[HN Gopher] Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds
Author : pseudolus
Score : 579 points
Date : 2021-04-05 10:40 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| quintdamage wrote:
| If I'm to be honest, I'm a little surprised at the responses I'm
| seeing posted. This site is probably >80% men, many of whom are
| college educated and far more wealthy than most Americans, but
| are still somewhat anti-Amazon?
| skj wrote:
| Not clear what stereotype you're invoking here.
| f6v wrote:
| > This site is probably >80% men, many of whom are college
| educated
|
| You forgot to bring up the race.
| htnsao wrote:
| >80% "men".
|
| Whiners gotta whine.
| uoaei wrote:
| Right, forgot -- men eat shit whenever they're asked and
| never fight for their or others' rights.
| htnsao wrote:
| No, more like, instead of whining, men just quit jobs that
| suck aka "take this job and shove it".
|
| And/or fire problem workers..
| uoaei wrote:
| You have a warped view of masculinity. Some may call it
| toxic, even.
| htnsao wrote:
| <"some may call it toxic, even".
|
| Whiners gotta whine. Toxic 'cancel culture' more like.
|
| Quiting a shitty job is pretty satisfying, all the
| whiners at Amazon should try it as this provides direct
| feedback that things need to be improved in order to
| retain talent. Or not, as it's probably just good
| riddance.
| tombert wrote:
| I feel like this is a weird statement. Unless I'm personally
| involved in the abuses of Amazon, I can't feel bad for the
| victims?
|
| I've never been murdered but I feel bad for murder victims as
| well.
| schnevets wrote:
| Even from a perspective where morality and empathy don't
| apply, why side with a monopoly whose quality has hit a
| noticeable ceiling?
|
| The unionization efforts seem like events that could disrupt
| Amazon outside of anti-monopoly legislation. To me, that
| seems like a good thing for most tech workers working outside
| of FAANG (as long as they don't hold Amazon stock).
| twoquestions wrote:
| What Amazon (among other corporate titans) can do to others,
| they can do to us eventually, and it won't be the first time
| even well-off white working men have been screwed over by those
| who own for a living rather than work for a living.
|
| This shit won't stop until we stand up to them.
| circumvent123 wrote:
| It's possible and healthy to empathize with people not in your
| own demographic.
|
| Some people also have principles that are not based purely in
| self-interest.
| troebr wrote:
| "But I don't want to pay taxes because they don't benefit me
| directly. And why would I pay for schools with my property
| taxes, I don't have kids". I've been surprised at how much
| prevalent this line of thinking is in the US as opposed to my
| home country.
| blinding-streak wrote:
| The original site seems to be offline now, but for reference,
| Amazon's anti-union propaganda website:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210301090641/https://www.doitw...
| krsdcbl wrote:
| > So be a DOER, stay friendly and get things done [...]
|
| I'm getting heavy 1984 vibes from this campaign.
| vsareto wrote:
| >We've got you covered*
|
| >*Applies to regular full-time employees.
|
| >Don't buy that dinner, don't buy those school supplies, don't
| buy those gifts because you won't have that almost $500 you
| paid in dues. WHY NOT save the money and get the books, gifts &
| things you want?
|
| I've seen better propaganda for EVE Online and most people are
| doing that as a joke
| marcod wrote:
| Also, in "right-to-work" states, you do not HAVE to pay union
| dues, i.e. Alabama.
| kop316 wrote:
| I am actually curious to see the EVE Online propaganda. Do
| you have any links?
| vsareto wrote:
| I don't have a stash or anything, so I mean this only
| helpfully, but
| https://www.google.com/search?q=eve+online+propaganda looks
| to have some interesting stuff
| kop316 wrote:
| Fair! EVE Online has always fascinated me with how much
| of a world it is. I tried getting into it a couple of
| times, but I just don't have time for it.
| atat7024 wrote:
| I've come across this problem. Have you considered
| becoming permanently disabled, or otherwise homebound?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| "Little Bees (X for POS Destruction)"
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p-m-0RlqMHM
|
| Most stuff doesn't spill over onto the wider internet from
| forums, but this looks like a selection:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tgLJi7F4ozM
|
| And a talk about it:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=irjx80_jnyM
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Nobody ever accused HR of being overburdened with creativity.
| capableweb wrote:
| This is worst than what people from HR could come up with.
| At least HR at companies sometimes interact with normal
| workers as they are at the intersection between the company
| and its workers.
|
| This website seems to be done by some corporate team that
| has never actually interacted with a blue collar worker.
| Hardly surprising coming from Amazon but considering the
| amount of money they earn, I would have thought they would
| have given it a better try than that.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's likely done by one of the handful of large lawfirms
| that specialize in killing unionization efforts.
| https://theconversation.com/the-labor-busting-law-firms-
| and-...
| nerdponx wrote:
| For context (and for anyone who might read this and think
| "hey that's a lot of money!"), $500 amounts to less than a
| $10/week raise over 52 weeks, or $0.25/hour over 52 40-hour
| work weeks.
|
| Yes, a healthy union can and will get you a lot more than
| $0.25/hour worth in value.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| This must be somewhat validating for Tim Bray, the VP/xml guy who
| quit over their firing
|
| https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/04/29/Leaving-A...
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| The labor laws in place violate the freedom of association and
| are terrible for social welfare. There is a reason why
| unionization is associated with enterprise decline, and why
| shareholders oppose it.
|
| Amazon is doing immense good for US quality of life and raising
| US export revenue, and there is no benefit in jeopardizing that
| to give a select group of workers a monopoly over the jobs it
| offers.
| lkrubner wrote:
| Germany has much stronger labor unions than the USA, a legal
| requirement we forced on them when they finalized the
| constitution (Basic Law) of 1949. Since that time, compare the
| fate of the American auto companies (GM, Ford, Chrysler and
| American Motors) to German auto companies (Mercedes Benz,
| Volkswagen, BMW). The American companies ruled the world, and
| then lost market ground, one went bankrupt, another was bought.
| The German companies pulled themselves out of the ruins of WW
| II and became international powerhouses.
| nerdponx wrote:
| In my understanding, the United Auto Workers union were one
| big reason why the US automakers were bailed out in 2008.
|
| So if anything, they're (partly) responsible for keeping a
| dead/dying industry on life support. Can't blame them for not
| wanting thousands of people to lose their jobs, but market
| forces were definitely not favorable to American automakers
| at the time.
|
| Then again, American automakers seem to be figuring things
| out. The problem with counterfactuals is that you can never
| actually observe them...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Ah yes, the companies failing were because of overpaid
| employees, and not because of incompetent management and an
| unwillingness to produce competitive products.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I never said anything about why the companies were
| failing.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| It should be noted that Germany's wage/GDP growth has been
| quite stagnant since the 1970s as well. Its auto industry has
| been successful, but that can be attributed to numerous other
| factors, like its effective education system, which puts a
| much heavier emphasis on vocational training, its engineering
| culture, and government policy focused on promoting auto
| manufacturing, all of which can counter-act the negative
| effects of its unions.
|
| Also, German unions are less antagonistic to management than
| American unions. The UAW took over the Big Three in the 50s
| and 60s, and they immediately went from extremely successful,
| to getting to the brink of bankruptcy.
| ska wrote:
| > Also, German unions are less antagonistic to management
| than American unions.
|
| The same could be said in the other direction.
| Fundamentally they are set up differently, and one of the
| results is that corporate-union relationships are more
| collaborative in Germany, more combative in USA.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Another point to consider is that Germany also has/had
| access to cheaper labor through people moving there from
| the east. And later the euro allows them to export heavily
| while not skyrocketing the price of their currency, because
| other euro countries somewhat balance it out.
|
| It might be that unions are the reason why German car
| companies are doing well, but there are definitely other
| factors at play too.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I'm hard-pressed to think of _any_ example where a unionized
| labor force killed a viable industry (or even a single
| company). Even when I think of the cases where unions hurt the
| viability of the company, the primary cause of decline was poor
| strategy and decision-making on the part of the owners. Blaming
| unions for those cases seems to be a rather sleazy way for the
| owners to avoid any liability for their faults.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _I 'm hard-pressed to think of any example where a unionized
| labor force killed a viable industry (or even a single
| company)._
|
| Look up the British car industry, specifically the antics of
| "Red Robbo" at British Leyland. Carmaking is a viable
| industry in the UK and is doing well now that it is all
| foreign-owned with minimal union interference. There would
| probably still be coal mining in the UK if it were not for
| the NUM, we import coal now.
|
| Then again this is specific to Britain, German unions are
| completely different, and I would be pro-union if ours were
| like the Germans.
| corin_ wrote:
| You're buying into propaganda about British unions, blaming
| them for the car industry is ridiculous, and when it comes
| to mining you seem to think that the mines would have
| lasted longer had unions not been against shutting mines?
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _you seem to think that the mines would have lasted
| longer had unions not been against shutting mines?_
|
| At the time, the average ton of coal was costing double
| to extract than it was worth. Closing the loss making
| mines was inevitable but the viable mines could have
| remained open, and would have as there was still the
| demand for coal.
|
| The Germans do this right, their unions want their
| workers to have fair share of the rewards and understand
| that the company must be profitable in the first place
| for that to happen. British union leaders simply play
| workers against management for their own gain, then leave
| both workers and management worse off, but workers get
| the worst of it.
| corin_ wrote:
| > _" British union leaders simply play workers against
| management for their own gain, then leave both workers
| and management worse off, but workers get the worst of
| it."_
|
| Again, you're buying into nonsense anti-union propaganda.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Again, you 're buying into nonsense anti-union
| propaganda._
|
| I'm not buying into anything. I see Germany with strong
| unions and a strong industrial sector and I want that
| here. Just there is something in the British union
| movement that makes it destructive instead.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > There would probably still be coal mining in the UK if it
| were not for the NUM, we import coal now.
|
| While they certainly didn't play an innocent role in the
| demise (planned, expected or otherwise) of the coal mining
| industry, to lay blame squarely at the union's feet ignores
| the _other_ 800lb gorilla in the room. The mines would have
| and were becoming less economically viable.
|
| But the Thatcher government made a point of starting the
| closures at the worst possible time, "effective
| immediately", and then made a point of pointedly ignoring
| the economic collapse of entire towns and districts whose
| lifeblood had been the coal mines. There were multiple
| towns of 20,000 working age people, 15,000+ of whom worked
| in the coal industry. And there was precisely nothing done
| to handle that collapse, and just as importantly to the
| union's handling - there was not even the hint of sympathy
| or compassion from the Thatcher government - everything was
| all about the "wicked" union "stealing" from the British
| people, and an infamous quote that "if miners don't like
| being out of work, they need to get on their bike and find
| more [work]". The problem with this is, even if the union
| had been stubborn, before, this attitude steeled their
| resolve to be just as hard-headed as Thatcher.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _But the Thatcher government made a point of starting the
| closures at the worst possible time, "effective
| immediately", and then made a point of pointedly ignoring
| the economic collapse of entire towns and districts whose
| lifeblood had been the coal mines._
|
| That is true, but the context at the time was the Winter
| Of Discontent. The unions had squandered all the goodwill
| the voters might otherwise have had.
| p_j_w wrote:
| Unions not having an abundance of good will is a pretty
| sad excuse for bad policy.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Unions not having an abundance of good will is a pretty
| sad excuse for bad policy_
|
| Thatcher was voted in for one reason: that taxpaying
| voters had just experienced the Winter Of Discontent and
| wanted something doing about it once and for all. Whether
| that's good or bad is a matter of perspective but that's
| the context in which it happened.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Nah, bentley, aston martin, and the other british car
| companies simply make bad cars in comparison to
| competitors.
|
| It wasn't unions that killed them
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| its especially ridiculous when they got out competed by
| even more heavily unionized German auto firms.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| The US auto industry was extremely successful before the UAW
| took over. It's not a coincidence that all three of the Big
| Three auto makers got taken over by the UAW in the 1950s and
| 60s, and saw decline in the 70s.
|
| For another example, Bombardier in Canada was a successful
| airplane manufacturer, and the demands of its unions
| gradually sapped its international competitiveness.
|
| For yet another example, all the passenger rail services in
| the US went bankrupt after they were forced into collective
| bargaining with unions.
|
| It's common sense that unions, backed by laws that give them
| an extra-contractual monopoly over who a company can
| negotiate with, are not good for industry.
|
| If they were, shareholders would push for their companies to
| have their workforces unionized. The only reason the notion
| that unions are good for the economy has any traction is that
| there are millions of parties with a conflict of interest in
| this debate, who use their time to push these pro-union-
| monopoly talking points.
| ic0n0cl4st wrote:
| It seems to quire naive to give unions all the credit while
| failing to America's declining quality compared to Japan
| and failure to listen to loud market trends.
|
| GM ignoring Deming's TQM while Japan wholeheartedly
| embraced this philosophy should be mentioned.
|
| The rapid increase in oil prices and the big 3 ignoring the
| data and sticking with the "Americans want big gas guzzling
| cars" philosophy would also be mentioned.
|
| This last one combined with the oil crisis is how Honda
| killed Harley Davidson, as well as how Toyota and VW killed
| the big 3. When the oil crisis hit the 15-mile per gallon
| american behemoths just became irrelevant.
|
| Containerized shipping and a lack of import taxes also had
| far more to do with the USA losing its doninance.
|
| We wanted cheaper, smaller, more reliable cars. The big 3
| wanted to pretend like it was still 1955.
| ska wrote:
| > The US auto industry was extremely successful before the
| UAW took over
|
| There is a real risk of correlation being confounded with
| causation here, but analysis in the area is tricky at best.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Ooh boy, those are some great examples of what I mean by
| people blaming unions for corporate (or government)
| failure.
|
| > For yet another example, all the passenger rail services
| in the US went bankrupt after they were forced into
| collective bargaining with unions.
|
| Yeah, no. The railroad industry is famously boom-and-bust
| cycle, with virtually every major railroad overexpanding
| during boom years and going bankrupt in any economic
| downturn, this happening both before and after
| unionization. Passenger rail itself was killed not by union
| featherbedding but by competition with the automobile and
| airplane--and government regulation that prohibited
| railroads from being able to cull unprofitable routes (as
| you needed government permission to cut a route, which it
| was disinclined to give even after the railroads were in
| poor health.)
|
| > For another example, Bombardier in Canada was a
| successful airplane manufacturer, and the demands of its
| unions gradually sapped its international competitiveness.
|
| Bombardier's troubles (to my understanding) largely
| originated from its attempts to push up into larger
| aircraft, bringing it competition against the Boeing/Airbus
| duopoly, who did not look kindly to a new entrant and
| brought expensive cases against Bombardier, which forced
| Bombardier into a partnership to survive.
|
| My sibling comment already tackles the US auto industry
| one, so I won't cover that.
| [deleted]
| mycall wrote:
| Are there any apps to streamline the unionization of businesses?
| It would seem quorum discovery is the hardest part of creating a
| union -- who is ready to join. Being in a union myself, even with
| some of the political issues that come with it, I very much
| appreciate what they do for me.
| curryst wrote:
| The incentive structure is bad. However much money you make for
| organizing unions, I'm positive the company they're attempting
| to unionize will pay you several times that to give them the
| list of workers who want to unionize. It's the same problem
| review sites have; companies that want to game the reviews will
| pay more than users who want honest reviews.
|
| You'll also have issues with companies paying someone to join
| the unionization effort to spy on it. That's not insurmountable
| with proper designs, but it makes it a lot harder to assist
| with organizing when you have to silo users from one another to
| prevent espionage.
| brundolf wrote:
| Could the first problem be prevented at a legal level? The
| app company itself files some sort of legal document
| preventing itself from falling prey to that sort of
| corruption (although, really, the first time they did that
| the company would go under because nobody would use it ever
| again)
|
| The second problem is harder... maybe the tech could be
| designed such that nobody, including the makers of the app,
| could see the list until/unless a quorum is reached? I can't
| believe I'm saying this, but could the blockchain be useful
| here?
| brundolf wrote:
| Edit: a simpler solution would be to give each person
| voting a unique, nonpersonal identifier, and then end-to-
| end encrypt their attached personal details, so after the
| voting period is done they would have exclusive authority
| to de-anonymize their information (so it can be verified as
| part of the final vote tally)
| rtkwe wrote:
| That solves the actual vote but that's not the big issue.
| At the start you have to get enough people interested and
| talk to other people to get them interested and the
| company can use that to do some 'totally not retaliatory
| firings/performance reviews of key organizers.' If it
| were as simple as just needing to make an up or down vote
| there wouldn't be so many issues but there's a lot of
| anti-union propaganda out there you might need to
| convince people out of before trying to vote.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The incentive structure is bad. However much money you make
| for organizing unions, I'm positive the company they're
| attempting to unionize will pay you several times that to
| give them the list of workers who want to unionize. It's the
| same problem review sites have; companies that want to game
| the reviews will pay more than users who want honest reviews.
|
| That's probably solved by having a union or a nonprofit
| develop and run the app, instead of a for-profit company.
|
| Is seems like the default assumption is for-profit companies
| are the best vehicle to accomplish any task, but there's a
| lot they just can't do or can't do well.
|
| > You'll also have issues with companies paying someone to
| join the unionization effort to spy on it. That's not
| insurmountable with proper designs, but it makes it a lot
| harder to assist with organizing when you have to silo users
| from one another to prevent espionage.
|
| Yeah, that's harder problem, but it's an issue that needs to
| be solved for any such effort. Maybe you could have some kind
| of validation/referral type feature, e.g. refer your
| coworkers anonymously, and part of on-boarding they verify a
| list of people and their roles, including the initiator. You
| could probably structure it so every person gets vetted, but
| it's unclear who started the process [1].
|
| [1] e.g. initiator refers the effort to 10 coworkers. You
| have a list of 11 potential employees. Send random 3-worker
| subsets that together cover all 11 to each referral for
| vetting of employment location and title. At the end of it,
| you should have some confidence that you can filter out bogus
| people and management. Though you still have the problem of
| snitches and spies who actually work the job.
| pje wrote:
| Literally _none_ of the hard problems in forming a union are
| technical. I can 't stress this enough--the hard problems in
| organizing are much squishier and amorphous.
|
| You're trying to get a majority of people to _feel_ like they
| have a personal stake in improving the material conditions of
| others. It 's not quorum algorithms, it's not apps, it's not
| encrypted communication platforms. The hard part is _organizing
| people_.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Are you saying that technology can't be used to more
| effectively organize and influence people?
| erwald wrote:
| No, I think pje is saying that existing tools are just fine
| & new tools are unlikely to improve things on the margin.
| ska wrote:
| > The hard part is organizing people.
|
| That's the hard part of most things, to be fair.
| dontreact wrote:
| Yes, my friend is working on this
|
| https://unitworkers.com/
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| Is this tech really needed for union organization though? It
| seems much better to be using conventional chatrooms like
| Telegram/Signal for the best outreach among workers. And
| Telegram/Signal seems to be far more trustworthy of not
| leaking your stuff to the companies than some random startup,
| as a lot of people are already using it...
| guerrilla wrote:
| coworker.org and another that has been posted on HN that I
| can't recall the name of.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| If you want to technologically verify desire for union
| membership in a given workforce, you need to credibly
| authenticate employment, and there's no way for the person on
| the other end of that transaction to be totally sure you're not
| doing so on behalf of an anti-union employer.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| This case is something to keep in mind anytime Amazon comments on
| any labor matter, be it minimum wage, visas, diversity, work
| conditions, contractors, anything at all. Amazon is not
| commenting on those issues with anything in mind other than its
| own interests.
| eplanit wrote:
| "Amazon is not commenting on those issues with anything in mind
| other than its own interests."
|
| Isn't that what the company should do?
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21228324/amazon-whole-foo...
|
| "Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon, is using a heat map to
| track stores that may be at risk of unionization"
|
| "a "diversity index" represents the racial and ethnic diversity
| of every store. Stores at higher risk of unionizing have lower
| diversity"
|
| https://trak.in/tags/business/2020/10/31/h1b-visa-ban-google...
|
| In October 2020 Google, Amazon & 44 Tech Companies Sued the US
| Govt Over the H1B Visa Ban
|
| https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/h-1b...
|
| European countries make up only 2.8% of the H1B intake.
| yhoneycomb wrote:
| Makes you wonder if THIS is what's behind all the pushes for
| diversity
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Well no, it's not. More diverse stores may have tensions
| that lower the cohesiveness of the group, and some of their
| members may be economically more vulnerable and thus more
| weary of the risk of retaliation, but once (if) diversity
| is normalized and racial inequality subsides, then this
| disparity will almost certainly disappear.
|
| And once it does, one of the most major lines exploited
| against economic and social progress becomes much more
| difficult to exploit.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| Why do people think the promotion of diversity is part of
| some nefarious global plot?
| paxys wrote:
| It's bizarre that this even needs to be said IMO.
| ajxs wrote:
| Unfortunately, it really does. There's so many people who are
| unable or unwilling to turn a critical eye to the actions of
| these companies. This applies doubly to social and political
| issues. Amazon and ilk carefully weigh the options and make
| decisions according to their own interests.
| oort-cloud9 wrote:
| Why would it be any other interests. Amazon provides us with
| goods and services. And that's our only interests. Those
| useless crybaby activists could find another job if they don't
| like it.
| tracer4201 wrote:
| > After Amazon told them that they had violated its external
| communications policy by speaking publicly about the business,
| their group organized 400 employees to also speak out, purposely
| violating the policy to make a point.
|
| I get that Amazon and big tech hate posts are a daily thing on HN
| these days, but this seems simple enough to me.
|
| They broke Amazons policies and organized other employees to also
| break policy. If I was a business owner, I would have done the
| same thing.
|
| The most vocal crowd on the Amazon topic here on HN despise the
| company outright. I'm onboard with taxing big companies, etc, but
| it's sad this stuff takes up the front page. The quality of
| discussion is the same as /r/politics or /r/worldnews.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > They broke Amazons policies and organized other employees to
| also break policy.
|
| How's Kohlberg Stage 4 working out for you?
| uoaei wrote:
| Maybe a little trite, but this is the correct framing IMO.
|
| Blindly accepting rules, just because they're noted down in
| some policy by a perceived authority, is _the very definition
| of bootlicking_.
| [deleted]
| wting wrote:
| Company policy cannot overrule laws, but it is not illegal to
| put it in a contract. Companies put in things they can't
| enforce because it has the same effect of discouraging certain
| behaviors.
|
| A company's policy cannot prohibit employees from talking about
| the company. Obviously there is more nuance (e.g. leaking
| internal info) but in this case we're discussing public events.
| door101 wrote:
| > If I was a business owner, I would have done the same thing.
|
| But you're not. Why take the side of a class of people that you
| don't belong to that don't share your interests (owners)
| instead of the class you do belong to and do share your
| interests (workers)?
| tracer4201 wrote:
| I don't think this is black and white between owners and
| workers. Corporate America is much more complicated.
|
| The owner and worker narrative sounds like communist take.
| I'm an American who values individualism and hard work. I
| fundamentally don't believe in what you're trying to say
| here.
|
| You don't have to "own" a business to understand how to
| manage people. If someone had issues and they take those
| issues on to stop your entire business and halt productivity,
| you remove that person. It's really that simple.
| ihumanable wrote:
| It's amazing all the free market zealots here are totally fine
| with companies completely messing with the fundamentals that
| make markets work.
|
| Companies tell employees not to discuss their salaries, this
| causes an information asymmetry where employees can't
| accurately ascertain the free market value of their labor.
|
| Workers try to pool their power together to get more of the
| value that they produce, they are evil. Corporate mergers and
| acquisitions that pool the corporations power so they can
| maximize profits, just the market at work.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| "The poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but
| as temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The big one to me is that the "free speech absolutists" are
| consistently nowhere to be found when labor organizing speech
| is silenced.
| seany wrote:
| Why is this even illegal?
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Tomorrow in the UK starts employment without rights - that is
| companies will be legally able to hire de facto employees and
| those people will not have any employment rights - so no unions,
| will be able to fire pregnant women or don't observe equal pay.
| It's a bit more complex paperwork, but once companies get a taste
| it can be streamlined. All this without Labour party nor unions
| saying a word... https://norightsemployee.uk/
| ihumanable wrote:
| The most surprising thing about this is that they chose the
| name "No Rights Employee"
|
| In America a similar concept is called "Right to Work"
|
| Where are your corporate PR people?
| merpnderp wrote:
| I'm clicking through all the links in this article and can't find
| a single bit from Amazon's point of view. But my hazy memory says
| Amazon's story is they were fired because they were sending mass
| emails through the internal Amazon email system trying to
| unionize and wouldn't quit and use some other means of
| communication even after being counseled.
|
| You'd expect the NYT's to give both side's at a minimum, or is
| Amazon a cartoon villain ran by a duck who swims in a silo of
| gold coins?
| confusion123 wrote:
| I remember their advocacy from internal mailing lists. They
| were staunch critics of Amazon's effect on the climate and
| environment. I don't recall either of them calling for a union,
| but I do remember them as passionate, eloquent, and consistent
| advocates of the environment, and I was very sad to see them be
| fired.
| baloney1 wrote:
| NYT is clearly left leaning and usually does not provide both
| sides.
| brightstep wrote:
| Maybe socially, but NYT leans right economically.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > You'd expect the NYT's to give both side's at a minimum
|
| 30 years ago, I would have had that expectation from NYT and
| other trustworthy media sources. I haven't had that expectation
| for at least a decade now.
| 8note wrote:
| Yeah, where's the side that's for dissolving amazon?
|
| And the side that wants to get rid of all labour standards?
|
| Where's the Islamic fundamentalist view that they shouldn't be
| outside without something covering their hair in that picture?
|
| The NYT is doing a horrible job portaying the relevant sides in
| this event
| anotherman554 wrote:
| Since corporations aren't alive how can they have a "point of
| view???
|
| That's a funny euphemism for "statement written by a corporate
| PR person who may not have any clue about what they are talking
| about, and may be repeating someone's lies."
| tyingq wrote:
| There's 2 quotes from an Amazon spokesperson there:
|
| _"We support every employee's right to criticize their
| employer's working conditions, but that does not come with
| blanket immunity against our internal policies, all of which
| are lawful," said Jaci Anderson, an Amazon spokeswoman. "We
| terminated these employees not for talking publicly about
| working conditions, safety or sustainability but, rather, for
| repeatedly violating internal policies."_
|
| _Ms. Anderson, the Amazon spokeswoman, said the company
| disagreed with allegations made in Mr. Bailey's case. "We are
| proud to provide inclusive environments, where employees can
| excel without fear of retaliation, intimidation or harassment,"
| she said._
| MereInterest wrote:
| There's also a response to one of those reasons.
|
| > After Amazon told them that they had violated its external
| communications policy by speaking publicly about the
| business, their group organized 400 employees to also speak
| out, purposely violating the policy to make a point.
|
| So, Amazon fired then for publicly speaking about the
| business. Their statement saying that it was for violating
| internal policy seems deliberately misleading, because the
| internal policy that was broken was to not speak publicly.
| That Amazon had a policy against speaking publicly is not a
| point in Amazon's favor.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > That Amazon had a policy against speaking publicly is not
| a point in Amazon's favor.
|
| Not to defend Amazon, but on this point, every job I've
| ever had included a policy that amounted to "do not speak
| publicly about the business."
|
| Do others think this is unusual?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are specific rights in this regard.
|
| https://www.natlawreview.com/article/can-you-terminate-
| emplo...
|
| > In a memo released on April 15, the agency evaluated a
| case where a company maintained a policy that prohibited
| employees from speaking to the media at any time. The
| NLRB found this rule to be unlawful and explained:
| "Employees have a statutory right to speak publically
| about their complaints or concerns with their terms and
| conditions of employment, including to the press, without
| employer authorization."
|
| > In other words, employees have a right under the
| National Labor Relations Act generally to discuss their
| employment - including with the press. Based on the
| finding that the policy was unlawful, the NLRB also found
| that the company violated labor law when it terminated
| two employees pursuant to the policy for speaking to the
| media about a workplace issue. A more narrowly tailored
| policy may have passed muster, but the broad media
| prohibition, in this case, crossed the line.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| But these two were not speaking about the "terms and
| conditions" of their employment. They were broadly
| criticizing the company on other matters ranging from
| climate change to more directly political issues. I feel
| like the scope of the NLRA is extending to include just
| about everything.
| rideontime wrote:
| > I feel like the scope of the NLRA is extending to
| include just about everything.
|
| You say this like it's a bad thing.
| rtkwe wrote:
| You've got it backwards the law allows companies certain
| things they can forbid people from doing not an explicit
| list of things employees are allowed to say [0].
| Companies can only prevent employees from speaking about
| specific things like trade secrets or other confidential
| things.
|
| [0] This would have some pretty obvious 1A implications.
| burnished wrote:
| What? It sounds like you are implying that you need your
| employers permission to speak your mind, broadly, on any
| topic?
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I'm not necessarily saying that's how it _should_ be, but
| I am observing that this is how it is in practice.
| Otherwise what do you make of companies regularly firing
| people for saying something on social media or on their
| own time? For example Disney+ fired Gina Carano for
| holding certain political positions and expressing them
| online. It seems like left-leaning activists want it both
| ways - protection for their own activities but not for
| the activities of moderates or conservatives.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| It is legal to prohibit employees saying or implying that
| they are speaking on behalf of the company or in any
| capacity, but it's actually forbidden by the National
| Labor Relations Board to tell employees they are
| forbidden from saying anything about their employer
| (notwithstanding sensitive, confidential or classified
| topics).
| themaninthedark wrote:
| That depends, is the policy:
|
| a) As an employee, you are not allowed to make statements
| about internal matters on behalf of the company.
|
| b) As an employee, you are not allowed to talk about
| internal matters outside the company.
|
| If A, then I have no problem. Companies have PR teams and
| random employee #13554 might not have all the information
| about an issue.
|
| If B, I have a huge problem as the first amendment is a
| thing that exists.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Companies regularly fire people for expressing political
| opinions they don't agree with. I feel that speech should
| be protected, but if so, it should be protected across
| the board for all points of views, all ideologies, and
| all political positions. For instance, an employee who
| publicly criticizes Black Lives Matter should be able to
| do so without risking their job. Would you be OK with
| that?
| aksss wrote:
| You limited B to internal matters, which generally means
| company confidential. Unless the matters concern legal
| violations (a different conversation about whistleblower
| regulation and protection), why on earth would you have
| "a huge problem" with confidentiality agreements and
| NDAs? Especially when you sign those agreements as a
| condition of employment?
| themaninthedark wrote:
| When I said internal matters, I did not have any specific
| information in mind, just internal company matters.
|
| If engineer #34529, profiled liked to SpaceY says on
| Twitter that his group has lots of overtime. He could be
| fired in a case B situation. And yes, information like
| that could be coupled with other information to figure
| out what projects the company is working on.
|
| It is my belief that confidentiality agreements and NDAs,
| along with non-compete clauses are overbroad and expand
| beyond what companies are allowed to ask of their
| employees.
| slibhb wrote:
| Right. But it would interesting to hear _how_ Amazon claims
| these employees violated internal policies. That seems
| newsworthy.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Their spokesperson did not wish to say what policies they
| claim were violated. They were presented an opportunity to
| state their side, and chose not to.
| slibhb wrote:
| Maybe an intrepid journalist could find out...
|
| Perhaps, in doing so, that journalist would discover that
| Amazon had no real argument for any internal policy being
| violated at all. Or perhaps they would discover that
| these employees did, in fact, violate some internal
| policy, whether or not their firing violated their
| rights.
| danaliv wrote:
| I generally don't like the New York Times either, but
| you're grasping at straws here.
| [deleted]
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The intrepid journalist linked to it, why is reprinting
| it necessary?
| aksss wrote:
| Which is why these things shouldn't be decided in a court
| of public opinion. If you've ever been involved in the
| employment dispute world, you know there is a lot of
| liability for employers talking about internal
| investigation matters publicly. It's not realistic to
| expect Amazon or any employer to talk openly with the
| press about an ongoing dispute with an employee in
| detail. Meanwhile, an individual fighting the company has
| every incentive to air everything (as they understand it)
| and little liability for doing so. Consequently, news
| stories are seldom going to give you a full accounting of
| facts.
| lupire wrote:
| The spokesperson had no choice. Speaking publicly in ways
| that harm the company's brand is against policy, a
| fireable offense.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| > You'd expect the NYT's to give both side's at a minimum, or
| is Amazon a cartoon villain ran by a duck who swims in a silo
| of gold coins?
|
| This kind of "both sides" journalism has been weaponized by bad
| actors to the point it does a disservice to readers. They use
| it as a way to inject talking points into the public discourse.
| I think the last 10 years have showed us that there are
| definitely some points of view that are more valuable than
| others, and that treating all points of view as carrying equal
| weight is a false equivalency that simply creates openings for
| bad-faith actors (and Amazon is hardly the first company /
| politician to act in bad faith).
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _You 'd expect the NYT's to give both side's at a minimum, or
| is Amazon a cartoon villain ran by a duck who swims in a silo
| of gold coins?_
|
| News doesn't do that anymore, but more importantly, Scrooge
| McDuck is not a villain.
| jessaustin wrote:
| We wouldn't want children to get the wrong idea about rich
| people!
| monocasa wrote:
| Apparently the NLRB didn't think the specifics of Amazon's
| explanation for why they were fired was compelling. Why should
| the NYT then?
| bhupy wrote:
| Because the NLRB isn't some opaque body; it's a public body
| accountable to voters, and as a voter it's impossible to know
| if their explanation is valid if the press doesn't accurately
| and _fully_ report on why a particular decision was made.
|
| Maybe after presenting all sides of the decision, an NYT
| reader might agree that the NLRB's decision was
| correct/valid; but with the way the article is written, it's
| impossible for that to happen.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > Because the NLRB isn't some opaque body; it's a public
| body accountable to voters, and as a voter it's impossible
| to know if their explanation is valid if the press doesn't
| accurately and fully report on why a particular decision
| was made.
|
| Since they're a public institution their decisions are
| published for anyone to look up, read, and understand the
| rationale behind their decision.
|
| It seems NYT got the scoop on this particular case but you
| can expect the decision to be posted on the NLRB site when
| it's finalized. I suspect the NYT (and the person who
| tipped them off) does not yet know the reason for the
| Board's decision. It's very likely no one involved in this
| article has read the document yet and, for now, they've
| only been informed as to the outcome. NYT, Amazon, and the
| aggrieved parties will probably have to wait to read the
| Board's written decision along with the rest of us.
| monocasa wrote:
| They printed Amazon's statement on the matter. I'm not sure
| why they have to go farther and print Amazon's now
| disproven legal theories too.
| bhupy wrote:
| In general, it's more or less impossible to litigate a
| legal decision based off of 2 quotes in a public
| statement. It's why we have courts of law, it's why the
| legal system is predicated on deliberation.
|
| > now disproven legal theories
|
| Disproven? According to whom? The whole point of the
| press is to show its work to the public. Maybe you're
| correct that it's disproven! But I would have no way to
| know how/why it's disproven as a NYT reader. Anyone that
| wants to demonstrate to voters that Amazon's legal
| theories are disproven needs to show their work.
| monocasa wrote:
| The NLRB is the legal system for deciding such matters.
| bhupy wrote:
| Correct, and it's accountable to voters, it isn't some
| opaque black box (or rather, it shouldn't be). The whole
| point is that, in a democracy, the press (NYT et al) is
| responsible for fully reporting on the workings of the
| government (NLRB). The GP commenter is pointing out that
| the NYT hasn't adequately done that, and I tend to agree.
| merpnderp wrote:
| So it's your point of view that the NYT's shouldn't be doing
| journalism, but advocacy? Readers don't get to make up their
| minds, but get spoon fed just what they need to know as
| determined by their betters? It's a brave new world you're
| creating.
| monocasa wrote:
| The NLRB is the legal system for deciding such matters.
| Amazon's legal theories no longer hold weight.
|
| Do you expect the NYT to publish every failed, specious
| motion filed in standard court cases in the name of "both
| sides" after the case has been decided? No, you take
| statements from both sides, and report what the legal
| system has decided.
| slibhb wrote:
| I have a feeling that you wouldn't be making this
| argument if the decision was reversed. The law is
| important, it's how we resolve disputes like this. But
| rulings can be disputed and one is not obligated to
| dismiss "Amazon's legal theories" from one's mind just
| because some legal body ruled one way or another.
|
| As a reader, I am interested to hear exactly how Amazon
| claims these former employees violated its internal
| policies. The article's lack of curiosity is interesting.
| MereInterest wrote:
| While I agree with you in this instance, I think there
| are cases where the different opinions in a case are
| relevant, such as the majority and dissenting opinions in
| SCOTUS cases.
| elefanten wrote:
| To do it's job as journalist institution.
|
| Though, in the NYT's case, they've been predictably going
| straight downhill since they adopted Fox News' high level
| strategy of chasing, fanning and profiting from political and
| social polarization.
|
| So, nobody's holding their breath that NYT would rise to that
| challenge.
| monocasa wrote:
| Why does a journalist institution have to go above printing
| Amazon's statements on the matter, and print their now
| disproven legal theories as well?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's not an endorsement, it's information. As a reader, I
| want to know which legal theories specifically were
| disproven. For example, would my own employer's "no
| public statements" policy be invalid based on this
| ruling, or was the problem something specific to Amazon?
| dahfizz wrote:
| I thought the press was supposed to hold the powers that be
| to account? Surely you don't want the press to parrot
| everything the government says with no context or additional
| information?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| They link to their original article about the firing, which
| says
|
| >Amazon told the employees that they had violated its policy
| against solicitation, which forbids Amazon workers from asking
| their co-workers to donate to causes or sign petitions.
|
| The article is part of a briefing with a headline about the
| airline industry, somewhat understanding how you would miss it.
| throwawayfire wrote:
| It would be unsurprising to me if Amazon had buried this claim
| and didn't want it to be repeated, because in my opinion that
| would be clear evidence that they were breaking labor laws.
| tpush wrote:
| ???
|
| Amazon's POV is explained directly in the article. There's also
| this link [0] from the article elaborating on the firing.
|
| [0]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/02/amazon-...
| jessaustin wrote:
| I hope they have better luck with WaPo!
| tyingq wrote:
| _" The agency told Ms. Cunningham and Ms. Costa that it would
| accuse Amazon of unfair labor practices if the company did not
| settle the case, according to correspondence that Ms. Cunningham
| shared with The New York Times."_
|
| That's a pretty nice piece of leverage to have in hand while
| negotiating a settlement.
|
| Edit: They were both UX/Design folks with Amazon, fired on April
| 10th, 2020. Costa was Amazon's first ever Principal User
| Experience Designer, and had 15 years with the company.
| Cunningham was a User Experience Designer and had 6 years in at
| Amazon. Guessing the settlement will be for a notable amount.
| seoaeu wrote:
| > That's a pretty nice piece of leverage to have in hand while
| negotiating a settlement.
|
| Isn't that how things usually work? If one party does something
| illegal, then the other can offer a settlement using the threat
| of other legal action as leverage?
| tyingq wrote:
| I think it's a pretty unusual situation in an unlawful
| termination negotiation, yes. That is: having a piece of
| paper in hand, from the Federal government, undeniably saying
| government intervention will happen if a settlement isn't
| reached.
|
| I believe this particular settlement, especially the one for
| Costa (based on Principal title and 15 years tenure), is
| going to be a very big number. It's also terrible timing for
| Amazon with all the anti-trust sentiment and gaffes in the
| warehouse union situation. I imagine they really want this to
| go away.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| When you file a lawsuit, you get a summons to serve on the
| other party. That is "a piece of paper, from the
| government, undeniably saying government intervention will
| happen if a settlement isn't reached." The government
| intervention is in the form of a legal proceeding. But the
| summons certainly doesn't mean the government/judicial
| system has made up its mind about the substance of the
| suit!
|
| Same here: the government intervention is in the form of a
| legal proceeding, it's just one that takes place within
| NLRB channels rather than in the judicial system. It
| doesn't mean the NLRB has made up its mind about whether a
| ULP was committed.
| tyingq wrote:
| It's a very specialized venue as opposed to a regular
| court, and the NLRB is able to take quite a lot of action
| without a trial or court proceeding, as well as to take a
| very specific position on the matter. They also very
| regularly reject claims. It's not the same thing, it
| isn't an impartial judicial process. It's more similar
| to, say, the FTC.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Is settlement actually a bad deal for Amazon or similar
| companies like Google? Sure they have to spend a bit of money
| on the settlement but they have still succeeded at their actual
| objective of getting rid of the activist employees. This cycle
| (labour organisation attempt -> leaders fired -> settlement for
| leaders -> leaders go off to some media
| job/retirement/academia) happens again and again. Presumably
| the companies think they're getting a reasonably good deal out
| of firing the organisers.
| regextegrity wrote:
| Sounds good for shareholders, but bad for the workers that
| make up Amazon.
| TheBobinator wrote:
| FAANG hasn't been innovators for a long time now, closing in
| on almost half a decade. They started out that way but have
| moved full bore into politics. Politics is what happens when
| the rest of society tries to figure out what to do with the
| innovators inventions, an when orgs don't innovate, they die,
| usually a pretty violent and shitty death over time.
| lokar wrote:
| It could make it hard to recruit new Sr people and leaders in
| their fields. I would never consider working at Amazon.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| In contrast, I would be very happy too consider a company
| that is honestly focused on its commercial mission rather
| than appease the small number of people who believe their
| employers should give them a platform for their activism.
| [deleted]
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| I interviewed at Amazon largely to see what happened when I
| challenged them to talk about some negative practices.
|
| Their answers impressed me sufficiently that I work here
| now.
|
| I believe (hopefully correctly) that Amazon is a very
| flawed company which is becoming _less_ flawed over time,
| and that I can help support those improvements.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Maybe some will balk, but not all. There is probably enough
| overlap between "talented devs and designers" and "people
| who think unions are bad and/or don't care" that it won't
| affect their hiring pipeline.
|
| That said, I think highly-paid tech contributors do have
| the most leverage out of any other labor market participant
| right now. The more of us that don't want to work for anti-
| union companies, the better.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The more leverage you have as an individual, the less
| relevant a union is for you.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Sure. And the aristocracy is good for aristocrats. I
| suspect that engineers, in general, vastly overestimate
| the amount of leverage they actually have as an
| individual when considering the merits of joining a
| union.
| objclxt wrote:
| > The more leverage you have as an individual, the less
| relevant a union is for you.
|
| If this was true, why are the highest paid and in-demand
| stars and directors in Hollywood all still dues paying
| members of their unions?
| mcny wrote:
| >> The more leverage you have as an individual, the less
| relevant a union is for you.
|
| > If this was true, why are the highest paid and in-
| demand stars and directors in Hollywood all still dues
| paying members of their unions?
|
| I am trying to parse these two statements and here is my
| thought. Being a union member can never hurt as long as
| dues are reasonable. You can always negotiate a better
| deal but at least you will get a baseline and really if
| acting is your career, you probably care about more than
| just total compensation.
|
| Here is what I found on Google:
|
| > To join SAG, a performer must pay an initiation fee
| plus the first semi-annual basic dues. The national
| initiation fee rate is currently $3,000 (initiation fees
| may be lower in some areas). Annual base dues are
| $201.96. In addition, work dues are calculated at 1.575
| percent of covered earnings up to $500,000..
|
| I don't know if this is up to date but assuming it is,
| 500000*1.575/100 + 201.96 is just over eight thousand
| dollars a year. Even at USD 10k a year, I think it is a
| good deal. If I were a highly paid on-screen talent, I
| would not want to stir a storm in a teacup over USD 10k
| if I was making over USD 500k a year. It simply wouldn't
| be worth my time.
| fmajid wrote:
| The union helped them on their way up, and they are
| grateful, even though strictly speaking they no longer
| need the union.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Not to mention that SAG's dues are quite regressive, only
| being applied to the first $500K in earnings, so being
| highly-paid doesn't cost them anything additional.
| sib wrote:
| Probably because California is _NOT_ a right-to-work
| state, and all studios that matter have agreements with
| all the unions (guilds) that make their productions
| union-only jobs. So, even if you are Tom Cruise, Dwayne
| Johnson, or Scarlett Johansson, you _have to_ join the
| union in order to get work.
|
| * Yes, there are small studios and some other ways of
| avoiding this if you only want to film in certain states,
| but if you want to earn the big bucks, you have to join
| the union.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| Isn't that slightly different and more because the film
| industry is unusual in that it has adapted around the
| unionised environment? Stars would have joined the union
| early in their career for the protection, but late on its
| minimal expense for sake of keeping the cogs of
| production turning. I'm no expert, but I imagine there
| are various on-set insurances which require actors to be
| a member of union, etc. It's not quite the same as a VP
| of a tech company joining a union.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Seems pretty much the same to me. Junior devs have to
| work their way up, senior devs already make big bucks and
| don't really "need" the union anymore.
| tekromancr wrote:
| If you do have leverage, and you don't use said leverage
| to help those that don't; then you are a bastard. And
| having policies ensures that your company, at high levels
| is ONLY staffed with bastards because people who are not
| bastards won't want to work there.
|
| Granted, that might be exactly what Amazon et al are
| selecting for; but at some point, a company being anti-
| union will be a signal to prospective high-level
| employees that many of your potential co-workers will be
| entirely self-interested assholes and you will have to
| decide if such a work environment is for you.
| oort-cloud9 wrote:
| You know that business is nothing designed to be your
| babysitter, right? And it's designed to pay you more than
| your work deserves,right?
| robocat wrote:
| Rubbish. Your assumption is that unions are always a
| benefit to their members.
|
| I have seen enough actions by unions where the outcomes
| were detrimental to their members for me to believe that
| some unions are a net negative for their members.
|
| Someone can choose to not belong to a union because they
| are a good person that just believes that a union is bad
| for everyone.
|
| Edit: Disclaimer: I am not stating that I think unions
| are bad. However the few direct experiences I personally
| have had with unions have not been a clear positive for
| the members (as an employee or student, never as an
| employer).
|
| Edit 2: Or you could just believe unions are net neutral,
| so be against joining. Because who wants to voluntarily
| submit themselves to an organisation or people they don't
| believe in?
| peytn wrote:
| I like to keep business and charity separated. Mixing the
| two, in my opinion, simply adds a layer of indirection
| for the bastards to hide behind.
|
| Besides, if you're in a working environment where people
| throw around terms like "total comp" and have mortgages
| denominated in millions of dollars, the self-interest
| ship has kinda sailed.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Unfortunately it's not physically possible to be neutral
| on this issue.
|
| It's not analogous to never giving people change on the
| street because you donate to soup kitchens and mutual aid
| orgs (or whatever). If you don't support unionization,
| you are effectively undermining it. This isn't meant to
| be some kind of woke purity test. It's just the facts of
| how a market operates.
|
| Every individual that is willing to work without
| supporting a union, is an employee that hurts the power
| of that union, because that's one less unit of labor that
| the employer has to rely on the union for.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| JFC talk about a "you're with us or against us"
| mentality. I tend to be somewhat neutral on unions
| (depending on the context I think they're sometimes good
| and sometimes bad), but your rhetoric has pushed me
| further towards unions being bad.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I already wrote a response to the sibling comment here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26703472
|
| > your rhetoric has pushed me further towards unions
| being bad.
|
| This sounds vindictive and selfish to me. I wish it
| wasn't this way. Personally I'd rather just play video
| games and screw around with Idris than get involved in
| labor disputes. But to turn against unions because
| someone who is vaguely pro-union said something that
| kinda offended you? Come on.
| amyjess wrote:
| Usually when someone says something like this, I assume
| they were never pro-union in the first place.
|
| "So-and-so said something I don't like, so now I've
| changed all my political beliefs to be the opposite of
| theirs" is something real people don't actually do. It's
| more likely that their political beliefs were _always_
| the opposite of so-and-so 's and they were just looking
| for an opportunity to admit it.
| sokoloff wrote:
| You don't imagine that "unions are good because of X, Y,
| and Z facts" is a more compelling argument to anyone
| anywhere in the middle spectrum than "if you don't like
| unions, you're a selfish asshole" or "if you're not with
| us, you're against us" and that difference in compelling
| nature would influence someone's support of unions?
|
| It's not like any of us emerged from the womb with a
| strongly decided opinion on unions, but rather we
| developed one over time by deciding on the arguments
| advanced and whereby bullying arguments and behavior of
| intimidation often push people away from support.
| carbonguy wrote:
| > You don't imagine that "unions are good because of X,
| Y, and Z facts" is a more compelling argument to anyone
| anywhere in the middle spectrum than "if you don't like
| unions, you're a selfish asshole" or "if you're not with
| us, you're against us" and that difference in compelling
| nature would influence someone's support of unions?
|
| I'm not the OP, but to answer your question: frankly, no
| - in general it seems to often be the case that the
| factual merit of an argument is not really important in
| influencing opinion.
|
| That the argument you mention ("if you don't like unions,
| you're a selfish asshole") has any influence at all is
| proof enough of this; note that it makes no direct
| statement about the merit of unions themselves, and yet
| is presented as an example of an influential argument
| about the value of unions - and rightfully so, based on
| your reaction and the reactions of other people in this
| thread.
|
| Furthermore, I think it's fairly naive to think that "we
| developed [our opinions regarding unions] over time by
| deciding on the arguments advanced," as though it were
| always a conscious process or that a broadly fair view of
| unions was widely disseminated with which to make an
| informed decision. After all, why would it be?
| sokoloff wrote:
| There's an old legal aphorism that goes, "If you have the
| facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law
| on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your
| side, pound the table."
|
| If I believe that and see someone pounding the table, I
| can make an inference about the ability of their position
| to stand up to scrutiny. I might be wrong in that
| inference, but IMO the lawyer with the facts or law on
| their side does their client a serious disservice if they
| choose to just bang the table.
| carbonguy wrote:
| > JFC talk about a "you're with us or against us"
| mentality... your rhetoric has pushed me further towards
| unions being bad.
|
| It's a remarkably odd choice to refer to OP's comment as
| "rhetoric" in this case given that the remark "it's not
| physically possible to be neutral on this issue" is a
| literal statement of truth.
|
| Generally, neutrality implicitly supports the status quo;
| it's a choice like any other, whether you acknowledge it
| as such or not, and as OP pointed out it is literally
| true that if you have the option to be part of a union
| and you aren't, the bargaining power of that union is
| less than it otherwise would be.
|
| I suppose you'd have to clarify what you meant with
| respect to your own decisions - have you ever even had
| the option to join a union? Because if not, then I could
| see how you might be able to see yourself as "neutral" as
| it's not an issue that has directly affected you. But if
| you did have a choice then presumably you made a choice
| one way or the other, in which case "neutrality" isn't
| something you can actually claim.
| andrepd wrote:
| If such a simple opinion "pushed" you into the unions-
| are-bad camp then you were never on the fence in the
| first place.
| mixedCase wrote:
| Absolutely not. Not increasing its power is not
| undermining it. It's neutrality. Stop changing
| definitions to suit your political goals.
|
| We have enough "with us or against us" going on driving
| violence to let more slide.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I was careful to explain my reasoning in my post, but
| maybe it wasn't stated clearly enough.
|
| Consider a company for which programmers are fungible,
| and 5 programmers are required to keep the company
| running at full efficiency. If one programmer quits in
| protest over union-busting activity, all it takes is one
| other equivalent programmer on the labor market to agree
| to take the job. The existence of 1,000 other pro-union
| programmers in the labor market are completely
| irrelevant, as long as the company knows they can find
| one union-neutral programmer. Morever, the union-neutral
| programmer is equivalent to an anti-union programmer from
| the perspective of the employer.
|
| It's "with us or against us" because of the nature of the
| labor market, not because of any desire to be toxic or
| exclusionary or whatever. This is literally the whole
| reason that picket lines exist. You're either a scab or
| you're not; that's definitional, not rhetorical.
| Rule35 wrote:
| > You're either a scab or you're not; that's
| definitional, not rhetorical.
|
| No, I'm an unaffiliated potential worker. Scab is a
| derogatory term. It's not surprising unions are losing
| support with that attitude.
|
| You're thinking you have a right to the job and that by
| not supporting you I'm taking it away. You don't though
| and from my point of view a union is a threat of violence
| (try crossing a picket line) and is one tiny step away
| from domestic terrorism. You're demanding to take a job
| that could be mine but you're not willing to negotiate to
| win it. Turning a free-market opportunity for me into a
| political struggle where I'd need to win my way into the
| 1000 through your support. No thanks.
|
| Every little thing Unionists do is about punishment and
| control, you can't even not downvote someone's honest
| opinion. Imagine if your job was controlled by such
| politics and you had to kowtow to the right opinions just
| to keep it.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| We don't have to imagine. This very article is about
| employees who were illegally fired for not kowtowing to
| the right opinions. These politics _do_ control your job,
| whether you want them to or not.
| jessaustin wrote:
| "Violence", you say? What violence is that? Is it taking
| place in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia,
| Korea, or maybe somewhere else, where we don't yet admit
| we have troops fighting?
|
| Oh, sorry, you were talking about people having heart
| attacks while climbing the steps of the capital building.
| Never mind, carry on. Americans complaining about
| violence is like plants complaining about oxygen.
|
| https://thegrayzone.com/2019/01/15/us-
| military-160-countries...
| carbonguy wrote:
| > Not increasing its power is not undermining it.
|
| This _might_ be true if you were describing a situation
| with three parties: a company, a union, and you -
| affiliated with neither. But as almost all unionization
| takes place after people have already entered an employee
| /employer relationship, the neutrality has been lost; you
| are, by default, on the side of the employer if you are
| not a part of the union, and having employees not in a
| union does weaken the bargaining position of the union
| since it's relative representation that matters.
|
| > Stop changing definitions to suit your political goals.
|
| Don't forget to call the kettle black, while you're at
| it.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Parent's point was that by working for a company without
| supporting a union, you are giving that company leverage
| against the union.
|
| That is where the neutrality is lost.
| Rule35 wrote:
| I reject your absolutist ideology. If it's a forced
| choice of with your or against you, then you've asked for
| against.
|
| Edit: With them or they'll do anything from downvote you
| to set your car on fire. This is why people don't believe
| you, or support you.
|
| Look at the modern intellectual arguing the equivalent of
| Wickard v Filburn. Anti-union would be going out of my
| way to lobby my government to forbid unions. Neutral is
| just not supporting you because I can't tell if you have
| a valid case or not. As for being a coward, that's the
| modern unionist screaming slurs at other workers and
| beating them up in the parking lot.
|
| The sad truth is that original unionists, who fought for
| safety in mines, etc, are being conflated with marxists
| who are really _anti_ worker.
| tekromancr wrote:
| I would posit that you aren't rejecting any ideology, you
| are being presented with the fact even inaction _is_ a
| political choice, and that seems to upset you. That 's
| okay, there are a lot of facts about reality that upset
| me, too!
|
| Unfortunately facts don't care about our feelings, and no
| amount of sulking about it will change the fact that so
| called union neutrality _is_ an anti-union position. Not
| only is it anti-union, but kind of a cowardly anti-
| unionism, at that. It 's wanting to be both anti-union,
| while also wanting to accept none of the social
| consequences that come with that position.
| RobRivera wrote:
| people often forget that subtlety of reality is NOT
| something every individual HAS to prioritize, and any
| amount of namecalling is really a refusal to open a
| dialogue and an excuse to grandstand.
|
| glad you feel safe enough to echo your opinions. it's
| important in championing dialogue.
| rualca wrote:
| > I like to keep business and charity separated. Mixing
| the two, in my opinion, simply adds a layer of
| indirection for the bastards to hide behind.
|
| That's an awful lot of words to say "screw you, I got
| mine".
|
| Exploiters have it easy when the exploited see basic
| workers rights as "charity".
| nerdponx wrote:
| Some HN users are apparently very touchy about this, so
| maybe a gentler way to state it would be:
|
| > It is only possible to see labor solidarity as
| "charity" if you are privileged enough to not depend on
| that solidarity.
|
| Of course, accusations of privilege themselves are
| subject to pants-twisting and fits of downvoting
| moderation-flagging rage.
|
| "Please don't remind me that I'm privileged because it
| makes me feel icky feelings so I will get ANGRY instead"
| seems to be a natural human reaction.
| DickingAround wrote:
| I'm not going to down vote either of these at the moment.
| But the basic idea is to attack ideas not people. Any
| statements that name call (e.g. 'bastards') or attack the
| idea by attacking the author of it (e.g. 'dont remind me
| that I'm privileged') will not lead to an environment
| where we are all learning from each other.
| tekromancr wrote:
| > I like to keep business and charity separated.
|
| I don't know if that really tracks, tho. You still have
| ethical obligations in your day-to-day business. As an
| extreme example; if your business is "I sell fentinyl
| laced heroin to elementary school children" isn't really
| something you can make up with any amount charitable
| giving.
|
| But aside from that, I was making the self-interested
| argument that even complete sociopaths wouldn't
| necessarily want to work in an environment where "My
| coworkers can and will try to fuck me at the first
| opportunity" is a true statement.
| ericd wrote:
| Using these false equivalences and "you're for us or
| against us" type reasoning might rule up people who're
| already convinced, but it likely makes those who aren't
| on a side more suspicious of what you're pushing, because
| it feels like you're trying to trick or coerce.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I recently saw a post (maybe here on HN?) about a study
| where participants had the ability to choose between a
| strict-no-cheating game environment and a mostly-
| cheating-allowed game environment. Cheaters self-selected
| into the latter because it allowed _them_ to cheat, even
| though they knew that others were also trying to cheat.
|
| Hopefully I'm paraphrasing/remembering correctly.
| spamizbad wrote:
| This perhaps explains the rationale you sometimes hear
| that more rules/regs will cause people to not even bother
| trying to start a business. If you set the business
| climate up in such a way that only permits fair
| participation and competition you're probably going to
| alienate a segment that would favor looser rules.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| I'm having a hard time seeing the justification here.
| It's not that the cheaters refused to play if they
| couldn't cheat, it's that when given influence, they
| prefered to have things be worse for everyone so that
| they could cheat more freely.
|
| >If you set the business climate up in such a way that
| only permits fair participation and competition you're
| probably going to alienate a segment that would favor
| looser rules.
|
| The converse, that rules which allow profitable unethical
| behavior (and therefore _prefer_ such unethical behavior,
| since profit is the measure of success) are going to
| alienate people who want to play fair, is exactly as well
| supported by that observation. And all other things being
| equal, it seems better to alienate the cheaters than the
| fair players, which in turn argues for stronger
| regulation.
|
| It just highlights that the people who want to cheat and
| make such arguments aren't arguing in good faith, they
| just want to cheat more easily.
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| Game environments usually means there aren't significant
| real-life consequences, so it's totally plausible that
| most people would pick the cheating-allowed game for just
| more fun and entertainment.
|
| When actual jobs and lives are on the line, and the
| penalty for losing requires most of the participants to
| give up your basic human needs (such as most of low-
| income wage workers, they don't have any fallbacks when
| they get scammed and go under), then things are going to
| be much different.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Very good point. I wish I knew the details of the study.
|
| I do wonder if, at a certain extreme level of
| cheaterness/selfishness, there is a minimum level of
| self-confidence that causes a cheater to self-select into
| a cheating-OK environment.
|
| It's an extension of the "survival of the fittest"
| mentality. If you believe you are one of the fittest, you
| might be willing to enter the survival scenario because
| you are confident that you will survive.
| majormajor wrote:
| In business environment terms, I see anyone who takes a
| "you're either with us or against us" position as
| promoting a "mostly-cheating-allowed game." You're gonna
| let things slide for people on "your team" much more than
| you would if everyone is for themselves. That's one of
| the more convincing arguments against traditional unions,
| to me.
| asymptosis wrote:
| It works both ways. When management form an elite club
| focused on exploiting workers, this induces sides.
| Workers who didn't care about unionisation are provoked
| by management to collectivise. Then these workers learn
| that collective action actually produces results, so the
| polarisation between "sides" increases.
|
| Concluding that you're "against traditional unions" just
| places you on one of the sides.
| nerdponx wrote:
| That's a good point and it definitely happens, but it's
| also somewhat of a whatabout argument and it's not
| relevant here IMO.
|
| My point was supposed to be that a workplace full of
| selfish people would not necessarily be a deterrent to
| other selfish people, because the opportunity to be
| freely selfish might be worth more than the (estimated)
| risk due to being surrounded by selfish people.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| >I like to keep business and charity separated.
|
| That sounds like a fancy way of saying, "I don't have an
| ethical responsibility to others."
| fmajid wrote:
| To be fair, a lot of corporate philanthropy is executives
| using their shareholders' money to buy themselves social
| capital.
| duckfang wrote:
| So, what individual thinks they have more leverage than
| Amazon?
|
| Amazon has a 1.6 trillion $ market cap.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Amazon needs a lot of software engineers and needs them
| more than any individual SWE needs Amazon, no matter what
| their market cap is.
| patrickthebold wrote:
| Amazon needs a lot of software engineers, but they don't
| need any single engineer.
|
| Which is the whole point of unionizing.
| DickingAround wrote:
| The software engineers have plenty of leverage over every
| company without unions. A proof of that is high wages
| across the industry. And for Amazon in particular, where
| is that extra money coming from? It's not like they have
| a dividend to shareholders they could stop paying out.
| They're not some law firm where the partners are profit
| sharing. It's a publicly traded company that just
| constantly reinvests in growth. They're practically
| famous for that. So really to pay more, they must either
| get more efficient (probably already trying at that) or
| raise prices or stop reinvesting. I guess they could pay
| the higher paid workers less, but isn't that already the
| software engineers we're talking about? Those are the
| higher paid workers.
|
| As an aside, I sometimes wonder if they could literally
| have qualified as a not for profit whose sole goal is to
| grow into new market segments and employ more people.
| Because if you take a wide angle view of it, that's
| pretty much all they ever do.
| frenchy wrote:
| And that's how you end up with a company full of
| assholes.
| singlow wrote:
| Then they have probably succeeded. I don't think they want
| people whom this would deter.
| Haga wrote:
| It's a nice way for anyone to get fired with cash to go
| ineedasername wrote:
| They've not only rid themselves of the activists, they've
| made it clear that you lose your job if you publicly disagree
| with them. You'll lose your job and if you try to fight it
| you'll spend years just to get a settlement.
|
| From here on out everyone will be thinking "is this worth
| losing my job over, especially when I may have similarly
| serious concers about _any_ employer I work for? "
| dan-robertson wrote:
| You lose your job but then win a big settlement and likely
| get money out of your role as someone trying to organise
| labour and getting fired by Amazon. It's not clear that
| it's a bad deal for those who were fired either
| rantwasp wrote:
| nah. a wrongful termination lawsuit is expensive (think 7
| figures). what i think amazon is going to do is put the
| workers that try this stunt into positions that are so
| crappy or the demands are so unrealistic that they're gonna
| quit.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| >a wrongful termination lawsuit is expensive (think 7
| figures)
|
| When you're a company that makes 11 figures, spending 7
| figures for a 1% increase in profits is a hundredfold
| ROI. They're not expensive, they're a bargain.
| rantwasp wrote:
| if it's one employee yes. if you're going to be basically
| liable every time you fire someone it's not worth it.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| That's 11 figures annually. Even if you make that
| settlement nearly 100 times a year, you still come out
| ahead
| rantwasp wrote:
| i think that the way a corporation would mitigate this
| risk is different. if i need to pay you 5million in a
| wrongful termination scenario vs paying you 250k per
| year, I could make you work for 20 years doing nothing
| and make your life miserable.
| fmajid wrote:
| That settlement is still coming from one individual's
| budget within the company. Even though the settlement
| amount is not material for a company the size of Amazon,
| it will be material to that one employee, who may even be
| fired herself (e.g. if she is in HR), so the incentive
| structure of the individuals within the Amazon hive mind
| will still be impacted.
| jwineinger wrote:
| Wouldn't that be considered constructive dismissal, and
| still subject to this sort of action?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Yes, but awfully hard to prove.
| eropple wrote:
| Constructive dismissal is difficult to prove, but
| generally less so in the context of sabotage of labor
| activism.
| [deleted]
| N00bN00b wrote:
| Wouldn't that go both ways and encourage more activism?
|
| I wouldn't mind being an activist employee if I know that not
| only do I stand up for what I believe in, but there's a
| reasonable chance it will result in enough compensation for
| an early retirement. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
|
| I wouldn't do it without caution and it does require funds on
| my end, but I'd still do it. That said, Amazon will likely
| engage in prolonged litigation, to minimize the benefits.
| [deleted]
| numbsafari wrote:
| It likely depends on the /terms/ of the settlement more than
| the /cost/ of the settlement in this case.
|
| As activists, they may be balking at NDA or non-disparagement
| language, rather than at price.
|
| From Amazon's perspective, the NDA/non-disparagement part is
| probably incredibly valuable.
| [deleted]
| stcredzero wrote:
| _they have still succeeded at their actual objective of
| getting rid of the activist employees._
|
| Activists often get a free pass. So long as they're saying
| the "right thing," the press covers for them. Since anyone
| can just put out their slate and become an "activist," this
| creates a situation where random people people are given
| enough power to abuse and basically no oversight.
|
| What if we had a society where Doctors got a free pass? What
| if there were no qualifications, and random people could call
| themselves doctors? So long as they're saying the "right
| thing," the press covers for them. Since anyone can just put
| out their slate and become a "Doctor," this creates a
| situation where random people people are given enough power
| to abuse and basically no oversight.
|
| We have historical precedents for this. What you get are the
| moral equivalents of wild west medicine shows.
|
| Further symptoms: When you start giving [X] a free pass,
| you'd start to see a degradation in the follower's
| understanding of morality, ethics, and fundamental principles
| which have far-reaching game theoretic consequences. These
| consequences aren't that easy to understand, so we'd expect
| to see people do shortsighted things which bring about those
| consequences. One would expect to see an ethos of
| totalitarian obeisance in [X] groups replace an ethos of free
| inquiry. One would expect to see forms of bigotry and the
| shallow judging of people by surface characteristics,
| sneaking in while disguised as other names. One would expect
| to see some scummy people who latched onto the moniker of [X]
| for a variety of reasons, who later on show their true
| colors.
|
| One would expect to see the behavior of the mob.
|
| _Presumably the companies think they're getting a reasonably
| good deal out of firing the organisers._
|
| Some activists are genuinely speaking truth to power. Some
| are exploiters. Some are somewhere in between. There need to
| be checks and balances. The fundamental right of free
| association isn't so bad a place to start.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I fully expect it. With "other ways of knowing" becoming
| not only a slogan but effectively being applied to our
| learning institutions, it is only a matter of time for
| restricting medical practice to credentialed medical
| doctors to be labeled as "white supremacy".
|
| The exam isn't fair so we should believe someone who has a
| lived experience that makes them a doctor (with a claim to
| insurance/government payments to their practice) or
| something like that.
|
| Meanwhile, kids in China are learning the skills to invent
| the actual, real future.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Would the labor board have provided such a convenient ruling if
| it were right leaning political activists masquerading as
| employees fighting for employee rights? For that matter why are
| the actions of political activists protected at all? From past
| discussions on HN, my recollection is that these two were not
| fighting for labor rights or wages or conditions. They were
| climate change activists that would spam employees with
| political activist content unrelated to work. Big tech
| companies are already very much taken over by left leaning
| ideology, and forcing companies to allow such employee activism
| seems highly inappropriate and bad for society.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| The labor board may well have done nothing if Amazon had
| fired them for activism. But they fired them once they did
| start bringing up labor issues:
|
| > Amazon has fired two employees and asked a third not to
| return to work, after the group organized a virtual event for
| warehouse employees to speak to tech workers at the company
| about its workplace conditions and coronavirus response.
|
| > The two employees who were fired on Friday, Maren Costa and
| Emily Cunningham, had in late March circulated a petition on
| internal email lists that called on Amazon to expand sick
| leave, hazard pay and child care for warehouse workers. The
| petition also asked Amazon to temporarily shut down
| facilities where workers were confirmed to have the virus so
| the facilities could be sterilized.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/business/stock-market-
| cov...
| cortesoft wrote:
| The 'agency' in this case is the National Labor Relations
| Board, and 'settling' in this case doesn't just mean paying
| money, it also means changing their practices. It basically
| means accepting the findings and taking remedial steps, instead
| of denying the findings and trying to fight them.
|
| This isn't like a law firm threatening to sue if they don't
| settle.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| It's effectively the same thing as Cunningham and Costa
| themselves saying they would pursue a ULP charge. It's just
| that in labor cases, the NLRB screens complaints first and then
| steps in to represent the complainant for complaints that are
| credible.
|
| That is _not_ a final determination, though: the piece of paper
| that Cunningham and Costa held does not say that the NLRB will
| find that Amazon did engage in a ULP and exact a penalty. It
| merely says that an NLRB attorney will represent Cunningham and
| Costa in resolving the matter.
| tyingq wrote:
| _" the NLRB screens complaints first and then steps in to
| represent the complainant for complaints that are credible"_
|
| That's a pretty big difference.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| How so? On the whole, it saves Amazon the hassle of dealing
| with "unfair labor" complaints that really aren't. And it's
| not like the NLRB attorneys give the employee some special
| advantage. Frankly, there are a lot of cases where the
| employee would probably be better off working with a
| private attorney whose incentives are more aligned with the
| employee's. And either way, Amazon had a piece of paper
| from a lawyer that said "we will pursue this if you don't
| settle."
| sreque wrote:
| The NLRB are appointed by the president and can behave
| with incredible political bias: https://republicans-
| oversight.house.gov/release/oversight-re...
|
| The reach of the executive branch has extended far beyond
| what is healthy for the nation of the United States.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Sure, but they're still constrained by the Courts of
| Appeal and the Supreme Court. And that bias would show up
| in the final decision: merely having a letter saying the
| NLRB will take up the case is multiple steps removed from
| the political appointment concerns.
| great_reversal wrote:
| Sure Amazon might not like them for their advocacy, but if they
| really did unapologetically break internal policies then I think
| Amazon's firing them is valid.
|
| Assuming they did leak private company information or try to
| organize a massive social gathering during the pandemic, the
| response was valid. They were probably targets, but as a target
| you shouldn't be breaking rules at work.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| > unapologetically break internal policies
|
| I mean, Amazon has an internal policy that you are not allowed
| to collaborate on any games related projects with anyone who is
| not also an Amazon employee. Did you go to a game jam? You've
| just unapologetically broken internal policies.
|
| It's absolutely the case that Amazon can construct policies
| that are never enforced and easy to break so they have
| something they can fall back on to say, "Well, they broke our
| policies, sooo...."
| joana035 wrote:
| That's the reason why I don't buy anything from Amazon and prefer
| to pay a bit more to a local store instead.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Yes, I also started to pay for shipping overall. (Convenience
| or Sm. Business Labor) > Shipping Fee.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Yes, and without too much effort one can also just shop online
| at other retailers (in case one lives way out in a rural area).
| Maybe free 2-day shipping won't happen at other places, but
| free shipping and equivalent prices are easy to find.
| joana035 wrote:
| Yes, that is what I do (buying online but from a more local
| seller). If it takes 2 or 5 days to delivery doesn't makes
| much of a difference for me at least, I will have to wait
| anyway.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I have also stopped buying from Amazon. I rarely got two day
| delivery from Amazon anyway.
| danaliv wrote:
| Same here. Between their garbage labor practices and the
| fact that everything on Amazon had become, well, garbage,
| it was an easy call to make.
| f6v wrote:
| Do you do this under the assumption that no local store treats
| employees unfairly?
| lasfter wrote:
| Certainly not on the scale of Amazon.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| We talk about Amazon being able to do distributed systems "at
| scale" all the time. They also do worker exploitation at
| scale. There are knock-on effects -- for instance we might
| look at a mom and pop shop and say, "That's not ok, I won't
| do the bad thing they do to their employees at _my_ shop. "
| But we'd look at Amazon and say, "Well, if _Amazon_ does it,
| then surely I can too. "
| dawnerd wrote:
| Been using Target Staples, and Bestbuy more and while they
| don't always have the same items, brand names end up being
| roughly the same price due to auto price matching and
| contractual minimum prices.
|
| Only times I'm using amazon is for cheap items no one else will
| ship. They've really just turned into AliExpress.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Same here, but I wonder if Target warehouse employees have
| been pissing in bottles all along and the news just never
| picked up on it.
| slices wrote:
| I don't know about the warehouses, but a family member
| stocked shelves at Target for years, and was paid the
| minimum wage the whole time. Hours were 1) part time, 2)
| too inconsistent to allow any other work.
| auiya wrote:
| Of course they do. And lots of other awful shit you'll see
| in this thread - https://twitter.com/BanishedBernie/status/
| 137645587453380198...
| dawnerd wrote:
| There really isn't a company at that scale that doesn't
| have problems. I rank Target over Amazon simply because I
| know the products are going to be legit. Most of the time
| I'm doing curbside pickup there anyways.
|
| And don't forget, Apple was also doing shady stuff:
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/3/21419729/apple-
| california-...
| crooked-v wrote:
| > They've really just turned into AliExpress.
|
| For a quick and concrete example of this, do a search on
| Amazon for "dent puller". You'll get pages and pages of
| obviously identical suction cups and dent removal kits with
| obviously randomly generated brand names like "LTGABA" and
| "QGMZZMF".
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| And with those companies you actually get the brand name item
| instead of a knock-off!
| crocsarecool wrote:
| I felt like I had to remember how to shop other places online
| as I've been making my switch to less Amazon. I'm so tired of
| finding little business cards in all my orders to review the
| products. I gave a bad review on a vacuum cleaner, and the
| seller has been contacting me every few weeks to refund me if
| I take it down. I sympathize with sellers because I know it's
| hard to sell anything less than a five star product on there.
| The whole system feels so broken these days.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I don't feel bad, those sellers did it to themselves. They
| gamed the system too hard and that's where they landed.
| p_j_w wrote:
| Not all of the sellers are responsible for the bad
| behavior, though.
| pow_pp_-1_v wrote:
| Wouldn't it be better for Amazon, in the long term to let workers
| get the best salary/benefits in the industry and even cooperate
| in their unionization efforts (if the workers want to)? Would it
| such a big hit to their bottom line?
|
| Or am I just being to too naive?
|
| [Edit: Grammar]
| creddit wrote:
| > Wouldn't it be better for Amazon, in the long term to let
| workers get the best salary/benefits in the industry
|
| The dirty secret is that Amazon basically already has the best
| salary/benefits for the job types that are looking to unionize.
| This isn't _entirely_ true, but very close. Warehouse work is
| not well compensated anywhere and Amazon 's $15/hr min wage
| plus really solid benefits is pretty much comparatively
| incomparable.
| [deleted]
| jjj123 wrote:
| It's not just about the bottom line, it's also about power.
| Without unionization, Amazon has complete control over their
| workers wages, benefits, and work contracts. Unionization
| shifts some of that control to the workers themselves. Amazon
| doesn't want to lose that power.
| pow_pp_-1_v wrote:
| If they had provided good benefits and working condition, the
| workers will not be incentivized to form unions, right? Why
| are they not doing that?
| jjj123 wrote:
| Well they are doing some of it for just that reason, like
| they raised the minimum wage to $15 (which is actually
| pretty good) and wave that around in their anti-union
| propaganda.
|
| I bet they've done all kinds of risk calculations around
| increasing benefits and decided they could stop there.
| Personally, I hope their calculations are wrong and the
| workers unionize anyways.
| lupire wrote:
| "minimum wage" should be for jobs that are minimum work -
| jobs were you stand around doing nothing (cashier at a
| slow store), or are apprenticing a skill.
|
| Amazon warehouse jobs are physically demanding and
| damaging (which should carry a premium) and extremely
| optimized to _negative_ downtime (which should carry a
| premium). (Employees are _required_ to do work while off
| the clock, walking between work area and break area, and
| waiting in line for security checks).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| "Wages" (or prices) should be determined by supply and
| demand curves. If the government wants minimum wages to
| rise, then it should lower supply of labor and/or
| increase demand for labor.
|
| The government can lower the supply of labor willing to
| work for low wages by offering a basic income, pay for
| people's education, etc.
|
| The government can increase the demand for labor by
| decreasing the number of hours needed to reach overtime
| (per day and per week), mandating vacation time and
| parental leave, etc.
|
| All of this, however, very explicitly increases
| government expenditures requiring tax increases and
| clearly shows the wealth transfer, so it's politically
| less popular than trying to foist it onto select
| businesses.
| jjk166 wrote:
| This isn't the government's minimum wage, this is
| amazon's minimum wage, ie the lowest wage that amazon
| pays to its employees, which is more than double US
| federal minimum wage.
|
| There is a push to raise federal minimum wage to match
| Amazon's minimum wage, but for now they are paying a
| hefty premium everywhere in the US except Washington
| D.C., the only US state-like entity to yet match it.
|
| Sometimes we forget that all these amazon warehouse
| employees could take jobs as cashiers at slow stores and
| similar such easier opportunities, but choose not to.
| [deleted]
| rtkwe wrote:
| Because that costs money, why just give workers more when
| you can use some of the money saved on suppressing
| organization instead.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Because good benefits and working conditions are fleeting
| without the power of collective bargaining behind it.
| Without a union, employees are depending entirely on the
| goodwill of their employers.
| schnevets wrote:
| This. Amazon became a ripe unionization target because
| they get noticeable productivity per worker. Its rates
| are closer to manufacturing compared to typical retail
| and the other prevalent, low-income jobs.
|
| With Amazon's massive investment in robotics and other
| opportunities for automation, they think they can become
| exponentially more efficient. At that point, a non-
| unionized workforce will lose that goodwill and be
| slashed into a fraction of its current size.
| nerdponx wrote:
| On the other hand, regarding automation...
|
| In an ideal world unions shouldn't have to be anti-
| automation, because people should have access to other
| sources of income (yes I mean income, not specifically
| employment) if they lose their jobs. This way we aren't
| holding back technological progress to protect people
| from poverty.
|
| I have no idea what that ideal world looks like, maybe
| it's not possible. But I do feel uncomfortable with the
| idea that automation is somehow inherently anti-worker
| with no opportunity for reconciliation.
| thedevelopnik wrote:
| Because they're betting, with a good deal of historical
| justification, that they can have their cake and eat it
| too.
|
| US has unfortunately been union-unfriendly since Reagan.
| SauciestGNU wrote:
| The US has been union unfriendly since the 19th century
| when union leaders were regularly assassinated, and in
| the 20th century when striking workers were aerially
| bombarded and killed.
| kazen44 wrote:
| mind you this was historically the case nearly everywhere
| in Wurope too. This only really changed drastically after
| world war 1, which saw the fall of many empires (german,
| ottoman, astro-hungarian and russian) which resulted in a
| lot of political instability. Trade unions and other
| labour organisations where able to demand representative
| power in a turmoil time when many new countries where
| created. (having a nationwide strike or even a revolution
| was a really bad thing for the (newly established)
| establishment).
|
| This got further cemented when the USSR was formed, and
| it actively supported many left winged militant
| organisations in europe. This was used as leverage by
| trade unionists and social-democrats to demand further
| rights (or else the militant forces will get into power
| and things will end much worse for the establishment).
|
| This dynamic only really changed right before world war
| 2, when stalin (and other USSR leaders) focused on a
| policy of "socialism in one country" instead of a the
| dogma of a worldwide workers revolution.
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| Things had to change after the Great Depression though,
| the Roosevelt government had to actually make amends with
| and negotiate with labor unions, since the alternative
| was widespread economically-induced unrest which might
| possibly lead to communist or fascist uprisings. I think
| the parent comment was talking about that particular era,
| and commenting on how Reagan dismantled that whole deal.
| minikites wrote:
| You don't get to be a billionaire by treating your workers
| well. Pay and benefits will always be worse at a non-union
| workplace because the workers have no leverage.
| lupire wrote:
| Jeff Bezos has plenty of slack for treating workers
| better while still being a billionaire. To start, he
| could each of 1 million employees $2000 more every year
| ($1/hour raise or 30min/day in more breaks) and not break
| a sweat.
| srswtf123 wrote:
| Agreed; _human resources_ are the same as natural
| resources: fodder for exploitation.
| adolph wrote:
| Assertion: a primary objective of most organizations is to
| establish and maintain independent control over resources (such
| as humans).
|
| If true, then it follows that Amazon would reject unionization
| as the union would claim some controls over human resources.
| Amazon's interests might be in alignment with a union part of
| the time but anytime it does not the presence of a union means
| that Amazon has lost a degree of freedom for action.
| peytn wrote:
| They're doing well now, so from their point of view why take on
| the risk? Service disruptions caused by strikes would hurt
| Amazon's product offerings. Competitors may draw away their
| hardest workers, leaving Amazon with an uncompetitive,
| unfireable labor pool.
| czbond wrote:
| A thought of theirs could be drawing a correlation to
| industries which unionized and became less nimble (eg: auto
| industry). Now was it unionization or a 'fat and happy
| industry' disregarding competition. Probably a little of
| both.
|
| I know little of unions - but my impression is that the
| unions often overreach human conditions with business
| decisions. In that case, having people without business
| experience making business decisions.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Why shouldn't a grown adult stick their hand near a jet
| engine to warm it up, when they've never had any bad
| experiences with that maneuver? Corporations are full of
| brains; even if they aren't directly sensing the downsides to
| some crappy position they hold, it's often fairly trivial to
| discern the logical outcome in advance.
| [deleted]
| bigtones wrote:
| The National Labor Relations Board has no teeth at all.
|
| The NLRB does not have the authority to impose any penalties or
| punitive damages on the employer, Amazon, but it can order Amazon
| to cease and desist from the unfair labor practices and to take
| affirmative action to remedy the violation. It can also require
| back pay and reinstatement for those two employees who have been
| wrongfully terminated. And that's all it has the power to do.
|
| This ruling does not mean much at all to the world's richest
| company.
| Daho0n wrote:
| The US not only needs more people in unions but it also needs
| better unions. I can't believe how bad they mostly are. It's more
| about power and money than empowerment of the workers/members. I
| have never seen a union as bad as the better ones in the US.
| Here's hoping it will be better soon..
| iamleppert wrote:
| Activist employees are the worst. Instead of focusing on their
| job duties, these workers clearly were focused on their campaign
| to make Amazon, their employer, look bad publicly. When one
| tactic (climate justice) wasn't getting them enough attention,
| they switched their tactics to pandemic safety. It's the switch
| of agendas here that is telling as to their true motives.
|
| They both got what they deserved, and Amazon's only mistake was
| not putting them on a PIP and firing them for performance
| reasons, which would have been a lot more defensible than a
| policy violation. I'm sure in all their time spent organizing
| their job duties suffered demonstrably. Can you imagine the
| collateral damage they caused to their department in all of this?
| Imagine just trying to do your job and having to deal with these
| two on your team.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I'm confident the CEO of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory felt
| the same way about their "women" asking to not be locked inside
| in case of fire. [1]
|
| Labor activism ([edit] to be read as 'a healthy tension between
| labor and capital') is good for everyone -- in fact you're a
| beneficiary. Weekends exist because of organized labor.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| People aren't tools. Amazon doesn't by virtue of being a
| business _deserve_ apolitical drones to do its bidding.
|
| That's the entire point of unions. Employers have too much
| leverage over employees, so employees have to use activism to
| counterbalance.
|
| > these workers clearly were focused on their campaign to make
| Amazon, their employer, look bad publicly.
|
| So the question you are begging is, "Is Amazon privately bad?"
| From what I have heard about the company over the last few
| months, the answer is likely, "Yes."
|
| So shouldn't the employees who have the most leverage be the
| most politically active? How else do we reconcile the inherent
| leverage a "bad" corporation has over its employees?
|
| > Imagine just trying to do your job and having to deal with
| these two on your team.
|
| Imagine trying to _just_ do your job, but knowing it 's all for
| a corporation that is treating other employees extremely
| poorly; and fighting to keep its leverage over them. Don't you
| have a moral imperative to do something about it?
|
| Do you actually instead have a moral imperative to keep your
| head down and focus on your work? I find that notion
| outrageous.
| cambalache wrote:
| > Activist employees are the worst.
|
| Totally agree. What have all those fuckers achieved? I mean,
| besides:
|
| - The week-end
|
| - The end of child labor
|
| - Parental leave
|
| - Occupational Hazard Protection: "Although
| any group of workers could stage a wildcat strike, strong union
| organization was necessary to prevent employer retaliation
| against workers who acted aggressively to preserve their health
| and safety. Describing the findings of a coroner's jury on the
| causes of a 1914 mining accident, the United Mine Workers
| Journal caustically remarked that the jury's verdict should
| havebeen "Death was due to lack of organization" *
|
| * https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2190/NS.24.3.d
| ORGANIZED LABOR AND THE ORIGINS OF THE OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND
| HEALTH ACT
| uoaei wrote:
| You are comfortable with giving up your own inalienable human
| rights upon starting a shift, that's fine. But it seems a
| little absurd to demand that others do the same.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| Maybe at very small companies this opinion makes sense but at
| 4th largest company in the world, we absolutely need these
| people. We only have some semblance of workers' rights due to
| activists and conditions will only improve because of them.
| haolez wrote:
| Side note: if they said the opposite, we would accuse them of
| conspiring together with Amazon :)
| mullingitover wrote:
| Is there as much of an effort to unionize in other countries
| where tech salaries are markedly lower? I only seem to hear about
| efforts to organize in the US, but Europe's tech salaries are far
| lower across the board. You'd think that efforts to organize
| there would be more fruitful.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Many European tech markets are supported by robust social
| welfare systems and a culture of unionization within other
| industries that creates a sort of economic herd resistance to
| employer abuse.
| asymptosis wrote:
| In Australia there is still a reasonable amount of
| unionisation, although membership percentages dropped off
| markedly when a past government sharply curtailed union powers.
| In particular, the "right to strike" as understood by much of
| the developed world is now restricted to only certain
| circumstances; basically, we can only strike once every few
| years when negotiating for a new agreement.
|
| Once the agreement is in place, taking collective action
| against hostile management makes you a target for civil
| liability. (Which isn't to say it doesn't happen, but the
| threat of civil damages certainly has a chilling effect
| whenever the prospect of "unprotected action" is raised.)
| licnep wrote:
| Most workers in europe are unionized, but at least here in
| Italy, there is no union specific to tech workers. Tech workers
| fall either under the unions for factory workers or commerce
| workers, which have lower standards for salaries. So one reason
| salaries stay low is not so much that workers aren't unionized,
| but that a computer engineer is lumped together with an
| assembly line worker. As the european tech sector grows it
| would make sense for tech-specific unions to emerge.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Google at least has some form of worker council in Europe
| because of organizing + local law.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-04-05 23:00 UTC)