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Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

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Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#181
post #145

In 1920 Appalachia, coal companies owned all the land, the homes and stores. They also paid workers with their own special money (that was useless everywhere else). The security companies they hired where armed and violent towards miners and their families. https://explorepartsunknown.com/west-virginia/coal-minings-d... Today, people can tour these old towns and learn the history of how the coal companies trapped and…

This is where the Tennessee Ernie Ford song comes from, "Sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don't call me cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store."

There was an episode of South Park last season where they played this song as a backdrop to Amazon workers in a warehouse.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#182
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...so far. Other countries have some mechanisms - legal and cultural - in place that have resisted the creep of capitalist power concentration better than the U.S. has. But I'm pessimistic - I think globally we'll continue to see taxes cut, social safety nets dried up, and privatization of benefits, like has been happening in the UK. It just seems to be the tendency of capitalism. edit: I invite downvoters to let me…

"Because capitalism" is always a terrible argument, whatever your position. It's a very nebulous term. Does it mean free markets? Does it mean private ownership of the factors of production? Does it mean laissez-faire? Does it mean economic organization of a professional manager class, with management separated from ownership, and ownership characterized by tradeable claims on assets?

It has a specific definition that you can find by googling: "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state."

Don't assume that others are naive, imprecise, or uninformed about what capitalism is and how it affects the world, just because your own understanding of it is limited.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#183
post #145

In 1920 Appalachia, coal companies owned all the land, the homes and stores. They also paid workers with their own special money (that was useless everywhere else). The security companies they hired where armed and violent towards miners and their families. https://explorepartsunknown.com/west-virginia/coal-minings-d... Today, people can tour these old towns and learn the history of how the coal companies trapped and…

I respect a history lesson, but honestly, I think old comrade tales are not helpful.

I don't mean that it's irrelevant, strictly, but we hear more of these than 2020 tales, 2020 strategies and concerns. This is 100 year later, and despite of how many union die hards see it... most workers aren't likely to buy int a centuries long struggle. They're interested in their own lives & jobs.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#184
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I disagree that everyone should get paid a loving wage. Let's take 2 identical twins Juan and Jamal (because if you've seen Juan you've seen Jamal). In school Jamal works hard, studies, and puts his efforts first. Juan on the other hand decides football is the way to go and along with that partying, drinking and at one point gets a gal pregnant. They graduate Jamal gets several scholarships and goes to school whi…

If you need to spend several paragraphs designing a pair of strawmen to illustrate your point, consider widening your view on this. > That is good however to claim that he should get the same privileges and standing as his brother who spent years working hard giving back and making better long term choices is asinine. Nobody is complaining that minimum wage isn't the same as a software engineering salary. Just that t…

the counter point is that minimum wage is artificial. if you aren't actually providing that much value, businesses will just cut the job altogether. if you are trying to raise a large family on minimum wage, well then that's obviously a big problem, but it's highly likely to be a problem you created with your life choices.

on the other hand, if you are in high school or college, minimum wage is likely fine as it's just extra spending money. raising minimum wage significantly more than likely just kills these jobs in favor of a kiosk that can do the job just as well.

if we want to make it so that everyone can live, that is a job for gov't with things like universal healthcare, universal basic income, social safety nets. forcing businesses to pay people more for a job than the job creates in value is not a solution. in the long term those jobs will just go away completely to a technology solution.

give people a safety net so that they can not be in poverty, but don't force businesses to pay more than the market says a job is worth. kind of a silly argument on a post about amazon anyways, since they pay well above minimum wage, and in fact have campaigned on raising it (not out of the goodness of their hearts mind you, they want to put small competitors out of business and they know they can't afford a large min wage hike like amazon can)

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is basically correct that the US police descend from a mixture of slave patrol remnants and strikebusters near the late 19th / beginning of the 20th century (though sometimes in opposition to them, the initial state police ranks were still largely drawn from private police, racist "town watches", and militia forces). England and the rest of the Anglosphere adopted what are often called "Peelian principles," focuse…

Do you have sources on any of these? In the 'defunding' era, I often see this claim about the origins of police but a) it seems unlikely to be generalized (police forces in the Northern states are obviously not derived from "slave patrol remnants" and b) it seems irrelevant since whatever the police was in the past doesn't mean that's what it is today and it doesn't mean the goals or the culture are the same.

In the North, rich merchants socialized the costs of the guards they hired to protect their assets in port cities through municipalization. In the South, that wasn't the case, and the police are direct descendants from slave patrols.

From Time's "How the U.S. Got Its Police Force"[1]:

> The first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1838. Boston was a large shipping commercial center, and businesses had been hiring people to protect their property and safeguard the transport of goods from the port of Boston to other places, says Potter. These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.”

> In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system.

With regard to police originating from strike breakers, that's also true.

> For example, businessmen in the late 19th century had both connections to politicians and an image of the kinds of people most likely to go on strike and disrupt their workforce. So it’s no coincidence that by the late 1880s, all major U.S. cities had police forces. Fears of labor-union organizers and of large waves of Catholic, Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European immigrants, who looked and acted differently from the people who had dominated cities before, drove the call for the preservation of law and order, or at least the version of it promoted by dominant interests.

[1] https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#186
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What tactics are ok for a company to use to combat unions if it doesn't want them? They don't have a right to combat them at all. Union organizing is literally a human right. Of course ownership doesn't want them -- the feelings of ownership are (supposed to be) irrelevant.

It really amazes me what some people think qualifies for a “human right”. If you are paying someone and they are doing something you told them not to do isn’t it your “human right” to stop paying them? Where do you draw the line with what a “human right” is?

[deleted]

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#187
post #3

"Pinkerton: for over one-hundred years, the ones to call when you've got a union problem." I mean, that has to be their schtick, right, even if it's unspoken? Because that pretty much sums up what I know about Pinkerton, so I would assume they are happy with that. As for the topic at hand, yeah well, that's what companies do...for over one-hundred years as well.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really amazes me what some people think qualifies for a “human right”. If you are paying someone and they are doing something you told them not to do isn’t it your “human right” to stop paying them? Where do you draw the line with what a “human right” is?

Its in the UN declaration of human rights and also if you think about it, in the Declaration of Independence. "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"

> Its in the UN declaration of human rights

This is, legally speaking, a meaningless document.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who identify strongly with unions, union-busting stuff like this is triggering... like "bringing up the war" in a war traumatised nation. I get that. But... 2020 isn't 1920 or even 1980. Fresh eyes might see more clearly. To the advantage of union organisers, mass communication and organisation is a lot easier today. Surveillance is easier too. IDK. Yes, Bezos does not want an amazon union and won't just le…

> Yes, Bezos does not want an amazon union and won't just let it happen without a fight. Same as always. Which is, if I recalled correctly, illegal.

> Which is, if I recalled correctly, illegal

Retaliation against employees is illegal. Shutting down a unionised facility is not.

Re: Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common nonsense and entirely false. Corporations are treated like people for certain elements of the legal process (like the question of civil rights) because they are owned and operated by people, as a way for those people to do things together as a group (like exercising civil rights). This line is a strong indicator that you're with or have been influenced by the "I hate Citizens United" people, who never seem to…

do you have any (not too legal\dry) background reading on this? I'm not in the USA, so I might have let my biases lead me in what to believe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

A judge ruled that a corporation was a person for the purposes of granting first amendment rights to run advertisements endorsing or attacking political candidates. The Koch Brothers could then spend an unlimited amount of money attacking any candidates who proposed environmental regulations, for instance.

It essentially shifted the power in America towards whomever had the bigger megaphone and more campaign financing.

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