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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

#231

Post by bonzini »

petre wrote: post #169
yardie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has a modern welfare system. When demand goes down, salaries go down. So the state welfare system makes up the difference. German unions also have a seat at the board. Unlike most board run companies a decision isn't made without input from the union. So yes, there few strikes in Germany because labor and management actually behave like adults.

I wonder where the money for the difference comes from? Taxes. Also German economy is pretty solid since they're a net exporter at the expense of the rest of the EU. This modern welfare system wouldn't work in France, let alone Southern Europe.

Italy has the same mechanism (it's called Cassa integrazione guadagni). It is sometimes abused for companies that ought to have gone bankrupt decades ago, but Italy has decent welfare policies and worker rights policies, especially compared to the US.

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

#232

Post by stickfigure »

tw04 wrote: post #165
chimeracoder wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You act as though anti-union FUD can't affect members. That's kind of ridiculous... if it didn't affect MEMBERS as well as non-members, what would be the point? If I'm a less-educated union member who has no concept of what life was like before unions, and constantly hear that unions just take my money while providing no benefit, I'm probably likely to be swayed. What's the union going to do? Tell me about how 50 y…

>I'm not going to say that democracy is infallible - in fact, I'm usually the first to point out the exact opposite. But "they don't know what's best for them the way I do" is a pretty dangerous line of reasoning to start heading down. I guess it's a good thing I never said any of the words you both put in my mouth and "quoted". Not once did I say I know what's best for them. Not once did I say they couldn't make dec…

Your words were dismissive of union members whose opinions differ than your own (they're less educated and missing the bigger picture, incapable of evaluating anti-union FUD on their own).

Don't be disingenuous, "they don't know what's best for them the way I do" is a very fair representation of your words. Maybe you do? If you're going to take that position, own it.

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

#233

Post by azernik »

mrighele wrote: post #198
SiempreViernes wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

I will try a summary translation for you (I can't claim to be perfect, it is more union-speak than Italian :-) ): The issues that the unions are complaining about are: * Need for increased wages: the current wages follow the minimum required by the CCNL (national collective contract)[ ], but working condition are worse than usual: pauseless working shifts, higher productivity required, night shifts spread all year lo…

So basically, they're saying Amazon is straight up lying about their wages being the highest in the sector.

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

#234

Post by bonzini »

Sujan wrote: post #134
bambax wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France has strikes too.. ;-)

Fair point. I would guess Slovenia is the most probably "solution".

Slovenia to Turin is a 5.5 hours drive by car, 8 by truck (550 km). The Piacenza hub is very well connected to a lot of highways and as in the middle as you can be without having mountains that get in the way.

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

#235

Post by alkonaut »

plandis wrote: post #207
09094920394314 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so will either increase prices or slow down delivery. Also, I don't know wether Italy has sane strike laws or not, but in Germany amazon would not be allowed to just fire the strikers, and there is and was non-negligible PR fallout from the strikes. Just to present the full picture. In the end, either there will be a price found. But I'd say good for Italian workers for making the labour market more of a market

Wait, what? You can’t fire people who refuse to work? That sounds absolutely crazy.

Put it this way then: you can’t hire someone on a contract that doesn’t include the right for them to strike without being fired. Because that would be illegal.

So what they are doing is entirely within their employment contracts.

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

#236

Post by alkonaut »

pouetpouet wrote: post #2

Black friday is a thing in Italy??

In Sweden we have Black Friday now even though we don’t have thanksgiving.

But given that we somehow started to carve pumpkins etc in recent years, I don’t doubt that we’ll have turkey and annoying uncles at thanksgiving within just a few years.

Right now Thanksgiving is only a Black Friday sale and nothing else.

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

#237

Post by chimeracoder »

jellicle wrote: post #229
chimeracoder wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure why I should be so outraged about this one in particular when it seems to be usually to workers' benefit. Clearly they don't think it's to their benefit, or else they wouldn't be trying to decertify or deauthorize it.

But they aren't.

Read below.

They are, just not directly, because the direct process for decertification or deauthorization is both highly risky (if caught, they could lose their jobs), and also pretty ineffective (the NLRB has a habit of overturning election results, rendering the whole process moot.

So, they use other tactics - hence the increasing support from union members for anti-union lawmakers. Political pundits often write about this as a "paradox" of union members voting "against their own interests", but it's actually pretty straightforward once you remember that union members are individuals who may or may not actually support the interests of the union that they belong to.

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

#238

Post by csallen »

stickfigure wrote: post #232
tw04 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not going to say that democracy is infallible - in fact, I'm usually the first to point out the exact opposite. But "they don't know what's best for them the way I do" is a pretty dangerous line of reasoning to start heading down. I guess it's a good thing I never said any of the words you both put in my mouth and "quoted". Not once did I say I know what's best for them. Not once did I say they couldn't make dec…

Your words were dismissive of union members whose opinions differ than your own (they're less educated and missing the bigger picture, incapable of evaluating anti-union FUD on their own). Don't be disingenuous, "they don't know what's best for them the way I do" is a very fair representation of your words. Maybe you do? If you're going to take that position, own it.

It's easy to read tw04's original comment and focus entirely on the "less educated" part, but tw04's point still stands without that — union workers can and will be affected by opposition arguments, and therefore we can't ignore that when analyzing declines in union membership.

In my opinion what's disingenuous is to ignore the main point in favor of picking some nit.

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

#239

Post by stale2002 »

johnvonneumann wrote: post #225
colejohnson66 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you required to pay the dues if you don’t want the benefits?

Because it doesn't work like that, you can't deny the benefits, the way they work (in Aus, it will be similar elsewhere) is with EBA (Enterprise Bargaining Agreements). Basically, the union will go into talks with companies, agree on conditions and then they will be spread out as an effective handshake rule across the industry. The union act as mitigators between businesses and workers, which pretty much changes the…

> So you can't really opt out. Unless of course you go and work for companies who don't sign the EBA

Actually there is a better way. The better way is to do everything in your power as a worker and citizen to prevent the union from being formed in the first place. Either at YOUR company, or at any others, even if you don't work there. As well as by pushing for any law that reduces the power of unions.

A union can't force you to pay dues if they are crippled country wide.

And this has been what has been happening in the US for decades, as unions are less powerful than they have ever been.

Don't like that attitude? Well then the pro-union people shouldn't have pushed to require people to pay dues.

The fundamental problem is that the more power that unions get, the more likely they are to invade whatever industry I am in and destroy. I don't ever want to risk THAT.

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

#240

Post by _joe »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #227
mrighele wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens because unions in the US are fragmented. In countries with bigger unions (e.g. France, Italy) those unions act at national level. This means that moving the assembly line from Seattle to South Carolina would simply move the strikes from one place to another. The underlying idea is that the behavior of the S.C. is just a race to the bottom and in the same way that those jobs arrived they will be gone one…

The union in italy have been extremely damaging to the local economy in the last 20 years. You see national union goals are too distant and misaligned from workers’ For example one of the problem is that not all professions are unionized for example, so o get more profit and power the unions need to stifle innovation and steer the government only toward heavy industry to the destriment of almost every other sector Al…

What a whole bunch of inaccuracies. I have no time to waste rebutting all the multiple falsehoods in this post, but I want people living in other countries know that it is filled with inaccuracies and plain falsehoods.
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