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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

#261

Post by kwhitefoot »

minikites wrote: post #147
Someone1234 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>happy workers are a good long-term strategy I always see this cited as a reason but it so rarely happens that it might as well be a Horatio Alger fable. It's not instructive or useful in our current reality and it would be like taking lessons from the workplace successes of Santa's elves.

It depends on where in the world you are, what kind of work the company does, etc. It even depends on where within a country the company has its principal activity.

Of course it is not necessarily the case that what works here in Norway would work in the US even if the legal framework were changed to support it.

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

#263

Post by phabora »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #205

Some colleagues asked me when I will start a company 'cause they want to join me. My dream of that company is that if a union is even needed, I have failed and that company needs to close. I understand why some people want unions. I also know about a very long history of unions either completely destroying companies or having a negative influence over them, including the countries in Europe like my own. Long term uni…

Your dream has two outcomes:

1. You get outcompeted by other companies that look out for Number One, namely the bottom line

2. You get surrounded by an entourage of corporate sycophants that nurture your lie about how your company is so benevolent that no worker representation is necessary

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

#264

Post by jokethrowaway »

jandrese wrote: post #186
pitaj wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of reasons health insurance is way too expensive, but one of them is that many individuals are shielded from the true price because it's provided through their employer. This essentially removes downward price pressure from individuals. Having insurance tied to employment is bad for workers. It makes switching jobs far more difficult and stressful, and makes losing your job that much more of an issue.

Normally people create downward pressure on prices by not buying the product when it becomes overpriced. However with healthcare there is a captive market. Are you not going to get a cast put on a broken leg because the doctor wants to charge too much? Are you going to just opt out of cancer treatments and die? Healthcare is an area where market forces are inherently perverted because people often don't have a choice…

You still have a choice between competing hospitals / doctors in a system where prices are not inflated for insurances' catalogues.

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

#265

Post by chipotle_coyote »

duxup wrote: post #54
rtpg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There may be a line to walk here, but the balance of power really does matter. The Republican Party might send me a flyer saying "if you vote for Democrats, it'll be very bad for you" (or vice-versa), but they're not in an explicit contractual relationship with me that my income depends on. If my employer sends me a flyer saying "if you vote to unionize, it'll be very bad for you" that's clearly got some very different implications to it. They may both be raising the spectre of what happens if the vote doesn't go their way, but only one of them carries an implicit threat.

Should employers be able to make an anti-union case? I'd have to say yes on free speech grounds, but I'd also say that they really should be subject to more restrictions on what kind of anti-union organizing they can do than the union should be on what kind of pro-union organizing they can do. Yes, that's deliberately giving the union an advantage -- but, again, management has the advantage of being the side that literally writes the checks.

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

I mean, that's kind of the point, in a way, isn't it? The employee/employer power balance is almost always weighted toward the employer, because the employee alone is one individual and the employer is a corporation. Employees acting as a collective are theoretically on more equal footing. That doesn't guarantee every single individual employee will support every collective action the union makes.

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

#266

Post by amelius »

whydoyoucare wrote: post #180

I am of the firm belief that Unions are a thing that are extremely good in theory, but rarely work out in practice. They kill innovation, profits and skills and turns a competitive workforce into a mediocre one. :-(

From the perspective of who are you talking?

CEO or blue-collar worker?

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

#267

Post by cat199 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #86
Zealotux wrote: post #10

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.

In the US, almost everything boils down to money and special interest. Amazingly enough, unionization hasn't been outlawed, despite the massive efforts from industry.

> Amazingly enough

Not so amazing when you look at DNC backers, July 30, 1975, etc. More radical unions (e.g. IWW) tend to look at the 'mainstream' unions as 'bosses unions' or 'controlled opposition', and the more libertarian minded often similarly view the relationship between unions and capital as power plays by big corps to raise the 'free market' price of labor and consolidate power.

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

#269

Post by ocdtrekkie »

gradys wrote: post #152
ahelwer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is where we see inequality as a force that perverts democracy. The side of capital has an enormous quantity of resources (by definition) that they use to influence electoral outcomes. So in a way, yes, the votes aren't very legitimate when the side of capital out-spends the side of labor by thirteen to one: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-16/skelton-...

Do you think there's any chance that this was actually what a majority of Californians wanted? You seem very confident that you know better what the voters wanted than they did. While differences in spending surely have some effect, spending isn't the only way to get the word out. I didn't measure, but I feel pretty confident that no more than 60% of the total communication about Prop 22 that I heard from any source…

I think there's definitely a good chance a majority of Californians wanted it: Because a lot of Californians are blatantly unaware or unconcerned about how Uber takes advantage of their workers.

All that most people, unfortunately, care about, is that they can open an app that solves a problem for them, and it's solved. They don't care about the people who are hurt in the process.

And then, yeah, incredible spending on Uber's part is going to slide the scale a bit too.

Look, if you put a vote out to say that Amazon workers are now indentured servants of Jeff Bezos and have to work for free and can never leave, but their Amazon purchases will all be 15% cheaper... the vote would pass, because the majority of people don't work at Amazon.

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

#270

Post by JKCalhoun »

syshum wrote: post #223
sudosysgen wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are at least nominally directly elected by their constituents and beholden to them, which is why they are protected when engaging in politics. If you think they do not represent them, then maybe the solution is to develop better union structures that are more democratic and representative. But by and large, teachers do not support the Libertarian party and instead favour the Democratic party, quite heavily in…

The libertarian party supports School Choice, Actual Education for children, and less protectionism based on "seniority" So it is no wonder that unionized teachers would oppose the Libertarian Party, libertarians want children to get a good education and allow parents to choose the type of education their child gets, taking away large amounts of power from Teachers who believe they should supplant parents and "know b…

If you are trying to espouse the virtues of Libertarianism I would say you're not doing a very good job.
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