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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

#181

Post by bluGill »

jimbob45 wrote: post #145
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…

Google didn’t unionize. Their “union” isn’t federally certified and they have current membership of 700/250000 workers. Google is under no obligation to work with them on anything. In the future, they could get a majority of workers agree to have a union represent them but that’s not the case at this time. What the Google union did was obstruct real unionization efforts at Google. Source: https://www.wsj.com/amp/arti…

The fact that google's union needs to be federally certified and isn't also says something about unions: they are a monopoly in the bad sense. Either the union doesn't need federal certification, or it should automatically be.

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

#182

Post by ryanmercer »

sct202 wrote: post #160
ryanmercer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even make 20$ an hour after 15 years at my job... when I was 18 I was doing the kind of work Amazon workers do for minimum wage which was 5.15 an hour IIRC. I was happy to have a job and fully understood warehouse work is not a career. 20$ an hour is 2.75x the minimum wage here in Indiana. A significant portion of the people I know don't even gross 41k a year.

Other people getting their employer to pay them more doesn't harm you. There are already people in warehouses that make that much. The warehouse I used to work started at $18 (for general labor, and like double that for mechanics and machine operators) and that was a decade ago.

>Other people getting their employer to pay them more doesn't harm you.

It does when it drives cost of goods and services up that their employer provides.

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

#183

Post by manfredo »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #48
zdragnar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also a function of "closed shop" unions in the US. Rarely do you get to pick a union to join when you work at a company; if the company workers are represented, it is often exclusively by a single union. The result is that unions have the exact same leverage over employees as the companies themselves do, and do not often have sufficient accountability. It is not as simple as voting a union out once it has gotte…

So, it sounds like you're agreeing with me? Collective action is admittedly work . The alternative is, as we've seen, worse in my opinion. https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ > From 1979 to 2018, net productivity rose 69.6 percent, while the hourly pay of typical workers essentially stagnated—increasing only 11.6 percent over 39 years (after adjusting for inflation). This means that although Americans are worki…

There's a distinction between collective action and government-sanctioned monopolies on labor. It's one thing for workers to bargain collectively. It's another thing when the government prohibits the company from finding another labor pool, and effectively gives the union a monopoly on labor. The latter is when corruption runs rampant, and unions have no competition.

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

#184

Post by kieselguhr_kid »

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…

Whole Foods has never been unionized. I don't know where you got that impression.

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

#185

Post by munk-a »

stretchcat wrote: post #139
grumple wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Are there a bunch of would-be teachers clamoring for those jobs? Emphatically yes, particularly at nice well funded schools. I have numerous long-term friends who have become school teachers, many of then had to move quite a distance just to find schools with openings. Most states have teacher certification reciprocity with Pennsylvania, which gave them a leg up in this regard. Even so, searching for open positions…

> Emphatically yes, particularly at nice well funded schools.

I emigrated up to Canada a while back where teachers are paid very well[1] and the bad teachers get weeded out really quickly since there are plenty of enthusiastic replacements. I am sure that at well funded schools in the US teachers do great - but most US schools are terribly funded[2] so I'm not surprised folks are willing to move across the country if a well reimbursed position opens up.

1. https://www.blogto.com/city/2020/09/average-ontario-teacher-... [TL;DR 108k including benefits] - also they've got great pension options.

2. Taking New York as a random counter example since cost-of-living is probably pretty close to Toronto https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/new-york-state-teacher-sal... [TL;DR 42k probably excluding benefits - which were about 12k for toronto teachers]

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

#186

Post by MaslowsPyramid »

DenisM wrote: post #100
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #2

I wonder what percentage of otherwise very liberal Amazon devs read sentences like "The company for years successfully fought off labor organizing efforts in the U.S." and come away thinking "we're definitely the good guys."

Sometime during the last year the usually heavily statist left became heavily corporatist. I'm not sure what to make of it.

Based on purely anecdotal evidence, I agree. I've seen an increased number of supposed "eat the rich" types voicing support for corporate interests, to an almost laughable degree of irony. For instance, Twitter users who have "#eattherich" in their bio saying that social media should be left unregulated because the owners of the platforms should be able to do whatever they want with it.

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

#187

Post by dragonwriter »

kortilla wrote: post #161
omegaworks wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The most recent drama was about a researcher having her quitting ultimatum called by a manager.

No, it wasn’t. Even to the extent that might be considered a superficially correct description of part of what happened, its not the center of the “drama”, which is more centrally about the treatment which led up to that.

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

#188

Post by paul7986 »

filoleg wrote: post #25
paul7986 wrote: post #3

They should and should be making no less then $20 an hour to start!

> They should be making no less then $20 an hour to start! This is a noble goal, and I am all for seeing it happen. But if you think it won't just give Amazon warehouses a stronger foothold, you are mistaken. I, personally, don't think it is necessarily a bad thing if Amazon warehouses gain more workers due to their conditions becoming better as a result of unionization. But quite a lot of people will disagree with t…

If their wages rise then others will be force to as well!

I worked answering phones at Verizon in the early 2000s and their pay there due to being union was top pay for customer service. Comcast was paying me $9 to $12.50 for that work while Verizon paid more then double of my highest wage at Comcast. Overall I got fed up with being yelled at on the phone by customers' of monopoly companies and taught myself web development and design. I'm glad I did so, yet am pro-union per my experience at Verizon vs. Comcast.

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

#190

Post by worik »

Aunche wrote: post #146
dxdm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If not with government officials, i.e. the executive part of the system taking care of public concerns, how should they negotiate with "the public"?

Any negotiated increase in salary or pensions should require a vote unless if there is a budget surplus. Municipalities are incurring way too much debt without taxpayer knowledge, let alone approval. Government workers already have a lot of job security, so I don't think unions should be allowed to affect that. I do think that public servants have a right to negotiate safety and other technical issues without public…

I want to vote on your salary.
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