[HN Gopher] Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize
Author : jbegley
Score : 554 points
Date : 2022-04-01 16:40 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| gojomo wrote:
| [on Staten Island]
| dang wrote:
| We've reverted to the article title now, in keeping with the
| site guidelines: " _Please use the original title, unless it is
| misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Submitted title was "Amazon workers vote to unionize in
| stunning win for organized labor". NYT is known to change
| headlines so that may not have been the submitter's doing.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| When this has happened at individual Walmart stores in the past,
| the company would immediately shut down the store and everyone
| would lose their jobs. A couple years later they would build a
| new store within 20 or so miles of the old store, free of the
| union. This was obviously financially painful for Walmart, but it
| served as such a strong signal to employees to not even try to
| unionize that it must have paid for itself many times over given
| Walmart's thousands of stores. I wonder if Amazon has been taking
| notes from them on this.
| mabbo wrote:
| The capital cost to build a modern Amazon Fulfillment Center is
| absolutely staggering. I used to be part of a team that helped
| launch them.
|
| Go watch one of those "inside the Amazon warehouse" videos on
| YouTube. The box/tote sorting machines are millions of dollars
| each, and there are probably 3 big ones and maybe 2 or 3 more
| small ones. The ubiquitous conveyor belts are cheap
| individually, but there are miles of them. The robots moving
| the storage shelves are not cheap, and there are hundreds of
| them per floor, and typically 4 floors.
|
| Amazon's strategy for the last decade has been to make these
| huge capital costs to keep variable costs low. They don't just
| shut an FC down.
| hackernewds wrote:
| from an outside of perspective, these don't seem to be
| compelling reasons why Amazon might not do the same.
|
| Amazon can choose to lose a LOT of money and bear tight
| margins in the retail business (as they do already). And they
| can just move the equipment, they don't have to lose them.
|
| I think the reason Amazon might just not do it is there is a
| lot of scrutiny and discourse against Amazon is politically
| favorable, that they would embellish their brand as "evil"
| even further - whether it be real or not.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| Oh yes they do. See: Rust Belt.
|
| I think you're drastically underestimating the influence of
| unionization.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I don't think Amazon wants to shut this warehouse down, my
| rough understanding is that it's a _hugely_ important
| warehouse, serving NYC 's millions of customers.
| INTPenis wrote:
| So? Why can't it be in Long Island, New Jersey, Newark, or
| any other place around NYC?
|
| It's a sad state of affairs when corporations are allowed to
| screw citizens over.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| I'm a 46yro male from the US. When have corporations NOT
| been allowed to screwed over citizens? I think thats been
| true for the entirety of my life.
| ptudan wrote:
| Staten Island is in a pretty central location. You can go
| straight to brooklyn / queens / long island without having
| to go through the city like you would from NJ.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| I have some family members that work at Amazon, my understanding
| is that the conditions at Amazon are hard to pin down because
| some warehouses are run just fine and others are abusive. That
| said, everyone working a job has a right to a union. Whether
| there's workplace abuse going on or not.
|
| All human endeavors are corrupt, including gov't, business, and
| occasionally unions. Collective bargaining is something I wish I
| had at my disposal. Not to mention I could use it to make life
| better for my colleagues overseas. No reason they should be paid
| any or much less than anyone else. They work hard, and we should
| band together.
| seibelj wrote:
| Should also have the right to work at a company and _NOT_ have
| to join the union, and negotiate your own conditions / wages
| independently.
| djrobstep wrote:
| Why should you have the right to work at a company withing
| joining the union, but not have the right to work at the
| company without generating money for shareholders?
| educaysean wrote:
| Yup, this is just as important in my view. Tangentially
| related: one of the places my wife worked at had a union that
| "pretty much everyone joins" because they charge union fees
| from every worker regardless of whether they join the union
| or not. I don't understand how they could mandate something
| like that, and the idea didn't sit well with me. It's a
| classic case of taxation without representation!
| djrobstep wrote:
| Why is it bad to be forced to deal with the union and
| contribute to union dues, but fine to be forced to deal
| with management and contribute to shareholder profits?
| educaysean wrote:
| Why is it bad? It's bad because it takes away freedom and
| agency from the working class, and workers rights is
| something I care about.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I'm not sure I get that, really. If you care about the
| material conditions of workers today, as they are
| experiencing them, the greatest threat to their agency
| _by far_ is the asset owners they work for.
|
| There is probably an abstract, theoretical future where
| worker freedom is significantly curtailed by union power,
| I guess. But being more concerned with that hypothetical
| than with the genuine exploitation that is the baseline
| for low wage labor doesn't read as caring about worker
| rights to me.
| educaysean wrote:
| I assume you're writing this from the viewpoint that I
| consider unions to be ineffective or evil, even. I am
| not.
|
| I share your concerns regarding the owners whose powers
| often go unchecked in corporate America, and I completely
| agree that we're reaching dangerous levels.
|
| But I'm not speaking in hypotheticals. No, the anecdote I
| brought up is, in fact, the least hypothetical thing in
| this conversation thread. My wife examined the union
| pamphlet that was handed to her, decided that the union
| did not represent her needs adequately, but was told
| she'd still need to pay the union dues. This is not
| enabling her agency whatsoever, and actively made her
| conditions worse by heaping on unwanted taxes that she
| felt was also priced disproportionately. Yet she had no
| voice in this matter.
|
| Organize a union, yes - you have my full support.
| Represent whichever needs your union deems to be
| important, yup - I'm behind it. Fight the greedy owners,
| great. But don't extort money from those who made the
| active decision to not be a part of the union. This is an
| active intrusion of her agency, and a real event that I
| brought up because I didn't think think it was fair. The
| fact that workers are already being exploited by greedy
| corporations does not excuse bad union behaviors, period.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| No, I wasn't quite assuming you are anti-union, but that
| _is_ one of the most common bits of anti-union
| propaganda. There 's a true issue there but I don't think
| it's proportional to the amount of time this specific
| problem gets in these discussions.
|
| I think it comes down to what you expect from people who
| are being treated poorly. Do you only accept "pure" moral
| acts as valid? Is small unfairness to a few justified to
| prevent large unfairness to many? It seems like we have
| different answers to these questions, but I don't think
| either can be dismissed as inherently against worker
| freedom or agency.
|
| I care very very much about practical power for people
| who need it right now. I care a lot less about abstract
| freedoms that material conditions prevent people from
| being able to act on.
| educaysean wrote:
| I think we reached a good point for the conversation.
| You're correct in your assessment: I do place a lot of
| faith and values in empowering individual freedom and
| agency, so any brush with authoritarian entities usually
| leave me grumpy. I hope for humanities sake that public
| opinion of unions in America never devolve into something
| like that of HOAs.
|
| Thanks for engaging, and have a good one.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Indeed. And remember that any union that's actually good for
| workers would have no reason to oppose such a right.
| djrobstep wrote:
| Should you also have the right to work at the company and
| not be forced to contribute to shareholder profits? Surely
| any management that was actually good for workers would
| have no reason to oppose such a measure.
| cwmma wrote:
| This is a textbook example of loosing at the prisoner's
| dilemma due to selfishness. The only way you get a better
| contract then the union is if the company intentionally does
| it to spite the union.
| seibelj wrote:
| You are authoritarian - forcing people to do something that
| should be accomplished voluntarily is antithetical to
| freedom
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The baseline condition of labor, that those doing it
| _must continue to do it or they will die_ , is inherently
| much more authoritarian than this.
|
| I'm not at all arguing for an "ends justify the means"
| position here, just pointing out that the condition we're
| talking about is already a morally compromised one, and
| so people won't always have the freedom to operate purely
| in line with their moral preferences. Or yours.
|
| Because, importantly, which specific things "should be
| accomplished voluntarily" is an idealogical position we
| won't always share. There is already much coercion
| foundational to our society, maybe you can find another
| one to oppose on purely abstract moral grounds.
| djrobstep wrote:
| Why is it authoritarian and bad to be forced to interact
| with the union, but fine to be forced to interact with
| management?
| hedora wrote:
| Everyone should have the right to collective bargaining.
|
| The US is a closed shop country, which means that, once a union
| is in place, it has an effective monopoly for the workers that
| work for one of its companies.
|
| If we switched to open shop, then unions would have to compete
| for membership. Of course, the existing unions are strongly
| against this. As an end result, everyone I know that's been a
| union member in the last twenty years strongly dislikes unions.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| > The US is a closed shop country, which means that, once a
| union is in place, it has an effective monopoly for the
| workers that work for one of its companies.
|
| This is not correct:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop
|
| The US is not a closed shop country.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Well it depends on the state:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law
|
| Like a lot of things about employment, housing, medical
| insurance, etc. it varies quite a bit between states.
| Animats wrote:
| No, the US is not a closed shop country. Not since 1947. The
| US goes no further than a union shop. In a union ship, the
| employer can hire, the union can insist that the employee
| join the union, and the union must let them join.
| zjaffee wrote:
| My mom's been in a union for 30+ years and is absolutely a
| fan of it despite not always liking every decision they make.
|
| It's like hating democratic governance, not every democratic
| decision made is one you're going to agree with, but overall
| it gives you the ability to shape the future of your
| workplace in a way you'd never have the ability to otherwise.
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| Weird, of the ~15 people I know who have been in unions,
| exactly two of them have been unhappy with them.
|
| Meanwhile, of the hundreds of people I know, most of them
| have been unhappy with their employers at one point or
| another...
| jfjfkfmf wrote:
| Of the thousands of public school students I know, all know
| at least one unqualified teacher.
| relaxing wrote:
| Everyone here knows multiple unqualified coworkers.
| mountainb wrote:
| The only "workers" who come out ahead in unionized workplaces
| under current federal labor law are the lawyers.
| coliveira wrote:
| This is true in so many areas that, by itself, it doesn't
| really say anything about unions.
| Spivak wrote:
| Isn't open-shop effectively "no union" in practice? What
| threat does a union have when the company can just hire non-
| union workers?
| leetcrew wrote:
| maybe this is a naive perspective, but it seems to me that
| the union should have more to offer labor than simply
| middlemanning access to an employer. if people genuinely
| want to be in the union, it should be hard to find non-
| union workers.
| selfhifive wrote:
| That could end badly because you don't want to have too
| many gatekeepers. I should be allowed to not be part of a
| group and work as I see fit. Unions are hit-or-miss. Bad
| ones have too much petty politics and corruption and
| that's why some people genuinely don't want to be in a
| union. Enforcing unions more strictly can make the good
| better but it can also make the bad worse.
| brimble wrote:
| They also often provide legal help and various sorts of
| insurance. They'll also usually provide representation &
| assistance for workers who come into conflict with
| management, which can be _super_ important when it comes
| to enforcing safety standards, contract terms (e.g.
| working conditions, rules around time-off requests), and
| even legal requirements.
|
| The trouble with completely optional membership is that
| it introduces the good ol' Free Rider Problem, bane of
| many an attempt to make things better without forcing
| anyone to do anything.
| ufmace wrote:
| I'd say a proper union is efficient and useful enough that
| employees who are free to choose whether to join or not
| mostly choose to join of their own free will. If you have
| to force people to join, then maybe it's not actually that
| great. Or alternatively, it has less incentive to stay
| efficient and useful and police itself if everyone is
| forced to join.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Unions often train their members and self-enforce safety
| standards. Both of these things provide a higher quality
| labor pool for the employer.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| Is that relevant in our race-to-the-bottom world where
| every last corner is cut? I am strongly pro-union, but I
| don't actually see corps seeing your point as a positive.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| Training members for an unskilled job doesn't really
| improve the value delivered by that worker. You can see
| why employers would not see that as a benefit of a union.
| Skilled jobs like the trades are already differentiated
| based on skill and reputation through the contract
| bidding process.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Once you acknowledge that unions are useless and bad, yes,
| this is correct. If unions were actually beneficial to
| workers, then companies would have a very hard time hiring
| non-union workers.
| [deleted]
| Spivak wrote:
| This makes zero sense, you're drawing huge conclusions
| based on a prisoner's dilemma situation. Of course it's
| beneficial to be a defector, you get all the benefit but
| none of the cost. Once no one is unionized at all or it's
| so small to not have any pull the benefit disappears.
|
| It's like saying that taxes are useless because given the
| choice people would opt-out if they could, ignoring the
| consequences of if everyone did that.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| There's a difference between "I don't want to join
| because I don't want to pay these dues (and I still get
| all the benefits)" and "I don't want to join because I
| disagree with them and they don't represent me, and I
| don't want them to purport to speak for me (and thus I
| also don't want to pay them to do so)".
|
| The former is indeed a prisoner's dilemma. The latter is
| a valid complaint and an entirely valid thing to want.
| And the only answer I've ever seen given is "well then
| get involved and try to steer it in a direction you care
| about", with no allowance for people who don't agree with
| the direction it has taken and don't want to spend their
| whole career struggling (likely unsuccessfully) to change
| it.
|
| I think collective bargaining is a powerful and useful
| tool, that in isolation, more people would likely
| support. I think it's unfortunate that that tool has lost
| a lot of its power, in part because it comes along with
| structures and assumptions that many people do not share.
|
| As one of _many_ examples: people often complain that a
| union shop values duration of tenure more than experience
| or skill, and devalues the latter because it 's easy to
| objectively measure duration of tenure. I've seen people
| say "well, if you form a union, it doesn't have to work
| that way"; that's always spoken from the point of view of
| the people who put together or maintain the union. But
| that doesn't do any good if you weren't involved with the
| initial setup, and you're just faced with how it
| currently works. If you push for something else, you're
| tilting at a very large windmill. And it's valid for
| someone to say "I'd like to have collective bargaining,
| but if it's going to do something tenure-based then on
| balance I'd rather reject it".
|
| The ability to individually choose to join or not isn't
| just a simple prisoner's dilemma where defecting is a
| loss; it's also something that gives _actual teeth_ to a
| requirement to be representative of employees, if an
| employee believes they 'd be better off with no
| representation other than themselves than they would with
| the current representation. That would have to be a
| pretty serious level of failure, if an employee believes
| that membership has negative value to them.
|
| Conversely, it might also resolve the prisoner's dilemma
| problem if negotiated benefits were tied to union
| membership. While some negotiated benefits (e.g. working
| conditions) are inherently available to everyone, others
| (e.g. policies, vacation time, pay structure) may be such
| that they could be offered to those who are a member of
| the organization that bargained for them.
| josephcsible wrote:
| How is it a prisoner's dilemma? Why would a union give
| its benefits to someone who didn't join?
| Spivak wrote:
| Because not all the benefits of membership are
| excludable. Unions that hold employers accountable to
| following labor laws and safety regulations benefit all
| employees, same with annual raises, removing abusive
| managers, better benefits, overtime pay [1], etc. etc.
| Some benefits are excludable for sure, a union isn't
| going to fight a non-members wrongful firing case.
|
| [1] Some unions manage to get payroll benefits for just
| union workers but it's vanishingly rare because it just
| pushes workers to the union if they don't give it to
| everyone.
| jfjfkfmf wrote:
| "Some benefits are excludable for sure, a union isn't
| going to fight a non-members wrongful firing case."
|
| This is absolutely false. These are just a few anecdotes
| but there are several
|
| "An arbitrator in 2007 found that teacher Alexis Grullon
| had victimized young girls with repeated hugging,
| "incidental though not accidental contact with one
| student's breast" and "sexually suggestive remarks." The
| teacher had denied all these charges. In the end the
| arbitrator found him "unrepentant," yet punished him with
| only a six-month suspension."
|
| "In 2016 and 2017, Poway Unified School District
| officials found that Westview High School coaches Derek
| Peterson and Tim Medlock sent inappropriate text messages
| to underage students. Those officials found that they
| violated school policy and in response, issued each of
| them warnings. Both men continue to teach at Westview
| High."
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443437504577
| 547...
|
| https://voiceofsandiego.org/2019/08/15/how-do-
| misbehaving-te...
| brimble wrote:
| Are either of these cases of unions aiding a non-member,
| which is the topic of the sentence you quoted? I can't
| read all of the first one--which is an opinion piece
| anyway, as is the second--but the second doesn't seem to
| be about that.
|
| At any rate, this, from your second link, is insightful:
|
| > For Medlock and Peterson, it wasn't necessarily the
| union that protected them. It was the district, which
| said they've been disciplined enough.
|
| You wouldn't believe what districts cover up or ignore,
| even if the union's not a factor. It's routine.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Why is a union necessary to enforce labor laws and safety
| regulations? Can't individual employees report such
| violations to the government even in non-union shops?
| brimble wrote:
| It's much riskier and costlier for employees to report
| that kind of thing, in a non-union shop.
|
| Union shop, if you're sure what you've been asked to do
| is a violation of rules, you tell your boss no, then to
| fuck off if they try to pressure you, and you'll be
| totally fine. If you're _not_ sure if something 's OK,
| you have the union as a resource to check with, not just
| other managers working for the company (whose interests
| may not be aligned with yours, and even asking questions
| might be risky).
|
| Non-union shop... good luck with that. You can go to
| regulators, but it's more effort, the process for doing
| so is something you'll have to figure out yourself, and
| it's a case where even if you're right you can end up
| having a rough few _months_ or even _years_ getting it
| all sorted out and being fairly compensated for any e.g.
| retaliation that happened.
|
| Ideally, you want reporting problems of this sort to have
| a low and consistent cost for the person reporting it,
| not a high and very uncertain cost. If you want effective
| enforcement, that is.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| In what way do you believe unions are useless and bad?
| That's like saying "companies are useless and bad" - some
| companies may be useless and bad, but you'd need to show
| an essential reason why the majority must end up that
| way.
|
| FWIW, I think you're wrong and that unions are good at
| improving worker conditions and pay, and that's why
| companies engage in aggressive union-busting and anti-
| union propaganda to prevent unionisation and broadly keep
| union membership down.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Unions are definitely bad for companies, but the fact
| that companies don't want them doesn't automatically mean
| that they're good for workers. They're a parasitic drain
| that's bad for both.
|
| Also, with the sole exception of Japanese bus drivers,
| every union I know of that's ever gone on strike has, in
| doing so, used innocent third parties as collateral
| damage.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Are the unions once damaging people or is it the
| companies that do not have sufficient contingencies when
| their employers take collective action? I don't think it
| is unreasonable to expect them to take account potential
| issues with their employees. After all it is a free
| market and they could source services from somewhere else
| during these times.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| You can claim they're a drain on both all you want, but
| you're just stating an unsubstantiated opinion that flies
| in the face of reason. Why would anybody join (and stay
| in) a union if they're unequivocally bad for everyone?
|
| Are strikers holding people hostage? Or are they just
| refusing to do their jobs?
| jfjfkfmf wrote:
| If Walmart closes its union store, which it has done, how
| is that not bad for everyone?
| beaconstudios wrote:
| That's not unions being bad, that's Walmart being bad.
| brimble wrote:
| Do you think a government that was very popular and that
| most citizens thought was pretty damn good, would have
| any trouble if it made paying taxes optional?
| kmonsen wrote:
| I was a union rep when working in Norway, I guess it was
| open-shop since we had two different unions. In practice we
| cooperated a lot, and the largest benefit was the it gave
| us access to lawyers that could answer questions quickly so
| the members were more willing to push back on unreasonable
| requests. We were never close to going to a lawsuit against
| the company, it was more "hey this is breaking the law, how
| do we work together to fix it".
| oblio wrote:
| > We were never close to going to a lawsuit against the
| company, it was more "hey this is breaking the law, how
| do we work together to fix it".
|
| Yeah, but the article is about the US, were they invented
| the Pinkertons instead of addressing employee grievances
| :-)
| ch4s3 wrote:
| That's hardly unique or even the night of 19th/20th
| century anti-Union violence.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This is a text-book example of being a victim of your own
| success. People have had the perks of union membership for so
| long, that they no long attribute them to the union. All they
| see are the costs of the union.
|
| Also, I feel like it's safe to assume that you don't know any
| teachers or police officers? Both those groups seem to very
| much support their unions.
| jedberg wrote:
| Most teachers I know, and I know a lot of them, don't
| really like their union because their union is ineffective.
| If it actually worked for them, they'd be making wages
| commensurate with their required education levels.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Wages are typically one of many priorities for a union.
|
| I know a couple teachers who tried the charter school
| thing and discovered non-union teaching has its own
| issues.
| brimble wrote:
| Non-elite private schools often have worse comp and/or
| working conditions than public schools in the same area.
| Which is surprising to some who assume "private school =
| big bucks", but there are lots of charter schools or
| religious private schools (which is most private schools,
| AFAIK) where that's _definitely_ not the case.
| jessaustin wrote:
| When I lived in Los Angeles, a friend who taught at an
| "elite" private school also reported worse compensation
| than at comparable public schools.
| brimble wrote:
| This seems to vary a ton state-by-state or even city-by-
| city. I can confirm that in my (red, midwestern) state
| the teachers union is totally fucking worthless. NEA's a
| little better, but neither is interested in actually
| working against things like pay freezes that are never
| undone, violations of contracts, et c. Not here, anyway.
| coolso wrote:
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Any evidence of anything you just said?
| coolso wrote:
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > "low pay" despite having 3 months vacation every year
|
| My kids' teachers get in as early as 5am, and I'm
| frequently getting emails and grade notifications from
| them as late as 9pm. They're not working anything close
| to 40 hour weeks during the school year.
|
| > despite other workers in other industries going to work
| every day
|
| This seems like an argument _for_ unions in those other
| industries.
|
| > Lest we forget the studies showing the harm to society,
| especially young males, that comes about from them being
| brought up in a "progressive" matriarchal system that in
| many areas teaches them that they're bad.
|
| Ah, yes, "the studies". A great citation.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| It's strange that you appear to think opinions don't need
| a factual basis. You really should research what you are
| saying as the facts on the ground are way different then
| you appear to think they are.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| Eh, I think this ends up being a product of local school
| funding, at least in most smaller size school districts
| (i.e. not the size of LAUSD). I know my high school paid
| (and still pays now, a decade later) their teachers
| substantially more than the next district over. Most of
| the tenured teachers made 120k+. I don't think that was
| because they had a better union but because the school
| district made a conscious choice to try to be the best
| and to match private schools in quality. It all starts
| and ends with local parents willing to make a sacrifice
| in their quality of life to fund schools. Many cities
| around where I lived were much wealthier (higher home
| values by 50-100%, many high paying employers) but had
| much worse schools.
| VictorPath wrote:
| The stockholders and board of a company have an effective
| monopoly on workers as well. Why not just have an open
| company where workers can choose their management in the
| circumstances in which their surplus labor time is being
| expropriated?
| jjulius wrote:
| >As an end result, everyone I know that's been a union member
| in the last twenty years strongly dislikes unions.
|
| Hi! Union member from ~2005-2011. Appreciated being in mine
| and strongly support a more unionized workforce.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why the end date to your membership? No longer in that
| field of work?
| jjulius wrote:
| That's a bingo!
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > That said, everyone working a job has a right to a union.
|
| Note for interest that this is not literally true. Some people
| work in jobs where unionisation is illegal, or where
| unionisation is legal but union action is illegal.
| hbrav wrote:
| It could be a sentiment rather than a statement of legal
| fact. Like "everyone has the right to free speech,
| healthcare, and three hot meals a day".
| beastman82 wrote:
| Everyone loves unions, somehow they overlook the outrageous power
| of police unions to keep terrible people in their ranks. Also
| Union actions against nonunion jobs are borderline criminal most
| of the time.
| tyrfing wrote:
| In my opinion, the big problem is that police unions have a
| clear goal: protect their members and advocate for their
| interests, like most unions. The people on the other side are
| much more ambivalent and don't really care what happens; it's
| the faceless appointed bureaucracy spending taxpayer money,
| insulated from accountability.
|
| This causes issues in a situation like serious misconduct,
| where it's entirely reasonable to fire the individual. However,
| a union will have strong grounds to make sure those policies
| are enforced fairly - and they simply aren't, it'll be allowed
| to slide if it isn't in the headlines. The problem isn't that
| it happened, it's that it ended up in the news!
|
| As for whether it's because police management is all former
| union, they're just collecting a paycheck, or what - I'm not
| sure. But where you see the power of police unions, I see the
| incompetence of police management. If that's intractable, I do
| agree that police unions are bad because there's no opposition.
|
| In comparison, a big company typically maintains a single goal
| - to make money. There will be exceptions of course, but as a
| whole, it's a coherent goal and things will be done at all
| levels to support it. There are the same sorts of issues with
| minor misconduct, since it's irrelevant to making money, but
| big issues are typically bad for business and thus there is
| strong motivation to enforce rules like "don't choke people" or
| "don't steal stuff".
| dgb23 wrote:
| More generally unions can be one-sided in a sense.
|
| They try to make up for the lack of responsibility of
| corporations towards their workers, which is important (keeps
| them in check), but then there is the issue of bureaucratic
| bloat and power concentration within unions (organizers,
| lawyers etc.) so they can become detached from the actual
| workers and their trade. At the same time there are highly
| skilled workers with high work ethic who benefit less from
| unions than their peers.
|
| In my opinion a an ideal union is organized bottom up. Lawyers
| and organizers are there to support union workers and most
| importantly don't create a hierarchical structure where all
| negotiations happen at the top. Secondly a union should strive
| for the highest quality and work ethic among their workers. One
| should be proud to be part of one and have values and
| principles to strive for.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > they overlook the outrageous power of police unions to keep
| terrible people in their ranks
|
| No, this is exactly what police unions should be doing. My
| problem is when elected officials and judges kiss their asses
| and defer to them on the subjects of public safety and civil
| rights.
|
| I'm stunned by how much weight public officials and journalists
| give to the opinions of police about the causes of crime, the
| motivations of the people who commit them, and the punishments
| that criminals deserve. Who cares what they think about the
| justice system? Tell me about hitting people with sticks,
| directing traffic, or leaving the military with no real job
| prospects.
|
| But aside from that, police are often underpaid and overworked,
| have to deal with workplace safety and harassment, not given
| anonymous channels to complain, etc. just like everybody who
| works. They need unions to fight for those things. Police
| unions are awful and racist because the police are awful and
| racist. The union _should_ be working for them, not for racial
| justice. If you want police unions to be less racist, hire
| fewer racist police, and don 't demand that they operate in a
| racist manner.
|
| When I hear people complain about public unions, I hear people
| that are disapproving of unions _when they 're the ones in the
| position of employer._ It's basically being pro-union except
| for the one at the business you own, who are clearly just
| outside agitators with an evil agenda making trouble and trying
| to destroy your family.
|
| It's common, though. Center-left media outlets hate unions in
| their newsrooms as much as they love unions at e.g. Amazon.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >Everyone loves unions, somehow they overlook the outrageous
| power of police unions to keep terrible people in their ranks.
|
| Unions represent their members' interests, that's the entire
| point of unions. It says more about the entire profession of
| policing (i.e. that there are so many terrible officers that
| the not-terrible ones can't do anything about them) than it
| does about unions, to be honest.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| How would you purpose that the not-terrible officers do
| something about the terrible officers? What should the great
| and inspiring teachers do about the bad teachers?
| Symbiote wrote:
| The union's members could agree to set appropriate
| boundaries, e.g. not defending staff who break the law.
|
| There are two unions representing metro train drivers in
| London, and I have little respect for RMT since they've
| gone on strike to defend a driver who was sacked for
| turning up drunk to work[1]. The other union (ASLEF) seems
| more reasonable.
|
| When an issue is important to both unions (e.g. pay for
| nighttime services) they wield considerable power. If only
| RMT strike, there's significant disruption but trains still
| run.
|
| [1] https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-
| releases/2015/februa... / https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
| news/2015/mar/07/london-under...
| simulate-me wrote:
| Marginalize them? Give them the unimportant tasks and
| classes. Put them in positions that limit harm.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Assigning tasks and classes is the job of management, not
| the fellow union workers. Often, management is not
| allowed to be in the union as that would be a conflict of
| interest.
| kooshball wrote:
| I would argue private company unions are fundamentally
| different from public unions like police and teachers whose
| roles are guaranteed by law.
| qorrect wrote:
| Don't forget the pervasive corruption and theft from those
| union bosses too.
| beastman82 wrote:
| I didn't want to bloat it, but yes this is what comes
| naturally from such a powerful position and has effectively
| no oversight from Democratic governments
| legitster wrote:
| Public sector unions are a different beast.
|
| The economic argument for unions is that they provide a
| counterweight towards corporate monopoly powers. But in a
| public setting, the opposition are voters and taxpayers.
|
| We as voters can say we want schools to re-open or police to be
| held accountable for their actions, and they can collectively
| bargain against our wishes. So, by their nature public sector
| unions are _vaguely_ anti-democratic.
| JackFr wrote:
| > So, by their nature public sector unions are vaguely anti-
| democratic.
|
| Consider that the public sector unions can donate to the
| political campaigns of the politicians they are at the
| bargaining table with and it becomes a little less vague.
| krastanov wrote:
| I am surprised you say this. Both in my social bubble and all
| over online forums like reddit I see attitudes like "unions are
| good, except for police unions which need to be destroyed".
| [deleted]
| equality wrote:
| This is fantastic news. Well done, Amazon employees! I'm glad to
| see that Amazon's anti-union propaganda was taken for the
| nonsense that it is.
|
| Hopefully the employees of other Amazon warehouses will be
| inspired to do the same, after this win for workers.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Their software engineers should, too. You don't actually have
| to get pipped, get pinged 24/7, and be ground to dust and
| thrown away to be a successful software engineer.
| equality wrote:
| I very much agree. Every worker should unionize, for the good
| of us all. Far too much power has been ceded to companies
| pushing for abusive working practices, that are now largely
| culturally normalized.
| dymk wrote:
| Well, no, I can bargain individually better than a group
| could try to on my behalf.
| munk-a wrote:
| That's awesome - I'm a skilled laborer who isn't really
| comfortable bargaining on my own behalf. Do you mind
| sharing your people skills while I share my engineering
| skills so that we can both get a better outcome overall?
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| So you can singlehandedly get a corporation to improve
| their working conditions? That's incredible
| dymk wrote:
| The company caters to _me_, not the other way around.
| Welcome to being in a high-demand job.
| hnaccount141 wrote:
| The tech job market is favorable for workers for now.
| That will most likely not always be the case.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Tech is not the only field that people have jobs in.
| Consider the Amazon warehouse workers that just unionized
| which is the topic of this article
| MartinCron wrote:
| I guess that's good if you only care about you?
| dymk wrote:
| Correct. I don't care that other people don't learn to
| bargain their own highly paid, highly in-demand jobs to
| be even better.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| throwaway684936 wrote:
| Your mistake is thinking a large corporation gives a
| single flying fuck about you as an individual employee
| (who's proven themselves rowdy by trying to bargain).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _mistake is thinking a large corporation gives a single
| flying fuck about you as an individual employee_
|
| You aren't negotiating against the corporation. You're
| negotiating against the people who determine your
| compensation. (This is a seemingly-minor, oft-overlooked
| and enormously-important distinction.)
|
| Many on this forum have leverage over those people. (Some
| over the corporation.) For those people, unionization
| could be a net negative. Recognizing that doesn't mean
| the idea isn't worth pursuing.
| [deleted]
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Every single time I put a notice in a large corporation,
| they tried to bargain with me to stop me from quitting,
| offering raises and improved working condition, eg.
| projects with more leadership roles. So no, they do care
| in some industries, especially when the cost of hiring a
| single worker is higher than Amazon warehouse workers
| entire yearly pay.
| bjourne wrote:
| So every time you quit you found out that you were paid
| far less than what your labor was worth...
| xyzzyz wrote:
| No, it's the company that found that, I already knew that
| by that point.
| zjaffee wrote:
| There are certainly areas where this isn't true in the
| tech industry. It's very rare that an engineer can just
| say that they will no longer be willing to do on call
| work for example while staying on a team that maintains
| an online service. You can always ask for more money, but
| that's not everything that would be on a negotiating
| table.
| hmfrh wrote:
| You probably think that you do, but in reality you don't.
|
| Large corporations have been proven to fix wages for tech
| workers[1]. There's literally no way that you could have
| any possible way of bargaining your way around that as a
| single person.
|
| [1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2014/04/24/306592297...
| dymk wrote:
| Looks like the US government "bargained" for me there,
| without the need for a union.
| striking wrote:
| Sure, but there's no guarantee they'll do that in every
| case or at every employer. Here there was a smoking gun,
| so the government could easily act on it; do you think
| that'd be the case for everyone in our field?
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>There's literally no way that you could have any
| possible way of bargaining your way around that as a
| single person.
|
| Actually you do, by walking across the street and getting
| a big fat raise to join a different company. That is one
| of many reasons engineers by and large don't feel a need
| to have someone else bargain for them - they negotiate
| with their feet.
| smachiz wrote:
| If you clicked the Parent's link, you would have seen it
| was discussing the anti-poaching collusion / wage fixing
| that was going on.
|
| You couldn't walk across the street, because the company
| across the street agreed not to hire employees from the
| other company across the street.
|
| The free market isn't always free.
| beastman82 wrote:
| If you clicked the parents link you would have seen that
| it involved 2 companies, not the market itself
| slg wrote:
| Unions of professional athletes are some of the most
| successful unions in the US. These are people that are
| highly paid and have very specific skills that can't
| easily be replaced. These are people who already spend as
| much as 15% or 20% of their salary paying others to
| negotiate on their personal behalf. Yet these athletes
| still want a union to represent them as a collective
| class.
|
| I don't know if the general software developer really
| _needs_ a union. Some niches certainly do. Game
| developers are the obvious example of a group of workers
| who are treated worse than people with comparable skills
| who do comparable work in other industries. But the idea
| that we don 't need a union because we are already paid
| well, we are skilled, or we can negotiate for ourselves
| is naive. Anytime an industry is as wildly profitable as
| the tech industry is, workers can benefit from a union.
| peanuty1 wrote:
| Without the NBA union, players like Labron James would
| make much more than they do today.
| zer0-c00l wrote:
| Unless you are at the top echelon of ICs at your org
| (principal engineer or something equivalent), I guarantee
| you that you are viewed by your organization as nothing
| more than a replaceable "resource". To think otherwise is
| inexperience, or delusion. If you ever get the
| opportunity to observe what goes on during org-wide
| planning or engineer leveling, it'll be a bit of a wake
| up call when you see how little anyone cares about you as
| an individual.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Unions are helpful in two scenarios:
|
| 1) When workers want systemic reform of an organization.
|
| 2) When workers are more-or-less interchangeable.
|
| Software engineers aren't interchangeable at all compared
| to a factory worker, which is why they have such great
| individual bargaining power and why (historically) they
| don't really feel a huge need for a union to represent
| them. Today, software workers have a bit more interest in
| unionizing because they want to change their
| organization's high-level goals (e.g. environmental
| responsibility, not making tools for warfare, hiring
| diversity, etc).
|
| But both scenarios apply to Amazon warehouse workers, and
| union representation would almost certainly be a massive
| benefit for them.
| Jiejeing wrote:
| Saying that software engineers are not interchangeable is
| being delusional. We have some bargaining power because
| this is a skilled office job where the demands outweighs
| the supply and our added value to the business is many
| times what we get paid. But many SWE job hob every two
| years or so at best, and they absolutely get replaced
| without a second thought.
| amrocha wrote:
| Developers are absolutely interchangeable. If they
| weren't then job hopping every 2 years wouldn't be the
| optimal career strategy.
| rajin444 wrote:
| The responses you got are borderline religious. Pro union
| people need to acknowledge and be up front about the cons
| of a union. It's just another entity with power over a
| group of people and suffers from the same pros and cons.
| It's not a panacea.
|
| Deriding legitimate concerns is not how you convince
| people, and makes it look like you have an agenda.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Convincing staunch anti union folks that a union would
| help them is like trying to convince a Southern Baptist
| god doesn't exist. You don't bother, you organize folks
| who recognize the benefit and understand the tradeoffs,
| people who don't think of them as individual
| exceptionalists.
|
| Wanting better pay and benefits for workers _is_ an
| agenda, and if making that clear isn 't enough (even
| after accounting for a cons of collective bargaining,
| union costs, etc), -\\_(tsu)_/-.
| dymk wrote:
| You'd be mistaken to think I'm some staunch anti-union
| person - I think it's great that these warehouse workers
| unionized! I think the benefits far outweigh the cons for
| them.
|
| Difference between them and myself is, we work completely
| different jobs, in completely different markets, with
| completely different incentives.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| But it's not just about yourself; it's about your
| colleagues and others in the same industry. Your
| incentives are not their incentives, and their work
| experience is not your work experience. Important points
| to remember imho about why people might desire collective
| bargaining in order to have better pay and working
| conditions. Setting pay aside for a moment (which is
| admittedly a complex topic in this context), not everyone
| has the ability, agency, or leverage to obtain better
| working conditions (without collective bargaining).
| jimbob45 wrote:
| "They're too stupid to know what they want so I have to
| lie about facts to them."
|
| Why is that an acceptable strategy for your side but not
| the other side? Could it be that you might both have
| valid viewpoints?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You misunderstand my comment perhaps, my apologies if I
| poorly communicated the idea. I never suggested lying to
| staunch anti union folks, but to ignore them out of
| effort efficiency. If they believe their viewpoint is
| valid, the effort to persuade is better spent elsewhere.
| Majorities win, simple as that (as demonstrated by this
| unionization vote, as well as those ongoing at Starbucks
| locations).
| changoplatanero wrote:
| I wouldn't mind for my pro-union co-workers to form a
| union but the part I hate is that they have the power to
| force me to pay their organization which I don't support
| and they also have the power to negotiate my employment
| contract without my consent.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| I will fight tooth and nail to keep our industry from
| unionizing. One can simply look at the public school system
| and how well it performs with one of the strongest unions in
| the country. You don't have well paid teachers (except those
| who have been teaching for a long time, at the detriment to
| new teachers),you don't serve the children well and you now
| have to navigate both a career and politics of a union.
|
| Unions benefit those who play the social game more so the job
| requirements, as it allows for an alternative power structure
| to be climbed.
|
| Those are the exact people I love being able to avoid in the
| software field.
| Symbiote wrote:
| There are IT/engineering/developer unions in Europe. Their
| popularity varies between countries and between sectors.
|
| However, "union shops" or "closed shops" don't exist, so
| the situation isn't directly comparable to the USA.
| 8note wrote:
| My understanding of the public school system is that
| administrators and football takes up all the money, and the
| government will forcefully end teachers strikes.
|
| The teachers union is probably the only thing keeping
| public schools running in a country where a political party
| explicitly wants them to fail and will sabotage them for
| political gain
| jfjfkfmf wrote:
| Why can private schools run perfectly fine without
| unions?
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| You think in rich states (like california) with liberal,
| democratic legislation and liberal governors that the
| political parties are the ones keeping schools from being
| effective?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| If you look at CA, teachers aren't getting rich, but
| they're making decent wages at 9 months a year, with some
| fairly nice benefits depending on the size of the district
| and level they teach. We need to raise some of these
| numbers, but I suspect smaller schools are in more remote
| areas of California where it is certainly cheaper to live
| than say SF, or LA.
|
| https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.asp
|
| "The average salary of public school teachers in 2019-20
| for the State of California was $84,531."
|
| That averages out to be about 58 dollars an hour if we
| assume the teacher works 9 months out of the year with 20
| working days per month or 180 days a year. This only
| includes summer, not winter breaks or spring break or other
| observed holidays, which is quite a few. Again, not a great
| number but certainly better than plenty of other folks.
| matt_wilson_206 wrote:
| It looks like you used 8 hours per working day in your
| calculations? Anecdotally, I haven't encountered a
| teacher who does a flat 40hrs a week. Also, summer break
| is only 2 months in LAUSD, not sure of the smaller
| districts.
| striking wrote:
| Have you worked somewhere (big enough to no longer support
| a flat hierarchy) where there were no office politics or
| social games? I don't think unions are the cause of that.
| wowokay wrote:
| Yes. Office politics can exist anywhere, the problem is
| people. But unions can cause more of it, just like
| Diversity & Inclusion, or minority incentive programs.
| The point is things get in the way of the work.
| verall wrote:
| > One can simply look at the public school system and how
| well it performs with one of the strongest unions in the
| country.
|
| Except that states that outlaw teacher's unions have lower
| teacher pay and worse average scores/outcomes. They're
| totally comparable too, public daycare _ahem_ school and
| software engineering.
| jfjfkfmf wrote:
| Non union private schools have higher test scores than
| union public schools in the same states
| thebigman433 wrote:
| That seems like an incredibly misleading comparison at
| best. There are about a million other variables factoring
| into that, obviously including the money spent per kid,
| and the background of the people attending the school.
| munk-a wrote:
| Private vs. public school comparison introduces a lot of
| compounding variables including skirting the requirement
| to adhere to the same teaching standards - a lot of
| private schools embed either religious or political
| ideologies into their teaching which drives private
| interest groups who share those interests to financially
| underwrite them.
|
| Sadly due to how strange private education in the US can
| be I don't think any comparisons between private and
| public education are really fair.
| munk-a wrote:
| Instead of looking at the US teachers union I'd really
| suggest you look at the Canadian teachers union -
| culturally we're almost identical and both countries have a
| strong general anti-union sentiment. But, IMO, due to the
| red scare being much more subdued in Canada our unions
| haven't been stripped down to the bare minimum.
| wowokay wrote:
| 1000% agree. Unions promote individual rights at the
| expense of the customer, product, and company. In reality
| they facilitate corruption and union rights over individual
| rights.
|
| I understand everyone wants to feel valued at their
| company, but value should be evaluated on merit and unions
| essentially lower the bar to keep more people paying dues
| and less product/service running efficiently. WE ALL HAVE
| THE OPTION TO FIND A BETTER JOB!
|
| The automotive industry is a great example of how unions
| made factory operating conditions worse. Employees had
| piece rates and controlled their time and pay. I.E. get 100
| parts done in 4 hours get paid the same as someone who
| takes 8 hours to make 100 parts. Then unions stepped in,
| now everyone works 8 hours, with half the work force
| slacking to fill the time.
| briansteffens wrote:
| > WE ALL HAVE THE OPTION TO FIND A BETTER JOB!
|
| For now most of us in this industry do. This is not a
| long term solution to anything.
|
| > Unions promote individual rights at the expense of the
| customer, product, and company.
|
| Individual rights? It's collective bargaining of workers,
| no?
| boplicity wrote:
| I have to strongly disagree with this assessment,for a
| simple reason: There are _many_ different public school
| organizations, not just one, with a vast array of outcomes
| among each organization. Sure, there certainly are some bad
| school systems, but it is very hard to generalize over such
| a massive system.
|
| The total salary of all of the public school teachers in
| the US is probably well over $150 billion. That's the
| market cap of many "huge" companies.
|
| Just saying -- it's easy to criticize when you're
| overgeneralizing a huge dataset based on one subset of that
| dataset.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| My experience with private schools where the teachers
| aren't unionized suggests the non-unionized situation can
| be even more fraught. Chaotic, manipulative principals,
| skeevy board members, low pay in exchange for "prestige",
| etc.
| jfjfkfmf wrote:
| My experience with public schools includes sexual abusers
| keeping their jobs due to union protection.
| abhiyerra wrote:
| My direct experience is the more tenured teachers not
| showing up at all. Spent a significant amount of my high
| school roaming the halls because some of the teachers
| didn't show up. This was opposed to the younger teachers
| who cared and put the work in, but also had second jobs,
| etc.
| javert wrote:
| HN is not a political forum. I get that we like to talk
| politics here, and that's all well and good. But having someone
| make a _brand new account_ to make a _political opinion post_
| that has _little to no intellectual content_ seems like it
| should be unwelcome.
| judge2020 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404
|
| > Why don't we have some politics but discuss it in
| thoughtful ways? Well, that's exactly what the HN guidelines
| call for, but it's insufficient to stop people from flaming
| each other when political conflicts activate the primitive
| brain. Under such conditions, we become tribal creatures, not
| intellectually curious ones. We can't be both at the same
| time.
|
| > A community like HN deteriorates when new developments
| dilute or poison what it originally stood for. We don't want
| that to happen, so let's all get clear on what this site is
| for. What Hacker News is: a place for stories that gratify
| intellectual curiosity and civil, substantive comments. What
| it is not: a political, ideological, national, racial, or
| religious battlefield.
| javert wrote:
| Seems like you are agreeing with me?
| hyperbovine wrote:
| Well, cast a downvote then.
| zenexer wrote:
| Given that many people are likely putting their jobs on the
| line by voicing support for unions, it's unfair to forbid new
| accounts from taking place in these discussions.
| javert wrote:
| I don't think the conclusion you reach follows from the
| premises.
|
| There is unfairness in the world. That does not mean that
| HN is obligated to be a soapbox for all unfairness.
|
| Anyway, comments on HN should be intellectually
| substantive. That one was not.
|
| Yes, we should discuss this on HN. No, we should not have
| brand new accounts posting cheap opinion comments that are
| devoid of intellectual content.
| zenexer wrote:
| Not every comment needs to be intellectually substantive.
| It's okay to be human and express some excitement now and
| then.
| javert wrote:
| The problem is that political comments lead to unpleasant
| flame wars. Sure, people can express excitement. I didn't
| speak against that. You're doing a bait and switch by
| presenting it that way. Expressing excitement is very
| different than starting a political flame war.
|
| Instead of having new accounts post empty pro-union
| comments and the anti-union people having to argue
| against them, it's better if we just not talking about
| that--- _unless it 's an intellectually substantive
| conversation_, in which case it's fine.
|
| That's all I'm asking---I know it's too much for you to
| give.
| cs702 wrote:
| A single successful effort of unionization at an Amazon facility
| is more than symbolic: It will encourage -- and serve as a
| blueprint for -- employees at other Amazon facilities to do the
| same. Moreover, it will motivate employees at other large
| companies to try. This has been brewing for a while.
|
| It's possible we'll see a generational wave of unionization.
| tyrfing wrote:
| I'd say this is partly demographic/generation shifts, unions
| have extremely strong support among younger age groups and this
| is just one of the first visible results. Teamsters, to name
| one union, just had leadership change over and will be taking a
| much more aggressive posture going forward, and I don't think
| that's a unique story.
| baccaratclub wrote:
| I totally agree with you, Amazon is like that.
|
| https://www.google.com/
| JustLurking2022 wrote:
| I predict the Staten Island warehouse will soon be closed due
| to redundancy as part of a strategic rebalancing of their
| logistics operations due to changing consumer demand. Someone
| at Amazon is probably already touring all the warehouse sites
| in Jersey. Doubt they accept this loss.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I'm having a hard time seeing that work for them. Amazon's
| tactics here fundamentally depend on there being an
| effectively inexhaustible pool of talent elsewhere that can
| be used to threaten any given store that considers
| unionizing, combined with the plausible threat of moving to
| get non union labor. Close up shop, hire non-union labor
| elsewhere, etc.
|
| That might have been true of Walmart stores, which are
| relatively small and cheap to build, but I do not think it's
| true for Amazon. The cost of relocating a warehouse is high,
| the number of places they can put a replacement warehouse is
| low, and the risk of another unionization push is non-
| trivial. Especially since Amazon is already beginning to hit
| head count issues; treating people as disposable drones
| doesn't work when you need so many workers in a hot job
| market. They are probably making their unionization problems
| worse due to the way they view and treat their warehouse
| workers.
|
| To be clear, I think they'll try. What we're seeing from
| Amazon is a real inability to react and innovate to new labor
| markets. I just don't think it'll work out as well for them
| as it did for say, Walmart.
| alexk307 wrote:
| > It's possible we'll see a generational wave of unionization.
|
| One can only hope. Collective bargaining is the most powerful
| tool to dismantle income inequality and corporate greed.
| nxm wrote:
| Or persistent labor strikes and disruptions. See France
| akhmatova wrote:
| Yup, that's exactly what this potential success story means.
|
| And is precisely why Amazon fought so fiercely (and
| underhandedly) to derail a similar effort in Alabama around
| this time last year.
| jasode wrote:
| _> unionization at an Amazon facility is more than symbolic: It
| will encourage -- and serve as a blueprint for -- employees at
| other Amazon facilities to do the same._
|
| It really depends on how things play out. E.g. what the extra
| union dues' payments will be in relation to the extra benefits
| received from union representation. Or maybe Amazon responds
| with a "business decision" to close JFK8 fulfillment center.
|
| So it can have the opposite effect. The strong union at the
| Boeing factory in Seattle WA negatively influenced the Boeing
| workers in South Carolina. The SC workers voted in 3 different
| elections to reject the union. The last voting count was 74%
| against the union.
|
| We have to wait and see what the union can "win" from Amazon.
| e40 wrote:
| Given SC rejected the union is interesting, given the quality
| issues that resulted in Boeing's plant in SC. The reports of
| managers putting defective parts back into service was
| horrifying (this was reported by a whistleblower).
| imglorp wrote:
| The SC quality issues were so severe, some customers were
| rejecting product created there.
|
| src https://www.fitsnews.com/2021/10/17/more-boeing-blues-
| for-so...
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| As somebody that works in an office in this factory, the
| micro-union votes down have been very contentious.
|
| I don't have a dog in the fight, but it certainly seemed
| like the situation with our PNW union sites did not boost
| support down here.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Maybe the union can win Amazon warehouse workers more
| bathroom breaks.
| ineedasername wrote:
| You shouldn't have to wear adult diapers to work to avoid
| getting fired because you need to go to the bathroom twice
| during a shift and they're a 10 minute walk away, & good
| luck hitting your performance targets with that chunk of
| time lost.
| VictorPath wrote:
| > ...Boeing workers in South Carolina. The SC workers voted
| in 3 different elections to reject the union.
|
| South Carolina has the lowest unionization rate in the US, a
| country that itself has a 6.1% private unionization rate. A
| Boeing executive said to the Seattle Times Boeing was opening
| a production line in South Carolina to avoid unionization and
| strikes. South Carolina has anti-union laws that Washington
| does not.
|
| Boeing purposefully moves to the least unionized state, works
| to prevent workers from organizing there, but in your
| calculus "The strong union at the Boeing factory in Seattle
| WA negatively influenced the Boeing workers in South
| Carolina".
| smachiz wrote:
| Do you have evidence to support that the strong union in
| Seattle negatively influenced the SC voters?
|
| SC has the lowest union membership in all 50 states - there's
| a lot of ingrained bias against unions there, and I'm not
| sure I see the connection to the Seattle, WA plant or
| workforce.
| jasode wrote:
| [Replying to multiple commenters with the same questions]
|
| _> SC has the lowest union membership in all 50 states -
| there's a lot of ingrained bias against unions there,_
|
| _> South Carolina has anti-union laws [...] the least
| unionized state, works to prevent workers from organizing
| there,_
|
| Anti-union bias does not fully explain the South Carolina
| Boeing factory rejection vote because the workers _did
| previously have a union_.
|
| Fyi... The original South Carolina aircraft factory
| (formerly Vought doing subcontract work on Boeing
| fuselages) was _unionized in 2007_. Then in 2009, they
| _voted to decertify the union_ as they no longer wanted IAM
| (International Association of Machinists) to represent them
| for collective bargaining. (75% voted to get rid of the
| union.) This happened around the time Boeing acquired the
| Vought factory. For various reason(s) (see below), the
| Vought /Boeing workers didn't feel the ~$1000/year union
| dues were worth the benefits the IAM union negotiated for
| them.
|
| Since being being voted out, IAM has repeatedly tried re-
| establish union membership at SC but multiple elections
| have voted against it by wide margins. The last 2017 vote
| was 74% against. In 2018, IAM tried a new approach of
| establishing a "micro" union of 175 _subset_ of employees
| instead of the entire ~3000 employees. The IAM won that
| micro vote but the Labor Board invalidated the micro union
| as a collective bargaining unit.
|
| Boeing workers' (current) anti-union stance is based on
| their real-world experience and not ignorance. The SC
| workers already know what collective bargaining benefits
| they had with the union. They got rid of the union anyway.
| Maybe someday, factors will change and Boeing workers will
| vote for union representation again.
|
| _> Do you have evidence to support that the strong union
| in Seattle negatively influenced the SC voters?_
|
| _> , but in your calculus "The strong union at the Boeing
| factory in Seattle WA negatively influenced the Boeing
| workers in South Carolina"_
|
| No, not my calculus. The SC workers reported it. One
| example: The workers in South Carolina didn't like the IAM
| directed union strike in Washington. Excerpt from
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
| aerospace/boein...:
|
| _> Another sore point that affected Thursday's vote was
| that many in the Charleston [South Carolina] work force
| were laid off last fall during the two-month IAM strike in
| the Puget Sound region due to the lack of production in
| Everett. _
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I work in an office in the SC factory, that comment does
| indeed reflect the truth. Of course, SC unions are weak and
| relatively unpopular but that isn't the whole story here.
|
| Just trying to provide some detail.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| but _how_?
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Or maybe Amazon responds with a "business decision" to
| close JFK8 fulfillment center.
|
| It's quite possible. They'll need to unionize several more
| Amazon facilities in that region to prevent that outcome. Not
| sure how many more are in process.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The other vote in Alabama failed, by more than 10%.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| "facilities in that region"
| pyuser583 wrote:
| New York had a long history of powerful unions. Alabama
| had a long history of not having unions.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The final decision is not here yet. Resolving the
| contested ballots could still swing it either way (as of
| this moment).
| rat87 wrote:
| I think it has more to do with politics. Conservative SC
| politicians have made it clear that they would rather not
| have good jobs if they are unionized, they don't wont workers
| getting ideas
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _maybe Amazon responds with a "business decision" to close
| JFK8 fulfillment center_
|
| Given the current labor market, that union could probably
| bulk sell its labor to someone else willing to come in and
| pick up where Amazon left off. This is another, less-
| mentioned benefit of collective bargaining: it aggregates
| labor.
| jfjfkfmf wrote:
| Why would any company actually want to do this when they
| could just get non union labor in any of the thousands of
| right-to-work cities?
| gregshap wrote:
| It's a last-mile facility for service to NYC.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's expensive to do business in those sorts of places.
|
| Alabama lost a Toyota plant to Ontario because literacy
| is so poor they would need to translate their
| documentation into Ikea-like pictograms.
| briandear wrote:
| That's false. That decision had to do with currency
| values not literacy.
|
| https://www.motortrend.com/news/suv-shuffle-mdx-
| production-m...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why would any company actually want to do this when
| they could just get non union labor in any of the
| thousands of right-to-work cities?_
|
| Because they can't. Not easily, not certainly.
|
| If you've been given direction to quickly deploy a
| warehouse, being able to sign a single agreement and know
| you have your work force is valuable. (The alternative
| involves creating a hiring pipeline, staffing it, running
| it and lining all of that up with everything else. If
| you're a scaling company that's a lot of non-core B.S.)
|
| Put another way, all business is bundling and unbundling.
| A recently-fired union is a bundle of labor. That isn't
| valuable to everyone. But it's definitely valuable to at
| least some labor buyers.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Presumably you still need to fulfill shipping needs in
| New York because people still buy things there.
| la64710 wrote:
| Next is Walmart ?
| [deleted]
| CapmCrackaWaka wrote:
| It's interesting to see the cyclical rise and fall of workers
| unions in the US. I'm of the opinion that there needs to be a
| balance between worker and employer rights - however it seems
| that, at least in the US, that balance swings back and forth
| quite often.
|
| It seems like anti-union proponents will remind you of the bad
| times when unions had too much power, and union supporters will
| remind you of the bad times when the employers had too much
| power. These days we actually see a lot more of the latter.
| Will we swing back and forth indefinitely? Probably.
| clove wrote:
| It will also encourage downsizing and expediting the shift to
| replacing humans with robots.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| They've been encouraging that forever, but it's just not
| there yet. They weren't going to wait until it was less
| convenient than people, they're going to do that the moment
| that it's viable, but as of yet, it still needs work.
| ATsch wrote:
| That shift already exists plenty, as one can see from the
| high degree of automation of those warehouses. The only thing
| that Unions would change there is that they can bargain e.g.
| for re-training of the workers made redundant.
| Spivak wrote:
| Great! It's only because of our stupid system that removing
| the need for thousands of humans to spend their lives doing
| unnecessary labor is a bad thing.
| krapp wrote:
| >It's only because of our stupid system that removing the
| need for thousands of humans to spend their lives doing
| unnecessary labor is a bad thing.
|
| That stupid system will still be there after all of those
| jobs are automated away.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That sounds like a good thing. An Amazon warehouse job is
| grueling, terrible work. The more we can get machines to do
| the crappy jobs, the better.
| FateOfNations wrote:
| Relatively fewer but higher quality jobs isn't necessarily a
| bad thing, especially in an industry where growth can absorb
| the efficiencies, rather than needing to resort to layoffs.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > It's possible we'll see a generational wave of unionization.
|
| I fully expect this to happen. Younger folks today are the
| unlucky beneficiary of years of wage stagnation and home price
| inflation. They have every right to be angry, and I think they
| are collectively starting to realize that they have a lot of
| power to change the status quo.
|
| At the risk of veering into politics, I'm also not sure how
| this will change the current tribal political lines. Normally
| this kind of movement would be a strength of the left. But
| lately the right has become quite populist, so maybe this plays
| in their direction. Whoever figures out how to capture this
| massive constituency is set up for a powerful future.
| closeparen wrote:
| Higher wages cannot make it any more possible for N+1 people
| to have N large plots of land close to the city center.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > large plots of land
|
| This assumption that you've smuggled in begs the entire
| question
| CydeWeys wrote:
| People living near city centers are perfectly content with
| apartment buildings, which have no real upper limit on how
| many people will fit into a given plot of land.
| Taikonerd wrote:
| > Normally this kind of movement would be a strength of the
| left. But lately the right has become quite populist, so
| maybe this plays in their direction.
|
| I saw an op-ed from a conservative magazine on this exact
| theme: [1]. The author basically says, "if we're claiming to
| be the party of the working class, shouldn't we be in favor
| of this?"
|
| 1: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/republica
| ns...
| sorry_outta_gas wrote:
| with the rise of the new generation of robber barons that's
| not suprising
| ATsch wrote:
| I think that question pretty much answers itself,
| especially if one looks at voting demographics by income.
|
| The idea of the republican working class party has always
| been more of a clever rhetorical strategy than a reality.
|
| (perhaps, on a more speculative note, also a reflection of
| the seemingly general conservative pattern of wanting to
| see oneself as "normal", to the point of sometimes
| fabricating "silent majorities" and such, even when there
| is overwhelming counter evidence)
| zeruch wrote:
| "The idea of the republican working class party has
| always been more of a clever rhetorical strategy than a
| reality."
|
| Always? No. But certainly since the 1970s.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > The idea of the republican working class party has
| always been more of a clever rhetorical strategy than a
| reality.
|
| I tend to agree, but then again I really don't grok the
| Trump thing, and I can't claim that I saw it coming or
| sticking around as long as it has. At this point I would
| not be terribly shocked to see a bit of role reversal
| between the two major parties.
| ATsch wrote:
| I'm not completely sure what you mean, the 2016 votes
| leaned approximately democrat for <75k and and republican
| >75k like every other election in recent US history,
| although admittedly by a lower margin than the previous
| years. In 2020 it seems to have returned to a larger gap
| again.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| I've been a conservative since I had a minimum wage job,
| for one reason: I want the government out of my life as
| much as possible. I firmly believe nobody will care about
| my family as much as I do and I don't want the
| government's golden handcuffs. Leave me alone, let me
| work, and I'll happily live with whatever happens.
|
| I think this is the fundamental disconnect in left-right
| (economic) politics. The left, as I see it, wants some
| guarantee of a good outcome. The right wants liberty,
| recognizing that comes with risk.
| ATsch wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure what this has to do with the topic
| at hand but statistics show the far majority of minimim
| wage workers, for many of whom it is not just a short
| phase, will disagree with you on this.
| ragona wrote:
| This is clearly a spectrum. On one hand we have Mad Max-
| style "might is right" anarchy, which is over-
| prioritizing freedom. On the other we remove all personal
| choice in order to "keep people safe."
|
| So the question is, "how much risk is acceptable?" Are we
| okay with the idea that getting sick can ruin your entire
| financial future? Are we okay with child labor?
| Personally I lean towards providing a social safety net,
| and I think most people actually want _some_ version of
| that as well -- but perhaps have not thought deeply about
| where exactly the balance is for them.
| mattwad wrote:
| > I want the government out of my life as much as
| possible
|
| unless it has to do with your education, gender identity,
| sexual preference, religion, voting, or women's rights, I
| assume
| awill88 wrote:
| In a idealogical vacuum, totally fair. But in a
| (spiritually) capitalist economy, the federated nature of
| government is an effective instrument when applied
| properly. It's not either the left or right's fault that
| government is dysfunctional, it's that greed is the root
| of all evil and subversion necessitates complex
| regulation over time.. it's a double edged sword. Hands
| off and risk irreversible damage to millions, hands on
| and risk irreversible damage to millions. I do not envy
| the job of governing (justly).
| jorblumesea wrote:
| > "if we're claiming to be the party of the working class,
| shouldn't we be in favor of this?"
|
| But they don't really mean it and have never meant it. The
| Republican party, at least in modern history, has never
| been pro working class in any real sense. The opposite in
| fact, probably far more hostile to working class than
| Democrats.
|
| Much of the "pro working class" rhetoric is largely just
| conservative values like abortion or region. Maybe a better
| way to phrase it is "pro rural white conservative working
| class values".
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| But they might mean it going forward. The parties realign
| - rarely, but not never. And there are a whole lot of
| voters who have been abandoned by the Democratic Party
| moving away from what it has been. It would not be
| impossible for the Republican Party to move into that
| territory.
|
| Of course, it is more likely for the Republican Party to
| _talk like_ it 's moving into that territory, but not
| actually do anything. But, for example, Trump's emphasis
| on "America over trade" is something that could actually
| help workers.
| [deleted]
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The Republican party has always been pro "working class" in
| that their policies have been focused on trapping the
| "working class." Keep them poor, uneducated, easily
| manipulated, and powerless as a worker so they are easily
| exploited.
|
| Republicans hate social programs like welfare because it's
| so much easier to prey up on John Q Factory Worker when
| John is paycheck-to-paycheck and terrified of losing his
| job.
|
| Ditto for universal health insurance. With medical bills
| are the top cause of personal bankruptcy, tying a basic
| human need/right to employment is just yet another way they
| get to hold a workforce in fear.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| If the trend continues as you posit, I would expect private-
| sector unions to become a non-partisan alignment, similar to
| how social security is sacrosanct in US politics.
|
| Most unions form at places that are genuinely terrible
| workspaces where workers have legitimate reasons to hate the
| boss. As unions become mainstream at places like Starbucks I
| would expect folks agitating for worker power to less
| radical.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It might, but they would have to be big enough to break the
| "conservative" alignment of resource extractors, religious
| fanatics and rich people.
|
| It's definitely possible in 10-20 years.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Outside of Bernie and a few others, the days of Democrats
| having many nationally significant politicians that are
| truly pro-union are pretty much gone.
|
| I don't think most people, including those that vote
| Democratic, have much of an illusion of the Democratic
| party as a friend of labor anymore.
|
| Sure the Republicans actively try to dismantle all worker
| protections, but the Democrats mostly stand by and say
| well what can ya do?
|
| The role of Democrats right now is to pretend to fight
| for normal people just enough to get the votes, then
| completely fail to do anything so the rich party donors
| still get what they want.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What do you expect Dems to do at the federal level if
| they do not have the votes in the Senate?
|
| The Democrats in democrat states have enacted paid
| parental leave, paid sick leave, higher minimum wages,
| banned non compete, and many other pro labor laws. At the
| federal level, the Dems got ACA pushed through also, even
| though they barely had the numbers and still had to
| compromise a lot due to just having 50 or 51 Senators,
| meaning the 1 or 2 Democrats in name only can hold
| legislation hostage to their will.
|
| It just happened again last year with the Build Back
| Better bill.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| I mean you're basically echoing my point - the Democratic
| party at the national level doesn't have the willpower to
| get pro-worker legislation through.
|
| And it's not just because they suck at winning elections,
| but also because they actively welcome anti-labor
| candidates into their ranks and crush the more
| progressive primary challengers even in safe blue
| districts.
|
| Not to mention that the executive branch has the power to
| go after labor law violators and for the most part just
| doesn't.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not think I echoed that. I said that Democrats have
| not had a majority by more than 1 for a long time. That
| is just numbers, it has nothing to do with willpower. You
| cannot realistically expect every single party member to
| toe the line, so effectively, as a party they have to
| compromise heavily just to get the things through that
| they have.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| It is obviously a matter of willpower.
|
| The Republicans have no problem getting their moderate
| members to toe the line on their more extreme stuff.
|
| "Moderate" Republican party members would make their
| statements about "this isn't the way things are done'
| every time Trump did something crazy, but every single
| one folded and fell in line, every single time.
|
| If it was the priority of the Democratic national party
| leadership to get real, actual big legislation done that
| benefited workers over companies and investors, then they
| would. They do everything they can to block, blacklist,
| and crush campaigns of progressive primary challengers.
| They could do that to the "moderate" members who don't
| want to pass any legislation at all, if passing that
| legislation was really a priority.
|
| It's just obviously not something they care about, and
| it's obvious why.
|
| The party is run by obscenely wealthy members and donors,
| just like the Republicans are.
| mateo411 wrote:
| The Democrats have been the party of the free trade and
| globalization, while also supporting the working class.
| There is a problem with this approach. Free trade and
| globalization means that goods are cheaper, the economy
| is more efficient, and the nation on the whole is
| wealthier. Unfortunately, a lot of these efficiencies
| come at the expense of many US based working class jobs.
| This is why the Democrats have been less union over the
| years, unless they are supporting teachers, police
| officers, or other government unions.
|
| The war in Ukraine could slow down and reverse a lot of
| globalization. Supply chain issues that we've seen during
| the pandemic have also been particularly. Maybe we'll
| start making more things in America again and perhaps the
| Democrats will do a better job supporting working class
| Americans.
|
| We are living in interesting times. I'll guess we'll see
| what happens.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| I don't think that will be the case for social security for
| much longer. The trust is on the path to running dry over
| the next 10-15 years and benefits will need to be cut.
| Romney recently breached the idea of raising retirement age
| for current workers. Frankly I'm shocked by how few young
| workers realize how bad of a deal they're getting with the
| current system
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > benefits will need to be cut
|
| You think politicians will be able to do such a thing? If
| they just decide to print an extra 100B or so every year,
| combined with allowing the yearly COLA to lag behind
| reality, maybe the trust fund won't run out after all.
|
| It's a raw deal for everyone in any case, but it's also a
| third rail issue. Give people an choice between the
| abstract (deficit spending is bad) and actual changes to
| their benefits in the negative direction, most people
| will choose the former.
| mrfusion wrote:
| It's easy enough to simply raise the income cap though to
| shore it up.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Politically, no, that is _not_ simple.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| What choice do they have? At any rate, SS benefits kicked
| in at 65 originally because that was the lifespan of a
| worker, more or less. Raising the age is a perfectly
| reasonable ask if we can get people better affordable
| ealthcare. Truly disabled people at 65 can of course get
| SSDI.
| cwmoreiras wrote:
| The only way social security will "run dry" is if
| Congress lets it die.
| [deleted]
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| gotostatement wrote:
| okay this is amazing. but wtf is this sentence?
|
| "No union victory is bigger than the first win in the United
| States at Amazon, which many union leaders regard as an
| existential threat to labor standards across the economy because
| it touches so many industries and frequently dominates them."
| KoftaBob wrote:
| They Don't Think It Be Like It Is, But It Do
| yearly wrote:
| That sentence is fine
| [deleted]
| scoot wrote:
| What seems to be the problem?
| k1t wrote:
| I assume it's because you could read it as: the union leaders
| view this big union victory as an existential threat to labor
| standards.
|
| (When instead they view Amazon as the existential threat)
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I disagree that any reasonable person could read it that
| way. It's totally impossible to come to that conclusion
| with the context of the article. Even out of context, it
| makes no sense that _union leaders_ would feel a _union
| victory_ is an _existential threat to labor standards_.
| brimble wrote:
| There are multiple things in the first part of the sentence
| that "which" could denote. "Amazon" is what's intended. You
| could fix this by breaking up the sentence, or by specifying
| what you mean after "which" ("which company").
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Elements of Style says to place a comma before a conjunction
| introducing an independent clause.
| htrp wrote:
| copy editor fell asleep
| brimble wrote:
| David Foster Wallace loved to repeat the object (edit: or
| subject, depending on usage) after "which" practically every
| time he employed that word, which technique is usually
| overkill, but in this case writing it "[...] which _company_
| many union leaders regard [...] " would have helped a lot.
| dionidium wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand. You seem to be suggesting:
|
| _" No union victory is bigger than the first win in the
| United States at Amazon, which Amazon many union leaders
| regard as an existential threat to labor standards across the
| economy because it touches so many industries and frequently
| dominates them."_
|
| But that's absolutely terrible, so you must be suggesting
| something else.
| brimble wrote:
| > "[...] which company many union leaders regard [...]"
|
| Ergo:
|
| No union victory is bigger than the first win in the United
| States at Amazon, which company many union leaders regard
| as an existential threat to labor standards across the
| economy because it touches so many industries and
| frequently dominates them
|
| [EDIT] I also intentionally used the construction in my
| original post: "[...] which technique is usually overkill
| [...]". The usage there, unlike in the _Times_ sentence,
| was actually necessary since the antecedent was too far
| removed. The original _Times_ sentence was correct, but
| splitting it up or specifying the antecedent would remove
| the possibility of a reader being confused by thinking the
| _Times_ writer wasn 't, correctly, using "which" to refer
| to the closest antecedent ("Amazon") but instead to
| something earlier in the first clause ("first win").
|
| On looking closer, I think it's the construction of that
| first clause that makes the "which" read like it might have
| been employed _incorrectly_ , when it was (technically,
| kind of) not. "first win in the United States at Amazon".
| The "at" makes "Amazon" seem heavily dependent on "first
| win in the United States", so it still looks like "which"
| might point at "first win", not "Amazon".
| dionidium wrote:
| That's obviously what you wrote, so I don't know why I
| replaced "company" with "Amazon" in my head. That's
| definitely better. Sorry for the confusion and thanks for
| not biting my head off where I deserved it.
| brimble wrote:
| Of course, minor misreading doesn't deserve a head-
| biting-off! Happens to everyone. And you weren't a dick
| about it, anyway, so it wasn't a big deal.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| is there a name for this grammatical construction? it's one
| of my favorites in English but I have no idea what it's
| called. I also wonder if younger readers nowadays would even
| be familiar with it unless they enjoy reading older
| literature, as I almost never see it in modern writing.
| brimble wrote:
| Lemme see if Garner's _Modern English Usage_ names it...
|
| Well, for one thing, the section on "which" begins: "This
| word, used immoderately, is possibly responsible for more
| bad sentences than any other in the language" :-)
|
| Ah, it refers me to a more relevant section for this
| construction, "Remote Relatives". Checking that.
|
| "Antecedent" and "relative clause" are relevant terms,
| meaning the word to which "which" refers, and the clause
| containing "which", respectively, but I can't find a name
| for specifying the antecedent after "which", in this text.
| Actually, on a skim, I didn't even see that presented as an
| option.
|
| [EDIT] Incidentally, it appears the _Times_ usage is
| correct, anyway, if still ill-advised--the antecedent
| should be the closest possible candidate before the
| relative clause, so "[...] Amazon, which [...]" is
| correct.
| Maximus9000 wrote:
| That's a textbook run-on sentence.
| bawolff wrote:
| I don't think its a run-on at all, let alone a text book one.
| Maximus9000 wrote:
| It should be broken into two sentences
|
| Original: "No union victory is bigger than the first win in
| the United States at Amazon, which many union leaders
| regard as an existential threat to labor standards across
| the economy because it touches so many industries and
| frequently dominates them."
|
| Sentence 1: No union victory is bigger than the first win
| in the United States at Amazon.
|
| Sentence 2: Many union leaders regard Amazon as an
| existential threat to labor standards across the economy
| because it touches so many industries and frequently
| dominates them.
|
| https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammar/ru
| n...
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| "Run-on" has an actual textbook definition. This sentence
| is very long and clunky, and should probably be broken
| into two sentences for readability, but it's not a run-
| on.
|
| To illustrate, this would be a run-on:
|
| No union victory is bigger than the first win in the
| United States at Amazon, many union leaders regard Amazon
| as an existential threat to labor standards across the
| economy because it touches so many industries and
| frequently dominates them.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Pretty sure OP is confused by the concept of "first win"
| being the object of the first clause. It feels clunky if
| you don't read your English like you would read algebra.
| akhmatova wrote:
| Then you'd do great writing for the Times.
| xmsam wrote:
| It's not a run-on, which by definition has two or more
| independent clauses in the same sentence that are not
| separated by either (1) punctuation such as a semicolon,
| colon, or em dash, or (2) a comma plus a coordinating
| conjunction. The first clause is independent (i.e. it can
| stand alone as a complete sentence), while the second
| clause is relative.
| brimble wrote:
| It's definitely not. People have just gotten used to _very_
| short and simple sentences, these days. Some would call a
| high percentage of all sentences written before, I dunno,
| 1970, run-on sentences, plus a good deal of the writing in
| contemporary but non-general-audience publications.
| selfhifive wrote:
| It's a feel good sentence. Both pro-union and anti-union people
| can agree with it.
| pessimizer wrote:
| They're trying to sneak in an opinion that they're ascribing to
| "many union leaders" for the sake of their narrative, but they
| couldn't find anyone who actually said it like that. The NYT do
| it so often and obviously that it must be in the style guide.
|
| _Not said_ by the NYT: "[Amazon is] an existential threat to
| labor standards across the economy because it touches so many
| industries and frequently dominates them."
|
| The previous was actually said by Mr. _Many U. Leaders_ who I
| can 't locate a phone number for.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| The NY Times prides itself on its 5th grade reading level.
| freyr wrote:
| The problem is that it's worded in a confusing way, not that
| it's "dumbed-down" for a general audience.
| [deleted]
| coolso wrote:
| Trash talk the Times however you see fit and I'll probably
| back you up on it (they are laughably
| liberally/"progressive"ly biased, and continuing to run cover
| for the current administration as best they can despite it
| not really working as per the polls), their writing standards
| are, in my opinion, impeccable and a standout among news
| organizations, but I suppose not everyone can be perfect
| always.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| I was joking, of course. I don't actually think there's
| anything wrong with their writing standards -- but its fun
| to poke fun! We all make mistakes!
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| Sentence, long
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| That's someone who doesn't want to use short sentences, and an
| editor who wants to watch the world burn.
| josemanuel wrote:
| Is this an April fool's joke?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Can Amazon now just shut down that warehouse and fire all the
| workers?
|
| It would seem like a sensible business move, even if it involves
| a little bit of service disruption for users in New York.
| munk-a wrote:
| > It would seem like a sensible business move, even if it
| involves a little bit of service disruption for users in New
| York.
|
| It only seems like a sensible business move if you ignore the
| incredibly negative PR that'd come from it. You're laying off a
| lot of local workers and publicly making a target of yourself
| _after_ the vote passes. Usually businesses will shut down
| sites before the union vote while they can still sort of BS
| their way into saying "Well, it looked like the vote would've
| failed anyways - look at this internal polling" - doing it
| after unionization is going to add a lot of vitriol to the
| situation, much more so than the underhanded techniques they
| use to sway the vote.
| jefurii wrote:
| Are you advocating this course of action?
| dymk wrote:
| It seems like somebody like you has to pop in and imply
| (accuse) a commenter of being anti-labor or whatever,
| whenever it's pointed out that unions can have downsides.
|
| Unions have upsides, and downsides. Discussing them helps
| people make good decisions. Pretending it's all flowers and
| rainbows does not.
| xibo9 wrote:
| I don't believe he did what you're claiming. Please keep
| the strawmen at home and undamaged.
| lampshades wrote:
| Is he not allowed to?
| softfalcon wrote:
| I don't think they are, they're just worried about what might
| happen if Amazon brings down the ban hammer.
|
| Please don't ask leading questions like this, they're not
| helpful to the discussion.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Amazon could sell the fulfilment center building to a third
| party to run.
|
| Then make all the workers redundant, but let the third party
| offer them employment.
|
| Then if the union makes undue demands, the third party can go
| bust and Amazon buy back the centre for pennies on the dollar,
| but without most of the staff.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| Yes, Amazon is allowed to do that. The main caveat is that they
| have to argue in court that the warehouse would be unprofitable
| given the union's demands.
| daenz wrote:
| >they have to argue in court that the warehouse would be
| unprofitable given the union's demands.
|
| They would? Why? How does the existence of a union prevent a
| company from firing everyone if it wants to? My understanding
| is that the _only_ power of a union is that all of its
| members use collective leverage to get better deals. There is
| no collective leverage action if everyone is fired.
| relaxing wrote:
| Federal law.
| zjaffee wrote:
| NYC is one of amazon's largest markets, and this is the biggest
| warehouse in the city. There are 8300 employees in the
| bargaining group which doesn't include management, engineers
| who do repair work for the robotics and so on.
|
| They cannot afford to close this shop, and it's obviously
| playing a big role as to why this location has successfully
| unionized while the location in Alabama has not.
| morelish wrote:
| May the opposite be the case? If Amazon really wants to
| prevent unions appearing in their employment relations,
| doesn't Amazon need to close this down now?
|
| I'm not saying that's good. But I'm saying Amazon might think
| it can't afford to let the employees unionise.
| zjaffee wrote:
| It's a matter of near totally shutting down their
| operations in NYC or not, a place where Amazon is currently
| the largest retailer. They might be able to stop gap it by
| sending all their packages in NYC through UPS/USPS, but it
| would be a major disruption to their operations.
| morelish wrote:
| Amazon has historically had the capacity to be ruthless. For
| example in it's fight against collecting state taxes, it
| shutdown third-party sellers in states that introduced laws
| requiring Amazon to collect state taxes. Eventually Amazon lost
| that battle, which paved the way for Amazon opening more
| fulfilment centres in more states.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon announced the closure of this
| fulfilment centre. It would seem dramatic but if it kept other
| centres from unionizing I could see Amazon taking the short-
| term discomfort.
|
| I don't know what Amazon's calculation will be in these
| circumstances. If Jeff was still in charge I reckon the
| fulfilment centre would be closed down.
| munk-a wrote:
| > I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon announced the closure of
| this fulfilment centre. It would seem dramatic but if it kept
| other centres from unionizing I could see Amazon taking the
| short-term discomfort.
|
| I think you're underestimating the long term pain Amazon is
| opening themselves up to by closing a recently unionized
| site. With a labour shortage and extremely high churn Amazon
| is already having hiring issues - scabs aren't really on the
| menu if you're already scraping the barrel and a large
| employer in the local market.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Yes, but I believe this warehouse employs 8,000 of people. It
| would probably cost hundreds of millions to rebuild it which is
| what they'd have to do in this situation. Might be worth it for
| them, but they'd take a huge pr hit which could tip the scales
| to not shutting down the warehouse. I think it's likely they
| build smaller warehouses in the future to make a shut down in
| response to unionization more palatable.
| zjaffee wrote:
| 8300 is just the size of the bargaining unit, there are
| almost certainly far more people working there than just
| that.
| amelius wrote:
| It's great that people are standing up against the abusive power
| of big companies.
|
| When will Apple (App Store) developers unionize?
| strombofulous wrote:
| Why should developers unionize? I love not being in a union. If
| my company starts dicking me around I'll quit and find another
| job.
|
| Besides, if I do something so bad my boss wants to fire me,
| fine then I'll go work somewhere where people want me. I don't
| want to have to bring in my union rep to argue about it since
| going somewhere else means losing my tenure and taking a 30%
| pay cut.
|
| The only time unions make sense is when you're doing labor that
| could be done by anyone and your bus factor is basically
| infinite. It doesn't make sense for skilled labor
| zjaffee wrote:
| That's just blatantly false, unions absolutely make sense for
| skilled labor. This isn't to say tech workers should
| unionize, but teachers, public defenders, subway engineers,
| high skill building trades, skilled workers in film are all
| unionized.
|
| Unions provide a ton of value if you're a skilled worker who
| does something comparable to gig work, jumping from jobsite
| to jobsite where the Union helps them keep their health
| insurance. It also helps when your job also has other
| political implications.
|
| The context tech workers should unionize would be in an
| instance where they job hopped even more often than is
| currently the case, and also potentially on teams where you
| become just so specialized that switching companies becomes
| difficult.
| beambot wrote:
| Guild versus Union?
| zjaffee wrote:
| In the US, federated labor which used to sometimes be
| organized under the name guild were merged with
| industrial unions under the umbrella of the AFL-CIO in
| the US.
| [deleted]
| beardedetim wrote:
| > Why should developers unionize? I love not being in a
| union. If my company starts dicking me around I'll quit and
| find another job.
|
| Why does the former preclude the latter?
|
| > Besides, if I do something so bad my boss wants to fire me,
| fine then I'll go work somewhere where people want me.
|
| What if you didn't do _anything_ and your boss wants to fire
| you so badly? What if your boss fired you over Zoom randomly
| without any recourse?
|
| > The only time unions make sense is when you're doing labor
| that could be done by anyone and your bus factor is basically
| infinite.
|
| I disagree with this point. A union makes sense for anyone
| that is working for a wage. It makes sense to me to work
| together for all of our benefit rather than me to try to go
| up against those that pay my wage alone.
|
| Put it another way, I do not think that I can argue well
| enough to get the actual value that I produce back in my
| pocket and would love if we all banded together and said "We
| deserve this much of the value we produce" instead.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > What if your boss fired you over Zoom randomly without
| any recourse?
|
| They can do that even with a union. The difference with a
| union is that they can collectively stop working if the
| employer violated a clause like "union members must be
| fired with reasoning pre-approved by the union", and then
| the employer either needs to find new employees for every
| person that was in the union or needs to re-negotiate terms
| with the union, likely including reparations ie. re-hiring
| the coworker.
|
| A union makes sense for anyone that is working for a wage
| but that doesn't mean people have to want to be in one.
| Adding a union adds a bunch of extra politics and
| brainpower to the advent of getting your job done, and
| that's not for everyone.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >They can do that even with a union. The difference with
| a union is that they can collectively stop working if the
| employer violated a clause like "union members must be
| fired with reasoning pre-approved by the union", and then
| the employer either needs to find new employees for every
| person that was in the union or needs to re-negotiate
| terms with the union, likely including reparations ie.
| re-hiring the coworker.
|
| But that potential response by the union should be enough
| of an incentive that casually firing somebody over Zoom
| for no reason is removed from the employer's SOP.
| xibo9 wrote:
| Not only is your last paragraph incredibly elitist, but any
| labor is skilled labor. The difference is degree of skill.
|
| A union does not prevent you from leaving your job for
| another employer. Why would you think that?
| Spivak wrote:
| Unionizing makes sense for people who...
|
| * don't want to have to switch jobs to address grievances
|
| * can't switch jobs because everywhere is shitty (eg actors
| guild).
|
| * an industry has a monopoly on some local resource like
| forest for lumber or coal mines and so you can't just start
| or join a competitor.
|
| It's not really about skilled labor, it's about mobility and
| the market forces that prevent it.
| oblio wrote:
| You shouldn't be forced to join a union but joining a union
| should not be an issue for any company.
|
| In practice, creating unions is heavily frowned upon and
| discouraged through various underhanded means.
|
| That should tell you that companies view unions as enemies,
| and collective bargaining in general.
|
| And companies for sure don't have your interests in mind.
| Also for sure you don't have the negotiating power they have.
| tuckerman wrote:
| Not arguing against all unions here, but I think saying all
| companies don't have our interests in mind is a bit
| hyperbolic. Many software engineers and product managers at
| places like Alphabet and Meta are treated extremely well,
| make great salaries in the bay area, and (at least pre
| pandemic) were catered to with many great benefits
| (including catering). There are some jobs/places where this
| isn't the case, but many silicon valley developers have a
| fairly symbiotic relationship with their employers.
| munk-a wrote:
| As incredibly inflated as developer salaries might seem -
| these companies make insane profits because developers
| create a lot more value than they cost. Companies _never_
| have your best interests in mind, small companies can act
| altruistically on small scales, but altruism is one of
| the first things that companies optimize away (beyond the
| level that earns them good PR). All those nice "free"
| benefits exist to make the employer more attractive to
| new employees, if you are a loyal employee no longer able
| to work productively due to an accident or other life
| changes you'll be exposed to just how much companies care
| about you. Silicon Valley has so much money that they can
| go pretty extravagant with benefits and perks, but
| (excepting again small/new companies that are living on
| VC funding) companies do care first about their bottom
| line.
|
| And, to be clear, I'm not actually saying this is
| necessarily a bad thing. I personally believe that social
| services should be at the grace of the government and not
| your employer - but this system relies on people on both
| sides of the fence (employee and employer) realizing that
| their employment is a contract that is to the benefit of
| the company and if their contract ceases to be beneficial
| it will be terminated. Being unaware of this fact will
| lead you to grief - it's on you to make sure you're
| getting a fair share for your value (which might, just
| FYI, include diverting a lot of your value creation to
| warehouse workers and the like who you think deserve a
| higher standard of living)
| oblio wrote:
| > Alphabet
|
| The Company Formerly Known As Google, that literally had
| to settle (i.e. paid money to not lose the trial) for
| collusion to depress employee wages?
|
| That company? Yeah, employee interests at heart <3
|
| > Meta
|
| For employees I hear The Company Formerly Knows as
| Facebook is actually quite good. But they're not a
| charity.
|
| > were catered to with many great benefits (including
| catering)
|
| Those benefits are cheap when bought in bulk, like
| corporations do. They also encouraged employees to stay
| more at work. Yes, they're nice, but let's not pretend
| that those benefits were not chosen very strategically.
|
| Both Google and Facebook are making a ton of money and
| still growing like gangbusters (Facebook somewhat less
| so). Once their growth plateaus, if they need to fire 10k
| employees each to increase profits and share values, they
| will do so without remorse. Probably on a Zoom call with
| all 10k employees at once.
| memish wrote:
| That so many tech workers don't understand that is legit
| scary. It's illogical and counterproductive, so it strongly
| suggests a parasitic mind virus has taken root.
| tifik wrote:
| > If my company starts dicking me around I'll quit and find
| another job.
|
| I agree with this sentence - because of the current state of
| the job market, and the level of seniority I have attained.
| However, if you are entry or junior, or if the market changes
| (good times don't last forever), just working a 'skilled
| labor' job won't give you the job security we enjoy atm. In
| that case, looking for a new job would be much more daunting,
| and working on improving your current work conditions might
| be a much better option.
|
| (edit - improve accuracy of which part of the statement I
| agree with)
| booleandilemma wrote:
| As a developer myself, I'd rather be in a union _before_
| companies start collectively fucking developers over.
|
| And I think it makes more sense to join a union preemptively,
| while things are in our favor, than to join a union in the
| future, possibly from a position of weakness.
|
| The problem is, of course, every developer thinks they're a
| 10x rockstar who doesn't need a union.
| amelius wrote:
| > The problem is, of course, every developer thinks they're
| a 10x rockstar who doesn't need a union.
|
| Apple is a 10x rockstar company ...
|
| Maybe 100x.
|
| The days of the lone 10x programmer with a strategy that
| leads to guaranteed success are over.
| criddell wrote:
| > It doesn't make sense for skilled labor.
|
| I would consider professional athletes skilled and they have
| powerful unions.
|
| Hollywood writers, actors, and directors are skilled an they
| all have unions/guilds.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Apple developers (assuming you mean app developers) are mostly
| self or small company employed. Unions exist to mediate the
| employee-employer interface, not the employer-third party one.
|
| An alliance of employers against a third party is a cartel,
| which is substantially different legal proposition. (Said
| without intending the pejorative connotations of the word
| 'cartel')
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > When will Apple developers unionize?
|
| Do you mean developers that Apple employs full-time, or third-
| party developers that publish on Apple's App Store?
| datavirtue wrote:
| Probably a good idea for both.
| [deleted]
| oh_sigh wrote:
| This is more akin to genius bar employees in Manhattan
| unionizing. Amazon developers are still not unionized.
| alexk307 wrote:
| > Employees cast 2,654 votes to be represented by Amazon Labor
| Union and 2,131 against, giving the union a win by more than 10
| percentage points, according to the National Labor Relations
| Board. More than 8,300 workers at the building
|
| This is just sad. Just a hair over 50% of the eligible voters
| voted; weirdly, approximately the same voter turnout for US
| elections historically. Does half of any given population just
| not care enough to vote for something?
| alxndr wrote:
| Short answer? Yes.
|
| Long answer probably involves value systems and what
| individuals are actually doing on that day...
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| Part of anti-unionization tactics is making employees
| uncomfortable about even discussing or associating with the
| topic. Management uses captive audience meetings to personally
| guilt the employees, which makes employees just want the whole
| thing to be over with because it's so uncomfortable. Nobody
| likes being made to feel guilty but they need a job and don't
| really know whats going on; they just want the drama to be over
| with so they avoid it as best they can.
| [deleted]
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Unions are disastrous in some countries. See Italy, Argentina,
| and Brazil. Boiling pot of corruption and extortion.
| IanDrake wrote:
| SecondTube wrote:
| legitster wrote:
| I had a boss who was an expensive consultant for unions.
|
| He explained the reason unions in the US were shrinking is that
| they are _too_ powerful. They control huge pension and healthcare
| portfolios and can completely control the relationship with
| employers, especially in closed shop situations.
|
| Comparatively, European unions are much "weaker" - or maybe more
| accurately their purview is much smaller. They control smaller
| geographic regions, and in general, all of the heavy lifting for
| healthcare and pensions and worker rights is handled by the
| government. So the unions' focus is entirely on the collective
| bargaining piece. Also, unions tend to be more regulated - they
| can't carry so much bloat. All in all, everyone, companies
| included, have less reason to combat unions.
|
| I'd be interested to hear if anyone has experience with both and
| can gauge the accuracy.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| The RMT/Unite Union in the UK regularly cripples London by
| staging tube strikes when they all have well paying secure jobs
| so not entire sure I buy it.
| pmyteh wrote:
| RMT and ASLEF; Unite don't tend to organise train crew.
|
| London transport is an interesting case. I wonder the extent
| to which they have well-paid secure jobs _because_ they can
| and do disrupt London. Bus drivers have a much worse deal,
| for example, being easily replaceable.
|
| I think from time to time about a statement made by Bob Crow,
| who was the former hardline chief of the RMT. He said that
| his members were now amongst the only working class Londoners
| who could afford to live decently in the city they served.
| Which (despite my dislike of his tactics) does seem like a
| reasonable point.
|
| FWIW my union (UCU; academic) has traditionally been a lot
| quieter and more consensual, and we've been repeatedly
| shafted in recent years as a result. That kind of
| collaborative management/union relationship only works if
| both sides are committed to making a decent workplace
| operate, and our management no longer are.
| Starlevel001 wrote:
| I wonder how they got those well paying and secure jobs
| iso1631 wrote:
| > staging tube strikes
|
| > all have well paying secure jobs
|
| I wonder if that's linked....
|
| And $70k a year in London is not "well paid", it's 9% of the
| price of an average property in London.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >He explained the reason unions in the US were shrinking is
| that they are too powerful. They control huge pension and
| healthcare portfolios and can completely control the
| relationship with employers, especially in closed shop
| situations.
|
| This is interesting. I'm a government employee with a union, a
| pension, health insurance, the whole deal. The union does not
| control the pension or healthcare in any way whatsoever.
|
| The governmental entity that I'm employed by, my employer,
| controls both, subject to collective bargaining to some extent.
| That is, my contract says I can join the pension, that I pay X%
| into the pension, that I can also join a 401k-style program if
| I wish, I'd pay Y% in that case. But it doesn't say anything
| about the operation of the pension or offer any real control.
| Same with my healthcare - it needs to meet certain criteria
| (e.g., premiums will be so many dollars for single coverage,
| employer must pay X% of actuarial value, etc.)
|
| So, who are these unions who actually have union-run pensions
| and healthcare plans?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| This is also my experience with unions. I don't know if it is
| different for things like electricians/etc. where you might
| not have a single shop you work for but you get jobs through
| the union.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Historically the government is better at procuring benefit
| plans. Back in the 70s and 80s, .gov would throw benefits at
| employees because they are better at procurement and could
| grant benefits at $0.80 on the dollar. Companies would throw
| money at unions to cap liability.
|
| But it does happen, especially with dental and similar plans.
| wahern wrote:
| Private corporations no longer offer pension (i.e. defined
| benefit) plans, so if employees want a pension it's going to
| be managed by a union, assuming they even have a union.
| That's probably for the better because these days (as opposed
| to 70 years ago), unions will be far more responsible
| managers of a pension fund than corporations, partly because
| of stricter government oversight.
|
| Some other countries have nationally managed pension funds.
| All the U.S. has is Social Security, a minimalist safety-net
| pension, and it's a heavy political lift just to maintain
| that, so I don't see things changing here.
|
| Also, don't unions literally sit on the board of corporations
| in countries like Germany? The notion that U.S. unions have
| too much power just seems like a typically American spin on
| the efficacy of unions--a bias veiled as a criticism. There's
| a host of reasons unions aren't more prevalent in the U.S.,
| and they feed back onto each other, but if you had to boil
| them all down, IMO it's because our culture is rather hostile
| to unions, and it's always been that way. Even at their peak
| popularity in early- and mid-20th century, mainstream unions
| (as opposed to the infamous Wobblies, which never had
| significant membership) were remarkably conservative as
| compared to their counterparts in Europe, reflecting the
| general culture.
| rocqua wrote:
| Unions have more hard power in the US. More control. Stuff
| like 'everyone who works has to be union'. Only X job can
| do Y. And Unions seek to increase their control as a
| defense against companies trying to take it back.
|
| European (dutch specifically) Unions have soft power. The
| only real control they have is declaring a strike.
| Everything else is bargaining for better terms of
| employment. The underlying trick is that entire sectors
| (willingly) have collective terms of employment.
| wahern wrote:
| > Stuff like 'everyone who works has to be union'
|
| So-called union shops haven't been legal in the U.S. for
| 75 years. What you're probably thinking of are compulsory
| agency fees, which admittedly have escalated to as much
| as 1/3 to 2/3 of full union dues. Full union dues are
| typically 1%-3% of wages.
|
| But the Netherlands have mandatory Works Councils for any
| company with 50 or more employees, and the company is
| required to pay all the expenses, including legal and
| litigation expenses of the councils. So it's functionally
| the same thing, except the cost is hidden from the
| employee.
|
| Granted, the relationship between management and workers
| is much less hostile in Europe, so transactional costs
| are presumably substantially less. I wouldn't be
| surprised (but can't find numbers) if Works Councils
| budgets or comparable budgets for equivalent union
| representation are much less in Europe. But I also
| imagine the wage premium that union power in general
| provides European workers, whether workers are in a union
| or not, is substantially greater than in the U.S., so
| overall "costs" (i.e. surplus value shifting) to
| corporations would be greater.
|
| Because management has always been so hostile to unions
| in the U.S., unions certainly have had to fight harder,
| and there's consequently more friction and acrimony. But
| it doesn't seem particularly fair to place that blame
| only on unions. IMO, management is much more culpable in
| that regard, but from a third-party observers'
| perspective one could easily simply chalk it up to
| American culture (and especially business and work
| culture) in general.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| This is the exact distinction I'd like to make, in fact.
| The pension probably isn't managed by a union, it's managed
| by a board and management structure that will usually
| include both employees (who might be former employees, or
| members of one union, or a different union, or management)
| and representatives of the employer. The union most likely
| negotiates certain details of the pension in their
| contract, but actual management is not typically done by a
| union.
|
| Hence, they cannot easily use management of the pension
| fund (they don't manage it) against the employer, as the OP
| claims.
| legitster wrote:
| I believe Teamsters is the biggest. But there are enough that
| taxpayers ended up bailing out a ton this year: https://www.n
| ytimes.com/2021/03/07/business/dealbook/bailout...
|
| But even if your union doesn't directly control your
| healthcare plan, I would still assume it was part of the
| collective bargaining?
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Multi-employer pension plans are usually governed by a
| board of trustees. Depends on the plan but typically labor
| and management share power equally (broadly speaking).
|
| And yeah, pensions, healthcare are all part of collective
| bargaining. Do you control the healthcare plan where you
| work? I assume it's part of negotiating the terms of your
| employment, so you could always ask for a really good one.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Its very on brand that the first response to this on HN is more
| or less:
|
| "Okay, hear me out, but what if Unions in America are really
| _too strong_?".
|
| Very counterintuitive thinking.
| legitster wrote:
| I mean, if you prefer to err on the side of groupthink I'm
| sure there are plenty of decent online spaces to do so.
| johnny22 wrote:
| the point is that HN has groupthink though.
| fgonzag wrote:
| I've seen what large unions can do (just search for some of
| the largest Mexican unions, like the PEMEX one). Any
| organization of a certain scale and power gets corrupt,
| including private companies and unions.
|
| I strongly believe in unions, but I agree with OP that
| keeping them small and focused is better for both the
| interests of the company and the employees. Extreme power
| imbalances are seldom (and I'd dare say never) good. I've
| seen unions effectively bankrupt business during tough times.
| I've also seen what unchecked corporate power can do. The
| right mixture of regulation and collective bargaining is a
| good thing, but like always, too much of a good thing can
| quickly turn bad. As an example, you can end up
| overprotecting unproductive or counter productive employees,
| reducing bonuses and pay for the other hard working employees
| because of reduced profitability.
| bjourne wrote:
| > Extreme power imbalances are seldom (and I'd dare say
| never) good. I've seen unions effectively bankrupt business
| during tough times.
|
| Please be specific.
| davidw wrote:
| The comment seemed like an honest question in that they're
| asking if it's accurate.
| educaysean wrote:
| Counterintuitive to what? Do you have stories or facts you
| want to share that argue unions in US are actually
| comparatively weaker than their European counterparts?
|
| The only thing you illustrated was that you were personally
| astonished by OP's comment, but I don't think that carries as
| much weight as you think it does.
| munk-a wrote:
| One of my favorite unionization stories comes from Denmark
| when unions in various industry sectors joined together to
| force McDonalds to adhere to union rules.[1] The US has so
| few weak and disparate unions that that story could never
| play out there - even up here in Canada we're pretty anti-
| union in general.
|
| 1. https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-
| to-de...
| educaysean wrote:
| Thanks for the article; it was a fun read. I actually had
| the privilege of working for a start up that was spun up
| in Denmark before it packed up everything and moved to
| the US. Because the CEO and a bunch of senior folks were
| Danish, they adopted what we called the Danish benefits:
| 6 weeks of vacation + multiple personal holidays. I miss
| it sorely, despite my current workplace offering
| "unlimited PTO" ugh.
|
| Reading the article really reinforced how Denmark (most
| Scandinavian nations, actually) has a strong worker-first
| culture. I agree with you in that I don't ever see this
| scenario playing out in the US, for various reasons.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| I think there is a point there. Looking back at the 60s-80s
| we see a clear concentration in corporate power as antitrust
| enforcement waned, followed by a similar consolidation in
| labor power. Unions certainly are not too strong relative to
| corporate power, but I don't think it's wrong to assert that
| unions failed at their height because they became large and
| corrupt - Jimmy Hoffa is a pop culture reference specifically
| because of it.
| [deleted]
| marricks wrote:
| Cases like this you really need to be extremely specific about
| what _powerful_ means. I think a lot of left leaning folks
| could agree with such statements but made too broadly it can be
| taken a number of different ways.
|
| I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone pro union who'd
| say unions have too much _influence_ or _sway_ in the lives of
| US citizens. Most workers don 't have union representation and
| unions don't have much say in worker pay in a great majority of
| sectors. Especially where it could help like warehouse work
| which has seen wages plummet with the advent of Amazon.
|
| Now, compare that to two unions which are _extremely_ powerful
| and not always good for the public or their members!
|
| 1) Teachers unions. Extremely powerful (at least Oregon where I
| know about them), but they don't necessarily help teachers! Pay
| is low because they haven't flexed their power and are fully at
| the whim of taxes. Since their funding is low the most
| teacher's union can guarantee their workers is that they will
| have a consistent job. Which sucks! Also, when COVID occurred
| there was little room for teachers to get a say as to how
| classes would be virtual, when kids would be back in schools,
| or when and how the mask mandate would be lifted. Supposedly a
| union would help!
|
| 2) Police unions: super strong, extremely political, extremely
| effective. Also nigh impossible to fire a cop unless they
| offend their union or a fellow cop. Rarely do police budgets
| ever get cut or does cop pay go down. Do most folks want this?
| Do most people in New York want their police force to have a
| budget larger than military of a mid sized country? Probably
| not? But hey, they're too powerful to do anything about.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >Extremely powerful (at least Oregon where I know about them)
|
| So, they don't get their employees good pay, they don't get a
| say in their working conditions. In what sense are they
| powerful, as you claim?
| marricks wrote:
| Powerful in their ability to control their members without
| helping them!
|
| They end up being another source of control.
|
| That's likely why there were a slew of wildcat teacher
| strikes.
| gruez wrote:
| >Do most people in New York want their police force to have a
| budget larger than military of a mid sized country? Probably
| not?
|
| Pareto distribution strikes again! Apparently new york city
| has a GDP that ranks 15 in the world, above mexico[1][2] and
| ranks 59 in the world in terms of population[3], so the fact
| that new york exceeds "a mid sized country" (median?) in some
| statistic isn't surprising. If you want to make the argument
| that the US is over-policed, use some statistic like officers
| per 100,000 people or something.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_New_York_City
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(n
| omi...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depen
| den...
| hapless wrote:
| Unlike Mexico, New York City does not need to maintain its
| borders or enforce a monopoly on the use of force and a
| supreme law -- because New York City is not a Westphalian
| state, it is just a municipal government covering a few
| hundred square miles!
|
| It is completely _bonkers_ to have this many uniformed
| officers and this much money poured into security forces,
| and so little positive result of any of it.
|
| The reason that comparisons to Mexico are alarming is that
| it plainly does not make sense for a _municipal government_
| enclosed within a large and heavily militarized state to
| have an army of its own! It is strange to compare a city
| government to a large country! It is SUPPOSED to sound
| strange!
| gruez wrote:
| > Unlike Mexico, New York City does not need to maintain
| its borders or enforce a monopoly on the use of force and
| a supreme law -- because New York City is not a
| Westphalian state, it is just a municipal government
| covering a few hundred square miles!
|
| you'd think that's the case, but it seems fairly normal
| for countries to have more police officers than
| soldiers[1][2]. Just looking at g8 countries:
| soldiers police officers Canada 67,400 67,425
| France 203,250 282,612 Germany 183,500
| 279,200 Italy 165,500 276,750 Japan
| 247,150 296,700 United Kingdom 148,500 148,893
| United States 1,388,100 686,665
|
| Which makes sense, considering that it's the police
| officers that are in charge of "enforce a monopoly on the
| use of force and a supreme law". In the 21st century,
| border incursions are rare compared to criminal activity.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_d
| ependen...
|
| [2] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/military-...
| cycomanic wrote:
| But that was not what he was saying. His argument was
| that just because NY has such a high GDP does not mean
| they need to spend that much on their police force. The
| number of police (+soldiers) you need is more a function
| of the number of citizens and area.
|
| Just taking your numbers above. The NY police has 50,000
| police for ~8.5 M people. Germany has ~280k police for 80
| M people, and that number likely includes border police,
| customs police, federal police (all jobs the NY police
| does not do). So NY has probably around 2x as many
| (regular) police per citizen as Germany.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Crime statistics are not well-known for following GDP. I am
| not sure why you would use that as a comparison point.
| Population? Sure. Surface area? Sure. Total local
| government revenue? Sure. But GDP?
| vikingerik wrote:
| > Also, when COVID occurred there was little room for
| teachers to get a say
|
| This may have been a positive. The teachers and their unions
| are only motivated for them to stay home and "safe", forever.
| It's the customers (parents) who need the leverage to get the
| teachers to actually deliver the service they're getting paid
| for, rather than trying to hide from their job indefinitely
| as many would be happy to do.
|
| Unions can be important to protect workers' rights, but it's
| also easy for them to go too far into not even providing the
| service the job is supposed to do. Particularly in an area
| with captive customers and government-mandated demand, like
| education.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| lol, yeah, fuck those people that don't want to die at
| work.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Risks of dying from covid for those under 65 are
| extremely low. Those who are also vaccinated, even lower.
| At this point, it's comparable to the flu.
| bdefore wrote:
| This is uncaring towards those working hardest on the
| challenges of education. Teachers more than those in most
| occupations are driven by care for their customers - their
| students. The low pay and hard work drives many of them
| away. Righteous parents even more.
| Spivak wrote:
| Yeah, but the job they're supposed to do is educate not
| necessarily babysit and covid made that separation front
| and center in a way that was felt by every parent.
|
| There's lots of "well then maybe that should be their
| mission" but no one wants to put up the capital for public
| daycare.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| It's one of the biggest problems of the US. The
| population craves a high level of government services
| like in developed European or Asian countries, but isn't
| willing to pay for them. So instead the government is
| stuck playing politics to make the budget work instead of
| actually taking a cost efficiency mindset. Schools double
| as daycare because taxpayers don't want to pay for actual
| daycare. Local road construction is subsidized by the
| federal government despite maintenance being
| unsustainable. Budgets by the federal government never
| balance.
| rat87 wrote:
| Seems like someone really bad at his job. Unions in the US are
| much much weaker making it easier for companies to undermine
| them. Also there is more of an anti union attitude among US
| empoyers and sometimes illegal union busting
| techniques/consultants are much more developed. And to top it
| off the laws and politics are much worse for unions, some
| conservative Governors have said that they would rather not
| have good autoworker jobs if they are unionized
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I agree that unions should have both more power but be less
| consolidated.
| djrobstep wrote:
| The parent comment really isn't at all descriptive of actual
| reality, somebody could really come away with the wrong
| impression reading it.
|
| It's misleading to consider unions in other countries like the
| Nordics as anything other than much stronger and more powerful.
| They have almost universal membership, engage in sectoral
| bargaining, set minimum wages, run important parts the welfare
| state, and sit on company boards. It's often noted that the
| Nordics don't have legal minimum wages - this is because
| industrial bargaining agreements that set minimum wages make
| this unnecessary because they cover ~all workers.
|
| In countries where union membership is declining (US and other
| anglo countries particularly), membership rates are low and
| optional, there's little sectoral bargaining, most industrial
| action is essentially outlawed. Sympathy and wildcat strikes
| are entirely illegal, and in Australia you cannot strike
| without prior permission from a government body.
| soco wrote:
| Which leads to the weird situation when a US-based company will
| fight to the bone their European unions just out of principle,
| no matter the topic discussed or its legal base. And with the
| EWCs (European Worker Councils), even worse.
| brimble wrote:
| > Comparatively, European unions are much "weaker" - or maybe
| more accurately their purview is much smaller. They control
| smaller geographic regions, and in general, all of the heavy
| lifting for healthcare and pensions and worker rights is
| handled by the government. So the unions' focus is entirely on
| the collective bargaining piece. Also, unions tend to be more
| regulated - they can't carry so much bloat. All in all,
| everyone, companies included, have less reason to combat
| unions.
|
| I'm not sure I'd call unions legally-mandated to hold 33-50%
| (depending on company size) of the _company 's_ board seats
| "weaker". That's the situation in Germany.
| tharne wrote:
| > I'm not sure I'd call unions legally-mandated to hold
| 33-50% (depending on company size) of the company's board
| seats "weaker". That's the situation in Germany.
|
| I think that's a brilliant policy. It forces the unions to
| have some skin in the game. If you're on the board, you have
| a fiduciary responsibility to the company and it's
| shareholders. In the U.S., most union bosses are happy to
| bleed a company dry provided the bleed is slow enough for
| them to make it to retirement (or death in the case of folks
| with a nice pension).
|
| It's even worse with the public unions. Since governments can
| theoretically keep raising taxes, there's no real limiting
| factor to how much the unions can demand.
|
| The union system is the U.S. is completely broken. I think
| unions in the U.S. should be both more widespread but much
| less powerful.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >It's even worse with the public unions. Since governments
| can theoretically keep raising taxes, there's no real
| limiting factor to how much the unions can demand.
|
| Do a search on governmentjobs.com for a job title you're
| familiar with and decide whether the unions have been
| successful at bleeding the government dry via high
| salaries. My anecdotal experience: you need to get to one
| level below Chief where I work to draw a salary close to a
| FAANG programmer, union pay tops out at 150k.
| yibg wrote:
| Why is the comparison against the highest paid jobs in
| the country? Shouldn't the comparison be against the
| median, or at least comparable jobs?
| johnny22 wrote:
| I dunno, that german situation sounds like the power isn't
| less or more, but rather in a different place. It's a place
| that actually can affect the how the company runs in a
| direct fashion.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i feel like I'm missing the causal link in your comment between
| controlling healthcare portfolios -> shrinking.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I gathered that the casual link is the admin bloat and
| complexity of managing health insurance compared to more
| direct applications of collective bargaining and potential
| priorities.
| legitster wrote:
| On a macro level, a US union is much more expensive per
| member than a EU union because members/companies have to
| front the cost of healthcare (as opposed to countries with
| universal healthcare).
|
| On a micro level, traditional US unions have huge pension
| funds that they have won from employers and promised to
| existing members, and so they can be very restrictive on
| membership qualifications.
| rat87 wrote:
| I think a more accurate point would be that employers force
| new employees to get worse benifits to undermine the union
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Hm, in my experience, even in a union context, healthcare
| was supplied by the employer, it was just negotiated in the
| contract. I'm not sure why that would make a US union much
| more expensive.
|
| Typically, you don't really get unions with dues unless
| they've managed to get a contract with a wage increase that
| covers the dues.
| legitster wrote:
| But if you are paying your union $25 a month to argue on
| your behalf, that money would go further if healthcare
| wasn't one of the things they had to negotiate.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| TBH, the additional overhead from also negotiating
| healthcare seems like a pretty marginal reason to explain
| the state of unions in the US today.
| mjmahone17 wrote:
| A union is much less likely to allow a company to use the
| cheapest health plan possible. So their purview is
| larger, as they need to ensure their members have access
| to basic benefits other countries provide "as right"
| regardless of union membership.
|
| This means the cost, to the company, of using union labor
| is even higher, but also that more of the union's money
| and energy is spent dealing with healthcare as opposed to
| ensuring safe workspaces or wage sharing or PTO or other
| labor concessions.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'm still not seeing what actually causes the US unions to
| shrink. The per-employee healthcare costs exist, of course,
| but that's a problem for companies without unions too.
| whatever1 wrote:
| European Govs have more regulation in place to allow for
| unions. That is why there are more widespread than in the US.
|
| Many of the union-busting activities American companies
| casually do would be flat out illegal in th EU.
| Conan_Kudo wrote:
| They are illegal in the United States too, just culturally
| the laws are not enforced like they are in the European
| Union.
| forcer wrote:
| When Cloudflare Workers unionize, that will be world first ;)
| Barrera wrote:
| Freakonomics ran a recent episode on unions [1]. A pair of
| interesting stats were presented near the start: the approval
| rating for unions stands at 70% in the US (even higher among the
| young) at the same time that union membership stands at 10%. Both
| numbers are at multi-decade extremes.
|
| I don't think it's any coincidence that this success at Amazon
| comes right now. After the GFC all regulatory efforts turned to
| keeping financial markets solvent. That has meant unwavering
| support for policies that favor those with assets over those who
| don't.
|
| The pandemic happened in early 2020 just as the wheels were
| flying off the US economy yet again. So what would have played
| out got masked by many other factors, including direct government
| transfers.
|
| Those stimmie checks of yore are long gone, and it will be a very
| steep uphill battle to bring anything remotely like that back
| given the rip-roaring yr/yr increase in CPI and PPI now underway.
| Those checks are being blamed for the ongoing inflation that more
| than just the lunatic fringe now thinks is the start of Weimar-
| style hyperinflation.
|
| So with the 2/10 year yield curve now inverted [2], it's just a
| matter of time before the economic chickens come home to roost
| once more. Will it be different this time? Will unions step in to
| fill the gap that government can not?
|
| [1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/do-unions-still-work/
|
| [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/01/us-bonds-treasury-yields-
| inv...
| jolux wrote:
| Why do you say the wheels were flying off the economy in 2020?
| Barrera wrote:
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_events_in_the
| _U...
|
| 2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/12/31/2019s-y
| ie...
| ineedasername wrote:
| There appears to be technical issues that caused #1,
| something about timing rather than a cause that points to
| more serious problems. If so, the analysis in #2 is based
| on a data point disconnected from those of the trend.
|
| Also the trend in #2 consists if 3 data points. It might be
| an accurate interpretation, but curves before the '73, '80,
| '81 recessions didn't follow this pattern. We'd need an
| explanation for why that's the case, and what changed in
| the '90s. Without that we're just drawing a bullseye around
| 3 dots coincidentally close together.
|
| Was there other evidence for a recession? I know that some
| people were saying we were "due" for one based simply on
| average timing, but that's no very compelling either if GDP
| growth had been relatively steady.
|
| Meanwhile, this article [0] indicates that right before the
| pandemic got huge we weren't checking the boxes on a
| variety of things that would be warning signs.
|
| [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/0
| 6/her...
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Unions as institutions run by non-workers kinda suck; they're
| just another hierarchy that exploits workers, and have little
| knowledge of worker conditions. Most animosity towards unions
| is towards these ossified institutions.
|
| Unions as worker-led orgs are much better; you have faith that
| your reps actually know your working conditions, and you often
| perosnally know the rep in some capacity.
|
| This victory is because of worker-led unions.
| VictorPath wrote:
| The private sector unionization rate in 2021 was 6.1%.
|
| While productivity increased over the past half century,
| inflation-adjusted hourly wages are about what they were 50
| years ago (it goes up and down - they were slightly lower in
| 2018 than 1972, a few cents higher in 2019). All productivity
| gains have been hovered up by the heirs and aristocracy.
|
| As it was in the Silicon Valley wage cartel which collapsed in
| 2014. So FAANG wages have been high for 8 years, which is a
| historic anomaly.
| google234123 wrote:
| Cartel is a pretty strong word for what happened and the fact
| that wages remained high is likely not an anomaly. E.g. Hedge
| funds which make similarly large amounts of money have paid
| their employees just as well for many years.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The FAANGs had soft agreements to work together on labor by
| not hiring each other's workers. That seems to fit the
| definition of a cartel:
|
| _" group of independent market participants who collude
| with each other in order to improve their profits and
| dominate the market"_
|
| I suppose we might argue that even the FAANGs together
| aren't large enough to constitute the full market. Other
| companies compete over the workforce of FAANG-eligible
| workers. The long tail of such SV employers with lower
| employee headcount a is still probably large in the
| aggregate. Though even apart from no-poaching agreements
| I've seen it speculated that FAANGs may employ large #s of
| talented people somewhat unnecessarily purely to keep them
| out of the hands of current competitors or potential
| startups that could grow into competition. That's a bit too
| conspiratorial for me though, at least without more
| evidence
| UncleMeat wrote:
| A recruiter at Google was fired simply for reaching out to
| an employee at Apple. Cartel feels like an appropriate
| word.
| xhrpost wrote:
| If an inverted yield curve means that investors are spooked
| about the current economy, and thus they favor longer term
| bonds, does that mean then that the market is not expecting
| inflation? Who wants to own a 10 or 30yr bond if they expect
| inflation to soar?
| nessguy wrote:
| I like the idea of unions more than the reality.
|
| My first job was earning minimum wage working full-time at
| Safeway. After working there for about 9 months I quit because
| I didn't want to pay union dues to join the union. I was
| already only making minimum wage, it wasn't like the union was
| improving my salary. The required hour long lunch breaks might
| have been thanks to the union, but I hated having to take hour
| long breaks. It left a bad taste in my mouth.
|
| Listening to that episode didn't change my thoughts much. One
| of the bigger problems I have with unions is that they always
| want to grow to gain more power/influence. If I'm paying dues I
| don't want 20% or whatever of those dues to go to what is
| essentially advertising/marketing.
|
| My ideal union would have low fees, not try to expand into
| other companies, and would be optional for employees.
| rocqua wrote:
| Why would a union be company specific? It makes a lot of
| sense for a union to represent all workers doing e.g. car
| manufacturing.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| A single-company union is generally a weak union, unless the
| company is gigantic. Expanding to other companies is how
| unions gain power to negotiate more effectively, the same way
| that companies gain price negotiation benefits by expanding
| into new markets.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I see what you're saying but an "optional" union is pretty
| much bound to collapse inevitably.
| Animats wrote:
| What's sad is that this is a "stunning win". It should be a
| routine event.
|
| Now, McDonalds and WalMart.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Yes, and this is after Amazon personally contested a large
| percentage of the ballots, and after past events like them
| making fake drop boxes that allegedly led to failed votes in
| previous amazon unionization situations.
| mtgx wrote:
| Unions are the most useful when you're dealing with monopolies.
| Where there is fierce competition in an industry, most workers
| probably feel that unions are not needed, as they can get a
| better paying job by switching companies within the same industry
| whenever they like.
|
| So I wonder if the recent rise in union interest is a symptom of
| the fact that in the U.S. a lot of industries have been
| monopolized or oligopolized, and the union option is starting to
| look increasingly more appealing every year.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Yes, but there is a second requirement for unions (in the US,
| anyway), which is that they have to have a tight enough labor
| market to have negotiating leverage. Otherwise, the company
| just closes the factory/store/warehouse/whatever, and moves it
| elsewhere. Amazon, in 2022, would appear to satisfy both
| requirements.
| datavirtue wrote:
| This is the fundamental flaw with unions in the United
| States. In other countries, if a company retaliates against
| their employee union then all the other unions will refuse to
| do business with that company. The point of unions, which no
| one in America gets, is that the union should be directly
| involved in business decisions. So as soon as there is a
| union, those employees have to allow that plant to close.
| Management just doesn't get to run around doing as they
| please. That's the whole fucking point.
|
| I'm not interested in being part of a union if the only
| points of negotiation are pay/hours/benefits. I want a say
| over profitability overall. Who we do business with and how.
| What products we offer, and why. And how we service and treat
| our customers. Google employees banding together to prevent
| the company from entering certain lines of businesses, for
| instance. That is progress.
| munificent wrote:
| _> as they can get a better paying job by switching companies
| within the same industry whenever they like._
|
| There's definitely a lot of truth to this, but I think it's
| also important to note that switching costs for jobs can be
| very high for employees. People can have deep social ties with
| coworkers, there is no guarantee that the new job is better so
| the risk of ending up in a worse position (with possibly burned
| bridges) has to be factored in. In places where the job market
| is limited, it can mean moving, which can be very difficult.
|
| Even in non-monopolistic areas, employment is very far from an
| efficient market.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >as they can get a better paying job by switching companies
| within the same industry whenever they like.
|
| Most workers are people without college degrees who can't even
| go a month without a paycheck or afford to move out of pocket.
|
| I don't think many Americans even have any direct concept of
| what unionization is like, because a lot of them have barely
| ever been part of organized labour in their lifetime, and their
| only experience with it is a barrage of negative info put out
| by Amazon or Musk.
| pkaye wrote:
| > So I wonder if the recent rise in union interest is a symptom
| of the fact that in the U.S. a lot of industries have been
| monopolized or oligopolized, and the union option is starting
| to look increasingly more appealing every year.
|
| Don't many EU countries have strong unions? Does that imply the
| industries in those countries are monopolized or oligoplized?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Where there is fierce competition in an industry, most
| workers probably feel that unions are not needed, as they can
| get a better paying job by switching companies within the same
| industry whenever they like.
|
| Unless the biggest players in the industry are colluding
| against them as was the case with Google, Apple, Adobe, and
| Intel: https://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-
| lawsu...
| robomartin wrote:
| I was in a union (not by choice) the first ten years or so of my
| professional life. To put it in simple terms: I despise them.
| Yes, of course, they had reason to exist in the dark ages. Today,
| I think they are in a range between counterproductive and
| dangerous.
|
| Before anyone make a move for the jugular: I make a distinction
| between union members and union management (the entity). Union
| members are hard working folks, just like anyone else. They want
| the best for their families. That's their driving force. Nothing
| wrong with that at all. We all want the same things. Union
| management, on the other hand, well, I the tend to be between
| evil and criminal.
|
| Today, US unions, in my opinion, destroy jobs. And they have done
| this in massive numbers. I still remember having a long
| conversation with a guy who retired from the printing industry.
| He explained, in great detail, how the union that ruled his
| industry absolutely decimated it. He lost his pension, benefits,
| etc.
|
| The problem with US unions is that they exist to squeeze as much
| from companies as humanly possible. One of the most egregious
| examples I have seen of this is what the UAW (United Auto
| Workers) contracts that made US auto companies have more than
| 10,000 employees getting paid full wages and benefits (about
| $130K/year) to do nothing. Non-US car companies don't have this
| unbelievably destructive expense.
|
| The effect of squeezing every possible drop out of a business is
| that you simply cannot be competitive over the long run. The
| other side effect is that economics and competitive pressures
| will force you to move portions of your process offshore and
| automate as much as you possibly can.
|
| So, yeah, union leaders likely gave themselves a huge pat in the
| back for pulling that one off. And they made millions themselves
| (they get paid very well). And yet, a the ground level, they
| destroyed jobs, damaged companies, likely caused people to have
| serious psychological problems and damaged the long term
| viability of jobs.
|
| When a company had hundreds of millions of dollars in dead-weight
| over head for years and years, sooner or later, there will be
| consequences. This is like fundamental laws of physics that
| cannot be violated.
|
| In my little slice of the universe, as we are building a new
| manufacturing business, everything that can be automated will be
| so. There is no way we can pay someone $15 per hour (EDIT: to put
| screws into holes). If there was a way to do so and remain
| viable, I would have no problem with it. The truth of the matter
| is, this wage is a job killer. The US is already not competitive
| due to the huge cost of doing business here. This makes it worse.
|
| On top of that, the combination of the $15/hr minimum wage,
| pandemic and other world issues has resulted in serious
| inflationary issues. Which means that the people who got that
| $15/hr wage (if they have a job at all), did not, in reality, get
| a raise at all. So, all we've done by pushing this nonsense is
| increase costs and destroy jobs.
|
| Brilliant.
|
| I know they look at all of this in China and cannot believe the
| US seems intent on destroying itself from the inside. I know
| because I also manufacture in China and talk to our suppliers all
| the time. They always tell me about how they are getting new
| customers because the cost of doing business in the US increases
| year after year.
|
| As I said. Brilliant.
|
| Sadly, people will not learn this lesson until things are bad
| enough to be obvious to nearly everyone. To be fair, what I am
| saying above requires having a reasonable understanding of
| business and skin in the game. Most people, the vast majority of
| people, go through life in complete ignorance of these realities.
| And so it is to be expected that, when the time comes to make
| decisions (voting) they are easily swayed into making truly dumb
| choices from the perspective of those who do have context.
| zeku wrote:
| The simple fact is that an adult needs X amount of money to be
| able to live with roommates, eat, drive their car to your job,
| etc.
|
| That amount of money is about $15 most places in the country at
| absolute minimum and that will be a struggle.
|
| If you can't afford to pay someone enough money at 40 hours a
| week that they can live with 1 other person in an apartment,
| eat, buy a car, maintain a car, buy gas, and have a small
| amount of cash left over--then your business isn't a viable
| business man.
|
| It's "simple economics"
| robomartin wrote:
| > The simple fact is that an adult needs X amount of money to
| be able to live with roommates, eat, drive their car to your
| job, etc.
|
| Sure. Let's pay everyone $50 an hour then?
|
| Do you understand how ridiculous it is to base a minimum wage
| on what an adult needs to live with roommates?
|
| It's a need. Of course it is a need. However, forcing a
| minimum wage isn't the solution at all. If it were, we could
| "fix it" by paying everyone $20, $30, $50, $500 per hour.
| Anyone but a complete moron can easily understand what
| happens if we set a minimum wage of $100 per hour. EVERY JOB
| THAT CAN BE EXPORTED WILL BE EXPORTED.
|
| For everything else, inflation will absolutely explode. Which
| means that your $100 per hour won't buy you anything except
| for everything made in China (which will have higher prices
| because the Chinese are not stupid and will raise their
| prices to make more money). Home will cost 10x more and cars
| will double or triple in price. So, the $100 per hour quickly
| turns into a real $10 per hour. All we've done is play with
| numbers to create funny money. The ONLY ONES who benefit are
| the Chinese because they are doing everything they have to do
| in order to grow their economy and become the dominant
| economy in the world for the next 200 years.
|
| That's the game and the stakes. People are allowing
| politicians to run us into the ground (or below it).
|
| Your "simple economics" isn't real economics. It's wishful
| thinking. In the real world, with a globally integrated
| economy, a job and a standard of living can only exist in the
| context of where goods and services can be delivered more
| effectively.
|
| This isn't even about greed. Anyone who has migrated work to
| China and other shores understands this very well. Only the
| ignorant equate this to greed. The truth of the matter is
| that market forces push pricing down. Since you won't pay
| more than $99 for a blender, everyone has to make them in
| China and margins are narrow. Nobody is making 300% margins
| because they went to China. If they do, those margins will
| collapse very quickly as competitors move their ops to China
| and push pricing down. That's economic reality. Like it or
| not.
|
| Try to make something not-trivial in the US or Europe and see
| what happens. Most people would be horrified by the reality
| those of us in manufacturing understand all too well.
| Ignorance is bliss, as they say.
| mplewis wrote:
| They're already exporting jobs.
| robomartin wrote:
| Raise costs and they export even more jobs. As many as
| possible.
|
| I see it in what I am doing every day. I truly want to
| manufacture in the US. I really do. I am angry about this
| whole situation because of it. Stupid policies prevent me
| from having the option to manufacture in the US. Policies
| that are so destructive that you are left with no option
| but to send the work to China. The only other option is
| to go out of business.
|
| I do not want to do this! Yet my government and the
| ignorant masses who vote for them and support their
| ignorant ways effectively forces me to take that path. It
| does not have to be this way at all. Yet, on the current
| path, things are not trending towards getting better at
| all.
|
| My partners and I have already discussed moving all
| manufacturing to China. All of it. Just like Apple, we
| would design here and manufacture there. I am the only
| one who is stubbornly holding that decision back. And I
| know I am going to lose. There's nothing I can do about
| it. It's like fighting the laws of physics. And then I
| post here and people who don't have a clue refuse to even
| think about this and attempt to understand. How have we
| become so ignorant.
|
| It isn't about a single policy. It isn't just about
| minimum wage. It's death by a thousand cuts.
|
| I'll give you another example that won't be popular. What
| we are doing with the southern border is absolutely
| criminal. I haven't kept up with numbers. I think the
| last estimate I read was that over 1.5 million people got
| in...and that's the ones we know about.
|
| BY DEFINITION: Every single one of them is unemployed.
| Yet, they are not counted in unemployment statistics
| because, well, they don't exist. Even worse, we are not
| creating 1.5 million NEW jobs per year for them. If we
| were, there could be justification for accepting people
| with the right skill sets. We are not. Which means we are
| importing unemployment. We might even be importing people
| who will be abused and work for menial wages in the
| shadows. No matter how you look at it, this isn't a plan
| for economic growth and stability at all. We are losing
| jobs and we are importing unemployment.
|
| What's another layer of stupidity? Energy policy. It is
| beyond belief that we are letting people like AOC even
| have a word in this conversation. Solar energy is
| fantastic. I built a 13 kW array. As an engineer, I know
| everything there is to know about solar and then some. I
| also know that we need to build nuclear power plants like
| there is no tomorrow. Solar is far from clean. A solar
| power plant equivalent to a nuclear plant consumes so
| much land and resources most would be horrified. Not to
| mention effects on wildlife, etc.
|
| If we are going to achieve the dream of converting our
| ground transportation fleet to electric vehicles we are
| going to need to DOUBLE our power generation capacity
| (and power transmission infrastructure). You cannot do
| this with solar. Solar is unreliable and expensive. You
| have to do it with nuclear, at least a majority of it.
| That means duplicating the entire US's power generation
| capacity. We need twice the power. That means we need an
| ADDITIONAL 1200 GW. A typical nuclear power plant is
| rated at 1 GW. Yes, that means we need to build somewhere
| in the order of 1000 nuclear power plants, or maybe 500
| and make-up the rest with solar, natural gas, etc.
|
| The other one is the war against oil. This is so
| ridiculous it hurts to even think about it.
|
| Simple concept: We all want clean cars and clean energy.
| At scale (300 million vehicles) this means undertaking
| the largest set of infrastructure projects in the history
| of this nation. Yes, heavy construction and manufacturing
| throughout the land.
|
| What do we need to move materials, dirt, concrete, rebar,
| solar panels, grade and dig the land, etc.? OIL! With oil
| at $130 per barrel there is no way in hell we can afford
| the infrastructure development that would be required to
| transition a nation like the US to clean energy. We need
| $20 per barrel oil for 25 years. With a mission. In other
| words, it can't be about lower the cost of oil so we can
| have cheaper gasoline and diesel. It has to be: We need
| cheap gasoline and diesel so we can build thousands of
| solar, wind and nuclear power plants as well as upgrade
| our entire power delivery infrastructure over 25 to 50
| years so we can transition to more those power sources.
|
| Once again, politicians drive the narrative that is most
| convenient for them in order to secure jobs and remain in
| power until they retire with nice benefits and pensions.
| The carnage and long term destruction they create is lost
| on everyone living for the moment. Sadly, most people
| don't exercise much in the way of critical and strategic
| thinking when they vote for and support these charlatans.
|
| Anyhow, yeah, I am angry and frustrated because I want to
| work in my country and create jobs here but my government
| and the people who support their dumb policies prevents
| me from doing this. Even trying to educate people about
| these realities is futile.
|
| What happens to a lot of business owners --after getting
| tired of hitting their heads against the wall-- is to
| capitulate and take a "if you can't beat them, join them"
| position where they make good money for themselves and
| stop caring about not being able to create jobs and build
| full companies here (or in Europe, same problems).
| metalliqaz wrote:
| funny how paying for employees is an impossible burden, yet
| paying for stock buybacks or the excesses of the C-suite isn't
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Your view is massively in the wrong. Companies are wasting
| waaaay more money on stock buybacks, huge compensation packages
| for executives, nepotism and corruption in business deals and
| other similar things than they are on employee wages.
| robomartin wrote:
| I don't even know how to respond to this fantasy you paint.
| As I told someone else, try to manufacture something non-
| trivial in the US or Europe and you might begin to
| understand.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| So you won't even be making $15/hour at this new business?
| robomartin wrote:
| No. That sentence should have read "There is no way I am
| paying someone $15/hr to put screws into holes".
|
| The problem this forced wage has created is that you can't
| hire people without some pretty solid justification for what
| they will deliver in exchange. Businesses are forced to make
| an ROI choice on everything, including people and their
| wages. This is why you are seeing things like burger flipping
| and fries making robots. You just can't pay people that much
| and stay in business.
|
| There will be plenty of high paid jobs. Just not jobs that
| cannot justify an artificially forced minimum wage that is
| not sustainable in the context of a global economy.
|
| I'll give you a simple and real example from a recent job we
| sent out to bid to nearly two dozen manufacturers in the US
| and China. It consists of a part made by a wire forming
| machine and with some manual labor. The average US-cost for
| that part was in the order of $6.00 per unit PLUS shipping.
| The average cost of the same part made in China INCLUDING
| shipping, was $1.00. Now, somebody tell me how we can make
| that part in the US when minimum wage, taxes, regulatory
| costs, etc. make it impossible to get anywhere even close to
| Chinese prices. I mean, you can't make the part in the US for
| even TWICE the Chinese price. And, keep in mind that shipping
| from China costs 10x more today that it did not too long ago.
|
| People might not like what I have to say. That does not
| invalidate the truth of it, you can't invalidate reality with
| a down-vote. Like it or not. Most people replying to my
| comment have never even tried to manufacture something at a
| non-trivial scale in the US. In other words, they don't even
| know what they are talking about, yet they are quick to have
| an opinion because words like mine hurt their feelings. Well,
| economics cares not one bit about feelings. Again, like it or
| not.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| So if your product can be made entirely in China by cheap
| workers and shipped here, why would I order from you? What
| value do you add? I can already order directly on
| Aliexpress and even talk to Chinese customer service agents
| in English - and they've been delightful to work with by
| the way.
| VictorPath wrote:
| > When a company had hundreds of millions of dollars in dead-
| weight over head for years and years, sooner or later, there
| will be consequences. This is like fundamental laws of physics
| that cannot be violated.
|
| Most large companies have massive amounts of dividends being
| siphoned off from the workers who created the wealth, to heirs
| who are stockholders. Talk about dead weight.
| rdiddly wrote:
| The summary says workers voted "by a wide margin" for a union,
| but it looks like it was 2,654 votes for, 2,131 against, which is
| 55.5% to 44.5% or a margin of 11%. I wouldn't call that a wide
| margin, but maybe it could be considered so in these sorry-ass
| times of perpetual 51-to-49 deadlock.
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