 't "spoiled, overpaid techies", yes?
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| There are many people working at Google that are not full
| time employees. They are treated completely differently
| when it comes to their pay, sick leave, vacation, or even
| just certainty that they will have a job when their
| contract expires. The benefits for them from being
| unionized are a lot more important than you're making
| them out to be.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I tend to agree, but the flipside is that we need trust the
| workers' judgment when a new union doesn't form. I see a
| troubling tendency among union organizers to assume that
| anyone who's thinking clearly would want to be in a union -
| if a unionization vote fails, that can only mean the
| company must have tricked or bullied people into casting
| the wrong vote.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| Please keep in mind that sometimes employees are punished
| for considering unionization, so it's possible that them
| not unionizing is a reaction to that.
|
| Assuming no external pressure, though, I absolutely
| agree: if workers don't see the benefit in unionizing,
| they should not unionize.
|
| (Of course, I would also like to see them able to
| unionize if they do see benefit from it)
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| True, and I definitely don't mean to deny the existence
| of illegitimate union-busting efforts.
| tehjoker wrote:
| All workers should be in unions. With few exceptions, workers
| collaborating forms the basis of their power vs management.
| Management has money and the ability to wait out vs an
| individual that needs a job. Only groups of employees can
| successfully negotiate for major concessions outside of rare
| circumstances. An older tradition that would be even better
| is unionization on an industrial/sectoral scale so you don't
| even need to unionize your current workplace and workers
| across the industry can enforce demands.
|
| Your politicians do nothing, your bosses do nothing. What do
| you have to lose? Fight for what you need together.
| slantaclaus wrote:
| "All workers should be in unions": as the owner of a
| business with 2 employees, I respectfully disagree.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| Unions are absolutely necessary but I think the situation
| is more complicated. From the perspective of the company,
| dealing with unions is expensive and time consuming. It'd
| be better just to give employees fair benefits and pay
| without dealing with a union. But if there's no union, only
| the threat of unionization incentivizes actually following
| through.
|
| Similarly for workers, no one wants to have to work harder
| to be treated fairly along with paying the overhead of
| unionization. What you end up with is an unstable
| equilibrium for the creation and destruction of unions.
| underseacables wrote:
| Unions are awful. They come in the guise of protecting
| people, and protecting employees, but they quickly become a
| weapon against non union employees - if you don't join the
| union can't work here. Which pressures people to agree with
| union groupthink in order just to have a job. To hell with
| unions. All unions are bad.
| Thlom wrote:
| How can the union stop the employer from hiring non-
| unionized workers?
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| Ironically or perhaps not your entire comment reads like pure
| anti-union propaganda. Sure unions protect bad apples but it
| also protects decent people from being treated unfairly by
| employers who in this country have overwhelming power over
| their lives.
|
| Would you also throw out all welfare systems because a
| handful of people abuse the system?
| Frondo wrote:
| Just one comment on this:
|
| > Teachers unions may care more about teachers ...
|
| That's precisely the point of a union. It's an organization
| to protect its members. It's the purpose of the school system
| overall, including principals, school boards, and so on, to
| care about teaching kids.
| stretchcat wrote:
| Maybe if student unions weren't a complete joke, the
| situation would improve. As it stands, teachers unions keep
| _terrible_ teachers employed, against the interest of the
| students, while the students have no real representation or
| organization to provide balance by looking after student
| interests.
|
| My mother was a middleschool teacher when I was in
| highschool, and drove me to highschool in the morning.
| Because she was a teacher, she had to get there before the
| school obstensibly opened, which wasn't a problem for me or
| my brothers because the administration of the highschool
| was reasonable and let us sit quietly in the office until
| the school opened. A handful of other kids had this
| arrangement too. It worked fine until my junior year, when
| the teachers union decided to throw a hissy fit. The result
| of that was all students being made to stand outside in the
| cold until the school was officially open. The teachers
| Union said that allowing students into the building before
| school hours unfairly saddled them with more labor... never
| mind that we were all quietly sitting in the office
| receiving compliments from the secretaries for being well
| behaved.
| grumple wrote:
| > teachers unions keep terrible teachers employed
|
| Are there a bunch of would-be teachers clamoring for
| those jobs?
|
| I think the lack of desirability is what keeps terrible
| teachers employed. There also aren't great ways to
| measure how good someone is at teaching.
| zdragnar wrote:
| If you were to ask the teachers and people who went to
| school for education that I happen to know, all of them
| would tell you there is absolutely more people who want
| to be teacher than there are open positions.
|
| My best friend gave up on getting a teaching job and went
| into industry work, while my sister in law has gotten
| multiple certifications to be able to teach different
| subjects and is still only able to get part-time
| substitute teaching work.
| stretchcat wrote:
| > _Are there a bunch of would-be teachers clamoring for
| those jobs?_
|
| Emphatically yes, particularly at nice well funded
| schools. I have numerous long-term friends who have
| become school teachers, many of then had to move quite a
| distance just to find schools with openings. Most states
| have teacher certification reciprocity with Pennsylvania,
| which gave them a leg up in this regard. Even so,
| searching for open positions was clearly stressful for
| them. But for them it was worth it; the work is rewarding
| and socially important. They like working with kids, and
| they like getting several months of vacation every year.
| There is no other job quite like it.
| munk-a wrote:
| > Emphatically yes, particularly at nice well funded
| schools.
|
| I emigrated up to Canada a while back where teachers are
| paid _very_ well[1] and the bad teachers get weeded out
| really quickly since there are plenty of enthusiastic
| replacements. I am sure that at well funded schools in
| the US teachers do great - but most US schools are
| terribly funded[2] so I 'm not surprised folks are
| willing to move across the country if a well reimbursed
| position opens up.
|
| 1. https://www.blogto.com/city/2020/09/average-ontario-
| teacher-... [TL;DR 108k including benefits] - also
| they've got great pension options.
|
| 2. Taking New York as a random counter example since
| cost-of-living is probably pretty close to Toronto
| https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/new-york-state-teacher-
| sal... [TL;DR 42k probably excluding benefits - which
| were about 12k for toronto teachers]
| stretchcat wrote:
| Anecdotally, the schools with the worst funding also have
| the most troubled students. I think many new teachers are
| up for a challenge and low pay at first, but are
| disturbed by the reality of what they find and seek
| better schools for their own mental wellbeing. From what
| I've heard, these schools get a steady supply of freshly
| minted young teachers straight out of college, who burn
| out after a few years. Their teacher supply problems come
| from a failure to retain teachers, not an inability to
| hire them in the first place.
| kritiko wrote:
| There are cases like NYC's "rubber rooms"[1] where
| teachers are paid to sit in a room and not to teach.
|
| 1 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/31/the-
| rubber-roo...
| Thlom wrote:
| Sorry, but are teachers employed by the union who then
| sells the teachers labor to the school? Or do I
| misunderstand?
| worik wrote:
| I find these stories from the USA about teachers unions
| fascinating. My prior is strongly pro union, so for a
| long time I disbelieved them. But I hear them so often
| from so many sources...
|
| We had problems back in the day here (Aotearoa) as the
| union movement became the battle ground for the larger
| social class conflicts, that whilst meat hook reality
| overseas, made less sense here (here it was racial
| conflict and colonisation that mattered, another story,
| another day).
|
| The union movement was smashed in the conflict. Too
| corrupt and ossified to fight back against a revitalised
| state in the 1980s and 90s. But the public sector unions
| survived, and were are strong now. The teachers union
| here is mighty.
|
| But we see none of the problems (bad teachers defended,
| stupid rules enforced arbitrarily - well some, there is
| still bureaucracy). The unions campaign very effectively
| for their members, some political agents try to stir up
| concern (American issues leak through here) but mostly no
| body really cares. When my children were at school I
| never gave it a thought.
|
| Good luck to the Amazon workers, I hope it goes well.
| Aunche wrote:
| Teachers and police officers are public servants. If they
| want to bargain, they should be negotiating with the
| public, not government officials. Otherwise, it's just
| collusion.
| midasuni wrote:
| The government are the public's representatives.
|
| Or should a developer negotiate with a shareholder for a
| bonus?
| dxdm wrote:
| If not with government officials, i.e. the executive part
| of the system taking care of public concerns, how should
| they negotiate with "the public"?
| Aunche wrote:
| Any negotiated increase in salary or pensions should
| require a vote unless if there is a budget surplus.
| Municipalities are incurring way too much debt without
| taxpayer knowledge, let alone approval.
|
| Government workers already have a lot of job security, so
| I don't think unions should be allowed to affect that.
|
| I do think that public servants have a right to negotiate
| safety and other technical issues without public
| approval.
| worik wrote:
| I want to vote on your salary.
| Aunche wrote:
| The difference is that my salary doesn't force you to
| take on debt.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Any negotiated increase in salary or pensions should
| require a vote unless if there is a budget surplus.
|
| Generally, they do require a vote of the appropriate
| governing body, with all the associated public
| information and opportunity for input that goes along
| with that.
|
| > Municipalities are incurring way too much debt without
| taxpayer knowledge
|
| If true, its because taxpayers don't actually care.
| Because if they did, _even if they were too lazy to find
| out themselves_ , it would be too convenient a lever for
| opposition to whoever the current majority is in the
| relevant governing body to use with the public to unseat
| them to go unused.
| Aunche wrote:
| > If true, its because taxpayers don't actually care.
|
| They do care when they're forced to pay extra taxes to
| cover interest. Your average voter doesn't have time to
| audit their city's finances. Both the government and
| public officials knew that public would not agree to tax
| hikes, so they decided to go with unfunded pensions
| instead. Even though it's technically transparent,
| they're still abusing an information asymmetry, much like
| pyramid schemes.
| seibelj wrote:
| The #1 concern with a school should be the children, not
| the teachers. Public schools bend-over-backwards to help
| the teachers over the students. Public schools have
| remained essentially unchanged for 120 years - one teacher
| divulging knowledge to a room of kids in silent
| observation. Nothing will change when unions are in control
| - they have absolutely no incentive.
| jandrese wrote:
| It's a strange system we live in where teachers get fired
| at the drop of a hat for seemingly innocuous offenses
| like teaching evolution or breaking up a fight, while
| also being absolutely untouchable.
| kube-system wrote:
| That's because it's not "a system", schooling in the US
| is thousands of systems.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| You all realize half the reason we have "bad schools" is
| that families home lives have been falling apart for
| decades, and schools are the only government agency
| (except for maybe the police...) interfacting with those
| families on regular basis?
|
| That and hyperlocal funding.
|
| We can't like society as a whole fall part and expect
| schools to keep on performing well.
| maya24 wrote:
| That is a failure of the public education system not
| unions. It is not as if the governments are trying to
| push innovative teaching methods and investing more in
| public education especially for the underprivileged.
| WalterBright wrote:
| There is pretty much zero chance of being elected to the
| public school board without the union endorsement.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| I'm honestly kind of surprised to see the teacher union
| hate in this thread.
|
| The teachers that I know work tirelessly, don't make very
| much money, and do literally everything they can to help
| students. This is doubly true during the past year when
| they've had to re work plans so that they work over zoom
| or in person.
|
| I think perhaps the point of friction is that all of this
| is true and the city can't afford to pay them more, so
| they get other concessions.
|
| I fundamentally disagree with your claim about lack of
| innovation - in a public high school 15 years ago your
| story doesn't ring true, much less seeing my friends who
| are teachers talking about lesson plans today.
| moate wrote:
| >>I'm honestly kind of surprised to see the teacher union
| hate in this thread.
|
| I mean, have you seen the American Education system?
| Millions of people thought Betsy Davos was a good idea.
| MILLIONS. The DOE under her tenure was basically a full
| on assault against public education in favor of
| charters/private schools. I've had hours-long, in-person
| arguments with people who are CONVINCED teachers have the
| easiest jobs on the planet and we pay them too much.
|
| Not to mention many HN commenters in general tend to
| strong pro-management stance which pushes them anti-union
| in general.
| pwinnski wrote:
| Non-union private schools can innovate at will, but so
| far it's not clear whether any of them have found a
| solution that works better than the one in place at
| public schools, while also satisfying the legal
| requirements put on public schools to accept all
| students, etc.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| And unionized cannot? Maybe my children's school is
| unique but the teaching there is radically different than
| my own.
|
| A couple of years ago there was endless complaints about
| new ways to teach math.
| worik wrote:
| Last I heard (twelve months ago) the results for "charter
| schools" were statistically no different than any other.
|
| There are anecdotes to support the point of view they are
| bad, and anecdotes to support that they are good.
|
| The source of funding does not seem to be the problem.
| The quantity of funding, definitely.
| Hickfang wrote:
| > .. That's precisely the point of a union. It's an
| organization to protect its members ..
|
| That's just it, the union is there to represent the
| interests of the senior officers and no one else.
| KorematsuFred wrote:
| > Teachers unions may care more about teachers ...
|
| Teachers union is easily one of the worst Unions in USA
| which has turned public education system into a wasteland
| of incompetent teachers protected at the expense of
| competent and unemployed. It has turned our education
| system into a soviet styled "jobs program for adults"
| instead of a schooling system for children.
|
| If Americans ever wanted an example of how much damage
| unions can do, look no further than Teachers union.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| And if you want the second best example, take a look at
| the MTA union. Rife with corruption for the union
| managers at the top, projects delayed by years to
| decades, cost overruns in the billions, etc.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
| subway-...
| aerosmile wrote:
| The point that the OP is making is that the negative
| propaganda against unions is not just entirely made up, but
| also something that many people with kids in school have
| experienced first-hand. This does factor in when that same
| parent then goes to their workplace and is pitched to
| form/join a union. I am not saying they won't agree to it,
| but they might remember the negative aspects of dealing
| with the concept of a union in another aspect of their
| lives.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| It is very rare that the best propaganda is made up. The
| best is true but incomplete, anecdotal in this case.
|
| To hold up it must be true, but misleading.
| soperj wrote:
| What are you basing this on? For years the Nazi went on
| and on about the Jews being the inferior race, about how
| it was science based, they indoctrinated the youth.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| I don't particularly want to go on hate sites to find
| examples at this moment.
|
| But the gist is, there are statements that are not
| falsifiable, like that "inferior race" that is not fact,
| it is the conclusion, but it is not falsifiable easily
| because there is no clear metric being used for that
| judgment.
|
| If you look at U.S. race based hate sites that are
| easiest to find now, you will see things like accurate
| references to crime rates and such. The number is true,
| but it is missing all kinds of context and correlations
| and such.
|
| For example, I have seen many references to lower IQ
| scores for certain groups. There are many ways to
| interpret this, but the racists use it as evidence. The
| "number" is true.
|
| Also, the anecdotes they tell are largely true, but to
| pick and choose emotional one off examples is misleading.
|
| By warping "true" things, you maintain credibility.
|
| Look at some of the election stuff. For example, if
| someone said "They were bringing suitcases into the
| polling place" (I can't remember the exact details) There
| is video it is true, but it is not nefarious. But it
| takes a long time to rebuff the implication and explain
| proper procedure.
|
| Now, I may have overstated "best", because the best is
| emotional, and a lot of that is art, nothing to do with
| fact, and portrayal of the enemy. You see this in a lot
| of the Nazi imagery. It has nothing to do with facts,
| true or false.
| konjin wrote:
| How are any of those things bad?
|
| You need to look after your interests first. Your anecdotes
| do that. It's not your job to make sure everyone has a "fair"
| life. You job is to make sure you get as much as you can.
| That's what capitalism is.
| biztos wrote:
| > Police unions may protect bad apples via union.
|
| I think it's pretty clear that at least some police unions
| work strongly against the interests of _society_ -- but I
| haven 't seen any evidence that they work against the
| interests of their members.
|
| Sure, if you're an honest cop it probably stings that a
| murderer can collect his pension like nothing happened; but
| on the other hand, you know the same protection would be
| available to you if you were accused.
|
| Or consider that, famously, the NYPD doesn't consider itself
| beholden to the Mayor. I can't believe that attitude would
| work without the union. And the unions can also very publicly
| take political positions that are contrary to their
| employers' or even the majority of the citizenry -- which
| looks to me like a serious demonstration of power.
|
| At least in the case of police unions in the US, I can't see
| how they are a negative example from the point of view of
| people who might end up as union members.
| ATsch wrote:
| I totally agree with your concerns about people being kept in
| their job for unjustified reasons. I think it's something
| we've all had experience with.
|
| At my first job, I had a horrible boss. A friend tried to
| speak up against him and was promptly fired. Turns out he was
| a relative of the CEO and was thus unfireable.
|
| Just a few weeks ago I also spoke to someone who told his
| experience of reporting someone for sexual harassment at a
| major tech company, just to learn that they were well aware
| of it but refused to do anything because of good performance.
|
| We should absolutely consider the role uninions can play
| regarding unfirable employees. Being able to push the company
| to get rid of them can have a huge impact on the well-being
| of workers.
| bluGill wrote:
| If sexual harassment really exists a lawyer will be glad to
| help. Companies that don't take care of it end up in big
| trouble - to your lawyers advantage.
|
| Sexual harassment is one of several things that the legal
| system takes seriously.
| ATsch wrote:
| I think the fact that you read that message and this was
| your conclusion is kind of concerning.
|
| Either way getting a restraining order or whatever on
| someone you work with is definitely not going to improve
| your situation, if you can even prove it in the first
| place.
| stretchcat wrote:
| Surely the lawyer would be for pursuing a lawsuit, not a
| restraining order.
| coffeemaniac wrote:
| This is bad information. Certainly it can work out like
| this, but suing your employer in the US is very very
| difficult. Most tech workers have even signed away their
| right to do so via forced arbitration agreements. And
| even if you do, you're more likely to just waste your
| money pursuing the case (which a good attorney will tell
| you beforehand).
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| That's just objectively false. Look at all the cases of
| sexual harassment coming out where the perpetrator had
| been doing it for decades to dozens of people without any
| consequences.
|
| Getting sexual harassment claims taken seriously is an
| uphill battle and often harms the careers of the people
| who complain.
| conanbatt wrote:
| > The real rule should be all poorly compensated folks paid
| $14/hr or less should automatically be in unions. That's
| where the real need is.
|
| This way they get to be compensated at 12/hr
| pmoriarty wrote:
| The problem is when anecdotes about isolated abuses are used
| to reject unions outright rather than looking at whether
| unions as a whole would benefit society.
|
| You could argue from personal experience that you went to a
| bad school therefore all schools are bad, or you had a bad
| experience with <insert skin color, ethnicity, or religion>
| therefore all people of that sort are bad.
|
| It's just not very convincing.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| > The problem is when anecdotes about isolated abuses
|
| What makes you jump to label that complaint an "anecdote"
| and an "isolated abuse" rather than evidence of structural
| rot and public union corruption?
| ekianjo wrote:
| > isolated abuses
|
| It's not isolated abuses, it's a feature of unions.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I think the point should have more nuance. Nobody looks at
| enron's abuses and says corporations are blanket bad (okay,
| many do, but not most). Nor do they say enron's abuses were
| fine because corporations as a whole benefit society. Most
| look at enron and say corporations have the potential to do
| good or bad, so let's figure out how to keep them from
| going bad.
|
| It's not unions good or unions bad. The focus should be on
| how to get unions that don't lead to the abuses people are
| afraid of. When it comes to unions, the discussion seems to
| be much more take-it-or-leave-it.
| iratewizard wrote:
| People do look at multi-level marketing schemes and label
| them as blanket bad. Unions are an organizational
| strategy just like MLM schemes are. One relies on the
| Shirky principle to stay alive, the other relies on
| people wanting to be fooled. Both are a con with
| opportunists hovering overhead.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Well, if you look at large-scale carefully controlled data,
| unionized firms tend to be at least 10% less productive
| than their non-unionized counterparts.[1]
|
| The most defensible thing you can say about this is that
| the cost is primarily borne by the shareholders rather than
| the consumers. Thus you tend to see that the best unions
| for workers tend to be in large, established, highly
| profitable firms with little to no competition. A prime
| example are the American automakers before the 1980s when
| foreign competition kicked in. Working on the GM assembly
| line in 1970 was a _very_ good job.
|
| However Amazon is barely profitable as it currently stands.
| Since there's essentially no room for lower profitability.
| The only give is either higher consumer prices or
| deadweight loss, i.e. fewer customer and therefore fewer
| (but higher-paid) employees. That might not necessarily be
| a bad thing, especially to the extent that the average
| Amazon customer is wealthier than the average Amazon
| warehouse worker. But given Amazon's extremely thin profit
| margins, I don't really see anyway that consumers won't end
| up paying for the sizable bulk of the unionization costs.
|
| [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0019793992
| 04600...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _unionized firms tend to be at least 10% less
| productive than their non-unionized counterparts_
|
| That's not entirely surprising. Unions aren't optimizing
| for company productivity, but for the conditions and pay
| of the workers. And conversely, a company can abuse its
| employees to a large degree while reaping productivity
| gains from it.
|
| > _However Amazon is barely profitable as it currently
| stands. Since there 's essentially no room for lower
| profitability._
|
| Amazon is "barely profitable" because of clever
| accounting. They rake in tons of money, and reinvest it
| into growth. There is plenty of buffer to eat the
| unionization costs. But of course Amazon may opt to pass
| these costs to customers instead.
| jjj1232 wrote:
| Honestly, 10% is less than I would have thought, and is
| something I'd trade in a heartbeat for greater benefits.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's not "anecdotes about isolated abuses." Even parents I
| know who are solidly on the left are outraged by how
| completely inflexible teachers' unions have been during the
| pandemic. Even people I know who are ardent Democrats in
| states like Illinois grumble quietly about the government
| having no money because they're crushed under pension
| obligations.
|
| The problem is that, in the US, most peoples' experiences
| with unions is with public unions, which are the worst kind
| of unions:
| https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/10/29/coolidge-
| and-...
|
| > For decades, that was the mainstream Democratic view,
| too. "The process of collective bargaining, as usually
| understood, cannot be transplanted into the public
| service," President Franklin D. Roosevelt affirmed in 1937.
| guerrilla wrote:
| "It's not only anecdotes" and giving more anecdotes isn't
| an argument.
| dahfizz wrote:
| They said "It's not anecdotes __about isolated abuses__".
| At a certain point, anecdotes become universal
| experiences, and therefore inform general political
| views.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >At a certain point, anecdotes become universal
| experiences, and therefore inform general political views
|
| In reality though we just went from one anecdote to two.
| We are unable to tell when something is universal
| experience just by hearing more anecdotes.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| > Even parents I know who are solidly on the left are
| outraged by how completely inflexible teachers' unions
| have been during the pandemic.
|
| As a dueling anecdote, I know plenty of
| libertarian/right-leaning folks who privately tell me
| that they totally understand that teachers (regardless of
| unions) should not have to face a highly infectious
| disease in classrooms just so a bunch of double-income
| parents want to keep doing their office jobs over Zoom.
| The current problems have almost nothing to do with
| unions directly.
| conanbatt wrote:
| The plural of anecdotes is called data.
|
| There are plenty of examples of unions being really bad in
| the US, the burden of proof is now on the other side of the
| court.
| asdff wrote:
| For every anecdote of an isolated case of union abuse,
| there are probably hundreds of unheard cases of
| corporations abusing their workers. But that doesn't matter
| for most people, simplistic logic says therefore all unions
| are bad and capable of corruption, and ignoring that most
| of the time, the status quo is far, far more exploitative
| for the average worker. Once again, perfect becomes the
| enemy of good, and conditions do not improve.
| quandrum wrote:
| Wage theft is the most common crime in the US, is
| estimated to occur to ~20% of all employees and equal
| tens of billions a year, and no one talks about it.
|
| How many union members do you think experience wage
| theft?
| ryathal wrote:
| For some union members the dues achieve the same result.
| stretchcat wrote:
| The US Department of Labor takes wage theft very
| seriously. If you report it to them, at no cost to
| yourself, they will investigate it and almost certainly
| scare your boss shitless so he'll never try it again.
|
| Probably they could do a better job of advertising this
| to workers. Many workers experiencing wage theft probably
| are not aware of their options, and that's a problem. But
| when used, it works. I've seen it work.
| coffeemaniac wrote:
| I've seen this go both ways, it's certainly effective
| when it does work, but it's sluggish and often won't
| provide the relief needed by workers in any acceptable
| time frame.
| kieselguhr_kid wrote:
| If they take it so seriously, why is it so underused? I
| don't think this is a lack of information; people who are
| highly precarious can't take these kinds of risks, even
| if they're just percevied.
|
| There are all kinds of de jure considerations that
| purport to protect workers, but they fail without an
| organization by and for workers to actually ensure
| they're enforced.
| stretchcat wrote:
| The first real job I had was the first time I saw the
| efficacy of the Department of Labor. I was working at a
| bean processing plant; semi trucks with trailers full of
| fresh green beans from the fields dropped beans off at
| the plant where they were cleaned (my job was to pick out
| the bits of small animals the harvesters chewed up),
| chopped, cooled, and loaded onto another truck. The
| entire operation hinges on the trucks arriving just in
| time.
|
| Well sometimes a truck is late, that's just the way the
| world works. In one of those cases, my boss asked us to
| stay at the plant an hour late; the truck driver was on
| the phone and said he'd be there shortly, but we had
| nothing to do but sit around on our asses twiddling our
| thumbs. One of my coworkers, more experienced than me,
| asked if we'd get paid while waiting. My account of the
| conversation that followed:
|
| Boss: _" Well uh, we're all just sitting here doing
| nothing so.."_
|
| Coworker: _" The Deparment of Labor says..."_
|
| Boss: _" WHOA WHOA WHOA! I was just kidding of course
| you'll get paid!"_
|
| Immediate backtrack. He turned on a dime as soon as he
| realized there were workers who knew their rights. I
| think information is the key. There is no substitute for
| workers knowing their rights.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The US Department of Labor takes wage theft very
| seriously.
|
| As, often, do state labor authorities.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| It is a matter of incentives.
|
| To substantiate and engage PR over abuse of workers by a
| corporation, the livelihood of individual workers who
| give witness to the allegations are at stake.
|
| To substantiate and engage PR over abuse of the public
| weal, customers or the corporation by a union, usually no
| one's livelihood is threatened by giving witness.
|
| It isn't surprising abuses by unions are easier to
| publicize and and more commonly substantiated. This
| dynamic will not change until workers have the equivalent
| of FU money. Or like in one sci-fi story I read, a
| genetic mutation causes everyone to fix chlorophyll in
| their pigmentation and get all their minimum bodily
| energy requirements by standing around in the sun for a
| few hours each day, and have to be convinced to work. I
| suspect a more near-term, practical direction is some
| solution along the lines of an intentional community co-
| op.
| omegaworks wrote:
| Google employees walked out to protest the golden parachute
| offered to two serial sexual harassers on their executive
| team and the conditions that allowed people like them to rise
| consequence-free through the ranks at the company.
|
| That you believe it's a "fit" thrown for causes that "don't
| connect with the average person" is reflecting pretty poorly
| on your priorities. Nobody wants to believe your boss is
| skipping over you for promotions because you rejected their
| sexual advances.
| kortilla wrote:
| The most recent drama was about a researcher having her
| quitting ultimatum called by a manager. It wasn't anything
| to do with sexual harassment or anything about underpaid or
| unsafe workplaces.
| omegaworks wrote:
| Google has a white supremacy problem. The James Damore
| incident was a highly public display of that internal
| tension. It's a sign they have made little progress
| resolving it with the firing of Timnit Gebru, an
| eminently qualified data scientist that focused her work
| on that exact issue.
|
| A union is not just about how "highly paid" employees
| are, it can help protect employees from those kinds of
| institutional deficiencies.
| tenpies wrote:
| And this is the problem with the Google Union. The
| ideologies already commanding way too much of the
| discussion are going to be hyper-empowered by the union.
|
| By 2025 I imagine that if you Google "conservative"
| you'll instantly have all your Google Services wiped, get
| banned from the platform, and be reported to the
| Progressive Thought Technology Alliance Union, so that
| Twitter and AWS can do the same to you.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The most recent drama was about a researcher having her
| quitting ultimatum called by a manager.
|
| No, it wasn't. Even to the extent that might be
| considered a superficially correct description of part of
| what happened, its not the center of the "drama", which
| is more centrally about the treatment which led up to
| that.
| kortilla wrote:
| But that's the point. The "treatment leading up to that"
| was a mid 6 figure income and nearly free reign to do
| research in her field of interest. Not relatable to most
| of the lower or middle class in the US.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The "treatment leading up to that" was a mid 6 figure
| income and nearly free reign to do research in her field
| of interest.
|
| No, the proximately preceding treatment was restrictions
| on her research that were inconsistent with those imposed
| on other Google AI researchers (the extent to which that
| is due to its subject matter, the extent to which it is
| due to her internal advocacy on gender and race issues,
| and the extent to which it is due to her own race and sex
| is unclear.)
|
| > Not relatable to most of the lower or middle class in
| the US.
|
| Being singled out for adverse treatment either for
| raising issues related to gender or race equity or for
| one's gender or race are, actually, quite relatable to
| lots of the lower and middle class in the US, certainly
| including those in that group who are also black and/or
| women.
| joshe wrote:
| American unions are quite different from European unions.
| European unions spend a lot of time running apprenticeship
| programs and doing things like advocating for more
| productivity. Like trying to figure out how to make the shop
| floor more efficient. American unions spend time preventing bad
| employees from being fired (like the NY teacher's rubber rooms
| and police unions fighting the firing of cops with 5 excessive
| force violations). Or spend time advocating for extra unneeded
| employees or forbidding employees from doing two different job
| roles. You can watch the longshoreman's season from the Wire
| for illustration. _It 's supposed to be a defense of unions_,
| but accidentally illustrates why they are utterly broken in the
| US.
|
| There is a use for unions that advocate for increased pay and
| clearer benefits. But as constructed and run in the US they are
| poison to the company. A whole layer of weird incentives the
| company (and workers!) have to deal with. A lot of the sinister
| sounding anti-union education the companies do points this out.
| And there's enough truth that it's very effective.
|
| Pro union folks are always tweeting that companies spending $1
| million to avoid an extra $100,000 a year in labor costs is
| evidence of a widespread conspiracy by the man to keep the
| working class down. Really the union is like adding a whole
| extra layer of horrible bureaucracy that costs way more than
| that $1 million. From that viewpoint shutting down a store or
| warehouse that unionizes make perfect sense.
| maximente wrote:
| i mean, yeah, is it really a surprise? most of the purpose
| (in terms of "the purpose of a thing is what it does"
| thinking) of organized labor in the US is basically
| countering ridiculous labor conditions: child labor, not
| having weekends, etc. when that didn't work, in came the
| police and the pinkertons (read: violence by the state on
| behalf of capital, or just violence via capital itself). so
| it's no surprise that the relationship is adversarial.
|
| plus, i don't really buy this anti-union propaganda. there's
| a strong correlation between between union membership going
| down and wealth inequality going up. i didn't say that was
| causation, but is it interesting enough to warrant
| consideration? hell yes it is.
|
| i'm guessing most people on this sites are of engineering
| mind, where they see an "unnecessary" layer of abstraction
| upon something as worth refactoring out. well... this ain't
| really in that lane, you see. it turns out that capital is so
| powerful in the 21st C. that they can straight up move your
| job to a country with worse environmental and labor
| regulations, and we all cheer it on in the name of
| "efficiency". little do we appreciate that that attack on
| labor is rotting the hell out of the country itself.
| joshe wrote:
| 1965 was 56 years ago. Unions need to be relevant for 2021.
| [deleted]
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| So how do we get european style unions here in america? How
| is it that they are able to avoid those issues and what
| lessons can we take that aren't "america just can't do unions
| right."
| joshe wrote:
| It would be great.
|
| I sometimes think that something like a "credible threat of
| peace" would be useful.
|
| "We are forming a union. If you vote for this union, we
| will allow workers here to chose other unions. We will
| never get in the way of firing someone. We will never
| create job roles that don't let workers move laterally or
| up. You can lay people off. We will not use our members
| money for political campaigns. Our workers can move into
| management without us freaking out.
|
| We will advocate for more pay, benefits, productivity, and
| training."
| ianai wrote:
| Pretty sure that union would be so weak as to be worth
| disbanding.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think part of the stark difference in how unions operate is
| due to the societal pressures applied to them. All of those
| "good" unions that would help advocate for employee education
| and protect workers who were unjustly fired were easier to
| brand as socialist and ended up being broken up as they
| failed to devote all of their power towards politics and
| staying alive. This ends up contributing to that image that
| unions don't do anything since, in the US, they are
| constantly maligned by politicians and the press - and since
| anything even loosely connected to communism (like, here,
| collective bargaining) has to fight an unhill PR battle in
| the hearts and minds of Americans.
|
| Unions should exist to serve their workers and the fact that
| most public unions gain the most power by constantly
| funneling money into political campaigns is a real problem
| that just leads back to election finance laws.
| bluedino wrote:
| >> European unions spend a lot of time running apprenticeship
| programs
|
| Trade unions in the US do exactly that
| dominotw wrote:
| > I think it's a good trend to see them happening at big tech
| companies
|
| Isn't the trend the rise of 'big' companies. I wish there were
| a lot of small/medium companies, instead, that were competing
| for workers, then we won't need 'solutions' like unions.
|
| Looks like we are just accepting these 'big' companies as fact
| of life and moving on to finding solutions to deal with them.
| mal10c wrote:
| "I wish there were a lot of small/medium companies..." I hear
| this from a lot of different circles, and I'm not trying to
| target you, just more or less generically voicing my
| frustrations. If people wish there were more small/medium
| companies in the US, then by all means, go to your county
| courthouse and officially establish a business. You could
| found a sole proprietorship just to get started. I own a side
| business and I'm part of ownership at my main job. It's a lot
| of work, but worth it. If you feel you have a good idea and a
| good way to form and keep a customer base, then nobody is
| stopping you. That's one of the greatest aspects of living in
| the US. And since I'm on my rant now, I often times hear
| something along the lines that people need to form together
| to combat something they feel isn't fair in their place of
| work. While I sympathise with that, I also know for a fact
| that there aren't a lot of CEO's out there that are waking up
| asking themselves how they can screw over their employees -
| that just isn't how the world works. How it does work is
| often times when times get tough, more than not CEO's and
| other C-Suite managers will put their own assets on the line
| to ensure the company can make it through a rough patch. If
| the rough patch is looking more like the norm, then they may
| have to make really tough decisions to let some people go.
| That sucks for them because they're losing talent to
| (potentially) a competitor. Last thing: if people really
| don't like that company X doesn't give them some perk -
| whether that's forming a union or even giving away free
| popcorn, then start looking for a job that does that stuff!!!
| Don't expect your employer to just make those changes. Sorry
| for the rant, but I think it's important to share a view from
| a different perspective.
| perfmode wrote:
| where can i learn more about the union activities at amazon in
| europe?
| abstractbarista wrote:
| I'm down for unions, but don't want a single cent of my pay to
| go to one. This is why I actually enjoy 'right to work' states.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard a major
| difference is that in Europe you generally have a choice of
| multiple competing unions, vs. the US where you're generally in
| or you're out.
|
| The competition forces the unions to remain focused on the
| desires of the general population, otherwise they just lose
| membership.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Not really, at least in the UK. You can join any union that
| will have you, and there are several big 'general' unions.
| But most employers will only recognise a single union (if
| that) per group of workers.
|
| So, if you're an academic like me, you can join the
| University and College Union, and there will be a local
| organisation, probably a collective bargaining agreement with
| the university, and so on. Or join a different union and get
| no local representation and only 'central office' services.
| There are some places with multiple recognition (when I
| worked in local government Unison, GMB and the T&G were all
| recognised, with membership strengths in different parts of
| the council) but it's often just one. And that's if you're
| lucky: many employers recognise no unions.
|
| Of course, the UK also doesn't have the closed shop (union
| membership is strictly optional) so there is a competition
| between member and not-member that keeps some pressure on the
| union organisation. And each European country has its own
| traditions of union organisation and different working
| cultures, so this probably doesn't extend outside of Britain.
| Thlom wrote:
| Fairly similar in Norway, but many of the "competing"
| unions both have agreements with the employer organization.
| My wife actually switched union because the other union had
| an agreement which allowed a certain type of shift schedule
| that the other union did not have.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| Fortunately most tech employees, including most Google
| employees, understand that unions don't make any sense for
| them. Warehouse employees are very different, and it might make
| more sense there.
| tchalla wrote:
| I'm sure Amazon can justify non union stand by one of their
| Leadership Principles.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Google didn't unionize. Their "union" isn't federally certified
| and they have current membership of 700/250000 workers. Google
| is under no obligation to work with them on anything. In the
| future, they could get a majority of workers agree to have a
| union represent them but that's not the case at this time. What
| the Google union did was obstruct real unionization efforts at
| Google.
|
| Source: https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/googles-fake-union-
| insults-...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I agree with the general thrust of this, but it seems
| misleading to describe an organization belonging to CWA Local
| 1400 as fake or not really a part of the labor movement. For
| better or worse, the labor movement believes these kinds of
| non-majority pressure groups count as real unions.
| bluGill wrote:
| The fact that google's union needs to be federally certified
| and isn't also says something about unions: they are a
| monopoly in the bad sense. Either the union doesn't need
| federal certification, or it should automatically be.
| KorematsuFred wrote:
| As someone who has seen the violence and damage unions do to
| businesses, workers and the unemployed. I hope these
| unionization efforts are thwarted by Amazon. I did not escape a
| socialist hellhole to end up in another one. The moral
| equivalence for me personally would be a jewish person
| supporting a new neo nazi movement claiming it is different
| this time.
|
| Having said that, right to form associations is a fundamental
| right and I support it for all workers everywhere, it is just
| that such unions should not get any privileges that an
| individual worker does not have. Amazon should be able to offer
| $1000 per year more for the workers who do not join any union.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Have you read anything about the Google "union"? It is a
| basically a joke that .0001% of the company signed in on. You
| shouldn't use it as a data point on any kind of trend.
| j_walter wrote:
| Unions in the US and unions is Europe are completely different.
| In one they cooperate to see that the company succeeds...and in
| the other they seek to drive up the cost of doing business to
| the point that shitty products are extremely expensive (GM,
| Ford).
|
| Unions used to be for protecting the workers and ensuring that
| companies were getting the very best skillsets when hiring. Now
| they protect the lazy, promote the well connected and drain
| efficiency from businesses. Longshoreman are the most shining
| example of how to destroy businesses...Port of Portland is now
| shuttered because they intentionally slowed down work to the
| point of forcing companies to go elsewhere. ILWU was hit with a
| $19M judgment because of the things it did in Portland.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The quality of a union is a function of membership engagement
| and organizational structure. Shitty unions, shitty
| companies, these are all who is in charge and how they're
| governed and the transparency available.
|
| Better to admit we need better operating models for unions
| (and that unions need to work in partnership with management
| to create sustainable relationships and businesses), rigorous
| governance and oversight of them, and that that is likely
| superior to the current situation of labor's collective power
| to continue to erode over the last four decades. Not only
| does labor need a seat at the table, employee ownership
| should be strongly encouraged through policy (this also
| financially aligns incentives between management and labor,
| which is a good thing imho).
|
| "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and
| expecting different results."
| j_walter wrote:
| But in many cases you can't choose which union you have to
| do business with. Do work at this location you have to do
| business with this union. Many examples of unions fighting
| other unions because they think they should get the work.
|
| I agree that better operating models could exist (more like
| European ones)...but the current unions in the US have a
| lot to lose by doing so.
| [deleted]
| zdragnar wrote:
| It is also a function of "closed shop" unions in the US.
| Rarely do you get to pick a union to join when you work at
| a company; if the company workers are represented, it is
| often exclusively by a single union.
|
| The result is that unions have the exact same leverage over
| employees as the companies themselves do, and do not often
| have sufficient accountability. It is not as simple as
| voting a union out once it has gotten in, and it takes on a
| life of its own.
|
| Also, stories like SEIU collaborating with the DFL in
| Minnesota to get family members of disabled adults declared
| "in home caretaker employees" of the state so that the
| union gets a cut of the disability benefits is terrible.
| There are surely good things that unions can do, but that
| doesn't mean they are an intrinsic good, or that they are
| appropriately structured in the US.
|
| Edit: reference:
| https://www.thecentersquare.com/minnesota/after-trump-
| rule-c...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| So, it sounds like you're agreeing with me? Collective
| action _is admittedly work_. The alternative is, as we
| 've seen, worse in my opinion.
|
| https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
|
| > From 1979 to 2018, net productivity rose 69.6 percent,
| while the hourly pay of typical workers essentially
| stagnated--increasing only 11.6 percent over 39 years
| (after adjusting for inflation). This means that although
| Americans are working more productively than ever, the
| fruits of their labors have primarily accrued to those at
| the top and to corporate profits, especially in recent
| years.
|
| > Rising productivity provides the potential for
| substantial growth in the pay for the vast majority.
| However, this potential has been squandered in recent
| decades. The income, wages, and wealth generated over the
| last four decades have failed to "trickle down" to the
| vast majority largely because policy choices made on
| behalf of those with the most income, wealth, and power
| have exacerbated inequality. In essence, rising
| inequality has prevented potential pay growth from
| translating into actual pay growth for most workers. The
| result has been wage stagnation.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/declining-worker-
| pow...
|
| > "Declining unionization, increasingly demanding and
| empowered shareholders, decreasing real minimum wages,
| reduced worker protections, and the increases in
| outsourcing domestically and abroad have disempowered
| workers with profound consequences for the labor market
| and the broader economy."
| manfredo wrote:
| There's a distinction between collective action and
| government-sanctioned monopolies on labor. It's one thing
| for workers to bargain collectively. It's another thing
| when the government prohibits the company from finding
| another labor pool, and effectively gives the union a
| monopoly on labor. The latter is when corruption runs
| rampant, and unions have no competition.
| random5634 wrote:
| I actually know a bit about the german union model.
|
| A couple of factors - the overall labor force is pretty
| highly educated and skilled - so less free riding overall.
|
| Strong social safety net - so folks not suited to a job have
| a place to land with health care etc.
|
| a MUCH more cooperate relationship with management -> the
| unions in Germany at least also want productivity / common
| sense stuff.
|
| In the US, you can have totally illogical and inefficient
| work rules and unions will keep them on purpose just to drive
| up bargaining power, even though it hurts everyone (ie, being
| able to no show for work with no call etc).
|
| Not all of europe is the same. The french unions have a
| different approach than german unions etc.
| j_walter wrote:
| When I refer to the European model I'm probably talking
| about the German model. Many years ago the articles I was
| reading had been going over the VW union so it was likely
| Germany. The cooperation part and inefficiencies you
| mention are exactly the problem. Here in the US the union
| and company are enemies that battle each other...and like
| you say illogical rules that just benefit the union.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" Port of Portland is now shuttered because they
| intentionally slowed down work to the point of forcing
| companies to go elsewhere."_
|
| Unions should be everywhere, so these companies could not
| escape them by relocating.
|
| Capital trying to feel the country should also be taxed
| heavily for the same reason.
| j_walter wrote:
| They went to the port of Seattle and LA...same union but
| different local leadership. They weren't much better, but
| better enough to relocate and pay to truck goods up and
| down the I5 corridor.
| refurb wrote:
| Sounds like a planned economy. We know how well that works.
| maxerickson wrote:
| China has been doing okay using that sort of high level
| planning, where the government supervises a lot of the
| economy and limits the movement of capital.
| j_walter wrote:
| You really think that? Talk to any of the chinese
| citizens that have fled the country to live elsewhere.
| Certain parts of how that government runs may look good
| from afar, but not if you are actually living under their
| rule.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I don't think the people have it good, but the economy
| has grown massively for ~40 years running.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| >Unions used to be for protecting the workers and ensuring
| that companies were getting the very best skillsets when
| hiring.
|
| Labor unions in the US formed primarily to combat
| exploitation by employers, often in the face of great
| oppression and cronyism that led to literal bloodshed[0].
| This is one of the reasons unions can't be part of the
| companies their members work for, unlike in Europe. Unions in
| Europe formed from trade unions that had a longstanding
| history in European economy. That said, all you have to do is
| look at union activity in France, where there seems to be
| nationwide strikes every year, to dispel the myth that they
| are somehow more cooperative or amenable to making
| concessions.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| I think you mean exploitation.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| i did ty
| saiya-jin wrote:
| French are no measure for strikes, as somebody living just
| across the borders the norm is some form of strike few
| months per year, every year. Colleagues can't get to work,
| public transport goes to standstill so everybody drives
| (very ecological).
|
| Its a double edged sword at best - government is properly
| afraid of the citizens. But overall the economy suffers
| badly. This is just a small part of overall french
| 'package' - high social benefits, its extremely hard to
| fire people, tons of paid holidays days per year, early
| retirement etc. Result is startups start elsewhere,
| companies move away whatever they can (even state semi-
| owned like car industry). Another result is tons of
| monopolies, which distort the market and make very small
| amount of citizens profit at he cost of everybody else.
|
| Economy is weak compared to Germany, I would say salaries
| are 1/2, although there shouldn't be the reason - big smart
| well educated population. But then comes the french
| mentality and way of doing things...
| jedberg wrote:
| I sympathize with the folks who want to unionize and I wish them
| luck, but I suspect this will quickly backfire on them.
|
| Of all the companies in the world, the one I would be most
| worried about automating away human jobs would be Amazon. If this
| warehouse unionizes, I suspect it will quickly become their
| number one automation test site. As the cost of labor goes up and
| the cost of automation goes down, they'll have a higher incentive
| to do this quickly.
|
| Just look at what they announced during re:invent this year. The
| AWS Panorama was basically designed to replace people in Amazon
| warehouses. The Amazon Go store was basically a test bed to ~~get
| rid of the already~~ prevent unionized labor at Whole Foods.
|
| I wish the workers luck, but in the long term, they're probably
| just hastening their replacement by increasing their own costs to
| the company.
| kieselguhr_kid wrote:
| Whole Foods has never been unionized. I don't know where you
| got that impression.
| jedberg wrote:
| Yeah, you're right my bad. They've been trying to unionize
| and formed a group to push for unionization but haven't been
| successful yet. I thought they had actually succeeded.
| robert_foss wrote:
| If they could replace all humans they already would have. They
| still employ people in the EU, so it can't be that close.
| jedberg wrote:
| As pointed out elsewhere, unions in Europe are very different
| from US unions. They actually work to maintain lower costs
| for the company as well as making sure workers aren't abused.
| varispeed wrote:
| It's weird that the US didn't catch up with the UK how to "solve"
| the "problem" of unions. You see last year we got changes to a
| law that is called "IR35" which essentially says that people
| working like employees should be taxed as employees. Nothing
| wrong with that - until now (I simplified this), if someone had a
| business of providing a service (for example bespoke software
| development) and if they realised their relationship with the
| client is of the employment in all but name, they had to declare
| themselves in scope of IR35 and pay the tax accordingly. Person
| inside IR35 has to pay all the taxes employees pay, but they
| don't have any employment rights (because they are not
| employees). And here is the genius twist - someone thought, what
| if the decision about the relationship is made by the client?
| That sounds innocent, right? Now (from April) a company can start
| hiring contractors instead of employees and write their contracts
| in a way that will make them always caught by IR35 (and declare
| the relationship as such). Since contractors are not protected by
| any employment laws, such de facto employees cannot form unions,
| can be hired and fired at will and don't have other protections -
| for example if your "employee" gets pregnant, they can be fired
| without consequences.
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| To be honest I find it much more likely Amazon would just shut
| down the Bessemer, Alabama warehouse, terminate the employment of
| any workers who joined the union, and open a new warehouse within
| a 50 mile radius of the current one.
|
| edit: since there are labor law repercussions to terminate the
| unionized workers, they'd likely just shut down the plant in its
| entirety.
| amelius wrote:
| That would cause even more outrage.
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| And? It's a business decision, not a popularity contest.
| Amazon is not afraid of "outrage".
| maxerickson wrote:
| My understanding is that it would be illegal to do that under
| Federal labor law (they can't punish the workers that joined
| the union for joining the union).
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| I think you're right, but they have ways to do it. They'd
| simply shut down the plant in it's entirety, and open another
| warehouse far away. They can dress it up as "operational
| inefficiencies" or "poor location for shipping" etc. The fact
| the workers were going to unionize? Oh, just a coincidence!
| We were already planning to shut down our Alabama location
| anyway.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I would expect that tactic to still require that they give
| the workers at the facility shutting down similar
| opportunities to what they have given other employees in
| the past in similar situations.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| It's a pretty easy loophole: offer workers their jobs at
| a different location with no relocation benefits. Most
| warehouse workers aren't going to take them up on it.
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| And drive a 50+ mile commute daily? None of the workers
| are going to take them up on that "offer".
| scsilver wrote:
| Im not sure they have the political will to do that right now.
| They are under the federal and social microscope, during a new
| bipartisan wave of antitrust sentiment.
| [deleted]
| eplanit wrote:
| And invest (even more) heavily in robotics.
| legitster wrote:
| I have to imagine unions have a bit of an uphill battle right
| now, they took some major black eyes in 2020:
|
| - Police unions openly declaring war on their own citizens
|
| - Teachers unions causing general chaos in school reopening plans
|
| I understand that public sector unions are a different beast, but
| purely from an optics perspective I have to imagine public
| sentiment for unions can't be very high right now.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Public sector unions feel so strange to me- could you imagine
| there being military unions?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I generally agree that public sector unions shouldn't exist,
| but on the other hand, it's undeniable that voters can be
| very fickle employers.
| eplanit wrote:
| Public sector unions are the worst of the union beasts -- a
| layer of financially interested and un-elected bureaucrats
| between taxpayers and the services they are paying for.
|
| In California, the teachers union has a grotesque level of
| influence -- and the quality of the kids' education isn't so
| special, as a result.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Same story in Hawaii. The unions completely dominate local
| politics and it's a one party state.
| j_walter wrote:
| I've never fully understood public unions to be honest. Unions
| used to be the best way to protect yourself from a bad
| employer...but the employer is the government (and to some
| extent the people). It used to be that public sector workers
| made less in exchange for better benefits, but in the last few
| years the war was waged on the public to increase wages to that
| of "private companies". Now teachers in my state make more than
| an average BS degree and work 9 months of the year...along with
| better medical and retirement benefits. They still claim they
| are underpaid and taxes just keep going up.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Public Sector Unions make perfect sense from a political
| standpoint. It accomplishes two big things - it's a massive
| barrier to scaling back bureaucracy and it's a boon for any
| politician who supports the union.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| >Now teachers in my state make more than an average BS degree
| and work 9 months of the year...along with better medical and
| retirement benefits. They still claim they are underpaid
|
| They are. A few years ago I still thought they were
| _oeverpaid_ and then I married a teacher. She 's absolutely
| underpaid. It is very much _not_ a 9-5 job and, that time off
| during the summer - some of it get used for required
| continued education and a good deal of it makes up for the
| fact that teachers generally don 't have vacation time
| remotely comparable to most other industries.
|
| My wife wakes up and goes to school about 2 hours before
| classes start. She comes home, makes us dinner, then sits on
| the couch all evening watching tv while she answers student
| and parent emails, works on her lesson plan for the next few
| days/weeks, grades papers, tries to figure out how to squeeze
| kids in around others during her prep hour or before/after
| school that are requesting help, find time to squeeze in
| phone calls during those same time slots with parents that
| are unhappy with a student's grade or want help for their
| child.
|
| The weekends are more of the same, a lot of grading/lesson
| planning/creating content for teaching.
|
| This summer she had 2 weeks of full-time college classes in
| the middle of summer to keep up with her continued education
| requirements which required her to purchase about a dozen
| books that weren't textbooks for the class and required a few
| binders, several papers, then a 20-page paper. Then weeks
| before the school year started she had to go start prepping
| her classroom, attending meetings in person, etc.
|
| Just look at babysitting rates. If you look at the cost of
| daycare and consider any k-12 child at babysitting rates,
| teachers are extremely underpaid. Last school year she had
| roughly 185 students she saw daily. So, the average rate for
| a local babysitter in Indianapolis, IN is $12.75 per hour as
| of January 2021 according to Care.com's data.
|
| Assume she had each student for 60 minutes a day - as a
| babysitter she should have earned $2,358.75 a day if my math
| is right. She was doing a lot more than babysitting, after
| marrying her I fully joined the stance that teachers are
| horribly underpaid.
| j_walter wrote:
| That is not how math works. My kids day care has a
| government mandated 8 to 1 ratio. That teacher doesn't get
| paid 8x the average wage to watch kids. I don't pay $25/hr
| for my 2 kids to be at daycare.
|
| A local babysitter can watch more than 1 kid for that
| $12.75 an hour as well...it's not per kid.
|
| Nice try. Also, continued education is a requirement as it
| should be for such a career, but don't forget that her pay
| will go up as she completes credits (on top of her yearly
| increase).
|
| Just so you know, teachers in my area start at $55K/yr
| right now, not including benefits.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| >A local babysitter can watch more than 1 kid for that
| $12.75 an hour as well...it's not per kid.
|
| You're just massaging the data to benefit your point. Go
| find a babysitter that'll find 5 parents an go "yes, I'll
| watch all 5 of your children if you all chip in and give
| me 12.75 total".
| j_walter wrote:
| I'd be happy to pass you on to anyone that works at a
| daycare. They don't make much more than minimum wage in
| many cases. That's how daycare can remain somewhat
| affordable...economies of scale.
|
| Even your own source of care.com has a "Nanny Share"
| program that reduces the cost more. Without sharing, full
| time care (40 hrs a week) for 2 kids in my area is $16 an
| hour...which is less than 2 bucks more than minimum wage.
| $17.65 an hour if its 3 kids. Certainly not three times
| the $14.65 an hour that is for a single kid.
| offtop5 wrote:
| Also worth mentioning teachers have to deal with almost
| every societal issue. Having a kid tell you him and his mom
| sleep in a car this weekend is a heavy burden to carry.
|
| We treat teachers like these magicians who should find a
| way to make economically stressed kids fantastic students.
|
| I myself went through tons of housing instability , and an
| eviction while in high school. In no universe was I going
| to get into some type of premiere college.
|
| But you just keep seeing more and more pressure to make
| kids college ready. Kids who can barely read English are
| now told to take a foreign language( I've always hated
| foreign language requirements because I think it gives a
| big leg up to people growing in bilingual homes).
|
| Your wife is a saint. I can't imagine how much stress this
| reopening drive is causing your home.
| mynameishere wrote:
| What don't you understand? The point of a union is to extract
| more money and reduce productivity (yes, it is). A company
| will resist this since it's the company's money that's
| getting extracted and their productivity that's getting hurt.
| Politicians will not resist it since it's public money and
| public services--not specifically their own.
| perfmode wrote:
| side effects but not the point
| ryanmercer wrote:
| >Teachers unions causing general chaos in school reopening
| plans
|
| Maybe out west but schools have been carrying on as normal here
| in Indiana. My wife is at school teaching right now, they've
| had exactly 1 day this school year where she didn't have to go
| to work (earlier this week) because 3 students physically cut
| the internet going into the building and they couldn't get
| repairs done in time to open that day.
|
| Edit: I don't understand the downvotes... many schools across
| the country have been open for in-person school for the bulk of
| covid. This is a concrete fact.
| ghaff wrote:
| There's been an ongoing fight in NYC as well between the
| union and the city/state. So it definitely varies.
| apengwin wrote:
| Also Janus v AFSCME, which was decided 2 years ago.
| DataSceince123 wrote:
| 1) The police need to be defunded and disbanded, this will take
| care of problems within unions of a corrupt institution 2)
| Teachers were right not going back to school, this is the
| deadliest pandemic in the history of the united states and to
| expect teachers to work is a crime. Therefore the union did its
| job
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| > Police unions openly declaring war on their own citizens
|
| Link?
| nexuist wrote:
| I know that the general consensus seems to be that corporations
| despise unions because it inhibits their unrestrained profits,
| but I have a pet theory as to why American corporations
| specifically avoid unionization whilst other corporations in
| other Western countries seem to accept it as a reality of doing
| business.
|
| I view it as a sort of prisoner's dilemma between two corporate
| boards. As a primer for those who are not familiar, there are two
| prisoners in solitary confinement who are given the choice of
| remaining silent or testifying against the other in exchange for
| being set free. The two prisoners cannot communicate with each
| other.
|
| * If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves two years
| in prison
|
| * If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B
| will serve three years in prison
|
| * If A remains silent but B betrays A, A will serve three years
| in prison and B will be set free
|
| * If A and B both remain silent, both of them will serve only one
| year in prison (on the lesser charge).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
|
| In my example, the prisoners are presented with two options:
| unionize, or stay un-unionized.
|
| There are a few tweaks I will make.
|
| I view "prison" as the consequences of picking either option
| (there is no way to be set free). A short sentence represents the
| consequences of not unionizing: negative PR, labor lawsuits, and
| committing moral sins in whatever belief system you subscribe to.
| A long sentence is the consequence of unionizing: lost profits as
| wages and benefits are negotiated. A and B's investors will not
| approve of either getting a long sentence. Lastly, betrayal will
| be punished, not rewarded.
|
| * If A and B unionize, they will both be sent to prison with long
| sentences.
|
| * If A betrays B by unionizing but B doesn't, A goes to prison
| with a long sentence and B gets a short sentence.
|
| * If B betrays A, A gets a short sentence and B gets the long
| sentence.
|
| * If A and B do not unionize, both of them get the short
| sentence.
|
| Given these rules, the only logical choice is to not unionize. If
| A or B unionize, they are hit with the long sentence.
| Corporations avoid unionization because their investors will
| punish them.
|
| HOWEVER!
|
| Imagine if A and B unionized, and _every other prisoner in the
| prison_ also chose to unionize. The investors cannot punish every
| prisoner, because there is no one else left to invest in!
| Therefore, the long sentences (lower profits) are simply accepted
| because there is no way out - no way to avoid the long sentence.
|
| That is why unionization enforced by government succeeds better
| than voluntary unionization. Investors are forced to accept the
| low results because they cannot choose to avoid unionized
| companies in favor of un-unionized ones. However, as long as the
| ability to avoid unionization exists, investors will do their
| damnedest to make sure that company boards work against worker
| movements. The boards must comply regardless of their personal
| beliefs, because they will lose the game if they allow the
| company to be unionized.
| Alupis wrote:
| Honestly curious - are there any laws that would stop Amazon from
| just terminating employment for anyone found to be participating
| in this union?
|
| When a company can hire 100,000 new employees at the drop of a
| hat[1], I see no reason why Amazon would ever cave into
| unfavorable union demands.
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/16/amazon-to-
| hire-100000-wareho...
| 458aperta wrote:
| Still there is this weird cognitive dissonance amongst software
| engineers in non-FANG companies that union is somehow bad and
| that preventing people working over the weekend for free is
| detrimental to the industry.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Is it going to be a proper union or a political tool for alt-left
| ideals (like Google's recent unionization attempt)?
| kieselguhr_kid wrote:
| I don't know what the alt-left is, but I imagine these
| extremely exploited workers are going to focus on their
| terrible working conditions.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| How are they exploited? Is amazon the only company they are
| able to work at?
| kieselguhr_kid wrote:
| Go work there and then tell me they're not exploited.
|
| Edit: This was flippant because I was annoyed. There are a
| lot of people who work in well-paying jobs and have never
| really experienced what the labor that enables their
| relatively privileged lifestyle actually feels like. They
| often weigh in with "well, get a better job" but not only
| is that not an option for everyone, it means you're
| devaluing absolutely critical work. The snobbery among
| people who fail to see that is aggravating.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| I've worked painting dorm rooms. Worked cleaning out
| freezers in an ice cream factory. I've done plenty of
| crappy manual jobs. But I knew that's what I would get at
| the time as I was uneducated and unskilled. I was happy
| to have an income that relied on not needing any skills.
| Sorry you are annoyed, it's my opinion.
| kieselguhr_kid wrote:
| "I've had crappy manual jobs" and "I've been in a
| situation where crappy manual jobs were my only viable
| option" are very different situations. But also, why
| didn't you want more money at the time? Why were you so
| happy to have a crappy job cleaning out freezers when you
| could have organized and got a better paying job cleaning
| out freezers?
|
| This future millionaire mindset, where you were "happy to
| have an income" because you anticipated better future
| returns, is ugly and detrimental to everyone around you.
| Every job that needs doing should be done for decent pay
| and with dignity, at a minimum.
| exolymph wrote:
| > "I've had crappy manual jobs" and "I've been in a
| situation where crappy manual jobs were my only viable
| option" are very different situations.
|
| ?? Why would anyone work a crappy manual job if it _weren
| 't_ their only viable option?
|
| Like, I'm sure there are exceptions but it seems unusual,
| since if you have better options, you'll pursue those
| instead.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| woot woot! proud this is in alabama.
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