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Comment by dahfizz | Hacker News Reader

> 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...

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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.

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.

> 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.

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