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Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees

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Re: Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees

#51

Detailed, 6 step instructions on how to open a ballot and mark no? Thanks, amazon. This is almost as scummy as asking the city to change traffic lights so union organizers have a harder time talking to workers in between shifts. https://www.al.com/business/2021/02/jefferson-county-now-say...

Unbelievable. This is petty shit you'd expect from 100+ years ago when companies were breaking strikes by killing people. Might as well rename this country to the Corporate States of America. No level of government has any backbone against the private sector.

Re: Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees

#52

How does this not backfire? At Google I'm just sitting on the sidelines with the whole union thing, but if they sent me something like this I'd join and support the union immediately.

This is a pretty interesting question, and I think prods at other questions about the actual form that tech worker unions will take - especially in big companies like Google. Will they be actual organized units capable of orchestrating coordinated action to withhold labor for improvement of material conditions? Or will they just be a sort of caucus that issue statements about political issues at work and occasionally organize an afternoon walkout? If the latter, this isn't the sort of thing that will bother management very much. Certainly not at the existential level of "some of the stock dividend/buyback money will have to be redirected from shareholders to workers, my GOD"

Re: Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees

#53

From a non-US point of view, this whole anti-union strategy from Amazon is somehow hilarious to witness on top of being sad. This kind of propaganda feels like its coming from another age, or dimension.

Amazon literally employs a union busting company from the last century (edit: from two centuries ago, apparently):

> The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was founded as a private police force in Chicago in 1850, and quickly expanded its reach; its detectives initially focused on catching thieves and burglars, but soon became the bane of the labor movement for their work as enthusiastic, vicious strikebreakers. Throughout the Civil War era and in the decades after, Pinkerton operatives left their bloody mark on strikes, protests, and massacres, and gained a ruthless reputation for protecting the interests of capital by any means necessary.

> [...]

> The Pinkertons, who are now a subsidiary of Swedish security company Securitas AB, are reportedly cozying up to 2020’s version of the Gilded Age robber baron: Silicon Valley tech bosses like billionaire vampire Jeff Bezos, who has hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to reportedly surveil workers in at least one of Amazon’s European warehouses and infiltrate its worksite, according to documents obtained by the publication.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/who-were-the-pinkertons

And yes, that is a Teen Vogue link, and yes, it’s worth reading.

Re: Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees

#54
post #43
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got instructions from more than one party this past fall on how to fill out a ballot and mail it early and etc.

It wasn't your boss telling you how to do that though. The direct power imbalance is pretty different, I think.

If we argue that what is wrong about the situation is the 'balance of power'... would that mean then no employer should be able to make their case when it comes to such situation because the balance of power wouldn't be fair?

That seems weird.

And unions once established have their own balance of power, and that's not in favor of the individual.

Re: Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees

#55
post #7

This Amazon union vote is one of the few things I see around me in the world where things have a chance of heading in the right direction. Truly hoping it succeeds and creates a nucleation event to stop our march into ever-more-innovative methods of worker exploitation.

I felt this was about Uber being told they had to treat drivers like employees in California too, and look how that turned out: A dystopian rule that lawmakers can't overturn to enable worker exploitation.

Re: Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees

#56

Amazon's tactics in response to unionizing efforts been extremely revealing. Even if unionizing fails, I'm happy that it forced Amazon to show us all the level of contempt they have for their workforce.

That's pretty much every employer ever in our economic system. Your labor force is a necessary evil and means to an end in far too many business leaders' minds. Any way they can reduce labor cost, the better, unfortunately they have to tiptoe around laws to do it and invent new clever approaches to achieve the same ultimate goal: labor rights and wage supression.

It's not just businesses though who are employers. If you've ever hired someone to do a contract job for you, say a plumber, electrician or some other small construction project, you probably thought about and devised all sorts of ways to reduce the time and material costs of their efforts to save you money. I see this happen with a lot of people. Our culture has a deep seated disregard for other humans when money is involved. For those who can easily afford the cost, I don't understand. For those who have to pay someone out of necessity but can't really afford the costs, I understand.

Successful businesses fall into the former category. They are not charities, they have a profit motive and margin so they can afford it otherwise they have a failing business model. It all becomes a matter of how much success of that model they want to share with those who make their model possible and how entitled they feel in deserving of reward for their models success. To me, a lot of it is sheer coincidence and luck. I say you should contribute back to those who enable and make you successful. It's all about balance though, again, a business (well, most) isn't a charity and its reasonable to expect them to garner rewards for their efforts and success, whether it be luck or innovation and hard work based. A business also shouldn't be on the other extreme operating as a sweat shop driving down others rights to benefit those in charge.

There's a healthy balance somewhere in between and many captains of industry or investors holding the purse strings seem to have forgotten this. In addition, hyper competitive markets have forced these sort of optimizations. If you take two identical businesses with identical cost structures, products, etc and one decides to better compete and lower costs to consumers, they can reduce their labor costs, then other participants in the market will have to follow suit to remain competitive or fail in a low cost driven society. So even if you understand the value of people and want to share the wealth, it would be quite difficult.

The way to protect against this is through baseline legislation like minimum wage, overtime limits, etc. When all competitors in a market have to comply or be fined a cost with too high of risk (the punishments for violation need to be high to dissuade abuse), it's not possible to undercut your competitors in these aspects because you can't optimize beyond these constraints. We need more robust labor laws and enforcement to fix this issue, IMO. Let businesses optimize outside of labor because labor is already incredibly optimized as is and will only reduce quality of life for most if it continues the ongoing trend.

Re: Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every corporation has contempt for its workforce, it's why labor unions are so necessary.

It varies. Not because some corporations are moral, but because happy workers are a good long-term strategy and many corporations are stuck with rolling short-term-ism. They reward the top tier on a three-ish year cycle, so executives only need to make the numbers go up for three years before exiting with a higher paying job and compensation via stock sales. The US has a massive issue in general with rolling corporat…

"I'll be gone, you'll be gone"[0]

[0]https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/IBGYBG

Re: Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees

#59
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By making any case other than robust worker rights and fair compensation, they have demonstrated their culture and priorities as a corporation. But, by all means, I agree that one shouldn't stop their enemy when they're pointing a gun at their feet (edit: to clarify, this implies Amazon is making a strategic failure by fighting unionization efforts, at it reflects poorly on them).

You're hyperbole strikes me as ... kinda out there. Not sure anyone has guns pointed at anyone in this case.

The humble footgun is not really a “gun” in that sense. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/footgun

Re: Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees

#60
post #16

From a non-US point of view, this whole anti-union strategy from Amazon is somehow hilarious to witness on top of being sad. This kind of propaganda feels like its coming from another age, or dimension.

Right out of the 1900's in fact, gilded age part 2: technologic boogaloo.

Are the Pinkertons fair game just like they are in Red Dead Redemption 2? Oh, my: but I don’t have a horse. Hope this won’t prevent me from taking part.
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