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Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

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Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#201

Post by 908B64B197 »

jleyank wrote: post #197

They might want to be somewhat careful here so as to not piss off the provincial government. As a foreign, anglophone company, I’m sure there’s a rule or inspection they can produce if they need to to make Amazon’s life miserable. And they won’t care if Amazon leaves.

> They might want to be somewhat careful here so as to not piss off the provincial government. As a foreign, anglophone company, I’m sure there’s a rule or inspection they can produce if they need to to make Amazon’s life miserable.

I don't think the government will get involved at all. Seems they had these specific labor laws for decades. It'll just go to court and get settled there.

I doubt Amazon are the first to try skirting these.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#202

Post by mabbo »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #168
mabbo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadians do not refer to themselves as "American" in the same way that the Irish don't refer to themselves as "British" despite living in the "British Isles". If you insist on calling a Canadian "American", you'll quickly find they stop inviting you to social events. Because we're polite, but a bit passive aggressive. Edit: grammar fixes.

I agree with your main point, but I'm not sure the analogy totally works. People sometimes confuse "British" with meaning from Great Britain or from the U.K. I would guess that plenty of Irishmen would take exception to having their island treated as a de facto part of the U.K.

That's the point I'm making.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#203

Post by 908B64B197 »

mabbo wrote: post #147
rob74 wrote: post #2

Quoted post unavailable.

Canadians do not refer to themselves as "American" in the same way that the Irish don't refer to themselves as "British" despite living in the "British Isles". If you insist on calling a Canadian "American", you'll quickly find they stop inviting you to social events. Because we're polite, but a bit passive aggressive. Edit: grammar fixes.

> If you insist on calling a Canadian "American", you'll quickly find they stop inviting you to social events. Because we're polite, but a bit passive aggressive.

Yet there has been a record number of Canadians moving to the US and getting American Citizenship, despite the last administration.

So a lot wish they were called "American".

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#204

Post by adam-a »

missedthecue wrote: post #189
dools wrote: post #34

Unions and vaccines are similar in that they are a collective action against which people only complain due to their effectiveness. That is to say, all the libertarians complaining about unions and vaccines can do so comfortably only because they have never been exposed to the horrors they helped to prevent .

People "only" complain due to their effectiveness? OPEC is also a union, have I no grounds to complain about them? What about when meat packing companies cartelize together to raise their incomes? Competition is a good thing whether in labor or oil or chicken markets.

What are you talking about? OPEC is not a labour union, which is clearly what’s being discussed here. You may as well say a horse is a duck because they both shit.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#205

Post by andrepd »

ETH_start wrote: post #124
andrepd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, imagine a website publishing opinion pieces with diverse viewpoints, some of which you find repulsive... I fail to see how that is relevant for this particular article.

The founder of the magazine defended the Berlin Wall and the killing of the surrendered Romanov children.

I for one am glad that freedom of speech exists (in practice as well as theory) and that people can express those two opinions, one of which I agree with and the other which I don't :)

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#206

Post by jleyank »

jhbadger wrote: post #200
jleyank wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yank. Historically based, no ambiguity.

There's a lot of ambiguity. Yes, many people outside the US use the term to refer to people from the US in general, but technically Yanks/Yankees are only the people from New England (the Northeastern US states). Someone from the US South or West aren't Yankees.

I thought this was referring to us-ians outside the us. Granted there are regional differences inside that are unknown outside. But to the rest of the English speaking world, yank is from the us. And Canadians aren’t Americans, Scots aren’t British or English and only a smaller portion of the Irish won’t get real offended if they’re not called Irish.

Significant differences between Quebec and the rest of Canada but unless they’ve visited they probably going to lump them all as Canadians. Pro tip: try not to do this, listen for the accent.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#207

Post by mabbo »

photochemsyn wrote: post #180

The general issue with the largest employers in the neoliberalized countries (Amazon, Walmart) relative to the outsourced sectors (manufacturing mainly) is that wages are now much lower for the blue-collar worker, who is now doing service/shipping (~$15/hr -> ~$30k/yr) rather than manufacturing (~$30/hr -> ~$60k/yr). Amazon employs about one million people in the United States, and unionization and collective bargain…

Amazon as a whole is profitable, but AWS subsidizes the rest. Amazon retail loses money because it's constantly undercutting competitors, and investing heavily in further CapEx to reduce costs.

If they had to pay living wages to those employees, they would stop being able to undercut every other business.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#208

Post by gedy »

effingwewt wrote: post #188
gedy wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mirrors real life interactions with union organizers in my family (as workers). Anything less than rah rah the union you get shunned and ostracized as some business shill. These bullying tactics are why I avoid unions.

Lol ah, yes, Amazon is the good guy here and magically it's now the union organizers who are harassing employees. Just when I thought my eyes couldn't roll any harder.

I'm no fan of Amazon. QED

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#209

Post by phabricator »

weberer wrote: post #156
phabricator wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base salary or total compensation? Do you have any data or reason to believe "unionized European programmers don't get paid nearly the same as un-unionized American ones?"

https://qubit-labs.com/average-software-developer-salaries-s...

That's just a list of average salary by country.

Does it show which of these are "UNIONIZED European programmers" and how many are "NON-UNION Americans?" If not, we can dismiss the claim outright.

Re: Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal

#210

Post by [deleted] »

photochemsyn wrote: post #191
missedthecue wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon net income is less than $30B. They also do not pay dividends.

I'd expect that an across-the-board increase in Amazon prices would be a side effect of unionization and wage increases, perhaps by 10%. I don't think that this would reduce consumer demand much, however, or make Amazon a non-viable concern.

[deleted]
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