Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by colejohnson66 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #152

dalbasal wrote: post #55

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…

If employees know that discussing unionizing or showing any pro-union tendency or behavior is going to arm their career prospects (or maybe even make them lose their job altogether) it's definitely going to be a lot harder for them to organize. I can't believe people here people here manage to justify this abject behavior as "business as usual". This is not normal, not legal and shouldn't be accepted.

It’s HN. Every time there’s an article about FB going too far, everyone seems to chime in about how FB is evil and anyone who works there must be evil as well, “so what did you expect?” It’s the same with Amazon or any FAANG company, and it gets quite tiring sometimes.

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

#192

Post by detaro » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

lacker wrote: post #160

burkaman wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about it this way: both sides have the right to freely negotiate a contract, and then decide whether or not to enter into it. The CEO can't prevent the workers from talking to each other and figuring out what they think a fair contract would be, and the workers can't prevent the CEO from talking to other CEOs for the same reason. The specific human right is usually referred to as "freedom of association". You c…

By the same token, the company’s management is free to fight union creation, by sharing anti-union messages. Freedom of speech and assembly on both sides.

Sure. the complaint here is not that Amazon shared anti-union messages. (and gets murky when it tries to force employees to consume said messages)

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

#193

Post by chrisseaton » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

CamTin wrote: post #88

dnissley wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do we draw the line? What tactics are ok for a company to use to combat unions if it doesn't want them? Or should companies just accept and work with any union that forms?

> 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.

> They don't have a right to combat them at all.

This is simply not true. Amazon have a right to argue against unionisation in order to combat it.

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

#194

Post by bildung » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

dcgudeman wrote: post #106

CamTin wrote: 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?

* Where do you draw the line with what a “human right” is?*

By looking into the declaration of human rights: https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

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

#195

Post by JackFr » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

berelig wrote: post #75

ekianjo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the people who are forced to work in Amazon's warehouses with terrible working conditions don't have that luxury. Who is forced to work in Amazon's warehouses? Is Amazon rounding up people with guns everyday to make them work there?

You live in a small town with small businesses that are undercut by Amazon's price and scale. Those businesses slowly die out as everyone in your region switches to ordering online (primarily from Amazon). Amazon opens a warehouse in the region to meet the demand and is now the largest employer around. This exact transformation already happened with Wal-Mart in the 80s and 90s. Obviously no one is literally forcing w…

My life was transformed with the growth of WalMart and Amazon.

The quality, variety, convenience and price of goods available to me all improved. The Mom and Pop who had been financing their lifestyle on the backs of the rural poor were forced out of business. I feel a little bad for them, but it seems wrong to elevate them over the rest of the population.

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

#196

Post by djsumdog » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

berelig wrote: post #75

ekianjo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the people who are forced to work in Amazon's warehouses with terrible working conditions don't have that luxury. Who is forced to work in Amazon's warehouses? Is Amazon rounding up people with guns everyday to make them work there?

You live in a small town with small businesses that are undercut by Amazon's price and scale. Those businesses slowly die out as everyone in your region switches to ordering online (primarily from Amazon). Amazon opens a warehouse in the region to meet the demand and is now the largest employer around. This exact transformation already happened with Wal-Mart in the 80s and 90s. Obviously no one is literally forcing w…

I stopped shopping at Wal-Mart around 2009 and haven't bought anything of Amazon's website since 2016 (I still bought Whole Foods and Woot for a bit, but I've cut those out too).

Newegg is a better place for parts, why use the Amazon stores for B&H and Adorama when you can .. just go to the websites for B&H and Adorama?!

I wrote this a while back. Amazon's has turned into a platform that's basically killed all the other parts sites and competition we use to have:

https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-death-of-the-mom-and-pop-...

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

#197

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #183

_wldu wrote: 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.

[deleted]

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

#198

Post by TurkishPoptart » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

harlanji wrote: post #127

eropple wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$16 per hour, at 2000 hours a year, is $32,000. The poverty line in the United States is around $26,000. "Slightly above poverty wages" is still pretty dang poor. (And to forestall the inevitable adjustment of one's pince-nez to well-actually: that it'd be median or even above-median wages somewhere else does not mean that it is not poor in America , nor that the two situations can be reasonably compared.)

I’ve been living in my car in SF for about 915 days, on less than $18k/yr take home. I’m so poor that I can barely get hired to a minimum wage job (“but you have a car,” “but you have an iPhone”). Everything I have is left over from a time when I made $200k/yr as a software engineer, and thankfully I’ve been given a lot of benefit of the doubt given my upstanding ways. (I was slandered, so people I meet see a good gu…

You've been slandered by whom?

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

#199

Post by Semaphor » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #190

Semaphor wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whomeve…

I meant the other view, the one the person I replied to was hinting at. The one that doesn't make it seen like a horrible thing for society.

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

#200

Post by qsort » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #166

Conlectus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What tactics are ok for a company to combat unions? None. This is a legally protected right.

> None. This isn't a true statement. Companies are allowed to argue against unionisation. In the US isn't it even a constitutionally protected right to do so?

There's a huge difference between "argue against" and "actively try to sabotage".

Here (Italy) unionization is a constitutionally protected right. My employer can try to persuade me not to join one, but is absolutely not allowed to retaliate against me if I do, discriminate basing on union membership, etc.