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A real gem in there was the comment of "there is actually an open door policy at the FCs, which allows us to directly communicate with our managers if we have concerns or issues."

Think about that for a second. The fact that they feel that is notable to call out, saying they "actually" have that... implies that they believe it is normal to not have an open door policy, and not be allowed to talk to their managers about problems.

I have worked warehouse jobs at a couple points in my life, and it was always OK to talk to your manager. It wasn't a perk, it was just how things were.

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That could also be interpreted as a response to the people who talk about the warehouse workers like they're slave labor with zero rights. It's like saying "Believe it or not, we actually have an open door policy and can talk to our managers if there are any issues."

The past reports on Amazon warehouses call out how strict and automated the management is: that the local managers don't have the authority to really do much in the way of providing flexibility (or humanity) to people.

Yeah, I don't doubt the reports about it. I was just commenting about how "we actually have an open door policy" doesn't necessarily mean that the employees are brainwashed into thinking that having basic rights is something to applaud.

I think the pushback was that if there's an "open door" policy it is presumed to mean "open communication with the possibility of change or at least suggestions being heard".

If the supervisor you have an "open door" to communicate with has zero flexibility in what they can do to help you then you might as well converse with one of the stock-picking robots.

Some people I know in AWS say that about their managers too

Also I believe a lot of these warehouses are subcontractors for Amazon.

The worst of excuses for bad behavior, "it wasn't us, it was the subcontractors (that we told to act that way)!"

> That could also be interpreted as a response to the people who talk about the warehouse workers like they're slave labor with zero rights. It's like saying "Believe it or not, we actually have an open door policy and can talk to our managers if there are any issues."

To me, it sounds like an echo of standard anti-union propaganda: e.g. "I don't need a union, because I can work out any problems I have directly with my manager!"

IIRC, this Wal-mart video has a line like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cle_OuOpBZc.

That jumped out at me too. My reading was the implication that if there was a union, you would lose that. It seems like a common anti-union talking point, from what I've seen at Walmart and Whole Foods.

In my experience being in a union (against my preferences) it’s not implied, but a fact.

Unions have sued their own members for speaking with managers about grievances.

My guess would be that it would be because the member is trying to cut an individual deal on a group problem. This is how the capitalist class practices divide and conquer.

What is the "capitalist class"?

> Modern capitalist societies—marked by a universalization of money-based social relations, a consistently large and system-wide class of workers who must work for wages, and a capitalist class which owns the means of production [....]

Emphasis mine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

I expected another definition in the context of that comment, but fine. According to that, it's anyone who owns the means to production, and is thus the most open class possible. Rather strange to say they're dividing and conquering when anyone can join.

Anyone who owns the means but does not actually do the work of production. This is in contrast to a worker-owned structure. It leads to concentration of power, since the profit from many workers goes to one or a few owners. Each owner is more powerful than any one worker, so workers have to act collectively to have leverage.

This is a fallacy. If you're going to talk about profit then you must also consider that the risk and loss also goes to owners while workers get paid either way.

This is something that should be rather simple to understand in the HN/Startup crowd. Considering that anyone can buy shares or start their own business, my point stands that this is the most non-exclusive club possible.

The workers also shoulder the risk. If a business goes under, they lose their jobs.

Ability to buy large quantities of shares is not "non-exclusive." Not everyone has money.

That's not the same risk. That's a voluntary agreement of work in exchange for cash, and either side can stop at anytime. Legal and contractual obligations like pensions and severance can also be layered on. What assets and liabilities that employee has in their personal life doesn't factor into calculation, they could be independently wealthy for all you know.

Also why does it have to be "large quantities"? Buy 1 share and you're a part owner. Many large companies have stock plans. It's not rare and if you're an employee then by definition you "have money" from working.

> Also why does it have to be "large quantities"? Buy 1 share and you're a part owner. Many large companies have stock plans. It's not rare and if you're an employee then by definition you "have money" from working.

Because the distinction is whether one's primary activity is using capital to gain income, versus working for pay. "Ah but a worker may own some shares!" isn't important. It's tough to nail down color names at transition points, too, but you add a tiny bit of white to some very red paint and no-one's gonna start calling it pink. It's still red.

[EDIT] at the heart of the misunderstanding, here, is a false syllogism, I think. "Pink paint is red mixed with white, you mixed some white in this red, therefore it is now pink"; "The capitalist class own capital, this worker owns some capital, therefore this worker is part of the capitalist class"; "The capitalist class owns capital, this guy owns and operates a hot dog stand, a hotdog stand is capital, therefore this guy is part of the capitalist class". It's quite similar to another that's often seen: "Mugging is taking something by threat of force, governments ultimately back taxation with the threat of force, therefore taxation is the same as mugging" or variations that end up at at some form of "taxation is the same thing as theft, so your thinking is inconsistent if you don't transfer all your bad feelings about theft to taxation, as well".

This thread was about the term, and that's the definition. If you have to change it to "you'll know it when you see it" then perhaps the definition is not so useful. The biggest companies have started from the smallest of ventures so your personal perception of size and importance has nothing to do with the term's qualification.

And no taxes are not theft, they are a contract in exchange for citizenship and sovereignty of the nation. Evading taxes is theft, by you from the government.

> This thread was about the term, and that's the definition. If you have to change it to "you'll know it when you see it" then perhaps the definition is not so useful. The biggest companies have started from the smallest of ventures so your personal perception of size and importance has nothing to do with the term's qualification.

You keep ignoring important parts of what's commonly considered the defining properties of the capitalist class, to make the idea seem less useful and much more slippery than it is. Or maybe taking that one sentence from WP as the entirety of the definition, period (though, again, ignoring important parts of that, even). I'm not sure you're going to find what you need to understand the concept, if you're interested, in an HN discussion.

It doesn't seem that way, it is that way. If you have to muddy the definition to make it fit then it's not very practical. I sense your particular context being a class of people who have power through ownership of means. My point is that ownership is available to anyone, either by buying shares (fine if you say that's difficult) OR by starting their own business (literally minutes away on the internet).

If anyone can join then it's not exclusive. In fact it's entirely welcoming. The economy not only supports it but relies on it, demands it even, and the very people you may claim are the most powerful today includes members who have started with nothing and were far outside that 'class'. The boundary is completely porous and ever-shifting so as to be non-existent outside of a political discussion. There are no chains binding you.

So what is the use of such a definition other than a "us-vs-them" distraction? When the "them" is open to anyone? It seems like the side which is dividing and conquering is not the capitalists.

> It doesn't seem that way, it is that way. If you have to muddy the definition to make it fit then it's not very practical.

OK. I wrote a really long response attempting to get through, but frankly, at this point, you should write a paper and submit to some journals, because this whole line of reasoning would be a significant finding if it stands up to scrutiny.

Everything after that first sentence is entirely about your interpretation of it.

Brevity is a key signal of clarity and cohesiveness. If it takes a journal paper to even attempt a discussion then this entire concept (under your interpretation) is suspect.

> If you have to muddy the definition to make it fit

They're not muddying the definition. You're ignoring part of the definition.

Everyone has been consistent about what the definition is, and you have consistently pretended that part of the definition isn't there.

Can you please put that part that I'm ignoring in a single sentence? Is it "primary activity is using capital to gain income, versus working for pay"?

Yes. I see you actually did understand that after all.

Are you calling it "muddy", then, because socioeconomic mobility exists? America's socioeconomic mobility is among the lowest of developed nations and getting worse since the 80s, but regardless, in order to even study such a thing requires defining it. Its definition is not muddy, it's widely accepted and studied.

I am genuinely happy for you that you were able to achieve it. I am incredibly grateful my parents were able to achieve it. But such achievements don't mean it's not still a problem.

> This is a fallacy. If you're going to talk about profit then you must also consider that the risk and loss also goes to owners while workers get paid either way.

I think you're falling into a set pattern of argument rather than looking at what's under examination and considering it on merit.

> This is something that should be rather simple to understand in the HN/Startup crowd. Considering that anyone can buy shares or start their own business, my point stands that this is the most non-exclusive club possible.

Please look back over the previous posts in the thread and consider the points that have already been raised.

I don't think your point is going to get across.

You're talking to basically a huge crowd of well-paid individuals who can and do frequently swap between employment and self-employment, including employing others.

The people who these talking points might hit better with are people who don't have the capital, or access to such capital, to be able to do such things.

> I don't think your point is going to get across.

Oh, I'm used to Internet discussions with folks of a certain mindset (I here carefully avoid a convenient, self-selected label that I suspect applies in this case, as its introduction is rarely helpful). They're incredibly common online and usually very eager to engage. Years and years of experience, here. I usually avoid it these days because it's almost always fruitless for all concerned, but felt like giving it a go this time.

> You're talking to basically a huge crowd of well-paid individuals who can and do frequently swap between employment and self-employment, including employing others.

Fussell's class-confused middle by socialized attitude, maybe, coupled with the income and means of his upper-middle and so especially off-kilter. "I'm a doctor, I make good money, I run my own practice, therefore the capitalist class is both what I'm part of and easy to join, so it's a silly and not very useful term". That sort of thing.

I came from one of the poorest places in the world. I didn't have access to capital when I was born or young. I do have access now, and it's the ability to be a 'capitalist' under my own efforts which is responsible for that change.

This is why generalizations on audiences are pointless. Don't assume people are incapable of understanding an argument or empathizing with a perspective just because of their current place in life.

Owning a few shares isn't really what's meant. If your way of life still depends on earning wages for the bulk of your adult life, that's usually not what people mean by the term "capitalist" (or "capitalist class"), since it'd be a pretty useless definition.

Anyone can buy shares or start a business and own their means. It's only become easier now with the internet.

And yes, I agree that it's a useless definition. I've never seen it used outside of esoteric political debates.

> And yes, agree that it's a useless definition. I've never seen it used outside of esoteric political debates.

Esoteric? It's a central concept for understanding how capitalist societies are structured. The central concept, even. It's not math, it's language, exceptions or hard-to-pin-down boundary regions don't wholly invalidate or render useless an idea.

I said it's a useless definition, not an invalid idea. Being a central concept does not mean it's not esoteric.

> Being a central concept does not mean it's not esoteric.

That might be fair. I wouldn't consider a term well understood by anyone with much exposure to the social sciences (any of them, just about, will run you into it, sooner rather than later, probably) or a more-than-tiny exposure to economics (if we're feeling generous and separate that from the social sciences) or just about any higher liberal arts education, to be esoteric, but I can see that falling within one's tolerances for the term, depending. Probably well North of half the population would be lost by it, or take something other than the intended meaning, that's true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

In my comment, I meant the people that give the orders versus the people who must accept them.

As always I'm divided on comments like this. The first half is entirely accurate - it's trying to keep individuals from cutting their own deal and undermining the value of the collective bargaining process. I just don't know if we should start using a framework of class conflict to go along with it.

I feel like the point could easily be made without mentioning the "capitalist class", which seems to weaken the argument. But I don't know if the particular word choice terminology has no value? Should a point be inflammatory for those who oppose it? For some people putting it like that, using the ideas of class conflict conflict has value, but it seems to further divide the conversation. Is it more important to tell it like you think it is, or to try and make a point that the most people will agree with? I don't know what the solution is.

If capitalist class were replaced with managerial class? Or just management?

That's how I read it as I'm not sure capitalist class makes a whole lot of sense to me in the context, and I'm sure the commies used exactly the same tactics anyway.

It's just the use of clearly something that's very meaningful to the author, but I wonder if it gets lost or just serves to exacerbate people who aren't viewing it from their same angle, causing the point to be discarded.

It truly depends on the context. Can this type of siloization be detrimental to quick fixes? Absolutely. But are quick one-off sweep-under-the-rug fixes the best thing for less-vocal workers if there is a likelihood that similar problems may be occurring for them? The devil is in the details, and suing a member would hopefully be a last resort in case of a member knowingly stepping on the heads of others. Now, I’m not naive enough to think that all unions are rationally run. But having an environment that is hostile to them on principle doesn’t help.

Citation for that?!

I also searched a little and didn’t find a story about this. Where did this occur and what union?

I work under a union (though I'm not a member yet). Obviously every union is different, and every contract is different, but this sounds completely insane to me.

My first point of contact is always my team lead. If they ask me to do something unsafe, for example, I just say so. If it's not resolved there, I'd go to my job steward. The job steward exists to be the on-site worker advocate. I've spoken to my job steward about an issue maybe once ever.

I can't imagine how not having an advocate would ever be beneficial for me. It's simply an alternate path of escalation for issues which doesn't end at management saying "shut up and do the job".

The simple answer to not wanting to get sued for speaking with your manager is to have your union not write a #@&!*ing contract that allows workers to get sued for speaking with their managers. (Duh?) I'm sure that clause has existed somewhere, and I'm sure they had a reason for it, but my experience is that 99.99% of the time it's just like any other job, but with better pay and working conditions. If your manager is reasonable and listens to your grievances, then the day-to-day is literally no different than non-represented work.

Sounds like pure FUD to me.

What sort of grievance here I would normally expect a worker to first use the standard grievance procedure (in most cases) before coming to me.

Or is it "Hi Boss we come from the same village / clan /race how about you put me on that sweet work detail/shift".

I have (in the UK) personally overheard a guy working at a well known company say this - Also Fords at Dagenham had a scandal where white workers monopolised the better jobs.

Unions have sued their own members for speaking with managers about grievances.

When someone did an end-run around the agreed-upon way of handling conflict, and thought they'd go leverage their personal friendship with the manager to get what they want? Yeah, I could how that might happen, that's one of things unions often try to prevent.

I work in a large and friendly company, in which there seems to be a general fear of speaking up. if a company as employee-friendly as mine has difficulty in moving people towards an open speak-up culture, I think it’s totally reasonable to assume that many companies aren't successful at this, either.

It should therefore be reasonable for an Amazon warehouse employee to point out the counter-case for their experience, without you ascribing negatives to Amazon itself based on this.

My company has a quarterly "engagement" survey. If our supervisor doesn't get a 5 rating (highest) from us, he gets in trouble, so as shit rolls downhill, we get in trouble.

The majority of the team answers the survey questions dishonestly, so as to avoid rolling shit. The others feel it's their only way of expressing discontent short of leaving.

Wow, that's terrible.

What exactly happens to the supervisor, and what exactly does he do to all of you?

What do you think could be done to make this situation better?

I wonder if something different, maybe more serious needs to happen to the supervisor for getting a low rating? Or I guess the issue is, he gets to retaliate for a whole quarter and your opportunity to ding him further won't be until 3 months later. Maybe there needs to be an avenue for immediately reporting this kind of retaliation, with clear consequences for him? If the higher-ups don't have the kind of trust it would take to create such an avenue, I dunno what can be done. I guess that's what unions are supposed to be for, but the situation already sounds so broken. I guess if a union already existed and was trusted, it could serve as such an avenue of last-resort.

Well he doesn't really get a low rating. The questions (coming from Gallup I assume) are vague enough that if you answer fairly at all, no one would get a 5 across the board. He gets roughly 4.5 on average, but they compare each category to previous surveys.

He doesn't really punish/retaliate so much as make us have a team meeting where we discuss the survey, and then we have to come up with solutions. The surveys are supposed to be anonymous, but who really knows. So the meetings end up with people being vague and non-committal since it's hard to directly criticize your supervisor face to face sometimes.

And each supervisor is compared to their peers, and the organization is also rated. So if people don't feel happy about the workplace 100%, mgmt feels like it's the supervisors fault, not upper mgmt. Just a bad situation all around.

Dang. I wonder if either there could be an anonymous feedback channel to the supervisor, or a meeting could be arranged (with the supervisor's knowledge, so they don't feel like it's behind their back) that specifically excludes the supervisor where people could discuss what changes they would like, including to the supervisor's behavior, that would conclude with the group agreeing on someone to explain to the supervisor what changes they collectively want.

Open door policy means nothing if you'll be fired if you actually make use of it. (Not saying Amazon is necessarily like that.)

That's more just corporate pr speak to turn something that is incredibly standard into an incredible perk of how great the company is. One of the first places I worked my boss talked about how he let his developers listen to music on the job.

This may also stem from some union-busting messaging. One of the talking points that you see on anti-union posters and in videos is "unions get in the way of you talking to your manager, when you can talk to your manager directly you can address concerns straightaway with them."

This reminds me of that.

Yes...and is that not factual?

My experience being in a union tells me it is.

My experience being in a union tells me it's not.

But unions literally are (within the law) whatever their members decide they will be, so if you expect that of your potential union, it just means you expect it of your coworkers.

Some bad companies: no big deal, no one's making you stay, leave if you don't like it.

Some bad unions: all unions are awful and the solution is to not have unions.

If a company is bad you can just switch to another company, if a powerful union is bad you'd have to switch to another industry.

I imagine that this may be true, but only if there's a single union in the industry. Why on Earth would that be the case?

Because Unions are basically corporations that go by another name and want to gobble up the market share?

Unions are not benevolent. They are bureaucratic organizations that want to grow in power and resources just like a corporation. Their interests just happen to be orthogonal to corporate interests which can be beneficial for employees.

https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/

An interesting model.

I suppose you could describe many groups of people as corporations by another name so I'm not sure how far that gets us, and I tend to treat groups of people large enough to have emergent behaviours as essentially amoral anyway.

Your market share comments are interesting. I remember Matt Levine making an observation about Uber's 'contractors', if they attempted to unionise could be guilty of price fixing, because they're supposed to be competitors. The corporation seems to be another step along where price fixing within the corporation is allowed, and the union goes a step further again by making monopolistic behaviour ok.

As a society that has decided that a corporation can decide how to organise itself and work together internally, but also a society that has decided that monopoly, or at least the abuse of that monopoly is wrong, these seem to be interesting exceptions.

They are assuming the German sector based model here.

Is there anything preventing unions from growing huge and essentially dominating entire sectors in the US?

Yes, that's not how unions are structured by law in the US. Every union is shop-based and organized against a specific employer. They usually throw in with a larger union or an association, but not always. This is where the "Local 404" comes from -- the union itself is the local ###, aligned with the national federation. The union at Powell's Books, for example, is a retail union but they're connected to the ILWU, the longshoremen.

Portland is also undergoing an tremendous unionization battle at a local burger chain (Burgerville); one or two of the shops have successfully unionized, while the rest are still fighting for their right to organize. That's because unions here are at the shop level, and there just couldn't be one burger union that dominated all burger-making.

> The cynic in me thinks, if unions were such a bad thing, why wouldn't the owners let them form, burn the employees, and decertify?

Because unions gets more powerful than any company and can leverage said power against both workers and employers.

Lets take SAG-AFTRA as an example, a union many here at HN says the software industry should mimic. Their contracts with their workers states that the workers are not allowed to work at non-union shops, and their contracts with shops states that they are not allowed to work with non-union workers. This means that you as a worker has to join the union if your workplace unionize no matter if you feel it benefits you or not, and as long as the union control most workers any larger workplace will be forced to join or they will lack workers.

Why would workers not just stop being in the union, since it costs $3k to join and 2% of your salary to stay? Because the entire workforce at a union shop has to quit at once, at the same time the shop has to decide that they are not a union shop any longer. Do you think that will happen? No, of course not, weeding out a union in such a situation is way harder than starting the union in the first place. And even if they organize, the union could organize a picket in return to harass the shop and its worker into compliance.

Edit: Also PR and propaganda could easily make workers believe the union is good for them even if it isn't, kinda like how poor whites think that Republicans are on their side.

> Why would workers not just stop being in the union, since it costs $3k to join and 2% of your salary to stay? Because the entire workforce at a union shop has to quit at once, at the same time the shop has to decide that they are not a union shop any longer.

Or a majority has to elect new leadership in the union who will replace the problematic rules.

Or a majority (either of the whole membership or of workers in a defined subarea) need to vote to decertify (and optionally replace) the union.

Because of these, “everyone has to quit at once” is literally never an issue.

> Also PR and propaganda could easily make workers believe the union is good for them even if it isn't

Sure, but workers opposed to the existing union and employers and union parent organizations competing with the parent of the existing union (or wanting to become the parent of there is no current parent) are all able to deploy “PR and propaganda” (two different names for the same thing) against the established union, too.

Or we just don't have a union in the first place.

You could write the exact same comment about USG, and yet here we are...

"The Market" (or however you want to think about it) is not perfectly efficient - if it were, there would never have been any motivation to form unions because every employee's requirements would already be perfectly reflected in the companies they chose to work for. Rather, sluggish network effects and other non-invisible-hand structures dominate immediate results.

All power tends to concentrate. When it gets large enough, it attracts those who seek and hold power for their own ends rather than any benevolently stated goals. Your scenarios are straightforwardly mitigated by union leadership directly appeasing the leaders of such movements, the same way monopolist companies buy out possible competitors to keep a stranglehold - the creation rate of competition is itself limited.

I don't know too many specifics about SAG-AFTRA itself, but its hold over the entire industry is a good indicator that it is indeed too large. Its size implies politicking on the order of at least a city government. Conversely, that size may also be the minimum necessary to engage in collective bargaining across different production companies, and so any general top-down reform is a bit hazy. My only direct experience with this is seeing casual SAG actors having to do a bunch of extra paperwork to participate in a strictly non-profit hobby short film production. It seemed quite ridiculous and onerous, until I thought about the neighboring gradient of low-budget for-profit film production.

IATSE is a better model for tech SAG / Equity.

Also entertainment unions provide way more services eg training, chasing late payers for freelancers and running the "call first list" - this is the list of problem employers.

> Is there anything preventing unions from growing huge and essentially dominating entire sectors in the US?

The structure of labor law makes it just as possible for workers with a particular employer or in a particular job class with an employer to decertify—and, if they wish, simultaneously replace—a union (or for a union local to dissociate from a parent organization) as it is to organize one in the first place, which doesn't prevent parent union organizations from getting large, but does limit the success of ones that, in doing so, fail to meet the needs of their members in particular workplaces.

Or convince other employees in your workplace that that union is bad and decertify them (perhaps replacing them with a new union that you and your coworkers form, either independently or affiliated with a better parent union.)

How is that easier than convincing the employer? Seems much harder, especially since the middle-men have a vested interest in perpetuating any problems.

Not my experience at all.

My experience in a union tells me that it isn't. Being unionized doesn't mean that you have to be on the warpath at all time. It just means that if the structure (quite often, not directly your manager) has a big problem, the workers have the necessary logistics to share information and help each other, regardless of the management structure.

In some cases, it may be confrontational, but that's pretty unusual in my personal experience.

Because the amount of force use by employers against unions in very anti social countries such as corporate US is extreme, then you might get that feeling. But countries where business and unions understand that they're partners and not enemies , both sides usually are not on a war path.

The problem is not big business, or socialism, the problem is of mentality.

Sadly the US business mentality is centered around bullying and zero sum perception of the world. violence begets violence.

Too bad this brain virus is catching on at other cultures. It'll end up with either a big blowout, or suppression of the masses.

Was your manager not in the union as well...? This is so far outside my experience I can't even understand it. How does union leadership know if you talk to your manager? How do they enforce you not talking to them?

There is a difference between open door as a matter of policy and open door as a matter of practice. I've dealt with both, and the latter actually works, the former does not. Most retail is the former.

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