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Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

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Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#161

Post by kortilla »

omegaworks wrote: post #151
random5634 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The propaganda unfortunately also comes from folks direct experience with unions. In the US, most unions are public sector. So folks see that Police unions may protect bad apples via union. Teachers unions may care more about teachers including bad ones then teaching kids. We had a famously terrible teacher at my school - unfirable - as kids we thought it was hilarious. As a parent now - not so cool. Non unionized sc…

Google employees walked out to protest the golden parachute offered to two serial sexual harassers on their executive team and the conditions that allowed people like them to rise consequence-free through the ranks at the company. That you believe it's a "fit" thrown for causes that "don't connect with the average person" is reflecting pretty poorly on your priorities. Nobody wants to believe your boss is skipping ov…

The most recent drama was about a researcher having her quitting ultimatum called by a manager. It wasn’t anything to do with sexual harassment or anything about underpaid or unsafe workplaces.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#162

Post by asdff »

slg wrote: post #43
Barrin92 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what I'm astonished by is the degree to which American firms are allowed to sabotage unionisation efforts despite, as I understand it, the US actually having similar protections for workplace assembly as other Western countries. If you tried interfere with unions here in Germany you'd run up against the law, the media and so on very, very quickly, it's one of the things you don't want to screw with.

It isn't surprising once you reframe the issue. These unions are successfully suppressed for the exact same reason that people are inclined to form them. The labor class in the US simply doesn't have (or perhaps more accurately doesn't yield) the political power that the labor class does in many other countries. The forming of unions will help them get more power, but the act of creating a union already requires a ce…

That is by design, really. The working poor in this country have been ideologically divided by moral wedges such as abortion for decades now. Few poor republicans and poor democrats would like to admit that they are in the same economic boat, and as a result typically the former votes against their own economic interest on the grounds of their moral principles.

For the wealthy in this country, the political footballism is the perfect machine to ensure their position on the economic ladder remains at it's lofty heights, and inequality continues to widen by the year. I really don't think republicans like Mitch McConnel care at all about an issue like abortion, they just use it to drum up votes from their base in order to further their economic policy goals.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#163

Post by munk-a »

spiznnx wrote: post #124
opinion-is-bad wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why only cops and not all public sector employees? I don’t see how you can make an argument that police work isn’t work.

The argument that cops are not workers, in a Marxist sense, is because they work to protect the interests of capital, rather than do "productive" work that is useful to the rest of the working class. It's not a broadly held view, even among communists.

As a worker I appreciate the fact that when I was burgled a decade ago there was someone to call to inform about the burglary.

I also very much appreciate the fact that "having police" (even vaguely, and even ineffective ones) is a pretty good deterrent to (most) random folks murdering other folks[1].

There is a hell of a lot wrong with American policing but they do productive work just like managers (that don't produce anything themselves) and HR and all the other "non-productives" people like to point out. I think it's perfectly fair to question just how much value police (and other "non-productives") are actually producing and a lot of businesses could do with trimming a bit of labour out of middle management - but there are reasons these jobs exist and they can add a lot to team and societal productivity.

1. I don't ascribe to theories on anarchist utopias where if everyone can kill everyone else no one does out of politeness, I've played Rust.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#164

Post by zdragnar »

grumple wrote: post #117
stretchcat wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if student unions weren't a complete joke, the situation would improve. As it stands, teachers unions keep terrible teachers employed, against the interest of the students, while the students have no real representation or organization to provide balance by looking after student interests. My mother was a middleschool teacher when I was in highschool, and drove me to highschool in the morning. Because she was a…

> teachers unions keep terrible teachers employed Are there a bunch of would-be teachers clamoring for those jobs? I think the lack of desirability is what keeps terrible teachers employed. There also aren't great ways to measure how good someone is at teaching.

If you were to ask the teachers and people who went to school for education that I happen to know, all of them would tell you there is absolutely more people who want to be teacher than there are open positions.

My best friend gave up on getting a teaching job and went into industry work, while my sister in law has gotten multiple certifications to be able to teach different subjects and is still only able to get part-time substitute teaching work.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#165

Post by jedberg »

robert_foss wrote: post #149
jedberg wrote: post #141

I sympathize with the folks who want to unionize and I wish them luck, but I suspect this will quickly backfire on them. Of all the companies in the world, the one I would be most worried about automating away human jobs would be Amazon. If this warehouse unionizes, I suspect it will quickly become their number one automation test site. As the cost of labor goes up and the cost of automation goes down, they'll have a…

If they could replace all humans they already would have. They still employ people in the EU, so it can't be that close.

As pointed out elsewhere, unions in Europe are very different from US unions. They actually work to maintain lower costs for the company as well as making sure workers aren't abused.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#166

Post by barbecue_sauce »

purple_ferret wrote: post #94
j_walter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions in the US and unions is Europe are completely different. In one they cooperate to see that the company succeeds...and in the other they seek to drive up the cost of doing business to the point that shitty products are extremely expensive (GM, Ford). Unions used to be for protecting the workers and ensuring that companies were getting the very best skillsets when hiring. Now they protect the lazy, promote the w…

>Unions used to be for protecting the workers and ensuring that companies were getting the very best skillsets when hiring. Labor unions in the US formed primarily to combat exploitation by employers, often in the face of great oppression and cronyism that led to literal bloodshed[0]. This is one of the reasons unions can't be part of the companies their members work for, unlike in Europe. Unions in Europe formed fro…

I think you mean exploitation.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#167

Post by kortilla »

slg wrote: post #43
Barrin92 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what I'm astonished by is the degree to which American firms are allowed to sabotage unionisation efforts despite, as I understand it, the US actually having similar protections for workplace assembly as other Western countries. If you tried interfere with unions here in Germany you'd run up against the law, the media and so on very, very quickly, it's one of the things you don't want to screw with.

It isn't surprising once you reframe the issue. These unions are successfully suppressed for the exact same reason that people are inclined to form them. The labor class in the US simply doesn't have (or perhaps more accurately doesn't yield) the political power that the labor class does in many other countries. The forming of unions will help them get more power, but the act of creating a union already requires a ce…

The labor class has tons of power. The labor class just doesn’t care much for unions in the US.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#168

Post by quandrum »

asdff wrote: post #150
pmoriarty wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is when anecdotes about isolated abuses are used to reject unions outright rather than looking at whether unions as a whole would benefit society. You could argue from personal experience that you went to a bad school therefore all schools are bad, or you had a bad experience with therefore all people of that sort are bad. It's just not very convincing.

For every anecdote of an isolated case of union abuse, there are probably hundreds of unheard cases of corporations abusing their workers. But that doesn't matter for most people, simplistic logic says therefore all unions are bad and capable of corruption, and ignoring that most of the time, the status quo is far, far more exploitative for the average worker. Once again, perfect becomes the enemy of good, and condit…

Wage theft is the most common crime in the US, is estimated to occur to ~20% of all employees and equal tens of billions a year, and no one talks about it.

How many union members do you think experience wage theft?

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#169

Post by asdff »

rjbwork wrote: post #84
pydry wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rather thought that the function of these other issues was to suck the oxygen out of the room so they didn't have to talk about labor issues. Their donors tend to be wealthy and anti-union.

Generally the point of most social wedge issues from the point of view of the moneyed and political elite is to not have to talk about any kind of economic issues that affect the bulk of society, yes.

And also to divide the working class vote. Could you imagine how progressive this country could be if the working poor was united and consistently voted in line with their economic interests? FDRs ghost would be dancing in the street.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#170

Post by deeeeplearning »

random5634 wrote: post #21
simpixelated wrote: post #5

Along with the unionization at Google, I think it's a good trend to see them happening at big tech companies. As it says in the article: "Unions are a prominent presence at Amazon in Europe, but the company for years successfully fought off labor organizing efforts in the U.S." It's sad that Amazon, along with FB and Google, etc. have managed to squash unions so completely here in the US. There's a lot of propaganda…

The propaganda unfortunately also comes from folks direct experience with unions. In the US, most unions are public sector. So folks see that Police unions may protect bad apples via union. Teachers unions may care more about teachers including bad ones then teaching kids. We had a famously terrible teacher at my school - unfirable - as kids we thought it was hilarious. As a parent now - not so cool. Non unionized sc…

Ironically or perhaps not your entire comment reads like pure anti-union propaganda. Sure unions protect bad apples but it also protects decent people from being treated unfairly by employers who in this country have overwhelming power over their lives.

Would you also throw out all welfare systems because a handful of people abuse the system?

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