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Amazon abruptly fires senior managers tied to unionized warehouse

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon abruptly fires senior managers tied to unionized warehouse

#61

Post by coliveira »

donthellbanme wrote: post #38
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #11

> Several were veterans of the company, with more than six years of experience I think it's sad that we have an industry, where someone with six years' experience, is considered a "veteran." But it sounds like Amazon is sending a message to managers of other warehouses, to go as low as possible, to fight unionization. Expect things to get ugly.

You know those help wanted commercials Amazon floods media with, "We pay $15 to start, blah, blah. Start a new career." I just assumed they were always hiring because of consistent growth. According to the guy (forget his name. Wears a gold chain.) representing the union; Amazon fires a lot of employees. Many for no reason. (I once read a restaurant success book. Everything he recommended made sence, except one, and…

You're completely right. Amazon strategy is to maintain constant turnover, so that employees never feel they have stability and can't complain of anything.

Re: Amazon abruptly fires senior managers tied to unionized warehouse

#62

Post by Mountain_Skies »

GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #58

The correct answer to the Amazon Problem is to create an alternate organization that starts as a unionized workplace, and goes from there. E.g. Spain's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation These problems mentioned in this thread are due to the greed of Capitalists. Period. Once the 'age of the Capitalist' is put behind us, and we move towards post-capitalism, then bs like OP mentions will be history.

What system follows capitalism?

Re: Amazon abruptly fires senior managers tied to unionized warehouse

#63

Post by wardedVibe »

donthellbanme wrote: post #38
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #11

> Several were veterans of the company, with more than six years of experience I think it's sad that we have an industry, where someone with six years' experience, is considered a "veteran." But it sounds like Amazon is sending a message to managers of other warehouses, to go as low as possible, to fight unionization. Expect things to get ugly.

You know those help wanted commercials Amazon floods media with, "We pay $15 to start, blah, blah. Start a new career." I just assumed they were always hiring because of consistent growth. According to the guy (forget his name. Wears a gold chain.) representing the union; Amazon fires a lot of employees. Many for no reason. (I once read a restaurant success book. Everything he recommended made sence, except one, and…

Another benefit of firing workers early is it increases churn, which makes forming unions in the first place difficult, since it relies on trust between workers.

Re: Amazon abruptly fires senior managers tied to unionized warehouse

#64

Post by dragonwriter »

joshe wrote: post #39

To me a more reasonable explanation than any in the article is that after losing the vote, Amazon looked into the warehouse and decided part of the problem was that the managers were making the situation worse. This could have been that the rsi injury complaints were true and unaddressed promptly. Or that the managers came off as cold in communications. Or 5 other things they could have done better.

> To me a more reasonable explanation than any in the article is that after losing the vote, Amazon looked into the warehouse and decided part of the problem was that the managers were making the situation worse.

You’d think that Amazon would be smart enough to look into the apparent problems before the vote, and make a show of addressing them to forestall it, if their concern was the actual labor conditions driving the desire to unionize and not the failure of worksite union-busting efforts leading up to the vote.

Re: Amazon abruptly fires senior managers tied to unionized warehouse

#65

Post by bostonsre »

tyingq wrote: post #35
mola wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe as an example for other managers? Basically it's "no union" or your head... Disgusting anyway.

I'm skeptical, because it seems like most of the anti-union activities are either dictated or run from HDQ. It doesn't feel like something where the local leadership was free to make their own plays.

The fact that a unionization vote was happening would have been more than enough to start an investigation into management and firing management before the vote due to bad practices could have prevented the unionization vote from being passed. I'm not sure it matters much how much leeway the managers actually had in preventing unionization from happening. Amazon has been extremely cold hearted and calculating with the management of their logistics infrastructure. They are managing (ruling) by fear, not love. They could easily have prevented unionization by treating their employees like human beings and not robots, but they chose to go the dystopian route of extreme monitoring and pushing their employees to work as hard as possible. It almost feels like a move that Putin and other dictators would pull. They shift blame to those that are relatively powerless in middle management and make an example of them even though the fault lies with those at the top.

Re: Amazon abruptly fires senior managers tied to unionized warehouse

#66

Post by dragonwriter »

rolandog wrote: post #45
jollybean wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Amazon's purview, 'the problem' is that the 'union was formed'. It's a signal to the managers of the other warehouses that if a union is formed on their watch, they are toast.

Wouldn't it be ironic that this makes Senior Managers realize it's in their best interest to join a union?

Senior managers (heck, even line managers) do not have the right to unionize.

Re: Amazon abruptly fires senior managers tied to unionized warehouse

#67

Post by dragonwriter »

Bilal_io wrote: post #27
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's confusing why investors haven't pushed harder for AWS to be spun-off into its own entity.

Why would they do that when one entity's losses can be used as a tax write-off for the other entity's profits.

> Why would they do that when one entity's losses can be used as a tax write-off for the other entity's profits.

Because it's better to not have losses than to use them as tax write-offs (also, because basically every use of funds other than retaining profits is already a tax write-off for business, and the ones that aren't losses contribute to future profits.)

Re: Amazon abruptly fires senior managers tied to unionized warehouse

#68

Post by GeorgeTirebiter »

egypturnash wrote: post #60
GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #58

The correct answer to the Amazon Problem is to create an alternate organization that starts as a unionized workplace, and goes from there. E.g. Spain's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation These problems mentioned in this thread are due to the greed of Capitalists. Period. Once the 'age of the Capitalist' is put behind us, and we move towards post-capitalism, then bs like OP mentions will be history.

Why is “spending 70 years growing a collective workplace to huge scale” more correct than “unionizing a huge ultra-capitalist workplace that exists right now”? Both are laudable goals IMHO.

They are, except one is actively being viciously suppressed, and the other already exists and is working great.

Re: Amazon abruptly fires senior managers tied to unionized warehouse

#69

Post by bostonsre »

someweirdperson wrote: post #26

"fired"? don't they have time limited contracts, that include a golden parachute in case of early termination? Does Amazon manage to even treat senior managers badly?

They are just another set of expendable cogs in the logistics machine of Amazon. They are incentivized to enact and enforce harsh management practices on those cogs further down the line while being subject to similar constraints coming from above them. Shit rolls down hill so they don't get the worst of it, but they are nowhere near the top of the hill and they still have to handle a miserable amount of it.
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