431–440 of 785 posts
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Indeed. And remember that any union that's actually good for workers would have no reason to oppose such a right.
Should you also have the right to work at the company and not be forced to contribute to shareholder profits? Surely any management that was actually good for workers would have no reason to oppose such a measure.
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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 lon…
I see what you're saying but an "optional" union is pretty much bound to collapse inevitably.
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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.
Because they already have fulfillment centers in all of those places, and during the holiday season (peak) they are maxed out.
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…
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…
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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.
Staten Island is in a pretty central location. You can go straight to brooklyn / queens / long island without having to go through the city like you would from NJ.
With that said, I haven’t looked at the toll situation for either of the NJ bridges in years, so maybe tolls alone would be enough to remove any alleged savings from non-union labor.
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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…
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Should also have the right to work at a company and NOT have to join the union, and negotiate your own conditions / wages independently.
Indeed. And remember that any union that's actually good for workers would have no reason to oppose such a right.
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So if your product can be made entirely in China by cheap workers and shipped here, why would I order from you? What value do you add? I can already order directly on Aliexpress and even talk to Chinese customer service agents in English - and they've been delightful to work with by the way.
You can do that with some products, not all. In some cases all we have left are things like local support and software development. This is particularly true in industrial segments --which is where we are. In the consumer sector things are increasingly in the picture you painted. You can do this on Amazon for just about anything. Once the Chinese figured out how to sell directly through portals such as Amazon, that g…
Is it not the exact analog to "I can just outsource my production to China"? What differentiates a Chinese worker from a US worker? And if they are the same in your eyes, then why shouldn't things get worse here and better there until they reach some equilibrium?
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 short version is that there was a union that was declining to support dues paying members because they were black. It resulted in a case that went all the way to the USSC.
In contrast, European unions are allowed to be more realistic and accept that some members are knuckleheads and that it’s a positive for both the union and the employer if they are fired with minimum fuss.