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Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

reuters.com

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Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#221

Post by johnvonneumann »

sliverstorm wrote: post #195
tryingagainbro wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exec salaries, golden parachutes, mistakes in management, dividends etc over the decades played no role right?

As unfair & objectionable as those things might be, quite a lot of companies seem to manage to pay their execs excessive salaries, provide golden parachutes, and pay out dividends without requiring government bailout.

However this hardly makes it ok to continue this sort of behaviour, the top boys manage to wrangle huge bonuses, yet when a group of workers asks for 5% per year, they're a bunch of monsters.

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#222

Post by ken »

oblio wrote: post #4

Now that's something I haven't heard about in the US for a few decades: strikes. I'm partly kidding, but have there been any major strikes in the US lately?

Living in Boeing's backyard, I regularly (if not frequently) hear about machinist strikes. It looks like the last big one was 2008: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_machinists_strike_of_20...

Teacher strikes are also fairly common. Seattle in 2015, and Tacoma in 2011, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Teachers_Strike_2011

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#223

Post by 35bge57dtjku »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #97
chimeracoder wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The anti-union FUD campaign in the US has contributed significantly to the erosion of middle class wages It's way more complicated than that, and it can't simply be dismissed as a "FUD campaign". Union members are actually disproportionately likely to support things like right-to-work laws, which unions dislike because it (more or less) means workers aren't obligated to be members if they choose not to. Similarly,…

> Union members are actually disproportionately likely to support things like right-to-work laws, which unions dislike because it (more or less) means workers aren't obligated to be members if they choose not to. Right-to-work laws are like prop 13 in California: sounds good on the surface, but hidden terrible impact. On the surface, "I should be able to choose whether or not I join a union" makes sense, Americans lo…

> but don't have to pay any fees

That's not true.

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#224

Post by 35bge57dtjku »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #204
09094920394314 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting this here, because I realize this poster is literally spreading FUD: you can not be fired for not joining a union in a unionized shop: http://gotfired.com/blog/2016/04/can-i-be-fired-for-not-join... >You are protected by law in all 50 states from being fired from your job for not joining a union. You can be only liable for no more than the requirement to pay either union dues or a reduced amount to work in an…

Why are you required to pay the dues if you don’t want the benefits?

You supposedly still get benefits, like wage increases.

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#225

Post by johnvonneumann »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #204
09094920394314 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting this here, because I realize this poster is literally spreading FUD: you can not be fired for not joining a union in a unionized shop: http://gotfired.com/blog/2016/04/can-i-be-fired-for-not-join... >You are protected by law in all 50 states from being fired from your job for not joining a union. You can be only liable for no more than the requirement to pay either union dues or a reduced amount to work in an…

Why are you required to pay the dues if you don’t want the benefits?

Because it doesn't work like that, you can't deny the benefits, the way they work (in Aus, it will be similar elsewhere) is with EBA (Enterprise Bargaining Agreements). Basically, the union will go into talks with companies, agree on conditions and then they will be spread out as an effective handshake rule across the industry. The union act as mitigators between businesses and workers, which pretty much changes the entire industry. So you can't really opt out. Unless of course you go and work for companies who don't sign the EBA's, and having worked in Construction before, the majority of these companies have malicious reasons for not signing, and you wouldn't want to work for them. I've seen a handful of people try to not pay dues, and it's pretty much always because they just don't want to pay money, whilst still pulling the benefits.

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#226

Post by johnvonneumann »

hackbinary wrote: post #104
chimeracoder wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The anti-union FUD campaign in the US has contributed significantly to the erosion of middle class wages It's way more complicated than that, and it can't simply be dismissed as a "FUD campaign". Union members are actually disproportionately likely to support things like right-to-work laws, which unions dislike because it (more or less) means workers aren't obligated to be members if they choose not to. Similarly,…

>> It's way more complicated than that ... I don't think so. The media (the 4th estate) is now basically a mouth piece for the corporations. Noam Chompsky has written extensively on this, and the west really does not have a diverse spectrum of opinion, information, and perspective in popular, widely distributed and readily available information sources. Media and information sources have been consolidated into a few…

CFMEU (Aus) used to hand out bumper stickers that said:

"Is that the truth or did you read it in the Herald Sun?"

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#227

Post by LoSboccacc »

mrighele wrote: post #202
jasode wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For the average joe who just wants to go to work and get a paycheck, the bigger picture is often lost. Isn't it possible the armchair talking heads like us are the ones missing the bigger picture and the actual workers are the ones who actually get it? Let's consider the Boeing workers in South Carolina: - 2009-09 74% of employees vote against the union and decertify it[1] - 2009-10 Boeing breaks ground on new South…

This happens because unions in the US are fragmented. In countries with bigger unions (e.g. France, Italy) those unions act at national level. This means that moving the assembly line from Seattle to South Carolina would simply move the strikes from one place to another. The underlying idea is that the behavior of the S.C. is just a race to the bottom and in the same way that those jobs arrived they will be gone one…

The union in italy have been extremely damaging to the local economy in the last 20 years. You see national union goals are too distant and misaligned from workers’

For example one of the problem is that not all professions are unionized for example, so o get more profit and power the unions need to stifle innovation and steer the government only toward heavy industry to the destriment of almost every other sector

Also being national they seldom talk directly with workers and plant owners, and prefer to play their hands at the political table, often ignoring the specificity of issues.

And since their decision have national level ramification, every singe one needs months if not years to mature, implement and execute. Like, most national contracts are expired and have wages that are ridicolous by 2017 standards and base salary need to be supplemented in various, highly taxed ways, and new form of contracts are impossible to create (IT for example is hired under industrial or commerce contract, as the gategory didn’t exist at the time and there’s no reasonable way to create it now)

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#228

Post by johnvonneumann »

RobertoG wrote: post #205
rconti wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree free riders are a problem with unions. But that doesn't mean right to work laws shouldn't exist. Maybe it just means unions shouldn't exist. I mean, if your entire business model is flawed, should the world change around your business model? This is more of a devil's advocate position, as I'm not particularly anti-union, but I personally have zero desire to work in a union or be forced to be in one…

"[..] if your entire business model is flawed [..]" Unions go a little deep than the concept of "business model" "[..] I personally have zero desire to work in a union or be forced to be in one." I'm going to speculate that's only because you have good working conditions. "unions [..] have a place in the past" That's a common opinion. What have changed from the past? Because the laws of capitalism tell us that if any…

""[..] I personally have zero desire to work in a union or be forced to be in one."

I'm going to speculate that's only because you have good working conditions."

I have noticed (personal anecdote here so yeah not great) that a large majority of people that I know against unions have never worked in dangerous fields, office workers are ridiculously ignorant as to the workplace dangers of many unionised industries.

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#229

Post by jellicle »

chimeracoder wrote: post #180
TulliusCicero wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That means less than 7% voted against it, and the remainder never had an opportunity to vote at all. I mean, most employer policies never get any kind of vote from any subset of the employees, so I'm not sure why I should be so outraged about this one in particular when it seems to be usually to workers' benefit.

> I'm not sure why I should be so outraged about this one in particular when it seems to be usually to workers' benefit. Clearly they don't think it's to their benefit, or else they wouldn't be trying to decertify or deauthorize it.

But they aren't.

Re: Workers at Amazon's main Italian hub, German warehouses strike on Black Friday

#230

Post by jellicle »

ultraluminous wrote: post #170
jasode wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For the average joe who just wants to go to work and get a paycheck, the bigger picture is often lost. Isn't it possible the armchair talking heads like us are the ones missing the bigger picture and the actual workers are the ones who actually get it? Let's consider the Boeing workers in South Carolina: - 2009-09 74% of employees vote against the union and decertify it[1] - 2009-10 Boeing breaks ground on new South…

Yes, but nothing in this speaks to the value of unions. It speaks volumes to the US legal climate allowing massive corporations to subtly coarse employees to vote against their economic interests. Basically what you're describing is "If you'll ask for more rights or better compensation, we'll close down this factory and move it somewhere where people will just say Thank You and shut the hell up". I think that phrase…

It's not exactly subtle (watch the video):

https://labor411.org/411-blog/1688-this-is-the-anti-union-vi...

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