Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 468 posts

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

#351

Post by mcguire »

syshum wrote: post #329
thomascgalvin wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main points are: 1. Their own struggles aren't new: companies have been trying to fuck workers over since time immemorial, and 2. There is a well-known solution to these problems: unions. Are you working 16 hours a day, barely able to afford rent + food + utilities, and slipping further into debt every day? It doesn't have to be that way , and we have a really good idea, based on historical facts, about h…

you do know that Appalachia is still the poorest area in the US, and the unions did not fix the economic problems. yes it provided the employees that were still employed with greater protections, but it is not the utopia you seem to believe it is

Do you get vacations? Have a (nominally) 40-hour work week?

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

#352

Post by nkrisc »

pydry wrote: post #159
nkrisc wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could do whatever they're doing with their tech workers. Around these parts any talk of unionizing developers is usually meet with skepticism or derision. So whatever big tech is doing is keeping most of their tech workers happy and unwilling to unionize. They could do the same for their warehouse employees, but that would mean paying them very well and giving good benefits.

It's not really feasible to pay their box packers $120k / year.

That's not really my point. My point is that workers wanting to unionize is not some inevitability that Amazon must be forced to deal with. If their workers are happy they may not want to unionize. I think it's telling that white collar tech workers generally are against unionizing while Amazon's blue collar workers are trying to. So you have workers in the same company, some who feel that it is unnecessary to unionize and some who feel it is.

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

#353

Post by syshum »

mcguire wrote: post #351
syshum wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you do know that Appalachia is still the poorest area in the US, and the unions did not fix the economic problems. yes it provided the employees that were still employed with greater protections, but it is not the utopia you seem to believe it is

Do you get vacations? Have a (nominally) 40-hour work week?

lol, that is not a valid response to criticize of unions. Sorry but no

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

#354

Post by mrtksn »

wyldfire wrote: post #350
mrtksn wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain?

He's referring to organized crime/racketeering. Your 'not-union' scheme seems like organized crime if you squint a bit and imagine that it would be backed up with violence. Populist tough-guy shakes down businesses to get back at The Man or some such. Plus unions in the US have often been infiltrated by organized crime.

This is a not-union, it doesn’t have those elements at all. It has a fancy office, a responsive website that nags you to use the app instead, and blogs about how they implemented the latest FUD and does have open source projects.

It has a Twitter savvy CEO a it’s mission is to make the world a better place.

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

#355

Post by syshum »

andybak wrote: post #332
syshum wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you do know that Appalachia is still the poorest area in the US, and the unions did not fix the economic problems. yes it provided the employees that were still employed with greater protections, but it is not the utopia you seem to believe it is

Nobody claimed a utopia. Extracting natural resources is always going to be a tough job that is ripe for exploitation. Did unions improve the lives of members? They certainly did where I come from. American labour history is more complex (union corruption and take over by organised crime seemed to run deeper)

That depends, sure you can point to examples where the Union did improve peoples lives

But then i can also point to examples where they did not, where they ended up driving business out, bankrupting people

Where unions are more focused on their own political power than helping workers

Or even if in general the union helped the "average worker" the collectivist nature of unions means not everyone will be better off. For example Seniority, and "personal connections" are often more of a driving factor in Unions than merit or work performance. In fact highly efficient hard workers are often driven out of unions or forced to "work slower", etc.

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

#356

Post by sp332 »

mrtksn wrote: post #315
sudosysgen wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that being in a "not-union" isn't a protected class, so you could probably get fired for it after your employer sent the "not-Pinkertons" to do some intel. To prevent this, you'd have to get your "not-Union" to either have huge solidarity, or lobby the government to make that a protected class. Maybe if you went for the first you could make a song about it, how about "Solidarity not-for-finite-periods-of…

Why would they fire or investigate you? It’s not like you’re organizing strikes or anything like that. You are simply benefiting of the same knowledge that companies have to have a fairer deal.

How are you going to negotiate without striking (or threatening a strike)? Why would the company care that you know you're being underpaid if you're still going to do your job either way?

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

#357

Post by mrtksn »

mcguire wrote: post #348
mrtksn wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they fire or investigate you? It’s not like you’re organizing strikes or anything like that. You are simply benefiting of the same knowledge that companies have to have a fairer deal.

If you're simply going to accept the company's employment offer, why do you need the external organization?

You aren’t simply going to accept any offer, you are going to negotiate a fair one thanks to the intelligence you obtain from not-union.

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

#358

Post by travisoneill1 »

ardy42 wrote: post #333
dalbasal wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who identify strongly with unions, union-busting stuff like this is triggering... like "bringing up the war" in a war traumatised nation. I get that. But... 2020 isn't 1920 or even 1980. Fresh eyes might see more clearly. To the advantage of union organisers, mass communication and organisation is a lot easier today. Surveillance is easier too. IDK. Yes, Bezos does not want an amazon union and won't just le…

> To the advantage of union organisers, mass communication and organisation is a lot easier today. But that's a double-edged sword. It's also an advantage to employers and businesses . And recent history has shown they have the advantage: they been successful at thwarting union formation (see Wal-Mart, the movie American Factory, etc.) and even labor laws (e.g. Prop 22).

Well if you thwart union formation and legislation by using communication to persuade people that you're right and to vote for your side, that's called democracy.

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

#359

Post by mrtksn »

sp332 wrote: post #356
mrtksn wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they fire or investigate you? It’s not like you’re organizing strikes or anything like that. You are simply benefiting of the same knowledge that companies have to have a fairer deal.

How are you going to negotiate without striking (or threatening a strike)? Why would the company care that you know you're being underpaid if you're still going to do your job either way?

If you’re underpaid it means you can get a better deal somewhere else.

You’re going to negotiate with the knowledge in par with the company that is interested in having you.

Knowledge is power. - France is bacon.

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

#360

Post by terr-dav »

vermontdevil wrote: post #312
rtkwe wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Probably) The first aerial bombardment on US soil was when private planes dropped homemade bombs on striking coal workers at Blair Mountain in 1921. The US has a looong and brutal history of breaking up labor movements.

How do you think May Day was celebrated? The Haymarket Affair [1] which occurred in 1886 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

And let’s not forget why we have a separate Labor Day in the US:

>Labor Day has conservative roots. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland pushed Congress to establish the holiday as a way to de-escalate class tension following the Pullman Strike, during which as many as ninety workers were gunned down by thousands of US Marshals serving at the pleasure of railway tycoon George Pullman, one of the time’s most hated industrial barons.

>Cleveland was wary of the response to his actions. He signed Labor Day into law a mere six days after busting the strike.

Source: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/labor-day-may-first-ameri...

Post reply on HN