Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#471

Post by School-Cotton » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 12:33 AM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #278

vikingerik wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, when COVID occurred there was little room for teachers to get a say This may have been a positive. The teachers and their unions are only motivated for them to stay home and "safe", forever. It's the customers (parents) who need the leverage to get the teachers to actually deliver the service they're getting paid for, rather than trying to hide from their job indefinitely as many would be happy to do. Unions…

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.

One of the obvious primary social purposes of public education is free day-care so that both parents can work. People who claim that this isn’t (a major part of) the mission of teachers and schools are just wrong.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#472

Post by dluan » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 12:35 AM UTC

rocqua wrote: post #355

nessguy wrote: post #326

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.

Why stop there? What if we even had a huge tent, available to workers from all around the world...

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

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Post by heavyset_go » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 12:41 AM UTC

ATsch wrote: post #425

clove wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That shift already exists plenty, as one can see from the high degree of automation of those warehouses. The only thing that Unions would change there is that they can bargain e.g. for re-training of the workers made redundant.

Unions have not only fought for retraining, but for compensation for workers whose jobs were outsourced or automated away. Compensation is important in order for workers to transition careers without their families ending up homeless.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

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Post by hnburnsy » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 12:41 AM UTC

Taikonerd wrote: post #351

rootusrootus wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. I saw an op-ed from a conservative magazine on this exact theme: [1]. The author basically says, "if we're claiming to be the party of the working class, shouldn't we be in favor of this?" 1: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/republicans...

Marco Rubio came out in favor of the works at Amazon., last year he wrote:

>Here’s my standard: When the conflict is between working Americans and a company whose leadership has decided to wage culture war against working-class values, the choice is easy — I support the workers. And that’s why I stand with those at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse today.

Was there a large ground swell of popular conservative outlets against this?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

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Post by CivBase » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 12:42 AM UTC

dluan wrote: post #472

rocqua wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why stop there? What if we even had a huge tent, available to workers from all around the world...

Yeah. We could hold elections for union reps amd call the dues "taxes" and the union "government".

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

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Post by josephcsible » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 12:46 AM UTC

seoaeu wrote: post #438

josephcsible wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. And remember that any union that's actually good for workers would have no reason to oppose such a right.

"If cooperation is actually the better choice in the prisoner's dilemma, why do you care if I defect?"

What prisoners' dilemma? What part of collective bargaining agreements give benefits to employees who choose not to join the union?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

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Post by tshaddox » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 12:48 AM UTC

alexk307 wrote: post #305

> 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…

Perhaps roughly half of the eligible voters correctly estimated that the chance of their vote affecting the outcome is exceedingly low and that the cost of voting (even if it's just a few minutes of time) is not worth that small chance of affecting the outcome.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

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Post by heavyset_go » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 12:48 AM UTC

coredog64 wrote: post #436

ptudan wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are two bridges connecting Staten Island to New Jersey. One is part of I-278 which then continues onto Long Island via the Verrazano Narrows bridge. 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.

I'd imagine the tolls for bridges and tunnels are prohibitively expensive for last-mile shipping going from Jersey to NYC. Tolls are absent from NYC to Jersey in some cases, though.

That area also has some of the longest commutes and traffic in the country. In my mind, it doesn't make much sense for time sensitive deliveries or efficiency.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#479

Post by avidphantasm » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 12:49 AM UTC

ARandomerDude wrote: post #398

rootusrootus wrote: post #393

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…

This is all well and good, but we have essentially had this for 40 years where anti-trust enforcement is concerned. I don’t think anyone can honestly say this has been a good things, especially not for small businesses. There is a conservative argument for breaking up big businesses thereby enabling democratic control over our economic destiny, which has been largely lost, to the detriment of 99% of us.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

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Post by pmorici » Sat, Apr 02, 2022, 12:53 AM UTC

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…

High housing prices aren't the result of stagnant wages and rising wages will only cause housing to become more expensive (more money chasing the same housing stock) unless something is done to boost supply. Unions don't fix this, they might make it worse on the margins.

Unionization is a mixed bag. The UAW has been in the news recently for a seemingly never ending parade of union leaders being sent to jail for corruption.