Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon's anti-union site for its Alabama warehouse

doitwithoutdues.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 204 posts

Re: Amazon's anti-union site for its Alabama warehouse

#101

Post by pmontra »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #54
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #17

Wow. Just...wow. Maybe the line with the worst rhetorical trick is this bullshit in the "joining a union" FAQ: "Q: Will a union provide better wages and benefits? A: A union cannot guarantee better wages and benefits. With union negotiations, you could end up with more, the same.... or less than what you make today." I love that because it works exactly as well when you just negate the question: "Q: Will NOT having a…

Q: Will NOT having a union provide better wages and benefits? A: Yes, it could. Unions introduce parasitic loss and collective bargaining. Collective bargaining allows a large part of the workforce to negotiate as one unit and consequently higher performing workers are unable to negotiate a salary commensurate with their performance. In order to retain higher performing workers, corporations end up paying average per…

Different country and different rules but when I was an employee I always earned much more than the basic salary for the industry I was working in. And I always got salary increases, either because I performed well or because the company knew they had to keep up with the competition.

Re: Amazon's anti-union site for its Alabama warehouse

#102

Post by Meph504 »

ineedasername wrote: post #68
scotth wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That, or they're pitting union and non-union members against each other.

Usually it's all or nothing: a place unionizes, everyone is a member of the union. Technically, you could say "no I'm not going to be a member". But you're still part of what is called the bargaining unit. In some cases it is even possible to opt out of the union dues... there was a Supreme Court case about it recently that came down on the side of allowing opt-out, but I don't know the full extent/ramifications of t…

The ramifications are pretty massive. here is a decent summary.

https://www3.swipeclock.com/blog/union-employers-what-you-ne...

Re: Amazon's anti-union site for its Alabama warehouse

#103

Post by chordalkeyboard »

danShumway wrote: post #75
CryptoPunk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>. It's a place where jobs are hard to come by, so maybe Amazon offers something the desperate, the poor, and the struggling something they can't get elsewhere. If you make it illegal to provide bad jobs, those jobs will not be substituted one-for-one for good jobs. That's not how an economy works. You're only hurting low-skilled workers by mandating higher minimum work standards. Responding to below: Yes, every so-…

> If you make it illegal to provide bad jobs, those jobs will not be substituted one-for-one for good jobs. That's not how an economy works. I think this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how markets work. If you are a smart business, you don't charge what's "fair", you don't start by saying "I'm going to pay $X to my workers, so let's see how many I can hire with that money." Those are bad ways to run a busi…

> Similarly, if you get rid of labor laws and reduce the minimum wage for Amazon's workers, it's not going to hire twice as many people just because it has the money. It'll increase its profit margins, because it's a business being run by smart people who understand how supply/demand works.

No, they will lower prices and keep margins constant. This prevents competitors from moving in.

Similarly, increased benefits from collective bargaining will result in higher prices for amazon goods and services, and more automation.

Re: Amazon's anti-union site for its Alabama warehouse

#104

Post by La1n »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #49
Bakary wrote: post #15

This is another reminder that we have some of the negative aspects of a cyberpunk future without the cool empowering hacking parts. I wonder about the sort of person who would design such a website. Surely you'd have to be dead inside to create such an abomination, even if it's just a job? I am not trying to be hyperbolic here.

> Surely you'd have to be dead inside to create such an abomination, even if it's just a job? I am not trying to be hyperbolic here. Many of us don’t like unions. We consider them to be parasitic organizations that pervert the employer-employee-customer relationship without adding value. In fact, by twisting a business so that it is run for the benefit of the employees instead of for the mutual benefit of employees,…

>In fact, by twisting a business so that it is run for the benefit of the employees instead of for the mutual benefit of employees, employer, and customers, they destroy value.

An union negotiates/help negotiate, an employer would never run it's business if there was no benefit for them. Do you really believe that unions make it so only employees and not the employer benefit?

Re: Amazon's anti-union site for its Alabama warehouse

#105

Post by Hamuko »

cosmotic wrote: post #86

Side stepping all the union talk, this site is ugly and inaccessible. The contrast ratios are awful; white text sitting on top of full screen, lightly colored videos? This was made in haste by some amateurs. Or maybe it's trying to be trendy? It's tragic either way. Doubly so if you actually read the content.

I imagine they allocated like an hour to make the site. The FAQ are just a bunch of poor-quality JPEG images. Guessing that properly layouting that FAQ would've taken too much time.

Re: Amazon's anti-union site for its Alabama warehouse

#106

Post by ineedasername »

Meph504 wrote: post #98
ineedasername wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't take it completely at face value. This wasn't just to to try to convince people that a union was a bad choice, this was a scare tactic to indicate how angry Amazon will be if they go ahead & unionize, and the consequences of that anger. See the part about not being so "helpful". Unionization efforts also always take place against the backdrop of former employers simply shutting down the business location and mo…

Well businesses closing and moving, has happened a considerable amount, and often to devastating effects to a community, so it seems like something that would be of real concern. Realistically, how much would it hurt to move amazon warehouses near the border of any neighboring state? The days of the factories, and none movable infrastructure a long gone, so it is a strong factor to consider.

It doesn't even have to be another state. It can be a few miles away: Fire all current employees because you're shutting down. Open the new place, hire new people.

I literally witnessed this threat first hand growing up when my mom was involved in union efforts.

Re: Amazon's anti-union site for its Alabama warehouse

#107

Post by heterodoxxed »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #99
heterodoxxed wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you’re so unfamiliar with the actual case against unions How can the average American worker be so unfamiliar with the case against unions? We are inundated with anti-union propaganda practically from birth. Barely any of us are unionized, corporations have gone to the ends of the earth to disempower or dismantle unions for the past 40-50 years, and you hardly ever hear any pro-union narrative outside of union orga…

> How can the average American worker be so unfamiliar with the case against unions? We are inundated with anti-union propaganda practically from birth. I disagree on the pervasiveness of anti-union propaganda. Perhaps this is your experience, it has not been mine. > Barely any of us are unionized, corporations have gone to the ends of the earth to disempower or dismantle unions for the past 40-50 years, and you hard…

> if they were dead inside

I'm not the original poster, so I'm not sure why you're responding to me as if I were.

> Thats your experience

Yes, that's my experience. My experience is extremely common.

Have you not worked any blue collar or service jobs?

Re: Amazon's anti-union site for its Alabama warehouse

#108

Post by chordalkeyboard »

comex wrote: post #96
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely you'd have to be dead inside to create such an abomination, even if it's just a job? I am not trying to be hyperbolic here. Many of us don’t like unions. We consider them to be parasitic organizations that pervert the employer-employee-customer relationship without adding value. In fact, by twisting a business so that it is run for the benefit of the employees instead of for the mutual benefit of employees,…

Perhaps there are plausible anti-union arguments out there, but this Amazon website isn't making them. Instead we get text like this: > IF YOU’RE PAYING DUES… it will be RESTRICTIVE meaning it won’t be easy to be as helpful and social with each other. So be a DOER, stay friendly and get things done versus paying dues. It's impossible for me to imagine that anyone involved in drafting that text actually believed it wa…

Yeah that jumped out at me but it was probably a poorly phrased attempt at referring to the changes inherent in a unionized workplace. Like restrictions on how much work a person is allowed to do and conflict between employees who pay dues and employees who do not pay dues.

> It's impossible for me to imagine that anyone involved in drafting that text actually believed it was a meaningful argument.

You’re probably being hyperbolic but this lack of charity is one reason why we can’t have nice things.

Re: Amazon's anti-union site for its Alabama warehouse

#109

Post by ahepp »

Meph504 wrote: post #92
zerocrates wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're talking about making illegal, requiring all employees to join the union or pay dues, that's already illegal in much of the country: that's what "right-to-work" laws do. Alabama is one of the states with a right-to-work law.

So from 1977 until 2018, you could be required to pay union dues, even if you weren't a member of the union even in "right to work" states, 22 of them. So it isn't like you've been free and clear to not have a union interfere with you being hired. It took the supreme court (which over threw its own ruling) to remove this. Additionally, even in places where you have union and non-union employees, the unions can make t…

This is pretty much the only complaint about unions I can get behind. I think the best solution is to give the union a substantial ownership stake in the company, so that they have an incentive to operate efficiently

Re: Amazon's anti-union site for its Alabama warehouse

#110

Post by maybelsyrup »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #51

That very first * is the first major point for unions. Many unions protect part time workers, or protect workers from being excluded from a fair share of benefits based on their inputs. The reason for this is that there’s no incentive to push hours down until no one gets benefits. Which is not uncommon, unfortunately. Many companies tout incredible benefits with a significant portion of their workforce having no enti…

I joined my union somewhat by accident, and it's opened my eyes to a lot of what you're talking about. (My workplace is not usually the kind of place that's known to be unionized in the US, so when I showed up I was surprised to hear it was a thing. I did my due diligence and decided to join.)

I'm of an age and socioeconomic stratum where union membership is not only not really done - people don't even really know what unions do or how they work, and I was essentially just as ignorant.

> I could say my money is better but it’s nowhere near as secure and dependable, and although it looks so much better paper, I’d be spending a huge amount to get the same benefits privately.

The real epiphany moment for me came when I understood that my lifelong fixation on salary, into which I, as an upper-middle-class person, was socialized from a young age (along with everyone else I know), is a form of sleight of hand: in a society like ours, with a gutted social safety net and enormous inequality, no one tells you in middle school the point you're making here: a metric ton of that fancy six-figure salary is going to go to making up for the absence of benefits and services that could be provided in many cases much more efficiently and cheaply in a less reactionary developed country. And this effect gets worse as you age and have kids, of course.

So these days, after getting a tiny whiff of these dynamics in my somewhat modest (meaning not high-status) but fairly-compensated union gig, I find myself wondering, if given the choice between a $200k salary in Idaho or a $100k salary in, say, Sweden, which would I choose? And a second doesn't pass before I smell pickled herring and lingonberries.

> I don’t believe unions are universally perfect.

I don't either. I'm not blindly ideological about this, and like any human system, human beings can fuck up unions to the detriment of everyone else, too. But man, as someone low on the totem pole in my organization, it's nice to know that a group of competent people with (some) real power actually have my back.

Post reply on HN