951–960 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the honest story, congrats on pulling yourself out of debt and into (quoting you) privileged life. I see the HN crowd as rather monotonic, and thanks to stories like yours, it shows me wrong, and that’s for the best.
"monotonous" I think you meant :). Though the identical etymology makes this a bit silly.
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?…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They also stopped selling fresh meat through a butcher window all across the US when the butchers unionized.
If in their judgment, it became not in their best interests economically for them to continue doing it, what else would have them do?
"Here's exactly how these people should have voted" – legions of San Francisco software engineers making $550K/yr convinced that they know everything about the lives of warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama making $15/hr.
Yes. Incredible arrogance and clearly insinuates that the people of Bessemer are unable to think for themselves. 71% said no. That is a very clear majority. I think we need to trust the people on the front line with the discernment to make their own decisions. I've been around a lot of people without much formal education who were much wiser than most. And please don't yell about Amazon misrepresenting things. I susp…
“The retail workers union said Amazon was trying to surveil employees in Bessemer and even changed a traffic signal to prevent organizers from approaching warehouse workers as they left the site. Last month, the New York attorney general said in a lawsuit that Amazon had retaliated against employees who tried to protest its pandemic safety measures as inadequate.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/technology/amazon-unions-...
Here's an interesting and surprising analysis from a labor organizer and writer (you'll need to follow the back-and-forth of the comments a bit): https://twitter.com/yeselson/status/1380363511709196288 The short version is: while the Bessemer campaign was a good thing, the vote (according to this person --- everything I'm writing here is according to Yeselson and subject to errors in my understanding) was not. To wit…
It seems to me like losing 70/30 is a sign that they picked the wrong battle.
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?…
People like to shit all over Margaret Thatcher and her policies but they forget that it was the actions of the unions (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent) under a Labour government that got her elected in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
USA needs better education so that people understand economics and labor markets, so they wont calling paid positions indentured servitude.
We need better education so that people stop voting against their own self-interest, in union elections and generally.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm stupid, but why does unemployment cause violent crime?
I think being really broke greatly hinders your ability to think rationally. I never committed any violent crimes, but I know throughout most of 2016 I was really really broke (about $15,000 credit card debt, 3 months of unpaid rent, a lawsuit from my landlord for the back rent). In the process I debated reaching out to one of those payday loan places, despite the fact that I knew they were scams. My desperate brain…
It's very rational to choose crime over starvation or exposure, especially when our legal framework (US) is morally bankrupt. Why not turn to crime when crime really isn't such a bad thing compared to the other shit going on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lidl in Germany has a minimum starting salary of 12,50€ per hour. With other benefits like 30 days of vacation. https://jobs.lidl.de/lidl-als-arbeitgeber/mindesteinstiegslo...
so...that's about 15 dollars. Do you consider them to be slaves too?
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…
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 th…