Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’ • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by umvi » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #128

umvi wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then they should help local unions (not that local unions would be useful for, say Amazon or Walmart) become a thing and give them incentives not to become part of a big union. Or, even easier, just pay your workers well, give them decent benefits, and do union busting to prevent them from forming in your company. Why outsource treating workers well to a bureaucratic middleman when you can just treat workers well y…

>Or, even easier, just pay your workers well, give them decent benefits, and do union busting to prevent them from forming. Never going to happen, there will always be a point where the company will try to minimize worker salaries as far as it can get away with. >Wouldn't that corrupt union leadership over time? No, you would pay employees using profits in part, and implicate them into the decision-making process. Th…

> Never going to happen, there will always be a point where the company will try to minimize worker salaries as far as it can get away with.

I disagree. Not every company is public, first of all. So not every company is beholden to shareholders who demand endless growth at any cost. There are lots of private companies that are content with the size they are at, and with the revenue they are generating and aren't tempted to start squeezing their employees.

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

#142

Post by umvi » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

csb6 wrote: post #129

umvi wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still discouraging to see the lack of education HNers have on unions. Maybe ignorance is a better word. In theory unions are great. In practice America's implementation of unions end up as a crappy caricature of the theoretical one and are nothing like their European counterparts.

Maybe recently, with many American unions struggling just to survive, but historically (in the late 1800s to middle 1900s) American unions have been incredibly effective and pioneering.

> but historically (in the late 1800s to middle 1900s) American unions have been incredibly effective

So basically unions were good for ~50 years until the Mafia infiltrated the Teamsters?

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

#143

Post by badRNG » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

tehjoker wrote: post #101

reading-at-work wrote: post #17

Not surprised. Tech companies (Facebook and Google in this case, and probably others) have been known to retain Pinkerton agents to monitor employees. Yes, those Pinkertons. “Among other services, Pinkerton offers to send investigators to coffee shops or restaurants near a company’s campus to eavesdrop on employees’ conversations.” https://newrepublic.com/article/147619/pinkertons-still-neve...

Everyone that likes the New Deal should thank the union organizers and socialists that literally had to fight police in the streets to force the hand of the state. A large enough faction of the capitalists back then agreed to reforms because they feared things were going the way of revolution. In the 1930s, the 1917 revolution in Russia was a recent memory that scared the piss out of them. Bezos would like to continu…

While I don't think getting bogged down in a political discussion here is a good idea (and I don't necessarily disagree,) I do think it is interesting how ignorant Americans often are of the many literal battles in the war for humane working conditions.

It might be worth reading about how workers were bombed and gunned down during the labor movement (late 19th, early 20th centuries) in the US, notably the Battle of Blair Mountain [1]. Here is a good history of the different full battles waged in the late 19th and early 20th century by bosses and the police [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence_in_the_Uni...

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

#144

Post by hyko » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #105

chrisseaton wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know of anyone who disputes the killing of Wilkie happened or claims that it was somehow exaggerated. As a taxi driver he was also not a police officer or an agent of the state. He was not armed or causing violence to anyone. He was just driving someone who didn't agree with the union to work. So they killed him.

They dropped a concrete block on his car. It wasn't attempted murder it was attempted property damage. So, yes, they killed him and were rightly imprisoned for manslaughter.

I guess we can all agree that it wasn’t an attempted murder.

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

#145

Post by Nacdor » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

refresher wrote: post #48

The relevant excerpts from the job listings: >Analysts must be capable of engaging and informing L7+ ER Principals (attorney stakeholders) on sensitive topics that are highly confidential, including labor organizing threats against the company, establish and track funding and activities connected to corporate campaigns (internal and external) against Amazon, and provide sophisticated analysis on these topics >Analyst…

> labor organizing threats against the company

If anyone needed confirmation that unions are beneficial to employees, Amazon just handed it to them on a silver platter.

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

#146

Post by sudosysgen » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #141

sudosysgen wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or, even easier, just pay your workers well, give them decent benefits, and do union busting to prevent them from forming. Never going to happen, there will always be a point where the company will try to minimize worker salaries as far as it can get away with. >Wouldn't that corrupt union leadership over time? No, you would pay employees using profits in part, and implicate them into the decision-making process. Th…

> Never going to happen, there will always be a point where the company will try to minimize worker salaries as far as it can get away with. I disagree. Not every company is public, first of all. So not every company is beholden to shareholders who demand endless growth at any cost. There are lots of private companies that are content with the size they are at, and with the revenue they are generating and aren't temp…

But that's not the issue. The issue is competition. Eventually, you have to cut costs in order to be competitive even if you're very nice, and if you read business administration textbooks cutting employee compensation is often the primary way.

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

#147

Post by imglorp » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

imcoconut wrote: post #131

imglorp wrote: post #97

> The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 is a foundational statute of United States labor law which guarantees basic rights of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining for better terms and conditions at work, and take collective action including strike if necessary. It's truly late stage capitalism if companies can impede labor organizing so brazenly in public like thi…

do have the link(s) for that Boeing thread?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24305067

The whole thread is interesting.

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

#148

Post by Jasper_ » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

hoorayimhelping wrote: post #13

This article is ridiculous. It makes a bunch of unfounded assumptions and provides very little in the way of facts to support its claims. Did anyone actually read the job postings before jumping to conclusions? > Monitor various collection platforms for incidents that pose direct and indirect risk to Amazon operations, personnel, or brand; There is nothing in there about union busting or making sure employees don't o…

> There is nothing in there about union busting or making sure employees don't organize.

Literally from your own link:

> Analysts must be capable of engaging and informing L7+ ER Principals (attorney stakeholders) on sensitive topics that are highly confidential, including labor organizing threats against the company

(emphasis mine)

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

#149

Post by mikestew » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 7:00 PM UTC

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…

And, coincidentally, should you ask a person making such statements I am confident that they will place themselves firmly in the "excel" category. Ignoring, of course, that self-categorization does little good when Jobs is calling up Schmidt (wait, calling would be the smart move; they documented it in email instead) to say, "hey, you don't hire our workers, and we won't hire yours. Win, win!" Where's your meritocracy now? I'm not going to say a union would have prevented that particular incident, but a union would carry more weight saying, "remember that shit you and $OTHER_COMPANY pulled last year? Yeah, well, to prevent such things in the future..." than some IC in her manager's office where the manager holds all of the cards.

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

#150

Post by dforrestwilson » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 7:01 PM UTC

beeboop wrote: post #130

colinmhayes wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, capitalism is awful, but it's by far the best idea we've got.

Please, go on and continue the propaganda about how socialism and communism doesn't work. Please point to failed nations/states that had communism and explain how they failed due to communism and that it definitely wasn't anything else.

What are you suggesting?