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Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

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Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#391

Post by hintymad »

shmolyneaux wrote: post #339
saas_sam wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My anti-union sentiment arrived from my experience working with a large established union in an industrial plant. The union protected some of the worst, laziest, most unsafe workers I had ever witnessed in any job before or sense. It blew my mind how difficult it was to remove obvious bad apples, and how the best workers were forced to wait in years-long "seniority" queues before they could get promoted. I would get…

What do you think of the Screen Actors Guild? That seems to have been a huge win for workers in the industry, seemingly without the negatives you describe.

There might be a difference. Studios must first look for actors in the actors guild. That said, a studio has freedom not to use an actor. Similar, a studio does not need to use a bad script, and the studio does not need to pay a writer if it doesn't use the writer's work. In contrast, a factory has to pay for a worker, or even assign some work to the worker, no matter how bad this worker performs.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#392

Post by PragmaticPulp »

dwater wrote: post #291
marcinzm wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a number of people in a large teacher's union and the stories indicate the union is bad for both good teachers and students. I've personally seen many great teachers leave for private schools and other public systems. The union rewarded the incompetent and did little for rampant administrator abuse.

I was a public teacher for 9 years, 2 years in a union and 7 years in a right to work state. The union experience was better as an employee. I find it hard to believe great teachers would go to private schools in large numbers as a result of being in a union, private schools generally have lower pay, lower benefits, and lower standards. The one thing you gain going to a private school is freedom to do as you want, an…

> I find it hard to believe great teachers would go to private schools in large numbers as a result of being in a union, private schools generally have lower pay, lower benefits, and lower standards.

I don't know where you lived, but this is the opposite of the situation in most places. Private schools attract people who will pay private school tuition because they offer higher standards.

In my limited experience with private schools, it was relatively easy to poach good teachers away from unionized jobs precisely because the school had freedom to offer them higher wages and better benefits. Many of them were also sick of dealing with the issues that come with unionized labor and union membership.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#393

Post by musingsole »

asdff wrote: post #300
aarongray wrote: post #127

Speaking as someone who lives adjacent to Bessemer but who does not work at Amazon, you need to understand that Bessemer is a dying city, a slum. These were the best paying jobs that many of these workers had had in their entire lives, it is no wonder that a majority of them decided not to bite the hand that was feeding them.

Amazon moving into these impovershed areas, becoming the majority employer, and having absolute influence over the local governance and electorate they themselves employ makes these places de facto a company town. Brilliant move, totally evil genius move, but brilliant.

Carpetbaggers carpetbagging is a story as old as time. At least they're creating jobs and distributing money into the community. It's not like there's a long list of others who would willingly pick up the slack if they went elsewhere.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#394

Post by starlust2 »

bhupy wrote: post #323
quijoteuniv wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that might be right,You are not taking into account that in Europe you get free healthcare & education.

The warehouse workers get the same (extremely generous) healthcare as every other Amazon employee (due to ERISA). And even if they didn't, through the Affordable Care Act, someone at that income level can buy a "Gold" plan with low deductibles for $75/month. Obviously for Amazon workers, that's irrelevant. K-12 education is free, and once you factor in-state tuition and FAFSA, university is also basically free for an…

Neither of the options you listed is free.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#396

Post by gruez »

asdff wrote: post #300
aarongray wrote: post #127

Speaking as someone who lives adjacent to Bessemer but who does not work at Amazon, you need to understand that Bessemer is a dying city, a slum. These were the best paying jobs that many of these workers had had in their entire lives, it is no wonder that a majority of them decided not to bite the hand that was feeding them.

Amazon moving into these impovershed areas, becoming the majority employer, and having absolute influence over the local governance and electorate they themselves employ makes these places de facto a company town. Brilliant move, totally evil genius move, but brilliant.

So let me get this straight: companies shouldn't be investing money into revitalizing impoverished areas?

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#397

Post by psds2 »

sct202 wrote: post #363
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly would the retribution from Amazon look like, had this passed? They can't pick up the fulfillment center and move it somewhere else (without inconvenience, time, and expense, of course). They will need workers willing to travel to Bessemer for work, which presumably are people who live near or adjacent to Bessemer.

They could suck up the losses of closing a 1 year old warehouse to send a signal. Walmart has claimed unfixable plumbing problems at union stores and closed them in the past.

They also stopped selling fresh meat through a butcher window all across the US when the butchers unionized.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#398

Post by ineptech »

parliament32 wrote: post #199
Someone1234 wrote: post #132

HN is very consistently anti-union. My question is this: Where did you get information about unions? Because people keep mentioning their "bad reputation" and then start listing off a bunch of "facts" that read like they're bullets straight out of one of those anti-union videos during onboard at several major employers (Walmart, Target, Amazon, etc). So anti-union people exactly where does your information come from?…

Personally, it came from working for a massive union (government, not US) for many years. The downsides are real: hard to fire bad performers, your merits don't matter at all (the guy doing the bare minimum job description gets the same raises as you), wayyy too much focus on seniority (for promotions, vacation selection, etc), and overall just too many rules (for example, "unlimited vacation" works great with my cur…

I think that the value of a lot of unions is obscured by how well-established they are. Historically, unions are a solution to a specific problem - the employer can (for one reason or another) get away with jerking employees around and treating them badly. But if you form a union, and the employer is forced to stop some of their the worst behaviors, and then it stays that way for a generation or two, it feels like the union serves no purpose.

To take government work as an example: you mentioned some minuses that are very obvious. But you didn't mention what I consider one of the biggest pluses: not having to fear losing your job because the mayor/governor/etc flipped parties. That still happens in leadership positions, but it used to happen to rank-and-file workers as well; I believe it's the public employee unions that stopped that.

I don't work for Amazon and I don't have a dog in this fight, but it would've been very interesting to see what happened if this site had unionized. It's not really clear to me whether/how much Amazon is jerking its workers around; are there plants really unsafe, are people really miserable, should they be paid more? Having one site unionize for a couple of years would probably answer those questions better than a million forum posts.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#399

Post by bhupy »

nathanappere wrote: post #330
fearling wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is free up til college in the US and the healthcare for Amazon warehouse workers is the same as for their engineers and Jeff Bezos.

You mean costs the same and as a result is entirely a function of how well you're paid in order to be able to afford better coverage?

No, exactly the opposite. ERISA is a Federal law that strictly regulates how plan fiduciaries can operate employer-sponsored health plans. A key element of ERISA is that an employer cannot offer more generous benefits to some employers over other; everyone in the company must be offered the same plans, and within each plan, every beneficiary must be treated the same.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#400

Post by [deleted] »

kpennell wrote: post #349
Diederich wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, you're not kidding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessemer,_Alabama#Economy "Crime increased following the rise in unemployment and social disruption from the decline of manufacturing industries in the area. As of 2019 Bessemer ranks first in terms of violent crimes for US cities with 25,000 or more people." Population has fallen from its peak in 1970 of 33k to 26k today. Thanks for the reference. EDIT: Also hom…

thx for the chicken edit

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