Amazon Sends ‘Vote No’ Instructions to Unionizing Employees

1. Prices are slightly higher that Walmart, which keeps away the most budget conscious shoppers (ie, couponers & low-income people will go to walmart to stretch their money). Because lower-class shoppers are less visible at Target, middle-class shoppers flock to it, and even non-middle class people who can swing it may prefer it because it confers higher social status. (This is also why the common nickname for Target is "Tar - Jhey", aka, "Target" with a fake french accent to mock the aspirational bougieness of the brand).

2. Target has fairly aggressive policies about how long customers should have to wait in line (if there's more than 3 people waiting, the manager is supposed to call a sales floor person up to assist) + a policy on how long checkouts should take to complete (they actually give the cashier a pass/fail score that everyone can see after each checkout, and if the average is too low, it's grounds for dismissal). For the customer, this does mean a faster checkout. For the employees - it means more work interruptions and ultimately more work to do at closing.

3. Target doesn't even attempt to provide certain products and services that are culturally associated with rural/poor America. They don't sell guns, they don't cash checks, they don't have gardening centers.

What? You could conclude that anything that Amazon does is legal by this logic. I'm sure they /did/ consult their lawyers - not for lessons on "right" and "wrong", but to find exactly how to skirt or cross the legal line with an acceptable level of legal exposure.

I often see mandatory dues being brought up as arguments against unions in the US. I've never heard of that practice here, so I looked and it is in fact illegal here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop#Council_of_Europe based on the freedom of association (which also covers freedom of _not_ associating).

There's also no requirement for employers to negotiate or recognise unions. Usually if sufficient members of the company are in a union the employer will negotiate pay terms with them - they don't have a requirement too, though of course the union can strike to bring them to the negotiating table. Some employers might make a single negotiation with the union and use that as the basis for their pay grades or other terms, though again, there's no requirement for them to do so.

What I don't understand is why US unions don't embrace that - if they don't adopt the "mandatory membership" part, surely the opposition to their existence has less to argue for. You don't need a big vote, members just join, and if there's enough of them they can bring employers to the negotiating table. Yes, you can get freeloaders, but that seems preferable to having no union for the employees that need it most.

I'm in tech, so there's not much call for the unionisation of tech in my country. But that's because it's a seller's market, an individual tech worker often has more leeway to insist on improvements to their pay or conditions than a factory worker and both sides know it. it's why e.g. you get management apologising for 9:30am meetings if a visiting exec is in town and they want to impress but arrive at 9:10am to the factory or mcdonalds and expect an unpleasant meeting with your supervisor. (Also if you were lucky, you knew that you were rosted for 9am the week before)

Most people from my school days, and even my father are in jobs like this. If I was too, I would totally be in a union. Part of me wonders if in tech we really should be too to have the infrastructure in place if a time comes when the market for tech work is dramatically different. Certainly given the state of unions and low wage employment conditions in my country, if I hadn't been lucky to have something I was interested in and had aptitude for pay so well, I would join a union if I had to work on it.

I know people like to harp on about examples like the US auto industry or UK mining industry where strong insistence of worker's rights was arguably a contributor to the industry in those countries going under, but it's not clear to me that industries like call centers or retail where that didn't happen have had much better outcomes for employees. Better outcomes for the businesses operating them, sure, employees, ehh...