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Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

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Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#671

Post by [deleted] »

FearlessNebula wrote: post #590
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…

I'm stupid, but why does unemployment cause violent crime?

[deleted]

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#672

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #559
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen what non at-will employment leads to in Europe, and it's pretty good.

I’ve heard similar things from others (though less so in Southern Europe). However, I don’t think you get there from here by just expanding existing US unions. It would take a bigger culture shift.

You don't need unions for that, just legislation. In Ireland, you are essentially at-will for the first six months of any role, and after that you are "permanent".

This essentially means that there needs to be a process to fire you. You need to supply at least one verbal warning on stated grounds (backed up as a written), then another one and then you can fire someone.

It works reasonably well (not always, obviously) and it's super bizarre to me that you don't have that in the US. To be honest, when my previous employer wanted to move me to the US, this was one of my concerns, especially when you're dependent on the job for a visa.

It just seems that its a bad trade-off for US people in general, and it's odd to me that it appears to be mostly unquestioned.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#673

Post by jandrese »

FearlessNebula wrote: post #590
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…

I'm stupid, but why does unemployment cause violent crime?

Are you asking why people who have run out of money might turn to stealing? Even if you are trying to be nonviolent a life of crime is hard and eventually you'll find yourself in a situation where you have to use violence because there is nothing else to turn to. You certainly can't go to the cops.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#674

Post by _jal »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #264
kethinov wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a false dichotomy. The solution to a badly run union is to run it better, not dissolve it and surrender all your power to your boss, just as the solution to a badly run republic is to elect better leaders, not abandon democracy and go back to the bad old days of monarchy. Unions are workplace democracy. Opposing them is by definition supporting workplace monarchy.

This is extremely ideological to the point of simply being untrue. The best outcome for everyone is no union and a supportive employer that gives you a fair deal so you don’t want one. Unions are a huge tradeoff and better as a last resort.

> The best outcome for everyone

You state it as if it is somehow obvious, but really need to show your work here.

If it is just some reductionist claim about not having a third party consuming resources, that's almost too silly to respond to. But if you also want to forbid employers from hiring lawyers, at least you'd then be consistent.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#675

Post by binaryblitz »

seriousquestion wrote: post #635
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…

> Here its $15. And you're on your fucking own. You've been mislead by propaganda. They have healthcare, protections, etc.

How so?

In Alabama you cannot qualify for medicaid unless you are a "needy child, parent, caregiver, pregnant woman, or elderly/disabled resident". Meaning you can't qualify just for being low income.

While Amazon does provide decent health insurance, most lower income jobs do not.

I make good money, and have good health insurance and it would still cost me over $1k to go to the hospital. Imagine doing that with no health insurance while making $10/hr.

EDIT: You updated your comment so I'll add on. Sure, Amazon provides health insurance, but a lot of businesses don't. In 2020, ~31 million Americans didn't have insurance. Even if you have health insurance, premiums and deductibles can be astronomical.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#676

Post by xadhominemx »

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…

No one’s saying it’s impossible for someone like to you spend $80k on a four year degree, just that you don’t have to.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#677

Post by jimmar »

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?…

I'm in academia at a university. I'm part of a union and I hate it. Union meetings are mostly members nitpicking minor contract issues and complaining about being underpaid. The union's purported main goal is to protect free speech, but everybody knows it really only exists to (unsuccessfully) negotiate for better pay.

I worked about a decade in industry and never felt like management was the enemy. We didn't expect management to coddle us, though. We knew we were there to do a job and if being there wasn't worth the benefit, we'd leave. Being in union, it feels like an artificial wall between management and union has been erected; that it's us versus them. Like the vice presidents are fat cats smoking cigars in their high rise offices while we, the proletariat, fight to get what's fair. Its as if union members think there's some reservoir of money we could get in salary if only we could break down the dam that management is using to hoard all the money.

I'm in a right to work state and technically don't have to pay union dues. But, I pay my dues because if you don't, your name gets published publicly and there is a lot union members can legally do to make life difficult for you if you don't want to join the club.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#678

Post by brianwawok »

specialist wrote: post #556
brianwawok wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most smaller startups, because it's literally do awesome work or shut down. Trading/finance, because it's either outsmart the rival trading firms, or lose your entire stack in 1 day.

Could I restate your view as: Competition keeps orgs and people honest. The economics book Design Rules: The Power of Modularity suggests orgs use something like NPV to assemble as a basket of competing efforts to tackle problems. The strategy of prematurely picking winners, come hell or high water, always struck me as sub-optimal.

I think that is true... but man, if that was 100% of jobs? I don't think a lot of people would love that. You have to have a certain mindset to want to fail over and over again until someday you fail upward.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#679

Post by prepend »

specialist wrote: post #298
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…

> the downsides are real: hard to fire bad performers, your merits don't matter at all Which work environments are merit based? Which employers fire bad performers?

I’ve worked for a half dozen software companies and they were all merit based and fired bad performers. They certainly weren’t perfect and mistakes were made, but as staff I perceived that pay was strongly correlated to performance and as management I worked to have pay correspond to performance and had access to data that demonstrated that.

I’ve worked for orgs where this wasn’t true and I avoid those orgs and prefer environments that are merit based.

I feel bad if people really have never experienced this as it’s really disheartening to work in an org where performance doesn’t matter. That must really suck.

Re: Amazon workers vote against unionizing in Alabama

#680

Post by lostlogin »

sbacic wrote: post #533
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…

"In Europe" in this case means "Western Europe". I'm pretty sure many would take the $15/hour over the social benefits in say, Bulgaria.

Touch choice. As far as I can tell, the social welfare system in Bulgaria covers unemployment, healthcare, sick leave, maternity and paternity leave. The country looks like an amazing place, however it’s population is in decline, it is corrupt and it has variety of huge problems. Minimum wage is about US$1.16.

https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1103&langId=en https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgaria

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