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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

#231

Post by marricks »

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…

Cases like this you really need to be extremely specific about what powerful means. I think a lot of left leaning folks could agree with such statements but made too broadly it can be taken a number of different ways.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone pro union who'd say unions have too much influence or sway in the lives of US citizens. Most workers don't have union representation and unions don't have much say in worker pay in a great majority of sectors. Especially where it could help like warehouse work which has seen wages plummet with the advent of Amazon.

Now, compare that to two unions which are extremely powerful and not always good for the public or their members!

1) Teachers unions. Extremely powerful (at least Oregon where I know about them), but they don't necessarily help teachers! Pay is low because they haven't flexed their power and are fully at the whim of taxes. Since their funding is low the most teacher's union can guarantee their workers is that they will have a consistent job. Which sucks! Also, when COVID occurred there was little room for teachers to get a say as to how classes would be virtual, when kids would be back in schools, or when and how the mask mandate would be lifted. Supposedly a union would help!

2) Police unions: super strong, extremely political, extremely effective. Also nigh impossible to fire a cop unless they offend their union or a fellow cop. Rarely do police budgets ever get cut or does cop pay go down. Do most folks want this? Do most people in New York want their police force to have a budget larger than military of a mid sized country? Probably not? But hey, they're too powerful to do anything about.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#232

Post by jfjfkfmf »

8note wrote: post #192
VirusNewbie wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why can private schools run perfectly fine without unions?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#233

Post by bastardoperator »

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…

If you look at CA, teachers aren't getting rich, but they're making decent wages at 9 months a year, with some fairly nice benefits depending on the size of the district and level they teach. We need to raise some of these numbers, but I suspect smaller schools are in more remote areas of California where it is certainly cheaper to live than say SF, or LA.

https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/fr/sa/cefavgsalaries.asp

"The average salary of public school teachers in 2019–20 for the State of California was $84,531."

That averages out to be about 58 dollars an hour if we assume the teacher works 9 months out of the year with 20 working days per month or 180 days a year. This only includes summer, not winter breaks or spring break or other observed holidays, which is quite a few. Again, not a great number but certainly better than plenty of other folks.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#234

Post by johnny22 »

tharne wrote: post #213
brimble wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Comparatively, European unions are much "weaker" - or maybe more accurately their purview is much smaller. They control smaller geographic regions, and in general, all of the heavy lifting for healthcare and pensions and worker rights is handled by the government. So the unions' focus is entirely on the collective bargaining piece. Also, unions tend to be more regulated - they can't carry so much bloat. All in all,…

> I'm not sure I'd call unions legally-mandated to hold 33-50% (depending on company size) of the company's board seats "weaker". That's the situation in Germany. I think that's a brilliant policy. It forces the unions to have some skin in the game. If you're on the board, you have a fiduciary responsibility to the company and it's shareholders. In the U.S., most union bosses are happy to bleed a company dry provided…

I dunno, that german situation sounds like the power isn't less or more, but rather in a different place. It's a place that actually can affect the how the company runs in a direct fashion.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#235

Post by johnny22 »

legitster wrote: post #197
lamontcg wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the point is that HN has groupthink though.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#236

Post by dionidium »

brimble wrote: post #35
gotostatement wrote: post #6

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."

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.

I'm not sure I understand. You seem to be suggesting:

"No union victory is bigger than the first win in the United States at Amazon, which Amazon many union leaders regard as an existential threat to labor standards across the economy because it touches so many industries and frequently dominates them."

But that's absolutely terrible, so you must be suggesting something else.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#237

Post by beaconstudios »

jfjfkfmf wrote: post #199
beaconstudios wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's not unions being bad, that's Walmart being bad.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#238

Post by dang »

gojomo wrote: post #175

[on Staten Island]

We've reverted to the article title now, in keeping with the site guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Submitted title was "Amazon workers vote to unionize in stunning win for organized labor". NYT is known to change headlines so that may not have been the submitter's doing.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#239

Post by fgonzag »

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've seen what large unions can do (just search for some of the largest Mexican unions, like the PEMEX one). Any organization of a certain scale and power gets corrupt, including private companies and unions.

I strongly believe in unions, but I agree with OP that keeping them small and focused is better for both the interests of the company and the employees. Extreme power imbalances are seldom (and I'd dare say never) good. I've seen unions effectively bankrupt business during tough times. I've also seen what unchecked corporate power can do. The right mixture of regulation and collective bargaining is a good thing, but like always, too much of a good thing can quickly turn bad. As an example, you can end up overprotecting unproductive or counter productive employees, reducing bonuses and pay for the other hard working employees because of reduced profitability.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#240

Post by simulate-me »

themaninthedark wrote: post #211
M2Ys4U wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everyone loves unions, somehow they overlook the outrageous power of police unions to keep terrible people in their ranks. Unions represent their members' interests, that's the entire point of unions. It says more about the entire profession of policing (i.e. that there are so many terrible officers that the not-terrible ones can't do anything about them) than it does about unions, to be honest.

How would you purpose that the not-terrible officers do something about the terrible officers? What should the great and inspiring teachers do about the bad teachers?

Marginalize them? Give them the unimportant tasks and classes. Put them in positions that limit harm.
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