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Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

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Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#441

Post by DC1350 »

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…

> hard to fire bad performers

Why do you care about this as an employee? You get nothing when somebody else makes the company more money.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#443

Post by lotsofpulp »

tablespoon wrote: post #413
gruez wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> So let me get this straight: companies shouldn't be investing money into revitalizing impoverished areas? No, they should do so, just not be so exploitative about it (e.g. deliberately going into areas full of desperate people, for the reason of using that desperation to exert maximum control with minimum accountability).

Have you ever shopped around for lower pricing? The collective population of the world does this when we chose to purchase things for cheaper prices made in countries with more lax environmental and labor laws.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#444

Post by plexman »

quijoteuniv wrote: post #293
flavius29663 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$15 an hour is more than you can get in almost any place in Europe or the world for unskilled labor, what are you talking about?

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

Free? Nothing is free, what do you mean? Healthcare and education don't grow on trees. Dublin income tax is between 30% to 40%, you pay one way or another.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#445

Post by slantedview »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #231
Loughla wrote: post #9

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.

> Can someone who works/worked one of these jobs please explain it to me? I am so confused by how lopsided this was. It's a result of how unions are structured in the US. (It's different in Europe from what I understand, and they're more popular there as a result.) In the US unions are structured as a monopoly on labor which then nominally has more negotiating power with the employer. The problem is that monopolies a…

> A monopsony employer is still a big problem, of course, it's just not a problem that unions are a solution to. Try antitrust, or lower regulatory barriers to small businesses so that there are more competing local employers etc.

I like your comment, but unions aren't necessarily meant to solve this problem. Amazon imposes terrible working conditions on its warehouse workers, which a union absolutely could address.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#446

Post by musingsole »

noobermin wrote: post #191
redkoala wrote: post #14

Unions don’t always contribute to a better outcome for their workers, and it looks like working conditions wasn’t a strong enough driver for the majority of the workers. It’s hard to motivate a vote for unions when Amazon pays double the federal minimum wage.

Perhaps but this ignores the million+ dollar campaign Amazon leveraged to push people to vote no. It's not like it explains all the vote but it's definitely a component.

I have little expectation that a propaganda campaign could meaningfully shift worker-voter perspectives for this specific vote. They're working off of the old propaganda over the past decades and their perspectives on the ground. The recent ads and such we're seeing are about the greater narrative and trying to set the stage for union-votes 5-10 years from now.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#447

Post by tw04 »

flavius29663 wrote: post #246
fartcannon wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a tragic way to frame it. The USA (and all the world governments) need to take care of it's poor people better so they don't have to choose indentured servitude over poverty. Edit: Added the bit about all the world governments

$15 an hour is more than you can get in almost any place in Europe or the world for unskilled labor, what are you talking about?

There are plenty of jobs in western Europe that will pay similar and won't force you to pee in a bottle or your pants.

That's ignoring the whole healthcare situation... which I think you're leaving out of the equation.

30 seconds of searching indicates the average grocery store clerk in the UK makes 8.80GPB/hr. Add on healthcare and they're coming out far ahead of an amazon warehouse worker.

https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Industry=Grocery_Store_...

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#448

Post by charlescearl »

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.

As someone whose great uncles worked in the steel factories nearby, whose parents before that labored in the cotton fields, I can also testify the multi-century efforts of Black workers who fought the “hands that was fedding them”. America's Johannesburg [1] and Hammer and Hoe [2] for reference.

[1] https://ugapress.org/book/9780820356273/americas-johannesbur...

[2] https://uncpress.org/book/9781469625485/hammer-and-hoe/

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#449

Post by busterarm »

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.

It has a $3000 initiation fee that loads of people pay and never see the benefit of.

You will have to pay it just to do a short television appearance. It is certainly not worth that to everybody.

Then there are annual dues, whether or not you actually earned any money.

Then there's recent discussions of them kicking out long-standing members over their political views.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#450

Post by tablespoon »

hnunionthrow wrote: post #412
drivebycomment wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that definition, companies are workplace monopolies. So are you against companies ? If you want to argue you can choose a different company, by the same token you can choose a different union by choosing a different company.

I believe what GP was alluding to is that if a workplace is unionized, the worker does not have a choice of wanting to be a part of the union or not(in a non right to work state), and so essentially a monopoly. IF the worker wants to work for that employer, he can only do so via the union. No way for the worker to work for the employer and not wanting to do absolutely nothing with the union.

>> By that definition, companies are workplace monopolies. So are you against companies ? If you want to argue you can choose a different company, by the same token you can choose a different union by choosing a different company.

> I believe what GP was alluding to is that if a workplace is unionized, the worker does not have a choice of wanting to be a part of the union or not(in a non right to work state), and so essentially a monopoly.

That's a distinction without a difference. If you don't want to work for the union that's at a particular workplace, you can always choose another workplace. It's just another condition of employment, just like all the other conditions of employment you'd have to abide by without a union.

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