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How Amazon Crushes Unions

nytimes.com

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Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#171

Post by pjmlp »

capableweb wrote: post #101
pjmlp wrote: post #45

Fortunely crushing unions is not a legal in many countries. As for everyone that gives money to Amazon, and praises their FOSS offerings, this is what evil companies do in practice.

> Fortunely crushing unions is not a legal in many countries. Unfortunately, some companies like Amazon seems to simply include "break labor laws" on their balance statements in the end of the year, as they keep breaking the laws in order to save short-term costs.

That only works as long as no one reports them to the respective goverment departments.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#172

Post by EliRivers »

nickpp wrote: post #150
EliRivers wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Look it up. Over the last fifty years in the US, productivity gains have gone to the rich. Employee wages have stagnated; the extra wealth they create goes to the rich.

This isn't exactly esoteric knowledge. It's pretty widely known. Your assertion that employees have the power would suggest that employees are choosing to give these gains to the rich. That's just plain nonsense. All those people making minimum wage at Walmart; do they really look to you like they're in the driving seat?

Not aware of any evidence? You don't have to agree with Piketti to be aware of him; to be unaware of his work is to be wilfully ignorant. Best selling economist of the last decade? Enormously widely sold? Discussed in almost every economic forum? If you are genuinely unaware of any of the work on the subject (even those who vehemently disagree are still aware of it), then you are phenomenally ignorant in the field and should probably just not say anything.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#173

Post by reaperducer »

tidepod12 wrote: post #129
tablespoon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see the commingling thing brought up in every thread like this, but I've never personally, nor has anyone I know IRL, received anything from Amazon that are even suspect of being counterfeit. If they are counterfeit, then they are such high quality counterfeits that I'm not sure I even care. I wouldn't be so sure, since it's not always easy to spot a counterfeit. Take a charger for instance. A counterfeiter can g…

Like I said, if any of the chargers or cords I have received from Amazon are counterfeit, they're good enough counterfeits that I don't care. My iPhone, iPad, and MBP all charge just fine, still have perfectly fine working batteries, have never had any issues with the electronics, and nothing has caught on fire after years of use. The headphones I've bought from Amazon sound great and have given me no issues. The lig…

they're good enough counterfeits that I don't care

Yet. When one burns down your house, you'll care.

Most people try to head off possibilities like that, rather can just shrug their shoulders and say, "But I saved three dollars!"

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#174

Post by pietrovismara »

nickpp wrote: post #170
pietrovismara wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. This is a blatant lie that keeps being repeated without thought. The reason people work at amazon warehouses is because they don't have other choice. For many there simply are no other jobs that pay or treat you better.

Then the alternative was better education and more focus during one's formative years. It's not my fault the kids skipping class, having fun and making jokes during teacher's lessons are now paid less than me. Society offers plenty of opportunities but not to people who did noting to prepare themselves to take advantage of them.

If it really is just a matter of the effort one puts into education, then answer this. If everyone studied with the same exact amount of effort, would we have a world without waitresses, warehouse workers, low wage jobs?

Obviously not. This society relies entirely on the fact that a good portion of the population can be blackmailed into doing the bad jobs, while the other small portion enjoys the fruits.

If nobody could be forced to take shitty jobs, how would most of the current industries exist?

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#175

Post by JulianTapales »

Chris2048 wrote: post #154
charlesu wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So someone offers a job at a poor rate, and it's "exploitation". Then what are you and me, who didn't even offer a rate? If they would've literally starved without the offer, it literally saved their life. If a persons situation is not made worse by a job offer, then what's the problem? They would've still been worse off without it.

Just because they would be better off with it doesn’t mean it’s not exploitative. The problem is the lack of non exploitative alternatives. You can argue a life of exploitation is better than starving to death but I’d say even that is up for debate.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#176

Post by nickpp »

pietrovismara wrote: post #174
nickpp wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the alternative was better education and more focus during one's formative years. It's not my fault the kids skipping class, having fun and making jokes during teacher's lessons are now paid less than me. Society offers plenty of opportunities but not to people who did noting to prepare themselves to take advantage of them.

If it really is just a matter of the effort one puts into education, then answer this. If everyone studied with the same exact amount of effort, would we have a world without waitresses, warehouse workers, low wage jobs? Obviously not. This society relies entirely on the fact that a good portion of the population can be blackmailed into doing the bad jobs, while the other small portion enjoys the fruits. If nobody co…

The fewer people interested in taking those "shitty jobs", the more they would get paid. Then the jobs would cease to be shitty.

This is what we should push for, not artificially and undeservedly reward those jobs more and thus trap ever more people into them.

My grandmother was illiterate. That condemned her to a hard life of struggle and hard work. But she stayed on my father's ass to study. My father stayed on my ass and I am staying on my children's. The lesson was so strong, three generations are benefiting.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#177

Post by JulianTapales »

Chris2048 wrote: post #164
bena wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What kind of power balance, specifically. If you offer $5/hr where max rate is $5/hr the area isn't any worse off.

If $5/hr is an exploitative rate, then it's exploitation regardless of whether the the area is worse off or not

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#178

Post by _huayra_ »

mindslight wrote: post #107
_huayra_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well at least one of the latter definitely has skeletons... [0] But in all seriousness, Oracle at least has very good free tier to get started. You basically get two free okay-provisioned VMs (lite on the CPU to say the least, but mem and desk okay). Very good for self-hosted your own stuff for free! [0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bl...

Oracle's administration interface is horrible. It's an obtuse nonsensical hierarchy, probably specified by someone non-technical writing a requirements document in a vacuum. It'll take you an afternoon to figure out how to get your instances set up, upload your initial image etc. Also your instances will always be behind NAT (having internal IPs), which is odd. Its redeeming feature is having a free tier that isn't G…

Oh yes, I wasn't saying Oracle was good. It was the usual mess of conflicting systems (e.g. two different ways to do network ACLs...that conflict?).

I personally wouldn't consider them for anything serious. If folks need a free box for something lightweight, those free tier VMs on Oracle are pretty much the only good thing about it. (I have a VPN and a few small services running on it for my own consumption)

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#179

Post by nickpp »

EliRivers wrote: post #172
nickpp wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Look it up. Over the last fifty years in the US, productivity gains have gone to the rich. Employee wages have stagnated; the extra wealth they create goes to the rich. This isn't exactly esoteric knowledge. It's pretty widely known. Your assertion that employees have the power would suggest that employees are choosing to give these gains to the rich. That's just plain nonsense. All those people making minimum wage a…

No, it didn't go to "the rich". The generated wealth went to funders, investors and employees with stocks. That made some of them rich.

But today anybody can own stock in companies so I guess everybody had the opportunity to enjoy those gains.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#180

Post by passivate »

tidepod12 wrote: post #106
Judgmentality wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're buying from Amazon, you're almost definitely getting comingled inventory - which means even the official retailer themselves can't guarantee it's a genuine product. Your point still stands about easy returns, although personally I've noticed Amazon adding a lot more friction when I have a problem in the past year or so. https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-m...

I see the commingling thing brought up in every thread like this, but I've never personally, nor has anyone I know IRL, received anything from Amazon that are even suspect of being counterfeit. If they are counterfeit, then they are such high quality counterfeits that I'm not sure I even care. It's obviously a problem to some extent, but I can't help but think news articles like that blow it way out of proportion. As…

I used to think the same, but I received a sorta dodgy SD card from Amazon last year. By dodgy I mean that the graphics on the sticker seemed off compared to my other cards from Sandisk, and it was slower than advertised. It still worked just fine, and I don't want to imply that this is widespread, but it has happened to me.
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