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Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

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Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#111
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much agree. Every worker should unionize, for the good of us all. Far too much power has been ceded to companies pushing for abusive working practices, that are now largely culturally normalized.

Well, no, I can bargain individually better than a group could try to on my behalf.

Unions are helpful in two scenarios:

1) When workers want systemic reform of an organization.

2) When workers are more-or-less interchangeable.

Software engineers aren't interchangeable at all compared to a factory worker, which is why they have such great individual bargaining power and why (historically) they don't really feel a huge need for a union to represent them. Today, software workers have a bit more interest in unionizing because they want to change their organization's high-level goals (e.g. environmental responsibility, not making tools for warfare, hiring diversity, etc).

But both scenarios apply to Amazon warehouse workers, and union representation would almost certainly be a massive benefit for them.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#112
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't open-shop effectively "no union" in practice? What threat does a union have when the company can just hire non-union workers?

Once you acknowledge that unions are useless and bad, yes, this is correct. If unions were actually beneficial to workers, then companies would have a very hard time hiring non-union workers.

Do you think a government that was very popular and that most citizens thought was pretty damn good, would have any trouble if it made paying taxes optional?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#114
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should developers unionize? I love not being in a union. If my company starts dicking me around I'll quit and find another job. Besides, if I do something so bad my boss wants to fire me, fine then I'll go work somewhere where people want me. I don't want to have to bring in my union rep to argue about it since going somewhere else means losing my tenure and taking a 30% pay cut. The only time unions make sense i…

That's just blatantly false, unions absolutely make sense for skilled labor. This isn't to say tech workers should unionize, but teachers, public defenders, subway engineers, high skill building trades, skilled workers in film are all unionized. Unions provide a ton of value if you're a skilled worker who does something comparable to gig work, jumping from jobsite to jobsite where the Union helps them keep their heal…

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Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#115
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much agree. Every worker should unionize, for the good of us all. Far too much power has been ceded to companies pushing for abusive working practices, that are now largely culturally normalized.

Well, no, I can bargain individually better than a group could try to on my behalf.

The responses you got are borderline religious. Pro union people need to acknowledge and be up front about the cons of a union. It’s just another entity with power over a group of people and suffers from the same pros and cons. It’s not a panacea.

Deriding legitimate concerns is not how you convince people, and makes it look like you have an agenda.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#116
post #2

Unions are the most useful when you're dealing with monopolies. Where there is fierce competition in an industry, most workers probably feel that unions are not needed, as they can get a better paying job by switching companies within the same industry whenever they like. So I wonder if the recent rise in union interest is a symptom of the fact that in the U.S. a lot of industries have been monopolized or oligopolize…

> So I wonder if the recent rise in union interest is a symptom of the fact that in the U.S. a lot of industries have been monopolized or oligopolized, and the union option is starting to look increasingly more appealing every year.

Don't many EU countries have strong unions? Does that imply the industries in those countries are monopolized or oligoplized?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#117
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you can singlehandedly get a corporation to improve their working conditions? That's incredible

The company caters to _me_, not the other way around. Welcome to being in a high-demand job.

I guess that's good if you only care about you?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#118

Can Amazon now just shut down that warehouse and fire all the workers? It would seem like a sensible business move, even if it involves a little bit of service disruption for users in New York.

Amazon has historically had the capacity to be ruthless. For example in it's fight against collecting state taxes, it shutdown third-party sellers in states that introduced laws requiring Amazon to collect state taxes. Eventually Amazon lost that battle, which paved the way for Amazon opening more fulfilment centres in more states.

I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon announced the closure of this fulfilment centre. It would seem dramatic but if it kept other centres from unionizing I could see Amazon taking the short-term discomfort.

I don't know what Amazon's calculation will be in these circumstances. If Jeff was still in charge I reckon the fulfilment centre would be closed down.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#119
post #2

Unions are the most useful when you're dealing with monopolies. Where there is fierce competition in an industry, most workers probably feel that unions are not needed, as they can get a better paying job by switching companies within the same industry whenever they like. So I wonder if the recent rise in union interest is a symptom of the fact that in the U.S. a lot of industries have been monopolized or oligopolize…

> Where there is fierce competition in an industry, most workers probably feel that unions are not needed, as they can get a better paying job by switching companies within the same industry whenever they like.

Unless the biggest players in the industry are colluding against them as was the case with Google, Apple, Adobe, and Intel: https://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsu...

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#120

I had a boss who was an expensive consultant for unions. He explained the reason unions in the US were shrinking is that they are too powerful. They control huge pension and healthcare portfolios and can completely control the relationship with employers, especially in closed shop situations. Comparatively, European unions are much "weaker" - or maybe more accurately their purview is much smaller. They control smalle…

Which leads to the weird situation when a US-based company will fight to the bone their European unions just out of principle, no matter the topic discussed or its legal base. And with the EWCs (European Worker Councils), even worse.
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