How the American Worker Got Fleeced | Hacker News Reader

How the American Worker Got Fleeced

bloomberg.com

53 pointsmesofile8 comments

The case for a Job Guarantee [1] argues that the way to deal with this is to ensure everybody always has an alternative living wage job to go to.

Then competition for scare labour does the rest.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/1509542108/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_...

Absolutely terrible. Corporate abuse doesn't just stop at lower-tiered jobs, it affects all levels of industry, including knowledge workers, like the article explains. I had no idea that workers at MS had unionized, only to be stomped out like they were nothing. I feel all those efforts described in the article are too localized, I wish there was a way to build a union of different professions that can back each other up.

I know very little about unions but I feel like it is a dirty word. A very "us versus them" type of idea.

Companies don't start out wanting to mistreat people. Companies grow in the market they are in, and the conditions are set by their competitors.

Standing up for "I want to work less, make more, get better benefits" just isn't competitive if your competitor isn't doing it.

Strong-arming your employer almost never seems like a good idea.

That's not an issue if the competitor's workers are in the same union and are fighting for the same collective agreement.

You say “us vs them” like it’s at all inaccurate. Owners have every incentive to make their employees work more for less. Unions just balance that power dynamic.

it is very unfortunate that owners have such an incentive. they shoudn't. in germany for example, much of what the unions have fought for eventually became law, giving the same benefits to everyone, and not just union members, making the unions less important.

the problem really is the adverserial nature of the relationship. a cooperative relationship between employees (with or without unions) and employers would be beneficial to every one.

Please go work in an Amazon Warehouse for some amount of time and let us know your feelings then.

That’s the basic idea behind the IWW, but because of their tremendous success with that tactic early in the 20th century, laws were passed that made it illegal to strike in solidarity with workers in another workplace. It still happens, (for instance there was a lot of that kind of activity in the recent teachers strikes) but it is illegal. Ironically it’s basically illegal because it works.

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