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Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#131

Post by judge2020 »

beardedetim wrote: post #56
strombofulous wrote: post #20

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…

> 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. Why does the former preclude the latter? > Besides, if I do something so bad my boss wants to fire me, fine then I'll go work somewhere where people want me. What if you didn't do _anything_ and your boss wants to fire you so badly? What if your boss fired you over Zoom randomly withou…

> What if your boss fired you over Zoom randomly without any recourse?

They can do that even with a union. The difference with a union is that they can collectively stop working if the employer violated a clause like "union members must be fired with reasoning pre-approved by the union", and then the employer either needs to find new employees for every person that was in the union or needs to re-negotiate terms with the union, likely including reparations ie. re-hiring the coworker.

A union makes sense for anyone that is working for a wage but that doesn't mean people have to want to be in one. Adding a union adds a bunch of extra politics and brainpower to the advent of getting your job done, and that's not for everyone.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#132

Post by cool_dude85 »

legitster wrote: post #108

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…

>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.

This is interesting. I'm a government employee with a union, a pension, health insurance, the whole deal. The union does not control the pension or healthcare in any way whatsoever.

The governmental entity that I'm employed by, my employer, controls both, subject to collective bargaining to some extent. That is, my contract says I can join the pension, that I pay X% into the pension, that I can also join a 401k-style program if I wish, I'd pay Y% in that case. But it doesn't say anything about the operation of the pension or offer any real control. Same with my healthcare - it needs to meet certain criteria (e.g., premiums will be so many dollars for single coverage, employer must pay X% of actuarial value, etc.)

So, who are these unions who actually have union-run pensions and healthcare plans?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#134

Post by legitster »

whimsicalism wrote: post #123
legitster wrote: post #108

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…

i feel like I'm missing the causal link in your comment between controlling healthcare portfolios -> shrinking.

On a macro level, a US union is much more expensive per member than a EU union because members/companies have to front the cost of healthcare (as opposed to countries with universal healthcare).

On a micro level, traditional US unions have huge pension funds that they have won from employers and promised to existing members, and so they can be very restrictive on membership qualifications.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#135

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway684936 wrote: post #92
dymk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Your mistake is thinking a large corporation gives a single flying fuck about you as an individual employee (who's proven themselves rowdy by trying to bargain).

[deleted]

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#136

Post by xibo9 »

strombofulous wrote: post #20
amelius wrote: post #9

It's great that people are standing up against the abusive power of big companies. When will Apple (App Store) developers unionize?

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…

Not only is your last paragraph incredibly elitist, but any labor is skilled labor. The difference is degree of skill.

A union does not prevent you from leaving your job for another employer. Why would you think that?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#137

Post by dymk »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #127
rajin444 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Convincing staunch anti union folks that a union would help them is like trying to convince a Southern Baptist god doesn't exist. You don't bother, you organize folks who recognize the benefit and understand the tradeoffs, people who don't think of them as individual exceptionalists. Wanting better pay and benefits for workers is an agenda, and if making that clear isn't enough (even after accounting for a cons of co…

You'd be mistaken to think I'm some staunch anti-union person - I think it's great that these warehouse workers unionized! I think the benefits far outweigh the cons for them.

Difference between them and myself is, we work completely different jobs, in completely different markets, with completely different incentives.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#138

Post by zjaffee »

morelish wrote: post #124
zjaffee wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC is one of amazon's largest markets, and this is the biggest warehouse in the city. There are 8300 employees in the bargaining group which doesn't include management, engineers who do repair work for the robotics and so on. They cannot afford to close this shop, and it's obviously playing a big role as to why this location has successfully unionized while the location in Alabama has not.

May the opposite be the case? If Amazon really wants to prevent unions appearing in their employment relations, doesn't Amazon need to close this down now? I'm not saying that's good. But I'm saying Amazon might think it can't afford to let the employees unionise.

It's a matter of near totally shutting down their operations in NYC or not, a place where Amazon is currently the largest retailer. They might be able to stop gap it by sending all their packages in NYC through UPS/USPS, but it would be a major disruption to their operations.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#139

Post by vkou »

hedora wrote: post #5
BuckRogers wrote: post #3

I have some family members that work at Amazon, my understanding is that the conditions at Amazon are hard to pin down because some warehouses are run just fine and others are abusive. That said, everyone working a job has a right to a union. Whether there's workplace abuse going on or not. All human endeavors are corrupt, including gov't, business, and occasionally unions. Collective bargaining is something I wish I…

Everyone should have the right to collective bargaining. The US is a closed shop country, which means that, once a union is in place, it has an effective monopoly for the workers that work for one of its companies. If we switched to open shop, then unions would have to compete for membership. Of course, the existing unions are strongly against this. As an end result, everyone I know that's been a union member in the…

Weird, of the ~15 people I know who have been in unions, exactly two of them have been unhappy with them.

Meanwhile, of the hundreds of people I know, most of them have been unhappy with their employers at one point or another...

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#140

Post by xibo9 »

dymk wrote: post #87
jefurii wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you advocating this course of action?

It seems like somebody like you has to pop in and imply (accuse) a commenter of being anti-labor or whatever, whenever it's pointed out that unions can have downsides. Unions have upsides, and downsides. Discussing them helps people make good decisions. Pretending it's all flowers and rainbows does not.

I don't believe he did what you're claiming. Please keep the strawmen at home and undamaged.
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