Amazon to face U.S. union push in year ahead
reuters.com
reuters.com
* amazon is huge, can you really mobalise 50% of the US workforce to vote for it?
* what happens when all the unskilled workers are simply sacked and replaced with non-union workers?
Still, this intimidation strategy works best when there are only a few workers involved. With critical mass, it becomes much harder. Additionally, the new administration will hopefully make this standard union-busting much more expensive by passing a bill to institute treble damages for unfair labor practice violations.
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/amazon-fires-staten-island-c...
Also, only a tiny minority of employees are skilled. They're well paid and looked after. They have large stock options (I think the only pay over 100k at amazon is given in the form of stock). I highly doubt they'll strike for the rest. They've never met them. They don't have anything in common with them. They much closer to management.
Don't get me wrong, they have every right to try. I just don't think anything even a tenth this size has been accomplished in the history of labour relations...
I absolutely will join a strike if Amazon lays off unionizing unskilled workers en masse.
The pay is good, but I think you're missing two things.
(1) A large portion of Amazon SDEs leave after a year or two anyway. (The lack of vested RSUs in the first two years is typically compensated with an equivalent sign-on bonus, which pays out with each paycheck. So the vesting schedule doesn't particularly incentivize sticking around for no other reason.)
(2) Many Amazon SDEs (like that of any FAANG) are millenials, who skew progressive: worker rights are an issue I think many feel strongly about, and many probably have friends who are part of the unskilled labor pool or gig economy. We know if it weren't for software, we'd very well be in the same boat.
Imagine you're a dev at amazon, and you get 100k basic and share options worth another 100k. If you throw in with the union, you risk your job. And if you win, they get 2usd an hour more. And your 100k of share options is worthless. How does that sound like a good deal?
But programming isn't a regulated profession. It doesn't have a professional organization. Your "cred" is reputational and based on work history, not on actual credentials or licensure. It's closer in this sense to a trade, like electrical work or plumbing, where members frequently are unionized.
Why unionize? Because your facial recognition tech is being used to round up Uigurs, or bomb Yemeni weddings, or bake cakes for gay people. To have actual say over the products you work on, and how they're used.
Tech companies have no problem working together, illegally, to keep wages down. Workers should work together, legally, to push wages up. This does not mean that compensation needs to be based on seniority or anything like that, and union contracts do not necessarily mean an end to worker flexibility. Engineers can propose whatever rules they think are fair.
However, I do agree that ethical concerns are a strong reason to organize, and a proper subject for union negotiations.
No you can’t. This is a very young and naive view. The NBA is a monopoly. It will absolutely not be the same when implemented in the tech industry. Not only will you earn less, but your stock will take a huge hit.
> Tech companies have no problem working together, illegally, to keep wages down.
This was 10 years ago and isn’t happening. The incredible salary inflation makes this pretty obvious.
Your points on Why unionise? have wondered a bit if you don't mind me saying. Again, I'm all for people having a moral stance. But if you do, why did you join the Amazon Facial Recognition and Military Tech department? And why would unionising actually stop that work being done, rather than just move it to MS or Apple or Halliburton? And even if you did, why bother including the pickers? They don't care about amazon tech and you wouldn't need them to close the tech centre down...
First you say, Doctors don’t have unions.
Then you move the goalpost when it’s pointed out that many skilled professions do have something effectively similar.
The reason for having one isn’t just about pay.
* do they negotiate standard wages, hours and work conditions?
* do they organise strikes and other action when they don't get what their members want?
* do they also represent unskilled workers, say hospital cleaners (as was being suggested for the amazon Union)?
Help me out here. Am I missing something? I'm no expert so I'm happy to be corrected...
A trade union is simply an organization of workers to achieve a shared goal. That’s it.
For many trade associations, safety standards is a big one, and it becomes more important as the trade is more skilled.
So for instance, it’s the AMA that promoted the standards of medicine over the century and a half and lobbied to prevent quacks from practicing as “medical doctors”.
Do you believe the fragmented and haphazard standards in software today and management’s race to the bottom is beneficial to consumers or to society?
Didn't protect James Damore.
Wrong. The AMA sets an even higher bar than any union.
2) AFAIU, for many years now the bottleneck in the United States for doctors has mostly been residency slots, which aren't controlled in any manner by the AMA, AFAIK. Skilled nurses are even more supply constrained than doctors despite having relatively lower barriers to entry. The issue there seems to simply be not enough teachers.
There’s more reasons to support an influential trade organization other than just pay and job security.
- Ethics : Litigating the worst behaviors (Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc.).
- Quality and security: There is no cost advantage to supporting security, unless somebody pushes to make it that way. I can’t find a large US bank that supports Yubikey.
Also think of the chaos with Experian.
- Solidarity with very important (and struggling) fields like investigative journalism. My field destroys jobs and creates others, but quality information is just too important.
I can go on.
It depends on whether you're coming at the question from a prescriptivist or a descriptivist viewpoint. The point about skilled workers isn't a strawman from a descriptivist viewpoint--i.e. understanding why there's less demand for unionization. Even from a prescriptivist viewpoint the point is relevant as to why alternative approaches might be better--e.g. giving consumers and users more power by rolling back limitations on class actions, and statutorily creating new rights of action designed to force companies to internalize more of their costs (e.g. regarding security). Why rely on unions, which are principally designed to look after employee interests, to address issues related to consumers or society as a whole, especially when there are alternatives that empower groups whose self interests are a better fit for your prescriptivist goals?
That said, many skilled nurses are unionized. So there's definitely reason to believe that if unskilled Amazon employees become unionized, other skilled employees might follow suit, and that could be a good thing for all the reasons you described.
At least when I read it money and stability (or lack of) is a given, but scope and purpose of the work is really the distinguishing factor.
Though looking at it again maybe OP meant all of the above is a reason for a trade organization.
> Why rely on unions, which are principally designed to look after employee interests, to address issues related to consumers or society as a whole, especially when there are alternatives that empower groups whose self interests are a better fit for your prescriptivist goals
Because it’s necessary?
Currently how can an employee blow the whistle on unethical practices, without significant repercussions?
But the idea of unionizing is quaint for a company that has become so many things (manufacturing, logistics, infrastructure, marketplace).
They suggest that somehow the new administration will be friendlier to unionizing, as if that was the blocker.
It doesn't take a PR genius to see what the Amazon narrative will be when people can't get their boxes of shit because of a strike. And thats just from warehouses. Extend that to AWS and Whole Foods and it'll be hard to maintain any sympathy.
Amazon was already getting their tentacles on everything before covid, and now its just amplified. I'd love to see this be the motivator that encourages people to rise up against their overlords, but it's going to end up like the people that protest by blocking freeways. It just pisses off the people trying to go about their lives, and works against the cause.