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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

#271

Post by Hasnep »

missedthecue wrote: post #265
fithisux wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they cannot afford a good salary, then the business is a liability

This is a fun soundbite, but it's completely arbitrary and meaningless. You could just as easily and accurately come up with something along the lines of "if a union causes its employer financial distress, it is a liability".

I think a key fact is the right to unionise in America is protected by law. You could make two contradictory statements like:

> If they cannot afford proper safety equipment then the business is a liability.

And

> If buying safety equipment causes an employer financial distress then it is a liability.

But I think most people would agree with the first statement and disagree with the second.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#272

Post by thaumasiotes »

woodruffw wrote: post #163
JasonFruit wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny: when Americans realize we're saying the name of a foreign city badly, like Peking for Beijing, Canton for Guangzhou, and others, we move to assimilate our naming to that of the natives. Why is it that everyone insists that we refer to ourselves by the wrong name? Is it even possible for us to be wrong about what we call ourselves ?

Just as a note: Peking was a corruption by French missionaries, not Americans. In general, these kinds of errors come from historical limitations: orthography, linguistics, &c. At minimum, it’s respectful to try to adapt based on our better, contemporary understanding.

> Just as a note: Peking was a corruption by French missionaries, not Americans.

What? Peking wasn't a corruption at all. It accurately reflects the pronunciation encountered by... most Europeans who interacted with Chinese. Mandarin received official status in the 20th century.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#273

Post by edmundsauto »

andrepd wrote: post #263
gruez wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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/ne…

Fair enough, but why is it that on every post critical of Amazon there's a bunch of freshly-made accounts just for the purpose of spreading fud?

Some people don't feel safe using their primary accounts due to the vitriolic responses. The community collectively creates this culture, but it's particularly spread with strong toned comments and perspectives that leave little room for discussion.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#274

Post by edmundsauto »

sershe wrote: post #247
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 .

Quoted post unavailable.

Aren't unions the reason we have a number of worker protections and standards, including the 40 hour work week?

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#275

Post by sophacles »

ETH_start wrote: post #234
sophacles wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 uni…

>>"Other people have it worse, why would you want better for yourself?" "I want better for myself" != "if you don't offer me better, you're exploiting me". The implication of your assertion is fallacious. >>making use of a situation or treating others unfairly in order to gain an advantage or benefit. Nothing unfair about offering a wage for a job, and someone accepting it. >>Punishing (the term they use is penalizin…

I guess that might be true if you define "free society" as "a society which maximizes the allowed types of financial transaction". In that case, I'm sure you'd agree that a truly free society is one in which people are born as slaves because their ancestors sold the labor of their descendants in perpetuity.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#276

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

ETH_start wrote: post #98
andrepd wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. So your company treats you like shit and you quit. Where do you go now? You need to sell your labour to survive, so you lost all your income. Your employer has other sources of income, has reserve capital, so that even if your job was critical and production is now shut while they look for a replacement (unlikely), they're gonna be fine. But you need to eat tonight . Not next quarter or next month or even next…

The employer owes you nothing. You're citing your difficult circimstances to justify getting the government to seize control of an employer from its shareholders, in dictating its hiring decisions. But as a practical matter, opportunities expand faster when labor markets are free, and capital owners are secure in their rights. Employment growth has been widely observed to be stronger where labor laws are less restric…

> 1950

That prosperity almost certainly more to do with the post-WW2 economic boom than anything else. There are arguments to be made against unions but citing what happened in the golden era of the '50s-'60s isn't one of them.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#277

Post by nomel »

Jhjjjjjjjj wrote: post #59
user3939382 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some vote no because they fear retaliation if the vote fails.

Or they fear Amazon leaving

Which isn't unprecidented (albeit, different context): https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/10/amazon-reveals-the-truth-on-...

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#278

Post by AtlasBarfed »

mabbo wrote: post #207
photochemsyn wrote: post #180

The general issue with the largest employers in the neoliberalized countries (Amazon, Walmart) relative to the outsourced sectors (manufacturing mainly) is that wages are now much lower for the blue-collar worker, who is now doing service/shipping (~$15/hr -> ~$30k/yr) rather than manufacturing (~$30/hr -> ~$60k/yr). Amazon employs about one million people in the United States, and unionization and collective bargain…

Amazon as a whole is profitable, but AWS subsidizes the rest. Amazon retail loses money because it's constantly undercutting competitors, and investing heavily in further CapEx to reduce costs. If they had to pay living wages to those employees, they would stop being able to undercut every other business.

Without Bezos, when will AWS be spun off? It's a stock payoff for execs waiting to happen, and the execs can only turn a blind eye to that for so long.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#279

Post by ETH_start »

sophacles wrote: post #275
ETH_start wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>"Other people have it worse, why would you want better for yourself?" "I want better for myself" != "if you don't offer me better, you're exploiting me". The implication of your assertion is fallacious. >>making use of a situation or treating others unfairly in order to gain an advantage or benefit. Nothing unfair about offering a wage for a job, and someone accepting it. >>Punishing (the term they use is penalizin…

I guess that might be true if you define "free society" as "a society which maximizes the allowed types of financial transaction". In that case, I'm sure you'd agree that a truly free society is one in which people are born as slaves because their ancestors sold the labor of their descendants in perpetuity.

An agreement has to be genuinely and fully consensual for it to be consistent with the principles of a free society.

So selling your children into slavery, or even a distant future self, would obviously not be allowed.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#280

Post by specialist »

missedthecue wrote: post #229
kelseyfrog wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the word union mean to you?

Restricting competition to raise the cost of the product sold. That's why unions hate people who cross the picket line. If you willingly compete, you undermine the whole strategy.

> Restricting competition

aka collective bargaining.

> If you willingly compete

aka defecting.

It's just game theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action I really don't understand why people get so fluffed up about it.

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