[HN Gopher] Amazon fails to overturn New York City union election
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon fails to overturn New York City union election
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 145 points
Date : 2022-09-02 13:58 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| black_13 wrote:
| granzymes wrote:
| For those wondering, this is not a final decision.
|
| The case will now go to the NLRB board, and then the courts of
| appeal. The local administrative law judge (in-house NLRB court)
| is only the first stage.
|
| I would not expect the NLRB to rule for Amazon at the board
| level, either. The first chance of a friendly court will be at
| the circuit level.
| Animats wrote:
| Amazon isn't even supposed to have a voice in this. The right
| to organize belongs solely to the workers. Amazon is raising
| phony claims that somehow, the election wasn't fair to them.
| Those were rejected.
| seibelj wrote:
| And whenever the union loses, they say the election wasn't
| fair to them. It's almost like both sides refuse to believe
| anyone can have an opposing opinion and everything is rigged
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Your comment ignores that one side is a trillion dollar
| company with a track record of abuse and anti union
| behavior, documented as fact.
| seibelj wrote:
| And major unions such as the UAW have embezzled millions
| of dollars from their members, documented as fact
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/former-uaw-official-
| sen...
|
| Let's not pretend one side is sinners and one is saints
| csb6 wrote:
| The UAW didn't organize this election. Neither did any
| major unions. An independent union, the Amazon Labor
| Union, did.
|
| Stop implying that major unions have anything to do with
| the dispute.
| seibelj wrote:
| My comment is to counteract the knee-jerk HN opinion that
| "All unions are a panacea!" without ignoring the very
| real, very well-documented counterpoints.
| googlryas wrote:
| You could just say "Your comment ignores...".
|
| I don't see much of a problem with seibelj's comment, it
| seems accurate. Just like in American politics, people
| constantly decry "That's unconstitutional!" about some
| proposed law they don't like, as if there is any kind of
| agreed upon definition of what is unconstitutional(there
| isn't - even the Supreme Court frequently disagrees
| within itself and is only decided based on a simple
| majority-rules voting of the members).
| metadat wrote:
| I wonder how Amazon views this internally. Is it a "failure",
| resulting from an $AMZN corp employee or group being ineffective
| at their "job" to ensure worker unionization is suppressed and
| not achieved?
| oxguy3 wrote:
| If I recall correctly, they fired managers en masse when these
| election results came out.
| bmismyname wrote:
| I don't work at Amazon, but I have a few insights here through
| insider backchannels. It basically all comes down to numbers
| and the amount of money spent on opposing the union versus how
| much money they will save on suppressing wages if the union
| fails. In other words, it's pretty good ROI to invest in union
| busting at all costs because the cost of a few lawyers and
| consultants is much lower than paying living wages.
|
| It's unlikely that Amazon employees will be reprimanded or
| whatever, but they probably will use a different law firm next
| time around.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Of course, now Amazon are closing warehouses, soon-to-be
| unprofitable warehouses.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-02/amazon-cl...
| ftyhbhyjnjk wrote:
| One genuine question: Will this accelerate the move to more
| automation by these companies? And of course the answer is yes
| here, but, what options workers will be left with once that sets
| in?
| joshl32532 wrote:
| Amazon already trying its hardest to automate as much as
| possible in their fulfillment center, union or no union.
|
| This is such a smug take, that the warehouse workers should not
| anger the big almighty Amazon, or they'll automate their job.
|
| If Amazon need them today, they have their value. This gives
| the workers even more incentive to squeeze Amazon ASAP, while
| Amazon is desperate for manpower.
| tyrfing wrote:
| No, because minor increases in labor costs don't change the
| math much. Amazon is already spending billions to improve
| automation, these people are doing the jobs that they cannot
| reasonably automate. If you assume a magic "develop automation
| faster" button, companies like Amazon are already paying as
| many people as possible to mash it around the clock. Why
| wouldn't they?
|
| You could just as well argue that increased labor costs due to
| unions means Amazon will be forced to spend less on developing
| automation, since they don't have the budget for it.
| overthemoon wrote:
| I can't imagine it'll move the timetable up faster than it was
| already moving. I couldn't speak to the options workers will
| have. Historically, the answer is "not many", right?
| larkost wrote:
| Amazon always wants as much as it can automated, they devote an
| enormous amount of money to that. This is not going to move the
| needle on something they were already dedicated to.
|
| And that argument is almost always silly. All of these big
| companies are devoting resources all the time to reducing
| payroll. It is banged into their heads in MBA schools that
| "payroll is your biggest expense", and that is a bad thing.
| With that mindset they are always looking to reduce payroll.
| thfuran wrote:
| Yes, they're devoting money towards automation, but wage
| increases absolutely can move the needle. If you're spending
| a bunch of money trying to get your automation solution's
| costs below 130% of the cost of labor and suddenly the cost
| of labor jumps 40%, it instantly becomes profitable to start
| deploying automation instead of hiring labor.
| favorited wrote:
| > we believe having a direct relationship with the company is
| best for our employees
|
| that's too bad, because your employees seem to believe otherwise.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I fail to see how this ends with anything other than Amazon
| folding as a company and AliBaba taking over. AliBaba isn't
| infested with unionization like Amazon is. Even if eventually the
| US branch of AliBaba is forced to become unionized, it will be
| far too late for Amazon to resurrect and compete against them.
| bmismyname wrote:
| US gov will just ban Alibaba for nationalistic reasons before
| that happens. Besides, all the crap you buy from Amazon is
| coming from China already, and a good chunk of it is just
| straight off Alibaba.
| etchalon wrote:
| Ah, yes. Just like how Ford, famously heavily unionized, folded
| and disappeared as Kia took over.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| Don't look at the survival of a multinational as a metric,
| look at its places here. What happened to Detroit and those
| unionized jobs? Some remain, but much of Ford has been moved
| to Mexico. So yes, there was some folding and disappearing.
| etchalon wrote:
| I was mocking the idea that unionization would cause a
| company to "disappear", not that unionization wouldn't
| impact the structure of a company or have other side
| effects.
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| I mean, Ford is in a pretty tough spot for the future. They
| couldn't compete in the ICE sedan market. Their cash cow ICE
| truck market is gone in 10 years. They have a LOT of debt
| that will cost a lot more to service now interest rates are
| up. So their only saving grace is a successful pivot to the
| EV market, but their software and software culture is bad,
| and they are not procuring very many batteries.
| stonogo wrote:
| I think describing the US market of a global company isn't
| as compelling an argument as you think it is.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| The parent comment topic is the benefits to US workers
| working on US market products. If Ford's US market
| footprint and manufacturing workforce has relatively
| shrunk over the decades, then that is absolutely relevant
| to the concern of long-term benefit to US workers.
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| Exactly. When we're talking about US auto unions, the
| market for those vehicles pretty much is the US market.
| The rest of the global sales are made with global
| (typically non-unionized) workers. If Ford can't make
| competitive cars for the US market, it doesn't speak well
| to the union vs. non-union competitiveness.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| US automakers absolutely struggled in the 70s when foreign
| car companies showed up and started competing. It wasn't Kia
| that gave them fits, it was Honda and Toyota. It was 100% an
| existential crisis, and unions made the situation worse.
| Which isn't to say that unions are necessarily bad and didn't
| produce good things for their workers, but they made it very
| difficult for the US auto industry to adapt.
|
| A link to a long series about the interaction between US
| automakers and the unions is below. Of note is the story
| about how automakers' market share declined precipitously in
| the early eighties when Japanese automakers figured out the
| US market.
|
| The US auto industry is not a great example of how a union
| can work with an employer in the face of existential threats.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/08/business/uaw-.
| ..
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1981/10/11/f.
| ..
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/chrysler-
| bai... (Heavy International Competition)
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The US automakers did not struggle because of unions. The
| US automakers struggled because they were led by incredibly
| pathetic people and genuinely did not know how to make good
| cars or run a business.
|
| Unions were not who was responsible for their atrocious
| offerings during the 70s to 2000s.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| US automakers' products were terrible, and there is
| plenty of blame to go around. But I have yet to read any
| analysis of that crisis (such as those linked above) that
| did not include unions as one contributing factor.
| idontpost wrote:
| That's because you keep reading propaganda.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Feel free to provide an alternate source. I would love to
| read it. Please ensure that it is as free from propaganda
| that it would pass your own level of scrutiny by someone
| on the other side.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| What a horrible viewpoint to have. Unionization is one of the
| best things happening (albeit slowly) in these sorts of
| industries right now. How can you not be for it? Amazon working
| conditions are terrible and turnover is so bad that Amazon is
| rapidly running out of people who haven't already tried working
| at Amazon and decided it's horrible. If working conditions and
| pay improves, we will all reap the economic benefits -- more
| capital in the hands of consumers, probably less broken or
| mismatched packages because workers will have a more reasonable
| workload and more incentive to do a good job, better outcomes
| for the majority of the population, etc, etc,. Bear in mind
| more than one in 10 people works in some capacity for Amazon in
| the U.S.. That's a huge economic sector if their pay and
| working conditions improve.
|
| Your argument that AliBaba can somehow come into the U.S. and
| not be subjected to the same economic and cultural effects
| mystifies me. If AliBaba came here they would experience
| unionization, and it would be a good thing. Also given the
| extent of Amazon's monopoly in the U.S., and anti-china AND
| anti-middle-east sentiment in the U.S. being as high as it is
| (AliBaba cannotes "arab" for a lot of americans), there is just
| no way AliBaba could ever enter this market successfully unless
| Amazon was broken up into multiple companies and AliBaba
| rebranded to something appropriate for the U.S. market. So
| yeah, your comment is really bizzare.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"How can you not be for it?"
|
| I'm wary because unions in the US start out strong by
| addressing very real grievances and putting the greedier
| aspects of management in-check. But it seems inevitable that
| they become entrenched, bloated, and protectionist to the
| point of hurting the company's ability to adapt to market
| pressure and disruptions from non-unionized competitors. I'm
| not anti-union per se, and I would rather see them structured
| the way they are in Europe, and particularly, those in
| Germany.
| dcist wrote:
| How are unions structured in Europe?
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| There's not much structurally different about unions in
| Europe, but they exist in very different legal
| circumstances. Unions in the US are micromanaged by the
| NLRB and many complex laws enacted during the cold war.
|
| Unions aside, Germany requires by law that corporate
| boards have a minimum percentage of representation from
| bottom-level employees, meaning employees who are
| nobody's boss. This law seems to have been invaluable to
| working conditions in Germany. The catch is that the
| American ruling class would simply never allow such a law
| to be passed. Germany has the law as a result of history.
| Remember the Soviets defeated the Nazis, "first they came
| for the communists" and so on.
| kazen44 wrote:
| this law is also in effect in a lot of other european
| countries.
|
| Remember that after World War One and during the
| interbellum, most european countries had massive social
| unrest. Giving workers representation inside the company
| was usually meant as a way to appease to
| communist/socialist voters during those times.
|
| Mind you, this all happened before world war 2 and the
| iron curtain.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I'm weary...
|
| You're tired?
|
| I think you mean wary. Or leery. Not weary.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Interesting, I did not know this. Fixed.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| Unions/Governments/Companies/Families/HOA's/Schools/Restaur
| ants/Colleges/etc.. are great at first.
|
| Eventually they crumble under their own apathy,
| bureaucracy, mismanagement, entropy and waste and a more
| lean competitor takes their place.
|
| Thankfully
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy
| tbihl wrote:
| >How can you not be for it?
|
| Mostly too many stories from family of ridiculous
| interactions with unions (e.g. "you can't carry your own
| stuff to your booth. If you don't have us carry your
| briefcase, your truck's windows are all going to be
| smashed.")
|
| Also, teacher's unions.
| ratsmack wrote:
| >Unionization is one of the best things happening
|
| Some unionization works out well, especially when the union
| actually has the best interest of both the workers and
| company in mind. There are many times that self serving
| unions bleed workers through dues and protect non-productive
| workers to the benefit of no one, and in some cases, driving
| companies into bankruptcy.
| morvita wrote:
| I am pro-union and acknowledge that some unions will
| protect workers that don't actually contribute to the
| business, but I think we need a source on unions that drove
| companies into bankruptcy. That's a pretty extreme case
| that needs concrete examples.
| swatcoder wrote:
| You genuinely believe that this is a make-or-break line for a
| multinational with extensive horizontal and vertical
| integration across multiple industries and it will _fold_
| because their warehouse workers demand marginally higher wages
| and some guaranteed bathroom breaks?
|
| It's in their interest to fight unionization, but the
| catastrophizing is just part of that negotiating game. You're
| just buying a PR line that they don't even believe themselves.
|
| As soon as unionization gains a foothold, that same PR will
| talk up how they have strong relations with workers and that it
| gives them a competitive advantage in hiring, quality, tenure,
| and loyalty.
|
| It's spin today, and spin tomorrow. Don't take it so seriously,
| maybe.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Can't we just short circuit to the last part? If it's going
| to get there eventually, it makes sense to cut to the chase.
| Doing the song and dance before hand feels so tedious,
| boring, and pointless.
| danaris wrote:
| The thing is, it's _not_ a foregone conclusion that we 'll
| get to there. Amazon believes it's in their interests to
| fight tooth and nail to prevent unions from forming, and
| historically, it has been able to do so.
|
| Of course, there's some pretty good evidence that companies
| that treat and pay their workers well are _more successful_
| than those that try to scrape by treating them like
| disposable machine parts. But it 's not, and has never
| been, all about the money: a lot of it is about power, and
| classism, and giving mediocre managers someone they can
| treat like garbage.
| [deleted]
| realslimjd wrote:
| Is it really that difficult to imagine a company that treats
| its workers fairly succeeding?
| bmismyname wrote:
| Yes.
| criddell wrote:
| The unionized professional baseball (and basketball,
| hockey, football, etc...) players seem to be doing okay.
| bmismyname wrote:
| Yep, funny how that works.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The NFLPA and NBAPA are wildly ineffective and are unable
| to adequately advocate for their players' needs.
|
| However, I would chalk that up to immature and young guys
| not voting for their best interests. When you're up
| against the best leaders and lawyers money can buy, your
| union is bound to seem ineffective.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's also an unsympathetic postion from the outsider.
| These are multi-million dollar salaries that are making
| complaints about locker room amenities and what not.
| Complaining about having to play 3 days out of 7 also
| falls on deaf ears a bit. You're being paid to play a
| game at the most elite levels purely for entertainment
| purposes. Rather than complaining about playing time, how
| about asking "are you not entertained?" If you're too
| tired, sit on the bench and let someone else play.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| So how does COSTCO thrive?
| bmismyname wrote:
| COSTCO is 1/5th the size of Amazon, even though the
| company has been around about 20 years longer.
| jfim wrote:
| They also only sell goods to members, and don't offer
| have a cloud service.
|
| I also trust Costco a lot more than Amazon, even though
| Costco is not as convenient to use due to their smaller
| number of SKUs.
| dylan604 wrote:
| smaller number of SKUs and not consistent. you can find
| something on a visit, and then it is not available on a
| subsequent visit. but i now know this going in, and still
| benefit from the items that are available
| nameless912 wrote:
| This is like saying your restaurant chain is unsuccessful
| because it only has 1/5 the locations as McDonalds.
|
| That's still a _lot_ of freakin' restaurants my guy.
| Costco is the only counterexample that I know of to "all
| workplaces need unions in order to guarantee workers'
| quality of life", but I think they might be the exception
| that proves the rule. That they've grown to be that big
| and treated their employees that well is a testament to
| how good economically, long term, it is to treat your
| employees as the valuable assets they are.
| whateveracct wrote:
| > 1/5th the size of Amazon
|
| So pretty freaking big?
| bmismyname wrote:
| Depends on how you look at it. Costco had a 20 year head
| start, and with the way returns compound they should
| really be MUCH bigger than Amazon if capitalism worked
| well for the working class.
|
| Personally I spend most of my money at Costco when I can
| because I prefer giving money to companies that treat
| their workers better (or at least better than Amazon).
| pie420 wrote:
| "if capitalism worked well for the working class."
|
| your intent here was to provoke outrage and it succeeded,
| well done. Just because capitalism works
| SUPERSUPERSUPERSUPER well for the SUPERSUPERSUPERSUPER
| intelligent/hardworking/lucky (jeff bezos), and only
| SUPERSUPER well for the SUPERSUPER
| intelligent/hardworking/lucky (costco founders) doesn't
| mean that capitalism doesn't work for the capitalist
| class, only that it works proportionally well for the
| capitalist class in relation to
| intelligence/workethic/luck. Bezos was harder working or
| smarter or luckier than mr costco. Capitalism works well
| for all capitalists, it just works better for some.
| bmismyname wrote:
| I'm saying that capitalism is designed to enrich the
| owning class at the expense of the working class. It's
| just a system to transfer wealth toward those who already
| have it.
|
| The "rising tide lifts all boats" reaganomics argument is
| not wrong, but if it reaches the point (where it has now)
| where the working class is not seeing an inflation-
| adjusted increase in wealth, then they are (by
| definition) becoming poorer over time.
| danaris wrote:
| Not sure how this squares with your assertion upthread
| that it's hard to imagine a company that treats its
| workers well succeeding...
| LegitShady wrote:
| which system other than capitalism has worked better,
| historically? Because the alternatives seem to be worse.
|
| The issue isn't capitalism its the political leadership
| who aren't interested in creating an environment where
| workers are rewarded in line with their productivity.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Socialism seems to be working out far better for pretty
| much the entire EU.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Not a single country in the EU uses socialism, so you'd
| be mistaken. They are all capitalist countries.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Would anyone even notice? Amazon retail is basically an
| Aliexpress storefront.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| From a European perspective, it is simply crazy that 1.6M workers
| [0] failed to unionize so far.
|
| Not that Unions are simply great and effective - unions bring
| their own set of problems. But a company this large shouldn't
| have been able to fight unionization for so long.
|
| [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/234488/number-of-
| amazon-...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| American Union corruption is an ugly story, quite a lot of it
| in New York, NY .. later Detroit. The battle against communism
| fits well here, as the far-right criminals who did run NY
| Unions were the choice of the insider capitalists, versus the
| serious-Left that thought of the idea.
|
| Proof of this extreme statement? How about a Jeopardy question
| -- "What New York City famous gangster got his start as a mafia
| boss with his appointment to run the New York airport union" ..
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Funny how people only ever talk about those supposedly
| horrible unions instead of the nurses and teachers unions
| that made sure my mom could feed her kids or my family
| members are paid fairly for their hard work, often hard
| PHYSICAL LABOR in a supposed knowledge industry.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Actually most of the people I hear that talk about
| Teacher's union are expressing negative opinions of them,
| citing things like rubber rooms, and the impossibility of
| getting rid of bad teachers.
|
| Not necessarily saying I have an issue with unions per se,
| but the two unions I hear people complaining about the most
| are the teachers and the police unions. It seems generally
| people don't like public sector unions from the people I've
| talked to.
| sophacles wrote:
| Those examples sound to me like great examples of unions
| doing thier job: protecting their members. All the places
| that I've heard of that weaken or eliniate various unions
| in the name of protecting the powerful shortly produce
| stories of ever increasing demands for unpaid work and
| firings for not doing the unpaid work, or
| firings/censures/punishments for not violating the laws
| of physics (e.g. my friend who was given a pay cut
| because every teacher was required to do an hour of 1:1
| time with each of their students each week, but her band
| was 200+ kids).
| macinjosh wrote:
| > (e.g. my friend who was given a pay cut because every
| teacher was required to do an hour of 1:1 time with each
| of their students each week, but her band was 200+ kids).
|
| Sounds like only one side of the story to me and highly
| improbable.
| sophacles wrote:
| You think its improbable that an organization would set
| an unmeetable KPI to have an excuse for lowering pay?
| bsder wrote:
| Because that all fits the anti-union PR.
|
| The mere _presence_ of the union suddenly cuts down on
| the shittiness of the administration. Teachers stop
| getting jerked between classes and classrooms. Teachers
| can 't get forced into doing extracurricular activities.
| etc.
|
| The union also pays the legal bills when teachers get
| sued by idiotic parents because they had the temerity to
| teach evolutionary theory in a science class.
|
| And, as I have pointed out previously, a lot of the
| "can't get rid of teachers" is due to the fact that the
| _administration_ simply won 't file the paperwork to get
| a teacher fired. You see, if you file the paperwork, that
| becomes a _record_ and can wind up public information.
| That record is likely to come up when the _administrator_
| is trying to get a promotion or a new job. So, rather
| than creating a paper trail to fire the teacher, these
| administrators would rather transfer teachers to a
| "rubber room" and bury the problem so that it won't haunt
| the administrator's promotions in the future.
| macinjosh wrote:
| The last people I want working as my nurse or my kids
| teacher is someone who is entitled to their job regardless
| of their performance.
| com2kid wrote:
| > The last people I want working as my nurse or my kids
| teacher is someone who is entitled to their job
| regardless of their performance.
|
| And the last person I want working as my nurse is someone
| who got the job because they are good at boot licking and
| the previous nurse who cared about patient safety was
| fired for "being a trouble maker" when they complained
| about poor quality of patient care.
|
| Or how about a nurse who is overworked because there
| isn't a union around to see that they get breaks?
|
| Or how about a nurse who is stressed because they can't
| pay their bills?
|
| Without nurses unions, quality of care plummets.
|
| Or to put it another way, people become nurses because
| they want to help others. People become hospital
| administrators to make money. Without nursing unions, the
| hospital administrators are the ones determining what
| quality of care you will get.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's almost like you have a very colored opinion of what
| unions do. Consider where you get the information about
| unions.
|
| Unions are why when my mother got her job, she was given
| a paper that showed her most likely pay scale for the
| next 10 years. Unions are how my mother had excellent
| health care to take her children to the doctors, despite
| making just over poverty wages. Unions were there to help
| her when a student (a fellow student of mine, in my own
| class, indeed my mother taught me a few times) made
| baseless and false claims of sexual assault. Unions were
| there when nurses were being put in harms in an attempt
| to force nurses to bear the brunt of covid issues. Unions
| are there when management says "you should be expected to
| do X" when X is laughably beyond average expectations and
| also what was in your contract when you signed it.
|
| Unions could have stopped my company from requiring
| unpaid overtime as "prod support" for our products.
| Unions could have prevented my work contract from being
| one sentence that's as vague as possible. Unions could
| have prevented my company from cutting everyone's pay by
| 20% during covid despite business being up 100% because
| we do e-commerce.
| macinjosh wrote:
| My view is no more colored than yours apparently.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| _edit_ people are mistaking this comment for anti-Unionism..
| isn 't it obvious that this is anti-"corrupt union
| management" and nothing about the virtues of working life,
| protecting workers from exploitation, and a social path to
| prosperity for a greater number of people? Management
| corruption IS a problem if you want all of that ! hard to be
| understood here...
| kranke155 wrote:
| Unions are necessarily political organisations (who are
| almost always corrupt), but they also do tend to defend the
| rights of their workers. Didn't the UAW protect their workers
| so well that they are partially blamed for the trouble at GM
| and Ford? This is a Union so strong that it managed to become
| a major part of the companies bottom line (instead of all
| being extracted by CEOs as usual).
| macinjosh wrote:
| > Unions are necessarily political organisations (who are
| almost always corrupt), but they also do tend to defend the
| rights of their workers.
|
| "My dad beats me but at least he feeds me once a day"
| malermeister wrote:
| How is corruption ~= beatings?
|
| More like: my dad wastes money on lottery tickets
| sometimes, but he always makes sure I'm cared for.
| nix0n wrote:
| > UAW ... blamed for the trouble at GM and Ford
|
| This is just propaganda.
|
| The counterpoints to this would include the Geo Prizm and
| Pontiac Vibe, which were cheap, fantastically reliable cars
| built by GM union labor from Toyota designs.
| bendbro wrote:
| Couldn't you have picked something other than the apex
| econobox to prove you point?
| thfuran wrote:
| Is there some reason they should have?
| lr1970 wrote:
| > How about a Jeopardy question -- "What New York City famous
| gangster got his start as a mafia boss with his appointment
| to run the New York airport union"
|
| Is it Jimmy Hoffa [0]?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa
| NathanKP wrote:
| I think this comes down to how many in the US see jobs in the
| general. A job working in an Amazon fulfillment center is seen
| by most as a kind of "stepping stone" job. Literally anyone can
| get the job very easily, and as a result its not considered to
| be a "good job" in the first place. There is an understanding
| that you work this type of job if you are fresh out of high
| school with no experience, or you don't have any skills so you
| can't find better work, etc. So it's considered okay to suffer
| in the short term, as you don't plan to stay in this type of
| job for the long term anyway. In fact Amazon leans into this by
| offering programs to pay tuition for fullfillment center
| workers to learn tech skills, etc. Part of the draw of the job
| is that you can more easily pivot from the role into new better
| roles.
|
| So with this background its not hard to see why workers don't
| bother to join a union or invest that much in improving working
| conditions in their current role. They want to be moving on to
| another job or better role in a year or less anyway.
|
| Disclaimer: I am an Amazon employee, and I am speaking from my
| own personal viewpoint, not for Amazon.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I don't think this is true. I remember when I was in the
| Army, I was a commissioned officer, and a whole lot of junior
| enlisted Soldiers who were discharging were intentionally
| looking to go work at Amazon fulfillment centers. While I
| imagine they're not "great" jobs in terms of the working
| conditions, they did seem to pay better than anything else
| you could do without specialized skills in the areas they
| were located in. As long as the job is full time and offers
| health insurance, that's gold in a lot of places. Keep in
| mind the cost of living can be extremely low in rural areas.
| I think back to a good friend from college that came out to
| LA to live with me 20 years ago to follow his dream of being
| a television writer. We shared a 2-bed place that was
| something like $1,400 a month or so back then. Where he was
| from, Charles Town, WV, the rent on a comparable place was
| between $100 and $200 a month. A full-time job that pays more
| than double the federal minimum wage is more than enough to
| make it there.
|
| It definitely isn't in New York City, of course, which starts
| to get at the real problem, but this isn't really an _Amazon_
| problem. No matter how strong a union ends up being, they 're
| not going to push wages high enough for unskilled labor to
| ever be able to comfortably live in a place like New York
| City, but New York City still needs things like Amazon
| fulfillment centers. This is a problem with cities in
| general. None of them can house the low-skill populations
| they nonetheless require to do most of the labor required to
| make a city livable for everyone else.
| ahelwer wrote:
| I wouldn't say this is how such jobs are seen by most. This
| is certainly how such jobs are seen by people who have landed
| a tech job though. We can't all be tech workers, managers,
| consultants, or other such professions. Somebody has to move
| the packages around in the real world. To consign this and
| other _essential_ (to borrow a word from early pandemic
| times) jobs to transitory, stepping-stone status is the
| opposite of how it should be. It doesn 't matter, in the
| grand scheme of things, whether my git commits go in by the
| end of the week. The professions where it _does_ matter
| whether something happens by the end of the week ought to be
| made much more attractive places to be.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| I have parents, neither are in the tech sector, that
| believe this. I would say a fair number of people outside
| of tech believe this too. I have also used vocational
| rehabilitation services and they don't treat those jobs
| with such disrespect, but I definitely got the feeling some
| jobs are stepping stone jobs.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| Europe doesn't have the NLRB and great many stifling anti-union
| laws passed in the US during the cold war.
| ars wrote:
| That's because while they are both called "Union" a European
| union and an American one are not the same thing!
|
| This explains some of the difference:
| https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/17/15290674/u...
|
| And from my understanding in Europe you can pick whichever
| Union you like (maybe you can confirm?) While in the US the
| employer is locked to a single Union.
|
| That single difference explains why they are unpopular in the
| US.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Propaganda and individual exceptionalism are a hell of a drug.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Every human being is exceptional. You won't convince me
| otherwise. We are all unique and have something to offer.
| Your kind of thinking is anti-human and leads to a world
| where the only options for people in work and society are
| what someone else has already decided is best for them. I'd
| rather live my life according to my principals instead of
| getting the same serving given to everyone else. When I am
| forced to join a union agency is ripped away from me and
| given to the collective.
|
| Not everyone has the same beliefs and values as you do, so
| perhaps a little humility is in order.
| archagon wrote:
| > _Not everyone has the same beliefs and values as you do,
| so perhaps a little humility is in order._
|
| Practice what you preach, mate. "Anti-human"? Yikes.
| butUhmErm wrote:
| malermeister wrote:
| Every human is unique in their skills and wants, but not
| their basic needs.
|
| We all need food, healthcare, housing etc. and it's
| unconscionable that some jobs in the US don't provide for
| those basics.
|
| If you join a union, agency is not ripped away from you, it
| is given to you. Alone, the fast food worker cannot demand
| a pay raise. Together, they all can.
|
| Nobody is talking about "the same serving as everyone
| else", this is about raising the minimum serving to be
| reasonable so nobody has to suffer.
|
| Agency is being taken away by capitalist exploitation, not
| by attempts to counteract it.
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