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Amazon's anti-union site for its Alabama warehouse

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

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context which will be blithely ignored.

If being one of the most successful businesses in the world means you can’t pay your employees a living wage, then I think there’s a fundamental problem. That’s also context.

> If being one of the most successful businesses in the world means you can’t pay your employees a living wage, then I think there’s a fundamental problem.

The fundamental problem is that the government keeps mandating policies that drive up the cost of living so that low-skilled and unskilled workers are constantly struggling to keep their head above water, then tries to solve the problem by doubling down on the same failed policies that make it harder for poor and working class people to survive.

Some people don’t make very much when they negotiate because their labor actually isn’t worth very much on the market. Its not worth very much when translated into goods and services. So they work a lot and they don’t have very much and its sad. So people feel bad for them and change the law so they have to get paid more money for the same work. But they aren’t any more productive so there isn’t any more stuff to go around, so when they take their more money to the market, they bid up the prices of goods and end up where they started, sometimes even a bit further behind. But they spent the money at a business that makes a profit. And that profit eventually ends up in the pocket of someone who owns that business. But the working class person is still dependent on that artificially high wage, and the cycle repeats itself.

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

#132

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…

What is even wrong with the world you are describing? I would much rather live in a world of more flat compensation, where I don’t have to worry about negotiating a salary, where there are more rigid worker protections, etc. I don’t see myself as better or more deserving than my coworkers, I see us all as on the same team, with the same basic interests.

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree that a high performing developer is hard to find, but so is a high performing manual worker. high performing manual workers negotiate superior wages unless they are restrained by a union > I think what you are talking about is scarcity driving the market salary rates for developers, not performance. So they are related but the key concept here is that a low performer is more easily replaced, and so does not…

>key concept here is that a low performer is more easily replaced. It’s not easy to replace a low performing worker with scarce skills or domain specific knowledge. It not difficult to replace a manual worker that requires limited training or domain knowledge. Developers are paid way more than an equitable share of the salary share in organisations like Amazon because their skills are currently scarce. This will not…

> It’s not easy to replace a low performing worker with scarce skills or domain specific knowledge.

I’m defining “high performance” to include those sorts of persons.

> Developers are paid way more than an equitable share of the salary share in organisations like Amazon because their skills are currently scarce.

It is equitable precisely because those skills are scarce.

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

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, they will lower prices and keep margins constant. This prevents competitors from moving in. I'm not sure what to say about this other than, no, they won't. If you're a publicly traded company, your investors want profit margins to go up, not stay the same. Unless you can convince them otherwise because you're growing -- but even then, they still want your profit margins to eventually rise. If you go into a busi…

> If you're a publicly traded company, your investors want profit margins to go up, not stay the same. No, they want their return to go up. They don’t care about the margin, they care about the total yield (growth + dividend). > Unless you can convince them otherwise because you're growing -- but even then, they still want your profit margins to eventually rise. No, you want your net profit to rise. You want your mar…

> No, you want your net profit to rise.

Which is determined by a combination of, among other things, your profit margin and your volume.

> They don’t care about the margin, they care about the total yield (growth + dividend).

And again, how is that determined? Does profit margin and net profit often play a role in dividend policies by any chance?

> Glad you agree that companies are optimizing for their place in the market and not naively optimizing for a large profit margin.

Are you trying to argue that Amazon is in an underdog position and has to fight for market dominance in online retail right now? Are you trying to argue that there's some fundamental rule that says that if a company has a way to increase profit margins, they should always ignore it and lower costs instead?

Do you think that Amazon right now is purposefully pushing it's profit margins to the bare minimum that is possible for them to stay alive because they're so devoted to growth? Do you think there's some kind of fundamental rule that means if they had more profit they would be forced to invest it into growth or change their position in the market -- that profit can only ever be reinvested? Are you aware that Apple exists?

I mean think through what you're saying right now. Amazon did see record profits this year. Did they lower the price of Amazon Prime? Did they lower the threshold of free shipping from $25 to $20? They didn't, because getting record profits doesn't change their positioning strategy in the market. Even ignoring the basic theory, what you're saying is observably not true, because we can look at Amazon's profits increasing right now, and the shipping prices aren't going down and they're not paying their workers more.

> This is true and still misses the point that an increase in the cost of inputs results in an increase in costs, resulting in an increase in price.

No, it doesn't miss the point, the point you're making is wrong. The cost of a product's inputs do not determine what it is worth. Only the market determines what a product is worth. The moment you tie it to cost of material/labor, you are no longer talking about Capitalism.

> I think its well understood among people who are familiar with unions that increasing labor costs results in acceleration of an automation process that is already in progress.

And? Accelerating automation is good. It's going to happen anyway, and it's a waste of time for us to make factories miserable trying to delay it. And again, even if you don't like automation, no one who opposes automation is arguing that the solution is to make jobs awful.

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

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have, I’ve been a welder/fabricator, a machine operator, a forklift driver, and a temp. I’ve seen anti-union propaganda. I’ve seen pro-union propaganda. And I’m familiar enough with the discourse that I don’t wonder why anyone chooses what they choose. And there are evil parasites on both sides. But rarely do I see people acknowledge the arguments of the other side, usually just calling them parasites. > I'm not th…

> I’ve seen anti-union propaganda. You yourself haven't even had the experience of going through life without seeing a significant amount of anti-union propaganda. Yet you believe there are people who miraculously have.

I don’t assume that my experience is representative of every other person, true.

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

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve seen anti-union propaganda. You yourself haven't even had the experience of going through life without seeing a significant amount of anti-union propaganda. Yet you believe there are people who miraculously have.

I don’t assume that my experience is representative of every other person, true.

You assumed the extreme opposite.

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

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What is even wrong with the world you are describing? I would much rather live in a world of more flat compensation, where I don’t have to worry about negotiating a salary, where there are more rigid worker protections, etc. I don’t see myself as better or more deserving than my coworkers, I see us all as on the same team, with the same basic interests.

> I would much rather live in a world of more flat compensation, where I don’t have to worry about negotiating a salary, where there are more rigid worker protections, etc.

Thats fine and all but I don’t share your preference and so I’d appreciate it if you’d understand that I’m free to negotiate and don’t attempt to take that from me.

> I don’t see myself as better or more deserving than my coworkers,

I do think its better to earn your own wage rather than an average of all wages. After all I contribute my own productivity, I don’t contribute some average negotiated productivity.

> I see us all as on the same team, with the same basic interests.

Do you share a bank account with them? Why not?

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

#138
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what you are saying at a high level, but owning the business even in part would totally screw up the way unions work. If the union has a vested interest in the betterment of the business, they loose the impartiality to serve the workers. A lot of the places the unions end up with negotiated metrics that either had direct cash payouts, or effect the terms of the next union contract. This doesn't seem to carry th…

How can unions lose their incentive to serve workers? It's a collective body of the workers. When workers are owners, incentives are aligned. If you're talking about union leadership being beholden to management, that is an issue unions often have, but I don't think it is relevant here. I'm saying, create a union trust fund with 25% of the company's stock. It pays out dividends to all union members equally (not a slu…

Do you suppose that the union will raise the funds to aquire 25% or that the workers would take a pay cut to offset this? Or should a business owner give up a quarter of their company just so that the employees do the jobs they are compensated for?

And ownership can easily present a conflict of interest even when spread out.

So now 25% compensation is based on this buy in, if a business unit is doing poorly and has brought down that compensation, the company wants to shit can the business unit and its employees, the members of the union would not be directly working against their own interest fight to keep them. (this is always the case really, but now it is directly felt by the members)

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

#139

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 wh…

> 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.

I disagree with the factual assertion and the framing here. The money that you make is not “intended to ma[ke] up for” benefits and services that could be provided in some hypothetical. The money that you’re saving is to provide for yourself in retirement because you’re the one who doesn’t want to die of exposure or become a burden on someone else when you stop working.

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