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

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

#331

Post by FireBeyond »

snoman wrote: post #51
Analemma_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because courts are supposed to see through flimsy fictions like this. These companies are not in an ordinary vendor/customer relationship: they are controlled completely by Amazon, they do not and cannot serve customers other than Amazon, their conditions and working hours are set by Amazon, etc. They are Amazon subsidiaries in all but name, and their treatment by the law should reflect that.

Tell that to every government contractor. Many companies (that I'd wager you wouldn't take issue with) exist due to the contracts they have with a single government organization.

> Many companies (that I'd wager you wouldn't take issue with) exist due to the contracts they have with a single government organization.

But the government doesn't tell those companies "you cannot work for anyone but us." The government doesn't tell those companies "your employees must work these hours" (it may say "we require coverage for X period of time").

And so on.

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

#332

Post by FireBeyond »

parineum wrote: post #304
vkou wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are trying to limit being perpetually sued for the same issue. Why shouldn't they be perpetually sued for the same issue, until they've fully paid their debt to society, and every person they've harmed is made whole?

I made no argument that they shouldn't, that's just what they are doing. I replied to point out that the attempts to limit their liability to 2 billion dollars has, so far, failed.

Somewhat. There's not a whole lot that can actually be done.

Georgia Pacific was faced with 62,000+ claims. They went through this same process. Spun off their subsidiary. "Pledged" to fund it with an "initial" billion dollars, and that GP would fund all claims.

Never happened. They actually only funded $175M. Less than $3,000 per claimant for asbestos related injuries. That is, less than $3,000 before legal fees.

And there was nothing defendants could do, because there was no legal obligation that could be created to force GP to fully fund. "That entity is independent and is in bankruptcy. So sad, too bad."

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

#333

Post by FireBeyond »

anigbrowl wrote: post #317
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 thi…

Help? No. Be prevented from actively hindering? Absolutely.

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

#334

Post by worrycue »

jenkstom wrote: post #199
epivosism wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like just the opposite of a capitalist monopoly from the other side. Why would I want any party to control the way a market works? You'll get stagnation both ways. see many historical examples where both monopolies and unions refused change and were overturned, leading to failures. i.e. Detroit I want a functioning competitive market where workers and firms compete and have to adjust and innovate to fit w…

Unions are just another corporation. They balance the corporation that owns the assets. Nobody is locking anything down, they're just signing contracts. This is healthy for competition, not stifling.

Not quite “just another corporation”, they are often monopolies on labour.

Frankly, power imbalances in either direction isn’t good - because we all know it will be abused.

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

#335

Post by worrycue »

adfskghnmionio wrote: post #167
epivosism wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like just the opposite of a capitalist monopoly from the other side. Why would I want any party to control the way a market works? You'll get stagnation both ways. see many historical examples where both monopolies and unions refused change and were overturned, leading to failures. i.e. Detroit I want a functioning competitive market where workers and firms compete and have to adjust and innovate to fit w…

A capitalist monopoly is a conspiracy in favor of the firm. Unions are a conspiracy in favor of the people.

Unions are often monopolies too - monopolies on labour. Monopolies often lead to inefficiency in the market and an inefficient market is bad for everyone.

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

#336

Post by telotortium »

ceejayoz wrote: post #258
CSMastermind wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Mainly, that one city or state doing it will likely cause an influx of sicker people. You can't require a visa to come to, say, Austin TX, and "only to residents who've lived here longer than x" would raise equal protection constitutional issues. (This is the same reason the ACA had the individual mandate, and why said mandate's striking down is likely to result in the ACA's failure or needing significant amending so…

> "only to residents who've lived here longer than x" would raise equal protection constitutional issues

States seem to apply residency consideration all the time to college tuition and taxes, among others. Why would equal protection be an issue here?

Austin, TX can't implement this on its own without state support, but cities don't have any federal constitutional rights apart from their containing states, so that's too bad

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

#337

Post by jklinger410 »

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.

This trend is actually slowing and will likely disappear.

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

#338

Post by pluto_modadic »

alberth wrote: post #301
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.

> ” This behavior of legal loopholes to discount workers should be made illegal.” It comes down to priorities. In the US at least, regulators are very pro jobs & job creation. People employed contributor to society in many ways (eg purchase goods, taxes, lower crime, etc). Which means, US wants to make it easy for someone to create a company so they can hire a people. Now if the business that’s created to employee pe…

"pro jobs" here meaning... not pro workers...

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

#339

Post by itake »

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…

> Fuel, tolls, and ongoing maintenance paid for by Amazon

https://freightpartner.amazon.com/marketing/opportunity

I think Amazon still owns the trucks and pays for their maintenance.

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

#340

Post by Dylan16807 »

AlbertCory wrote: post #277
dragonwriter wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They interpret what the law says, not what it "intends." Within the bounds of the viable interpretations of the words actually written into the law, courts are, in fact, often guided by their reading of legislative intent in choosing which of the superficially viable interpretations is correct. The idea that interpreting what the laws say precludes interpreting what legislators mean seems to implicitly invoke the i…

"quite wrong" -- no, you're wrong. "legislative intent" is in fact deeply controversial among judges. What counts as "intent"? Something a bill sponsor said, but other sponsors disagreed with? the only certain thing is what the bill says, and the fact that it passed.

They claimed a specific thing is quite wrong. "the idea that any given set of words has only one tenable interpetation to start with"

Do you really disagree with that claim?

If legal words only had one tenable intepretation we could resolve contract disputes so quickly...

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