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Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#771

> Employees cast 2,654 votes to be represented by Amazon Labor Union and 2,131 against, giving the union a win by more than 10 percentage points, according to the National Labor Relations Board. More than 8,300 workers at the building This is just sad. Just a hair over 50% of the eligible voters voted; weirdly, approximately the same voter turnout for US elections historically. Does half of any given population just…

Basically 30% of the workforce is setting rules for the whole. The vote should require a majority of all workers, not just those not voting, to approve the union.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#772
post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tax break is not a subsidy. A subsidy is a payment to the person. If a farmer lost money one year, the tax break does not financially benefit him. Money I have left over from paying taxes is not a "subsidy".

The common definition includes tax breaks see: “subsidy is a benefit given to an individual, business, or institution, usually by the government. It can be direct (such as cash payments) or indirect (such as tax breaks). The subsidy is typically given to remove some type of burden, and it is often considered to be in the overall interest of the public, given to promote a social good or an economic policy.” https://ww…

I don't agree with those definitions, but I'll have to concede the point.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#773
post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about dignity. Ask any nurse, doctor, grocery worker, restaurant worker, etc. how they feel about being called a hero. Calling us that to exploit our sense of duty or compassion. Giving us pats on the back and "bonuses" if that amounting to half a week of rent or food. We won't just stop at being actual people. We'll keep on organizing and quitting and lying flat or whatever we need to do to get our shar…

That is what has felt so hollow to me over the past two years. I'm not an "essential worker", so I've been looking at this from the outside, but it's felt so gross seeing all the "hero" framing with all the "huge thanks", but without anything tangible to go with it. How about we pay people more? Maybe give more paid vacation? Maybe find ways to make these jobs more attractive so more people will want to do them and r…

At this point, everyone I know has quit or just works way less than they used to. Compassion fatigue is awful. At this point, everything is just a job to most people, and we will all become disloyal mercenaries in healthcare and service industries. Yes, more pay, vacation, and not being physically or verbally abused would be nice. Nurses and doctors and residents should not be physically abused while on the job.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pure fantasy. Minimum wage in the US is 2-10x what it is in low cost regions. Not even touching regulations. US experts travel to those regions to hand-hold every step necessary in order to make any product not forced to be built in the US by taxes or regulation. I did this for years and I hate it. I have worked for years in both American and foreign factories and I can assure you that they can automate just…

Sure, but the problem is it's not just minimum wages that are 2-10x higher in the US. It's all wages. I don't know the manufacturing sector personally, but I can look at the tech sector. I am a senior software engineer in Romania working for an American company. I am well appreciated and currently have a significant hand in designing major pieces of one of our bigger products, working with a Romanian team, a US team…

While I absolutely understand and sympathize with what you are saying, the issue cannot be analyzed by simply comparing executive pay to that of the lowest paid employees. I know it is popular to make these comparisons, I get it, one gets a sense of righteousness from discussing things in those terms. However, these comparisons make no sense at all.

Wage scales are what they are for a reason. Simple example, in the US an engineer might graduate with somewhere between $100K and $300K US in student loans. That, right there, starts to impose a baseline on what someone can reasonably earn in order for it to be worth it to have that job. Just like a business isn't going to exist to just break even, people tend not to work just to break even. Everyone has to make a profit.

To that you start adding professional and personal necessities and you might quickly realize that $150K a year living in Los Angeles might very well be equivalent to 1/2 or 1/5 of that salary elsewhere in the world.

I'll give you another simple example: It costs my family $1200 per month for healthcare. It used to be $600 per month. Then Obamacare was instituted --under the laughable "Affordable Care Act"-- and our healthcare tripled to $1800 US per month. We eventually moved to a $1200 per month plan where we accept greater risk and higher costs. I did the math, we have to spend somewhere in the order of $25K in a year before our health insurance really starts paying for things.

In other words, context is always important in judging how much people get paid.

An executive that is responsible for managing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue should make enough money to reflect the degree of responsibility he or she has. If they don't do their job, hundreds of people lose their jobs. You simply can't compare executive pay to that of a warehouse worker who is operating at an entirely different level of responsibility and accountability.

The problem isn't pay scales. The problem is the overall cost structure, which starts at artificially forced costs --be it wages or regulatory-- imposed in complete violation of free market principles.

Here's an example of these costs, something I learned about a couple of decades ago and just astounded me. In Los Angeles County (for those outside the US, the region where the city of Los Angeles is located) we have a tax called "Los Angeles County Business Property Tax". What is this? Well, to put it in simple terms, look around your office. The County of Los Angeles makes businesses pay taxes on everything you see: Your desk, your computer, your printer, fax machine, chair, table, lights, trash can, even any improvements you may have made to your building (dividers, painting, electrical, etc). LA County makes you pay a tax on every physical product the company owns. FOR FUCKING EVER.

This is some of the context that is missed from most of these conversations and the kinds of things only people who have to deal with them would know. As is always the case, life is a complex multivariate problem that is never well represented by a single simple variable.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large amounts of venture capital from US investors, a really large monolingual market and path dependence. More generally though, relying on outliers for your argument is perhaps not the best approach.

Outlier? FAANG is just the top of the market. Companies are started in the US and grown because the opportunity to make money is much greater. Venture capital? An awful lot of the venture capital comes from foreign investors. Monolingual? The global business world runs on English. Outliers? When it's all of them, the idea it is a coincidence starts getting pretty unlikely.

> Companies are started in the US and grown because the opportunity to make money is much greater.

I'm not convinced that this is the case. Like, the US market is cheaper to operate in relative to other markets the same size (e.g. the EU) because you have an over-arching system of laws, contracts and (most importantly) language.

If your theory is correct, then one would expect the US to remain the largest source of profitable companies globally. If my theory is correct, one might expect China/India to take it's place. Come back in 20 years, I guess?

> Venture capital? An awful lot of the venture capital comes from foreign investors.

Can you point to some sources on this. A quick Google didn't reveal much information, and I really would like to know. Modulo Softbank, I suspect that it's mostly US based institutions giving VC's their money.

> Monolingual? The global business world runs on English.

All of the big companies you mentioned sell to consumers, not businesses, so the global language of business is kinda irrelevant. My point was that the US is a relatively integrated, large market with one language. Most startups begin in their home company. While a startup from Greece would likely have to hire more people to scale across the EU (20+ languages), the equivalent US based startup can scale happily without worrying about languages for a much longer period.

> Outliers? When it's all of them, the idea it is a coincidence starts getting pretty unlikely.

FAANG are 100% outliers, I don't see how you can believe otherwise.

However, Europe has produced SAP (uggghhhh), Spotify, and a bunch of second-tier fintechs (but given the regulatory advantages of the EU in this space, I suspect one of them will conquer the world).

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walter, it’s amazing how often I see you weigh in on economic and political issues on this forum when you have a poor grasp of even the basics. Claiming that privatised healthcare is somehow more efficient in spite of overwhelming real world evidence to the contrary, or that people are capable of meaningfully informed choices in picking a healthcare plan and somehow find it life-enhancing to have to do this, or ignor…

Are you sure about your points? I've never made the claim that privatized health care is more efficient. I have claimed that free market health care is more efficient. If you've got evidence that government health care is more efficient, let alone overwhelming evidence, I'd like to see it. From what I've seen from high school economics, they can laugh at me all they want. But they don't know anything as they are taug…

Google "US health expenditure vs life expectancy" and "adverse selection in healthcare", read the top few links and get back to me.

You're making several basic mistakes thinking about freedom, because once again you're not even familiar with basic knowledge of the topic. In particular:

- Confusing the quality and quantity of choices. Free healthcare increases freedom because it increases overall quality of choices people can make - if you'd even encountered the concept of the capability approach to human welfare (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_approach) you wouldn't have made this basic mistake.

- You're conflating capitalism with freedom, when in fact capitalism is built on top of property law, a very anti-freedom system. Property is the biggest government program their is, and is enforced with violent anti-freedom, liberty-destroying government force.

In other words, you're so ideological you're not even wrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong).

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#777
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure I'd call unions legally-mandated to hold 33-50% (depending on company size) of the company's board seats "weaker". That's the situation in Germany. I think that's a brilliant policy. It forces the unions to have some skin in the game. If you're on the board, you have a fiduciary responsibility to the company and it's shareholders. In the U.S., most union bosses are happy to bleed a company dry provided…

>It's even worse with the public unions. Since governments can theoretically keep raising taxes, there's no real limiting factor to how much the unions can demand. Do a search on governmentjobs.com for a job title you're familiar with and decide whether the unions have been successful at bleeding the government dry via high salaries. My anecdotal experience: you need to get to one level below Chief where I work to dr…

It's not the salaries that drive costs. It's mostly the long-term underfunded liabilities like pensions.

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outlier? FAANG is just the top of the market. Companies are started in the US and grown because the opportunity to make money is much greater. Venture capital? An awful lot of the venture capital comes from foreign investors. Monolingual? The global business world runs on English. Outliers? When it's all of them, the idea it is a coincidence starts getting pretty unlikely.

> Companies are started in the US and grown because the opportunity to make money is much greater. I'm not convinced that this is the case. Like, the US market is cheaper to operate in relative to other markets the same size (e.g. the EU) because you have an over-arching system of laws, contracts and (most importantly) language. If your theory is correct, then one would expect the US to remain the largest source of p…

> Can you point to some sources on this.

No, but I've heard it many times. I've also seen plenty of talk about the trade deficit not being a deficit at all, as the balance is foreign investment in the US, which is not counted.

> so the global language of business is kinda irrelevant

Attend a trade show. They're in English, even in foreign countries. Every single one I've attended.

The bottom line is, which companies do you invest in?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about your points? I've never made the claim that privatized health care is more efficient. I have claimed that free market health care is more efficient. If you've got evidence that government health care is more efficient, let alone overwhelming evidence, I'd like to see it. From what I've seen from high school economics, they can laugh at me all they want. But they don't know anything as they are taug…

Google "US health expenditure vs life expectancy" and "adverse selection in healthcare", read the top few links and get back to me. You're making several basic mistakes thinking about freedom, because once again you're not even familiar with basic knowledge of the topic. In particular: - Confusing the quality and quantity of choices. Free healthcare increases freedom because it increases overall quality of choices pe…

You didn't read the article I cited. Please return when you have.

BTW, the Soviet Union didn't allow people to own property, and had free healthcare. People were so free there they had to build a wall around it and shoot people who tried to escape. Ditto for every other communist country.

And where do those freedom-loving people want to go? The US. So many, in fact, that the US had to build a wall to keep them out.

What do all those people know that you missed?

Re: Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

#780

I really don’t understand this push tbh. Amazon is already the industry leader in pay and benefits for these roles. Why was this needed? In 2022, the only time I tend to see a union do anything, it’s to disrupt and create mob like holds on things (shipping, trucking etc). There seems to be waaay more corruption in anything union related than without. Can someone seriously explain why this is needed or a good thing? W…

Can someone provide examples of when unions are bad?
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