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Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]

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Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]

#21

Post by lr4444lr »

YouTube comments are usually a cesspool, but sometimes a real gem makes it through, like this:

  > notices another worker says "grievance"
  > i was trained for this
  > i run to the hrm 
  > i twist my ankle jumping over my piss bottles
  > i struggle to limp through the warehouse as the other 
  workers have to push me over so the make their times.
  > i fall over from heat exhaustion because the hvac has 
  never worked
  > finally at the hrm 
  > i get fired before i can report the red scourge

Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]

#22

Post by mirimir »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #19

If Amazon's work force unionizes, Amazon will cease to be a dynamic company that sees rapid foreign expansion and growth in export revenue it earns for the US. The US will see yet another major driver of innovation and production growth, this time the tech industry, succumb to social activists and their rent-seeking-motivated ideological narratives. A century of pro-union-monopoly advocacy will not change the fact th…

A century of pro-corporation-monopoly advocacy will not change the fact that corporations as generally conceived are anti-market interventions and thus economically unsound.

Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]

#23

Post by harimau777 »

cameronbrown wrote: post #10
ggm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The principle is sound but sometimes the implementation is weak"? A question to ask is perhaps, if a Mondragon workers cooperative should have a union?

Devil's Advocate: If there are so many examples of weak implementations, then is the principle therefore unsound?

I think there are at least an equal number of cases where a company without a union took advantage of their employees.

Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]

#24

Post by noego »

icxa wrote: post #4

Absurdity of this video aside, but I just wish there was room in today's political environment to discuss pros and cons to unions and non-unions. There are some pretty good examples of unions being corrupt, there are examples where unions work. There are examples where like Amazon says, having a direct relationship with your employer is the best. Nuance is gone which is the biggest loss.

> I just wish there was room in today's political environment to discuss pros and cons to unions and non-unions

I agree with this from both perspectives. Companies and business-owners should also be allowed to espouse anti-union arguments without automatically being tagged as "evil" or subjected to extra scrutiny.

That said, you're certainly not going to find a nuanced debate in a ... training video. The purpose of this video is literally for the company to train their employees, not to serve as a forum for debating the pros and cons of unions.

Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]

#25

Post by chr1 »

nyolfen wrote: post #13
cameronbrown wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil's Advocate: If there are so many examples of weak implementations, then is the principle therefore unsound?

is it pointless to attempt democracy when so many democratic states are corrupt?

Not a good comparison because democratic states are consistently better than non-democratic ones, so we have evidence that democracy is an improvement compared to other methods.

Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]

#27

Post by lr4444lr »

wrong_variable wrote: post #5

Organized labor was extremely problematic for capital since WW2. The new dealers ( FDR, Truman ) gave organized labor tremendous power because without it the USA would probably have had a big communist party. They also knew the deflationary period of the 1930s lead to the rise of fascism and nationalism in Europe. So the petty greed of capital was scarified at the altar to maintain peace. They were also willing to sa…

I don't think that is correct. My understanding of American union activity was that it was much less associated with communist movements than Europe, in large part because of its history with machine politics and various ethnic affinities.

The real problem with American unions is its bloody fight against suppression in the late 19th century. American labor relations with management are war compared to Europe and Asia.

Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]

#28

Post by dahfizz »

nyolfen wrote: post #13
cameronbrown wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil's Advocate: If there are so many examples of weak implementations, then is the principle therefore unsound?

is it pointless to attempt democracy when so many democratic states are corrupt?

No, but perhaps we should recognize the common errors of implementation and use that to improve the concept of democracy.

It's not that this state or that state is corrupt. It's that democracy is vulnerable to corruption, so we should have systems in place to guard against that.

Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]

#29

Post by [deleted] »

dahfizz wrote: post #28
nyolfen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it pointless to attempt democracy when so many democratic states are corrupt?

No, but perhaps we should recognize the common errors of implementation and use that to improve the concept of democracy. It's not that this state or that state is corrupt. It's that democracy is vulnerable to corruption, so we should have systems in place to guard against that.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]

#30

Post by CryptoPunk »

mirimir wrote: post #22
CryptoPunk wrote: post #19

If Amazon's work force unionizes, Amazon will cease to be a dynamic company that sees rapid foreign expansion and growth in export revenue it earns for the US. The US will see yet another major driver of innovation and production growth, this time the tech industry, succumb to social activists and their rent-seeking-motivated ideological narratives. A century of pro-union-monopoly advocacy will not change the fact th…

A century of pro-corporation-monopoly advocacy will not change the fact that corporations as generally conceived are anti-market interventions and thus economically unsound.

Corporations as generally conceived are not anti-market interventions. A union backed by the state imposing a rule that violates an employer's contracting rights by 1. preventing them from negotiating with workers outside of the union, 2. preventing them from firing workers who unionize or strike and replacing them with new workers, is.

These are blatant anti-market interventions that give any group of workers that unionize an effective state-backed monopoly over their employer's labor force.

The conspiratorial narratives about opposition to such state-backed monopolies being nothing more than Big Business trying to mislead and exploit the little guy, and such monopolies being in the public interest, is nothing more than economic quackery, on par with anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories about vaccination being a harmful practice that is only widely promoted because of the nefarious influence of Big Pharma.

The economic reality is that these rules create rent-seeking and reduce economic efficiency. They will destroy Amazon's dynamism.

Giving a select group of workers a temporary wage boost at the expense of the industry that sustains them is the same short-sighted policy implemented in the post-war era, which saw workers see large wage gains, and then saw the industries that employed them suffer massive bankruptcies and contractions.

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