Amazon reportedly has Pinkerton agents surveil workers who try to form unions • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by scruple » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #4

It just astounds me that the Old Timey Pinkertons are still around, to be honest. That is a company that my 98 year old grandfather tells stories about from his childhood. I know there are other old companies, but Pinkerton is one of those that just sounds old fashioned.

They're owned by Securitas today, the Swedish security guard company. Which makes the decision to continue using "Pinkerton" as a _brand name_ even more of an intimidation tactic, IMO. And I think it ultimately results in demonstrating how committed Bezos is to fighting this.

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

#282

Post by heavyset_go » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

colinmhayes wrote: post #259

heavyset_go wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You point to efficiency, but to achieve that efficiency, people were driven off of land that their families had lived on for millennia in order to create a class of people that were desperate enough to risk their lives and limbs, and their children's lives and limbs, in dangerous factories for wages they couldn't sustain themselves with.

Millions of people went from self-sufficiency to being desperately poor and without homes because their land was privatized by governments that were in cahoots with industrialists.

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

#283

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #270

djsumdog wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where the Tennessee Ernie Ford song comes from, "Sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don't call me cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store." There was an episode of South Park last season where they played this song as a backdrop to Amazon workers in a warehouse.

That is de facto slavery!

[deleted]

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

#284

Post by Grimm1 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 6:54 PM UTC

badRNG wrote: post #80

Grimm1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay that is not particularly clear to me from the article and it's doing a disservice to the overall discussion then, imo. They should at least be linking to the original articles then to give context on that fact.

You may be right about that. The reason I went looking for the Vice article in the first place was due to what was said in the first paragraph of the article: >According to documents, Amazon reportedly runs a surveillance program to track activism among its workers. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Lauren Gurley of Motherboard magazine, who broke the story.

I'll fully admit I gloss right over the names of journalists typically in favor of reading the content of the article, though had I read that I still would have had to search for the story much like you did. I can take two things away here, I should slow down when reading an article and this article should still be more obvious about the work they're discussing.

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

#285

Post by dontbeevil1992 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

hnlmorg wrote: post #260

dontbeevil1992 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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.

this is always the right-wing rhetorical contradiction:

"less government!"... when it comes to limiting the power of capital, and redistributing its profits to society

"more government!!" when it comes to squashing dissent to capital and existing hierarchies

it's not really a contradiction, it's part of a consistent authoritarian ideology ruled by capital and other oppressive social structures, but it is outwardly hypocritical and often goes against the interests of the people who parrot it

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

#286

Post by michaelyoshika » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

I'll try using other online retailers whenever I can until Amazon gets splitted.

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

#287

Post by mrtksn » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

_alex_ wrote: post #275

mrtksn wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything stopping workers from crowdsource their own protection anonymously? Does it have to be some kind of formal union? If you think about it, work is just a business deal and wouldn't be possible for employees create some kind of company that deals with the companies they are employed? Pretty much like an agency, I guess.

I think you just described a union

See, it's not a union. Unions are apparently uncool in the USA. Think of it as Musk inventing the Tube by removing the engineeringly silly parts of the Hyperloop and adding a sharing economy feature to the result :)

Why would you share your "not-union" membership with your employer? Instead, use it as a coordinator between your peers to prevent being underpaid and overworked do to information disparity you normally have in your relationship with you employer and if you get screwed it turns out you have access to lawyers.

Something of that sort.

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

#288

Post by jacobush » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

_alex_ wrote: post #275

mrtksn wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything stopping workers from crowdsource their own protection anonymously? Does it have to be some kind of formal union? If you think about it, work is just a business deal and wouldn't be possible for employees create some kind of company that deals with the companies they are employed? Pretty much like an agency, I guess.

I think you just described a union

A secret union. Would be labelled terrorists in no time flat.

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

#289

Post by geodel » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:02 PM UTC

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.

> It's easy to say that it's just the way the world works from your desk,

Its equally easy to be disappointed and show some virtual outrage via social media. To me if office workers are not putting their money where their mouth then it is not of much consequence whether they are disappointed or world weary.

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

#290

Post by sangnoir » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #267

_wldu wrote: post #145

In 1920 Appalachia, coal companies owned all the land, the homes and stores. They also paid workers with their own special money (that was useless everywhere else). The security companies they hired where armed and violent towards miners and their families. https://explorepartsunknown.com/west-virginia/coal-minings-d... Today, people can tour these old towns and learn the history of how the coal companies trapped and…

Is there anything stopping workers from crowdsource their own protection anonymously? Does it have to be some kind of formal union? If you think about it, work is just a business deal and wouldn't be possible for employees create some kind of company that deals with the companies they are employed? Pretty much like an agency, I guess.

Oh, do you honestly think such an "secretive, radical union cell" funded by "dark money" would be allowed to exist and interface with corporates? (words in scare-quotes would be how this would be framed by employers and the media - they may or may not throw in foreign funding, Venezuela or China could get name-dropped with zero evidence).