Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#481

Post by AlgorithmicTime » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

whoknew1122 wrote: post #440

bhupy wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're conflating FAFSA and Pell Grants. FAFSA is an application for student aid. Pell Grants are the federal government grants given to low-income students. The lifetime limit for Pell Grants is $6,3465. As a low-income student, you may also be eligible for Stafford loans, which are federal subsidized loans. Subsidized meaning that the government pays for any interest accrued while you're a part time student, in you…

>University isn't 'basically free' for low income students. My parents lived below the poverty line their entire lives. I graduated with my bachelor's degree and $80k worth of loan debt.

You must have done something dumb.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#482

Post by toby » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #454

toby wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guilds are a little different from unions in practice. They set minimum standards but there's no group negotiation based on seniority or anything like that. Studios are free to pay some hot rising star 100x as much as the guy who has been a character actor for 30 years as long as he's making the minimum and getting his breaks and meals and stuff. It's also a challenge to get into a guild, SAG has minimum requirements…

Why are you making his argument for him? He pointed out that not all unions are the doom and gloom version where you can't carry lightbulbs (seriously people, don't ever use that example, it's right out of the anti-union video, obvious tell) and good people can't get promotions because of blah blah blah. You then responded by saying it doesn't count because it's different. Yeah, that's the point. A "union" isn't a th…

I'm not arguing, if anything I'm agreeing, was just trying to clarify some things.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#483

Post by stcredzero » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

cwwc wrote: post #384

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.

And education is free at almost all Ivy’s if you’re below a 100K or so salary family. That said: prereq is you’re bonkers smart.

That said: prereq is you’re bonkers smart.

Meh. I went to an Ivy league, as did my sister. My wife was a grad student at Stanford. My classmates were clever, but they weren't that smart! The standardized test scores can be improved with work.

As for standing out with your essay and CV, I remember a talk from an admissions officer from Harvard. His take was that it's easy to stand out from 99% of students just by actually doing real, substantive work. He wasn't talking about the stuff that's designed to be a student CV stuffer to impress admissions. Do actual, substantive work.

Something like a substantive contribution to a scientific field. Amateurs can still do this. Maybe run a real business. The example this admissions officer gave was someone who dropped out of High School, got a GED, then started repairing motorcycle engines. Then, you also need to make sure your essay is well written, which is another skill which can be learned. Relate your experience back to the academic opportunity, and how this would enable you to benefit society.

There is a problem with this way of thinking of admissions: If you do pursue it in earnest, you might well decide to skip university entirely.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#484

Post by whimsicalism » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #372

duckfang wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hard to fire bad performers In the jobs that I do, "bad performance" is super subjective and very hard to measure. It's also the common canard to use from the managerial class to get rid of someone they don't like. > your merits don't matter at all They don't either in the non-union corporate world either. They pay as little as they can get away with. They'll assign as much work as you can possibly do, and then pil…

> In the jobs that I do, "bad performance" is super subjective and very hard to measure. It's also the common canard to use from the managerial class to get rid of someone they don't like. Are you serious? This line of thinking is exactly why I'm against union. It is really not that hard to tell who are the bad performers. There will be false judgement, but the rate is low. If you want to avoid any false results, wel…

I think it's pretty silly to suggest that that the failure of public schools is just due to teacher unions.

I went to a very similar school system as the one in Waiting For Superman and there are a whole litany of issues I would put before teacher unions in terms of what is afflicting our urban schools, top on the list is:

a. incompetent administration

b. failure to desegregate our schools.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#485

Post by rootsofallevil » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

yibg wrote: post #477

objclxt wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I can tell, a lot of people in tech are anti blue collar union, but mistakenly assume that blue-collar unions are all unions. For example, just in the replies to your comment people are saying they dislike unions because they protect the incompetent, stifle progression, give preferential treatment purely on seniority, etc. But then go look at Hollywood, with the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild, the P…

Everyone points to SAG as an example of a good union. But how many of these are there? If there are dozens of examples of "bad unions" and a single example of a "good union", that doesn't exactly give someone voting to unionize high confidence.

Talk to people in places like Germany and you might get a different take about bad/good unions

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#486

Post by Justsignedup » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

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?

In Europe there are a lot of social benefits that mitigate this.

- Health care

- Worker protections

- Required time off

- Sick time

- Maternity leave

etc.

Here its $15. And you're on your fucking own.

If you compare it to completely underdeveloped or dictatorial economies... Sure I guess its way better. But the US shouldn't be comparing comparing itself to that. Its like saying "This engineer is horrible, but he's not as bad as this drug addict that is yelling all day outside our front door!"

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#487

Post by slantedview » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

saas_sam wrote: post #410

slantedview wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every non-unionized place I've worked suffers from many of the same problems. These are real problems, but don't outweigh the benefit of unions to people's material well being.

Have you worked in a large unionized organization? I've worked in both. Unions are worse.

I guess it depends what outcome you want, higher income inequality or not. I happen to think higher income inequality that directly follows from the lack of unions is a bad thing:

https://files.epi.org/charts/img/172988-21725.png

https://www.epi.org/publication/labor-day-2019-collective-ba...

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#488

Post by whimsicalism » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

jacksnipe wrote: post #403

vlozko wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the jobs that I do, "bad performance" is super subjective and very hard to measure. It's also the common canard to use from the managerial class to get rid of someone they don't like. Have you not heard of The Rubber Room? Or the dance of the lemons? At least with respect to teachers unions, the problem is real and in a very detrimental way. Even when a schools district wants to fire a bad teacher, the process c…

On the flip side, I've been a student in a school with a teacher's union (NYS public middle school) and a school without (South Carolina public high school) and there was an absolute world of difference between the two. My NYS teachers were almost universally better, whereas in South Carolina good teachers seemed to be the exception. My good SC teachers made 20k/year less than my worst NYS teachers, iirc

If by NYS, you mean Westchester (as is not unlikely given HN), I don't think this is a fair comparison.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#489

Post by tw04 » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

ianbutler wrote: post #471

tw04 wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

Amazon Warehouse workers have medical coverage here too. So they're leaps and bounds ahead if you want to go ahead and say that. Of course the US healthcare system is broken so I know what you're getting at but I don't know that I want Amazon to pay their workers > $15 to subsidize a broken healthcare system for their workers I just want a functional healthcare system and for them to continue to make $15/hr.

>Amazon Warehouse workers have medical coverage here too. So they're leaps and bounds ahead if you want to go ahead and say that.

Sorry, are you seriously trying to claim an HSA is better than universal healthcare?

>Of course the US healthcare system is broken so I know what you're getting at but I don't know that I want Amazon to pay their workers > $15 to subsidize a broken healthcare system for their workers I just want a functional healthcare system and for them to continue to make $15/hr.

I'm not even sure where you're going with this. The original claim was that $15/hr was better than you can get in Europe. I pointed out the hourly wage actually isn't much better, and oh by the way, that wage doesn't include healthcare (which it doesn't). If you want healthcare coverage you have a monthly fee, plus your co-pay and deductible. Not even REMOTELY competitive to western Europe unless you're one of the lucky few who literally never gets in an accident and never gets sick (as well as your entire family).

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#490

Post by bitcurious » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

trackmenot wrote: post #161

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " ...why you would vote against your own collective interest ... " > " ...Most of the folks who vote aren't really the type to sit down and think long-term... " Why do people call others dumb (and let's not kid ourselves, that's just what these phrases are a cultured, genteel way of saying) and then are surprised when said others don't vote for the causes they believe in? Don't they realize that casting aspersions…

> Why do people call others dumb (and let's not kid ourselves, that's just what these phrases are a cultured, genteel way of saying) and then are surprised when said others don't vote for the causes they believe in? How does calling people dumb affect the way they vote? In fact, if me and others calling people who vote against unionization dumb makes them more likely to vote against unionization, it clearly means tha…

If the vote is for union representation and the folks who will represent you have the attitude that “if you don’t agree with me you’re an idiot” how could they be trusted to represent your views? They will only ever represent their own interests.