Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by nextaccountic » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

balabaster wrote: post #194

tyingq wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You appear to perhaps be from the UK (saw "honour"). Employees in the UK have quite a lot more protection by default than they do in the US. I do respect your go-it-alone-and-fight-my-own-battles position, but consider that you might feel differently if you were in a US "right to work" state.

I don't know what it means to live in a "right to work" state. I assume that means that everyone has a right to reasonably paid employment? I don't understand how this situation could come to be. What if there were no employers? That situation can only occur if there are enough jobs to maintain gainful employment of every citizen of the state. In such a situation I would likely only remain around as long as there was…

> I don't know what it means to live in a "right to work" state. I assume that means that everyone has a right to reasonably paid employment?

It's the opposite! It means you can be fired for any reason whatsoever.

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

#302

Post by dheera » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #277

dheera wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe someone should start a second union without dues? That would leave Amazon with no way to argue.

But what would be in it for union leadership under such a structure? (Not to mention that unions also have some unavoidable expenses, even if you didn't have a bunch of highly-paid union leader mouths to feed.) Amazon would still find a way to argue. "If you're not a lowest performer, don't let a union negotiate for you and force your wages down to the lowest performing among you." or many other phrases that would ap…

> But what would be in it for union leadership under such a structure?

An ego boost? I mean this seriously -- people love being moderators of Subreddits and admins of online communities largely deep down for the ego boost.

A union really needs not much more than a Discord server and maybe a Zoom membership to organize strikes and whatever else they need to do.

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

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Post by Someone1234 » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

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.

Contrast Walmart and Costco, in terms of employee happiness and turnover.

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

#304

Post by yawaworht1978 » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

Imagine if the person who was assigned or in charge to do the printing and distribution of these instruction leaflets was pro union. There is an odd aversion to unions in the US. I find the "do not book that dinner" metaphor fitting. Bezos and Musk will book it for you instead. How do people not see a pattern that some of the richest people out there exploit the workforce the most(urinate in bottle at Amazon, safety and hours at tesla etc) are fiercely opposing unions?

You know who has pretty good unions? The police departments, ask them about it.

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

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Post by sudosteph » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

arrosenberg wrote: post #276

azinman2 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or… they actually do mean what they say, but don’t connect the dots and ultimately have a bigger incentive to cognitively shift their perspective when it comes down to their own bottom line. Amazon as a company is about low prices made up by scale, and is famous for continuously optimizing costs. Humans are just one cost to optimize, and are likely a big one given the number of people involved for their business mode…

This response has the echoes of so many dark parts of human history. If that's actually true, then Amazon needs to be destroyed for all our sake.

If it's destroyed, another retailer will take it's place. I worked at Target back in the day, and I still remember the onboarding videos they showed us. Half of it was ridiculous drivel about how much they love employees and support LGBT and minorities, and the other half was literal anti-union propaganda and fear-mongering. When it came right down to it, Target is just as happy to treat human workers as disposable tools as anyone else. Most every succesful retail company treats workers as unworthy of decent pay, benefits, or even human friendly scheduling.

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

#306

Post by ska » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

soperj wrote: post #142

xphilter wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that contradictory?

if they have reduced hours, then they have time to find another job.

What about irregular scheduling? Surely that can have a big impact on ability to find/keep other work I imagine.

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

#307

Post by random5634 » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

jeanjogr wrote: post #204

I have never been able to quite grasp what it means to "unionize" in the US. Here in my country, unions work like political parties (which I understand is not exactly enticing right now): - you are free to join or not - there are elected workers' representatives whether there are unions are not - unions serve to organize workers for action and representatives elections, support candidates, and provide additional serv…

The US is a bit different.

1) Many unions are govt unions - think police, prison guard, teachers.

2) For closed shop states, if a union wins election, EVERYONE has to join the union.

3) A history of corruption in unions in some cases.

4) There is a perception in the US that unions and lazy workers overlap.

Teachers unions, prison guard unions, police unions - they need to have some real good examples of the successes unions can bring. Internationally (at least in EU in my experience) there really are those. In the US it's a bit muddied.

The latest example I saw, a parent wanted to try and get schools to reopen. Union called them racist -

"she was being racist and not considering “the needs of brown/black families who 'predominantly want to stay home' as evidenced by the several months old OUSD survey that was sent out to all district parents."

Stuff like this is kind of eye rolling. The union starts calling folks racist for wanting their kids in school? Do the black/brown folks they are speaking for even agree with these claims?

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

#308

Post by jakelazaroff » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

SilasX wrote: post #298

jakelazaroff wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're reading too far into this. OP is just saying that Amazon's propaganda is slimy. Everyone else is on the same page here.

So, it's only as slimy as every other organization that gives you ballot instructions. Not sure that's the message you were trying to send.

Someone noted that it's different when your employer tells you to vote in a certain way vs. a random political party. That's where you entered the conversation, so I'm not sure how that's getting lost.

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

#309

Post by TameAntelope » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

balabaster wrote: post #95

Full disclosure: I've always been anti-union for my own personal approach to life. I do see the value in unions, I've just always, to this point, been a go-it-alone-and-fight-my-own-battles kind of person. I don't want to be beholden to a union or their rules any more than I want to be beholden to an employer beyond my contractual obligations for which I'm paid. That said, people should take note of what happened whe…

Anti-union tactics are so... nasty. It's crazy to me how any of this is even tried in the 21st century. It's so obviously wrong and in a ton of cases illegal, the only reason I can think of that this is done so aggressively is that these tactics are "effective" based on their invention in the early-to-mid 20th century, and nobody's bothered to try and innovate since.

Does Amazon really see unionization as an existential threat? Surely at some point, a company as large as Amazon or Walmart can handle a worker's union.

What other perceived "existential threats" are they handling with these kinds of tactics, that we just don't know about because it's not as public?

(Disclaimer: I benefit substantially off of Walmart's continued ability to make money.)

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

#310

Post by faitswulff » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #168

lovegoblin wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Teen Vogue has plenty of solid journalism.

I'm genuinely not sure if this is sarcasm or not. Teen Vogue is certainly surprisingly serious, but my standard for "solid journalism" involves some attempt at neutrality and objectivity as opposed to hyper-partisan ideology marketed to children. To be quite clear, the overall modern media landscape is highly partisan and sensationalist; Teen Vogue mostly only stands out in that they're marketing their divisive ideol…

Sure, I’ll bite. I downvoted you because it’s not partisanship or divisiveness that should be decried, but the immense wealth inequality in the United States. And perhaps Teen Vogue is progressive because that’s where their readership already is, as opposed to them simply preying on a vulnerable population.