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

npr.org

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

#251

Post by dimnsionofsound »

jamiequint wrote: post #95
rmrfrmrf wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: > We need to note that Amazon is an NPR funder. The original Motherboard article [0] is extensive. The NPR version is deliberately incoherent. [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dp3yn/amazon-leaked-reports...

You actually believe that Amazon has editorial control over NPR and specifically exerted that leverage to make this article incoherent?

The implicit threat of loss of funding and/or access is often enough to sway editorial decisions in a way that could appear like direct control.

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

#252

Post by colinmhayes »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #191
simias wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think facebook is evil. It's just run by a naive dictator who isn't willing to make the tough decisions that will allow democracy to continue. The intentions aren't bad but the outcome is horrible.

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

#253

Post by dontbeevil1992 »

JackFr wrote: post #245
dontbeevil1992 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is not that googling it will reveal everything about it, but nice bad faith. My point is it has a dictionary definition and there are plenty of people who understand what it is. It is not a nebulous concept just because you aren't informed about it. If you want to get started learning about it, I recommend looking up Richard Wolff

I must not have been clear, because you seem to have missed my point. I don't believe that capitalism is a nebulous concept because I am not informed about it. I believe it is a nebulous concept because I have actually witnessed people in arguments using it to mean different things. Some people consider capitalism as simply a rhetorical foil to Marxism. Some people consider capitalism an economy that while capital is…

when you say '"because capitalism" is always a terrible argument', you're doing more than observing that it's used nebulously sometimes, you're saying that by definition it cannot be used unnebulously, which is just false and is what I was responding to.

Your original comment was aggressive but I admit quoting Dunning Kruger, while not misplaced, was also aggressive and escalatory.

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

#254

Post by claudeganon »

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #224
kayodelycaon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, Bezos does not want an amazon union and won't just let it happen without a fight. Same as always. Which is, if I recalled correctly, illegal.

Didn't stop Google from firing two employees in regards to union organizing. It doesn't matter what they did, if the NLRB is backing the employees, the company is in the wrong. Having to wait for a government agency to respond to your case of being wrongfully terminated is a PITA as it is. The fact that they determined the employee was conducting protected behavior which Google actively disagrees with just goes to sh…

See also Google conspiring to suppress worker wages for many years until they were caught and given a slap on the wrist.

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

#255

Post by colinmhayes »

JackFr wrote: post #195
berelig wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think anyone here will disagree with you. They're just saying that this new system brings its own problems. Namely heightened labor monopsony. That doesn't mean we have to go back to mom and pop systems, but it probably does mean we should work on solving the new problems.

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

#256

Post by glaugh »

patwolfe wrote: post #18

Really disappointing to see the "Well, what did you expect?" comments already. Just because companies have been trying to prevent organization of their labor for over a century doesn't mean it isn't still messed up now. It's easy to say that it's just the way the world works from your desk, the people who are forced to work in Amazon's warehouses with terrible working conditions don't have that luxury.

“What did you expect?” is my least favorite conversational trope (it’s more disappointing on HN because in general I have higher expectations here, but it’s common everywhere).

On the surface it sounds smart and world-weary. As an actual part of a conversation, whether something is expected is pretty orthogonal to whether, say, something would ideally be done about it.

I suppose it is relevant to whether something makes good content, but hopefully most of us aren’t here primarily to comment on our judgment of content marketability

I think the most common place I see it is with surveillance conversations

Though I should note that I’m not seeing those comments towards the top anymore, so that’s good

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

#257

Post by arrosenberg »

throwawaysea wrote: post #151

Why is this problematic? I find the idea of unions distasteful. Why should all employees be obligated to join a union? It would make more sense if it was voluntary and people collectively bargain as a subgroup whose size is smaller than all employees. But forcing a single union upon all employees is just creating a separate parallel management structure, one that often tends towards practices that ultimately deliver…

That sounds good in theory, but essentially gives the company the ability to play groups off each other. The entire point of unionization is to be able to negotiate on level terms.

This viewpoint also seems to assume that merit is the most important thing, and that unions should optimize for it. For a union, tenure is super important to maintain its strength. Corporations are held together with contracts and money, so they optimize for things that are legally safe and make more money than they cost. Unions are held together with only social fabric, so it makes sense to optimize for things that maintain continuity and cohesion.

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

#258

Post by heavyset_go »

claudeganon wrote: post #254
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't stop Google from firing two employees in regards to union organizing. It doesn't matter what they did, if the NLRB is backing the employees, the company is in the wrong. Having to wait for a government agency to respond to your case of being wrongfully terminated is a PITA as it is. The fact that they determined the employee was conducting protected behavior which Google actively disagrees with just goes to sh…

See also Google conspiring to suppress worker wages for many years until they were caught and given a slap on the wrist.

For those who are not familiar, Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay all colluded with one another to keep tech worker compensation below its market value[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

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

#259

Post by colinmhayes »

heavyset_go wrote: post #154
harimau777 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the world's natural resources and land have already been claimed. This means that most people have no choice but to work for the people who control those resources and land.

Not only that, land that once belonged to the people was privatized during the Industrial Revolution in order to create a landless class of people that needed to work in the new factories in order to eat. It was hard to convince people to work in them otherwise.

Land belonging to the people is a horrible system that creates huge inefficiencies due to moral hazard. If you look at the agricultural revolution in Europe, a major reason for increased crop yields was private property. Incentives matter.

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

#260

Post by hnlmorg »

dontbeevil1992 wrote: post #111
hnlmorg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

...so far. Other countries have some mechanisms - legal and cultural - in place that have resisted the creep of capitalist power concentration better than the U.S. has. But I'm pessimistic - I think globally we'll continue to see taxes cut, social safety nets dried up, and privatization of benefits, like has been happening in the UK. It just seems to be the tendency of capitalism. edit: I invite downvoters to let me…

The ironic thing about the UK is we are seeing the same people advocating deregulation at the national level, while also campaigning for greater government intervention at the local level.

Or at least that's been the general sentiment I've seen in many of the Tory strongholds in the counties surrounding London.

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