Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

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Post by cmh89 » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 12:13 AM UTC

geodel wrote: post #261

finite_depth wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm well into my 30s, in the top few percent for income in the US, and live in California (one of the highest tax states), and I happily pay them. I'm alive today because of their benefits, and I'd be the worst kind of hypocrite to pull the ladder up after me. People's objection to social safety nets mostly isn't their desire to keep their money. It's a perception that the people who need those safety nets are lazy b…

> in the top few percent for income in the US, and live in California (one of the highest tax states), and I happily pay them. Well, thats not surprising but at same time not default for most people. Universities have been leaning left since at least 60's and 70's . If all the people who attended university remained influenced by those ideas over the years. Most of the people with higher income and influential positi…

> If all the people who attended university remained influenced by those ideas over the years. Most of the people with higher income and influential positions in society would be overwhelmingly left but that has not happened

Uh what? higher educational attainment correlates with voting Democratic https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/23/education...

Universities are also not the leftist indoctrination camps that right-wingers have deluded themselves into believing they are. There are lots of conservatives on campus, especially the faculty.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

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Post by r00fus » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 12:35 AM UTC

umeshunni wrote: post #236

toomuchtodo wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.8 million voters over the age of 55 die every year in the US. 4 million voters turn 18. We're just arguing time horizon and cohort turn out rates. Bernie was just too early after Reagan, globalization, and deregulation. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/01/1-generation... https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/01/17/generat... https://archive.is/iRyQE https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/…

Except that people also age out of far left ideas. The 18 year old who's like "hell yeah, ownership is theft, raise the taxes" feels differently when they turn 35 and have to pay those taxes.

Except that logic is old. Nowadays the 35 year old still doesn't have a home, can't afford kids and forget about retirement because of usurious student loans and sky-high real-estate.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

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Post by Modified3019 » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 12:49 AM UTC

thebradbain wrote: post #288

Modified3019 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you count the influx of homeless as residents? These people absolutely need healthcare, but they are a resource drain that can move in suddenly, unpredictably, and overwhelm a local solution with static resources. Then you get a situation where the wealthy, even (and sometimes especially) the diehard leftists who voted for the situation, turn up their nose at what’s shown up in their backyard, and fuck off from Ca…

Except the only demographic of net in-flow _moving to California_ are those in the top 5% or so. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-income-t... Note: this article is from 2019, which is obviously pre-Covid. I still think it’s too early to predict any trend on post-Covid migrations (which would really be captured and 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, assuming you started planning to leave mid-pandemic 2021-202…

FYI, unless they fix their tax system, they are currently headed towards a (last I checked) 30+ billion dollar deficit this year. They also recently raised taxes on income over (I think) $1 million again last year, and I believe plan to continue to do so.

Also for a more up to date perspective on migration and money: https://calmatters.org/commentary/2022/08/california-is-leak...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/San-Francisco-migrati...

Regardless, this still supports my point that state level healthcare while far more durable than local gov, still can’t compare to national level stability.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

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Post by dangus » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 1:09 AM UTC

CSMastermind wrote: post #219

esalman wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's political suicide for Republicans. Left leaning Democrats like Bernie are all for it.

What's to stop your local city government from increasing taxes to hire a doctor and provide them with a building and staff in order to provide medical services to locals residents? It seems to me that the problem is that everyone wants a federal solution to healthcare and the United States is generally structured to limit federal power. Fire departments are funded locally generally speaking, it didn't take a federal…

There really isn’t anything that constitutionally prevents the federal government from establishing universal healthcare. See Medicare and Medicaid.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

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Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 1:17 AM UTC

vkou wrote: post #285

geodel wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in the top few percent for income in the US, and live in California (one of the highest tax states), and I happily pay them. Well, thats not surprising but at same time not default for most people. Universities have been leaning left since at least 60's and 70's . If all the people who attended university remained influenced by those ideas over the years. Most of the people with higher income and influential positi…

Education is incredibly strongly correlated with not voting republican.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

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Post by AlbertCory » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 1:22 AM UTC

deelowe wrote: post #281

AlbertCory wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patent claims are also written broadly, deliberately by the lawyers. There's a whole part of every trial where "claim construction" takes place, and I personally helped with many of those briefs when in Google Legal. The briefs never argue "what the inventor intended." They argue about what the claims and the spec says and what those words mean. That can, indeed, leave room for argument, and that's why both sides wri…

Not trying to be rude here, but I highly recommend you do a little more research on the common law system and how it works. At it's core, common law states that laws are interpreted over time and these interpretations become the official law of the land. There is no requirement that every conceivable form of infraction be enumerated within the law itself. Patents are something else entirely and not relevant to this d…

When people say "not trying to be rude" they are, but prefer to not own it.

Maybe you need to do some research. Patents are construed in exactly the same way as any other law.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

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Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 1:25 AM UTC

legitster wrote: post #101

I'm always confused by the framing of these articles. Are companies supposed to help unions form against them? If they supported unionization efforts, why not just save everyone the time and money and listen to employee demands without one? It's like, you can love your wife as much as anyone, but you are not expected to help her get her own divorce attorney. Yeah, companies are going to be against unionizing. That's…

Are companies supposed to help unions form against them?

You're framing it as an inherently adversarial relationship. Owners of a company are allowed to coordinate, and do so by voting their shares to select directors and officers. Workers should be similarly free to organize in pursuit of their interests. In many cases, the interests of shareholders and labor will coincide because the workers understand a lot of things about the business that the shareholders (and indeed management in many cases) do not.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

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Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 1:28 AM UTC

whalesalad wrote: post #49

Is this a theory, or proven? It makes a LOT of sense to do what Amazon is doing here. Why would you want to have a ton of depreciating vehicles on your balance sheet? Why would you want the maintenance burden? No need to worry about all the regional differences with vehicle/transport law - you allow people who are based in that region to do it (better). One could also argue this is good for the economy, in that there…

Why would you want to have a ton of depreciating vehicles on your balance sheet? Why would you want the maintenance burden? No need to worry about all the regional differences with vehicle/transport law [...]

Why did Amazon build its own delivery fleet in the first place? Unless you were strenuously against that idea from the outset, the answer is that even with the costs it was probably cheaper than buying the service from other corporations.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

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Post by Dr_Birdbrain » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 1:36 AM UTC

nitwit005 wrote: post #201

bfeynman wrote: post #2

This behavior of legal loopholes to discount workers should be made illegal. The definition of sub-contractor has got to change and/or have laws/policies in place that actually make sense in a sub contractor relationship. These are shell companies that spin up and exclusively deliver for amazon, they aren't gig workers delivering when they want, they have strict quotas.

The real fix is to stop tying various benefits to employment, so there'd be no need to worry about who is full time or part time, or who they work for. Unfortunately, changing most of those programs is political suicide, particularly anything health care related.

The thing is, I see a huge difference between high-end health plans (for example, at places like Meta, which include IVF coverage) and middle-of-the-road plans (like my employer provides) and bare-minimum plans (like MediCal).

Which plan would we be talking about for government coverage? I assume barebones plans.

In that case, it still matters who you work for, because some employers still provide much better coverage.

Re: Amazon doesn't 'employ' drivers, but hired firms to prevent them from unionizing

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Post by bravura » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 1:43 AM UTC

cmh89 wrote: post #310

sokoloff wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reads like they've tried to try it 9 or 10 times. They haven't even gotten to the point of finding out what all might turn out differently in a US state than in an EU country surrounded by other EU countries, all with roughly similar approaches to public health care.

I work in public health at a state government, in a western state. The biggest hurdle I see is that America has freedom of movement and residency. If my state creates truly affordable health care, we will of course have refugees from conservative states coming here for medical care. We'll probably end up with a public option of some kind that will somewhat function like health insurance but who knows.

This is an interesting point. And perhaps worse yet, high quality doctors will have the freedom to move out of your state.

I'm an American living and Germany and sadly, my GP who is also a personal friend of mine, will be shutting down their practice at the end of the year because their small practice simply isn't financially sustainable. They will instead start treating the prison population, which apparently pays more / is more consistent.

So I can also imagine how doctors in your state would feel if suddenly their rates are dramatically capped by the state.

I'm not aware of any public health care systems where medical care services are as expensive as in the United States, but perhaps it's possible to maintain relatively similar doctor pay as currently exists AND provide socialized health care benefits. I really don't know enough about this topic and the financials of American (non-public) health insurance companies to comment accurately on whether that would be feasible.