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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

#401
post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the record, Amazon has admitted the peeing in bottles story was true: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/amazon-admits-it...

No, and this is more union deception. You're trying to conflate employees doing warehouse work (where they have bathrooms) with contract drivers who choose to pee in bottles. Everyone knows the warehouse pee story is made up or you'd stop grasping at straws. Why, oh why, must socialists lie?

You just didn't specify warehouse workers. But anyway, there are corroborating accounts of that too: https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse...

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#402
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I put men in quotes because the mostly gay crowd here are more like women.

Looks like I chose the wrong person to reply to. Does it ever feel sour that people that think like you are an ever decreasing minority in the greatest country on earth? Reflect on that.

Ha, good one. Which one of the two major dystopian police states are you referring to?

"feel sour" - is that a chinese phrase? sounds familiar.

You can interpret my comment negatively if you choose. My comment is no worse than yours: "it's a reality".

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In contrast, I would be very happy too consider a company that is honestly focused on its commercial mission rather than appease the small number of people who believe their employers should give them a platform for their activism.

Expect no one to stand up for you when you, too, are inevitably mistreated.

You mean I will not be protected from oppression by the self-sacrificing activist heroes in tech? The same heroes that so righteously punish the thinkers of bad thoughts and so gallantly protect everybody else from the violence of wrong ideas?

I guess I'll have to fight my fights alone then.

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#404
post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, and this is more union deception. You're trying to conflate employees doing warehouse work (where they have bathrooms) with contract drivers who choose to pee in bottles. Everyone knows the warehouse pee story is made up or you'd stop grasping at straws. Why, oh why, must socialists lie?

You just didn't specify warehouse workers. But anyway, there are corroborating accounts of that too: https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse...

Warehouse workers are the ones trying to unionize so all stories about drivers are irrelevant. You know this. I shouldn't have to specify.

Re your source, 1) The verge is currently lying about the warehouse/driver distinction so their credibility is very low, 2) the claims were anonymous or second-hand, and 3) they aren't saying there weren't bathrooms - but that people were trying to improve their speed.

Literally nothing that supports the need for a union. Nobody claims to have a medical reason that they needed to use the toilet and having been forbidden, or even had pay docked. That would be illegal under OSHA guidelines and they'd have just reported it as such at the time. Courts are extremely friendly to these suits from workers but apparently they never actually happened.

> “From their point of view, we don’t have the right to be ill,”

Nope. Illegal. If that happened there'd have been a lawsuit.

> “I had a fit at work and was taken to the hospital. The next day, someone rung me and asked why I was not in work. I explained to them, but it was still marked, ‘no call, no show,’”

Um yeah, you didn't call or show. That you (may have) had a valid reason to leave yesterday doesn't translate into not having to let them know if you're coming in today. Not a valid complaint.

> But despite having legally compliant break times, workers noted they had to walk quite a distance from their main work area to the break area, which greatly diminished how much time they had left to rest.

If you're required to take your break in a designated area then the time to travel there is not part of your break. If some manager got this wrong and stuck to it, it's a reason for a complaint and a maybe a lawsuit which the employee would profitably win. Maybe this happened, but all companies can make mistakes and the fix is easy.

It's not that they can't just want to unionize. That would be fine. Pointless, but fine. What's not is the lies. Their case for abuse clearly has no merit.

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The push for diversity is not that sinister, they just want the widest customer base they can get. Neoliberal diversity and identity politics lets them be moral without threatening their power base. What we've seen from Amazon's anti-union efforts this round is that they are not sophisticated enough to be pulling some kind of machiavellian plot. If unions are going to work in America, they have be able to navigate a…

Have you ever in your life seen someone look at a company's diversity stats before buying something?

No but I do remember media headlines about a company.

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#406
post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like I chose the wrong person to reply to. Does it ever feel sour that people that think like you are an ever decreasing minority in the greatest country on earth? Reflect on that.

Ha, good one. Which one of the two major dystopian police states are you referring to? "feel sour" - is that a chinese phrase? sounds familiar. You can interpret my comment negatively if you choose. My comment is no worse than yours: "it's a reality".

The US is not a police state. Are you some CCP anti-Westerner or something?

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The labor board may well have done nothing if Amazon had fired them for activism. But they fired them once they did start bringing up labor issues: > Amazon has fired two employees and asked a third not to return to work, after the group organized a virtual event for warehouse employees to speak to tech workers at the company about its workplace conditions and coronavirus response. > The two employees who were fired…

Yeah but that's pretty meaningless, because left wing activists have figured out that there's no specific requirements on what a union is meant to achieve, therefore literally any activism can be connected to "agitating to form a union" in some vague way and instantly become not only legally protected, but will rope in government agencies that are themselves captured by left wing activists. This is how you get stuff…

What are you on about? Pay, benefits, and safety are core workplace concerns. There's no roping-in going on: Amazon fired them once they began bringing up labor issues.

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but that's pretty meaningless, because left wing activists have figured out that there's no specific requirements on what a union is meant to achieve, therefore literally any activism can be connected to "agitating to form a union" in some vague way and instantly become not only legally protected, but will rope in government agencies that are themselves captured by left wing activists. This is how you get stuff…

What are you on about? Pay, benefits, and safety are core workplace concerns. There's no roping-in going on: Amazon fired them once they began bringing up labor issues.

There's a discussion elsewhere in this thread about how they were engaged primarily in climate change related activism.

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#409
post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, good one. Which one of the two major dystopian police states are you referring to? "feel sour" - is that a chinese phrase? sounds familiar. You can interpret my comment negatively if you choose. My comment is no worse than yours: "it's a reality".

The US is not a police state. Are you some CCP anti-Westerner or something?

Ha wrong again. Is English your second language?

Re: Amazon illegally fired activist workers, Labor Board finds

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon needs a lot of software engineers, but they don't need any single engineer. Which is the whole point of unionizing.

The software engineers have plenty of leverage over every company without unions. A proof of that is high wages across the industry. And for Amazon in particular, where is that extra money coming from? It's not like they have a dividend to shareholders they could stop paying out. They're not some law firm where the partners are profit sharing. It's a publicly traded company that just constantly reinvests in growth. T…

High wages relative to other wages, sure. High wages relative to the profit generated? Not so much.

High wages without a union only come out of an even larger pool of profit for them to pay wages from.

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