Per their own words, worker unions impede "speed, innovation, and customer obsession."
Yeah, gotta feed that customer obsession at all costs.
Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]
51–60 of 138 posts
Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Corporations as generally conceived are not anti-market interventions. A union backed by the state imposing a rule that violates an employer's contracting rights by 1. preventing them from negotiating with workers outside of the union, 2. preventing them from firing workers who unionize or strike and replacing them with new workers, is. These are blatant anti-market interventions that give any group of workers that u…
It's true that the legality of unions in the US depends on an exception in antitrust law. But it's also true that corporations depend on state-backed exceptions to common law. As such, corporations were generally illegal in the US until the late 1800s. There was an exception for corporations serving the public interest. Initially for building canals and railroads. But in the late 1800s, a series of Supreme Court opin…
Unions depend not just on an exemption from anti-trust law, which in itsef is an anti-market intervention, but on state-imposed restrictions on businesses to give unions a monopoly over their workforces.
It's an extreme disruption in the economy, with all predictable consequences for productivity.
As for corporations and common law, that's a relatively minor deviation from the free market that would be almost entirely ameliorated by removing limited liability from tort cases.
>>As long as we're going to allow collective action by business owners, it's only fair that we allow collective action by workers.
Collective action is not the problem. Laws prohibiting employers from exercising their right to contract liberty and free association, to fire workers who unionize or strike, or to negotiate with workers not in a union, when a union has voted to collectively bargain, are the problem.
Like I said, the state gives unions a monopoly over any workforce in which they form. Giving a party a monopoly by restricting the contract rights of other parties is entirely different than "allowing" a monopoly to exist.
Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any form of business larger than a sole proprietorship is a collective action. The “corporate” form of a business (as supposed to a partnership or other structure) is mostly a matter of taxes, legal liability, and the manner of raising capital and distributing profits. Powerful unions are typically larger than the workforce of any one single company.
Right. Sole proprietorships and individual workers have similar market power. But without unions, workers have virtually no market power vs corporations (and partnerships, for that matter). I do agree that both corporations and unions ought to be regulated by antitrust law.
Market power is irrevelant to workers being able to fetch the market rate for their labor. Corporations compete with each other for a limited pool of labor. There is no generalized class conflict between corporations and workers in a free market. Competition happens just as much within classes as between them.
Ultimately that results in the wages offered being determined by the underlying market forces of supply and demand that are far larger and more powerful than the efforts of any single party. And it is in society's best interest for wages to be determined by supply and demand and not some social agenda.
The only policy which provide zero sum benefits to corporations at the expense of workers is immigration. And that can be addressed by workers through political coordination. The primary purpose of unions is to give select groups of workers the ability to engage in rent-seeking at the expense of the wider economy. We can get political coordination between workers without resorting to unions and all the harm that comes along with them.
Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]
#54Absurdity of this video aside, but I just wish there was room in today's political environment to discuss pros and cons to unions and non-unions. There are some pretty good examples of unions being corrupt, there are examples where unions work. There are examples where like Amazon says, having a direct relationship with your employer is the best. Nuance is gone which is the biggest loss.
Definitely. Unions brought progress in terms of worker rights, up to a point. They helped transform the landscape for all workers. But, like all big and complex organizations they become corrupted and rather than having the interest of workers and society as foremost goals, self perpetuation and preservation become the goals. Except for Bernie no other candidate explicitly and implicitly supports unions. All the othe…
> Unions brought progress in terms of worker rights, up to a point.
What does "up to a point" mean? Like these videos, this makes it sound as if the progress of workers' rights is over, and we've got all we'll ever need.
What about, say, "a living wage", which the government's minimum wage law is unable to provide? This isn't done. It will probably never be done.
Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]
#55There was a Home Depot anti-union video floating around yesterday. [1] What really struck me is how much they remind me of the cringey anti-drug videos we used to watch in like middle school, “If you see a suspicious person smoking something that looks like a cigarette but smells funny, cross the street to get away. They may offer you a joint for free to get you hooked. If you smoke that joint, before you know it the…
Even if I didn't know anything about unions before, the mere fact that all these mega-corps are spending the money to make anti-union videos would seem awfully suspicious. Why would companies have anything to fear, if unions were really so terrible for workers?
These anti-union videos are indeed reminiscent of the anti-drug videos. Drugs are unhealthy, expensive, and illegal -- so DARE should be shooting fish in a barrel, and yet they still have zero demonstrated effectiveness. Hearing an adult in a position of power tell you not to do something only makes it seem more attractive.
Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]
#56I love how they list "living wage" as a warning word.
Among pretty much every other activity. "Showing interest in benefits or plans" I'd tend towards it being a fake, if it didn't seem reasonable these are the kinds of ends Amazon HR goes to in order to keep their labor pools un-unionized.
It wasn't simply "showing interest in benefits or plans", it was showing "unusual interest" in them.
Amazon commented on the video saying Gizmodo "“cherry-picked soundbites” from the video". If it was fake, Amazon wouldn't say something like that, Amazon would say it's fake.
https://gizmodo.com/amazons-aggressive-anti-union-tactics-re...
Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]
#57I love how they say "associates" instead of "employees". Indeed the sheen of the coat of paint is different and shinier, but the tactics and morals are as scummy as 100 years ago.
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Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]
#58If Amazon's work force unionizes, Amazon will cease to be a dynamic company that sees rapid foreign expansion and growth in export revenue it earns for the US. The US will see yet another major driver of innovation and production growth, this time the tech industry, succumb to social activists and their rent-seeking-motivated ideological narratives. A century of pro-union-monopoly advocacy will not change the fact th…
Ah you mean,like Hollywood.
(copy-pasting)
I'd argue it's only because the nature of film making - with many short-lived independent productions - doesn't give unionized work units the monopoly control they would have in large stable production facilities, like factories, and moreover, due to being cultural work, is very difficult to outsource.
For a time all major industrial sectors were dominated by unions. It resulted in America losing its manufacturing edge and seeing most manufacturing migrate to Asia. The entire passenger rail service also went bankrupt due to the demands of the Brotherhoods, which had a stranglehold on the industry. Today, besides a few notable exceptions like Hollywood and the screen actors guild, unions are only growing in the public sector, and that's because taxpayers are forced to subsidize their inefficiency.
As a general rule, industries lose their dynamism when they come under the domination of unions, which is exactly what standard economic theories on free markets and efficiency predict.
Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]
#59I love how they list "living wage" as a warning word.
Any phrase that's open to interpretation helps organizers. The migrant might think a living wage is $15/hour while the native feels it's $60k/year. Two very different beliefs; but on the surface, they're both getting pumped up in agreement behind the organizer who's demanding it. That scares management. They know they'll lose control the moment someone comes along, who's more effective than them at winning over the hearts and minds of their employees. It's why I'm always a bit disappointed to see big businesses reacting with FUD rather than HOPE.
Re: Amazon's Anti-Union Training Video [video]
#60Absurdity of this video aside, but I just wish there was room in today's political environment to discuss pros and cons to unions and non-unions. There are some pretty good examples of unions being corrupt, there are examples where unions work. There are examples where like Amazon says, having a direct relationship with your employer is the best. Nuance is gone which is the biggest loss.
> I just wish there was room in today's political environment to discuss pros and cons to unions and non-unions I agree with this from both perspectives. Companies and business-owners should also be allowed to espouse anti-union arguments without automatically being tagged as "evil" or subjected to extra scrutiny. That said, you're certainly not going to find a nuanced debate in a ... training video. The purpose of t…
The major problem with this is that the employees are captive for a company's anti-union arguments; they're integrated with the job.
As long as the union gets to speak to the employees on company time and gets to add pro-union arguments to the training videos, I see no problem with the boss doing so as well.