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How Amazon Crushes Unions

nytimes.com

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Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#71

Post by bena »

Chris2048 wrote: post #42
spaetzleesser wrote: post #9

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.

I don't like that thinking. It ignores radical power imbalances.

If I, or a group I'm a part of, controls the majority of the resources, we get to decide allocation of those resources without regard to any other consideration than what we would part with.

So if you go to an area with high unemployment where the businesses only offer at most $5/hr, you can also offer $5/hr even for jobs critical to your business.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#72

Post by jjmarinho »

comrh wrote: post #51
Chris2048 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This naively assumes the person has a choice of other opportunities and that the those other jobs aren't also underpaid.

If ALL jobs around you are underpaid, maybe it's your work that is not as valuable as you think.

I'm not saying this is fair.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#73

Post by tidepod12 »

jtdev wrote: post #66
tidepod12 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are legitimate use cases for technology like facial recognition, and I see nothing wrong with using it in that way. Of course society should be cautious about unwarranted uses of such technology. But decrying all uses of it, even legitimate ones, because of a hypothetical "what if someone in the future uses facial recognition to start another holocaust?" is just a slippery slope fallacy.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#74

Post by dunnevens »

nafizh wrote: post #24
peer2pay wrote: 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.

Electronics now come to me from Best Buy, Microcenter, and Newegg. Best Buy in particular has faster shipping than Prime. It's frequently overnight for in stock items. At least in my area. And as far as I know, there's no problems with counterfeit goods with them.

Physical books I buy from a small online bookstore I want to support. Oddly enough, they're not much slower than Prime. Even for books not in stock. Plus, they frequently write a nice note, or slip a free zine or custom bookmark into the package. It's a nice touch, and whoever did the packing has equity in the company. They're worker-owned.

Ebooks are still Amazon, though I strip the DRM immediately after purchase so I'm not locked into the Kindle ecosystem. I may try buying a test book from Kobo or Barnes & Noble to see if I can just as easily strip the DRM from them. If so, then I'll probably switch.

Ebay's been good for some stuff. For Pi hobby stuff, I've started buying directly from the various small businesses that specialize. The shipping is longer, but that's not a problem so far.

Some stuff I do buy from Walmart / Sams. They're about as bad as Amazon in many ways, but they do pay their warehouse people a decent wage. Or they did last time I checked. So it's at least marginally better in that respect, and there's not much worry about fake goods from them.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#75

Post by i_haz_rabies »

klaudius wrote: post #52
pc86 wrote: 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?

Unique skills are rare by definition.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#76

Post by franklampard »

peer2pay wrote: 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…

> 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

In my experience, I get most stuff for the same price from other retailers on Amazon, but with fast shipping and the peace of mind that I can return them easily.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#77

Post by wombat-man »

dunnevens wrote: post #74
nafizh wrote: 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.

Electronics now come to me from Best Buy, Microcenter, and Newegg. Best Buy in particular has faster shipping than Prime. It's frequently overnight for in stock items. At least in my area. And as far as I know, there's no problems with counterfeit goods with them. Physical books I buy from a small online bookstore I want to support. Oddly enough, they're not much slower than Prime. Even for books not in stock. Plus,…

Best buy also has a pretty good pickup experience near me. I can order it online and walk over and have it in my hand a couple hours later.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#78

Post by i_haz_rabies »

Chris2048 wrote: post #42
spaetzleesser wrote: post #9

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.

This is the sort of thinking that erodes the ground underneath society.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#79

Post by lisper »

peer2pay wrote: 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…

> Now I only wish I could find a way to move all our infrastructure off AWS...

I've moved to Linode and never looked back.

[UPDATE] Wow. Downvotes for a shout-out to Linode. Didn't know there was so much Linode hate out there. What's up with that? What's wrong with Linode?

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#80

Post by franklampard »

dybber wrote: post #17
pibechorro wrote: post #14

Good. Unions ultimately get entangled with regulators and its harmful for everyone. Look no further than public school teachers, getting paid, refuse to work. Meanwhile private school teachers have been working.. if you hate working at Amazon, quit.

Your experience with unions seems very limited, please read about unions in countries where the system isn't broken.

For example?
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