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Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

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461–470 of 785 posts

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#461

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…

My understanding is that unions in the US are much weaker. It's hard to talk about all of Europe because...there's a lot of countries I'm with different histories, laws, and culture around this.

In the US a union is tied to a workplace. A single company, often a single location. This is by design of the NLRA.

Corporations fight to limit the size of the bargaining unit, to make the unions less powerful. This Amazon warehouse is unionized, but the other warehouses are not unionized and warehouses over a FooBar Corp. are not unionized. Each of these unions has to work out their own contract and bargain independently even if they all work for the same company.

This gives the workers less leverage and makes it easier for US Corps to pit workers against each other.

In Germany and elsewhere in Europe, unions are also organized by sector. You could have a national Warehouse workers union, which sets working conditions for all warehouse workers. This gives them significantly more leverage and makes it difficult to do the kind of "we shut down this store and open another" tactic that you see in the US.

I'm sure there's a variety of other differences, but I don't think it's fair to characterize EU unions are weaker.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#462

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%.

https://www.reuters.com/business/amazons-union-vote-counts-s...

It’s currently… 47% pro-union to 53% no-union in Alabama, with over 15% (400+ ballots) challenged by both sides. It could go either way, but “more than 10%” is not backed by any metrics.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#464
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why would a union be company specific? It makes a lot of sense for a union to represent all workers doing e.g. car manufacturing.

This is how the NLRA has been set up unions in the US--generally to make unions weaker. Other countries have sectoral bargaining, which is what you describe

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea of the republican working class party has always been more of a clever rhetorical strategy than a reality. I tend to agree, but then again I really don't grok the Trump thing, and I can't claim that I saw it coming or sticking around as long as it has. At this point I would not be terribly shocked to see a bit of role reversal between the two major parties.

I've been a conservative since I had a minimum wage job, for one reason: I want the government out of my life as much as possible. I firmly believe nobody will care about my family as much as I do and I don't want the government's golden handcuffs. Leave me alone, let me work, and I'll happily live with whatever happens. I think this is the fundamental disconnect in left-right (economic) politics. The left, as I see…

> The right wants liberty, recognizing that comes with risk.

The right are proponents of right-to-work legislation that force unions to represent non-dues paying members for free, and nullifies their private contracts. That's not exactly liberty, and it minimizes risk for owners.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "if we're claiming to be the party of the working class, shouldn't we be in favor of this?" But they don't really mean it and have never meant it. The Republican party, at least in modern history, has never been pro working class in any real sense. The opposite in fact, probably far more hostile to working class than Democrats. Much of the "pro working class" rhetoric is largely just conservative values like aborti…

But they might mean it going forward. The parties realign - rarely, but not never. And there are a whole lot of voters who have been abandoned by the Democratic Party moving away from what it has been. It would not be impossible for the Republican Party to move into that territory. Of course, it is more likely for the Republican Party to talk like it's moving into that territory, but not actually do anything. But, fo…

Exactly, and I think Ahmari's article was sort of laying down a challenge for his fellow Republicans: "are we going to talk about helping the working class, or are we going to do it?"

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think I echoed that. I said that Democrats have not had a majority by more than 1 for a long time. That is just numbers, it has nothing to do with willpower. You cannot realistically expect every single party member to toe the line, so effectively, as a party they have to compromise heavily just to get the things through that they have.

It is obviously a matter of willpower. The Republicans have no problem getting their moderate members to toe the line on their more extreme stuff. "Moderate" Republican party members would make their statements about "this isn't the way things are done' every time Trump did something crazy, but every single one folded and fell in line, every single time. If it was the priority of the Democratic national party leaders…

I think you're mistaking an electoral Catch-22 for "willpower" and desire.

Because the Republican party tends to line up with rural voters, they have a statistical advantage in both the Senate and the Electoral College; because of gerrymandering, they actually have a statistical advantage in most House races, too. (That last one is more complicated, but the short version is that when Democrats are in charge of redistricting they tend to favor putting nonpartisan committees in charge of drawing district lines, while when Republicans are in charge of redistricting they tend to favor drawing the lines themselves for partisan advantage.)

The upshot of that means that Republicans can and do win elections by appealing to their most partisan voters, but Democrats literally can't do that. Republicans can get rid of moderate Republicans and still win enough elections to maintain or even gain power; Democrats cannot get rid of moderate Democrats and get the same result.

So, actually, no, the Democrats can't "block, blacklist, and crush" campaigns of moderate members. They can do that to progressives in districts that are still swing districts, whose voters seem to be largely centrist. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad, but statistically speaking, when centrist Democrats run in those swing districts they win more often than progressive Democrats do. Joe Manchin is not from a swing state; he's from a state that went for Trump by 35 points in 2020. He's a fluke, and if he loses his seat, he ain't gonna be replaced by someone who votes with Democrats nearly as often as he does -- which is, IIRC, about 70% of the time. This is something else that often gets lost: the truth is that the most conservative Democrat still votes with Democrats a majority of the time, just like the most liberal Republican still votes with Republicans a majority of the time.

Maybe this balance will change; maybe it'll change sooner rather than later. But there seems to be this pervasive idea on the Left that Democrats would be able to pass all the legislation they wanted if they just had enough strength or willpower or something, and that just isn't true, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. If you only have 51 people on your side, counting the VP, and a single one of them is determined to keep the filibuster, then you're going to keep the filibuster. There is no amount of pressure you can put on that person that's meaningful, because you will need them on your side for other battles, they know it, and you know it. And if you keep the filibuster and there is no way you will peel 10 people off from the other side no matter what the bill is, you're not going to pass anything that can't get around the filibuster. Period. Full stop.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#468
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the job they’re supposed to do is educate not necessarily babysit and covid made that separation front and center in a way that was felt by every parent. There’s lots of “well then maybe that should be their mission” but no one wants to put up the capital for public daycare.

It's one of the biggest problems of the US. The population craves a high level of government services like in developed European or Asian countries, but isn't willing to pay for them. So instead the government is stuck playing politics to make the budget work instead of actually taking a cost efficiency mindset. Schools double as daycare because taxpayers don't want to pay for actual daycare. Local road construction…

What are you talking about? We pay way more per capita to educate kids and give people healthcare in this country than in a lot of other well developed countries where these things are more unified by government directive. Dysfunctionally, of course, but we pay a lot for it.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a conservative since I had a minimum wage job, for one reason: I want the government out of my life as much as possible. I firmly believe nobody will care about my family as much as I do and I don't want the government's golden handcuffs. Leave me alone, let me work, and I'll happily live with whatever happens. I think this is the fundamental disconnect in left-right (economic) politics. The left, as I see…

> The right wants liberty, recognizing that comes with risk. The right are proponents of right-to-work legislation that force unions to represent non-dues paying members for free, and nullifies their private contracts. That's not exactly liberty, and it minimizes risk for owners.

That's not true at all.

Those union members are perfectly free to create was is called a members only union, which only represents its own members who voluntarily join the organization.

Doing that avoids any of those conditions that you are talking about.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#470
post #427
post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The idea of the republican working class party has always been more of a clever rhetorical strategy than a reality." Always? No. But certainly since the 1970s.

Parties benefit from ideological inertia. I prefer small government that minimizes spending… So based on recent voting patterns, I vote Democrat.

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