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Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal
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Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would never join a union.
Isn't that irrational? If the union provides you with benefits, why would you not join?
Because there are plenty of times they make things worse?
Let's assume the absolute best of intent, no corruption, etc. There is some good, of course. I won't deny this. I'm not going to talk about the upside, but please don't whataboutism me simply because i'm going to talk about the downsides - you asked whether it is irrational. It is no more irrational than any other moral/ethical/etc viewpoint that someone chooses over a financial one. I am plenty aware of the history and good they have done, and the horrible labor practices they helped put an end to. I just do not happen to be an ends justify means kind of person.
their are a few countries where union equivalents have an explicit goal/requirements/etc around societal good - i have no issues there, the rest of this is about the ones that don't.
For unions, overall, their goal is not to help society, it is to protect and help their members. They have no duty to society whatsoever. In the extreme, that ends up bad for anyone not their members.
That is, they do everything they can only to get their members more money, more benefits, protect their jobs, etc. This sort of thing comes at a cost too.
So they make it harder to fire bad cops, bad teachers, etc.
When a municipality or state would be bankrupted by paying pensions, the unions will force them into bankruptcy at a cost to everyone else. The unions will first force them to raise pensions, too, to unpayable levels. The state/municipality has essentially no practical power against its workforce in that situation, so it agrees, again, at a cost to everyone else. The unions of course, do not care about the consequences for anyone else. They want it paid anyway.
I have no issue with pushing for a living wage, etc. But again, it's for their members, not for everyone, except where they believe it will generate more union membership.
So sum total, they do not care about anyone else. Literally. It's not their job.
This is awesome for their members. Horrible for everyone else.
So no, it's not irrational. Not everyone wants to group themselves with organizations designed to literally not care about anyone else.
Follow the US-style unions to their logical extreme - everyone in society in is a union, divided by job. Yay!?
I think that ends very badly for society - you really think the unions won't paint other jobs/unions/etc as the enemy? They do in plenty of cases already! So - i think it will end up the same sort of strong polarization/hate that exists across political affiliation, but across jobs instead. Great.
Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I realize mine is not necessarily a majority experience, but as a young single no-debt high-performing worker, I can negotiate a lot more effectively by myself than I could in a union because I can argue purely on my own merits and if the employer is unreasonable (and not all are) it's fairly easy for me to switch employers. I even moved to a different country early in my career for a better career opportunity. So no…
You can still negotiate and be in a union. Nobody takes that away from you. The union negotiates minimal conditions for all like minimal wage. You are a top performer - go the exact route you've described - nobody will stop you. It can work or not as you've said and the solution would be to find a new job.
This is 100%, extremely, dangerously, completely, utterly not the case in any North American union I've witnessed in North America.
(it probably explains why it is difficult to have meaningful conversations and everybody attacks each other, if we have such radically different experiences and knowledge of union laws and procedures)
FWIW, from my experience, In North America, it is the whole point of a union that "everybody gets the same" --> pay scale in particular. To make it explicit - if I'm in a union, I know EXACTLY how much anybody in any particular position makes. I can look it up in the pay scale table. I know how much my teacher cousin makes, I know how much my government friend makes, I know how much anybody at my brother-in-law's factory makes, by looking at the pay scale table.
I would be eager to hear about other countries. Maybe unions are different in Europe or Asia or Africa etc. As I indicated above in a more detailed post, I am 100% supportive of unions in general, and have had 100% negative experience in North American unions in particular.
Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'll be happy in one of the "right-to-work" states then. Wonder why they're hit the hardest by the "labor shortage?"
Because those states have the lowest unemployment?
Which is good right?! Nope! Labor markets can reach a point where each job added does not create enough productivity to cover its cost, every next job after that is inefficient ("slack").
With an unemployment rate as drastically low as many right to work states, wage inflation becomes a big issue, so companies hire less efficient employees.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/could-rising-wages-scuttle...
Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Germany in theory has laws against that. But this still happens - the problem is that you can’t just make “close warehouse” illegal and then things come down to what you can and cannot prove about the motivations of the company. And that’s often hard.
Sure, nothing is perfect. But it is about raising the cost and uncertainty of the bad action.
Definitely, I agree with you. Some protection is better than none, but this is a very hard goal to achieve. Fundamentally, I believe that the goal can only be achieved by normalizing unions - if you know that there‘s a high chance the next warehouse you open will unionize as well, the gamble becomes unattractive fast.
Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal
#116Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal
#117It's a testament to how effective propaganda can be when you see how easily you can get people to vote against their own interests. It's crazy to me that anyone who works in these Amazon warehouses votes agains tunionization but they do [1]. Even in the successful vote, there were still a lot of "no" votes. Unionization in the US is the lowest of all OECD nations (~10%) [2]. Is it any wonder US workers don't get paid…
Reminder that this article is about Canada, where these workers already have maternity leave and health insurance paid for by the public.
What’s they do, strike oil?
Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because that would be communism or something.
Good one. Now explain why unionized European programmers don't get paid nearly the same as un-unionized American ones. Is it because of fascism or something?
Base salary or total compensation?
Do you have any data or reason to believe "unionized European programmers don't get paid nearly the same as un-unionized American ones?"
Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal
#119Quoted post unavailable.
Can you explain why you skipped over these? > management has worked to isolate pro-union workers and threatened to relocate the warehouses if unionization succeeds. > One worker said his life has become miserable since he uttered the word “union” at work. “Every coworker who talks to me, after a few seconds, they are interrogated by the manager. When they do that, people don’t want to talk to you anymore. I’m being i…
I can
Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Interesting phenomenon I’ve noticed: Any thread on HN related to unions soon gets newly created accounts arriving to spread anti-union FUD talking points.
The interesting phenomenon I've noticed on HN are folks who have never worked a labor job in their life pontificating on how unions operate in the real world.
It makes you really wonder about the other decisions being made for society by this group of folks who have outsize power at the moment.