Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#91

Post by bradleyjg » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 1:00 AM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #68

sethammons wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A company doesn't become adversarial with its workforce because of unions; a company is forced to treat its workforce more as an equal because of unions. I'm not convinced. My brother's work has a warehouse. The warehouse unionized (a large push by two folks who are no longer there). Most of the warehouse workers are now making _less_ than they were before due to union dues. There are guys that my brother would lov…

So who's running the union? Some measure of nonsensicality exists here in the idea of a union composed entirely of warehouse workers that is somehow magically acting against the best interests of those warehouse workers.

The fallacy in your reasoning is that there is a unitary “interests of those warehouse workers”.

Collective decision making and fiduciary duties are directly contrary to each other but unions are supposed to feature both. The way the circle is squared is that unions don’t in fact represent all their members’ interests, only those of 50% + 1.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#92

Post by whatever1 » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 1:06 AM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #91

crooked-v wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who's running the union? Some measure of nonsensicality exists here in the idea of a union composed entirely of warehouse workers that is somehow magically acting against the best interests of those warehouse workers.

The fallacy in your reasoning is that there is a unitary “interests of those warehouse workers”. Collective decision making and fiduciary duties are directly contrary to each other but unions are supposed to feature both. The way the circle is squared is that unions don’t in fact represent all their members’ interests, only those of 50% + 1.

51% is still much more than the 5% that management represents.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#93

Post by tareqak » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 1:09 AM UTC

If unions can do some bad thing X and corporations can do that same bad thing X, then why are unions judged more harshly for doing the same bad thing?

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#94

Post by DannyBee » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 1:09 AM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #82

sethammons wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that make the account no longer valid? His problem is not "lazy union members," he has folks he thinks are getting screwed over that he would fight for a promotion for.

And yet presumably the union would be quite happy with across-the-board raises, so the complaint tries to casually gloss over the implied conflict with management about who deserves a more limited supply of raises.

I'm sorry, are you suggesting there should be no pay differentiation for performance at all?

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#95

Post by rukittenme » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 1:17 AM UTC

jagger27 wrote: post #74

rukittenme wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is valued at $1 trillion but Amazon does not have $1 trillion. Amazon's total assets are only about $131 billion. $20 billion of that is cash.

> only

"Only" as in an order of magnitude less than originally estimated.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#96

Post by dboreham » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 1:18 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #78

This is a direct attack on competitors, designed to enlist the help of the federal government to raise payroll and put pressure on arch nemesis Walmart and any other company that has lots of retail other jobs that are not conducive to automation. Remember that Amazon thinks 5 years ahead, and they waited for the perfect PR and political threshold to announce these changes and capitalize on the news.

If you compare the UX at Walmart vs, say, Costco (which pays higher wages) I'm not so sure that paying the lowest is good business. i.e. is 1 Costco employee equal in productivity to 1 Walmart employee? I suspect not.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#97

Post by whatever1 » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 1:18 AM UTC

Are we really comparing the tangible leap from $7.5 -> $15/hour that will help people get out of the government sponsored poverty, to the potential gains that some workers who already make more than $15/ hour would make in the future (if AMZN does not become GE)?

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#98

Post by toyg » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 1:21 AM UTC

Bjartr wrote: post #52

ComputerGuru wrote: post #51

I’ve always thought the answer to the union “problem” was easy: multiple unions. Mandate that no more than, say, 30% of the workforce may be part of a single union, then let them fight it out. Monopolies suck both when it comes to corporations and the workforce. In my experience corruption sinks in on both sides when people can get away with putting in place policies to protect the status quo. When there are multiple…

That's a cool idea, anyone know if anything like this has been put in place somewhere?

In Italy that’s basically what happened. Because each political party had its own trade unions, and there were quite a few parties after WWII, pretty much any unionised workforce is split between three or more unions.

The results differ by sector. In some cases, this plurality allowed for classic “divide & rule” strategies from management; in others, it produced chaos because each union can (and will) call for strikes at different times with little or no coordination, or refuse to agree on deals that everyone else has accepted.

The best outcomes have been consistently obtained in companies and sectors where the plurality was reduced to one or two dominant unions. Some competition is good, but it significantly increases complexity in all related processes.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#99

Post by stephengillie » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 1:22 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #78

This is a direct attack on competitors, designed to enlist the help of the federal government to raise payroll and put pressure on arch nemesis Walmart and any other company that has lots of retail other jobs that are not conducive to automation. Remember that Amazon thinks 5 years ahead, and they waited for the perfect PR and political threshold to announce these changes and capitalize on the news.

Back in my day, Walmart was the great evil retailer, threatening to put everyone out of business. Many towns had their retail core destroyed by having a Walmart open, defeat all the small businesses, then close.

Are we supposed to penalize Amazon for foresight?

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises

#100

Post by barry-cotter » Thu, Oct 04, 2018, 1:47 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #20

andrestan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Are the workers completely and totally incapable of deciding for themselves what the proper tradeoff between increased income and whatever decreased health comes from working harder?? What is your calculus that helped you arrive at it being the case that the now former monetary incentives' value was outweighed by the decrease in worker health that you have perceived?

I mean, can't this argument be made against ALL worker protections? We don't need OSHA, workers should decide for themselves how dangerous they want to be. We don't need minimum wage laws, workers should decide. We don't need overtime laws, let workers decide. We have seen what happens when you remove all restrictions on how employers can treat workers - workers get horribly abused and often times die. If you think t…

If you look at a graph of historical workplace deaths you can’t tell where OSHA was enacted. There’s no change in the rate of decrease of workplace deaths. As far as minimum wage laws go less than 5% of the US workforce gets paid minimum wage, and unpaid internships are both obviously beneficial to those who take them and ah, skirting the law to all parties’ benefit. Minimum wage laws are a great way to reduce workforce participation, just look at France. Does the US even have overtime laws as such?

Dubai is part of the UAE for what it’s worth but it would be impossible to treat workers like that in the US because (a) the US does not do slavery, or indentured servitude outside prisons (b) you can sue people in the US because you have the rule of law and a functioning legal system where everyone has equal rights. Before OSHA if a worker got injured at your place they they could sue you, so most places had insurance, which got more expensive if injuries happened. People also notice if a workplace is more dangerous. They demand higher pay to work there.