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That's a textbook run-on sentence.
I don't think its a run-on at all, let alone a text book one.
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.
HN is not a political forum. I get that we like to talk politics here, and that's all well and good. But having someone make a brand new account to make a political opinion post that has little to no intellectual content seems like it should be unwelcome.
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."
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What seems to be the problem?
I assume it's because you could read it as: the union leaders view this big union victory as an existential threat to labor standards. (When instead they view Amazon as the existential threat)
It's great that people are standing up against the abusive power of big companies. When will Apple (App Store) developers unionize?
Why should developers unionize? I love not being in a union. If my company starts dicking me around I'll quit and find another job. Besides, if I do something so bad my boss wants to fire me, fine then I'll go work somewhere where people want me. I don't want to have to bring in my union rep to argue about it since going somewhere else means losing my tenure and taking a 30% pay cut. The only time unions make sense i…
Unions provide a ton of value if you're a skilled worker who does something comparable to gig work, jumping from jobsite to jobsite where the Union helps them keep their health insurance. It also helps when your job also has other political implications.
The context tech workers should unionize would be in an instance where they job hopped even more often than is currently the case, and also potentially on teams where you become just so specialized that switching companies becomes difficult.
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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.
In what way do you believe unions are useless and bad? That's like saying "companies are useless and bad" - some companies may be useless and bad, but you'd need to show an essential reason why the majority must end up that way. 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 un…
Also, with the sole exception of Japanese bus drivers, every union I know of that's ever gone on strike has, in doing so, used innocent third parties as collateral damage.
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.
Are you advocating this course of action?
Unions have upsides, and downsides. Discussing them helps people make good decisions. Pretending it's all flowers and rainbows does not.
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I very much agree. Every worker should unionize, for the good of us all. Far too much power has been ceded to companies pushing for abusive working practices, that are now largely culturally normalized.
Well, no, I can bargain individually better than a group could try to on my behalf.
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Everyone should have the right to collective bargaining. The US is a closed shop country, which means that, once a union is in place, it has an effective monopoly for the workers that work for one of its companies. If we switched to open shop, then unions would have to compete for membership. Of course, the existing unions are strongly against this. As an end result, everyone I know that's been a union member in the…
The only "workers" who come out ahead in unionized workplaces under current federal labor law are the lawyers.