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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

#141

Post by d1sxeyes »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #17

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…

I also laughed at the following:

'Can a union guarantee [...] better wages?' 'No [...] only Amazon can make commitments about [...] your wages.'

And then a paragraph later

'You may end up with more, the same, or less'.

So, if Amazon are the only people who can make commitments, why would you negotiate for me to earn less... unless it's not really my interests you have at heart in the first place.

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

#142

Post by chordalkeyboard »

danShumway wrote: post #134
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

> Which is determined by a combination of your profit margin and your volume.

Yes, and a lower margin keeps the volume high by making it more difficult for people to compete.

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

Yeah the amount of profit impacts the decision to issue a dividend.

> 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?

No, and no.

> 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.

Look, its clear that you have a perspective and you’re not interested in other perspectives. Good, do you.

> 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’m not talking about what its worth, but what it sells for. My point has as much to do with accounting as it does economics.

> 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.

And so it is disingenuous to push unions as though they will help workers out when you know you’re actually helping convince amazon to replace them.

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

#143

Post by La1n »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #111
La1n wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In fact, by twisting a business so that it is run for the benefit of the employees instead of for the mutual benefit of employees, employer, and customers, they destroy value. An union negotiates/help negotiate, an employer would never run it's business if there was no benefit for them. Do you really believe that unions make it so only employees and not the employer benefit?

> Do you really believe that unions make it so only employees and not the employer benefit? If the employer doesn’t accrue some marginal benefit, he’ll liquidate his investment if he is able. So he has to get something, and a good parasite will make sure not to kill the host.

You could say the exact same from the employers side. They would love to pay people nothing if they could, but they need to make sure the employee gains the minimum benefit to keep them working.

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

#144

Post by La1n »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #131
lefrenchy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sam…

>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.

I haven't seen any evidence that this actually happens to a significant degree, could you link a study on it? Cause as far as I have read the inflation cause by minimum wage increases is relatively minimal, especially compared the the increase in income.

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

#145

Post by flower-giraffe »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #133
flower-giraffe wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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

My point is that you may be confusing the ability to perform a function efficiently with the ability to perform a function that less people can do.

I don’t think many here would define a VBA/Excel analyst that knows the data model and how to access a bunch of legacy platforms to produce a criterial report each month as high performing - but they’re scarce and difficult to replace.

>It is equitable precisely because those skills are scarce.

My use of the use of equitable was as a synonym for fair.

I don’t think it’s fair that those who work in higher risk or less fulfilling jobs should be paid half as much. There are credible arguments about why it’s justified , but I don’t think there are any tenable arguments that it is fair.

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

#146

Post by d1sxeyes »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #137
door100 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I’d appreciate it if you’d understand that I’m free to negotiate and don’t attempt to take that from me

No-one is trying to do that (at least, not at this stage, and any attempt to do so would be subject to at least a second vote). You are welcome to simply not join the union if you feel it doesn't represent your interests.

> 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.

Leaving aside the fact that is perfectly possible for a union to negotiate performance-based pay and/or bonuses, I would be interested to think what you think a fair productivity:pay ratio would be for a worker in an Amazon fulfillment centre. Currently, I understand employees are held to such high productivity targets as a matter of course that many of them are afraid to take bathroom breaks in case their productivity dips and they end up getting fired.

This seems to be a valid fear - I couldn't find anything for Alabama, but in Baltimore, Amazon fire around 10% of their workforce annually for failing to meet performance targets. I wasn't able to find any documentation of bonuses or higher pay for higher performance, only the 15.30 USD starting wage, but if anyone has evidence that compensation is higher for high performers, I'd be happy to see that.

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

This question doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why are you asking this?

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

#147

Post by chordalkeyboard »

La1n wrote: post #144
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sam…

>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. I haven't seen any evidence that this actually happens to a significant degree, could you link a study on it? Cause as far as I have read the inflation cause by minimum wage increases is relatively minimal, especially compared the the increase in income.

> I haven't seen any evidence that this actually happens to a significant degree, could you link a study on it?

No and I’m not aware of a study that shows this, and although there may be one out there arguing one way or the other I’d be inclined to disregard it because a claim like “ceteris paribus bids on scarce resources drive up the price” isn’t empirically testable because ceteris is never paribus. Whatever study that argues anything of this nature is required to use a theory to interpret data and the theory that “prices are the emergent result of repeated bid-ask transactions between interested parties” is more basic than whatever theory they are going to use in those (hypothetical) studies. I’d be happy to entertain objections to my statement.

> Cause as far as I have read the inflation cause by minimum wage increases is relatively minimal, especially compared the the increase in income.

I’m not arguing that they will always end up with less money. I’m asserting that the increase in wage will all go to consumption goods/services that are provided by profitable businesses owned by “the rich and/or wealthy” and so the minimum wage earners will stay at subsistence level but the people who already own assets will profit.

The relative motion of various prices is the result of many complicated factors and its likely that increased profits for the providers of these goods/services would cause more firms to enter the market and there would be more of these consumption items than before. But the people who own businesses would keep accumulating profit and the people at minimum wage would keep spending their entire paychecks on consumption items.

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

#148

Post by steve_adams_86 »

Meph504 wrote: post #117
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in Canada, but I work an hourly contract with no explicit vacation time. By law I need to be paid some minimum amount to cover the bare minimum of vacation time (4% of my wage, I think) but ultimately if I’m on vacation, I’m not going to get a pay cheque.

maybe there is a language thing here buy you said you are on an hourly contract? Are you employed by this company as a full time employee, or are you a contractor? In the U.S. at least, this is a night and day difference so I guess that is why I am trying to get clarification on that.

I’m an employee, but my hours aren’t set. I can work no hours or forty in a week. I was a contractor before, but this arrangement made it easier to add other forms of compensation besides wages to our agreement. It’s an atypical arrangement.

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

#149

Post by chordalkeyboard »

flower-giraffe wrote: post #145
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>I’m defining “high performance” to include those sorts of persons. My point is that you may be confusing the ability to perform a function efficiently with the ability to perform a function that less people can do. I don’t think many here would define a VBA/Excel analyst that knows the data model and how to access a bunch of legacy platforms to produce a criterial report each month as high performing - but they’re s…

> I don’t think many here would define a VBA/Excel analyst that knows the data model and how to access a bunch of legacy platforms to produce a criterial report each month as high performing - but they’re scarce and difficult to replace.

I didn’t mean to debate semantics with you and I can see how my language provoked that. My claim is that a scarce, difficult to replace employee deserves more money because of their scarcity and difficulty in being replaced.

> I don’t think it’s fair that those who work in higher risk or less fulfilling jobs should be paid half as much. There are credible arguments about why it’s justified , but I don’t think there are any tenable arguments that it is fair.

I believe its fair. In fact I believe its unfair not to do so. Rather than debate the fairness, I’m more interested in if you think fairness is objective or intersubjective?

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

#150

Post by chordalkeyboard »

batiudrami wrote: post #112
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pay their employees so much that they only make $1k/employee in profit. The dues on top of whatever useless shit the union negotiates for could put amazon back into the read without any benefit for anyone except union officials. Pleade strike the first sentence of this comment, thanks.

No, they agressively undercut competitors (to attempt to force them out of the market) so much that they only make $1k/employee profit. What a ridiculous narrative you're trying to push.

> they agressively undercut competitors (to attempt to force them out of the market) so much

That they provide excellent value to consumers. Indeed the recent pandemic would have been much worse without them.

> What a ridiculous narrative you're trying to push.

Maybe try understanding others’ perspectives instead of ridiculing them.

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