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Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#191

Post by jimbob45 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #127
rajin444 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The responses you got are borderline religious. Pro union people need to acknowledge and be up front about the cons of a union. It’s just another entity with power over a group of people and suffers from the same pros and cons. It’s not a panacea. Deriding legitimate concerns is not how you convince people, and makes it look like you have an agenda.

Convincing staunch anti union folks that a union would help them is like trying to convince a Southern Baptist god doesn't exist. You don't bother, you organize folks who recognize the benefit and understand the tradeoffs, people who don't think of them as individual exceptionalists. Wanting better pay and benefits for workers is an agenda, and if making that clear isn't enough (even after accounting for a cons of co…

“They’re too stupid to know what they want so I have to lie about facts to them.”

Why is that an acceptable strategy for your side but not the other side? Could it be that you might both have valid viewpoints?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#192

Post by 8note »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #126
1270018080 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their software engineers should, too. You don't actually have to get pipped, get pinged 24/7, and be ground to dust and thrown away to be a successful software engineer.

I will fight tooth and nail to keep our industry from unionizing. One can simply look at the public school system and how well it performs with one of the strongest unions in the country. You don't have well paid teachers (except those who have been teaching for a long time, at the detriment to new teachers),you don't serve the children well and you now have to navigate both a career and politics of a union. Unions b…

My understanding of the public school system is that administrators and football takes up all the money, and the government will forcefully end teachers strikes.

The teachers union is probably the only thing keeping public schools running in a country where a political party explicitly wants them to fail and will sabotage them for political gain

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#193

Post by beambot »

zjaffee wrote: post #85
strombofulous wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's just blatantly false, unions absolutely make sense for skilled labor. This isn't to say tech workers should unionize, but teachers, public defenders, subway engineers, high skill building trades, skilled workers in film are all unionized. 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 heal…

Guild versus Union?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#194

Post by M2Ys4U »

judge2020 wrote: post #131
beardedetim wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Why does the former preclude the latter? > Besides, if I do something so bad my boss wants to fire me, fine then I'll go work somewhere where people want me. What if you didn't do _anything_ and your boss wants to fire you so badly? What if your boss fired you over Zoom randomly withou…

> What if your boss fired you over Zoom randomly without any recourse? They can do that even with a union. The difference with a union is that they can collectively stop working if the employer violated a clause like "union members must be fired with reasoning pre-approved by the union", and then the employer either needs to find new employees for every person that was in the union or needs to re-negotiate terms with…

>They can do that even with a union. The difference with a union is that they can collectively stop working if the employer violated a clause like "union members must be fired with reasoning pre-approved by the union", and then the employer either needs to find new employees for every person that was in the union or needs to re-negotiate terms with the union, likely including reparations ie. re-hiring the coworker.

But that potential response by the union should be enough of an incentive that casually firing somebody over Zoom for no reason is removed from the employer's SOP.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#195

Post by smachiz »

jasode wrote: post #145
cs702 wrote: post #103

A single successful effort of unionization at an Amazon facility is more than symbolic: It will encourage -- and serve as a blueprint for -- employees at other Amazon facilities to do the same. Moreover, it will motivate employees at other large companies to try. This has been brewing for a while. It's possible we'll see a generational wave of unionization.

>unionization at an Amazon facility is more than symbolic: It will encourage -- and serve as a blueprint for -- employees at other Amazon facilities to do the same. It really depends on how things play out. E.g. what the extra union dues' payments will be in relation to the extra benefits received from union representation. Or maybe Amazon responds with a "business decision" to close JFK8 fulfillment center. So it ca…

Do you have evidence to support that the strong union in Seattle negatively influenced the SC voters?

SC has the lowest union membership in all 50 states - there's a lot of ingrained bias against unions there, and I'm not sure I see the connection to the Seattle, WA plant or workforce.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#196

Post by verall »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #126
1270018080 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their software engineers should, too. You don't actually have to get pipped, get pinged 24/7, and be ground to dust and thrown away to be a successful software engineer.

I will fight tooth and nail to keep our industry from unionizing. One can simply look at the public school system and how well it performs with one of the strongest unions in the country. You don't have well paid teachers (except those who have been teaching for a long time, at the detriment to new teachers),you don't serve the children well and you now have to navigate both a career and politics of a union. Unions b…

> One can simply look at the public school system and how well it performs with one of the strongest unions in the country.

Except that states that outlaw teacher's unions have lower teacher pay and worse average scores/outcomes. They're totally comparable too, public daycare ahem school and software engineering.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#197

Post by legitster »

lamontcg wrote: post #188
legitster wrote: post #108

I had a boss who was an expensive consultant for unions. He explained the reason unions in the US were shrinking is that they are too powerful. They control huge pension and healthcare portfolios and can completely control the relationship with employers, especially in closed shop situations. Comparatively, European unions are much "weaker" - or maybe more accurately their purview is much smaller. They control smalle…

Its very on brand that the first response to this on HN is more or less: "Okay, hear me out, but what if Unions in America are really _too strong_?". Very counterintuitive thinking.

I mean, if you prefer to err on the side of groupthink I'm sure there are plenty of decent online spaces to do so.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#198

Post by smachiz »

ejb999 wrote: post #162
hmfrh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably think that you do, but in reality you don't. Large corporations have been proven to fix wages for tech workers[1]. There's literally no way that you could have any possible way of bargaining your way around that as a single person. [1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/24/306592297...

>>There's literally no way that you could have any possible way of bargaining your way around that as a single person. Actually you do, by walking across the street and getting a big fat raise to join a different company. That is one of many reasons engineers by and large don't feel a need to have someone else bargain for them - they negotiate with their feet.

If you clicked the Parent's link, you would have seen it was discussing the anti-poaching collusion / wage fixing that was going on.

You couldn't walk across the street, because the company across the street agreed not to hire employees from the other company across the street.

The free market isn't always free.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#199

Post by jfjfkfmf »

beaconstudios wrote: post #122
josephcsible wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are definitely bad for companies, but the fact that companies don't want them doesn't automatically mean that they're good for workers. They're a parasitic drain that's bad for both. 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.

You can claim they're a drain on both all you want, but you're just stating an unsubstantiated opinion that flies in the face of reason. Why would anybody join (and stay in) a union if they're unequivocally bad for everyone? Are strikers holding people hostage? Or are they just refusing to do their jobs?

If Walmart closes its union store, which it has done, how is that not bad for everyone?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#200

Post by amrocha »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #111
dymk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no, I can bargain individually better than a group could try to on my behalf.

Unions are helpful in two scenarios: 1) When workers want systemic reform of an organization. 2) When workers are more-or-less interchangeable. Software engineers aren't interchangeable at all compared to a factory worker, which is why they have such great individual bargaining power and why (historically) they don't really feel a huge need for a union to represent them. Today, software workers have a bit more intere…

Developers are absolutely interchangeable. If they weren't then job hopping every 2 years wouldn't be the optimal career strategy.
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