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How Amazon Crushes Unions

nytimes.com

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Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#221

Post by capableweb »

skynet-9000 wrote: post #141
capableweb wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"This is not historically accurate." and then uses one story about Henry Ford as evidence, really?

Read up a bit on unions and their impact on the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union), and come back with more stories about how a business owner raised his employees salaries so therefore unions are not useful where salaries are not being raised...

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#222

Post by capableweb »

cheezymoogle wrote: post #199
capableweb wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

While I'm sympathetic to the argument that the rise of social media has contributed to the absolute degeneration of public discourse, blaming social media as the cause rather than the means strikes me as particularly hollow when measured by previous historical periods of civil unrest. Whatever the actual causes--nascent technological catalysis, changing property relations or elite culture, or whatever the God's-eye p…

Thanks for your thoughtful reply! As I don't know much about the US, I thank you for linking those documents, will make good reading.

I agree that my first argument was hollow and I don't blame it all on social media. I guess the "social media" aspect of HN actually makes me sometimes rewrite my speech to make more impact than to be 100% expanded to explain my viewpoint, mostly to not bore people.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#223

Post by capableweb »

pjmlp wrote: post #171
capableweb wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And if you've grown so big that there will be one or two reports every month, make sure you lobby the right people in the government departments.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#224

Post by jfengel »

pjmlp wrote: post #171
capableweb wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It works great if the departments don't have a lot of power to stop it. Even if Amazon gets hit with a fine for anti-union behavior, it would be a pittance to their budget, and almost certainly come too late.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#225

Post by renewiltord »

Chris2048 wrote: post #216
renewiltord wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just read the Wikipedia page for the dictator game. It'll fast-forward your understanding. I think this is the extent to which I am willing to tutor. But if you'd like more, I'll do it at $180/hr, email in profile. Should be 10 mins if you don't have further questions, 30 mins if you do.

Not even Wikipedia asserts that the experiment proves anything. And even if it did, the burden is on you to prove that "fairness in human relations" is relevant to this thread. That's exactly why I said: employee / employer relations are not "human relations" Since that's what we are talking about - I'm asking why this is relevant. But since you responded with smug condescension, it seems like your more interested in…

It isn't condescension. You're just living under the misapprehension that I am trying to convince you. You're welcome to believe what you want. If you don't think it's worth the money, it's okay if you don't want to pay.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#226

Post by [deleted] »

pietrovismara wrote: post #167
nickpp wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the alternative is another job.

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.

[deleted]

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#227

Post by hntrader »

bena wrote: post #71
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.

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.

It's got much more to do with supply and demand than power.

Table salt and unskilled labor are both cheap primarily because there's an over-supply relative to demand.

Cleaners (as an example) provide huge value-add, but it's not unique value-add because there's millions of people that are capable of providing that service, and therefore the market rate is low. There's no centralized power that's dictating that cleaners should earn a low wage.

Some reasons for over-supply of unskilled labor in rich countries are globalization (U.S. workers now need to compete with Chinese factory workers for manufacturing) and technology/automation.

This isn't to understate the incredible difficulty of being poor, but let's not misdiagnose what the real reasons are for low wages.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#228

Post by hntrader »

JulianTapales wrote: post #177
Chris2048 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This thinking leads to more poverty and less social mobility.

Factory workers in China get paid less than $5/hour, yet this so-called "exploitation" directly led to a large reduction in poverty[1]. If everyone had accepted your framing and refused to do manufacturing business with China on that basis, the consequence of that would be more poverty and human suffering.

If a person is being paid $4/hour and you come in and offer a $5/hour job, you are making their situation better and you are improving their life.

[1]https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/poverty-rate

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#229

Post by former-aws »

Judgmentality wrote: post #201
tidepod12 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably true, but such a laughably small number of people use Workmail that I doubt it has any material difference to AWS's reported numbers, so while they might not reflect the true AWS marketshare sans-Workmail, it's probably still in the same ballpark. The reason people bring it up in regards to Azure is because it does likely artificially inflate Azure's reported numbers a material amount and makes them…

I don't know for sure, but I'd guess MS Office makes up most of the revenue for their cloud offerings. Honestly I think their cloud is mostly a service to push MS Office harder, and they seem to be doing quite well for that.

My point is every cloud vendor needs to break up revenue by IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS. Each one looks strong and bad across segments and hence such a breakup will never happen. But saying AWS or MSFT is #1 misses the dominant segment where they are leading, hides where they are struggling, and gives an incorrect impression.

Re: How Amazon Crushes Unions

#230

Post by hntrader »

mminer237 wrote: post #126
i_haz_rabies wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unique skills are rare by definition.

Each individual skill may be rare, but given how many thousands of different skills there are, the trait of having some rare skill should be common.

But that doesn't mean that it's going to be valued by the market. If it's not valued by the market, the fact that it's rare doesn't help you.

For a high market price, you need the intersection of a scarce skill (low-supply in labor market) that provides value to other people (high-demand in the labor market). Being a good software engineer is an example - low-supply and high-demand, therefore high wage/salary.

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