Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Did that person have any connection to the Amazon Labor Union? I'm just trying to figure out how I was supposed to follow this subthread.
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Amazon instructs New York workers “don't sign” union cards
351–360 of 403 posts
Re: Amazon instructs New York workers “don't sign” union cards
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
Transacting is one aspect of business - ownership is much more important, and only exists as far as the government enforces it.
Did early humans own the tools they created? Probably. Government limits this in almost all cases. Even the liberty minded founders of the USA created eminent domain which is not limited in which property the state can take, technically. The USA typically is supportive of private ownership, but not the originator. I think ownership exists inherently in humans. As does it's counterpart theft. We have decided that thef…
Businesses can be owned by all of the workers collectively, its rather silly to assume that's not true and it needs a singular owner. There is zero reason why this would be the case. Groups of people can agree on things, believe it or not.
Re: Amazon instructs New York workers “don't sign” union cards
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, you would have the government step in and deny the right of an individual to earn what they may need at that moment, in their specific circumstance, to form a contract with another person - a business owner? The bureaucracy knows better, and if the individual can’t find another job at a level to even scrape by then the bureaucracy steps in again, but is this a path to a solid job in 20 years? The higher the wage,…
> I personally did not have my own shit together enough to earn minimum wage, not quite, at the very start. $15/hr+ starts to become a mountain that the least well-off cannot land a position earning, or cannot stay competitive at that rate, in some parts of the nation. This is the most salient point in my opinion when discussing minimum wages. Employers have to decide which potential employee can produce enough to ma…
Or employees could group together to form cooperative companies that don't simply work to extract from their labor and actually provides a decent living for everyone. There is no reason that we should be all working together as a group to make a few people wealthier when they didn't do any of the actual work.
Re: Amazon instructs New York workers “don't sign” union cards
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Another metric: "How long does it take to earn enough for my baseline expenses (rent, food, health, retirement money, etc.)". In my opinion, this is the only valid metric. If a business cannot pay people enough to live, the business should not exist. Businesses do not have more of a right to exist than the workers that make them up. Full stop.
So, you would have the government step in and deny the right of an individual to earn what they may need at that moment, in their specific circumstance, to form a contract with another person - a business owner? The bureaucracy knows better, and if the individual can’t find another job at a level to even scrape by then the bureaucracy steps in again, but is this a path to a solid job in 20 years? The higher the wage,…
We already produce enough food, goods, and housing for everyone in the country to live with their basic needs met. The only reason that isn't happening is because there is a small group of capital owners and corporations that work to create artificial scarcity. It's an absolutely disgusting practice that benefits nobody but people who are already rich
With the AI cliff that you discuss, productivity will increase even more than it did in the industrial revolution and there is even less of a reason to continue with our absurd current system of making a tiny out of people rich at the expense of everyone else.
Re: Amazon instructs New York workers “don't sign” union cards
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
Did that person have any connection to the Amazon Labor Union? I'm just trying to figure out how I was supposed to follow this subthread.
The “crossing state lines!” outrage was an example of someone trying to make the mundane sound evil and ominous.
Re: Amazon instructs New York workers “don't sign” union cards
#356Unions love card check instead of secret ballots. It's a great intimidation tool.
Re: Amazon instructs New York workers “don't sign” union cards
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
The pay is why the employees don't quit en mass.
Is this the same Amazon that is convinced they will run out of employees in a few years because they quit so often? https://www.vox.com/recode/23170900/leaked-amazon-memo-wareh...
Jeff Bezos wanted high turnover by design: this is why the starting pay is so high and doesn't grow.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-wor...
Re: Amazon instructs New York workers “don't sign” union cards
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
Transacting is one aspect of business - ownership is much more important, and only exists as far as the government enforces it.
Did early humans own the tools they created? Probably. Government limits this in almost all cases. Even the liberty minded founders of the USA created eminent domain which is not limited in which property the state can take, technically. The USA typically is supportive of private ownership, but not the originator. I think ownership exists inherently in humans. As does it's counterpart theft. We have decided that thef…
> That is if you do not consider a persons labor to be "owned" by them
That would be an insane stance to take. That is essentially arguing in favor of slavery, the idea that someone other than me owns my labour.
You can own the output of my labour if you have an employment contract with me where I trade you that in exchange for something from you, but you can't ever own my labour itself. That would be nuts.
Re: Amazon instructs New York workers “don't sign” union cards
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
that lifetime ban on working for the Krogers may have represented a much bigger threat to Mr. Manager than it ever would to you
pmc and workers aren't allies
> pmc and workers aren’t allies
The so-called “professional managerial class” is (1) not a class, and (2) a grouping that cuts across the proletariat and petit bourgeiosie (and is largely contained within the intelligentsia component of those classes.)
(Its basically an American-Left resurrection of the Leninist critique of the behavior of the intelligentsia, divorced from the theory in which that critique was grounded which recognized that the intelligentsia were not a genuine classes because their relation to the economy was predominantly as wage labor hired by capital–and thus proletarian–but occasionally petit bourgeois; its kind of weird that its invocation seemed to fade after the 1970s but has become popular again in the last few years.)
Re: Amazon instructs New York workers “don't sign” union cards
#360People nowadays have no memory of the decades of struggle, sacrifice to win the rights we currently have. Unions are the most effective tool the working class has to affect change where they spend a majority of their waking life. No wonder why its demonized at every possible instance.
I do think unions had some (modest) benefit but the role of raw economic growth in improving worker rights is often understated.
Please don't be so naive. Read some labor history. Workers' rights were won in blood. This idea that capitalism somehow magically bestowed rights on workers is absurd and quite insulting.