61–70 of 785 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't open-shop effectively "no union" in practice? What threat does a union have when the company can just hire non-union workers?
Once you acknowledge that unions are useless and bad, yes, this is correct. If unions were actually beneficial to workers, then companies would have a very hard time hiring non-union workers.
Hopefully the employees of other Amazon warehouses will be inspired to do the same, after this win for workers.
okay this is amazing. but wtf is this sentence? "No union victory is bigger than the first win in the United States at Amazon, which many union leaders regard as an existential threat to labor standards across the economy because it touches so many industries and frequently dominates them."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a text-book example of being a victim of your own success. People have had the perks of union membership for so long, that they no long attribute them to the union. All they see are the costs of the union. Also, I feel like it's safe to assume that you don't know any teachers or police officers? Both those groups seem to very much support their unions.
Most teachers I know, and I know a lot of them, don't really like their union because their union is ineffective. If it actually worked for them, they'd be making wages commensurate with their required education levels.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
David Foster Wallace loved to repeat the object (edit: or subject, depending on usage) after "which" practically every time he employed that word, which technique is usually overkill, but in this case writing it "[...] which company many union leaders regard [...]" would have helped a lot.
is there a name for this grammatical construction? it's one of my favorites in English but I have no idea what it's called. I also wonder if younger readers nowadays would even be familiar with it unless they enjoy reading older literature, as I almost never see it in modern writing.
Well, for one thing, the section on "which" begins: "This word, used immoderately, is possibly responsible for more bad sentences than any other in the language" :-)
Ah, it refers me to a more relevant section for this construction, "Remote Relatives". Checking that.
"Antecedent" and "relative clause" are relevant terms, meaning the word to which "which" refers, and the clause containing "which", respectively, but I can't find a name for specifying the antecedent after "which", in this text. Actually, on a skim, I didn't even see that presented as an option.
[EDIT] Incidentally, it appears the Times usage is correct, anyway, if still ill-advised—the antecedent should be the closest possible candidate before the relative clause, so "[...] Amazon, which [...]" is correct.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't open-shop effectively "no union" in practice? What threat does a union have when the company can just hire non-union workers?
Unions often train their members and self-enforce safety standards. Both of these things provide a higher quality labor pool for the employer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't open-shop effectively "no union" in practice? What threat does a union have when the company can just hire non-union workers?
Once you acknowledge that unions are useless and bad, yes, this is correct. If unions were actually beneficial to workers, then companies would have a very hard time hiring non-union workers.
It's like saying that taxes are useless because given the choice people would opt-out if they could, ignoring the consequences of if everyone did that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't open-shop effectively "no union" in practice? What threat does a union have when the company can just hire non-union workers?
Once you acknowledge that unions are useless and bad, yes, this is correct. If unions were actually beneficial to workers, then companies would have a very hard time hiring non-union workers.
FWIW, I think you're wrong and that unions are good at improving worker conditions and pay, and that's why companies engage in aggressive union-busting and anti-union propaganda to prevent unionisation and broadly keep union membership down.
This is fantastic news. Well done, Amazon employees! I'm glad to see that Amazon's anti-union propaganda was taken for the nonsense that it is. Hopefully the employees of other Amazon warehouses will be inspired to do the same, after this win for workers.
Can Amazon now just shut down that warehouse and fire all the workers? It would seem like a sensible business move, even if it involves a little bit of service disruption for users in New York.
They cannot afford to close this shop, and it's obviously playing a big role as to why this location has successfully unionized while the location in Alabama has not.