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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

#331

Post by kieselguhr_kid »

fat_pikachu wrote: post #297
kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I was a union organizer before I was a software engineer. I'll try answer your questions without much commentary: Is everyone required to join? No. Following Janus, they might not even be required to pay dues. However, the union contract will apply to everyone in the bargaining unit (generally all non-management) regardless of membership. Is Amazon required to negotiate? Yes, they're legally required to make good…

Janus was public sector unions only.

Well, guess they'll have to pay their dues then (which makes me happy).

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

#332

Post by kieselguhr_kid »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #317
moate wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they can pose hypothetical arguments about the corruption of the as-yet unformed union in an effort to undermine support for it. "What if the union is BAD!? We should consider other things before we lock ourselves into a democratic power-structure that allows greater agency for the laboring class against management because reasons !"

More like so you can appease the people with those worries. Worried about these issues? Here's a safety valve. One look at any thread about unions and you can see a significant number of people have these worries, so why not give them some choices?

Why not let them undermine solidarity because they have all these hypothetical and unfounded worries? I can think of some reasons.

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

#333

Post by j_walter »

random5634 wrote: post #319
j_walter wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I refer to the European model I'm probably talking about the German model. Many years ago the articles I was reading had been going over the VW union so it was likely Germany. The cooperation part and inefficiencies you mention are exactly the problem. Here in the US the union and company are enemies that battle each other...and like you say illogical rules that just benefit the union.

That's a bit of a special case as well - historically overall good relationship even when there were cuts / restructuring in 2017. Situation is very different in places like greece / italy / france even with much more militant unions and more protectionism for sectors. So it's def not EU wide. --- “I cannot complain about the cooperation with the works council,” VW brand chief executive Herbert Diess said at a news c…

Unfortunately the US auto unions try to capitalize on the good nature and cooperation of the VW union to say that they should unionize the VW plant in Kentucky or Tennessee (I think that was where it was). Saying that VW has unions already so it would be no different...except everyone that knows anything knows better.

Greece has terrible unions, but many of those seem to be the public unions like teachers and transportation workers.

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

#334

Post by kieselguhr_kid »

pingpongchef wrote: post #243
kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would people want competition on a union? They don't work like corporations - competition weakens them. I think this fundamentally misunderstands the purpose and function of a union.

I can think of a few reasons competition can be beneficial. 1. Exert downward pressure on union fees 2. Offer alternatives in the case of union corruption 3. Offer alternatives in union priorities/mission Also, I don't follow how competition in the two spaces, firms and unions, is necessarily different in kind. To the degree that competition "weakens" unions, the same should apply to firms.

The difference from a worker's perspective is that increased competition for their work should drive wages up, while increased union "competition" would undermine their bargaining power.

But to address your points: 1. Union dues are low. Given what organizing actually looks like, multiple unions are more likely to undermine the existence of a unionized workforce at all than to drive dues down. 2. Ideally, union corruption would be dealt with the entire shop moving to a different local, not the shop splitting into sectors. 3. Workers elect their stewards and negotiators, who set the negotiating agenda. It's not perfect, but this would be better dealt with by new representation than by adding another union with a competing agenda.

Like I said, I believe this reflects a misunderstanding about the function of unions and what workers are trying to get out of them.

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

#335

Post by ardy42 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #299
dahfizz wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They said "It’s not anecdotes __about isolated abuses__". At a certain point, anecdotes become universal experiences, and therefore inform general political views.

>At a certain point, anecdotes become universal experiences, and therefore inform general political views In reality though we just went from one anecdote to two. We are unable to tell when something is universal experience just by hearing more anecdotes.

> In reality though we just went from one anecdote to two. We are unable to tell when something is universal experience just by hearing more anecdotes.

And even if we somehow got to negative universal experiences, those very well could be:

1. Part of a conscious tradeoff (e.g. firms being less profitable due to higher labor costs). A lot of anti-union rhetoric seems to amount to complaining about not being able to have one's cake and eat it too.

2. Artifacts of law (either direct or indirect) that could solved through legal reform. My understanding is that at least some of the "adversarialness" of US unions derives from the requirements of US law, and German unions (for instance) operate very differently (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany).

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

#336

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #334
pingpongchef wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of a few reasons competition can be beneficial. 1. Exert downward pressure on union fees 2. Offer alternatives in the case of union corruption 3. Offer alternatives in union priorities/mission Also, I don't follow how competition in the two spaces, firms and unions, is necessarily different in kind. To the degree that competition "weakens" unions, the same should apply to firms.

The difference from a worker's perspective is that increased competition for their work should drive wages up, while increased union "competition" would undermine their bargaining power. But to address your points: 1. Union dues are low. Given what organizing actually looks like, multiple unions are more likely to undermine the existence of a unionized workforce at all than to drive dues down. 2. Ideally, union corru…

> while increased union "competition" would undermine their bargaining power.

It couldn't undermine it compared to no union at all, could it? It seems like still a net improvement.

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

#337

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #332
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like so you can appease the people with those worries. Worried about these issues? Here's a safety valve. One look at any thread about unions and you can see a significant number of people have these worries, so why not give them some choices?

Why not let them undermine solidarity because they have all these hypothetical and unfounded worries? I can think of some reasons.

How is it solidarity if you exclude their worries? You think it's unfounded. They disagree.

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

#338

Post by orzig »

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…

Thank you for a well reasoned argument, and linked evidence. I do want to point out for anyone who does not click through the link that the study is focused on just one industry (sawmills) in one year. It may well be a solid contribution to a bigger story, but it should not be represented as necessarily generalizable to a very different company in a very different world

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

#339

Post by Simulacra »

I'm not sure a union is the best idea for a technology company, and I am not there is a value proposition from being in that union, unless the union decides you cannot work for Google unless you are in the union. Then that would be truly awful.

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

#340

Post by kritiko »

munk-a wrote: post #185
stretchcat wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there a bunch of would-be teachers clamoring for those jobs? Emphatically yes, particularly at nice well funded schools. I have numerous long-term friends who have become school teachers, many of then had to move quite a distance just to find schools with openings. Most states have teacher certification reciprocity with Pennsylvania, which gave them a leg up in this regard. Even so, searching for open positions…

> Emphatically yes, particularly at nice well funded schools. I emigrated up to Canada a while back where teachers are paid very well[1] and the bad teachers get weeded out really quickly since there are plenty of enthusiastic replacements. I am sure that at well funded schools in the US teachers do great - but most US schools are terribly funded[2] so I'm not surprised folks are willing to move across the country if…

The url says New York State. NYC teacher salaries are publicly available - ~$60-125k USD based on education and tenure. It's a solid upper middle class living (as much as you can say that in a HCOL city with insane real estate market, but it starts higher than the median household income for the city) with great benefits, pension, and job security.

https://www.uft.org/your-rights/salary/doe-and-city-salary-s...

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