341–350 of 785 posts
> Employees cast 2,654 votes to be represented by Amazon Labor Union and 2,131 against, giving the union a win by more than 10 percentage points, according to the National Labor Relations Board. More than 8,300 workers at the building This is just sad. Just a hair over 50% of the eligible voters voted; weirdly, approximately the same voter turnout for US elections historically. Does half of any given population just…
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> 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.
It's definitely possible in 10-20 years.
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…
The private sector unionization rate in 2021 was 6.1%. While productivity increased over the past half century, inflation-adjusted hourly wages are about what they were 50 years ago (it goes up and down - they were slightly lower in 2018 than 1972, a few cents higher in 2019). All productivity gains have been hovered up by the heirs and aristocracy. As it was in the Silicon Valley wage cartel which collapsed in 2014.…
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It will also encourage downsizing and expediting the shift to replacing humans with robots.
Great! It’s only because of our stupid system that removing the need for thousands of humans to spend their lives doing unnecessary labor is a bad thing.
That stupid system will still be there after all of those jobs are automated away.
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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.
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> 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.
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>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…
Maybe the union can win Amazon warehouse workers more bathroom breaks.
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,…
So you won't even be making $15/hour at this new business?
The problem this forced wage has created is that you can't hire people without some pretty solid justification for what they will deliver in exchange. Businesses are forced to make an ROI choice on everything, including people and their wages. This is why you are seeing things like burger flipping and fries making robots. You just can't pay people that much and stay in business.
There will be plenty of high paid jobs. Just not jobs that cannot justify an artificially forced minimum wage that is not sustainable in the context of a global economy.
I'll give you a simple and real example from a recent job we sent out to bid to nearly two dozen manufacturers in the US and China. It consists of a part made by a wire forming machine and with some manual labor. The average US-cost for that part was in the order of $6.00 per unit PLUS shipping. The average cost of the same part made in China INCLUDING shipping, was $1.00. Now, somebody tell me how we can make that part in the US when minimum wage, taxes, regulatory costs, etc. make it impossible to get anywhere even close to Chinese prices. I mean, you can't make the part in the US for even TWICE the Chinese price. And, keep in mind that shipping from China costs 10x more today that it did not too long ago.
People might not like what I have to say. That does not invalidate the truth of it, you can't invalidate reality with a down-vote. Like it or not. Most people replying to my comment have never even tried to manufacture something at a non-trivial scale in the US. In other words, they don't even know what they are talking about, yet they are quick to have an opinion because words like mine hurt their feelings. Well, economics cares not one bit about feelings. Again, like it or not.
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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.
There is probably an abstract, theoretical future where worker freedom is significantly curtailed by union power, I guess. But being more concerned with that hypothetical than with the genuine exploitation that is the baseline for low wage labor doesn't read as caring about worker rights to me.
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This is a textbook example of loosing at the prisoner's dilemma due to selfishness. The only way you get a better contract then the union is if the company intentionally does it to spite the union.
You are authoritarian - forcing people to do something that should be accomplished voluntarily is antithetical to freedom
I'm not at all arguing for an "ends justify the means" position here, just pointing out that the condition we're talking about is already a morally compromised one, and so people won't always have the freedom to operate purely in line with their moral preferences. Or yours.
Because, importantly, which specific things "should be accomplished voluntarily" is an idealogical position we won't always share. There is already much coercion foundational to our society, maybe you can find another one to oppose on purely abstract moral grounds.