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Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

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Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#271

Post by kieselguhr_kid »

stretchcat wrote: post #230
quandrum wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wage theft is the most common crime in the US, is estimated to occur to ~20% of all employees and equal tens of billions a year, and no one talks about it. How many union members do you think experience wage theft?

The US Department of Labor takes wage theft very seriously. If you report it to them, at no cost to yourself, they will investigate it and almost certainly scare your boss shitless so he'll never try it again. Probably they could do a better job of advertising this to workers. Many workers experiencing wage theft probably are not aware of their options, and that's a problem. But when used, it works. I've seen it work…

If they take it so seriously, why is it so underused? I don't think this is a lack of information; people who are highly precarious can't take these kinds of risks, even if they're just percevied.

There are all kinds of de jure considerations that purport to protect workers, but they fail without an organization by and for workers to actually ensure they're enforced.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#272

Post by iratewizard »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #216
pmoriarty wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is when anecdotes about isolated abuses are used to reject unions outright rather than looking at whether unions as a whole would benefit society. You could argue from personal experience that you went to a bad school therefore all schools are bad, or you had a bad experience with therefore all people of that sort are bad. It's just not very convincing.

I think the point should have more nuance. Nobody looks at enron's abuses and says corporations are blanket bad (okay, many do, but not most). Nor do they say enron's abuses were fine because corporations as a whole benefit society. Most look at enron and say corporations have the potential to do good or bad, so let's figure out how to keep them from going bad. It's not unions good or unions bad. The focus should be…

People do look at multi-level marketing schemes and label them as blanket bad. Unions are an organizational strategy just like MLM schemes are. One relies on the Shirky principle to stay alive, the other relies on people wanting to be fooled. Both are a con with opportunists hovering overhead.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#273

Post by [deleted] »

tinyhouse wrote: post #125
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #2

I wonder what percentage of otherwise very liberal Amazon devs read sentences like "The company for years successfully fought off labor organizing efforts in the U.S." and come away thinking "we're definitely the good guys."

It doesn't matter if there's a union or not. It matters what actually is being done. From the news it seems that Amazon has been consistently improving conditions of its warehouse employees. For example, making the minimum wage $15/hour.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#274

Post by coffeemaniac »

bluGill wrote: post #148
ATsch wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with your concerns about people being kept in their job for unjustified reasons. I think it's something we've all had experience with. At my first job, I had a horrible boss. A friend tried to speak up against him and was promptly fired. Turns out he was a relative of the CEO and was thus unfireable. Just a few weeks ago I also spoke to someone who told his experience of reporting someone for sexual h…

If sexual harassment really exists a lawyer will be glad to help. Companies that don't take care of it end up in big trouble - to your lawyers advantage. Sexual harassment is one of several things that the legal system takes seriously.

This is bad information. Certainly it can work out like this, but suing your employer in the US is very very difficult. Most tech workers have even signed away their right to do so via forced arbitration agreements. And even if you do, you're more likely to just waste your money pursuing the case (which a good attorney will tell you beforehand).

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#275

Post by joshe »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #220
joshe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American unions are quite different from European unions. European unions spend a lot of time running apprenticeship programs and doing things like advocating for more productivity. Like trying to figure out how to make the shop floor more efficient. American unions spend time preventing bad employees from being fired (like the NY teacher's rubber rooms and police unions fighting the firing of cops with 5 excessive f…

So how do we get european style unions here in america? How is it that they are able to avoid those issues and what lessons can we take that aren't "america just can't do unions right."

It would be great.

I sometimes think that something like a "credible threat of peace" would be useful.

"We are forming a union. If you vote for this union, we will allow workers here to chose other unions. We will never get in the way of firing someone. We will never create job roles that don't let workers move laterally or up. You can lay people off. We will not use our members money for political campaigns. Our workers can move into management without us freaking out.

We will advocate for more pay, benefits, productivity, and training."

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#276

Post by perfmode »

mynameishere wrote: post #207
j_walter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never fully understood public unions to be honest. Unions used to be the best way to protect yourself from a bad employer...but the employer is the government (and to some extent the people). It used to be that public sector workers made less in exchange for better benefits, but in the last few years the war was waged on the public to increase wages to that of "private companies". Now teachers in my state make m…

What don't you understand? The point of a union is to extract more money and reduce productivity (yes, it is). A company will resist this since it's the company's money that's getting extracted and their productivity that's getting hurt. Politicians will not resist it since it's public money and public services--not specifically their own.

side effects but not the point

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#277

Post by ryanmercer »

j_walter wrote: post #236
ryanmercer wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now teachers in my state make more than an average BS degree and work 9 months of the year...along with better medical and retirement benefits. They still claim they are underpaid They are. A few years ago I still thought they were oeverpaid and then I married a teacher. She's absolutely underpaid. It is very much not a 9-5 job and, that time off during the summer - some of it get used for required continued educati…

That is not how math works. My kids day care has a government mandated 8 to 1 ratio. That teacher doesn't get paid 8x the average wage to watch kids. I don't pay $25/hr for my 2 kids to be at daycare. A local babysitter can watch more than 1 kid for that $12.75 an hour as well...it's not per kid. Nice try. Also, continued education is a requirement as it should be for such a career, but don't forget that her pay will…

>A local babysitter can watch more than 1 kid for that $12.75 an hour as well...it's not per kid.

You're just massaging the data to benefit your point. Go find a babysitter that'll find 5 parents an go "yes, I'll watch all 5 of your children if you all chip in and give me 12.75 total".

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#278

Post by txsoftwaredev »

kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #159
txsoftwaredev wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they exploited? Is amazon the only company they are able to work at?

Go work there and then tell me they're not exploited. Edit: This was flippant because I was annoyed. There are a lot of people who work in well-paying jobs and have never really experienced what the labor that enables their relatively privileged lifestyle actually feels like. They often weigh in with "well, get a better job" but not only is that not an option for everyone, it means you're devaluing absolutely critica…

I've worked painting dorm rooms. Worked cleaning out freezers in an ice cream factory. I've done plenty of crappy manual jobs. But I knew that's what I would get at the time as I was uneducated and unskilled. I was happy to have an income that relied on not needing any skills. Sorry you are annoyed, it's my opinion.

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#279

Post by txsoftwaredev »

kuang_eleven wrote: post #246
txsoftwaredev wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cancelling student debt will help a shit tonne more workers." I will feel terrible if that ever happens for folks that were smart with money and didn't incur tons of debt. It's gonna be a real bummer when you learn that you paid off your educational debt or never had any and that now you get to pay off debt of others that made bad decisions.

I, as someone with no outstanding student debts anymore, would be ecstatic to have universal student loan forgiveness. It is the right thing to do, and part of being a conscientious citizen is advocating for issues that help society, even if they don't help yourself.

Have you considered reaching out to some students or grads with debt and writing them a check to help them pay off their debt?

Re: Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union

#280

Post by tehjoker »

random5634 wrote: post #21
simpixelated wrote: post #5

Along with the unionization at Google, I think it's a good trend to see them happening at big tech companies. As it says in the article: "Unions are a prominent presence at Amazon in Europe, but the company for years successfully fought off labor organizing efforts in the U.S." It's sad that Amazon, along with FB and Google, etc. have managed to squash unions so completely here in the US. There's a lot of propaganda…

The propaganda unfortunately also comes from folks direct experience with unions. In the US, most unions are public sector. So folks see that Police unions may protect bad apples via union. Teachers unions may care more about teachers including bad ones then teaching kids. We had a famously terrible teacher at my school - unfirable - as kids we thought it was hilarious. As a parent now - not so cool. Non unionized sc…

All workers should be in unions. With few exceptions, workers collaborating forms the basis of their power vs management. Management has money and the ability to wait out vs an individual that needs a job. Only groups of employees can successfully negotiate for major concessions outside of rare circumstances. An older tradition that would be even better is unionization on an industrial/sectoral scale so you don't even need to unionize your current workplace and workers across the industry can enforce demands.

Your politicians do nothing, your bosses do nothing. What do you have to lose? Fight for what you need together.

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