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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

#301

Post by boomboomsubban »

conanbatt wrote: post #251
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.

The plural of anecdotes is called data. There are plenty of examples of unions being really bad in the US, the burden of proof is now on the other side of the court.

So you need a handful of people to tell you anecdotes of how a union helped them?

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

#302

Post by franczesko »

perfmode wrote: post #131
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…

where can i learn more about the union activities at amazon in europe?

The problem is that EU cannot be considered as a whole. What you see in particular markets can largely differ one from another - what you have in UK, doesn't apply to France. What you have in the latter, doesn't apply to Germany, and so on...

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

#303

Post by dang »

KorematsuFred wrote: post #55
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…

[flagged]

Please keep ideological flamebait* out of your posts here. It leads to ideological flamewars, which are repetitive and nasty and not what this site is for. Please make your substantive points without it.

*e.g. "socialist hellhole", "jewish person supporting a neo nazi movement"

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

#304

Post by Retric »

dcolkitt wrote: post #285
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.

Well, if you look at large-scale carefully controlled data, unionized firms tend to be at least 10% less productive than their non-unionized counterparts.[1] The most defensible thing you can say about this is that the cost is primarily borne by the shareholders rather than the consumers. Thus you tend to see that the best unions for workers tend to be in large, established, highly profitable firms with little to no…

That sounds like Unions doing their job really well. The entire point is for workers to better capture the value they create. From a combination of lower risks and or higher compensation.

Amazon’s warehouses for example have some serious safety issues which they largely ignore. One example being heavy items being stored in such a way vastly increase the risk of back injury. Stuff can be good for efficiency and a really terrible deal for workers.

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

#305

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #113
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…

Public Sector Unions make perfect sense from a political standpoint. It accomplishes two big things - it's a massive barrier to scaling back bureaucracy and it's a boon for any politician who supports the union.

I have never engaged with a public government union that was short of bureaucracy and laziness.

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

#306

Post by franczesko »

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."

The harsh truth is that RSUs stand higher in the list of priorities, than other people's problems.

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

#307

Post by txsoftwaredev »

kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #281
txsoftwaredev wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"I've had crappy manual jobs" and "I've been in a situation where crappy manual jobs were my only viable option" are very different situations. But also, why didn't you want more money at the time? Why were you so happy to have a crappy job cleaning out freezers when you could have organized and got a better paying job cleaning out freezers? This future millionaire mindset, where you were "happy to have an income" be…

I grew up relatively poor in Arkansas. I dropped out of college (thankfully fully paid for by scholarships for music) after a few weeks. I was pretty useless in my late teens and early 20s and "earned" the low paying jobs I had. I finally got my act together, started working help desk / IT support jobs. Then I learned enough to get a job doing web development for low pay. I continued to show my value to employers and my salary reflected it after time. No one deserves more money because they don't like their job.

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

#308

Post by m-ee »

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.

They’ve been getting injured at a higher rate since Amazon introduced robots to the warehouses and Amazon tries to limit their access to healthcare to avoid workers comp claims. This is definitely something a union would address.

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

#309

Post by rufus_foreman »

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 did unskilled labor for 10 years of my life, 5 years of it in a factory where a typical job involved lifting 50 and 100 pound loads repetitively the entire day. It started at maybe 20 cents over minimum wage as a temp and went up a few dollars above that by the time I left.

First of all, comparatively Amazon warehouse work doesn't sound like "terrible working conditions", it sounds like a dream job, and it sounds like you have never really experienced typical manual labor if you describe it that way.

Second of all, was I exploited? What would that matter? Every other choice I had was worse or I would have taken one of them. Should the company have improved the working conditions? They did! They automated everything. All of the unskilled jobs are gone and the jobs that remain are higher paying mechanic or process operator jobs. Today I would have to take one of the worse choices.

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

#310

Post by s1artibartfast »

Thlom wrote: post #197
underseacables wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are awful. They come in the guise of protecting people, and protecting employees, but they quickly become a weapon against non union employees - if you don’t join the union can’t work here. Which pressures people to agree with union groupthink in order just to have a job. To hell with unions. All unions are bad.

How can the union stop the employer from hiring non-unionized workers?

In most union workplaces, one of the first contract demands is exclusivity, where the employer can only hire members. This is referred to as a " closed shop" [1] When a closed shop forms, works have a choice to join or leave. Some places allow non-union workers, but they must pay part of their salary to the union. This is called and "agency shop" [2]

For example, if you become a police officer and do not choose to join the union, you must still pay fees which are spent by the union on political lobbying.

I am generally pro union but think that all unions should be optional to the workers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_shop

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/employee-...

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