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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

#211

Post by sophacles »

ETH_start wrote: post #123
jmyeet wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every Amazon warehouse that unionizes make it less possible to close a given warehouse to snuff out a budding union. Amazon is spending millions on union-busting lawyers. From the article, workers had to go to mandatory anti-union classes, which is pretty funny coming from a company where you could get written up for "time off task" by taking a bathroom break. The propaganda the company is pushing is that the company…

>>The propaganda the company is pushing is that the company and the workers are working together. They are not. Those workers are being exploited. Bezos considered turnover desirable. While it is propaganda to claim the interests of the workers and company are aligned, it's also propaganda to claim that they're being exploited. A voluntary market interaction, that 95% of the world population would jump at the opportu…

It's a fundamentally fallacious notion to say "Other people have it worse, why would you want better for yourself?". That's part of the problem with this satement: "A voluntary market interaction, that 95% of the world population would jump at the opportunity to engage in, is by no reasonable definition, exploitive." It applies equally to a statement like this: Other companies struggle with profits when they have union labor, why shouldn't amazon be forced to unionize their employees?

The other part of the the problem with that statement of course comes from the dictionary definition (one I think most people would consider a reasonable definition), it says:

making use of a situation or treating others unfairly in order to gain an advantage or benefit.

Punishing (the term they use is penalizing because it sounds nicer) people for being people and needing to use the restroom is unfair. So is punishing people for delivery delays caused by traffic. Both of those seem pretty unfair to me - maybe I'm unreasonable for thinking a person isn't at fault for traffic?

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#212

Post by CoastalCoder »

mabbo wrote: post #202
CoastalCoder wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your main point, but I'm not sure the analogy totally works. People sometimes confuse "British" with meaning from Great Britain or from the U.K. I would guess that plenty of Irishmen would take exception to having their island treated as a de facto part of the U.K.

That's the point I'm making.

Sorry, maybe I'm misunderstanding.

My point was that some Irishmen have an active, deep-seated animosity towards the U.K. because of a dispute about national sovereignty / independence.

I saw that as different from the U.S. - Canadian issue, because I'm not aware of most(?) Canadians holding similar antipathy towards the U.S.

It sounds like I'm clueless about some dynamic here. Would you mind elaborating?

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#213

Post by newsclues »

sanp wrote: post #173
newsclues wrote: post #89

It’s not just Amazon it’s big and small businesses that operate this way. I rather focus broader reform than just focusing on Amazon.

I don’t know why you are being downvoted. In fact, it is your local McD franchisee who is doing the most to ensure that min wage workers do not get organized.

Because people want to just hate Amazon and Bezos, and feel good that they are on the right side.

I came to HN because Reddit turned into a cesspool and it seems like the cesspool followed.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#214

Post by phabricator »

chrisseaton wrote: post #135
phabricator wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does being union stop you from negotiating for yourself or switching employers?

Part of your agreement with the union is usually that you will not negotiate independently. You’d be disciplined by the union.

That's too broad, you can negotiate things like salary independently. Other things you cannot, and it's often to prevent them from saying "Sally agreed to lower her vacation time to 2 weeks, is that ok with you too?"

I still didn't hear how it prevents you from switching employers.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#215

Post by phabricator »

chronofar wrote: post #45
geysersam wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever their interests are, they will be easier to achieve by unionizing. Not organizing only makes your interests irrelevant. That can hardly be in anyones own interests.

That is clearly too broad a brush. Collective bargaining is useful if your needs are aligned with the collective, if not they may be at best unhelpful and at worst actively counter productive (for instance if you have some personal circumstance you wanted to negotiate beyond the terms of the agreement, rather than negotiating with a boss or two you now have to negotiate with your representative organization). Not to…

Thank you for some subtlety. I have friends that want Bezos beheaded and want the NYPD union defunded. Put most broadly: you are advocating for the creation of one union advocating for the reduction of another at the same time. And that's ok! Unions are humans and big groups of them need to be kept in check.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#216

Post by dghlsakjg »

missedthecue wrote: post #189
dools wrote: post #34

Unions and vaccines are similar in that they are a collective action against which people only complain due to their effectiveness. That is to say, all the libertarians complaining about unions and vaccines can do so comfortably only because they have never been exposed to the horrors they helped to prevent .

People "only" complain due to their effectiveness? OPEC is also a union, have I no grounds to complain about them? What about when meat packing companies cartelize together to raise their incomes? Competition is a good thing whether in labor or oil or chicken markets.

OPEC is a cartel. In most econ 101 classes it is used as the most prevalent example of a cartel. I have never seen anyone argue that it is a labor union.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#217

Post by dghlsakjg »

n4r9 wrote: post #186
CoastalCoder wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your main point, but I'm not sure the analogy totally works. People sometimes confuse "British" with meaning from Great Britain or from the U.K. I would guess that plenty of Irishmen would take exception to having their island treated as a de facto part of the U.K.

Isn't that exactly why the analogy works? "British" means someone from the UK or an overseas territory/dependency. Therefore the Irish are not British and are rightfully miffed when called as such. Even though Ireland is in the (poorly named) British Isles. "American" means a citizen or national of the USA. Therefore Canadians are not American and are rightfully miffed when called as such. Even though Canada is in (s…

When I lived in South America many people took exception to referring to US citizens as 'Americans'.

For most of SA, 'American' can refer to something of the American continents. Even more interesting, the middle school geography that I took taught that there was only one American continent.

So by that standard Canadians are 'American'. But yeah, as someone who now lives in Canada: don't ever think that Canada is the same as the US.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#218

Post by chrisseaton »

phabricator wrote: post #214
chrisseaton wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of your agreement with the union is usually that you will not negotiate independently. You’d be disciplined by the union.

That's too broad, you can negotiate things like salary independently. Other things you cannot, and it's often to prevent them from saying "Sally agreed to lower her vacation time to 2 weeks, is that ok with you too?" I still didn't hear how it prevents you from switching employers.

> That's too broad, you can negotiate things like salary independently.

For example I worked with a school where the area management and the union set salaries and individual teachers could not negotiate on their own. I'd say that's pretty typical in unions. It's also the case in for example the NHS and British railways (topical at the moment.)

> I still didn't hear how it prevents you from switching employers.

Because I never said it did.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#219

Post by dghlsakjg »

golf_mike wrote: post #179
pera wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a native Spanish speaker and most, if not all, people I know use "Estadounidenses" or "yankees" (colloquially). I do see "Americanos" used in translated media though.

Fun fact: an "Americano" also means an espresso with water added

Which is borrowed from Italian, not Spanish.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#220

Post by gruez »

effingwewt wrote: post #185
chmod775 wrote: post #174

Meta: Right now there's thirteen top level comments on this story, and only one of them isn't heavily downvoted, flagged, or dead. At least some of the comments on this story objectively shouldn't be flagged, because they're made in good faith by reputable accounts, while most comments could be taken straight from Facebook. On a five hour old submission with 200 votes you'd normally expect some worthwhile discussion,…

Quoted post unavailable.

>If they know they are going to take a hit? Oh now its 'regular people' in the comments going to bat for a company everyone hates these days.

>I have to say the worst by far is Amazon. Every post about them has this shit happen.

>Obvious shills in the comments, flamebait and wars. When they can't get them to flag and get a post off the front page they do their best to muddy the waters.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. "

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