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How Amazon Crushes Unions

nytimes.com

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Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#81

Post by cestith »

Shivetya wrote: post #67
cestith wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Picketing has been legal for a long, long time. There's no law now that says I can't go out and picket on the sidewalk outside Whole Foods or Walmart.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#82

Post by croes »

jjmarinho wrote: post #72
comrh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or there is a big imbalance of power.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#83

Post by mintcoffee »

Judgmentality wrote: post #53
pc86 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now I only wish I could find a way to move all our infrastructure off AWS If only there were competing cloud/PaaS services.

If only they were competitive.

They're not? I've always seen AWS as the most expensive of the cloud providers. e.g., GPU instances on AWS EC2 vs GCP.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#84

Post by basilgohar »

Rule35 wrote: post #60
cratermoon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those same "bad laws" are why you have a 5-day work week, your retirement plan, overtime (if you are hourly), safe working conditions, sick leave. The list goes on. If you think you'd like to go back before the time when unions didn't exist, let me direct you to the work of photographer Lewis Hine

Unions have done their job. They were needed when Pinkertons beat up people trying to open new stores in a company town, etc. Ironically, flagging a post without bad content is just the sort of passive aggressive crap you have to put up with in a union.

Laws have done their job. They were needed when people were hunter-gatherers and needed to settle in cities and learn how to live peacefully now, etc.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#86

Post by ropeladder »

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,…

De-DRM for Kobo works great. It's basically the same as Kindle, there is just another plugin or two to install. Books are usually a bit more expensive. However, it looks like Walmart actually owns Rakuten now, so it's not like you're helping out the little guy much.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#87

Post by xmprt »

musingsole wrote: post #37
hasmolo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

without the power afforded by money to the union, it cannot stand up to the company. the dues are functionally an insurance payment for security in your job. this comment is similar to saying: i'm kinda creeped out by car insurance payments. it just feels less about protecting other drivers and more about enriching the insurance companies. you are right that it does create a new power structure and job roles, that's…

> i'm kinda creeped out by car insurance payments. it just feels less about protecting other drivers and more about enriching the insurance companies. Yeah, me too! And health and homeowners insurance while we're at it. All systems seemingly meant to exploit statistics for the betterment of us all...and yet the 20 most expensive homes in my city growing up were owned by insurance execs... What an oddity!

Fortunately unions aren't for profit so that's generally less of a concern

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#88

Post by busterarm »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #28
dybber wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The challenge I have with looking at unions in countries that 'do it right', so to speak, is that the union Amazon employees are looking to make will end up being an American-style union.

It's telling that when shown overwhelmingly that private-sector unions in America are hopelessly broken and corrupt that the only solution the pro-union folks have for the problem is "more unionization".

I've been in three different unions and would never "join" one again [my participation was mandatory for the job in each case] and would change careers if my field unionized significantly.

I remember a local news story once where a baker at a local grocery store was caught on film urinating in the cake batter for the store's cakes. His termination was fought, successfully, by the union for violating rules they'd negotiated around filming. That's not a win for anyone.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#89

Post by xmprt »

donovanian wrote: post #43
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…

> It would mean to ignore the weakest in society (maybe lay them off?) for the benefit of a few at the top. As though almost all the unprecedented levels of pandemic relief in the US haven’t gone to anything but people that need relief.

A lot of the early pandemic relief went to large corporations looking for cheap loans.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#90

Post by christkv »

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…

I'm seeing food delivery places like uber eats, globo etc able to become pickers for local stores (at least here in Europe). Now I only need some way to order online from local stores and have it automatically sent to me via bike courier.
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