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How Amazon Crushed the Union Movement (2014)

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Re: How Amazon Crushed the Union Movement (2014)

#61

Post by yequalsx »

stale2002 wrote: post #13
Kocrachon wrote: post #4

As a former member of a union, I honestly find it odd at how many people think that unions are always good. Of the two unions I was a part of and watching what my dad went through with his Union I'm actually fairly anti-union at this point in my life. I watched a guy get fired for sexual harassment, and rehired due to pressure from the Union. I watched my father not get a manager position, because of seniority ruling…

The biggest problem with unions is that they try and force everyone to join them. Fine, join whatever private organization that you want. But please leave me out of it. I do not want to follow your ill thought out rules and I want to be able to negotiate myself. I can get a better deal on my own, and I do not want your collective bargaining that they try to force on everyone.

Unless you are a skilled labor lawyer you will not be able to bargain better than the union. In my union there is a tremendous amount of institutional memory and they know the consequences of management proposals.

If you really think that individuals can bargain better on their own than collectively then why do companies want to get rid of collective bargaining?

Re: How Amazon Crushed the Union Movement (2014)

#62

Post by Avshalom »

scoofy wrote: post #34
elicash wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you're special. And contracts can even be negotiated with a group to recognize individual performance! But the data is pretty clear that when workers bargain collectively, they can negotiate higher pay and better benefits.

I think the real issue is what "benefits" means. If benefits means healthcare, then i'm all for it. If benefits means it's nearly impossible to fire someone, or that seniority trumps performance, then it seems more like it will negatively impact many workers than it is supposed to benefit.

>seniority trumps performance

At least people can actually measure seniority.

Re: How Amazon Crushed the Union Movement (2014)

#63

Post by home_boi »

tclancy wrote: post #17

Oh Hacker News, you beautiful people, let me tell you a quick story, because I am in the mood to tell a story in this current country I live in where we are going to make things Great Again by restoring industrial jobs, as though industrial jobs were ipso facto wonderful, high-paying things. As opposed to dangerous, low-paying shit work that killed the people who showed up 6+ days a week until they all looked at each…

Food for thought, if software engineers unionized, you would be out of a job as a contractor because any employer that uses your service would get inflatable ratted.

Then you would be forced to join a union and take the same low pay as every other engineer. And your income would be based on seniority instead of skill, so there is very little chance that you would make even half of your contracting rate.

Re: How Amazon Crushed the Union Movement (2014)

#64

Post by chimeracoder »

elicash wrote: post #59
chimeracoder wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same people decrying the wholesale existence of unions due to bad unions are very rarely willing to decry the wholesale existence of corporations due to bad corporations. Unions and corporations are just flipsides of the same coin. Unions are corporations, in every sense of the word, both legally and conceptually. Unions are just a special type of corporation that has been granted a special right: the exclusive…

No, they aren't legally or conceptually. Legally, they're in a unique class. They're 501c5s. They have their own unique set of laws that apply to them. Conceptually, they're democratic institutions and not at all like corporations. Irrevocable? Getting rid of them is the exact same process as starting one! You have to convince your coworkers and win a vote.

> No, they aren't [corporations] legally or conceptually. Legally, they're in a unique class. They're 501c5s.

What do you think a 501(c)5 corporation is?

> Getting rid of them is the exact same process as starting one! You have to convince your coworkers and win a vote.

Sort of. Companies are strictly prohibited from taking retaliatory action against employees who attempt to organize their workplace. In extreme cases, this can even result in mandatory recognition of a union without a vote.

Unions, on the other hand, have great leeway to terminate membership association with members who speak out publicly against the union, which is de facto termination. They are also legally permitted to suppress counter-organizational activities in many other ways which companies cannot do legally to prevent the formation of a union.

In practice, deunionizing a workplace is many orders of magnitude more difficult than unionizing it, because you have to obtain the written permission of 30% of the bargaining unit without attracting the attention of the union leadership.

There's a reason that only 10% of union members in the US ever had the opportunity to vote (for or against) union representation - unions are not legally required to undergo periodic re-certification votes, and they are given great latitude to prevent themselves from ever having to face a vote.

Re: How Amazon Crushed the Union Movement (2014)

#65

Post by [deleted] »

stale2002 wrote: post #60
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except right-to-work laws allow non-union members to freeride. If we truly wanted to restore balance then people opting out of the union wouldn't be able to benefit from any of the union's negotiations. Of course then everyone would join the union so...

I don't want your union negotiation benefits, though. I don't want to be covered by the union contract. You should be able to negotiate with your own group of people to get certain benefits, and I should be able to negotiate on my own. And then we could see who really gets the better deal. Personally I am confident that my own deal would be better, but I have no problem with other people deciding for themselves that…

[deleted]

Re: How Amazon Crushed the Union Movement (2014)

#66

Post by flukus »

thedarkginger wrote: post #37
flukus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be fine with this, just don't expect any of the rewards that unions fight for. You can negotiate your own wages, your own holiday leave, your own cost of living increases, your own disciplinary process, etc. I'll stand up for your right to opt out and get none of these benefits.

If you're in the U.S., this is an interesting layer to the labor rights debate: "right-to-work" states. Now 28 states (including all of the South, where wages are low) have passed laws that guarantee those who opt out of unions in unionized workplaces receive the same benefits as those who are members. As you'd guess, that works really effectively to undercut the appeal of joining a union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

What on earth was the justification for that? "We hate collective bargaining but want the benefits of collective bargaining"?

Re: How Amazon Crushed the Union Movement (2014)

#68

Post by stale2002 »

elicash wrote: post #23
stale2002 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way that you restore balance is that you make it illegal to force people to join them, as it is in many right to work states. If unions are so great, then they can stand on their own. If they end up sucking, then people will leave them.

This is like making taxes optional.

I am not suggesting that I should be covered under the union contract, without paying union due. Far from it!

I do not want the union contract, because I believe that I can get a better deal for myself. The unioners can have their contract, and I can have mine. In the same way that I negotiate for myself right now, in a fully union free industry.

Re: How Amazon Crushed the Union Movement (2014)

#69

Post by anth1988 »

stale2002 wrote: post #13
Kocrachon wrote: post #4

As a former member of a union, I honestly find it odd at how many people think that unions are always good. Of the two unions I was a part of and watching what my dad went through with his Union I'm actually fairly anti-union at this point in my life. I watched a guy get fired for sexual harassment, and rehired due to pressure from the Union. I watched my father not get a manager position, because of seniority ruling…

The biggest problem with unions is that they try and force everyone to join them. Fine, join whatever private organization that you want. But please leave me out of it. I do not want to follow your ill thought out rules and I want to be able to negotiate myself. I can get a better deal on my own, and I do not want your collective bargaining that they try to force on everyone.

> collective bargaining

> collective

> shared or assumed by all members of the group

Re: How Amazon Crushed the Union Movement (2014)

#70

Post by fixxer »

Looking through the comments, I see a combination of anecdotal evidence about Unions being bad/good and a few (very logical) statements about how collective bargaining leads to higher wages & benefits.

Here are my two pennies:

Private sector unions are great for collective bargaining, though I prefer they abstain from broad political platforms (immigration, for example), as these are so far removed the intent of the union. I tend to view these Unions as being political vehicles first, collective bargaining agents second. That isn't a compliment.

Public sector unions are awkward in that tax payer is not represented at the bargaining table. They should be restructured to make bargaining comparable to the private sector case (or reverse Aboud).

My personal experiences with Unions are very negative.

In the first experience, in SoCal in the early 90s, I saw first hand when the Teamsters moved to unionize drywall framers. My dad was a small scale developer in the San Gabriel Valley and during a protest, a Teamsters boss on a megaphone encouraged a mob of picketers to run through the project with hammers and destroy recently hung drywall. My dad also received death threats and we had a rock thrown through a window.

My second experience was doing campaign targeting for AFSCME. The people I met from that org were in the extreme far left part of the political spectrum (as in "Stalin had some good ideas"). Take from that what you will.

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