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Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’

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Re: Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’

#111

Post by dencodev »

csb6 wrote: post #94
wnevets wrote: post #78

Whenever unions are mentioned on HN there always seems to be a coordinated effort to attack them in the comments, very interesting.

Yeah, it’s discouraging. But Hacker News is a place for capitalists (self-identified) or wannabe capitalists to hold discussions, and the site is run by a venture capital firm, so makes sense. Still discouraging to see the lack of education HNers have on unions. Maybe ignorance is a better word.

It's less about education, and more about "fuck you got mine" for a website full of engineers whose average salary is probably 6x that of the average American

Re: Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’

#112

Post by notJim »

Accujack wrote: post #25
anoxor wrote: post #16

Having been a part of a union I was mandated to enter when I took the job until the supreme court ruled that wasn't legal, actual unions are a far cry from how they are portrayed as helping the worker. I would honestly do anything in my power to not have to work in a union again. They are set up as antagonistic between administration and workers, and adds a layer of bureaucracy that I've only seen be negative. I've w…

Some people like unions, I think because they're lucky enough to have had a good experience, or to be part of a union that was not decayed by age or special interests. Unions should not be needed... the governments who represent the people working should provide the necessary protections for workers without unions being needed. Unions are a way for some people to get what all workers should have by default.

Who supports these pro-worker politicians and holds them accountable? In the US, both parties are very cozy with corporate interests, because that's where the money (and thus ability to mobilize voters) is. Historically, unions played a major role in holding politicians accountable, and supporting those who were more pro-worker. The parties have become more corporatized as union membership has declined. Without the base of support from organized labor, this is a likely outcome.

Re: Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’

#113

Post by umvi »

sgillen wrote: post #40
anoxor wrote: post #16

Having been a part of a union I was mandated to enter when I took the job until the supreme court ruled that wasn't legal, actual unions are a far cry from how they are portrayed as helping the worker. I would honestly do anything in my power to not have to work in a union again. They are set up as antagonistic between administration and workers, and adds a layer of bureaucracy that I've only seen be negative. I've w…

As long as we’re offering anecdotes, I’m part of a union and I think they have a positive effect on workers and enjoy a generally positive opinion among the employees. This union is probably less powerful than the one you are talking about as no one is mandated to join, and no one is impossible to fire.

The type of union business owners are terrified of aren't small local unions, but massive NEA-esque mega-unions.

Re: Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’

#114

Post by dencodev »

me_me_me wrote: post #18
throwaway894345 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does Jeff not know that everyone will remember him for this behavior? This presupposes that Jeff cares about his legacy. I genuinely don't know what drives him; my best guess is 'making Amazon ever more successful'.

Wasn't there an article about him saying that he fancy himself as real life capt. Picard?

do you think jeff poorly practices a penny whistle in private?

god does that man suck

Re: Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’

#115

Post by dencodev »

ancorevard wrote: post #31

I've not seen good come out of unions in decades. Example of unions that are net negative for society: police unions, teacher unions.

police unions are basically the singular example of where they shouldn't exist

Re: Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’

#116

Post by chrisseaton »

caoilte wrote: post #106
chrisseaton wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Union activists in the UK have a reputation of being bullies, and in some cases in the past they've used physical violence to try to get people to do things their way. At the height of union fever back in the 80s it got so bad at one point that union activists dropped a concrete block on someone's head from a bridge because he was trying to get into work and they thought he should be striking (David Wilkie.) I would…

Love the way you've got to reach back literally 36 years to find one example of union violence. The reputation that British unions actually have is for getting shat on by bullying employers.

I think it was a pretty watershed moment in union relations in the UK. It's what a lot of people think of when they think of unions in the UK. They're pretty unpopular here. I was explaining why a British person might call them goons.

Re: Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’

#117

Post by sudosysgen »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #61
Accujack wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people like unions, I think because they're lucky enough to have had a good experience, or to be part of a union that was not decayed by age or special interests. Unions should not be needed... the governments who represent the people working should provide the necessary protections for workers without unions being needed. Unions are a way for some people to get what all workers should have by default.

The government will never be as in tune with the needs of the workers as the workers themselves. I think organized labor is a very good idea. We can see in the US how workers have been put in ever more precarious situations since the labor unions were significantly weakened 30-40 years ago. But actually I don’t think having a normal corporation with a board of directors and then a union at odds with that board really…

I think worker-owned cooperatives do make a ton of sense and bridge the interest gap between employers and employees. When the interests of the unions align with the interest of society at large in that we want to promote productivity, it fixes a lot of things.

Re: Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’

#118

Post by scarmig »

anoxor wrote: post #16

Having been a part of a union I was mandated to enter when I took the job until the supreme court ruled that wasn't legal, actual unions are a far cry from how they are portrayed as helping the worker. I would honestly do anything in my power to not have to work in a union again. They are set up as antagonistic between administration and workers, and adds a layer of bureaucracy that I've only seen be negative. I've w…

It's always interesting to see the anti-union arguments on threads like these. Half the people say that unions are anarchist thugs who beat people up and bash their heads in with bricks, and half say they're gray bureaucratic paper pushing middlemen.

Different unions are different, just as different companies are different. Plenty of companies have positive, constructive relationships with unions; you have no particular reason to say that the union is what made the relationship antagonistic and not the employer, except for an implicit assumption that companies have a right to exist and push for their interests while unions don't.

Re: Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’

#119

Post by ouid »

jacobr1 wrote: post #66
ouid wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a growing part of america that is coming around to the idea that the path to more negotiating power for laborers is not unions. It is through basic income and social safety nets.

The presumption that the ideas we came up with in during the industrial revolutions are the best is preposterous. They might be the best (old idea aren't necessarily bad), but there are also probably modern options. I find it frustrating to discuss the failure of unions without being labeled anti-labor. But it seems to me, the fundamental failure of unions, even when they seem to work, is setting up an adversarial sy…

I disagree wholeheartedly with this idea that adversaries create instability. Stability is the result of all forces acting on an object summing to zero, to abuse metaphor. You can't have that if all of the forces are pointing in the same direction. There is a reason Nash equilibrium is called "equilibrium"; it is stable.

Unions fail primarily because they are a very shoddy bandaid. When you have commodity labor, in which each worker is the same, a union has the capacity to plausibly represent them as a group. That cooperation gives the workers negotiating power. There is A) no reason to suspect that that negotiating power cannot or will not be abused, and B) the premise is usually false. Police are the obvious target here on both counts, as a police union is nothing more than a private army, and policing is far from commodity labor. It matters a lot who my police are. I think that teacher's unions are probably a better example of the problems though because people tend to think of the police as an outlier.

Re: Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’

#120

Post by notJim »

rumanator wrote: post #96
sacks2k wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core of a union is bad for workers that excel You won't get paid what you are worth and will get held back when you want a raise. In almost all unions that I've encountered, if you want a raise, it's as a collective. They also prevent technological advances and it only makes things more expensive for the consumer (Who do you think is fighting Uber and Lyft in major cities? Taxicab unions that were fleecing custom…

> The core of a union is bad for workers that excel You should really let go of that folclore because it makes absolutely no sense at all and has absolutely zero connection to the real world. First of all, it's widely known that Amazon already has a rigid employee structure that pays according to the internal pay scale. This alone shuts dispels the "omg unions keep top performers down", because internally your only s…

Great point—every company I've worked at, people have complained about lack of transparency about who gets promoted. HR and company leaders always respond "oh we're trying, it's hard, trust us", etc. But with a union workers would have a seat at the table to change the process.
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