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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

#331

Post by educaysean »

djrobstep wrote: post #299
educaysean wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, this is just as important in my view. Tangentially related: one of the places my wife worked at had a union that "pretty much everyone joins" because they charge union fees from every worker regardless of whether they join the union or not. I don't understand how they could mandate something like that, and the idea didn't sit well with me. It's a classic case of taxation without representation!

Why is it bad to be forced to deal with the union and contribute to union dues, but fine to be forced to deal with management and contribute to shareholder profits?

Why is it bad? It's bad because it takes away freedom and agency from the working class, and workers rights is something I care about.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#332

Post by tsimionescu »

robomartin wrote: post #282

I was in a union (not by choice) the first ten years or so of my professional life. To put it in simple terms: I despise them. Yes, of course, they had reason to exist in the dark ages. Today, I think they are in a range between counterproductive and dangerous. Before anyone make a move for the jugular: I make a distinction between union members and union management (the entity). Union members are hard working folks,…

Your view is massively in the wrong. Companies are wasting waaaay more money on stock buybacks, huge compensation packages for executives, nepotism and corruption in business deals and other similar things than they are on employee wages.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#333

Post by toomuchtodo »

jimbob45 wrote: post #191
toomuchtodo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You misunderstand my comment perhaps, my apologies if I poorly communicated the idea. I never suggested lying to staunch anti union folks, but to ignore them out of effort efficiency. If they believe their viewpoint is valid, the effort to persuade is better spent elsewhere. Majorities win, simple as that (as demonstrated by this unionization vote, as well as those ongoing at Starbucks locations).

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#334

Post by thebigman433 »

jfjfkfmf wrote: post #226
verall wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Non union private schools have higher test scores than union public schools in the same states

That seems like an incredibly misleading comparison at best. There are about a million other variables factoring into that, obviously including the money spent per kid, and the background of the people attending the school.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#335

Post by hn_version_0023 »

INTPenis wrote: post #309
TameAntelope wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Amazon wants to shut this warehouse down, my rough understanding is that it's a hugely important warehouse, serving NYC's millions of customers.

So? Why can't it be in Long Island, New Jersey, Newark, or any other place around NYC? It's a sad state of affairs when corporations are allowed to screw citizens over.

I’m a 46yro male from the US. When have corporations NOT been allowed to screwed over citizens? I think thats been true for the entirety of my life.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#336

Post by VictorPath »

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…

> ...Boeing workers in South Carolina. The SC workers voted in 3 different elections to reject the union.

South Carolina has the lowest unionization rate in the US, a country that itself has a 6.1% private unionization rate. A Boeing executive said to the Seattle Times Boeing was opening a production line in South Carolina to avoid unionization and strikes. South Carolina has anti-union laws that Washington does not.

Boeing purposefully moves to the least unionized state, works to prevent workers from organizing there, but in your calculus "The strong union at the Boeing factory in Seattle WA negatively influenced the Boeing workers in South Carolina".

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#337

Post by abhiyerra »

jfjfkfmf wrote: post #216
killjoywashere wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with private schools where the teachers aren't unionized suggests the non-unionized situation can be even more fraught. Chaotic, manipulative principals, skeevy board members, low pay in exchange for "prestige", etc.

My experience with public schools includes sexual abusers keeping their jobs due to union protection.

My direct experience is the more tenured teachers not showing up at all. Spent a significant amount of my high school roaming the halls because some of the teachers didn’t show up. This was opposed to the younger teachers who cared and put the work in, but also had second jobs, etc.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#338

Post by netizen-936824 »

hnaccount141 wrote: post #242
dymk wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company caters to _me_, not the other way around. Welcome to being in a high-demand job.

The tech job market is favorable for workers for now. That will most likely not always be the case.

Tech is not the only field that people have jobs in. Consider the Amazon warehouse workers that just unionized which is the topic of this article

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#339

Post by Spooky23 »

jfjfkfmf wrote: post #207
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe Amazon responds with a "business decision" to close JFK8 fulfillment center Given the current labor market, that union could probably bulk sell its labor to someone else willing to come in and pick up where Amazon left off. This is another, less-mentioned benefit of collective bargaining: it aggregates labor.

Why would any company actually want to do this when they could just get non union labor in any of the thousands of right-to-work cities?

It's expensive to do business in those sorts of places.

Alabama lost a Toyota plant to Ontario because literacy is so poor they would need to translate their documentation into Ikea-like pictograms.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#340

Post by Starlevel001 »

cyberpunk wrote: post #214
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…

The RMT/Unite Union in the UK regularly cripples London by staging tube strikes when they all have well paying secure jobs so not entire sure I buy it.

I wonder how they got those well paying and secure jobs
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