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How Amazon Crushes Unions

nytimes.com

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Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#141

Post by skynet-9000 »

capableweb wrote: post #117
elisbce wrote: post #113

Like the unions didn't already destroy America's auto industry. Now they want to do the same to the tech industry. Supervisors can't talk directly with union workers, they have to go through unions first. Who on earth think this is a good idea? It kills productivity and I'm not even talking about the foreseeable protests down the road. Unions don't work in tech business where you need to break rules and move fast. It…

> where you need to break rules and move fast Dude, we tried this. Now people in the US can't have reasonable arguments in public without wanting to kill one another. People somehow gets "cancelled" now, because some 20s-something wanted to "move fast" without thinking of the consequences. Maybe it's time we try "slow and steady" and see if the world actually ends up more equal and diverse, instead of the opposite, w…

> if unions hadn't existed, you'd still be slaving away 6 days a week (minimum), 10 hours a day, your children would be working instead of going to school and everything labor related would certainly have been worse.

This is not historically accurate.

For example, Henry Ford actually increased wages (without worrying about unions, and he had literal enforcers to bully people.)

He claimed to be doing it for altruistic reasons, and so that workers in his plants could afford a Ford, but the real reason was because he had to, because people could choose to work elsewhere, even if they had to move. Also, he attracted people from other cities and states to move to Dearborn.

This is the real antidote to union-busting and union-towns. Any job that basically needs a person can always be paid minimally, but multiple employers have to compete for that person; perhaps an alternative job is far away, but mobile people will always be worth more because their market is larger. It was a bit different 150 years ago during the Industrial Revolution, because of information asymmetry and the cost of relocation.

So why form a union? Just get a better job from an employer that literally values you more. It's not like these companies don't exist.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#142

Post by xwolfi »

capableweb wrote: post #117
elisbce wrote: post #113

Like the unions didn't already destroy America's auto industry. Now they want to do the same to the tech industry. Supervisors can't talk directly with union workers, they have to go through unions first. Who on earth think this is a good idea? It kills productivity and I'm not even talking about the foreseeable protests down the road. Unions don't work in tech business where you need to break rules and move fast. It…

> where you need to break rules and move fast Dude, we tried this. Now people in the US can't have reasonable arguments in public without wanting to kill one another. People somehow gets "cancelled" now, because some 20s-something wanted to "move fast" without thinking of the consequences. Maybe it's time we try "slow and steady" and see if the world actually ends up more equal and diverse, instead of the opposite, w…

For the kill each other, it's really a deep deep issue in education. Nothing to do with anything else really. You have to educate kids into a sort of national unity thinking.

I come from France, and we're not perfect, far from it. But I was raised, not so long ago, to tolerate very diverging opinions. I enjoy debating calmly with communists, nationalists, muslims or europeanists. As long as we agree France comes first, our little divergences second, I stay polite and agree to disagree. After all, they may be right, and I wrong, so I just discuss to gain perspective.

What I see in US debates is that everything seems so existential. Hearing someone disagree is so painful and deeply disturbing, on both sides (there seems to be only 2, another problem), that people I see debate seem to forget that end of the day, they and their descendants will have to live together forever. Better embrace the fact it's done and final, and start finding little ways to be nice about it.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#143

Post by anonuser123456 »

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?

> Are public schools so bad that people come out with no marketable unique skills that would give them natural job security?

Yes, but that's not the only issue. Some people are incapable of managing their own affairs. Showing up to work on time, not drunk is not in their personal capacity. It's not really their fault; we are not the authors of our neurobiology.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#144

Post by xwolfi »

kaesar14 wrote: post #137
elisbce wrote: post #113

Like the unions didn't already destroy America's auto industry. Now they want to do the same to the tech industry. Supervisors can't talk directly with union workers, they have to go through unions first. Who on earth think this is a good idea? It kills productivity and I'm not even talking about the foreseeable protests down the road. Unions don't work in tech business where you need to break rules and move fast. It…

The auto industry died because it got outcompeted by the Japanese auto industry, which is also unionized.

I think nobody would disagree to have Japanese unions in the US.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#145

Post by afavour »

elisbce wrote: post #113

Like the unions didn't already destroy America's auto industry. Now they want to do the same to the tech industry. Supervisors can't talk directly with union workers, they have to go through unions first. Who on earth think this is a good idea? It kills productivity and I'm not even talking about the foreseeable protests down the road. Unions don't work in tech business where you need to break rules and move fast. It…

> Supervisors can't talk directly with union workers, they have to go through unions first.

I've never heard of this before. The idea that a supervisor cannot talk to a unionized employee at all is extreme, to say the least. Having the union there during disciplinary hearings? Sure. All meetings?

Do you have any examples?

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#146

Post by musingsole »

xmprt wrote: post #87
musingsole wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Yeah, unions deal in a different currency than dollars. The rest of it works much the same way.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#147

Post by dunnevens »

stonecraftwolf wrote: post #132
dunnevens wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

What do you use to strip the DRM from kindle books?

I use DeDRM. Works as a plugin for Calibre. I import the books into Calibre and the DRM is stripped away automatically. Mostly painless.

https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#148

Post by hinkley »

blinding-streak wrote: post #3

> Amazon managers openly warned recruits that if they liked things comfortable, this would be a difficult, perhaps impossible, job. For customer service representatives, it was difficult to keep up, according to media accounts and labor organizers. Overtime was mandatory. Supervisors sent emails with subject headings like “YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD.” Umm, yikes.

Coworker who lasted two weeks at Amazon before quitting, “I saw a poster that read, ‘You can work, smarter, harder, or longer, but you can’t pick just two.’”

When they called to find out why he wasn’t at work on Sunday, and told him they don’t usually give stock grants to people with such a limited investment in the company, that was the end of it.

If you’ve ever been in the parts of Seattle they’re in, they tend to take up the whole sidewalk. Different coworker called them Amholes. After working a contract there I figured out it isn’t because those people have huge egos. It’s because they’re zombies. Surprised more of them don’t get hit by cars.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#149

Post by brundolf »

musingsole wrote: post #33
jtdev wrote: 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.

Think pragmatically: who would we help by trying to "get back at" an abstract corporate entity for bad things "they" (not even the same people) may have done nearly 100 years ago?

What we're talking about with Amazon is taking steps to actually fight transgressions that are happening right now.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#150

Post by nickpp »

EliRivers wrote: post #134
nickpp wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have those thanks to the increase of productivity and competition between employees, not some unions hundreds of years ago. Maybe that was the reason initially but time has passed and today's situation favours the employee in most fields.

today's situation favours the employee in most fields I guess employees are choosing to let rich people take all the wealth they generate, then. How very generous of employees. I guess what I'm basically saying is that the evidence indicates that what you just said is bullshit.

I guess am not aware of any evidence of "rich people take all the wealth".

I know there are organisational structures in which all kinds of people cooperate to create wealth which is then distributed along to clearly agreed and understood rules to funders, investors and workers. They are called companies and all participants are adult, informed and consenting.

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