Amazon's Aggressive Anti-Union Tactics Revealed in Leaked Video | Hacker News Reader

Amazon's Aggressive Anti-Union Tactics Revealed in Leaked Video

gizmodo.com

128 pointsamaccuish23 comments

Say what you will about Amazon, but what I did not appreciate about that Gizmodo article is they are misleading on purpose. They put a massive screenshot of the video showing a "TIPS" acronym that apparently stands for Threat, Investigate, Promise, Spy. Then in tiny grey text the caption states its a screenshot of what the company does NOT advise Management doing. Obviously very few will read that tiny caption. Sensationalism at its best.

And Amazon is so concerned that its managers could spontaneously forget not to do any of those four specific things that they made this handy acronym to help them remember. /s

But this image appears at about the middle of the article, after the fold - so whatever the rationale, it wouldn't be particularly useful clickbait.

The rest of the article is pretty unambigous though. The expectation that employees should focus more on "customer obsession" than their own wage is rather funny. The "warning signs" and general language is less so.

I'm not sure how the legal situation in the US is - but the quotes seem like they very carefully try to stay out of legal trouble, but go as far far as they can in anti-union tactics otherwise.

> Obviously very few will read that tiny caption.

Sounds like the point.

It's like having a police PSA to prevent robbery that describes in detail how to effectively commit robbery and get away with it. Afterwards, in tiny letters it says, "don't do this."

I'm glad I live in the country where these tactics would be completely illegal, as workers have the lawful right to unionize in businesses that have a certain number of employees. In fact there are agreements, per industrial branch, large corporations have to follow regarding unions.

In US even workers who would benefit from unionizing think unions are a bad thing. This behavior is definitely a vestige of puritan morals. I guess that's why the richest men in the world are american as well.

If the best argument you can fathom for being anti-union is "puritan morals" I highly recommend you spend 5 minutes researching the issue. This is a good rule of thumb for ANY time you are unable to come up with a reasonable argument against your position. I mean, have you EVER changed your mind about an important issue? Were you being stupid or irrational EVERY time you did that, or are some issues legitimately tough to think through and both sides have positions grounded in a reasonable assessment of the available evidence, just perhaps differing weights on that evidence?

Whenever someone expresses a strong opinion to me, this is a simple test: "What's the best argument you've heard against your position?" If they can't come up with anything, or resort to an exaggerated caricature of their opponents, I know they are merely being emotional and cannot be trusted, at least on that particular issue.

So what's the better arguments then?

Being forced to keep around dead weight because they can't be fired, the potential for an entire company to be shutdown due to a union strike, being forced to only hire individuals who are part of a union, regardless of whether they're the most qualified. For workers, they may be fine with the pay and benefits provided by the company, but get forced to pay union dues and deal with strikes and walkouts because union leadership says so.

I'm generally in favor of unions, but there are enough downsides and examples of corrupt unions that they can't be considered objectively good. Also, not all companies treat non-union employees the same as walmart and amazon. My father works for a large multi-national company that is mixed union and non-union, and the non-union employees get paid more than the union employees, and get equivalent raises whenever the union employees get one. Money and benefits for employees aren't really a huge issue for the company, but the threat of a union organized shutdown is, so they pay basically reward the non-union employees for not having an implicit threat of shutting down if they don't get their way.

There is also the association of Unions with Organized Crime in the US. In the early 20th century unions got into bed with, or were infiltrated by, organized criminal organizations and were used to extort other businesses and the government. The legacy of this is an image of corruption and “Union Thugs.” This image is used by management to make these potential issues seem like they are intended to line someone else’s pocket, thus making the idea of Union Dues and Strikes very unappealing.

To be clear, I’m generally pro-union as well, as long as the union rules/dues/etc are reasonable, just discussing where US anti-union attitudes might be coming from.

A lot of this is the direct result of union busting. Companies hired essentially private militias to come in and bully/repress workers who were attempting to organize. As a result, those workers turned to another group of essentially private militias to help stand up for them.

Not that the criminals did this out of the kindness of their hearts. It turns out that being in charge of the Teamsters Union comes in handy when you're in the business of importing illicit goods.

It's extremely easy for Americans to gloss over the fact that until significant work reforms culminating in the Sherman anti-trust act, it was not unheard of (or, crazily enough, illegal) for super-companies like Standard Oil to enlist the US army in literal massacres with body counts over 100 when unions lead strikes.

Being a union leader in the so-called "Gilded Age" of Rockafeller put you in alliance with other anti-government actors of varying quality as a matter of survival. As the government subsequently became more receptive to guaranteeing some degree of workers rights and benefits and limiting the power of super-billionaires, the necessity of allying with these elements fell apart in messy way.

The Ludlow Massacre? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

i work in one of the big 3 car companies. i deal with union employees on a regular basis. there's a reason why the american big 3's are not being able to compete the japanese and koreans. it takes more than an hour to undo a screw here, because the union employee is having a coffee/cigarette/....break, and i am not allowed to undo that screw because of the 'law'. i am for unions, but lack of accountability makes them do whatever they want and not do anything in time. i think i will write a blog post soon.

edit - also these are the same guys who call themselves patriots and proudly support trump.

So the JAW doesn't exist? Toyota encodes many union mechanisms directly into the corporate structure. The government itself makes it very hard to fire factory workers and backs pensions.

So if you're looking for a justification for this, it seems like Unions are more of a scapegoat than a root cause. It seems as unfair to blame their union affiliation as it does to suggest that it's because they're Trump voters.

Also worth noting that Tesla, an anti-union shop by all accounts, actually straight up missed their Model 3 targets while union shops (notably Chevrolet, but also Nissan) managed to get mass-market-priced full EVs on the road with good marks for quality, safety and performance within their price category. So maybe it's just America itself that has the issues?

I'm not blaming the existence of union for these issues. The lack of accountability is my complaint. If you tell any employee that no matter what they do, their job is protected, you'll find them laughing at you when you assign them a task. If you look at Ford, they had to kill majority of their sedans because of the development costs and profitability. I live in this environment and I see daily tasks that take minutes take hours to get done. Bigger projects which takes weeks or months get dragged all the time. People still get paid and there are no consequences if objectives are not met. Considering these points, the management is forced to drop projects, kill certain cars or keep using old stuff (not fuel efficient). I do sincerely accept that the union is not the only bottle neck and sometimes we see wastage from upper management, but the magnitude of impact the union attitude has on work environment and productivity is considerably high.

Tesla is altogether a different story. They just don't have the expertise to make things happen. The processes that the big 3 car companies have in place, developed over time, are not exact science. Putting a car together is a complex task. I definitely am a big fan of Tesla and love the way they do things, they have grossly underestimated the complexity of building a car.

> The lack of accountability is my complaint. If you tell any employee that no matter what they do, their job is protected, you'll find them laughing at you when you assign them a task.

Well, you attribute this directly to Unions... so maybe there is a different kind of union that exists in a country with more social services that doesn't cause this. And that might explain the JAL. But like I said, Unions often have formal processes for people who aren't doing their work. Now, for folks who simply aren't doing a good job, you have to have an opinion about what must be done.

> I live in this environment and I see daily tasks that take minutes take hours to get done. Bigger projects which takes weeks or months get dragged all the time

I mean, I've worked at big non-union companies and I feel like I saw exactly that phenomenon as well. Perhaps that's more a feature of ineffective organizations?

> People still get paid and there are no consequences if objectives are not met. ... the magnitude of impact the union attitude has on work environment and productivity is considerably high.

Personally (perhaps I'm naive here?) I think if an organization that can't align and inform performance incentives with its workforce, be they union or not, is the result of a workplace and senior management problem. I know bad apple employees do exist, and they can be painful to work with and around. But I just have a hard time believing that it's a significant enough fraction to actually tank the company with no recourse.

> I definitely am a big fan of Tesla and love the way they do things, they have grossly underestimated the complexity of building a car.

I agree, but I think it's more that they don't get how to make good processes and align these over a large workforce, and a failure properly incentivize the workforce. When they were at a more artistic scale and the roadster's first-run bugs were worked out, they made fantastic cars for the most part.

Both Japan and German automakers have very strong unions and between the two of them, they make some of the best cars in the world.

Any time management starts blaming their workforce for the poor perforance of their firms, we should take it with a huge grain of salt.

When a company goes under it is almost always the result of poor management decisions, but Americans are so quick to blame the workers. I really don't understand it.

> Being forced to keep around dead weight because they can't be fired, the potential for an entire company to be shutdown due to a union strike, being forced to only hire individuals who are part of a union, regardless of whether they're the most qualified. For workers, they may be fine with the pay and benefits provided by the company, but get forced to pay union dues and deal with strikes and walkouts because union leadership says so.

Right, but these are arguments that may or may not be based in reality. They're also based around a worldview that inherently says, "If you are not very good at your job compared to the most productive and dedicated people, you deserve to be fired." This is in fact a very modern view focused around the idea that efficiency-maximization is a pillar to societal happiness at large. In M. Friedman's case he very literally argued that.

In reality, a better way for unions often aggressively deal with people who refuse to perform at all (because many jobs are union-only and if the union kicks you out, you're in trouble). Even teachers unions, the target of every union grudge in the US, do this. The disagreement is what to do with people who simply aren't very good at their jobs relative to peak producers.

As we list the various American oppositions to unions, I think it's important to point out how these ideas are shaped and how they conflict with the Union's policies and the existing neoliberal economic establishment.

In addition to the specifically anti-union views mentioned in other posts, I think the biggest problem in the US is simply an apathy towards the goals/purpose of a Union, caused by sociopolitical views. If I was to tell someone that I’m dealing with poor working conditions at a Job, almost nobody I know would suggest that I organize with other workers to demand improvements. They would tell me to find a new job, or if the issues were egregious enough, sue.

There is a general sentiment in the US that bettering one’s situation comes not from improving the situation, but by changing it. If you’re work conditions are terrible, find a new job. If your whole industry is terrible, learn new skills and move to a new industry. If you don’t want to be an exploited worker, become management. I think this is due to the strong expectation of the self-regulation of employment in a free market. But the cost and risk of changing your situation, combined with industries management collectively working together, and the near monopolistic size of some companies, makes such self-regulation unlikely in many industries/fields.

This is part of an even larger social class issues where the goal for most people isn’t to improve the conditions for their class, but to get them selves into a higher-class. This ends up pitting everyone against each other in a way that makes organization and collective bargaining very difficult.

“… the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires” -- Ronald Wright/John Steinbeck

If you compare class consciousness between the US and UK, this is bigger than just unions. Britons, from an American perspective, have a mental block that prevents them from even considering the possibility of social mobility, while Americans, from a British perspective, have an irrational faith that social mobility will happen to them.

The difference in attitudes isn't altogether surprising. America was settled by people who left situations they were unsatisfied with instead of staying and trying to fix them; that's why they came to America in the first place. Europe was left with the people who decided to stay home and either resign themselves to the situation or try and change things from the inside.

Find a new career? Start a new company? Americans are the descendants of people who found a new continent and started their own country. Of course we're not going to see ourselves as held serfs and agitate for better treatment.

This is not unique to Amazon. It's standard practice at most non-union places for training materials to emphasize the dangers of unionization and to inform management how to identify and deal with threats effectively.

If only companies were this diligent about preventing workplace harassment.

There are already laws surrounding workplace harassment.

My point is companies do the minimum required by law to prevent harassment and will often systematically impede the victim in their attempts at recourse.

If that same person was being bullied into unionizing, the company would solve the problem in an hour.

Someone needs to create a unionize Amazon website along with a social media presence.

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