Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#591

Post by makoz » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

DC1350 wrote: post #441

parliament32 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I guess to some extent it's about some aspect notion of "fairness". Another concern would be if their poor performance spills over into my own role and that prevents me from pursuing more interesting tasks that are more aligned with my growth/interests.

More practically, if I'm working at a place where my team has fixed head count I'd rather us have the ability to replace someone who's not contributing to the success of the team.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#592

Post by CameronNemo » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #215

JCM9 wrote: post #176

It was clear getting these workers to unionize was good for the union... it was much less clear why it would be good for the workers. People can say what they want about Amazon but the reality is they provide a far better job, wage, and benefits than most. Apart from the broad sweeping messaging around corporations = bad, unions = the answer, it wasn’t really clear at all why a union would benefit workers here. As su…

This was similar to the Boeing situation in Charleston, SC. Boeing came in and brought great jobs with them. Then the union reps came in and started acting like everybody was being wronged somehow.

That Charleston plant has terrible quality control compared to the more mature, unionized group in Everett. Some airlines have refused shipments from south Carolina in preference to the Washington group.

https://leehamnews.com/2020/09/14/pontifications-boeing-sc-m...

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#593

Post by avs733 » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 6:28 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.

incorrect. they are OFFERED healthcare coverage. By this use of the word have, I have a private jet because I could buy one if I had the resources.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#594

Post by u678u » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

Justsignedup wrote: post #486

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?

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 no…

Free healthcare - yeah I had to go to a hospital in Romania - I'd take my Alabama private hospital any day.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#595

Post by motardo » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

resto49 wrote: post #523

Justsignedup wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

No objection that most of EU is better than the US in these regards, but Amazon warehouse workers get some of the best healthcare insurance that I’ve ever seen in the US. Similar to what the top-level-commenter pointed out, I guarantee that the warehouse jobs in Bessemer provide among the best healthcare available in the town. The US as a whole is awful at providing healthcare, but healthcare is a particular area whe…

I'm an Amazon warehouse worker in North Carolina. As far as health insurance, I pay 100% of the first $1500, then 10% of the next $15,000 (so $3000 total), then 0% of anything over $16,500. I wouldn't call that astonishing, but it is the minimum $0 monthly premium plan. Also, I'm generally happy at work. I basically feel well paid and well treated.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#596

Post by standardUser » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #341

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 Are you a poet? In every job I've worked, from manual labor to writing code, it's incredibly easy to figure out who is "performing badly".

It's not a matter of identifying the obviously worst performers. It is about insulating the majority of middling workers from the whims of their bosses so they can't be fired at a moment's notice for a vaguely defined idea of "poor performance".

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#597

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

DC1350 wrote: post #441

parliament32 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are held accountable for performance of your team, directly or not. I have worked with people who were a net negative - try to push their work on me, or just being an asshole in general. The productivity would have been higher if they were not there, and I would be much happier.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#598

Post by winkeltripel » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #265

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?…

On the flip side I wonder how many of the pro union voices I see on Facebook or elsewhere, especially millennials & gen z, have ever worked a union job and seen what a seniority system or non-at-will employment actually looks like in practice. Of the people I know that have direct experience with US unions, even those that ultimately come down on the side of supporting them have lots of stories to illustrate the wart…

With the shrinking fraction of jobs which are unionized, is it really surprising that a younger crowd has no experience with it?

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#599

Post by dominotw » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

alpaca128 wrote: post #573

dominotw wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The USA (and all the world governments) need to take care of it's poor people better I believe The USA spends most on social welfare than any other country.

The amount of money spent doesn't mean anything. The US also pays insane amounts for their health system but the result is a system that's far more expensive than in other countries.

> These were the best paying jobs that many of these workers had had in their entire lives

What does that have to do with health system

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#600

Post by stale2002 » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

objclxt wrote: post #274

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?…

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…

Even the high end unions have pretty big problems.

Things like the actors guild are simple rent seeking at the expense of newcomings. They are setup in a way where only insiders are allowed to get jobs at certain places, and there are large barriers to entry to becoming an insider.

If we were to apply this to tech, it would be contract provisions that keep out engineers that dont have degree, or discrimination against H1B immigrants.

And I don't want the tech industry to have contractual provisions that discriminate against these groups, and would be willing to spend a huge amount of effort fighting people who want to do that. (And based on comments that I have read on hacker news, there really are a lot of people who want to screw over self-taught developers, or immigrants)