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I absolutely do not understand why you would vote against your own collective interest for a small amount of union dues. That is not snark, it's a real statement. I legitimately do not understand it. Can someone who works/worked one of these jobs please explain it to me? I am so confused by how lopsided this was.
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That’s the fundamental problem with our culture generally. The closer (figuratively speaking) to the big money and political power someone is the more comfortable they are. And we all want to believe it’s a meritocracy. We’re just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
I think that’s a feature, not a bug. In that I don’t think it’s a problem. Labor is subject to markets like many things, and shouldn’t be exploited. But there’s some work that’s hard and doesn’t require specialized training (eg, hauling stuff around warehouses all day). Some people are willing to do this and they do, if they don’t want to they can do other things. This is an oversimplification, of course, but having…
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Assuming you're not an Amazon warehouse employee, but they have more skin in the game than you. So presumably their opinion is more informed and reasoned. I don't think its as clear cut as "in your interest". I certainly wouldn't vote to unionize my profession and I would even go as far as avoiding unionized fields. I prefer to have a direct relationship with my employer. I stay away from organizations that have a ta…
> I stay away from organizations that have a table that will tell you how much you'll make after N years. I don't think that's necessarily a characteristic of a union shop and if it is, those are probably minimums. For example, professional baseball players and are unionized yet individuals can still negotiate salary.
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My guess is the messaging about dues. Lots of people focused on the short term hit to their paychecks. Most of the stories reference $500/month. That does seem high. Data I can find for other unions shows somewhere between 1 to 4 percent of gross pay as typical for union dues. Assuming $15/hour, 4 percent of gross pay would be $144/month. But, if $500/month is accurate, it's 13.8% of gross pay for $15/hour workers, a…
It was $500/year, not per month https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/early-vote-counts-sho...
https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+union+vote+%22%24500%...
I absolutely do not understand why you would vote against your own collective interest for a small amount of union dues. That is not snark, it's a real statement. I legitimately do not understand it. Can someone who works/worked one of these jobs please explain it to me? I am so confused by how lopsided this was.
I like to think this is due to the bad reputation unions have. Digging a two mile tunnel eats half of the state budget? Police refuses to wear body cams? Schools are slow to reopen after covid? Rightly or not, in many people's minds unions are to blame.
If you were a contractor to a state and you scored a contract worth half the state's budget, would you consider that a success or a failure?
You would consider it a success! The examples you give show exactly how unions work in the self-interest of their members. If the tunnel costs half the state's budget, the tunnel workers are surely well-paid, police officers rather not wear body cams so that they can whack people with their batons without being prosecuted, and teachers rather not return to schools as long as the epidemic is ongoing.
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Holy, that is probably the sole reason for a majority of the 'no' votes. You're talking a job that pays as little as $15 an hour, so 500/mo is nearly a week's pay (~33 hours).
Which is a good reason to be a little skeptical. The amount is off by an order of magnitude.
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It was $500/year, not per month https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/early-vote-counts-sho...
Interesting, the union missed an opportunity to fix a lot of misinformation: https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+union+vote+%22%24500%...
Am I the only one who thinks $500/mo seems excessive for union dues? That's $60k/yr in dues for every 10 workers. Does a union really need a full time rep for every 10 or 20 members? If, perhaps, half of that goes to "strike insurance", that would mean $15k/member over 5 years. Which would be enough replace wages(at $15/hr) for six months. Do they really anticipate a six month strike every 5 years?
It’s 500 per year not per month Edit to add source https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/early-vote-counts-sho...
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I think reasons will vary, and I didn’t vote in this event. But in previous situations I’ve not supported unionization due to how it favored existing workers in ways I thought were unfair in that all layoffs were due to seniority not performance so older workers would be kept and younger workers laid off, no matter what. It also established more rigid pay levels that were better on average but not as good for high pe…
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but your comment reads like you were operating in a much nicer career than these workers. If your job was good enough they gave you the opportunity to negotiate your pay, you're in a totally different social class than the subjects of this vote.
I was one of the few High School employees they had that was reliable and always did what I was asked, this enabled me to get not only higher wages but ever increasing job titles