SO, that explains the business case behind the pay raise just fine. Reducing the $ 4.2 billion stock based compensation (2017 figures) and giving the blue collor workers an added sense of stability. In Germany, one of the main complaints used by Unions was that RSUs and bonuses are not what workers want. So both problems solved, kind of.
Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises
181–190 of 245 posts
Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A company doesn't become adversarial with its workforce because of unions; a company is forced to treat its workforce more as an equal because of unions. I'm not convinced. My brother's work has a warehouse. The warehouse unionized (a large push by two folks who are no longer there). Most of the warehouse workers are now making _less_ than they were before due to union dues. There are guys that my brother would lov…
So who's running the union? Some measure of nonsensicality exists here in the idea of a union composed entirely of warehouse workers that is somehow magically acting against the best interests of those warehouse workers.
>> Some measure of nonsensicality exists here in the idea of a union composed entirely of warehouse workers that is somehow magically acting against the best interests of those warehouse workers.
...is this hard to believe? This happens all the time with unions. Professional sports unions fall for this all the time, most notably Major League Baseball and the National Football League. The former butchered their negotiations so bad in the last Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that they screwed themselves out of hundreds of millions of dollars due to their own ineptitude and the latter settled a concussion lawsuit that didn't require ownership to admit that they negligently and criminally lied about the safety (or lack thereof) of union members at their job.
Unions regularly act against their own interests; rarely do they have legal/arbitration representation nearly as good as ownership, and this is only one factor that causes it. Oftentimes they have leadership that prioritizes the needs of the few (seniority) over the needs of the many, or are just outright corrupt.
Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
the power of a union is the ability of its workers to withhold labor. this would make unions ineffective and I'm not sure what the upside is other than an aversion to monopolies.
The actual true power of unions is to restrict entry to the trade. A union that is adversarial to employers may achieve some insignificant pay increases. But the only truly successful unions when it comes to improving pay and working conditions have exclusively done so through limiting entry to the profession, think the AMA, ALPA, Bar Associations.
Professional sports unions are also very good examples of this as well.
Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If most of the workers are making less now, why would they vote to unionize? You seem to be confusing the direction of time...
What we're the expected benefits of joining the union that they didn't get then? For instance in most low level jobs I've had like that, just getting a consistent schedule would be worth half the hourly wage, without a bonus all. You'd be able to have a life or a second job. When you don't have a union you get companies ignoring even basics like that and doing random scheduling with leaves you with the inability to d…
Something we also take for granted in the tech world is companies running on ridiculously high net margins. Apple, for instance, makes about $400,000 in profit per employee. They could literally give every single one of their 123,000 workers a $200k raise and still be making tens of billions of dollars in profit per year. Now let's consider WalMart, the largest employer in the US and one many have chastised for poor pay. The make a bit less than $4,300 in profit per employee. And that's one of the largest companies in the world that can take advantage of economy of scale to push their profit margins as high as possible.
Most companies operate on very thin margins, made up for by scale. Selling $300 hardware for $1000 is, fortunately, an exception rather than the rule. But what this means is that unions are not going to suddenly send major benefits towards employees, because the companies simply do not have the money for these benefits. Factor in the frequently unreasonably high union fees and unions are often going to be a negative overall outcome at many companies. For instance the united autoworkers union demands 30 hours of pay, or 1.44% (which is 30/2080) of your annual pay in dues per year. So in other words workers would need to see an extra 30 hours of pay or a ~1.5% raise, just to break even.
But many people don't consider economic realities when they believe they can get more stuff. If you had a national vote on enacting a $50/hour minimum wage you'd have tens of millions people vote for it even though it would lead not only to their direct unemployment, but also throwing the entire nation into complete chaos and crashing the US and world economies as well. For instance you regularly see things like employees trying to unionize at companies that are operating in the red. What exactly do they think is going to be the outcome there?
Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises
#185This will help with recruitment, but the sentiment that new workers will essentially get paid the same as older workers is going to immediately be a big sticking point. From watching the Boeing union strikes over many years, I get the sense that once a labor force unionizes they setup their own structure for pay and get that signed off -- where they have seniority and things like that. But it also means the company b…
And please, oh please, add in an a high bar of performance. Many non-trade unions are notorious for dwindling down quality of work output.
Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
A company doesn't become adversarial with its workforce because of unions; a company is forced to treat its workforce more as an equal because of unions. The adversarial nature of the relationship between a workforce and its company is not a result of unions, it exists without unions. It's just that, without unions, companies are free to largely ignore the demands of individual workers. Control over compensation and…
This is not always true. For example, the union relationship with Eastern Airline, where the union decided that it was better to eventually kill the airline in exchange for a better contract today. (Reference - Hard Landing by Thomas Petzinger). Unions are yet another human organization. Like all human organizations, it in-enviably becomes about sustaining itself, and that sustaining and power structure can become as…
> the union relationship with Eastern Airline, where the union decided that it was better to eventually kill the airline in exchange for a better contract today.
Articles from the time paint a different picture. They claim it was mismanagement that caused the bankruptcy of the airline - not union intervention. See https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/20/us/eastern-airlines-broug..., https://www.jstor.org/stable/20713006?seq=1#metadata_info_ta... or https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1060&co...
Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises
#187This will help with recruitment, but the sentiment that new workers will essentially get paid the same as older workers is going to immediately be a big sticking point. From watching the Boeing union strikes over many years, I get the sense that once a labor force unionizes they setup their own structure for pay and get that signed off -- where they have seniority and things like that. But it also means the company b…
A company doesn't become adversarial with its workforce because of unions; a company is forced to treat its workforce more as an equal because of unions. The adversarial nature of the relationship between a workforce and its company is not a result of unions, it exists without unions. It's just that, without unions, companies are free to largely ignore the demands of individual workers. Control over compensation and…
(Not arguing about benefits or usefulness of unions)
As an organization unions have the same prime directive as every other organization, survive (and grow). One of the ways of a union to survive (and grow) is to demonstrate that it takes action and to be adversarial. So many unions tend to be adversarial. In Germany in the past especially smaller unions were highly adversarial to gain ground against larger unions in the same company ("grow").
Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises
#188SO, that explains the business case behind the pay raise just fine. Reducing the $ 4.2 billion stock based compensation (2017 figures) and giving the blue collor workers an added sense of stability. In Germany, one of the main complaints used by Unions was that RSUs and bonuses are not what workers want. So both problems solved, kind of.
I thought the main complaint is that Amazon regards it's warehouse staff categorized as logistics, while the unions want them categorized as (higher paid) retail.
Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises
#189This will help with recruitment, but the sentiment that new workers will essentially get paid the same as older workers is going to immediately be a big sticking point. From watching the Boeing union strikes over many years, I get the sense that once a labor force unionizes they setup their own structure for pay and get that signed off -- where they have seniority and things like that. But it also means the company b…
unions should be for labor what HR is for the company - a single force with a comparatively large negotiating power instead of a thousand individual non-professional negotiators. it doesn't always look like this and this is a problem that unions have.
Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers Lose Bonuses, Stock Awards for Raises
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry, are you suggesting there should be no pay differentiation for performance at all?
No, I'm suggesting that management and the union seem to disagree on who exactly has the higher performance in this situation.
The only union experience I have was that the whole concept of performance based compensation was something to fight to the teeth (in France, 12y ago). The pay structure was almost exclusively seniority-based.