Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 785 posts

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#321

Post by ch4s3 »

oblio wrote: post #31
kmonsen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a union rep when working in Norway, I guess it was open-shop since we had two different unions. In practice we cooperated a lot, and the largest benefit was the it gave us access to lawyers that could answer questions quickly so the members were more willing to push back on unreasonable requests. We were never close to going to a lawsuit against the company, it was more "hey this is breaking the law, how do we…

> We were never close to going to a lawsuit against the company, it was more "hey this is breaking the law, how do we work together to fix it". Yeah, but the article is about the US, were they invented the Pinkertons instead of addressing employee grievances :-)

That’s hardly unique or even the night of 19th/20th century anti-Union violence.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#322

Post by londons_explore »

londons_explore wrote: post #34

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.

Amazon could sell the fulfilment center building to a third party to run.

Then make all the workers redundant, but let the third party offer them employment.

Then if the union makes undue demands, the third party can go bust and Amazon buy back the centre for pennies on the dollar, but without most of the staff.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#323

Post by rootusrootus »

clove wrote: post #201
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.

It will also encourage downsizing and expediting the shift to replacing humans with robots.

That sounds like a good thing. An Amazon warehouse job is grueling, terrible work. The more we can get machines to do the crappy jobs, the better.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#324

Post by rootusrootus »

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.

> It's possible we'll see a generational wave of unionization.

I fully expect this to happen. Younger folks today are the unlucky beneficiary of years of wage stagnation and home price inflation. They have every right to be angry, and I think they are collectively starting to realize that they have a lot of power to change the status quo.

At the risk of veering into politics, I'm also not sure how this will change the current tribal political lines. Normally this kind of movement would be a strength of the left. But lately the right has become quite populist, so maybe this plays in their direction. Whoever figures out how to capture this massive constituency is set up for a powerful future.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#325

Post by yibg »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #230
tharne wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>It's even worse with the public unions. Since governments can theoretically keep raising taxes, there's no real limiting factor to how much the unions can demand. Do a search on governmentjobs.com for a job title you're familiar with and decide whether the unions have been successful at bleeding the government dry via high salaries. My anecdotal experience: you need to get to one level below Chief where I work to dr…

Why is the comparison against the highest paid jobs in the country? Shouldn't the comparison be against the median, or at least comparable jobs?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#326

Post by nessguy »

Barrera wrote: post #250

Freakonomics ran a recent episode on unions [1]. A pair of interesting stats were presented near the start: the approval rating for unions stands at 70% in the US (even higher among the young) at the same time that union membership stands at 10%. Both numbers are at multi-decade extremes. I don't think it's any coincidence that this success at Amazon comes right now. After the GFC all regulatory efforts turned to kee…

I like the idea of unions more than the reality.

My first job was earning minimum wage working full-time at Safeway. After working there for about 9 months I quit because I didn't want to pay union dues to join the union. I was already only making minimum wage, it wasn't like the union was improving my salary. The required hour long lunch breaks might have been thanks to the union, but I hated having to take hour long breaks. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Listening to that episode didn't change my thoughts much. One of the bigger problems I have with unions is that they always want to grow to gain more power/influence. If I'm paying dues I don't want 20% or whatever of those dues to go to what is essentially advertising/marketing.

My ideal union would have low fees, not try to expand into other companies, and would be optional for employees.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#327

Post by matt_wilson_206 »

bastardoperator wrote: post #233
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…

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 avera…

It looks like you used 8 hours per working day in your calculations? Anecdotally, I haven't encountered a teacher who does a flat 40hrs a week. Also, summer break is only 2 months in LAUSD, not sure of the smaller districts.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#328

Post by jdavis703 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #324
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.

> It's possible we'll see a generational wave of unionization. I fully expect this to happen. Younger folks today are the unlucky beneficiary of years of wage stagnation and home price inflation. They have every right to be angry, and I think they are collectively starting to realize that they have a lot of power to change the status quo. At the risk of veering into politics, I'm also not sure how this will change th…

If the trend continues as you posit, I would expect private-sector unions to become a non-partisan alignment, similar to how social security is sacrosanct in US politics.

Most unions form at places that are genuinely terrible workspaces where workers have legitimate reasons to hate the boss. As unions become mainstream at places like Starbucks I would expect folks agitating for worker power to less radical.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#329

Post by mabbo »

eigenvalue wrote: post #290

When this has happened at individual Walmart stores in the past, the company would immediately shut down the store and everyone would lose their jobs. A couple years later they would build a new store within 20 or so miles of the old store, free of the union. This was obviously financially painful for Walmart, but it served as such a strong signal to employees to not even try to unionize that it must have paid for it…

The capital cost to build a modern Amazon Fulfillment Center is absolutely staggering. I used to be part of a team that helped launch them.

Go watch one of those "inside the Amazon warehouse" videos on YouTube. The box/tote sorting machines are millions of dollars each, and there are probably 3 big ones and maybe 2 or 3 more small ones. The ubiquitous conveyor belts are cheap individually, but there are miles of them. The robots moving the storage shelves are not cheap, and there are hundreds of them per floor, and typically 4 floors.

Amazon's strategy for the last decade has been to make these huge capital costs to keep variable costs low. They don't just shut an FC down.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#330

Post by UncleOxidant »

Manuel_D wrote: post #274
UncleOxidant wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or maybe Amazon responds with a "business decision" to close JFK8 fulfillment center. It's quite possible. They'll need to unionize several more Amazon facilities in that region to prevent that outcome. Not sure how many more are in process.

The other vote in Alabama failed, by more than 10%.

"facilities in that region"
Post reply on HN