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Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

reuters.com

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Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#121

Post by berberous »

RKearney wrote: post #29
oblio wrote: post #4

Now that's something I haven't heard about in the US for a few decades: strikes. I'm partly kidding, but have there been any major strikes in the US lately?

Last year Verizon workers had a strike. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_strike_of_2016 It affected many of our circuit orders around that time and caused us to go with different last mile carriers.

The Verizon strikers would regularly blast air horns outside my home and office. Extremely annoying, and apparently legal. Made me lose my sympathy for them real quick.

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#122

Post by vixen99 »

gsnedders wrote: post #105
chimeracoder wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> £55k isn't that well paid for people who have to live in or near London It's more than the typical software engineer can expect to make in London. Source: Glassdoor, Indeed, talking to colleagues who live in London, and my own memories from my last job search.

OTOH, they have worse health prospects than most software engineers and they mostly have contractual requirements to live within x miles of the depot they're based out of.

Serious consideration is being given to driverless cars so why not similarly upgrade all trains for situations far less demanding than public roads?

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#124

Post by kwhitefoot »

chimeracoder wrote: post #78
zitterbewegung wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think union membership rates have been dropping due to the fact that companies have been increasinly more anti union.

> I think union membership rates have been dropping due to the fact that companies have been increasinly more anti union. Contrary to popular belief, companies have incredibly little power in that regard, especially when you're talking about an already-unionized closed shop (as opposed to a company that wants to prevent its workers from unionizing in the first place). Legally and practically, it's incredibly difficul…

Aren't closed shops illegal?

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#125

Post by SiempreViernes »

Kiro wrote: post #111

> The company said salaries paid to its workers were among the highest in the logistic sector and that it also provided some benefits such as private medical insurance or money to pay for training programs. I don't understand how you can strike if this is true.

I don't either understand why they strike, but that's because they released their statement as a scanned pdf without ocr and I can't read italian: http://www.cgilpiacenza.it/imgportfolio/14/img_6/img_767969....

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#126

Post by scarmig »

chimeracoder wrote: post #78
zitterbewegung wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think union membership rates have been dropping due to the fact that companies have been increasinly more anti union.

> I think union membership rates have been dropping due to the fact that companies have been increasinly more anti union. Contrary to popular belief, companies have incredibly little power in that regard, especially when you're talking about an already-unionized closed shop (as opposed to a company that wants to prevent its workers from unionizing in the first place). Legally and practically, it's incredibly difficul…

> union members overwhelmingly voted for Republicans in the last two election cycles

There's a lot that's skewed in your comments, but that's just flat out wrong. Union households voted for Clinton over Trump by 8%. That's less than Democrats often get, but the idea that union members prefer Republicans is divorced from reality.

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#128

Post by nindalf »

> The company said salaries paid to its workers were among the highest in the logistic sector and that it also provided some benefits such as private medical insurance or money to pay for training programs.

Not a criticism of either Amazon or the unions but I would really appreciate it if news sources would verify these claims one way or another. Obviously as a wire service, that may not be Reuters' job but whether Amazon's claim here is true or not makes a massive difference to what I glean from the article.

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#129

Post by distances »

eriken wrote: post #55
dsacco wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where unions realize that competitiveness trumps wages. It seems like you’re sneaking an assertion in there. Can you clarify your point a bit? What is the relationship between competition and wages, and why is one better than the other for unions?

Well if a company cannot compete because wages are too high then the company goes under and jobs are gone. Germany is a good example of this, they have a ton of unions and lots of production but the unions understand that competition is key to survival so there are very few strikes.

It's not directly comparable, as in Germany the workers have much more power in companies to start with. You need fewer strikes if your representatives in the company board can affect the decisions before they are announced.

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#130

Post by bogomipz »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #23

Happy to hear workers are standing up for themselves. The anti-union FUD campaign in the US has contributed significantly to the erosion of middle class wages over the past 50 years (check out Thomas Piketty's work if you're curious about this).

>" The anti-union FUD campaign in the US has contributed significantly to the erosion of middle class wages over the past 50 years."

That's quite a claim, do you have any data to back that up? That just sounds like another claim intended to politicize things in some binary fashion - left vs right. Which is ironic because it is this same FUD tactic that politicians use to get people to react with their gut rather than their brain. You seem to be propagating this divisive tactic.

There are many reason for a shrinking middle class in the US - loss of the manufacturing sector, an aging population, the decline in marriage rates, a more unequal income distribution and changing demographics such as an increase in racial and ethnic diversity.[1]

Also the majority of of union members are now in public sector jobs and not private sector jobs.[2]

The past 50 years has overall seen an increase in the public sector union jobs, trending slightly downward recently.

Public-sector workers have a union membership rate (34.4 percent) more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.4 percent).[3]

[1] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middl...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/business/23labor.html

[3] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf

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