Amazon Warehouse Workers to Decide Whether to Form Company's First U.S. Union
npr.org
npr.org
It's sad that Amazon, along with FB and Google, etc. have managed to squash unions so completely here in the US. There's a lot of propaganda around unions that helps prevent them from every gaining much power. Obviously Amazon warehouse employees desperately need unionization much more than software devs, but I think both are needed.
Unions used to be for protecting the workers and ensuring that companies were getting the very best skillsets when hiring. Now they protect the lazy, promote the well connected and drain efficiency from businesses. Longshoreman are the most shining example of how to destroy businesses...Port of Portland is now shuttered because they intentionally slowed down work to the point of forcing companies to go elsewhere. ILWU was hit with a $19M judgment because of the things it did in Portland.
Better to admit we need better operating models for unions (and that unions need to work in partnership with management to create sustainable relationships and businesses), rigorous governance and oversight of them, and that that is likely superior to the current situation of labor's collective power to continue to erode over the last four decades. Not only does labor need a seat at the table, employee ownership should be strongly encouraged through policy (this also financially aligns incentives between management and labor, which is a good thing imho).
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
I agree that better operating models could exist (more like European ones)...but the current unions in the US have a lot to lose by doing so.
The result is that unions have the exact same leverage over employees as the companies themselves do, and do not often have sufficient accountability. It is not as simple as voting a union out once it has gotten in, and it takes on a life of its own.
Also, stories like SEIU collaborating with the DFL in Minnesota to get family members of disabled adults declared "in home caretaker employees" of the state so that the union gets a cut of the disability benefits is terrible. There are surely good things that unions can do, but that doesn't mean they are an intrinsic good, or that they are appropriately structured in the US.
Edit: reference: https://www.thecentersquare.com/minnesota/after-trump-rule-c...
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
> From 1979 to 2018, net productivity rose 69.6 percent, while the hourly pay of typical workers essentially stagnated—increasing only 11.6 percent over 39 years (after adjusting for inflation). This means that although Americans are working more productively than ever, the fruits of their labors have primarily accrued to those at the top and to corporate profits, especially in recent years.
> Rising productivity provides the potential for substantial growth in the pay for the vast majority. However, this potential has been squandered in recent decades. The income, wages, and wealth generated over the last four decades have failed to “trickle down” to the vast majority largely because policy choices made on behalf of those with the most income, wealth, and power have exacerbated inequality. In essence, rising inequality has prevented potential pay growth from translating into actual pay growth for most workers. The result has been wage stagnation.
https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/declining-worker-pow...
> "Declining unionization, increasingly demanding and empowered shareholders, decreasing real minimum wages, reduced worker protections, and the increases in outsourcing domestically and abroad have disempowered workers with profound consequences for the labor market and the broader economy."
A couple of factors - the overall labor force is pretty highly educated and skilled - so less free riding overall.
Strong social safety net - so folks not suited to a job have a place to land with health care etc.
a MUCH more cooperate relationship with management -> the unions in Germany at least also want productivity / common sense stuff.
In the US, you can have totally illogical and inefficient work rules and unions will keep them on purpose just to drive up bargaining power, even though it hurts everyone (ie, being able to no show for work with no call etc).
Not all of europe is the same. The french unions have a different approach than german unions etc.
Situation is very different in places like greece / italy / france even with much more militant unions and more protectionism for sectors. So it's def not EU wide.
---
“I cannot complain about the cooperation with the works council,” VW brand chief executive Herbert Diess said at a news conference, citing “very constructive” dealings with the unions.
VW’s mass-market brand has been undergoing heavy restructuring since it agreed with the works council on plans to cut 3.7 billion euros ($4.41 billion) of costs per year from 2020 and slash 23,000 jobs in Germany via natural attrition.
Greece has terrible unions, but many of those seem to be the public unions like teachers and transportation workers.
Unions should be everywhere, so these companies could not escape them by relocating.
Capital trying to feel the country should also be taxed heavily for the same reason.
No.
The other stuff, sure no, but I wondered if you were making a broader point about a controlled economy, which would be a point that China increasingly contradicts.
Labor unions in the US formed primarily to combat exploitation by employers, often in the face of great oppression and cronyism that led to literal bloodshed[0]. This is one of the reasons unions can't be part of the companies their members work for, unlike in Europe. Unions in Europe formed from trade unions that had a longstanding history in European economy. That said, all you have to do is look at union activity in France, where there seems to be nationwide strikes every year, to dispel the myth that they are somehow more cooperative or amenable to making concessions.
Its a double edged sword at best - government is properly afraid of the citizens. But overall the economy suffers badly. This is just a small part of overall french 'package' - high social benefits, its extremely hard to fire people, tons of paid holidays days per year, early retirement etc. Result is startups start elsewhere, companies move away whatever they can (even state semi-owned like car industry). Another result is tons of monopolies, which distort the market and make very small amount of citizens profit at he cost of everybody else.
Economy is weak compared to Germany, I would say salaries are 1/2, although there shouldn't be the reason - big smart well educated population. But then comes the french mentality and way of doing things...
If you tried interfere with unions here in Germany you'd run up against the law, the media and so on very, very quickly, it's one of the things you don't want to screw with.
For the wealthy in this country, the political footballism is the perfect machine to ensure their position on the economic ladder remains at it's lofty heights, and inequality continues to widen by the year. I really don't think republicans like Mitch McConnel care at all about an issue like abortion, they just use it to drum up votes from their base in order to further their economic policy goals.
They might agree that they're in the same boat, but they'll disagree with why they're there.
Poor democrats will blame corporations for keeping wages low and sending jobs to China and lack of government assistance programs. They think the solution is to increase taxes on the rich to provide better social programs.
Poor republicans will blame illegal immigrants for stealing their job, or they somehow think the government is in their way. They think the solution is to cut taxes on the corporations to create jobs (regardless of the fact that this never works).
As we entered the 80's and 90's with the rise of Reaganism and then neoliberalism, however, US businesses as well as the federal and state governments started chipping away at them. Now, between insufficient oversight, "right-to-work (spare me)" laws, lack of NLRB enforcement, and a robust cottage industry of private-sector union-busters, labor has less power in America than it's had in a long time.
It's good to see it start to change.
Just a personal anecdote, my biological grandfathers trunk was firebombed by the Philly Roofers Union (UURWAW) due to a dispute with them. The K&A gang in that area is well known to be tied into the union[0] and was known to fairly regularly engage in violence like that to prevent "scabs". My point being, the violence was omni-directional and this fact is often omitted by those in favor of unions.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%26A_Gang#Roofers'_Union_corr...
Police unions may protect bad apples via union.
Teachers unions may care more about teachers including bad ones then teaching kids. We had a famously terrible teacher at my school - unfirable - as kids we thought it was hilarious. As a parent now - not so cool. Non unionized schools seem to be coming up with innovate workaround during pandemic (outside / park / hiking classrooms etc).
Absolutely horrendously drafted laws that make life miserable even for folks trying to do right (AB5, schools not allowed to keep reserves) that are union drafted, and require endless exceptions and modifications.
Google employees unionizing and striking and walking out and otherwise throwing very highly paid fits over things that don't connect with average person.
When you call what people have first hand experience of "propaganda" they may immediately will discount everything else you are saying.
The real rule should be all poorly compensated folks paid $14/hr or less should automatically be in unions. That's where the real need is.
> Teachers unions may care more about teachers ...
That's precisely the point of a union. It's an organization to protect its members. It's the purpose of the school system overall, including principals, school boards, and so on, to care about teaching kids.
I've personally known three people who got elected to their local school boards without any endorsements at all. They all had big families, literally just a lot of people knocking on doors evening after evening, no prior political experience even.
A couple of years ago there was endless complaints about new ways to teach math.
There are anecdotes to support the point of view they are bad, and anecdotes to support that they are good.
The source of funding does not seem to be the problem. The quantity of funding, definitely.
That and hyperlocal funding.
We can't like society as a whole fall part and expect schools to keep on performing well.
The teachers that I know work tirelessly, don't make very much money, and do literally everything they can to help students. This is doubly true during the past year when they've had to re work plans so that they work over zoom or in person.
I think perhaps the point of friction is that all of this is true and the city can't afford to pay them more, so they get other concessions.
I fundamentally disagree with your claim about lack of innovation - in a public high school 15 years ago your story doesn't ring true, much less seeing my friends who are teachers talking about lesson plans today.
I mean, have you seen the American Education system? Millions of people thought Betsy Davos was a good idea. MILLIONS. The DOE under her tenure was basically a full on assault against public education in favor of charters/private schools. I've had hours-long, in-person arguments with people who are CONVINCED teachers have the easiest jobs on the planet and we pay them too much.
Not to mention many HN commenters in general tend to strong pro-management stance which pushes them anti-union in general.
That's just it, the union is there to represent the interests of the senior officers and no one else.
Teachers union is easily one of the worst Unions in USA which has turned public education system into a wasteland of incompetent teachers protected at the expense of competent and unemployed. It has turned our education system into a soviet styled "jobs program for adults" instead of a schooling system for children.
If Americans ever wanted an example of how much damage unions can do, look no further than Teachers union.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
To hold up it must be true, but misleading.
But the gist is, there are statements that are not falsifiable, like that "inferior race" that is not fact, it is the conclusion, but it is not falsifiable easily because there is no clear metric being used for that judgment.
If you look at U.S. race based hate sites that are easiest to find now, you will see things like accurate references to crime rates and such. The number is true, but it is missing all kinds of context and correlations and such.
For example, I have seen many references to lower IQ scores for certain groups. There are many ways to interpret this, but the racists use it as evidence. The "number" is true.
Also, the anecdotes they tell are largely true, but to pick and choose emotional one off examples is misleading.
By warping "true" things, you maintain credibility.
Look at some of the election stuff. For example, if someone said "They were bringing suitcases into the polling place" (I can't remember the exact details) There is video it is true, but it is not nefarious. But it takes a long time to rebuff the implication and explain proper procedure.
Now, I may have overstated "best", because the best is emotional, and a lot of that is art, nothing to do with fact, and portrayal of the enemy. You see this in a lot of the Nazi imagery. It has nothing to do with facts, true or false.
If I didn't know about the sustained US corporate anti-union messaging as a thing, I might wonder why that is.
My mother was a middleschool teacher when I was in highschool, and drove me to highschool in the morning. Because she was a teacher, she had to get there before the school obstensibly opened, which wasn't a problem for me or my brothers because the administration of the highschool was reasonable and let us sit quietly in the office until the school opened. A handful of other kids had this arrangement too. It worked fine until my junior year, when the teachers union decided to throw a hissy fit. The result of that was all students being made to stand outside in the cold until the school was officially open. The teachers Union said that allowing students into the building before school hours unfairly saddled them with more labor... never mind that we were all quietly sitting in the office receiving compliments from the secretaries for being well behaved.
Are there a bunch of would-be teachers clamoring for those jobs?
I think the lack of desirability is what keeps terrible teachers employed. There also aren't great ways to measure how good someone is at teaching.
Emphatically yes, particularly at nice well funded schools. I have numerous long-term friends who have become school teachers, many of then had to move quite a distance just to find schools with openings. Most states have teacher certification reciprocity with Pennsylvania, which gave them a leg up in this regard. Even so, searching for open positions was clearly stressful for them. But for them it was worth it; the work is rewarding and socially important. They like working with kids, and they like getting several months of vacation every year. There is no other job quite like it.
I emigrated up to Canada a while back where teachers are paid very well[1] and the bad teachers get weeded out really quickly since there are plenty of enthusiastic replacements. I am sure that at well funded schools in the US teachers do great - but most US schools are terribly funded[2] so I'm not surprised folks are willing to move across the country if a well reimbursed position opens up.
1. https://www.blogto.com/city/2020/09/average-ontario-teacher-... [TL;DR 108k including benefits] - also they've got great pension options.
2. Taking New York as a random counter example since cost-of-living is probably pretty close to Toronto https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/new-york-state-teacher-sal... [TL;DR 42k probably excluding benefits - which were about 12k for toronto teachers]
https://www.uft.org/your-rights/salary/doe-and-city-salary-s...
1 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/31/the-rubber-roo...
My best friend gave up on getting a teaching job and went into industry work, while my sister in law has gotten multiple certifications to be able to teach different subjects and is still only able to get part-time substitute teaching work.
We had problems back in the day here (Aotearoa) as the union movement became the battle ground for the larger social class conflicts, that whilst meat hook reality overseas, made less sense here (here it was racial conflict and colonisation that mattered, another story, another day).
The union movement was smashed in the conflict. Too corrupt and ossified to fight back against a revitalised state in the 1980s and 90s. But the public sector unions survived, and were are strong now. The teachers union here is mighty.
But we see none of the problems (bad teachers defended, stupid rules enforced arbitrarily - well some, there is still bureaucracy). The unions campaign very effectively for their members, some political agents try to stir up concern (American issues leak through here) but mostly no body really cares. When my children were at school I never gave it a thought.
Good luck to the Amazon workers, I hope it goes well.
Government workers already have a lot of job security, so I don't think unions should be allowed to affect that.
I do think that public servants have a right to negotiate safety and other technical issues without public approval.
Generally, they do require a vote of the appropriate governing body, with all the associated public information and opportunity for input that goes along with that.
> Municipalities are incurring way too much debt without taxpayer knowledge
If true, its because taxpayers don’t actually care. Because if they did, even if they were too lazy to find out themselves, it would be too convenient a lever for opposition to whoever the current majority is in the relevant governing body to use with the public to unseat them to go unused.
They do care when they're forced to pay extra taxes to cover interest. Your average voter doesn't have time to audit their city's finances. Both the unions and public officials knew that public would not agree to tax hikes, so they decided to go with unfunded pensions instead. Even though it's technically transparent, they're still abusing an information asymmetry, much like pyramid schemes.
Or should a developer negotiate with a shareholder for a bonus?
It's not a broadly held view, even among communists.
I also very much appreciate the fact that "having police" (even vaguely, and even ineffective ones) is a pretty good deterrent to (most) random folks murdering other folks[1].
There is a hell of a lot wrong with American policing but they do productive work just like managers (that don't produce anything themselves) and HR and all the other "non-productives" people like to point out. I think it's perfectly fair to question just how much value police (and other "non-productives") are actually producing and a lot of businesses could do with trimming a bit of labour out of middle management - but there are reasons these jobs exist and they can add a lot to team and societal productivity.
1. I don't ascribe to theories on anarchist utopias where if everyone can kill everyone else no one does out of politeness, I've played Rust.
One specific feature (at least in the US) is that a police report is required for an insurance claim - but there's no fundamental reason this system requires a police report, as opposed to, say, a sworn statement to a clerk of court or a public prosecutor. And even so, that's about getting some form of recompense after the crime happened, not stopping the crime (the burglary still happened to you, did it not?).
Along the same lines, I don't believe that the presence of the police prevents people from killing others. I certainly believe that the presence of the legal system does, by imposing strong penalties against murder. I'd believe that detective / investigative work (which a small fraction of the work the police do now, yes) aids the legal system by making those penalties actually happen. But I think you will find that there are very few potential murders where a cop is around and able to respond (by shooting first, I guess?) in time to prevent the murder from happening.
Even if you think of the favorable portrayal of cops in, say, Law and Order, they're generally investigating a crime that already happened, and it's pretty rare that they end up in a position by the end of the episode to stop a crime in progress and find themselves in a shootout.
It mostly just made me feel better - the chances of recovering items after a theft or burglary is nearly nil. However, after having my home invaded by a stranger and my personal belongings rifled through it was quite cathartic to report the crime, give all the information I could to try and make sure the criminals were eventually caught, and help restore my sanity by just seeing a system in place for these issues.
I received no recompense for the crime and, at the time, I wasn't insured, but I was also dirt poor and didn't have much to lose except my privacy.
On the topic of murders I agree that detectives and investigators are the ones that will end up catching murderers and beat/patrol police do very little to apprehend criminals but they do make the system dramatically more visible and do a lot to de-escalate situations[1] from becoming as dangerous. The chances that you will be mid-being-murdered and be rescued by the police are nearly zero - the chances that someone who may have murdered you decides not to do so is more significant and, I think, aided by a visible patrol police force - even if they don't significantly contribute to resolving justice.
So I both agree with you that police are pretty useless when it comes to dealing with crimes after the fact - but disagree with you about their general efficacy. They should exist to de-escalate situations before they become real problems and make visible the rules of society that we should all abide by.
Oh, this is all very much my opinion so I've not got a lot of sources or references to pull on as to how to make police into a force that does that.
1. In this point I'm speaking as a now-Canadian - I don't really feel qualified to speak on the US system as 1) I'm white and 2) I haven't lived there in over a decade. So please do excuse this statement if you (the reader) have personally suffered unreasonable escalation of force.
The right to strike is tricky for essential services.
Perhaps a underlying problem is the adversarial nature of many of our social relationships.
There’s just too many perverse incentives for politicians to give in to union demands in exchange for buying votes. Unlike the private sector, the ones agreeing to the union demands care little about the long term costs associated since they’re not the ones paying them.
If politicians were looking to maximise votes, wouldn't they target parents not teachers: there's a lot more parents than teachers.
Why do you think Mitch McConnell cares so much about coal?
That union needs some serious reform and it isn't going to come from the inside, but there are some really good reasons for police to have good bargaining power.
Honestly, this probably all comes back to the US massively underfunding public services as a general rule - if the policing budget had been slashed like the education budget regularly is then we'd have nothing but vigilantes in the police force.
One thing I've noticed, is that where 'new unions' are forming, there is' probably a good reason for it.
... you do realize you're making those broad, blanket statements in the comment thread of an article that's about the unionization of Amazon's warehouse workers who aren't "spoiled, overpaid techies", yes?
Assuming no external pressure, though, I absolutely agree: if workers don't see the benefit in unionizing, they should not unionize.
(Of course, I would also like to see them able to unionize if they do see benefit from it)
For example, if you become a police officer and do not choose to join the union, you must still pay fees which are spent by the union on political lobbying.
I am generally pro union but think that all unions should be optional to the workers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_shop
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/employee-...
But I think the main reason why we have higher unionization rate in Europe especially northern Europe/Scandinavia is that the relationship between labour and capital is almost legalized. There's rules in place that dictate when tariffs should be negotiated and how they are negotiated, what kind of leverage the parties can use and when they can use it. In other words, the relationship between labor unions and employer organizations are regulated. Seems to work quite good, but it is a product of history and can probably not be emulated directly somewhere else.
You could argue from personal experience that you went to a bad school therefore all schools are bad, or you had a bad experience with <insert skin color, ethnicity, or religion> therefore all people of that sort are bad.
It's just not very convincing.
How many union members do you think experience wage theft?
Probably they could do a better job of advertising this to workers. Many workers experiencing wage theft probably are not aware of their options, and that's a problem. But when used, it works. I've seen it work.
As, often, do state labor authorities.
There are all kinds of de jure considerations that purport to protect workers, but they fail without an organization by and for workers to actually ensure they're enforced.
Well sometimes a truck is late, that's just the way the world works. In one of those cases, my boss asked us to stay at the plant an hour late; the truck driver was on the phone and said he'd be there shortly, but we had nothing to do but sit around on our asses twiddling our thumbs. One of my coworkers, more experienced than me, asked if we'd get paid while waiting. My account of the conversation that followed:
Boss: "Well uh, we're all just sitting here doing nothing so.."
Coworker: "The Deparment of Labor says..."
Boss: "WHOA WHOA WHOA! I was just kidding of course you'll get paid!"
Immediate backtrack. He turned on a dime as soon as he realized there were workers who knew their rights. I think information is the key. There is no substitute for workers knowing their rights.
How many union members do you think experience wage theft?
To substantiate and engage PR over abuse of workers by a corporation, the livelihood of individual workers who give witness to the allegations are at stake.
To substantiate and engage PR over abuse of the public weal, customers or the corporation by a union, usually no one's livelihood is threatened by giving witness.
It isn't surprising abuses by unions are easier to publicize and and more commonly substantiated. This dynamic will not change until workers have the equivalent of FU money. Or like in one sci-fi story I read, a genetic mutation causes everyone to fix chlorophyll in their pigmentation and get all their minimum bodily energy requirements by standing around in the sun for a few hours each day, and have to be convinced to work. I suspect a more near-term, practical direction is some solution along the lines of an intentional community co-op.
It's not isolated abuses, it's a feature of unions.
It's not unions good or unions bad. The focus should be on how to get unions that don't lead to the abuses people are afraid of. When it comes to unions, the discussion seems to be much more take-it-or-leave-it.
The problem is that, in the US, most peoples’ experiences with unions is with public unions, which are the worst kind of unions: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/10/29/coolidge-and-...
> For decades, that was the mainstream Democratic view, too. “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt affirmed in 1937.
In reality though we just went from one anecdote to two. We are unable to tell when something is universal experience just by hearing more anecdotes.
And even if we somehow got to negative universal experiences, those very well could be:
1. Part of a conscious tradeoff (e.g. firms being less profitable due to higher labor costs). A lot of anti-union rhetoric seems to amount to complaining about not being able to have one's cake and eat it too.
2. Artifacts of law (either direct or indirect) that could solved through legal reform. My understanding is that at least some of the "adversarialness" of US unions derives from the requirements of US law, and German unions (for instance) operate very differently (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany).
As a dueling anecdote, I know plenty of libertarian/right-leaning folks who privately tell me that they totally understand that teachers (regardless of unions) should not have to face a highly infectious disease in classrooms just so a bunch of double-income parents want to keep doing their office jobs over Zoom. The current problems have almost nothing to do with unions directly.
There are plenty of examples of unions being really bad in the US, the burden of proof is now on the other side of the court.
What makes you jump to label that complaint an "anecdote" and an "isolated abuse" rather than evidence of structural rot and public union corruption?
The most defensible thing you can say about this is that the cost is primarily borne by the shareholders rather than the consumers. Thus you tend to see that the best unions for workers tend to be in large, established, highly profitable firms with little to no competition. A prime example are the American automakers before the 1980s when foreign competition kicked in. Working on the GM assembly line in 1970 was a very good job.
However Amazon is barely profitable as it currently stands. Since there's essentially no room for lower profitability. The only give is either higher consumer prices or deadweight loss, i.e. fewer customer and therefore fewer (but higher-paid) employees. That might not necessarily be a bad thing, especially to the extent that the average Amazon customer is wealthier than the average Amazon warehouse worker. But given Amazon's extremely thin profit margins, I don't really see anyway that consumers won't end up paying for the sizable bulk of the unionization costs.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001979399204600...
That's not entirely surprising. Unions aren't optimizing for company productivity, but for the conditions and pay of the workers. And conversely, a company can abuse its employees to a large degree while reaping productivity gains from it.
> However Amazon is barely profitable as it currently stands. Since there's essentially no room for lower profitability.
Amazon is "barely profitable" because of clever accounting. They rake in tons of money, and reinvest it into growth. There is plenty of buffer to eat the unionization costs. But of course Amazon may opt to pass these costs to customers instead.
Amazon’s warehouses for example have some serious safety issues which they largely ignore. One example being heavy items being stored in such a way vastly increase the risk of back injury. Stuff can be good for efficiency and a really terrible deal for workers.
It's not large scale or even necessarily generalisable. I don't think a study limited to 83 "Sawmills in the Western U.S." can be presented as an example of unionisation in general.
> However Amazon is barely profitable as it currently stands
Amazon actively avoids profitability... Modern economies do not reward profitability, they increasingly reward the promise of potential future profitability. Amazon is perfectly capable of earning a healthy profit, but it is actively incentivised not to in favour of chasing further growth. Uber, WeWork, and Doordash all exemplify this attitude; although it could be argued that they are incapable of profitability at all.
Companies are actively choosing to remain in the red in order to stack the house of cards that little bit higher, steal a little bit more of their market before they turn around and exploit the fragile and artificially inflated position they've bought their way into.
> The most defensible thing you can say about this is that the cost is primarily borne by the shareholders rather than the consumers.
Surely the most defensible thing is that the workers are fairly compensated and work in humane conditions? We seem unable to convince Western corporations to not use child or slave labour, but at least we don't attempt to justify it by saying "Iphones would be more expensive without Uighur work camps".
At my first job, I had a horrible boss. A friend tried to speak up against him and was promptly fired. Turns out he was a relative of the CEO and was thus unfireable.
Just a few weeks ago I also spoke to someone who told his experience of reporting someone for sexual harassment at a major tech company, just to learn that they were well aware of it but refused to do anything because of good performance.
We should absolutely consider the role uninions can play regarding unfirable employees. Being able to push the company to get rid of them can have a huge impact on the well-being of workers.
Sexual harassment is one of several things that the legal system takes seriously.
Either way getting a restraining order or whatever on someone you work with is definitely not going to improve your situation, if you can even prove it in the first place.
Getting sexual harassment claims taken seriously is an uphill battle and often harms the careers of the people who complain.
That you believe it's a "fit" thrown for causes that "don't connect with the average person" is reflecting pretty poorly on your priorities. Nobody wants to believe your boss is skipping over you for promotions because you rejected their sexual advances.
A union is not just about how "highly paid" employees are, it can help protect employees from those kinds of institutional deficiencies.
By 2025 I imagine that if you Google "conservative" you'll instantly have all your Google Services wiped, get banned from the platform, and be reported to the Progressive Thought Technology Alliance Union, so that Twitter and AWS can do the same to you.
No, it wasn’t. Even to the extent that might be considered a superficially correct description of part of what happened, its not the center of the “drama”, which is more centrally about the treatment which led up to that.
No, the proximately preceding treatment was restrictions on her research that were inconsistent with those imposed on other Google AI researchers (the extent to which that is due to its subject matter, the extent to which it is due to her internal advocacy on gender and race issues, and the extent to which it is due to her own race and sex is unclear.)
> Not relatable to most of the lower or middle class in the US.
Being singled out for adverse treatment either for raising issues related to gender or race equity or for one’s gender or race are, actually, quite relatable to lots of the lower and middle class in the US, certainly including those in that group who are also black and/or women.
The fact that there isn’t really any direct evidence of gender bias in this case is why this is so unrelatable.
A likely millionaire being asked to defer a last minute publication is not even something that would register as an annoyance to the huge portion of the US workforce that doesn’t give two shits about their job.
Would you also throw out all welfare systems because a handful of people abuse the system?
I think it's pretty clear that at least some police unions work strongly against the interests of society -- but I haven't seen any evidence that they work against the interests of their members.
Sure, if you're an honest cop it probably stings that a murderer can collect his pension like nothing happened; but on the other hand, you know the same protection would be available to you if you were accused.
Or consider that, famously, the NYPD doesn't consider itself beholden to the Mayor. I can't believe that attitude would work without the union. And the unions can also very publicly take political positions that are contrary to their employers' or even the majority of the citizenry -- which looks to me like a serious demonstration of power.
At least in the case of police unions in the US, I can't see how they are a negative example from the point of view of people who might end up as union members.
You need to look after your interests first. Your anecdotes do that. It's not your job to make sure everyone has a "fair" life. You job is to make sure you get as much as you can. That's what capitalism is.
This way they get to be compensated at 12/hr
Your politicians do nothing, your bosses do nothing. What do you have to lose? Fight for what you need together.
Similarly for workers, no one wants to have to work harder to be treated fairly along with paying the overhead of unionization. What you end up with is an unstable equilibrium for the creation and destruction of unions.
That's like arguing against private business by citing anecdotes about people's direct experiences with car dealerships and Comcast.
It's undeniable that sectors with strong unions provide better working conditions to employees than comparable sectors without unions.
Isn't the trend the rise of 'big' companies. I wish there were a lot of small/medium companies, instead, that were competing for workers, then we won't need 'solutions' like unions.
Looks like we are just accepting these 'big' companies as fact of life and moving on to finding solutions to deal with them.
The competition forces the unions to remain focused on the desires of the general population, otherwise they just lose membership.
So, if you're an academic like me, you can join the University and College Union, and there will be a local organisation, probably a collective bargaining agreement with the university, and so on. Or join a different union and get no local representation and only 'central office' services. There are some places with multiple recognition (when I worked in local government Unison, GMB and the T&G were all recognised, with membership strengths in different parts of the council) but it's often just one. And that's if you're lucky: many employers recognise no unions.
Of course, the UK also doesn't have the closed shop (union membership is strictly optional) so there is a competition between member and not-member that keeps some pressure on the union organisation. And each European country has its own traditions of union organisation and different working cultures, so this probably doesn't extend outside of Britain.
The Amazon union is of the much more classical form, is well past due, it's not entirely necessary, but it would be beneficial.
I don't actually think that regular Google employees should be unionized, rather, it should be the non-technical staff, contractors and so many people not in privileged positions that should be probably be unionized to the exclusion of the talent, who want to form their union for entirely different reasons. I do not believe that the Google Union is oriented towards helping those who actually are powerless.
Google technical staff are the most privileged and well taken care of workers literally in the entire world.
It seems like the main actions taken by the Google employees' union so far have been to push the company to behave more ethically, not to enhance their already-significant (indeed, outrageous) privilege. I see that as using their privileged positions as leverage for positive change, and I hope they succeed.
I don't trust Google Employees one bit more than I trust Google Management, as far as certain issues of ethnics, I'd much rather have intelligent and pragmatic regulation.
Also, I didn't really hint at 'what was within their rights' or not.
Finally, and ironically, if we're going to be concerned about 'ethics' it might start with tidying up their own household and using the tools of organizing like Unions for which they were intended, which is to say helping those who have no power i.e. the gazillion of 'secondary' actors at Google.
If Googlers want to have more influence I'm not sure the Union model is it, because far more often than not, it's a system of entrenched power that will use their base to carry out the wishes of the vanguard. Student unions for example, tend to take positions that are wildly inconsistent with what the average student would want, but voter participation is low, the system is opaque, and many students don't pay any attention and are just resigned to the system. I don't know what the answer is, but it's probably not a union.
There is a use for unions that advocate for increased pay and clearer benefits. But as constructed and run in the US they are poison to the company. A whole layer of weird incentives the company (and workers!) have to deal with. A lot of the sinister sounding anti-union education the companies do points this out. And there's enough truth that it's very effective.
Pro union folks are always tweeting that companies spending $1 million to avoid an extra $100,000 a year in labor costs is evidence of a widespread conspiracy by the man to keep the working class down. Really the union is like adding a whole extra layer of horrible bureaucracy that costs way more than that $1 million. From that viewpoint shutting down a store or warehouse that unionizes make perfect sense.
I sometimes think that something like a "credible threat of peace" would be useful.
"We are forming a union. If you vote for this union, we will allow workers here to chose other unions. We will never get in the way of firing someone. We will never create job roles that don't let workers move laterally or up. You can lay people off. We will not use our members money for political campaigns. Our workers can move into management without us freaking out.
We will advocate for more pay, benefits, productivity, and training."
Unions should exist to serve their workers and the fact that most public unions gain the most power by constantly funneling money into political campaigns is a real problem that just leads back to election finance laws.
plus, i don't really buy this anti-union propaganda. there's a strong correlation between between union membership going down and wealth inequality going up. i didn't say that was causation, but is it interesting enough to warrant consideration? hell yes it is.
i'm guessing most people on this sites are of engineering mind, where they see an "unnecessary" layer of abstraction upon something as worth refactoring out. well... this ain't really in that lane, you see. it turns out that capital is so powerful in the 21st C. that they can straight up move your job to a country with worse environmental and labor regulations, and we all cheer it on in the name of "efficiency". little do we appreciate that that attack on labor is rotting the hell out of the country itself.
Trade unions in the US do exactly that
Source: https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/googles-fake-union-insults-...
But once these mandates became law, corporations used the arguments of "why do we need unions if the law already protects workers?" This and following Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers changed the image of unions. They were now corrupt middlemen that charged you a fee to be part of the club.
And it worked. Trying to form a union is now news instead of being the natural course of things. I wager that most people in the tech side of Amazon have a hard time grasping why their coworkers are trying to unionize. (we get paid well, what's the fuss all about?)
I hope they vote in their interest, but I'm doubtful it will pass (I hope I'm wrong). These laws that are supposed to protect workers are enforced by the company's HR department[1]. The problem is that HR will side with the company before siding with any employee.
I think we need to start looking into reforming HR and making it a public service.
It was illegal for the controllers to strike.
They knew when they took the job that striking was illegal. Reagan reminded them of that, and said he'd fire them if they broke the law. They did anyway, and Reagan wasn't bluffing. Reagan could have also prosecuted them, but (wisely) chose not to.
https://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Rela...
Part of the reason may be that the divide between Democrats and Republicans is much wider on those issues vs labor issues.
It's all theater.
Cancelling student debt will help a shit tonne more workers.
He has a section on his campaign website addressing Union specifics:
https://joebiden.com/empowerworkers/
Well see what he can actually does, but with the senate in democrat hands, the sky is the limit.
I will feel terrible if that ever happens for folks that were smart with money and didn't incur tons of debt. It's gonna be a real bummer when you learn that you paid off your educational debt or never had any and that now you get to pay off debt of others that made bad decisions.
I agree emotionally. But that's life, if you actually believe in education you can only really pay if forwards...
"bad decisions"
Imagine thinking that earning a degree was a "bad decision".
The Republican Party is for people whose primary concern is one of a theocratic judiciary, paying less taxes if you make more than $400k/yr, white nationalism, extractive industries, military contractors, unrestricted access to any/all classes of firearms.
In both of those groups there are large pro-business, anti-labor contingents.
Hopefully one day we will move to ranked choice voting and other mechanisms that allow 3rd parties to compete and we can have more meaningful and direct connections between parties and specific policies instead of these two loose coalitions.
Also, white nationalism is only embraced by a small percentage of the party. It's not really part of their platform, it's just what the loudest shouters in the party want.
(Disclaimer: I do not identify as repbulican, but if this is your best faith effort to define their platform, you lack empathy for them which means you'll never understand even their lucid ideas. Granted, many of their ideas are vague and not lucid.)
I'm not saying that all Republicans are white nationalist and anti-abortion but I haven't met a Republican whose primary political concern wasn't one of the issues I listed.
And everybody I've met whose primary issue is one of those that I listed has been Republican.
The vast majority of my extended family, whom I love, is Republican. There isn't some great mystery to understanding their political motivations.
Did I miss a Republican Party coalition from my list?
But this is also I reason why I think ranked-choice voting is so compelling. I've met Republicans who essentially only vote Republican because they want to defend their 2nd amendment right but otherwise would be much more likely to support left-wing economic causes. But the way policies are bundled in our two parties they are forced to vote according to their primary concern.
The last family gathering we all had together, pre-covid thanksgiving, they all spent much of the time telling me how I had to "be afraid" of Mexicans and Arabs for a variety of reasons. I'm kind of dumb in social situations and kind of polite so I just stood there entirely unsure how I should even respond to that.
have I talked to a single republican? I've talked to several that I'd known all my life, who all came out with the race baiting stuff.
Bernie Sanders and AOC would like a word. Most of their platform is based around supporting the working class.
Very good point! I did not think of this at all. Perhaps the collapse of the Soviet Union discredited the planned economy as means of social equalization and they never quite regained their footing.
If I had to analyze the root cause of it though, I'd say the proximate cause really is Cultural Hegemony. Pretty much every piece of media and every interaction you have assumes liberal economics so much that it is very hard to even realize that you are working within that framework. An unknown known, kinda.
In a universe where public social programs are impossible; I find many of these corporatist-redistributionist arguments sort of interesting. But in this one; I really do think we should tax corporations more and fund State programs.
If everyone has medicare for all and eviction protections; do we still care whether amazon can fire a worker from a warehouse?
I think MFA is not entirely antithetical to the right ideology and could be over time incorporated - it improves labor mobility which is in line with core right values (freedom of association and participation provides better free market outcomes and more self-sufficiency). It’s just at any point in time it’s too convenient to crap on it for cheap points. A local optimum of negative variety.
This process was, ironically, only made possible by the destruction of unions which were the most important leftist institution.
Who knows, maybe they'll make Amazon to allow unmetered bathroom breaks one day.
It literally is considered time off task (TOT) when you stop for a restroom break outside of your scheduled break times.
There is always the option for people with increased medical restroom needs to seek specific accommodations to essentially excuse the TOT for their needs.
The negotiating power of unions is another.
- Police unions openly declaring war on their own citizens
- Teachers unions causing general chaos in school reopening plans
I understand that public sector unions are a different beast, but purely from an optics perspective I have to imagine public sentiment for unions can't be very high right now.
In California, the teachers union has a grotesque level of influence -- and the quality of the kids' education isn't so special, as a result.
They are. A few years ago I still thought they were oeverpaid and then I married a teacher. She's absolutely underpaid. It is very much not a 9-5 job and, that time off during the summer - some of it get used for required continued education and a good deal of it makes up for the fact that teachers generally don't have vacation time remotely comparable to most other industries.
My wife wakes up and goes to school about 2 hours before classes start. She comes home, makes us dinner, then sits on the couch all evening watching tv while she answers student and parent emails, works on her lesson plan for the next few days/weeks, grades papers, tries to figure out how to squeeze kids in around others during her prep hour or before/after school that are requesting help, find time to squeeze in phone calls during those same time slots with parents that are unhappy with a student's grade or want help for their child.
The weekends are more of the same, a lot of grading/lesson planning/creating content for teaching.
This summer she had 2 weeks of full-time college classes in the middle of summer to keep up with her continued education requirements which required her to purchase about a dozen books that weren't textbooks for the class and required a few binders, several papers, then a 20-page paper. Then weeks before the school year started she had to go start prepping her classroom, attending meetings in person, etc.
Just look at babysitting rates. If you look at the cost of daycare and consider any k-12 child at babysitting rates, teachers are extremely underpaid. Last school year she had roughly 185 students she saw daily. So, the average rate for a local babysitter in Indianapolis, IN is $12.75 per hour as of January 2021 according to Care.com's data.
Assume she had each student for 60 minutes a day - as a babysitter she should have earned $2,358.75 a day if my math is right. She was doing a lot more than babysitting, after marrying her I fully joined the stance that teachers are horribly underpaid.
A local babysitter can watch more than 1 kid for that $12.75 an hour as well...it's not per kid.
Nice try. Also, continued education is a requirement as it should be for such a career, but don't forget that her pay will go up as she completes credits (on top of her yearly increase).
Just so you know, teachers in my area start at $55K/yr right now, not including benefits.
You're just massaging the data to benefit your point. Go find a babysitter that'll find 5 parents an go "yes, I'll watch all 5 of your children if you all chip in and give me 12.75 total".
Even your own source of care.com has a "Nanny Share" program that reduces the cost more. Without sharing, full time care (40 hrs a week) for 2 kids in my area is $16 an hour...which is less than 2 bucks more than minimum wage. $17.65 an hour if its 3 kids. Certainly not three times the $14.65 an hour that is for a single kid.
We treat teachers like these magicians who should find a way to make economically stressed kids fantastic students.
I myself went through tons of housing instability , and an eviction while in high school. In no universe was I going to get into some type of premiere college.
But you just keep seeing more and more pressure to make kids college ready. Kids who can barely read English are now told to take a foreign language( I've always hated foreign language requirements because I think it gives a big leg up to people growing in bilingual homes).
Your wife is a saint. I can't imagine how much stress this reopening drive is causing your home.
Also this “9 months a year” thing is really getting tired. Every teacher I’ve ever met works 60-80 hours a week or more, including weekends. When they work does not correlate to how much they work.
Maybe out west but schools have been carrying on as normal here in Indiana. My wife is at school teaching right now, they've had exactly 1 day this school year where she didn't have to go to work (earlier this week) because 3 students physically cut the internet going into the building and they couldn't get repairs done in time to open that day.
Edit: I don't understand the downvotes... many schools across the country have been open for in-person school for the bulk of covid. This is a concrete fact.
Link?
Everybody here seems to agree that unions have the potential to do good or bad in every thread on it. The next logical step to me is that there needs to be a selection mechanism in place.
For companies, the selection mechanism is competition. If someone else does better, the consumer or worker can choose someone else. And we have anti-monopoly laws to make sure that that someone else exists, to foster that competition and choice.
Is there such a mechanism for unions? My ideal scenario wouldn't be me on my own as it is today. I'd want a handful of unions to pick from to represent me, not too differently from my choice of medical insurer. Five unions to represent 575,000 amazon warehouse workers would still average 115,000 members each, so it's a huge step forward in collective bargaining. And then people can change unions if one of them ends up how folks are worried about in every union thread.
It seems like it would get at all sides of the issue. We'd get collective representation and a safeguard against the potential pitfalls.
How could this scenario come about? Could it be something like medical insurance with an open enrollment season? There would need to be something akin to anti-competitive behavior built in, so you couldn't end up with an agreement saying you can only hire from our union. What else would it take?
Unions should be democratic. The workers in the union should collectively decide how it is run, and it should have a fairly flat hierarchical structure. So if you feel that your union does not sufficiently represent your interests, you can get rid of the leadership and change the union for the better. As opposed to companies where you essentially have the choice to tolerate it or leave if you don't like what's happening (without unions, that is).
- Software engineers unionize
- Some "bad" rules get implemented, perhaps passing vote by misleading slogans or over-represented groups etc. Maybe it was a narrow 51% vs 49% vote.
- Top talent leaves, over time that 51% in favor of the bad rules becomes a larger and larger majority
- Now your option is essentially tolerate it or leave if you don't like what's happening. So it's the same as before, except now you owe union dues.
- "Top talent" starts new company that's more focused on "work" and has fewer rules.
- Company grows...
- Software engineers unionize... repeat
When I say "bad rules" I'm thinking things that are the software equivalent to existing union rules like "Only union members can plug in that HDMI cable" etc etc.
- Conspire with others to not pay top talent market rate and not poach employees
- The end.
Outside of FANG, poaching and competing on salary are common, at least in the startup space.
My question is why did this group unionize if nothing has changed for the better (in your words "its the same as before except now you owe union dues")?
Wouldn't it be more likely that the group makes some gains, some losses and is better for most of the people in the group overall? That tends to be what happens in real unionization efforts (I'm more than happy to provide case studies).
I'll agree that there would most likely be some gains and some losses. I'm just not personally convinced the gains will outweigh the losses for software engineers specifically.
I think the key difference here between warehouse workers and tech workers is that if non-union talks with management break down, most tech workers can move jobs and keep similar benefits/comp/location without huge effort, the same can't be said of many warehouse workers.
In a sense, the monoply power of a union is a counterbalance to the monopoly of management in a single workplace.
I get a vote in the union's policies. Employers can't require you to be a member of a specific union - or any union at all. You ccany join at any time - or leave whenever you want.
What does it take? Just join a union and get others to do so.
That's all union is, people working together.
I think this fundamentally misunderstands the purpose and function of a union.
1. Exert downward pressure on union fees
2. Offer alternatives in the case of union corruption
3. Offer alternatives in union priorities/mission
Also, I don't follow how competition in the two spaces, firms and unions, is necessarily different in kind. To the degree that competition "weakens" unions, the same should apply to firms.
But to address your points: 1. Union dues are low. Given what organizing actually looks like, multiple unions are more likely to undermine the existence of a unionized workforce at all than to drive dues down. 2. Ideally, union corruption would be dealt with the entire shop moving to a different local, not the shop splitting into sectors. 3. Workers elect their stewards and negotiators, who set the negotiating agenda. It's not perfect, but this would be better dealt with by new representation than by adding another union with a competing agenda.
Like I said, I believe this reflects a misunderstanding about the function of unions and what workers are trying to get out of them.
It couldn't undermine it compared to no union at all, could it? It seems like still a net improvement.
I believe this to be an accurate reading of the law as, as far as I am aware, there are no competing unions anywhere in the US unlike many countries in Europe which appear to have competing unions, though I am not particularly familiar with European labor markets.
[1] https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/nation... Sec. 9 159 (b)
[2] https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/nation... Sec. 9 159 (a)
The point I'm getting at is most of the wages that could go to employees go to executives. Not even to the board or funneled back into the company for investment. Some businesses are fair and obviously pay the CEO fair compensation package. But not egregious ones like 100x the lowest paid employee or even higher. That's just flat out absurd then at that point and clearly someone can't stand not being able to compete in a worthless yacht race or some bourgeoisie garbage.
edit: since there are labor law repercussions to terminate the unionized workers, they'd likely just shut down the plant in its entirety.
Of all the companies in the world, the one I would be most worried about automating away human jobs would be Amazon. If this warehouse unionizes, I suspect it will quickly become their number one automation test site. As the cost of labor goes up and the cost of automation goes down, they'll have a higher incentive to do this quickly.
Just look at what they announced during re:invent this year. The AWS Panorama was basically designed to replace people in Amazon warehouses. The Amazon Go store was basically a test bed to ~~get rid of the already~~ prevent unionized labor at Whole Foods.
I wish the workers luck, but in the long term, they're probably just hastening their replacement by increasing their own costs to the company.
Seeing all the anti-union propaganda makes me wonder how many people spreading it have ever been in a union. It seems like most of it is just buying into the ambient pro-business propaganda without direct experience.
Unions should also be a last resort. Folks need to stop assuming that their employer is oppressive and give them a chance to accommodate their grievances, and they should be reasonable in what they expect from an employer/employee relationship. The best possible outcome is having an employer who gives you what you want (within reason) without a union. Folks who make hundreds of K per year, get unlimited vacation, flexible working time, free gourmet meals, the best health benefits on the market have a lot less reason ti resort to such a blunt instrument than a factory worker in a one factory town.
They should also be sincere in their evaluation of rebuttals. It’s import to build trust on both sides. Sometimes threats of a plant closure are bluffing as a negotiating tactic, but sometimes they aren’t.
For what it’s worth, I have been a union member and many of my family members are in unions. I do not have good things to say about them at all, but it’s true that some places are even worse without them.
But the difference a union contract made in my day-to-day life when I was a grocery worker was astounding. I didn't have to worry about retaliatory discipline. I had better wages, better healthcare and better vacation. And it built camaraderie among union members even if it damaged relationships with management. I'm proud of what we accomplished there.
Discussed here previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25463000
I know that correlation does not imply causation but here there are at least two strong narratives offered at the lecture supporting the relationship.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDqvzFY72mg&list=PLh9mgdi4rN...
[2]: https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-and-the-rise-...
It's one of those things businesses have to take into account when trying to compete. You can abuse your employees to gain competitive advantage over your rivals, but in the long term such tactics tend to result in the formation of a union which is a major competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace.
It's bad news for Amazon if they can no longer honor next day delivery for Prime members because of strikes at the warehouses. The workers have some leverage with strikes. It's not like coal miners where strikes were rather abstract because the lights never went out. This pain will be felt by the customers, and it's not like there aren't other businesses out there where you can mail order stuff. Maybe not all from the same shop and maybe you have to pay for shipping, but if Amazon doesn't know when it will be delivered because the product is in the warehouse and labor negotiations have stalled it's a reasonable tradeoff.
If they vote yes, is everyone at this location required to join? Are amazon required to negotiate with the union? Can amazon simply close the plant?
Presumably if unionisation works for these workers (better pay etc) then other centres will follow suit...
Is everyone required to join? No. Following Janus, they might not even be required to pay dues. However, the union contract will apply to everyone in the bargaining unit (generally all non-management) regardless of membership.
Is Amazon required to negotiate? Yes, they're legally required to make good faith negotiations. Whether or not they actually do this is an open question, as companies regularly stall here.
Can Amazon simply close the plant? Not legally, no. They would probably end up owing the workers quite a bit of money if they did. Whether or not they take that course of action may be a business decision.
I think it will be very interesting to see what the unions wants:
* cash raises (and what sort of structure)
* non cash benefits (health etc, more breaks, shorter lines to clock in and out)
* guaranteed hrs
* job security
* political faff
The situation is almost so ideal for Amazon that I wouldn't be surprised if someone high up in the company planned for this to be the location to try to unionize in order to poison the whole concept. They won't even need to play games with shutting down the warehouse as union failure at this location is highly probable.
When a company can hire 100,000 new employees at the drop of a hat[1], I see no reason why Amazon would ever cave into unfavorable union demands.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/16/amazon-to-hire-100000-wareho...
I view it as a sort of prisoner's dilemma between two corporate boards. As a primer for those who are not familiar, there are two prisoners in solitary confinement who are given the choice of remaining silent or testifying against the other in exchange for being set free. The two prisoners cannot communicate with each other.
* If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves two years in prison
* If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve three years in prison
* If A remains silent but B betrays A, A will serve three years in prison and B will be set free
* If A and B both remain silent, both of them will serve only one year in prison (on the lesser charge).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
In my example, the prisoners are presented with two options: unionize, or stay un-unionized.
There are a few tweaks I will make.
I view "prison" as the consequences of picking either option (there is no way to be set free). A short sentence represents the consequences of not unionizing: negative PR, labor lawsuits, and committing moral sins in whatever belief system you subscribe to. A long sentence is the consequence of unionizing: lost profits as wages and benefits are negotiated. A and B's investors will not approve of either getting a long sentence. Lastly, betrayal will be punished, not rewarded.
* If A and B unionize, they will both be sent to prison with long sentences.
* If A betrays B by unionizing but B doesn't, A goes to prison with a long sentence and B gets a short sentence.
* If B betrays A, A gets a short sentence and B gets the long sentence.
* If A and B do not unionize, both of them get the short sentence.
Given these rules, the only logical choice is to not unionize. If A or B unionize, they are hit with the long sentence. Corporations avoid unionization because their investors will punish them.
HOWEVER!
Imagine if A and B unionized, and every other prisoner in the prison also chose to unionize. The investors cannot punish every prisoner, because there is no one else left to invest in! Therefore, the long sentences (lower profits) are simply accepted because there is no way out - no way to avoid the long sentence.
That is why unionization enforced by government succeeds better than voluntary unionization. Investors are forced to accept the low results because they cannot choose to avoid unionized companies in favor of un-unionized ones. However, as long as the ability to avoid unionization exists, investors will do their damnedest to make sure that company boards work against worker movements. The boards must comply regardless of their personal beliefs, because they will lose the game if they allow the company to be unionized.
This is a frankly disgusting sentiment.
Edit: This was flippant because I was annoyed. There are a lot of people who work in well-paying jobs and have never really experienced what the labor that enables their relatively privileged lifestyle actually feels like. They often weigh in with "well, get a better job" but not only is that not an option for everyone, it means you're devaluing absolutely critical work. The snobbery among people who fail to see that is aggravating.
This future millionaire mindset, where you were "happy to have an income" because you anticipated better future returns, is ugly and detrimental to everyone around you. Every job that needs doing should be done for decent pay and with dignity, at a minimum.
?? Why would anyone work a crappy manual job if it weren't their only viable option?
Like, I'm sure there are exceptions but it seems unusual, since if you have better options, you'll pursue those instead.
First of all, comparatively Amazon warehouse work doesn't sound like "terrible working conditions", it sounds like a dream job, and it sounds like you have never really experienced typical manual labor if you describe it that way.
Second of all, was I exploited? What would that matter? Every other choice I had was worse or I would have taken one of them. Should the company have improved the working conditions? They did! They automated everything. All of the unskilled jobs are gone and the jobs that remain are higher paying mechanic or process operator jobs. Today I would have to take one of the worse choices.
Why?
A company should have the right to pay whatever they deem appropriate and an individual should have the right to choose to pursue whichever job they wish.
20$ an hour is 2.75x the minimum wage here in Indiana. A significant portion of the people I know don't even gross 41k a year.
It does when it drives cost of goods and services up that their employer provides.
This is a noble goal, and I am all for seeing it happen. But if you think it won't just give Amazon warehouses a stronger foothold, you are mistaken. I, personally, don't think it is necessarily a bad thing if Amazon warehouses gain more workers due to their conditions becoming better as a result of unionization. But quite a lot of people will disagree with that statement.
You know why, despite all those current awful-sounding conditions, people are still signing up to work at Amazon warehouses in droves? And no, it isn't because those workers are dumb and don't know what's better for them or because they are that desperate. It is because warehouse jobs are usually always somewhat hellish, and Amazon warehouse jobs tend to be a bit less hellish than other warehouse jobs, while paying quite a bit more. Bumping the pay up to $20/hr will make it even more not worth it to work any other warehouse jobs, when Amazon ones give you a no-brainer choice that is even better all around than before.
Again, not commenting on whether it would be a good or bad thing, just an observation. I, personally, think it would be a good thing if those workers got paid more and got better conditions. But the externalities of that decision (giving Amazon more power) might be a bit too much for a lot of people to swallow. I will admit, I haven't thought about those externalities much past what I have already described in this comment, so I definitely could be missing something. In which case, I would love to learn more about those, if someone has meaningful points to contribute to this discussion in the comments.
Seems likely enough that people working in other warehouses mostly aren't the ones filling Amazon jobs. Do we have some anecdotes about people leaving logistics jobs to go entry level at an Amazon warehouse?
That doesn't disprove gp's claim that amazon is better than the existing warehouse jobs, because it could be simpson's paradox at work. eg. let's say before amazon moved in your warehouse jobs you had in an area were the following:
* 20 forklift drivers @ $20/hr
* 100 pickers at @ $10/hr
The average warehouse wage would be $11.67/hr. Now, let's say amazon opened the warehouse and created higher paying jobs (like gp claimed), and the jobs now look like the following:
* 30 forklift drivers @ $22/hr
* 500 pickers at @ $11/hr
Every job's wages went up by 10%, yet the average wage slightly fell to $11.62.
I wonder what explains A Bloomberg analysis of government labor statistics reveals that in community after community where Amazon sets up shop, warehouse wages tend to fall. In 68 counties where Amazon has opened one of its largest facilities, average industry compensation slips by more than 6% during the facility’s first two years, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In many cases, Amazon quickly becomes the largest logistics player in these counties, so its size and lower pay likely pull down the average. Among economists, there’s a debate about whether the company is creating a kind of monopsony, where there’s only one buyer—or in this case one employer. though.
The 'warehouse wages tend to fall' cuts out a bunch of variables, you end up with 'warehouse worker pay', and it goes down. It could be that warehouse jobs tend to pay for tenure or something, but that goes to the question I asked; are people leaving other warehouse job to go work at Amazon?
After your edit: I guess picking for $11 is worse than driving a fork lift for $20, so they probably aren't improving overall work conditions if they are hiring so much that the structure of the workforce changes.
I worked answering phones at Verizon in the early 2000s and their pay there due to being union was top pay for customer service. Comcast was paying me $9 to $12.50 for that work while Verizon paid more then double of my highest wage at Comcast. Overall I got fed up with being yelled at on the phone by customers' of monopoly companies and taught myself web development and design. I'm glad I did so, yet am pro-union per my experience at Verizon vs. Comcast.