The fact they spend millions to prevent workers from unionize proves that workers must unionize.
Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize
531–540 of 785 posts
Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not convinced. There are plenty of countries with social safety nets galore, and all of them seem to have fewer freedoms and fewer small businesses created per capita than the USA.
If this is any indication, the US is certainly not winning that race: https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/Micr... I'm looking for a better source still, so if you find one please post it here. EDIT: I found this. Numbers are a bit old (2007), but it shows self-employment rate per capita on page 4, which is exactly the metric we're interested in discussing. https://www.cepr.net/documents/publicatio…
I'm not sure where that first link is getting its numbers, or why they're so outdated, but the US Small Business Association puts the number of small businesses in the US at around 31.7 million [0], or just over 100 per 1,000 people, which would top that list (excluding Indonesia, which, BTW why is it so high?)
[0] https://cdn.advocacy.sba.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/0512...
Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize
#533A 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.
The particularly interesting thing here is that this isn’t an effort by a larger, established union. This is a self-organized Amazon employees union spearheaded by a fired Amazon worker who Amazon spent a lot of money smearing over the past couple years. Arguably, along rather racist lines.
The more things change…
Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize
#534Earlier 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…
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 corru…
In 2022, when Congress is insider trading in full view of everyone, is anyone trying to pretend like the people going to jail for corruption are the ones who really deserve to be there?
Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outside of Bernie and a few others, the days of Democrats having many nationally significant politicians that are truly pro-union are pretty much gone. I don't think most people, including those that vote Democratic, have much of an illusion of the Democratic party as a friend of labor anymore. Sure the Republicans actively try to dismantle all worker protections, but the Democrats mostly stand by and say well what c…
What do you expect Dems to do at the federal level if they do not have the votes in the Senate? The Democrats in democrat states have enacted paid parental leave, paid sick leave, higher minimum wages, banned non compete, and many other pro labor laws. At the federal level, the Dems got ACA pushed through also, even though they barely had the numbers and still had to compromise a lot due to just having 50 or 51 Senat…
I think you're thinking too short term.
Support for deregulation (of workers rights), global free trade and an alignment with the financial class has been a bipartisan effort for a long time. Democratic policy hasn't been pro-labor in a long time. At best it's labor ambivalent but they support plenty of policies that hurt (American) labor as a direct and obvious byproduct.
Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize
#536Freakonomics 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…
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…
[deleted]
Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize
#537A good news for anyone work inAmazon robotics branch, I guess?
I remember all these promises of how quick tech bros would be able to automate minimum wage and so-called “unskilled” jobs. Now for the past 18 months every Subway sandwich shop (and the like) in my area is begging people (not robots) to work. I wouldn’t be betting on robots just yet.
The supermarkets I go to have been growing their self-checkout sections in recent years.
Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize
#538When this has happened at individual Walmart stores in the past, the company would immediately shut down the store and everyone would lose their jobs. A couple years later they would build a new store within 20 or so miles of the old store, free of the union. This was obviously financially painful for Walmart, but it served as such a strong signal to employees to not even try to unionize that it must have paid for it…
Another direction is more automation. Cover more tasks by humans with robots (this union stuff acts as a selection pressure for innovation). Then just staff the place with qualified robot overlords.
Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize
#539I 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,…
> When a company had hundreds of millions of dollars in dead-weight over head for years and years, sooner or later, there will be consequences. This is like fundamental laws of physics that cannot be violated. Most large companies have massive amounts of dividends being siphoned off from the workers who created the wealth, to heirs who are stockholders. Talk about dead weight.
Paying employees is just another cost, paying shareholders (which happens to include me) is the purpose of a corporation.
I buy food at the market price; keeping me alive doesn’t mean the supermarket deserves 100% of my pay. I sell skilled work at the market price; why would I deserve 100% of anything? I’m even leveraging the shareholders’ huge investment and earning far more than I would by myself or in a co-op.
Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is pure fantasy. Minimum wage in the US is 2-10x what it is in low cost regions. Not even touching regulations. US experts travel to those regions to hand-hold every step necessary in order to make any product not forced to be built in the US by taxes or regulation. I did this for years and I hate it. I have worked for years in both American and foreign factories and I can assure you that they can automate just…
It has been my experience that most folks commenting on this matter on HN have no clue whatsoever what they are talking about. None. They comment based on pure ideology or, possibly worse, a delusion driven into their heads by our lovely universities.
Those of us, like you, who actually have or had skin in the game --real experience actually trying to make real things in the context of the real world-- know better. We know and understand exactly what's going on and where this is likely headed. Nobody here wants to hear about it. The reaction ranges from the most uninformed comments to flagging and effectively cancelling what they don't want to hear.
The worse of it is that reality doesn't care about flagging comments and down-votes, reality keeps moving forward. The path we are on is 180 degrees from what we should be doing if we actually want to have a shot a maintaining a reasonable standard of living for generations to come.
To be fair, at this point, it is almost impossible. The kind of leadership and cultural shift we need in order to do the things we have to do might be impossible to achieve given what we have done to our society. This is the most disconcerting part for me. We have devoted years destroying this nation from the inside. Europe hasn't done much better than this.