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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

#371

Post by LatteLazy »

kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #92
LatteLazy wrote: post #39

Can anyone outline what unionisation means in this case? If they vote yes, is everyone at this location required to join? Are amazon required to negotiate with the union? Can amazon simply close the plant? Presumably if unionisation works for these workers (better pay etc) then other centres will follow suit...

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…

Thanks. So what happens if amazon's offer is exactly what they're offering now?

I think it will be very interesting to see what the unions wants:

* cash raises (and what sort of structure)

* non cash benefits (health etc, more breaks, shorter lines to clock in and out)

* guaranteed hrs

* job security

* political faff

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

#372

Post by masonic »

quandrum wrote: post #168
asdff wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every anecdote of an isolated case of union abuse, there are probably hundreds of unheard cases of corporations abusing their workers. But that doesn't matter for most people, simplistic logic says therefore all unions are bad and capable of corruption, and ignoring that most of the time, the status quo is far, far more exploitative for the average worker. Once again, perfect becomes the enemy of good, and condit…

Wage theft is the most common crime in the US, is estimated to occur to ~20% of all employees and equal tens of billions a year, and no one talks about it. How many union members do you think experience wage theft?

  How many union members do you think experience wage theft?
Essentially all do, when "dues" are mandatory.

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

#373

Post by masonic »

munk-a wrote: post #114
pwinnski wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many/most supporters of unions argue that police should not be able to form or join unions. "Cops are not workers" is a common phrase I've seen.

Given that the police budget is formed by public allocation and the nature of the job I think that policy absolutely should have the ability to form unions. Being forced to work long shifts in dangerous work environments (whether dangerous to you or others) is pretty unsafe. The issue is that, whether intentionally or not, the public has bargained away some pretty valuable things over the year to the union including…

Where, specifically, has the per-student education budget been "slashed"?

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

#374

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

txsoftwaredev wrote: post #200
LatteLazy wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obamacare got a lot of workers at places like amazon warehouses healthcare. Cancelling student debt will help a shit tonne more workers. He has a section on his campaign website addressing Union specifics: https://joebiden.com/empowerworkers/ Well see what he can actually does, but with the senate in democrat hands, the sky is the limit.

"Cancelling student debt will help a shit tonne more workers." I will feel terrible if that ever happens for folks that were smart with money and didn't incur tons of debt. It's gonna be a real bummer when you learn that you paid off your educational debt or never had any and that now you get to pay off debt of others that made bad decisions.

What a shitty attitude.

"bad decisions"

Imagine thinking that earning a degree was a "bad decision".

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

#375

Post by KorematsuFred »

dang wrote: post #303
KorematsuFred wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please keep ideological flamebait* out of your posts here. It leads to ideological flamewars, which are repetitive and nasty and not what this site is for. Please make your substantive points without it. *e.g. "socialist hellhole", "jewish person supporting a neo nazi movement"

Unionization is an ideological flamewar to begin with.

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

#376

Post by dang »

KorematsuFred wrote: post #375
dang wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please keep ideological flamebait* out of your posts here. It leads to ideological flamewars, which are repetitive and nasty and not what this site is for. Please make your substantive points without it. *e.g. "socialist hellhole", "jewish person supporting a neo nazi movement"

Unionization is an ideological flamewar to begin with.

It's possible to discuss it from an intellectually curious standpoint, as opposed to everyone just bringing in battle-hardened talking points and bashing each other with them, the same way they bashed each other last time. The former is what we're trying for here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#377

Post by erk__ »

ibudiallo wrote: post #64

Unions were proponents for worker safety, fair wages, anti-discrimination. They are the reason why such thing as OSHA exists today. They are the reason some laws were passed to protect workers in the US. But once these mandates became law, corporations used the arguments of "why do we need unions if the law already protects workers?" This and following Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers changed the image…

Over here in Denmark and a few other countries in EU we have laws that requires LLC to have employee representation on the board, they are the ones who are supposed to be the friend of the common worker.

https://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Rela...

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

#378

Post by fao_ »

DataSceince123 wrote: post #173
legitster wrote: post #9

I have to imagine unions have a bit of an uphill battle right now, they took some major black eyes in 2020: - Police unions openly declaring war on their own citizens - Teachers unions causing general chaos in school reopening plans I understand that public sector unions are a different beast, but purely from an optics perspective I have to imagine public sentiment for unions can't be very high right now.

1) The police need to be defunded and disbanded, this will take care of problems within unions of a corrupt institution 2) Teachers were right not going back to school, this is the deadliest pandemic in the history of the united states and to expect teachers to work is a crime. Therefore the union did its job

Hi, worth noting a lot of your comments are dead. I agree with you, but you're on the path to being shadowbanned, if you aren't already.
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