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Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#191

Post by regextegrity »

dan-robertson wrote: post #49
tyingq wrote: post #2

"The agency told Ms. Cunningham and Ms. Costa that it would accuse Amazon of unfair labor practices if the company did not settle the case, according to correspondence that Ms. Cunningham shared with The New York Times." That's a pretty nice piece of leverage to have in hand while negotiating a settlement. Edit: They were both UX/Design folks with Amazon, fired on April 10th, 2020. Costa was Amazon's first ever Princ…

Is settlement actually a bad deal for Amazon or similar companies like Google? Sure they have to spend a bit of money on the settlement but they have still succeeded at their actual objective of getting rid of the activist employees. This cycle (labour organisation attempt -> leaders fired -> settlement for leaders -> leaders go off to some media job/retirement/academia) happens again and again. Presumably the compan…

Sounds good for shareholders, but bad for the workers that make up Amazon.

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#192

Post by ihumanable »

intricatedetail wrote: post #169

Tomorrow in the UK starts employment without rights - that is companies will be legally able to hire de facto employees and those people will not have any employment rights - so no unions, will be able to fire pregnant women or don't observe equal pay. It's a bit more complex paperwork, but once companies get a taste it can be streamlined. All this without Labour party nor unions saying a word... https://norightsempl…

The most surprising thing about this is that they chose the name "No Rights Employee"

In America a similar concept is called "Right to Work"

Where are your corporate PR people?

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#193

Post by schnevets »

nerdponx wrote: post #71
pow_pp_-1_v wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they had provided good benefits and working condition, the workers will not be incentivized to form unions, right? Why are they not doing that?

Because good benefits and working conditions are fleeting without the power of collective bargaining behind it. Without a union, employees are depending entirely on the goodwill of their employers.

This. Amazon became a ripe unionization target because they get noticeable productivity per worker. Its rates are closer to manufacturing compared to typical retail and the other prevalent, low-income jobs.

With Amazon's massive investment in robotics and other opportunities for automation, they think they can become exponentially more efficient. At that point, a non-unionized workforce will lose that goodwill and be slashed into a fraction of its current size.

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#194

Post by acuozzo »

tracer4201 wrote: post #73

> After Amazon told them that they had violated its external communications policy by speaking publicly about the business, their group organized 400 employees to also speak out, purposely violating the policy to make a point. I get that Amazon and big tech hate posts are a daily thing on HN these days, but this seems simple enough to me. They broke Amazons policies and organized other employees to also break policy.…

> They broke Amazons policies and organized other employees to also break policy.

How's Kohlberg Stage 4 working out for you?

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#195

Post by nerdponx »

mixedCase wrote: post #152
nerdponx wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately it's not physically possible to be neutral on this issue. It's not analogous to never giving people change on the street because you donate to soup kitchens and mutual aid orgs (or whatever). If you don't support unionization, you are effectively undermining it. This isn't meant to be some kind of woke purity test. It's just the facts of how a market operates. Every individual that is willing to work wi…

Absolutely not. Not increasing its power is not undermining it. It's neutrality. Stop changing definitions to suit your political goals. We have enough "with us or against us" going on driving violence to let more slide.

I was careful to explain my reasoning in my post, but maybe it wasn't stated clearly enough.

Consider a company for which programmers are fungible, and 5 programmers are required to keep the company running at full efficiency. If one programmer quits in protest over union-busting activity, all it takes is one other equivalent programmer on the labor market to agree to take the job. The existence of 1,000 other pro-union programmers in the labor market are completely irrelevant, as long as the company knows they can find one union-neutral programmer. Morever, the union-neutral programmer is equivalent to an anti-union programmer from the perspective of the employer.

It's "with us or against us" because of the nature of the labor market, not because of any desire to be toxic or exclusionary or whatever. This is literally the whole reason that picket lines exist. You're either a scab or you're not; that's definitional, not rhetorical.

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#196

Post by lasagnaphil »

dontreact wrote: post #180
mycall wrote: post #42

Are there any apps to streamline the unionization of businesses? It would seem quorum discovery is the hardest part of creating a union -- who is ready to join. Being in a union myself, even with some of the political issues that come with it, I very much appreciate what they do for me.

Yes, my friend is working on this https://unitworkers.com/

Is this tech really needed for union organization though? It seems much better to be using conventional chatrooms like Telegram/Signal for the best outreach among workers. And Telegram/Signal seems to be far more trustworthy of not leaking your stuff to the companies than some random startup, as a lot of people are already using it...

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#197

Post by jjk166 »

pje wrote: post #102
mycall wrote: post #42

Are there any apps to streamline the unionization of businesses? It would seem quorum discovery is the hardest part of creating a union -- who is ready to join. Being in a union myself, even with some of the political issues that come with it, I very much appreciate what they do for me.

Literally none of the hard problems in forming a union are technical. I can't stress this enough—the hard problems in organizing are much squishier and amorphous. You're trying to get a majority of people to feel like they have a personal stake in improving the material conditions of others. It's not quorum algorithms, it's not apps, it's not encrypted communication platforms. The hard part is organizing people .

Are you saying that technology can't be used to more effectively organize and influence people?

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#198

Post by cortesoft »

tyingq wrote: post #2

"The agency told Ms. Cunningham and Ms. Costa that it would accuse Amazon of unfair labor practices if the company did not settle the case, according to correspondence that Ms. Cunningham shared with The New York Times." That's a pretty nice piece of leverage to have in hand while negotiating a settlement. Edit: They were both UX/Design folks with Amazon, fired on April 10th, 2020. Costa was Amazon's first ever Princ…

The 'agency' in this case is the National Labor Relations Board, and 'settling' in this case doesn't just mean paying money, it also means changing their practices. It basically means accepting the findings and taking remedial steps, instead of denying the findings and trying to fight them.

This isn't like a law firm threatening to sue if they don't settle.

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#199

Post by rtkwe »

throwawaysea wrote: post #100
ceejayoz wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are specific rights in this regard. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/can-you-terminate-emplo... > In a memo released on April 15, the agency evaluated a case where a company maintained a policy that prohibited employees from speaking to the media at any time. The NLRB found this rule to be unlawful and explained: “Employees have a statutory right to speak publically about their complaints or concerns with t…

But these two were not speaking about the “terms and conditions” of their employment. They were broadly criticizing the company on other matters ranging from climate change to more directly political issues. I feel like the scope of the NLRA is extending to include just about everything.

You've got it backwards the law allows companies certain things they can forbid people from doing not an explicit list of things employees are allowed to say [0]. Companies can only prevent employees from speaking about specific things like trade secrets or other confidential things.

[0] This would have some pretty obvious 1A implications.

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#200

Post by RobRivera »

peytn wrote: post #133
tekromancr wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do have leverage, and you don't use said leverage to help those that don't; then you are a bastard. And having policies ensures that your company, at high levels is ONLY staffed with bastards because people who are not bastards won't want to work there. Granted, that might be exactly what Amazon et al are selecting for; but at some point, a company being anti-union will be a signal to prospective high-level em…

I like to keep business and charity separated. Mixing the two, in my opinion, simply adds a layer of indirection for the bastards to hide behind. Besides, if you’re in a working environment where people throw around terms like “total comp” and have mortgages denominated in millions of dollars, the self-interest ship has kinda sailed.

people often forget that subtlety of reality is NOT something every individual HAS to prioritize, and any amount of namecalling is really a refusal to open a dialogue and an excuse to grandstand.

glad you feel safe enough to echo your opinions. it's important in championing dialogue.

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