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Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

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Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#121

Post by dragonwriter »

Goronmon wrote: post #108
hpoe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I disagree that everyone should get paid a loving wage. Let's take 2 identical twins Juan and Jamal (because if you've seen Juan you've seen Jamal). In school Jamal works hard, studies, and puts his efforts first. Juan on the other hand decides football is the way to go and along with that partying, drinking and at one point gets a gal pregnant. They graduate Jamal gets several scholarships and goes to school whi…

A "living wage" doesn't mean "middle class". A living wage means that a person is able to afford someplace relatively clean to live, feed themselves, afford heat in winter, etc.

> A "living wage" doesn't mean "middle class". A living wage means that a person is able to afford someplace relatively clean to live, feed themselves, afford heat in winter, etc.

That's not middle class in traditional class terms (petit bourgeois) based on the manner of interaction with the capitalist economy, but it's pretty much requires being “middle class” by the modern American broad income categories standards, where middle class is the middle income category.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#122

Post by dcgudeman »

berelig wrote: post #75
ekianjo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the people who are forced to work in Amazon's warehouses with terrible working conditions don't have that luxury. Who is forced to work in Amazon's warehouses? Is Amazon rounding up people with guns everyday to make them work there?

You live in a small town with small businesses that are undercut by Amazon's price and scale. Those businesses slowly die out as everyone in your region switches to ordering online (primarily from Amazon). Amazon opens a warehouse in the region to meet the demand and is now the largest employer around. This exact transformation already happened with Wal-Mart in the 80s and 90s. Obviously no one is literally forcing w…

Do you have any evidence that Amazon has decreased overall employment? To me it is totally plausible that with the convenience of online shopping they have increased the overall “retail pie” and have not taken away from local businesses. So I would prefer when you make claims about how small business are dying out because of Amazon you provide evidence

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#123

Post by lovegoblin »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #52
VonGuard wrote: post #34

Ah, lovely of Amazon to employ the EXACT same people that Carnegie and Frick hired to beat and kill steel workers in 1892. How long before Amazon has the Pinkertons open fire on the unionizers? Great prescident, Amazon. No bad choices here. Just the honest, fair dealings of the richest man in the world hiring the same people who've been murdering strikers and unionizers since 1850. Stay classy Jeff!

The exact same people? I marvel at their longevity! 128+ years is quite an accomplishment!

Don't be obtuse.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#124

Post by snvzz »

downrightmike wrote: post #68
fennecfoxen wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exact same people? I marvel at their longevity! 128+ years is quite an accomplishment!

Corporations are people, legally.

If corporations were people, we'd see some face the death penalty.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#125

Post by [deleted] »

criddell wrote: post #27
mikestew wrote: post #3

"Pinkerton: for over one-hundred years, the ones to call when you've got a union problem." I mean, that has to be their schtick, right, even if it's unspoken? Because that pretty much sums up what I know about Pinkerton, so I would assume they are happy with that. As for the topic at hand, yeah well, that's what companies do...for over one-hundred years as well.

Somebody should try to unionize Pinkerton employees.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#126

Post by harimau777 »

ekianjo wrote: post #30
patwolfe wrote: post #18

Really disappointing to see the "Well, what did you expect?" comments already. Just because companies have been trying to prevent organization of their labor for over a century doesn't mean it isn't still messed up now. It's easy to say that it's just the way the world works from your desk, the people who are forced to work in Amazon's warehouses with terrible working conditions don't have that luxury.

> the people who are forced to work in Amazon's warehouses with terrible working conditions don't have that luxury. Who is forced to work in Amazon's warehouses? Is Amazon rounding up people with guns everyday to make them work there?

Most of the world's natural resources and land have already been claimed. This means that most people have no choice but to work for the people who control those resources and land.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#127

Post by harlanji »

eropple wrote: post #79
jmnicolas wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in a factory building car bumpers. The work was so alienating that one day I "woke up" in the factory with literally no recollection of the last 2 hours. From all I knew I could have been taken by ETs but since my bumper quota was good I guess I just zoned out and became a bot. And I still call Amazon "horrible working conditions". The fact that it is better than being poor isn't saying much.

$16 per hour, at 2000 hours a year, is $32,000. The poverty line in the United States is around $26,000. "Slightly above poverty wages" is still pretty dang poor. (And to forestall the inevitable adjustment of one's pince-nez to well-actually: that it'd be median or even above-median wages somewhere else does not mean that it is not poor in America , nor that the two situations can be reasonably compared.)

I’ve been living in my car in SF for about 915 days, on less than $18k/yr take home. I’m so poor that I can barely get hired to a minimum wage job (“but you have a car,” “but you have an iPhone”). Everything I have is left over from a time when I made $200k/yr as a software engineer, and thankfully I’ve been given a lot of benefit of the doubt given my upstanding ways. (I was slandered, so people I meet see a good guy but when I interview they’re told of a violent bigot during the reference check, false).

I’m working on a book, or books, on the subject. It seems surprising to people that something happens called poverty with less than a certain level of income, that makes things get extremely hard and require great care to recover from. I was on track to get off the street and nearly did last year but faced a setback, and the pandemic threw a big wrench in my system this year (which is adapting, harder mode). My working budget has been $55/day or $375/wk or $18k/yr.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#128

Post by macintux »

hpoe wrote: post #28
patwolfe wrote: post #18

Really disappointing to see the "Well, what did you expect?" comments already. Just because companies have been trying to prevent organization of their labor for over a century doesn't mean it isn't still messed up now. It's easy to say that it's just the way the world works from your desk, the people who are forced to work in Amazon's warehouses with terrible working conditions don't have that luxury.

Can I just point out that I think the "horrible working conditions" things is a little played up. You want to know terrible working conditions dancing with a sign for 5 hours a day in the sun when it's 90+. I did that for 3 years and was happy to do the job, mind you this was only 10 years ago so it isn't forever. I made 7.50 an hour. I would've killed to get a job at amazon back then. People are getting payed $16 th…

> You want to know terrible working conditions dancing with a sign for 5 hours a day in the sun when it's 90+.

While dancing with a sign in the sun does lead to heat exhaustion risks, it's unlikely to lead to permanent disability, which seems like the inevitable outcome of working at an Amazon warehouse for too long.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#129

Post by malandrew »

iso1631 wrote: post #90
hpoe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I disagree that everyone should get paid a loving wage. Let's take 2 identical twins Juan and Jamal (because if you've seen Juan you've seen Jamal). In school Jamal works hard, studies, and puts his efforts first. Juan on the other hand decides football is the way to go and along with that partying, drinking and at one point gets a gal pregnant. They graduate Jamal gets several scholarships and goes to school whi…

Nobody is saying that Jamal should not be paid more, they're just saying the floor should be enough to live.

What does that even mean? Live entirely alone in a 1 bedroom apartment? A studio? Live with roommates? What do their meals look like?

A "living wage" means absolutely nothing unless you define the expectations.

When I first moved to San Francisco in 2011, I was living on less than $300/month or so for 8 months or so. I slept on an air mattress and ate rice and beans prepared weekly from 25lb bags because it was cheaper that way. I spent less than a dollar a meal.

What expectations do we have that people learn to be frugal? Here's someone who lives in the SF Bay Area for $7000/year:

https://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-i-live-on-7000-per-ye...

It's actually not hard to live on these wages if you're smart about how you spend your money. The only cost you can't really escape without moving is the cost of housing, and if you don't fix that problem, any increase in wages it just going to be temporary relief until housing prices correct.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#130

Post by rimiform »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #86
mikestew wrote: post #3

"Pinkerton: for over one-hundred years, the ones to call when you've got a union problem." I mean, that has to be their schtick, right, even if it's unspoken? Because that pretty much sums up what I know about Pinkerton, so I would assume they are happy with that. As for the topic at hand, yeah well, that's what companies do...for over one-hundred years as well.

I honestly thought "Pinkerton agents" was a metaphor. :) Like the way you say "xerox that paper".

Dito. But it's really far worse that Amazon is able to use literal Pinkerton agents, because it implies the organisation hasn't been torn to shreds as you expect it should have been.
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