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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

#261

Post by arcticfox »

claudeganon wrote: post #216
jamiequint wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You actually believe that Amazon has editorial control over NPR and specifically exerted that leverage to make this article incoherent?

You actually believe that NPR doesn’t edit articles to protect the people who fund them?

Yes, I do actually believe in their editorial independence. Here's an NPR opinion piece talking openly about the subject

https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2012/03/16/1487788...

Some excerpts that I liked (keep in mind, these are out of context, which is largely focused on why we should keep a very close eye out):

> Companies are most interested in getting their name before NPR's audience. They are, in other words, more interested in you than they are in NPR's journalism.

> The staff that sells sponsorships does not contact the newsroom to ask for coverage favor for a corporate client. To do so is a firing offense.

> Companies and marketers almost universally know not to ask journalists for coverage favors in return for sponsorship and advertising. To do so would be an insult—like asking a professional journalist to be a prostitute. It would invite distrust and negative coverage. It also would undermine the independence that attracted NPR's coveted audience in the first place.

> "Rote disclosures of every connection to a sponsor would not only clutter our programs, and be rendered meaningless in the process, but would also require producers to have an awareness of our corporate supporters that could actually be counter-productive and erode our firewall."

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

#262

Post by rvense »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #156
satisfaction wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have stopped ordering from amazon.com but do still use AWS. I should probably evaluate other cloud providers, when I made the decision to use AWS about 5 years ago there were no other providers that offered all the functionality I wanted. It was also easy enough to throw a rock and hit a certified aws consultant.

At this point the cloud provider that is the least shitty as a company is probably... Microsoft? Damn what has the world come to

My company is on DigitalOcean, but we're not exactly web scale yet, so I can't vouch for them on that level. Their support is nice and responsive, though, and their management interface is very nice. They don't do everything AWS do, e.g., they only just added an S3-compatible object store and I've yet to come across anything like secrets management or IAM for their virtual machines.

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

#263

Post by rtkwe »

_wldu wrote: post #145

In 1920 Appalachia, coal companies owned all the land, the homes and stores. They also paid workers with their own special money (that was useless everywhere else). The security companies they hired where armed and violent towards miners and their families. https://explorepartsunknown.com/west-virginia/coal-minings-d... Today, people can tour these old towns and learn the history of how the coal companies trapped and…

(Probably) The first aerial bombardment on US soil was when private planes dropped homemade bombs on striking coal workers at Blair Mountain in 1921. The US has a looong and brutal history of breaking up labor movements.

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

#264

Post by detaro »

arrosenberg wrote: post #257
throwawaysea wrote: post #151

Why is this problematic? I find the idea of unions distasteful. Why should all employees be obligated to join a union? It would make more sense if it was voluntary and people collectively bargain as a subgroup whose size is smaller than all employees. But forcing a single union upon all employees is just creating a separate parallel management structure, one that often tends towards practices that ultimately deliver…

That sounds good in theory, but essentially gives the company the ability to play groups off each other. The entire point of unionization is to be able to negotiate on level terms. This viewpoint also seems to assume that merit is the most important thing, and that unions should optimize for it. For a union, tenure is super important to maintain its strength. Corporations are held together with contracts and money, s…

And AFAIK in the US specifically, a union can only force an employer to accept them if it gets the majority on board to represent all employees, which means unions representing only some employees, while possible, are heavily disadvantaged, so pushing for covering all employees of a group makes even more sense.

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

#266

Post by arcticfox »

dimnsionofsound wrote: post #251
jamiequint wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You actually believe that Amazon has editorial control over NPR and specifically exerted that leverage to make this article incoherent?

The implicit threat of loss of funding and/or access is often enough to sway editorial decisions in a way that could appear like direct control.

NPR is on the record [0] as not even informing their editorial staff of their 175+ sponsors, which causes other issues (for which there is actual evidence, which, while reasonable, I haven't seen for your theory):

> That lack of awareness has led to some embarrassments in the past. Online spots from America's Natural Gas Alliance once ran next to a series on fracking, for example.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2012/03/16/1487788...

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

#267

Post by mrtksn »

_wldu wrote: post #145

In 1920 Appalachia, coal companies owned all the land, the homes and stores. They also paid workers with their own special money (that was useless everywhere else). The security companies they hired where armed and violent towards miners and their families. https://explorepartsunknown.com/west-virginia/coal-minings-d... Today, people can tour these old towns and learn the history of how the coal companies trapped and…

Is there anything stopping workers from crowdsource their own protection anonymously? Does it have to be some kind of formal union?

If you think about it, work is just a business deal and wouldn't be possible for employees create some kind of company that deals with the companies they are employed? Pretty much like an agency, I guess.

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

#268

Post by mattalbie »

jonjacky wrote: post #219
mattalbie wrote: post #12

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)

Another echo from those old days: this news about Amazon was broken by a writer named Lauren Gurley. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was a famous union organizer who fought the Pinkertons more than a hundred years ago. Coincidentally, the new novel The Cold Millions by Jess Walter portrays Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the Pinkertons in Spokane in 1909. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Gurley_Flynn (A quick search shows L…

Are you reading the book? Do you like it?

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

#269

Post by balozi »

Its safe to assume that as usual Amazon, Pinkerton, the unions and NPR/journalists are all being shady for their own self-serving reasons. Also, its appears they are all in bed with each other anyway. Some of them are trying to appear noble for extra credit.

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

#270

Post by javajosh »

djsumdog wrote: post #181
_wldu wrote: post #145

In 1920 Appalachia, coal companies owned all the land, the homes and stores. They also paid workers with their own special money (that was useless everywhere else). The security companies they hired where armed and violent towards miners and their families. https://explorepartsunknown.com/west-virginia/coal-minings-d... Today, people can tour these old towns and learn the history of how the coal companies trapped and…

This is where the Tennessee Ernie Ford song comes from, "Sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don't call me cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store." There was an episode of South Park last season where they played this song as a backdrop to Amazon workers in a warehouse.

That is de facto slavery!
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