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Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

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Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

#211

Post by Draiken »

max51 wrote: post #194
Draiken wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's such a bad analogy. Unions are only really brought up when people are being mistreated, underpaid, overworked, etc. People don't unionize when their needs are met (even if they should). Your analogy doesn't work even if you also include the fact that the husband has been abusing his wife as much as possible without getting caught. What they are doing is making an active effort to make sure the wife can't get t…

I think you are the one not understanding the situation. As you point out, amazon is a "profit-seeking machine". It makes perfect sense that they would not want unions. The wife-beating husband also is not going to want his wife to meet with a divorce attorneys and is certainly not going to take the initiative of hiring one for her.

Yeah it makes sense they don't want unions, but that's not the point of it. Anti-union behavior is still mostly illegal, isn't it?

There's a difference between expecting companies to help unions vs actively engage in shady behavior to avoid them.

In this case, we're describing what I consider a loophole, but it's still wrong (even putting aside the morality of it).

OP said the framing was weird, but expecting companies to not be that shitty is perfectly normal in my view. After all, we sometimes forget that at some point a human decided this was the right move.

The alternative is to normalize it and assume every company is the shittiest possible. On second thought that might be a lot closer to reality though.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

#212

Post by fma »

bfeynman wrote: post #2

This behavior of legal loopholes to discount workers should be made illegal. The definition of sub-contractor has got to change and/or have laws/policies in place that actually make sense in a sub contractor relationship. These are shell companies that spin up and exclusively deliver for amazon, they aren't gig workers delivering when they want, they have strict quotas.

Yep...This isn't really new to anyone that has any exposure to the business world that deals with actual good/services. Amazon had some program where they'd give a loan to business operator money to lease trucks, buy uniforms, etc and you get routes. The terms work out such that you make a certain amount money, almost guaranteed. To them, it's a form of insurance.

You deliver their goods. They track your performance. It's your business, but from a distance, they control everything. They have zero liability for what happens...it's not their company, their employees. But they can "union bust" by cancelling your contract. If a truck driver makes Amazon look bad, they will pressure you to fire them...even it's not their employee.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

#213

Post by ryandrake »

88913527 wrote: post #138

I'd be willing to accept a 0.25% less return annually on the S&P index if workers had meaningfully better existences. It might even increase returns if workers could be more productive by having dignified lives. This is the best way to frame thinking about things in our current macroeconomic environment.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of investors are not willing to accept anything less than "the highest possible returns legally achievable". Therefore,, everything that can legally be thrown under the bus in exchange for profit eventually gets thrown under the bus. Including workers' pay and conditions, product quality, customer service, customer privacy and security, every manageable cost. The minute one company realizes they can cut some good thing to provide a higher return, all companies will (and eventually must, due to competition) cut that thing. It's an inevitable race to the bottom.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

#214

Post by AtlasBarfed »

bfeynman wrote: post #2

This behavior of legal loopholes to discount workers should be made illegal. The definition of sub-contractor has got to change and/or have laws/policies in place that actually make sense in a sub contractor relationship. These are shell companies that spin up and exclusively deliver for amazon, they aren't gig workers delivering when they want, they have strict quotas.

Something like:

- laborers presumably have social security numbers

- if a laborer is working in the premises of a company (and a van is definitely that) WITH THE MARKETING, then you have a direct line between the worker and the company using its labor.

- if a laborer is working on a company's premises, it must report that labor for the hours.

- if the total labor for a company exceeds a "full time" trigger, then it triggers all that employment law about "full time employees" or "part time employees".

- you can have a cutoff amount for lucrative consulting that this doesn't apply to. So if your bill rate is like 100+/hr, you can be exempt from the tracking.

Basically, companies are going to utilize corporate law, limited liability, shell company obfuscation, and supplier relationships to obfuscate full time vs part time vs employee vs "contractor". This isn't really that new. Use the social security number system to break through this. Of course it relies on reporting and compliance, but there's numerous examples of big bad hammers that can be employed, especially if it tracks back to a big bad company like Amazon.

But the real issue is that government oversight of corporations is basically nonexistent except where the regulatory capture is valuable. The SEC and FTC are total jokes, the mortgage crisis showed that in plain view. So even if I come up with some good tieback mechanism, it won't work.

... unless there is a consortium of companies that will push it against Amazon, which I'm surprised hasn't happened. Everyone seems to be competing with Amazon in the marketplace, which at this point they are now monopolized. Walmart / Bestbuy / Target don't seem to be fighting in government regulation yet which is what they need to do. Likewise Azure and GCP aren't fighting AWS in antitrust either.

But I think at some point it will happen.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

#215

Post by kansface »

esalman wrote: post #204
nitwit005 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real fix is to stop tying various benefits to employment, so there'd be no need to worry about who is full time or part time, or who they work for. Unfortunately, changing most of those programs is political suicide, particularly anything health care related.

It's political suicide for Republicans. Left leaning Democrats like Bernie are all for it.

I don’t imagine it would be popular with unions, either.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

#216

Post by deelowe »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #6
bfeynman wrote: post #2

This behavior of legal loopholes to discount workers should be made illegal. The definition of sub-contractor has got to change and/or have laws/policies in place that actually make sense in a sub contractor relationship. These are shell companies that spin up and exclusively deliver for amazon, they aren't gig workers delivering when they want, they have strict quotas.

The solution is to enforce the laws we have, not feign powerlessness every time some crackerjack claims to have identified a profitable loophole.

This is why the US uses the common law system. Laws are written and the courts then interpret them. The courts should be telling these yahoos that these actions are against the intent of the law.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

#217

Post by imacomputertoo »

jtreminio wrote: post #28
bluedino wrote: post #12

I'm always amazed at the stark differences between UPS drivers, and Amazon drivers. UPS trucks are always clean. They follow the rules of the road. The drivers wear neat uniforms, they walk on the sidewalks, they're polite, they're just professionals held to a higher standard. Then there are Amazon drivers. They park blocking half the road, music blasting, the vans usually look like they haven't been washed in a mont…

> music blasting Far be it from me to say a driver can't listen to music while they are at work. > the vans usually look like they haven't been washed in a month Good. Washing work vehicles so that they are always sparkling seems like a waste of resources. > Reminds me of fast food employee who simply hands your meal out the window, no greeting, no thank you, no smile This is such a weird American fixation. Here, tak…

It might be an American thing, but I'm fine with that. Keeping it professional means having a professional attitude - smiling and being courteous. At least it does in America.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

#219

Post by CSMastermind »

esalman wrote: post #204
nitwit005 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real fix is to stop tying various benefits to employment, so there'd be no need to worry about who is full time or part time, or who they work for. Unfortunately, changing most of those programs is political suicide, particularly anything health care related.

It's political suicide for Republicans. Left leaning Democrats like Bernie are all for it.

What's to stop your local city government from increasing taxes to hire a doctor and provide them with a building and staff in order to provide medical services to locals residents?

It seems to me that the problem is that everyone wants a federal solution to healthcare and the United States is generally structured to limit federal power.

Fire departments are funded locally generally speaking, it didn't take a federal mandate to create them. If you think medical services should be provided to people as a civic service, go convince your local government to do it.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

#220

Post by bugglebeetle »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #189
bugglebeetle wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. There’s something fundamentally sadistic about American culture, I expect inherited from its legacy of slavery, where customers demand that workers perform a frightened but also “joyful” subservience to them as evidence that they’re getting their money’s worth.

This is an unbelievable take that I suspect if fueled by an over extrapolation of online culture and the news. Get a grip.

It’s fueled by my working in restaurants for ~7 years in my 20s. If you’d experienced people throwing food at you because they didn’t like how it was made, sexually harassing and hurling racist insults at your coworkers, among other, myriad abuses, you’d probably feel the same. And that’s just describing the customers, not even addressing how management behaved.

Not all of us have had the luxury to spend our lives musing about trivial things like RuneScape, in between posting on white-collar tech forums.

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