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Comment by bdefore | Hacker News Reader

Glad to see this from Amazon, although I see it heading off the inevitable. Wouldn't this be the most powerful moment for employees in 'essential' services to engage in worker strikes? Is there any legal precedent for what governments would do?

With all this war rhetoric thrown around, it seems a reasonable jump to declare essential workers troops on the frontline deserving of what we give other troops (free health care, pension, heavily subsidized secondary education)

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Striking in order to exploit a global disaster for personal gain would be a great way for organized labor to turn many people against them for a life time. It may work in the short term, but even that is debatable. Many people would gladly see the national guard break a strike if it's between them and basic essentials. Long term, the optics of that kind of move are so damning that it would likely be a net-loss.

Depends on the spin. Couldn't you argue this is exploitation of the health of desperate low-paid workers, their family and their communities?

> Couldn't you argue this is exploitation of the health of desperate low-paid workers, their family and their communities?

Giving people a raise to incentivize them to voluntarily work to supply resources people desperately need is pretty difficult to spin into exploitation. Many people are out there volunteering to do such things for free because they understand how badly it's needed. I suspect those likely to be sympathetic to that line made up their minds about such things long before this event. I do agree with you that some folks will definitely try that angle though.

I acknowledge that asking for increased wages may not pitch well. Perhaps the more effective angle is for strikers to demand all health expenses these workers incur during this time be covered.

Yes, you could argue that; thereafter, the overwhelming majority of people indifferent to worker conditions in the gig-delivery supply chain would then notice, rather acutely, when their preparedness meter inches toward zero. If we were living in a world where they then took time to study the issue and hear your argument, we may arrive at your outcome. Since we are not, more accurately, when people and politicians fresh out of toilet paper snap assess their dilemma and are conveniently presented with a picket line to blame in the media, we arrive at the unpleasant outcome being forecast for you. (I would argue a worse one.)

Negative consequences of Internet supply chain worker organization right now are a certainty due to intense delivery demand (the IKEA cart is barely functional today), and those optics are an element of the gig/delivery economic equation which I don’t think anyone has thought about until now. That economic model promised to somewhat free the worker and, quite predictably given its proponents, instead seems to have done the opposite.

More than ever before, workers are essential to survival. Striking isn’t just the UAW setting back 2022 Fords a bit, these days. Organizational actions have very, very real potential to collapse parts of the intertwined economy under these circumstances. We will need to consider that reality on the other side of the pandemic but you do not want to so much as blow on the world economy right now. There is a mountain of latent panic waiting for the excuse you’d hand it to organize and manifest.

Important: I’m not saying it’s “right,” just illustrating political and economic realities which make selecting the next move carefully all that more crucial. The entire planet is on a razor’s edge, and if you’re keen to dismiss my position as irrational, organize an Amazon walkout.

As everyone notices their packages stop arriving, comparatively few will buy into the idea that people making $17/hr are being 'exploited', especially as many people find their own working hours being reduced or eliminated.

People making $16/hr aren't the ones living on Amazon Prime package flow.

Yes they are. A married couple each making that wage puts them right around the average household income in the US. Amazon got big by catering to the average household.

If you've ever wondered if you're out of touch and in your own echo chamber, you definitely are.

That sounds like a side effect of the gig economy, job insecurity, and a lack of safety nets, so it's all just a race to the bottom for laborers.

There are already enough people unemployed just over the past week that would fill those jobs in a heartbeat...

I'm not sure it's understood yet what kind of devastation is unfolding with small businesses, which make up ~50% of the workforce.

This is going to have long term lasting effects that further suppress labor rates and further concentrate wealth/capital in the US. It's accelerating a problem we already had.

40% of the wealth in the stock market was wiped out over the last few weeks which drastically impacts the upper middle class and rich the most. Negative returns on capital do not promote wealth inequality.

Any good financial manager would have went cash or established a short position. Even if you held, as long as you don't realize your losses you will be right back to pre crash levels in 2-3 years, just like in 2008 or any other recession.

The wealthy have the capital to take advantage of the stock market, but are also insulated from the effects of downturns due to diversified financial investments and cash on hand. Recessions are also when the wealthy expand their property holdings.

>Any good financial manager would have went cash or established a short position.

Yeah, they did, while losing money during the crash, which is why there was a crash.

Real people lost a lot of real money. Bear in mind most of the wealth of most well off people is held in shares. It's just not possible that all shareholders all sold before the crash. A lot of people lost a lot of money.

The problem is not so much that some rich people are now somewhat less rich. Boo hoo. Let's rephrase that another way though.

A lot of people that previously had the wealth and assets to invest in new businesses, grow existing businesses, create jobs and fund the development of new technology now don't. These are the primary ways wealth is actually used, and now there is less of it around to do those things. So a lot less of those things are going to happen now. If you either work for a company that pays you, or have customers that buy your stuff, this is a bad thing to happen. Companies will have less to pay you with, and customers will have less money to buy stuff with because the same applies to them too.

Or employee ownership is allowed to expand as a means to grow a biz. True, that won't fill all the gaps. But it's certainly an option worthy of more attention.

How does employee ownership through stock giveaways generate capital for investment?

> Even if you held, as long as you don't realize your losses you will be right back to pre crash levels in 2-3 years, just like in 2008 or any other recession.

Japan still hasn't recovered from the 80s. At some point the economy is going to stop growing. A lot of growth is driven by debt which needs to be repaid. A lot of growth is driven by an increasing population which will eventually plateau, and what's worse you have to support those people (healthcare, education, housing) if you don't want them to cost even more money.

At some point the economy isn't going to just keep growing. I have no idea when that will be, but the market doesn't just go up over time as if it's some law of nature.

https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/stock-market

If 50 trillion dollars are "printed", then yes, the economy will appear to be growing purely based on the prices of stocks going up. Whether that represents real growth is another matter entirely

Japan has recovered. The Nikkei is just a piss poor index.

https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp

Their net worth is down if they held. The wealthy were just as unlikely to sell out before the crash as anyone else, they don’t have A magic future prediction machine.

> The wealthy have the capital to take advantage of the stock market, but are also insulated from the effects of downturns due to diversified financial investments and cash on hand. Recessions are also when the wealthy expand their property holdings.

None of this negates the fact that the crash wiped a significant chunk of their net worth out. Either they were invested in the market (real estate, stocks, bonds, etc) and they were accumulating wealth in a Picketty fashion until they got slammed by the crash or they missed the crash because they weren’t accumulating. You can’t have it both ways.

Yes. But that's simply in the short term. A good number of these people have reserves that allow them to buy back in.

In the short term, the middle to the bottom lose as well. But since they can't buy back in their piece of the pie falls into the hands of those that can. Like 2007/2008 this will ultimately result in a massive transfer from the Have-less to the Have-more.

For example, small businesses will close and Amazon will pick up that slack. Easily.

they can trade on margin. Making use of low interest rates.

So when the market recovers, which it will. They can see greater gains.

with fed interest rate at 0%. I’m sure the 0.01% can get incredibly favorable loans against their assets to double down.

"I can trade on margin" said no one with the rent / mortgage due.

That aside, you're missing the point. The public stock market best enriches those with the most reserves. Everyone else gets trickled on.

Not to mention margin calls if the stock goes down past a given price.

Much of what was "lost" was paper profits, artificially inflated in the first place, due to extremely cheap credit and massive demand spikes due to companies buying back enormous amounts of their own stock. Limited wage growth over the past decade, and reduction of benefits helped too.

From a time horizon, US stock markets have only regressed 3 years, and both the S&P and DJIA are about double where they were 10 years ago, while NASDAQ is still higher than triple its early 2010 value. Market leaders like FB, MSFT, GOOGL, NFLX, AAPL have only fallen to levels they were at in 2019.

You simply can't just focus on the decline without taking a hard look at how markets reached those heights in the first place and evaluating whether they were sustainable. Well you can, as you did, but it would be disingenuous.

Is Amazon only delivering basic essentials at a fixed cost? Where is this list of basic essentials that Amazon is so charitably ensuring the prompt delivery of?

Happened in World War II, and that’s why health insurance in the U.S. is tied to employers.

Could you expand on this bit of history please?

The Real Reason the U.S. Has Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/upshot/the-real-reason-th...

These people are in an overcrowded warehouse, without proper protection, while we are self-isolating. In these trying times, I would value my health higher than that.

With how 9/11 first responders were treated, or how veterans are treated now, don't count on the US making good on any promises it makes to its heroes. There is tons of hero worship and thumping of patriotic chests, but tangible actions typically fall well short of the level of care you'd expect. Lots of talking the talk, but not walking the walk.

Yea. Trump even pardoned a special forces killer against the wishes of fellow vets, the military, etc. our respect for veterans is flimsy.

> Is there any legal precedent for what governments would do?

There is a long history of the government using the military to break strikes and fill the labor gap for things deemed necessary for national security. I'm not sure Amazon warehouses are in the same class as coal mines though...

not quite, but delivery services are extremely important to the vulnerable population right now. many of these people are old and, as we all know, these are the people that vote most consistently. no sitting politician wants to be the one who sat on their hands while a strike prevented the elderly from receiving their hand sanitizer order.

People shut in at home don't need hand sanitizer.

I mean that's sort of beside the point; it only matters whether they think they do. the older people I know are aggressively sanitizing stuff whenever they have anything delivered.

The government would absolutely step in and stop a strike at Amazon right now, or just about any other business. Anyone trying to strike right now would be run out of town by citizens with torches as well. It might sound like a good idea in the abstract, but if you factor in the emotional state of the country, people would be up in arms and those on strike would get zero sympathy.

I would be sympathetic.

What would the Government do? Force people to go back to work at gunpoint?

I'd love to see them try.

With the coal strikes they threatened to draft every coal miner and nationalize the mines. That would likely be the same methodology used now.

But I think we're a bunch of disassociated internet people talking about how a bunch of people who just got double time should be unhappy.

Double time doesn't make their risk of watching a potentially deadly disease less likely, does it?

There was a time they did just that. Probably what your parent is referencing:

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

Italy had just declared any doctors/nurses on sick leave right now while not being sick, violate the laws and will be prosecuted.

Under emergency there isn't really rights for individual, not much.

The state of education in this country about the history of the labor movement is seriously depressing. I'm sure that's intentional though.

No, it’s covered. You might just be shocked to learn that children don’t really care about collective bargaining history anymore than the dates of important battles in WW2.

We covered the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, the muckrakers, and Roosevelt's war against trusts, but I don't ever recall hearing the name Eugene Debs, or say the Haymarket massacre.

> but I don't ever recall hearing the name Eugene Debs, or say the Haymarket massacre.

These are both covered in the popular APUSH American History courses.

I'd believe that. How many people end up taking APUSH though?

If DHS had used 6 million rounds a months since 2013, they’d still have enough for another 13 years of Iraq-invasion level war.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/03/11/1-6-billi...

There is a great deal of history where, yes, physical force & violence was used to break strikes. [0] <-- Just one example. [1] <-- another. [2][3] <-- more. The union labor movement is not at its most popular right now either. There'd be a lot more people rooting for the government right now.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike#The_strike's_...

[1] https://www.britannica.com/event/Pullman-Strike

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1877

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

Torches are 25$ apiece now and you can only get them at Amazon.

> I'm not sure Amazon warehouses are in the same class as coal mines though...

Essential for food security and biosafety? I'd say the same class.

That's quite a stretch. Amazon is not the sole seller of any of it's goods, and calling hand sanitizer essential for national security would not go over well...

Ask yourself again in two weeks whether it's a stretch.

> Is there any legal precedent for what governments would do?

I don't think you should be looking for legal precedent, just practical one.

Depending on the severity of the impact, governments would (and did several times):

1 - Declare the strike illegal and order people back to work, fine and at the worst case arrest the organizers if they don't comply.

2 - Declare the involved unions illegal, free companies to hire whoever they want and disobey agreements.

3 - Conscript people into doing the work, either by using the company as middle-men or by literally enrolling them on the military and absorbing the work.

But I don't think any government will have to do any of that. A strike does not fit this crisis very well, no party would gain anything.

... whatever Amazon does, it is always "however", "although" and "but" on HN

People, please get real. You all are running (or dreaming of) your own small business.

How much of payrise are you willing to give your workforce now?

This news is pure win for workers, consumers and amazon.

As much as Amazon is willing to pay for? Why do you assume Amazon is just being benevolent? I'm all for capitalism but this is what capitalism is, the workers don't have to just be happy with whatever Amazon throws at them, they can negotiate

I guess a good question would be "How much of a profit can Amazon make now?". The answer is as much as the market is willing to give, and that's the same for the workers' salary.

Yes. When the bailouts for so many others are happening, people in meat-packing plants, checking out groceries and delivering mail etc need major wage increases.

I think around 3X current levels. USPS mail carriers and handlers are being given no guidance or support right now either.

> When the bailouts for so many others are happening

I don't disagree that the support for, say, airlines, are bailouts, but the connotation that word has from 2008-2009 mischaracterizes what's going on right now. When this all blows over, you absolutely want airlines ready for business. Letting heavily impacted businesses fail is a recipe for a depression.

It's probably time to nationalize the airline industry entirely. Why do they enrich themselves during good times, and then we bail them out during bad times? If it's essential to economic stability and national security, and it keeps costing taxpayers a ton of money, then why even continue this facade of "private" airlines?

The same excuse was used for banks during the recession. We need banks when the economy recovers, and we need people who know the system to unwind the major screw ups they did. What happened is most of the people who were responsible for the recession remained in power making a lot of money. Lessons were not really learned, other than that being too big to fail is a good position to be in.

> Why do they enrich themselves during good times

Did they? Airline stock prices have collapsed, so unless insiders sold everything in January, "enrich themselves" really means standard executive pay...which might be high, but that's another issue. Airlines, as businesses, didn't behave especially irresponsibly for the past decade. It's nothing like the banking excesses in 2007 that causes 2008.

Air travel in the US was significantly more expensive when it was heavily regulated. By your logic, you very quickly get to a Chinese level of state ownership of businesses. Practically every large cap company would be on that list.

They enriched themselves through stock buybacks over the last decade to boost stock price and executive compensation, at the cost of not having money on hand to weather bad times.

Does your discounted unregulated fare rate include the cost of the all the bailouts over the decades? Are you fine with letting the airlines fail this time?

> standard executive pay...which might be high, but that's another issue

It's not. It shouldn't be "another issue" every single time we discuss a company having financial trouble, just because it's widespread.

> By your logic, you very quickly get to a Chinese level of state ownership of businesses. Practically every large cap company would be on that list.

Not really. Any company that's not a natural monopoly can go ahead and go bankrupt. Utilities and transit would be on the list. Banks could be on or off the list depending on how you handle them. Not much else would be on the list.

> It's probably time to nationalize the airline industry entirely.

Great call. Every time I watch a presidential press conference, my first thought is "Wow, when this all blows over, I hope these people are running the airlines."

Because incompetence doesn't exist in the private sector? Is it really even a private sector when it's reliant on billions or trillions of dollars of public capital injections every decade or so?

Maybe it's not such a bad thing to ask the question of who do we want running these huge ventures, which seem so entangled to the health of the economy and citizens. That applies to the government and private sector.

At least then the people in charge are forced to respond in some capacity to what the public wants rather than individual purchasing decisions about what tactically works best moment to moment.

The bank (as well as the GM) bailout did involve equity transfers. I believe quite a few shareholders got wiped out, and the net result was even positive for the government (barely, but still).

Also interesting: The farm subsidies over the last two years, supposed to compensate them for their business losses due to Trump’s trade war, cost a multiple of the 2008 bailout (2x or 3x IIRC). None of that will be recovered.

Airlines deserve no sympathy from how they've spent 90% of free cash flow over the years buying back their own stocks.

Now when times are tough they have no cash reserves and are seeking government bailouts.

Just appalling.

Even if they saved literally every penny of profit made in the last 5 years, including buybacks, the most profitable airline would've had 4 (now closer to 3) months of cash reserves in a situation like this one. Is it really reasonable to expect a corporation to plan for every black swan like this and just totally ignore shareholders? Why would anyone be a shareholder if it means not getting anything when times are good and lose value when times get harder?

But I'm against airlines getting bailed out. It's a huge moral hazard imo to just remove the risks of investing in... a risky sector. Bankruptcy courts should deal with this and lenders should take the hit too. Still, blaming this on share buybacks doesn't make a lot of sense... A corporation hoarding money is bad.

The bailouts you are referring to are just loans. Are you suggesting loans are what workers need?

> Wouldn't this be the most powerful moment for employees in 'essential' services to engage in worker strikes?

No, because there's currently/there will soon be an army of unemployed retail/service workers who will happily take their jobs.

If that happens I'll show up at my local warehouse and work for free. People are dying.

Why aren't you doing this already then?

Because the market is still working right now. Amazon is raising wages and hiring like crazy.

Pretty sure they still need more help. Why don't you apply? Unless you'd only offer your services for free in order to spite striking workers asking for better working conditions? How noble of you...

We have laws in place that ban critical workers from striking. Air traffic controllers aren't allowed to just stop working. Usually Amazon warehouse workers are not critical infrastructure, but this month they are. Talking about "spite" implies I would be concerned about their opinion in any way if they were to start striking. Their feelings would be irrelevant.

Again, why you don't you go sign up for the labor-intensive warehouse and delivery work, with significant risk of contracting COVID-19 while having poor health coverage and no sick leave, along with people demanding that you should absolutely be forced to work those conditions? Please, go volunteer your time, you seem to so apt to make other people's jobs mandatory, and oddly they are jobs you don't seem to want to do!

It again sounds like you only want to volunteer your time to this crisis if it involves the unlikely circumstance of strike busting. Very noble. I hope you gave yourself a big pat on the back.

What part of the market is still working do you not understand? Amazon is raising wages and attracting more workers. I want this to happen. I'm happy the workers are getting relief in the form of more coworkers to help cover shifts and higher wages.

If a new factory opened up in my town making ventilators and there was a critical labor shortage with no available workers, I would show up for that too. In this hypothetical there's no striking workers to "spite".

Imagining you understand my motivations is a critical thinking error. Attributing bad motivations to me unjustly doesn't just make you wrong, it makes you a bad person.

>I'm happy the workers are getting relief in the form of more coworkers to help cover shifts and higher wages.

How do you know this? Did you apply, and they said your help was not needed at this time? Is your name on file, will they call you back if there is an opening?

Have you called all local charities in your area and offered to volunteer your time for free?

You're waiting for magical strikes and magical ventilator companies to show up, yet you are eager to volunteer other's time, while coming up empty on actually volunteering your own.

Imagining you know what I have or haven't done in my community to help the needy is a critical thinking error. Attributing bad motivations to me unjustly doesn't just make you wrong, it makes you a bad person.

I am not a bad person, just someone who this specific issue impacts personally. I don't get to wait for hypothetical situations to occur to make difficult decisions related to this issue, I actually have to make them. Perhaps think twice before offering to undermine the valid concerns these workers have.

if there's massive unemployment many people are going to be happy just to have a job and will not want to risk losing it

A strike now would incur the hatred of the public in general and a bipartisan political wrath. Nope, their best position of leverage will be just after the crisis when appreciation is at its highest, people haven't forgotten what they've done, and they have a strong argument to say, "look how essential we are, we should be a happy & valued workforce"

The administration would certainly order employees back to work under the Taft–Hartley Act under threat of imprisonment. While it resists ordering companies to produce critically need medical supplies on ideological grounds[1], there can be no doubt that it would not miss an opportunity to damage labor organizations.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/politics/trump-coronav...

> no doubt that it would not miss

ERROR: Stack Overflow

The nurse union has had a small amount of success with just the threat. Unfortunately there isn't a lot to give them. Even time is limited with a shrinking ceiling on staff as they sit two weeks out with symptoms.

>Wouldn't this be the most powerful moment for employees in 'essential' services to engage in worker strikes?

Many would have no sympathy for workers exploiting a crisis like this.

Don't get to excited on the other hand they fire workers who are ill and can't work.

E.g. you have people still trying to come into work to get paid and spreading the sickness.

That might be the worst idea I've ever heard. Shutting down the supply lines during a pandemic would have disastrous consequences for everyone.

Strike right now means government will chime in and force them back to work.

Iirc during ww2 the military was there to just take union workers jobs if they went on strike in critical sections like mines.

>War rhetoric

Wait, like a real war? Who's talking about a war? Between what parties? I have heard nothing about a war, please explain.

Based on downvotes I'm gonna go ahead and guess that there is no war (aside from the wars that are already going) and this use of the word "war" was referring to something else. Still I would like someone to please confirm that there is not a real war coming.

I heard this was about France declaring war on the virus. I assume if they're officially declaring war (again, against the virus), certain government powers / resources are immediately available.

I suppose that could be the case. I don't know how power is distributed throughout the French government. Thanks for clarifying. I live in the Pacific, so I don't follow much European news.

> I'm gonna go ahead and guess that there is no war

That's not really right, because that implies that other people are using the word wrong. It's more that it's a word with a lot of uses, and you got stuck on one of them.

They are using it wrong. I think when op said "war" op meant "public health policy" which is really far away from war. It's actually the complete opposite thing.

They're not using it wrong.

Merriam-Webster, definition 2:

  2a: a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism
  b: a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a 
  particular end
  a class war
  a war against disease

Note that last line. The use here is so extremely valid that it's an example in the dictionary!

I don't know what the parent had in mind but in Europe at least the word "war" has been thrown around a lot lately. The French president said that France was in a "state of war" during his last discourse for instance.

Consider it 'military rhetoric' if you prefer. It's politically very effective in galvanizing support among Americans for things that are not really targetable (i.e. war on drugs, terrorism). Outside the US, French leader Macron has declared 'We are at war'.

Some further contemplation on it: https://newrepublic.com/article/156949/casualties-war-corona...

Oh. Okay. Thanks for clarifying.

As Calvin Coolidge said "there is no right to strike against the public safety." People can organize all they want, but they can't conspire to harm people, holding lives up as not-that-metaphorical hostages in a negotiation. It's the idea of yelling fire in a crowded theater. Putting people's lives in danger for literal personal profit would be a sure-fire way to turn people against unionization.

Interesting. What about “strike for the public safety”?

Performing a strike to achieve a goal for public safety, such as, when the government of a city decided, against public opinion, not to close the border even when bordering a large country with lots of infected patients, some essential workers decided to go on strike to demand the close of the border?

Even more interestingly, if the essential workers are themselves public safety workers, hence their strike would put some people in risks, while hoping for saving more people when the demands are met---real life Trolley problem.

Not hypothetical, I have an actual case in mind.

That's somewhat ingenious. I sometimes hear about walkouts when a company has some military contract - I bet that would be a good time to unionize; make ending the contract part of deal.

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