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Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

npr.org

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Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#11

Post by Grimm1 »

"Pinkerton operatives were inserted into an Amazon warehouse in Wroclaw, Poland, to investigate an allegation that warehouse workers were circumventing sort of the application process for applying to warehouse jobs"

How does this match the title of the piece. Then,

"So I imagine that in the U.S., they're tracking labor organizing activity but not union members yet."

So they have no proof and this is all speculation. Another Amazon hit piece, real quality journalism here.

Amazon used some people to catch people cheesing their job application process and then because the US doesn't have strong unions and they know they look at labor stats for people joining Unions this "journalist" has extrapolated they are definitely "surveiling" people. This is really low quality.

Edit: I'm fine with the allegations being true, the point I'm making is this isn't the article that we should be discussing because it's lazy journalism -- another poster below me linked much more well thought out and written posts on the subject being discussed by this article.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#12

Post by mattalbie »

It’s a very minor point but this article makes it sound like the generic term for a union buster is Pinkerton agent. Pinkerton is a private company who does security work these days, but has a long history of doing exactly this. Fascinating Wikipedia read if you’re curious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#13

Post by Fjolsvith »

alisonkisk wrote: post #2

These transcripts are literal, hard to read with "it seems", "I mean", "you know", "sort of", "so". Transcripts should be be cleaned up for print.

They wouldn't be transcripts, then. They would be editorialized.

Original transcripts are powerful in that they are difficult to refute.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#14

Post by nicoburns »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #6

Why would you expect anything else? Amazon is a logistics company like UPS; if Bezos didn't squeeze every last drop of profit from their employees it wouldn't be world-dominating.

The world-dominating is largely a negative from my perspective: it pushes it's smaller competitors out of business which decreases the competitiveness of the market and extracts profits/wealth out of local communities where it would likely be spent productively into the pockets of Jeff Bezos and Amazon investors where it is not nearly so useful.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#15

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

To me, the lengths Amazon goes to discourage unionization hints at how vulnerable they feel they are to certain aspects of unionization (probably strikes).

This isn't that much of a surprise though. The more we automate stuff (excluding complete automation), the more important the squishy humans that keep everything running are.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#16

Post by fuzzy2 »

jimbob45 wrote: post #5

I thought the headline was a mistake and that these were “Pinkerton-style” agents. Nope. They’re legitimately Pinkerton. Surely Amazon must know better than to partner with the most recognized name in anti-labor practices. Their PR guy needs to be sitting in on these meetings.

Why would they care? The stories of how Amazon is a bad employer keep coming and yet people keep buying.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#17

Post by kome »

We are letting amazon going way too far. This is unacceptable. A global coalition of trade-unions is mobilizing against amazon, https://makeamazonpay.com/

Also legislators should get more aware of companies undermining workers right. But I feel legislators to be part of the problem.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#18

Post by patwolfe »

Really disappointing to see the "Well, what did you expect?" comments already. Just because companies have been trying to prevent organization of their labor for over a century doesn't mean it isn't still messed up now. It's easy to say that it's just the way the world works from your desk, the people who are forced to work in Amazon's warehouses with terrible working conditions don't have that luxury.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#19

Post by kayson »

I'm all for the Amazon hate train but this is pretty weak. The journalist first says Pinkerton was hired in Poland to investigate irregularities in their application process. Amazon says they only hire Pinkerton to "secure shipments". The "acquired document" says that Amazon tracks social media information about labor organization and strokes. It's all over the place, and even assuming all parties report the truth, no one actually says that Pinkerton is doing surveillance related to unions.

Maybe NPR is missing something from the original article, which I couldn't find linked, but come on.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#20

Post by HarryHirsch »

nicoburns wrote: post #14
HarryHirsch wrote: post #6

Why would you expect anything else? Amazon is a logistics company like UPS; if Bezos didn't squeeze every last drop of profit from their employees it wouldn't be world-dominating.

The world-dominating is largely a negative from my perspective: it pushes it's smaller competitors out of business which decreases the competitiveness of the market and extracts profits/wealth out of local communities where it would likely be spent productively into the pockets of Jeff Bezos and Amazon investors where it is not nearly so useful.

I agree with every word you say.
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