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How Amazon Crushes Unions

nytimes.com

61–70 of 261 posts

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#61
post #54
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate where do you buy things online from? I want to move away from Amazon, but it's also exhausting to sort through multiple websites for a product, their shipping fees, and make decisions.

Isn't a bit of "exhaustion" worth to fight back terrible practices ?

For most people, no. I might work through it today and tomorrow but in a few days I'm going to give up and go back to Amazon.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#62
post #24
post #6

I hate Amazon and stories like this make me hate it even more. I stopped ordering anything from them and, if anything, this has actually improved my consumer experience. Most stuff you can buy on Amazon these days is the same garbage that is sold on Wish but you pay ~25-50% more for it to come within a couple of days. Not shopping at either has definitely raised the average life span and quality of goods in my househ…

Can you elaborate where do you buy things online from? I want to move away from Amazon, but it's also exhausting to sort through multiple websites for a product, their shipping fees, and make decisions.

I'm not in the US but to me Amazon is something I use maybe twice a year and I buy a lot online and abroad. I even order stuff from the US sometimes and I don't normally use Amazon (or eBay). I don't get why it is so hard to cut out the middleman (Amazon) when it isn't to me when I order from the US. If I find the product on Amazon I just click on to the retailers website and order there.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#63
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't a bit of "exhaustion" worth to fight back terrible practices ?

I'm not sure what the term for this is; maybe "quorum problem"? If too few people sustain a boycott, then they suffer without accomplishing their goal, so a net negative. If enough people sustain a boycott, they'll suffer but will also accomplish their goal, so a net positive.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#64
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've made the same changes in recent months and agree that it's improved my consumer experience significantly. I didn't realize just how much time and energy I was spending sorting through cheap Chinese made junk and counterfeit garbage on Amazon trying to find quality products. In terms of cloud providers: the major three (Azure, GCloud, AWS) seem to be cut from the same cloth... maybe IBM or Oracle cloud are better…

Turning to IBM or Oracle for moral reasons is about the funniest thing I've read in a long time. One enabled the holocaust and the other made 90s-era Microsoft seem downright communist.

I know Oracle has a bad rep and is generally perceived as a corporate monstrosity, but honestly what is actually so bad about their business model? Sure they make a ton of cash fleecing other enterprises but at least it doesn't seem like they're mistreating workers or tracking users. Honestly, it always seemed kind of old-fashioned but not necessarily bad compared to the 'new era' internet giants

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#65
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine being in a position where you have to choose between putting up with this hostile bullshit or going hungry/evicted. Most of us here could tell our bosses to f off and either have enough savings for months (or even years), or at the very least get another job within weeks or days. Even having grown up lower-middle class with zero, often negative, extra money, going years without vacation, etc., it's hard to wr…

How does someone get into that position? Are public schools so bad that people come out with no marketable unique skills that would give them natural job security?

What jobs have natural job security? Either you’re protected by a union, a professional association, or having a rare and valuable skill set. The unions have been busted, professional associations are exclusive by their nature and most people definitionally do not have rare and marketable skills. As a result, an increasingly large fraction of jobs are gig work, part-time, or on contract. That includes work in law and software engineering. Precarity is the natural state of an unregulated, de-unionized job market and it is not a bug but a feature. It has little to do with our public schools.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#66
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is doing some rather creepy stuff with the CIA [0]. Can you elaborate on what Oracle did that was so bad? Is charging for software and enforcing license terms somehow worse than what Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc. are doing? [0] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/22/aclu_amazon_aws_rekog...

I don't really see how selling facial recognition tech is "rather creepy". Facial recognition has legitimate uses, and the CIA/FBI using it to track criminals seems to be a legitimate use case to me. The article you linked seems to be making a hypothetical leap to "well what if they choose to use it nefariously in the future??" And to their credit, Amazon at least seems to be interested in trying to limit its use to…

Yeah, that's all incredibly troubling to me. I'm shocked that so many people fail to see the parallels to historic misuse of technology by states, e.g., IBM and the holocaust as outlined above:

"Mankind barely noticed when the concept of massively organized information quietly emerged to become a means of social control, a weapon of war, and a roadmap for group destruction." [0]

Is it unreasonable to desire that your dollars don't go to organizations involved in war, oppression, corruption, etc.?

[0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bl...

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#67
post #35
post #29

What I don't see mentioned in the article are right-to-work states. While still effective to a degree, unions tend to have much less bite in these states. I'm left to wonder if Amazon would have the heft/ability to simply relocate all manual labor to states with right-to-work as law, or if that kind of move would be outside of union-busting laws.

Alabama is a right to work state. Amazon is telling people at the Bessemer warehouse that they could be forced to pay union dues whether or not they join the union, which is not true under Alabama law.

However the US Congress is pushing the PRO Act which will basically force you to join any union and it actually forbids right to work laws. It will even permit unions marching against related businesses as a means to intimidate others; in others say your supplier has issues well they can then march on you and vica versa.

Welcome to the pay off for the election

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#68

Stuff like this always comes to mind when the media celebrates the richest people in the world. This often comes at the expense of low level employees who do dangerous and underpaid work so a few guys can become very rich. And the worse they treat these employees the more the rich guys get celebrated. That’s why the slogan “run the government like a business” doesn’t work. It would mean to ignore the weakest in socie…

> who do dangerous and underpaid work so a few guys can become very rich If it's underpaid, why do it? If you do it, what makes it "under" paid? By taking the job, you confirm the wage is right.

Because the alternative is to starve?

You can take advantage of people when they’re in dire straits. That’s not indicative of some greater truth about the price of labor but a fact of exploitation.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#69
post #24
post #6

I hate Amazon and stories like this make me hate it even more. I stopped ordering anything from them and, if anything, this has actually improved my consumer experience. Most stuff you can buy on Amazon these days is the same garbage that is sold on Wish but you pay ~25-50% more for it to come within a couple of days. Not shopping at either has definitely raised the average life span and quality of goods in my househ…

Can you elaborate where do you buy things online from? I want to move away from Amazon, but it's also exhausting to sort through multiple websites for a product, their shipping fees, and make decisions.

Walmart and Target have improved their web experience a lot, but you still need to avoid the 3rd party sellers there. If you know the brand and the product, ordering direct also works. I also kind of enjoy shopping irl more since it gets me out of the house and basically everything else is closed due to the Rona. I've heard costco has a great 2 hour delivery experience but I don't have a membership.

The effect of Amazon is that at least for now, there's never been a better time to order things online in general. Every website competes with amazon now. Most places ship fast and cheap/free. Sometimes with a minimum order, but same with amazon's add on items. There are exceptions for sure, and I do occasionally still need to buy a thing on Amazon.

Unless you're really into the prime video selection, I suggest everyone cancel their prime and try life without it. I think I got a prorated refund, and you can always reactivate.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#70
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine being in a position where you have to choose between putting up with this hostile bullshit or going hungry/evicted. Most of us here could tell our bosses to f off and either have enough savings for months (or even years), or at the very least get another job within weeks or days. Even having grown up lower-middle class with zero, often negative, extra money, going years without vacation, etc., it's hard to wr…

How does someone get into that position? Are public schools so bad that people come out with no marketable unique skills that would give them natural job security?

Massive deindustrialization is a huge part of it in the US. There aren't many decent blue collar jobs anymore.
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