[HN Gopher] Amazon loses effort to install camera to watch count...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon loses effort to install camera to watch counting of ballots
in union vote
Author : koolba
Score : 198 points
Date : 2021-03-30 15:22 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| BurningFrog wrote:
| "The people who cast the votes decide nothing; the people who
| count the votes decide everything" --- Usually
| attributed to Joseph Stalin
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/stalin-vote-count-quote/
| tamaharbor wrote:
| Why is everyone against fair elections?
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Amazon's request seems very reasonable. The NLRB is a union-
| favoring body - I can understand why Amazon may distrust the
| process, the participants, the overseers, etc. Both sides should
| want this process to be as secure as possible if we are to not
| end up in a state where we doubt the results. For this union vote
| and election in general, I simply do not accept arguments that
| there must be things just left up to chance (like voter ID or
| security of the ballot box). We should strive to make the process
| as bulletproof as possible. Having cameras, a log of when the
| storage room is opened, and tamper-proof tape seems like a very
| low bar to set and I am not sure why this request was not
| granted.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Apparently the union and Amazon were both granted the ability to
| have four observers present during the counting. Amazon wanted
| wanted to watch the _ballot box itself_ (not the votes or counts
| or ballots) during off hours so both parties can confirm that it
| wasn 't tampered with.
|
| > Amazon had sought to place a video camera in the NLRB's
| Birmingham office, where votes will be tabulated, to keep an eye
| on the ballot boxes in the off hours between counting, according
| to an NLRB order denying Amazon's request. The camera feed would
| have been accessible by both Amazon and the RWDSU.
|
| That doesn't sound as nefarious as the headline suggests. In
| fact, it seems strange that the secure ballot box would be
| deliberately stored somewhere without security cameras.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| I think it's important to understand, for this decision, the
| context of the election process. Secret ballot union elections
| are conducted not by the employer or the union, but actually by
| the NLRB itself, a federal agency. These elections are carried
| out according to specifications and requirements produced by
| NLRB as administrative law.
|
| So consider that Amazon's request for security measures beyond
| what the NLRB has previously found necessary will increase the
| time and cost for NLRB to run the election... it seems likely
| to me that the NLRB would reject the request simply because
| they feel it to be unnecessary and to impose additional
| complexity and cost on the NLRB (and thus potentially the
| taxpayer).
| omegaworks wrote:
| We saw the impact of FUD spreading around the November
| Presidential election on January 6th, I'm curious to see what
| kind of impact a a similar effort will have on the NLRB vote.
| manicdee wrote:
| The ballot box is stored in a secure building.
|
| Are the Union or Amazon going to break into the offices of a
| federal agency to deposit fake votes or otherwise tamper with
| the ballot box?
|
| Doesn't the security of the building contribute to the security
| of the ballot?
| [deleted]
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| Uh, he just said it's about a camera that's supposed to run
| over night when there is no voting going on. Is what he said
| untrue?
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Sorry for responding to your comment, but I'm unable to
| respond to the parent comment.
|
| Since when is it possible to delete a comment after someone
| has replied to it, or was this done by a moderator?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I believe you can email the moderators and ask for your
| comment to be deleted at any time and they may oblige.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > In fact, it seems strange that the secure ballot box would be
| deliberately stored somewhere without security cameras.
|
| I've been a voting official a couple of times in Germany. Here,
| the ballot boxes (which are literal trash cans, just in a
| different color) get loaded with _everything_ (ballots,
| tabulation aids, even the pencils) at the end of the day and
| sealed off, then over night left behind in the room where the
| election and counting happens (usually a school classroom), and
| at the beginning of the next day we verify the seals haven 't
| been tampered with, unload the cans and continue counting.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Amazon requested similar measures, including tamper-proof
| tape:
|
| > According to the motion, Amazon asked that the NLRB change
| or reset the security locks to the storage room's door where
| the ballots will be held, provide Amazon and the RWDSU with
| an electronic or physical log of when the storage room door
| is opened during the counting process and use tamper proof
| tape on the ballot boxes or storage room door to "ensure no
| unauthorized access to the envelopes, ballot boxes, or
| storage room occurs."
|
| These measures seem rather basic and in the interest of both
| sides, to be honest. It's strange that there's so much
| resistance.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _These measures seem rather basic and in the interest of
| both sides, to be honest. It 's strange that there's so
| much resistance_
|
| Giving Amazon the benefit of doubt, some unions are
| notoriously corrupt. Giving that benefit to the union, it
| could have just been the latest stalling tactic in a long
| string of reasonable requests.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| This line of thinking of unions is why many Americans not
| in unions hate them. They benefit nobody but the people
| in the union.
| babycake wrote:
| > They benefit nobody but the people in the union.
|
| Amazon has enacted policies that are entirely employee-
| hostile... like creating timetables that are impossible
| to fulfill unless they pee in bottles or take a dump to
| fertilize a customer's lawn. And those policies were
| created that benefits nobody but Amazon itself.
|
| Why would this scenario be more acceptable than a union
| whose goal is to empower workers and to allow an official
| process to create lasting change?
|
| If anything, any union policies that get enacted by the
| company generally benefits all employees of Amazon, union
| or not. It's not like amazon will give benefits to only
| union members, because that would then cause non-union
| employees to join the union, boosting the union's power.
|
| In any case, if we're generalizing all unions like in
| your statement, then we can generalize corporations as
| well. Since all corporations just look out for
| themselves, and can throw you and your life under the bus
| at any time, having union is still better than a
| corporate overlord. Americans will therefore hate
| corporations more than unions.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > It's strange that there's so much resistance.
|
| I can think of two plausible, good reasons for resisting
| these measures:
|
| 1. It's in Amazon's best interest to delay the vote as much
| as they can. More security edicts from Amazon means more
| delays, which means that Amazon can spend more time
| blasting both the public and their own employees with anti-
| union messaging.
|
| 2. Security demands from Amazon are a chilling force on the
| independence of the union. The union already has voting
| rules and mechanisms; kowtowing to Amazon makes them appear
| weak and establishes a precedent for future union body
| decisions.
|
| I think the first reason is stronger than the second, but
| that both are perfectly sufficient and acceptable
| objections to Amazon's demands, particularly in light of
| their established delay tactics. Absent of any evidence to
| the contrary, there's no reason to believe that the union
| _and_ NLRB are incapable of holding a fair election on
| their own terms.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Who'd be chilled, the box? They ask for a camera watching
| the box with ballots, not voters themselves. And I can't
| believe installing a webcam would take much time. I'm
| pretty sure one could order it from... say Amazon? - and
| get it the next day ;)
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Who'd be chilled, the box?
|
| The chilling effect is on the prospective unionists --
| there isn't much point in being in a union if the union
| unconditionally accepts orders from your employer.
|
| As a reminder: there is _absolutely no evidence of
| impropriety at any level_ here. Amazon 's demands amount
| to handwringing and FUD; acquiescing to them sends the
| message that Amazon, not the union, ultimately calls the
| shots in union elections.
| smsm42 wrote:
| > there isn't much point in being in a union if the union
| unconditionally accepts orders from your employer.
|
| That's BS - nobody talking about accepting every order
| forever, whatever it is. The matter in question here is
| completely common and reasonable security measure. To
| refuse it just to be obstinate and play the power game is
| childish and pointless. Exactly what one doesn't want in
| a union - preferring power games to the benefit of the
| workers - who, I presume, would want an honest election -
| and an election that can be _proven_ to be honest.
|
| > there is absolutely no evidence of impropriety at any
| level here
|
| So what? There's no evidence I am a terrorist, but I have
| to show ID and go through the security when I fly (or
| enter a court building). There's no evidence I am not
| paying taxes, but I have to submit my tax return (and
| sometimes undergo audit - without any evidence I
| cheated!). There's no evidence I am an illegal immigrant,
| but I still have to show my ID when passing the border.
| There's no evidence I am a crappy driver, but I still
| have to get a driver license, by passing tests. There's
| no evidence I am a criminal, but I still have to show ID
| and submit to a background check if I want to buy a
| firearm. There's no evidence I stole my credit card, but
| I still have to type in the secret code in the form.
| There's no evidence I am impersonating somebody else on
| HN, but I still have to type the password when I am
| logging in. There's no evidence somebody is breaking into
| my house, but I still have lock and keys (and cameras).
|
| I could continue for hours. There are thousands of cases
| where security measures are taken _without evidence_ of
| somebody 's personal misconduct that already happened.
| That's how you make sure the probability of misconduct is
| very low - by taking measures before it happened, not
| after. Somehow in this particular case it's not clear -
| despite widespread usage of security cameras otherwise,
| that could have hinted you that using security cameras
| does not have proof of misconduct as prerequisite - in
| fact, the presence of the cameras is usually the
| prerequisite of obtaining the _evidence_.
|
| > Amazon's demands amount to handwringing and FUD
|
| There was no base for FUD until people started refusing
| common security measures - and then there is, if they
| don't plan to cheat why they are so against the common
| security measures? If there's no misconduct, why they are
| so keen to ensuring there could be no possibility of
| having any _evidence_ of it?
| ardit33 wrote:
| a camera while voting, has chilling effect, but a camera
| at the location while the ballots are stored overnight is
| kinda common sense. If it was a sack of cash, or even
| just supplies that were valuable, it would have been
| treated the same.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > It's strange that there's so much resistance.
|
| Not knowing the specifics, I'd imagine trust has just
| completely eroded for the workers where they always assume
| Amazon is nefariously working against them. Pure
| speculation on my part, but it's easy to understand
| psychologically.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| Amazon's proposal may be entirely reasonable. But I could
| easily imagine that it's part of a very sophisticated
| strategy on Amazon's part to ultimately undermine a
| legitimate vote.
|
| I have trouble guessing which approach approach is more
| desirable in this situation.
| josho wrote:
| Just the rumour of "Cameras are recording who votes"
| could significantly alter the willingness of people to
| vote.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| IIUC, this particular article deals only with keeping a
| camera on the ballot box after it's been sealed, and on
| the subsequent vote-counting.
|
| So I don't think this poses a risk to anonymous voting
| _per se_.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| But as we see from even comments in this article, the
| lack of clarity around this is probably enough to chill
| some potential voters from participating, correctly or
| otherwise.
| bdavisx wrote:
| This is a federal agency with legal authority:
| 1 - why should they have to answer to Amazon on how they
| conduct elections that they have been handling for longer
| than Amazon has existed? 2 - since it is
| Federal, any change to the way they handle things would
| likely delay the election - but perhaps that's what Amazon
| is really after - or they're taking a page from the
| Republicans and will use it to sow fake doubt about the
| outcome
| elefanten wrote:
| The ability to challenge and potentially change
| government procedures exists in various forms at all
| levels of the political and legal systems. One could
| argue that it's a key component of the systems'
| strengthening and improving over time.
|
| More cynically, it's also an agency who's purpose is to
| support labor. So, it seems understandable that one of
| the biggest companies with some of the hottest labor
| issues would want any types of insurance it can acquire
| in the interest of contingency-planning.
| dbt00 wrote:
| The problem isn't that the steps they're requesting are
| onerous, it's that the process by which the ballots are
| stored and counted is already set forth in NLRB regulations
| and backed by law. Arbitrarily changing the conditions,
| even if each step seems practical, requires ratifying the
| changes, delays the counting, and potentially invalidating
| the vote.
| brightball wrote:
| I'll never understand how opposition to improving the
| integrity of things like this is taken seriously, much less
| defended.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Honestly makes me feel the authority managing the vote
| believes that something corrupt is likely to take place.
| zwayhowder wrote:
| When you've had a long vitriolic campaign it can be hard to
| agree to anything your opposition proposes even when it is
| clearly a fact or win-win.
| nickff wrote:
| Unions generally oppose most of these 'safeguards',
| including secret ballots. The stated reason for this is
| that the 'safeguards' are unnecessary and costly;
| employers often suggest that the unions engage in
| pressure tactics and fraud.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > That doesn't sound as nefarious as the headline suggests.
|
| Why rule against it if it isn't a big deal? When is "too much
| security" a bad thing?
| smsm42 wrote:
| I can't think of a valid reason why one would object to having
| a camera over the box, unless they intend to tamper with it. I
| mean, I can understand objections to installing cameras where
| there might be privacy or ballot secrecy issues. But the box
| doesn't have privacy and it won't reveal anyone's ballot's
| content - so why the objection?
| lvs wrote:
| It's the federal agency itself that you're accusing of
| impropriety here.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Of course, it has been never the case that federal agents
| behaved improperly. In fact, once a person is hired by a
| federal government, they become incapable of committing a
| crime or even an impropriety. That's why no courts has ever
| convicted anyone working for a federal agency in anything
| inappropriate.
| SolarNet wrote:
| Because it will cost the taxpayer more?
| smsm42 wrote:
| The price of one webcam? I think somewhere in our multi-
| trillion-dollar budget there's a place for a webcam. But I
| am sure if that'd be the problem Amazon would gladly cover
| the price of the cam.
| jl2718 wrote:
| Imagine a world where cryptography doesn't exist, so we have to
| trust volunteers to hand-count easily-forged pieces of paper.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Votes are anything but easily forged, they are in fact quite
| trivial to secure.
|
| What IS easily forged and extremely difficult, if not
| impossible, to secure is a result printed out by some opaque
| computer that is running a huge amount of software on an
| extremely complex processor which runs its own closed-source
| firmware, probably communicating over the internet 'securely'
| to some other computers.
| tomschlick wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/2030/
| [deleted]
| jayd16 wrote:
| Cryptography won't help if you want a secret ballot.
| drdaeman wrote:
| Not true, there's a lot of research into voting systems that
| provide both secrecy and various verifiabilities:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-
| end_auditable_voting_sy...
| throway98752343 wrote:
| A voting system where voters can prove which way they voted
| is vulnerable to coercion or retribution.
|
| The manager rounds up the workers and "suggests" they all
| compare how they voted. Those who voted "pro-company" will
| likely reveal their vote. So for everyone who refuses to
| reveal their vote, the manager checks a box next to their
| name on the attendance sheet.
|
| There may be a voting system that provides all the desired
| guarantees, but I doubt such a system is also easily
| understood and trusted by the average voter.
| kevinsundar wrote:
| You can partially defeat this by allowing people to
| change votes. Then everyone has something that "proves"
| they at some point voted pro-company but they could have
| changed it later.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Ok what about when you're coerced to change your vote?
| zchrykng wrote:
| Just make that kind of thing illegal like so many other
| things around union elections and come down on them like
| a ton of bricks if they violate this. Both the employers
| and unions.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| We have secret ballots because this is not a solvable
| problem. If you're threatened with your job it is one
| thing, if you are threatened with violence for voting
| "incorrectly" it is another.
| uncoder0 wrote:
| Couldn't you use something like monero but, I guess then you
| couldn't audit it.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| After spending some years in development of cryptographic
| software, I became an ardent fan of not-so-easily forged pieces
| of paper. (Try counterfeiting modern banknotes. NOT easy.)
|
| Cryptographic software is tricky, very easy to implement
| incorrectly or with major security gaps, completely opaque to
| the amateur user, vulnerable to all kinds of zero-days and
| possibly even progress in mathematics (God save us from the day
| when someone comes with a fast factorization algorithm). If
| secure enough, it will be burdensome enough that people will
| try to circumvent it. It runs on a stack of OSes and hardware
| that may (read: of course they do) have fatal security flaws
| rendering your secure app insecure.
|
| No, thanks. Give me a paper ballot any day.
| dzonga wrote:
| one of those times, you wish every working man knew what efforts
| are made into bursting unions. And then reflect internally, are
| unions bad for a company to put in such an effort to keep their
| works unorganized.
|
| once unions disappeared in america, the working man lost wages,
| political representation and so on.
| jstanley wrote:
| > are unions bad for a company to put in such an effort to keep
| their works unorganized.
|
| It's completely plausible that unions are bad for both
| employers _and_ employees.
| simion314 wrote:
| Only a good union example will invalidate your argument,
| maybe check history and find such a good example then attempt
| to reformulate some valid hypothesis or try something not
| that easy to disprove.
|
| While you try to find some bad example of unions and show us
| how they ruined some companies consider that I will respond
| with similar examples where the CEO and the board did even
| worse stuff - so maybe we skip the examples comments and we
| can conclude that there can be bad unions and bad CEOs (or
| board/whatever), the main difference is that one group
| controls a lot of money and can create a lot of PR to present
| the other group as evil.
| toast0 wrote:
| > one group controls a lot of money and can create a lot of
| PR to present the other group as evil.
|
| CEOs _also_ control a lot of money and create a lot of PR,
| so don 't try to paint them as always the good guys.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I'd be surprised if unions controlled as much money as
| CEOs; union reps aren't generally on rich lists.
| sli wrote:
| If they did, wouldn't the money be in the organization's
| control and not be the personal wealth of the rep?
| salawat wrote:
| Unions don't control as much money by definition. Any
| Union's coffers are pulled from dues coming out of the
| pay of the workers. While theoretically, a Union may make
| more than the employees of a particular Union workplace,
| it would be only because you took into account cash flow
| from other Union workplaces.
|
| Statistical multiplexing is the only thing that makes
| unions viable to my understanding, and I may be wrong on
| that, as warchests may be partitioned by workplace, I
| can't confirm whether or not that is the case.
|
| This is also one of the reasons why I'm not sold on the
| illegalization of secondary strikes. Labor should
| absolutely exploit network effects to make up for the
| fact that the capital class will pretty much by default.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Check out the lists of top political donations some time
| - e.g. on https://www.opensecrets.org/. Unions have
| _tons_ of money, and they spend it lavishly on lobbying,
| political donations and PR.
| laurent92 wrote:
| > check history
|
| Classic. But historically, advances in wages and advantages
| tightly follow the economic curve: Employers increase wages
| when skills and economic development gets better. Not
| correlated with unionization, even when the union is here
| when the paper is signed and brandish it as a success
| (looking at you, Conge Payes in France in 1936, many
| companies were already doing it when the union gathered
| with the bosses to say "We do it").
| simion314 wrote:
| I think you were manipulated with some examples, so let
| me know such example that you are thinking of, also try
| to fit your view with my examples: "miners union demand
| pay on time and safer conditions", "actors union demand
| safety", "teacher union demands a raise equal with
| inflation" . Your view is that this groups should wait
| until the free market will solve their issue? Many people
| here are comparing their programming job with someone
| that works an unskilled low paying job, this people can't
| individually demand things like "hey, put it in my
| contract that you will allow me 2 minutes toilet breaks,
| not 1 like the others, I am a 10X worker see my CV on
| GitHub"
| dontreact wrote:
| Wages have stagnated since sometime around unions started
| to lose power. Wage growth has certainly not kept up with
| GDP. And the decoupling of these two things happened
| around the time unions started to lose power.
| robomartin wrote:
| > While you try to find some bad example of unions and show
| us how they ruined some companies
|
| I think your perspective does not match the reality of the
| last 50 years or so. We are not in the 1800's or early
| 1900's, when unions were super important in shaping our
| labor laws and actually helping workers. Nobody can deny
| that.
|
| Since then?
|
| To reuse a phrase: The huge sucking sound you've been
| hearing are jobs --union and otherwise-- going to China by
| the millions. Unions, and their aggressive anti-business
| stance in the US, have been a part of this exodus. I know
| people who forcefully retired from a number of union jobs
| as their unions decimated their respective industries and
| their jobs went to China.
|
| Sure, of course, reality isn't a single variable problem
| and we can't just blame unions for the erosion of our
| industrial base. There are many factors that led to this,
| including our incompetent politicians and their never
| ending quest for party power rather than what's good for
| the nation.
|
| Unions in the US have become distinctly different from
| their European counterparts. Our unions use the threat of
| destroying a business as a way to get what they want.
| European unions have somehow reached a balance where they
| understand protecting the business is just as important as
| protecting workers. It's a far more symbiotic relationship
| rather than a brutally adversarial one.
|
| No love lost of Amazon here. I just think it is important
| to understand history so we don't repeat our painfully-
| learned mistakes. The US and Europe are out of time. We
| can't make more mistakes. We have been helping China
| achieve the rank of second economy in the world for fifty
| years. How much more self-harm is enough?
|
| I desperately want to go back to having manufacturing in
| the US as an option. Today, that option does not exist but
| within very specific boundaries. Anything "union" is dead,
| whether they know it or not. Save this message and read it
| again in 10, 15 or 20 years.
| simion314 wrote:
| You remind me of indoctrinated religious people. A guy
| gets a rare birth defect and one day a doctor cures him,
| he thanks God for saving him but not blames God for
| giving him the birth defect from the beginning.
|
| Same in your case you blame the union concept for all the
| evil (ignore all the other possible causes why China
| economy is rising) but never credit unions with any good
| thing.
|
| Let's assume that the US people are special, they can't
| ever have a society like the rest of the world. How do
| you solve the issue where workers have to work in unsafe
| conditions, pee in bottles and other degrading stuff? Do
| you pass laws to forbid peeing in bottles? The anti-
| government guys will not let you pass such laws... do you
| make each worker negotiate how many minutes a year he can
| spend in toilet ? Do you solve it with Twitter and cancel
| culture or with God?
| lnanek2 wrote:
| > once unions disappeared in america, the working man lost
| wages
|
| I've worked the same role in union shops and non-union before.
| Non-union paid more and had less deadbeat co-workers to
| navigate around. Depends on your profession and skills,
| honestly. Probably a benefit for amazon pick and drop workers.
|
| Really sucks at mixed union and non-union tech companies,
| though. At my current company programmers aren't even allowed
| to move our own computer between desks because only union
| people are allowed to do that, and getting the union people to
| do it will take over a week and be done at an inconvenient time
| interrupting work.
| [deleted]
| babelfish wrote:
| At non-union shops it's not like you can move your desk
| wherever you want either, most offices without hot desks have
| a floor plan and an office manager who all seating changes go
| through. Don't blame the union for that.
| bendbro wrote:
| And this office is not an office with hot desks, and not
| every office even wants hot desks. The behavior of unions
| monopolizing a job type in a company is absolutely to
| blame.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the OP is talking about how the Union
| requires that the equipment transfer is _only_ done by a
| union employee. And, you 'd get fined if you did it
| yourself. I don't think they're talking about the process
| being complicated, but rather that the union forcefully
| inserts itself into the process.
| asdff wrote:
| I don't see that as an issue, I see that as a feature.
| What good is the union if a company can just remove union
| workers from the process in the name of "efficiency" or
| whatever metric increases profit at the expense of the
| employees? The other commenter complained it took a week
| to get a new desk. To me that's another great thing. That
| means the staff doing this sort of thing aren't over
| worked and have some agency to dictate their workload,
| and me as a worker would respect that system since I too
| benefit from this ability to collectively negotiate the
| terms of my job. Personally, I don't care if my company
| is running the most efficient operation, because usually
| that means overworking and underpaying your staff to do
| so.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| The culture these policies create isn't proactive and
| healthy. It's hard to explain if you haven't experienced
| it. It's dismaying and demoralizing to see someone
| deliberately punt on their job for hours or days without
| trying to hide it, just because they can. It makes you
| want to work somewhere else before you turn into them.
| asdff wrote:
| I've seen that behavior all the time in my work
| experience and I've never been in a union job. There are
| shitty, frusterating, lazy workers in every job at every
| level, from entry level to the C level, and plenty of
| them find a way to not get fired and keep skirting by. I
| don't think saying workers can be lazy in a union is a
| very compelling argument, especially considering the
| collective negotiating ability the union gives you that
| will just be gone if everyone was left to negotiate with
| management themselves. I've set to see an argument
| against a union that couldn't simply be pointed to a non
| union workplace just as well.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Yes, I don't think there is any argument you cannot
| simply assert against to the negative or nullify with the
| same argument against other kinds of organizations on the
| Internet.
| asdff wrote:
| Oh come on, no need for this cynical sentence that gave
| me a headache just to parse in the afternoon :)
|
| The two big arguments I see against unions are
|
| 1. lazy workers
|
| 2. corruption
|
| And in the case of 1., I mean come on. Lazy workers are
| everywhere union or no. In the case of 2., yes this
| happens. Wage theft from the worker by management happens
| probably a lot more, on the other hand. It impacts at
| least 1/3 of minimum wage earners in cities like LA and
| Chicago, and for those who have experienced a pay
| violation on average they loose out on 12.5% of their
| actual paycheck (1). Just look at the second page of this
| report and see the horrors for the working poor in our
| country who are under very little labor protections; all
| of these issues would have been stymied by a union
| protecting labor.
|
| At least with a corrupt union you have some recourse
| where you can drum up internal support among similarly
| exploited people, and change your organization via vote.
| As a nonunion worker, in contrast, you can't do anything
| to enact change if management isn't playing ball with
| labor, short of quitting your job and losing any and all
| your benefits like healthcare in the process.
|
| 1. https://irle.ucla.edu/old/publications/documents/LAwag
| etheft...
| cblackthornekc wrote:
| > At my current company programmers aren't even allowed to
| move our own computer between desks because only union people
| are allowed to do that
|
| This is also likely an insurance limitation as well. Where I
| work most employees are insured for basic injuries on site.
| Only those required to move equipment have the add on that
| they might move equipment weighing 50 lbs or more.
|
| So if I move a desk that weighs 51 pounds and throw out my
| back, getting work to pay for it might be difficult because I
| should have gotten facilities to do it as they have the heavy
| weight add on.
| bluGill wrote:
| The network cable I want to plug into a open jack doesn't
| weight 50lbs though. I've worked in places where I need a
| union electrician to do that task though. Fortunately the
| union was cool in that location and just ignored my
| crawling under my desk, I'm told in other offices they were
| a lot more strict.
| beaner wrote:
| This is exceptionally hilarious considering the Washington Post's
| (Bezos' paper) perspective on voter fraud this last presidential
| election.
| _red wrote:
| Maybe WP will run an article stating that workers from Walmart
| should be allowed to vote in their election...
| josefresco wrote:
| > perspective on voter fraud
|
| What's their _perspective_ exactly?
| beaner wrote:
| That even questioning whether it may be happening is itself a
| fascist assault on democracy.
| jaywalk wrote:
| But at least this time it fits with their fairly new "Democracy
| Dies in Darkness" tagline.
| jamesgreenleaf wrote:
| There are a number of ways you can read that tagline.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| >During this portion, the NLRB will read off each voter's name
| and both sides will be allowed to contest ballots, likely based
| on factors such as whether an employee's job title entitles them
| to vote or an illegible signature. Any contested ballots will be
| set aside.
|
| What kind of job title would _disqualify_ an employee from being
| allowed to vote to unionize?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Presumably being in management.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The union isn't a blanket union for all Amazon employees. It
| only covers about 5,800 employees who want to join the Retail,
| Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU).
|
| An AWS engineer casting a vote for the warehouse workers to
| unionize would be invalid, for example.
| tzs wrote:
| Engineers in the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union
| seems absurd, but strange things like that can happen.
|
| For example, a lot of engineers in aerospace and defense
| (including software engineers) were members of the United
| Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of American (UBC).
|
| That came about because when Howard Hughes built the Spruce
| Goose he hired a bunch of UBC labor. They only built one
| Spruce Goose, but as the company did other things, many of
| those workers stayed, and UBC continued to represent them.
| When Hughes started Hughes Aircraft, more workers turned to
| UBC to represent them.
|
| As late as 2000, Local 1553 of UBC was still representing all
| kinds of engineers at various companies that have arisen out
| of the various splits and mergers that the Hughes companies
| have been involved in. I don't know if that is still the
| case.
|
| There's something funny about satellites and missiles, which
| are about as far from wood-based projects as you can get,
| being built by people represented by the United Brotherhood
| of Carpenters and Joiners. But then there is "Japan
| developing wooden satellites to cut space junk" [1], so maybe
| it isn't so funny after all.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55463366
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > What kind of job title would disqualify an employee from
| being allowed to vote to unionize?
|
| Managers and supervisors, generally, including when supervision
| (including just giving out work assignments with some degree of
| discretion) is a relatively small part of the worker's job.
|
| https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/employee-...
| WalterBright wrote:
| There must be a secure audit trail from the voter to the final
| tally. That's how public trust in the result is garnered.
| bluGill wrote:
| There have been cases in the past where someone did a vote for
| me or [some violent act that they were capable of following up
| on]. The audit trail needs to break someplace between the
| individual voter and the actual vote they cast. We still need a
| good trail to believe that all votes were counted correctly,
| only people who should vote voted, and nobody voted more than
| they were allowed. This is a hard problem.
| dheera wrote:
| Honestly I don't understand why we can't have cameras installed
| at ALL voting-related facilities.
| aeturnum wrote:
| An important aspect of voting systems is that, while you want
| to authenticate that each voter _is allowed to_ vote, you also
| want strong protections against discovering who voted for who.
| I understand why it seems like cameras would be a good idea,
| but it 's very easy to imagine how such a system could be
| abused.
|
| Can you tell a camera's field of view by looking at it? Could
| your grandparents? Trusting systems that secure the vote is
| much easier when they are designed resist being changed to abet
| oppression.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > you also want strong protections against discovering who
| voted for who.
|
| You also want protection against discovering who voted at
| all!
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Not at all, the fact that someone voted (or didn't) MUST be
| recorded, otherwise you can't check whether there has been
| multiple voting.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yes, but you don't need to keep that record. Unless, of
| course, voting is mandatory.
| WalterBright wrote:
| That's why you have voting booths. Voter goes in booth with
| ballot, closes curtain, comes out with ballot, ballot goes in
| counting machine. That way, you can:
|
| 1. verify who is voting
|
| 2. verify trail from voter to count
|
| 3. no extra votes
|
| 4. no discarded votes
| aeturnum wrote:
| Sure, it's a good system.
|
| But, of course, if you had a camera, voters might
| reasonably be worried that you would combine the footage
| with vote order and figure our who voted when.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Sure, the counter would have to be set up so the order of
| the votes cast is not retrievable. Any display should be
| only the total of votes counted, not the tally for each
| item on the ballot.
|
| This doesn't seem hard at all to do right.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I agree that you could easily design a system where you
| could have video of everyone dropping their ballots into
| a ballot box and it would still be impossible to
| associate a particular vote with a voter.
|
| However, that's not the standard. The standard is
| avoiding the _appearance_ of being able to track votes. I
| don 't trust the people who make voting machine software
| or the government. You don't know that your voting
| tabulation software correctly anonymizes the results and
| you shouldn't need that technical knowledge to feel safe.
| The correct approach is to make a system that guarantees
| what we want and would be impossible for a bad actor to
| abuse.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The gold standard would be an auditable ballot trail from
| voter to final tally.
|
| Any gaps in that leads to suspicion of error and fraud.
| That leads to bad things, as recent events amply
| illustrated.
|
| Yes, it can be done while still having a secret ballot.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >The correct approach is to make a system that
| _guarantees_ what we want and would be _impossible_ for a
| bad actor to abuse.
|
| No such system is possible
| WalterBright wrote:
| We can do a heluva lot better.
| dheera wrote:
| Hmm ... could we do voting with NFTs and get rid of this
| mess, and all the paper waste? 1 NFT = 1 vote and you get
| the NFT by presenting ID in person at the police station.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| Scrap the voting machines. Manual counting (with randomly
| picked volunteers) is the only solution that guarantees
| trust in the process.
|
| As the recent US elections showed, voting machines are open
| to the opposition saying "we only lost because the machines
| were hacked against us".
| jhayward wrote:
| > _Manual counting (with randomly picked volunteers) is
| the only solution that guarantees trust in the process._
|
| This is naive. The Georgia Presidential election was
| hand-recounted, _twice_. The loser still claims it was
| stolen, incited an insurrection that sacked the Capitol
| while Congress was certifying the winner.
|
| When one party is solely dedicated to power, not
| democracy, none of your ideals or safeguards mean
| anything. They just don't care what anyone thinks as long
| as they can hold power.
| toast0 wrote:
| Counting machines are fine as long as you can do a hand
| recount. The machines people are upset about in 2020 are
| actually pretty reasonable; unlike the machines people
| were upset about in 2000 which didn't create a paper
| trail.
| dheera wrote:
| Why not just have two vote count machines made by
| different manufacturers and just ensure that they produce
| the same counts?
| stuaxo wrote:
| In this case Amazon would be seeing who was voting.
| jaywalk wrote:
| That's not what the article says.
|
| It says that the cameras would "keep an eye on the ballot
| boxes in the off hours between counting" which seems...
| perfectly reasonable to me.
| uoaei wrote:
| Surely they wouldn't watch the feed during counting hours!
| Who would go against their word so brazenly?
| StavrosK wrote:
| Votes are anonymous, people can watch the count all they
| want.
| uoaei wrote:
| Intimidation is the name of the game when it comes to
| union-busting, I think it is pretty obvious that this is
| one more attempt at that.
| bluGill wrote:
| Both ways. Unions have their share of intimidating people
| to vote for them.
| uoaei wrote:
| Whataboutism doesn't really apply when it's a $1.5
| trillion company vs a couple dozen over-extended union
| organizers.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| > During this portion, the NLRB will read off each
| voter's name and both sides will be allowed to contest
| ballots, likely based on factors such as whether an
| employee's job title entitles them to vote or an
| illegible signature. Any contested ballots will be set
| aside.
|
| It looks like they aren't anonymous?!
| anamexis wrote:
| I participated in an NLRB election about 10 years ago,
| and I believe the name was on the ballot envelope, so the
| count happened in two stages.
|
| First, go through all of the envelopes, reading the
| names, and either side can contest ballots, which are set
| aside.
|
| Then, the uncontested ballots are removed from the
| envelopes and counted.
|
| If the vote margin is less than the number of contested
| ballots, that kicks off some kind of remediation process.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Oh good, that sounds nice. And how did the vote go?
| anamexis wrote:
| The union lost by 2 votes. The election results were
| later thrown out because the company had engaged in
| illegal electioneering, but by the time this happened the
| company had fired several union organizers (also
| illegally) and the campaign lost steam.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Hopefully they mean this happens before voting? This is
| outrageous if not.
| jrib wrote:
| seems pretty trivial to just block the camera physically
| to prevent that
| josho wrote:
| It wouldn't take much for that reality to be distorted and
| end up leaving some people with the impression that Amazon
| has security cameras watching who votes. That's going to
| suppress the vote and potentially alter the outcome.
|
| Just look at this thread and how much confusion over what
| the cameras are recording.
| ddoolin wrote:
| It's not secret apparently:
|
| > During this portion, the NLRB will read off each voter's
| name and both sides will be allowed to contest ballots,
| likely based on factors such as whether an employee's job
| title entitles them to vote or an illegible signature. Any
| contested ballots will be set aside.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Seems more like a roll call check. Usually, signatures are
| on the outside of sealed ballots.
| wavefunction wrote:
| Doesn't sound like they know the actual vote though? At
| least how you've quoted the description. Just the name and
| title of the employee.
| ddoolin wrote:
| Fair, I hadn't considered that. It does seem like the
| actual vote should be private.
| hooande wrote:
| if it isn't secret...why do they need cameras to watch the
| ballots? if all the votes and names will be read aloud,
| there's no way to cheat and change a vote
| opo wrote:
| According to the article:
|
| >...Amazon had sought to place a video camera in the
| NLRB's Birmingham office, where votes will be tabulated,
| to keep an eye on the ballot boxes in the off hours
| between counting, according to an NLRB order denying
| Amazon's request. The camera feed would have been
| accessible by both Amazon and the RWDSU.
| [deleted]
| hef19898 wrote:
| Because in order to be democratic, an election has to be fair,
| free and _secret_. That 's why I am always a little bit
| disturbed with signed ballots for example. I never signed a
| paper ballot in my whole life. Or any other ballot as far as
| that is concerned.
|
| Cameras would limit the secret part.
| [deleted]
| ddoolin wrote:
| Doesn't anyone have an idea of the likelihood of this passing?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| No idea about the camera (there's lively discussion here about
| that already), but the other measures like sealing the ballot
| boxes and restricting/auditing access all sound like "make sure
| the results won't be contentious".
|
| It's totally in Amazon's interest (but also in the interest of
| anyone who wants a fair vote) to avoid any doubt/claims about
| tampering.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Well, from a strategic point of view, if you think you're on
| the losing side, wouldn't it make more sense to create doubts
| about the procedure? Then you can scream "Rigged election!"...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if you think you 're on the losing side, wouldn't it make
| more sense to create doubts about the procedure?_
|
| If you think you're on the winning side, you'd also want the
| results to be unimpeachable.
| dmwallin wrote:
| There's no such thing as perfect and unimpeachable and
| attempts to move the needle eventually have diminishing
| results and steadily increasing costs on the system. If you
| let a side push the definition of whats acceptable beyond
| what is a reasonable standard you make it increasingly
| likely the procedure will fail in some inconsequential way
| and give bad faith actors more ammunition to make
| unreasonable claims about the validity of the results.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If you think you're on the losing side, and have access to
| the room where the ballots are stored, you would definitely
| want cameras banned there.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| On the company side? Not necessarily. Having a union
| "peacefully" is probably better than having a union while
| screaming about rigged elections, creating strife and chaos
| within your own company.
|
| Companies' union-busting attempts are often the best
| advertising a union can wish for.
| tyingq wrote:
| I do enjoy the irony of Amazon being paranoid about a little box
| and what might be happening inside it.
| vmception wrote:
| remember that for your stand up session, tech world could use
| some light humor at the conferences this year
| mariodiana wrote:
| Voter fraud is rare. I think I read that in the Washington Post.
| mullingitover wrote:
| The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation actually has an
| extensive database of voter fraud, and while they try to make a
| big deal about the _number_ of cases that have been found, the
| unwritten fact is that the _rate_ is infinitesimally low.
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