https://www.al.com/business/2021/02/jefferson-county-now-say...
That's almost like saying
"You're too poor to fight for your rights. Know your place."
Well, yes. The goal of an antiunion campaign is the demoralization/ disempowerment of the workforce.
Notice also the recent push for "experimental polities", AKA company towns.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/07/sidewalk-labs-shuts-down-t...
[2] https://theconversation.com/will-silicon-valleys-new-company...
"Explain how!"
"Money can be exchanged for goods and services"
If you believe those companies will capture so much surplus, you could also buy some of their stock and participate.
> If you are unhappy with the terms or products of a company, you are free to shop or work elsewhere.
If you don't work you starve, or at the very least lose your house, car, maybe even your kids. There is no "freedom" of choice, and this is painfully obvious to anybody who is not stuck neck-deep in dogmatic ideology.
> If you believe those companies will capture so much surplus, you could also buy some of their stock and participate.
Sure, let me just get a small loan of 300 mil a month to build my competitor to Uber.
If you're not independently wealthy you probably cannot even get 100k of credit to open a restaurant or a similar small business. Again, that access to capital (nevermind to education, connections, etc) is profoundly unequal, and thus that "just start your own business" is am absurd statement, is also obvious to anyone who isn't blinded by ideology.
> "Capture of surplus" is hate speech
Ahahahaha
This argument is made often and is patently in bad faith. You understand and I hope your readers understand there is a power disparity and a prevalent culture that has a certain effect on your ability to "be free" (of what? To go elsewhere and have the same shit done to you? To have your family go hungry because some HR shithead blackballed you?).
On a personal level I would ask you to stop actively trying to make the world worse by parroting capitalist propaganda built specifically to disempower workers.
0. https://www.epi.org/publication/why-unions-are-good-for-work...
That Amazon is fighting this so hard should signal that there is something meaningful to be gained by the workers. Hopefully they recognize this and succeed in organizing. The biggest question I would have is does Amazon pull a Walmart and just shutter the FC if they succeed?
Make your voice heard! Tell Big Brother you love him!
IF YOU’RE PAYING DUES… it will be RESTRICTIVE meaning it won’t be easy to be as helpful and social with each other. So be a DOER, stay friendly and get things done versus paying dues.
(sic)
---
Couldn't even include a stock-statement like "we got you covered" without a disclaimer.
"won’t be easy to be as helpful and social with each other" What the hell does that even mean? In a union you can't talk? As though you could be totally chatty before?
It isn't always about neighborly overtime.
Amazon would still find a way to argue. "If you're not a lowest performer, don't let a union negotiate for you and force your wages down to the lowest performing among you." or many other phrases that would appeal to those who think they're above the bottom already and plant fear that bargaining with the collective would lower their outcomes.
An ego boost? I mean this seriously -- people love being moderators of Subreddits and admins of online communities largely deep down for the ego boost.
A union really needs not much more than a Discord server and maybe a Zoom membership to organize strikes and whatever else they need to do.
No union will have much luck performing collective bargaining against Amazon without working alongside experienced lawyers.
These costs don't have to be huge, but they aren't zero.
What events? If it's to discuss a certain issue, that can be virtual and almost free. If it's a social event, meh, there are enough of those already and people can self-organize them. Hell for $500/month I could organize social events where everyone goes to Michelin 3-star restaurants every month and rants over gourmet dinners about their bosses.
> pay for mailers and other communications infrastructure
Use e-mail. I don't even check my snail mail box anyway unless someone tells me to expect something by e-mail, and even then when my snail mail box gets too full I usually just dump it all in the recycle bin, so it's not an effective way for a union to communicate with me.
> and of course pay for professionals like labor lawyers.
What if they just split the lawyer fees evenly?
Assuming an experienced lawyer charges $1000/hr and spends 100 hours on a case, and there are 1 million people in the union, that amounts to about $0.10/person/case, a far cry from the $500/month they seem to be charging. Even if my numbers are off by a factor of 100 it would be only $10/person/case, and if the union won the case Amazon would probably have to pay the legal fees anyway.
Although this may sound a bit naive I feel like $500/person/month sounds like there is some massive inefficiency in use of resources.
Virtual isn't the same as free.
>Although this may sound a bit naive I feel like $500/person/month sounds like there is some massive inefficiency in use of resources.
Nobody knows what the union dues will be if the union wins, but they will not be 500 per month. It might be a fair guess that they're 500 per year. About 20 per check if you get paid biweekly. The dues will be decided on by union members through some kind of democratic process.
A professional Union needs funds to do its work. Over time the benefits members get more than pay for the union dues. If there's a strike at least in Europe the union will also use the dues to cover the salary for the days striking.
The imaginary alternative would be to have somebody do this for free in their evenings and on their weekends. Have you ever tried to manage even a class representative and budget for your kids' school or a little league or any other kind of long-term engagement? Already at that small scale things tend to break down quote easily and few stay involved more than a few years. How can you expect volunteer union reps to work 8h+/day, spend their nights writing legal briefs, researching, organising events, managing members and expenses, etc while being up against an army of professional lawyers?
Unions brought the five day work week, end to child labour, 40/38 hour weeks, the right to breaks, vacations, medical leave, ... If you don't have those right now then that's likely because you are in a non-union workplace (and/or country).
Absolutely true.
> Over time the benefits members get more than pay for the union dues.
That strikes me as an opinion that could use some supporting facts. It might be the case, but union fees are the same order of magnitude as many workers' savings rate. If the prospective member saved those fees over a lifetime, would they be better off?
> If there's a strike at least in Europe the union will also use the dues to cover the salary for the days striking.
That means that union members are buying insurance against there being a strike declared. Would they be better off to pay smaller dues and bear the risk themselves? If all possible strikes are union-wide, it seems like this insurance can only be a losing gamble for members, all the while creating a fat piggybank for union leaders to raid/drain.
Unions have to disclose financial statements. Leaders can't just raid the strike fund. And there won't be a strike fund unless most members vote for it.
[1] https://illinoisepi.org/site/wp-content/themes/hollow/docs/w...
That said, it sounds like you haven't dealt with the real world logistics of large groups of people. From both a practical and legal perspective, there is a lot to cover. The finances need to be kept up to date and audited. You mention, in jest, that you could bring all these people together for a dinner at that price. Getting 15 people to agree on a time and place for dinner is close to impossible if you've ever tried it. Nevermind getting a warehouse full of people to show up.
100 hours (2.5 weeks of labor) for lawyers to come to an agreement for the 1mm workers you cited? Not possible, especially with an adversary like amazon.
Email as communication? Maybe, but does it qualify for legal matters? Voting? Have you ever tried to send a million emails? There's a reason that there is an entire industry built around bulk emails.
A union is more like an independent HR office than anything else. Think of how many resources HR uses, and that gives you an idea of what a union needs
Any reason why "show up at 8" wouldn't work? It doesn't have to work for everyone if they can be recorded, summarized, or otherwise disseminated.
A coworker in a non-unionized position said that the didn't like unions because of the dues. When I told them what the dues were, their opinion quickly changed. The funny part is that unionizing would only bring about small benefits in our case since the existence of unionized positions with the same employer reaped benefits for all employees.
And for what it's worth, paying $500/month in dues implies an income of about 30,000 to 50,000 per month. Not only is this outside of the target demographic of unions, but it ranks up there with taxation levels (with much richer government services). Suggesting union dues of this level is either an unintentional mistake or disingenuous anti-union propaganda.
Altruism maybe? The structure costs would probably be harder to cover than finding mad amazon workers who want to improve working standards
If you willfuly agree to unpaid work, you will be such a bad union leader, don't bother.
You missed the entire point.
Further: People do all kinds of unpaid work to make their community or shared experiences better without (most of?) us accusing them of advocating for slavery.
That's like calling volunteering slavery. Am I a slave for working at my hospital in the summer?
I'm thinking of the line "the capitalists will sell you the rope you use to hang them."
There could be optional dues, as well as some built in DeFi applications for investing in blockchain that could pay a dividend to the unions and their leaders.
The shoes idea works as you have to pay for them. Why pay for shoes? You know you get exactly the same benefits at Amazon while barefoot?
A classic similar example used to be the "godhatesfigs.com" parody of the Westboro Baptist church's similar slogan (sadly gone now) - with a bible passage where Jesus curses a fig tree.
I can’t help but think if this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VJqr6LBFelI
Can’t imagine this word could be used unironically
This is one reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26263866
Even if it was someone's boss... they too get to talk / have an opinion... even if I think it is wrong. I've certainly worked for employers who I thought had some very wrong ideas, I still did my own thing voting wise.
If I had gotten mailers last year directly from the United States government instructing me "how to re-elect Donald J. Trump", I would have been livid. Individual within the company should be able to make their case for why they think unionization is bad, but I don't think the company itself gets a say in this.
That seems weird.
And unions once established have their own balance of power, and that's not in favor of the individual.
The literal purpose of a corporation in all its varieties, for profit, non-profit, co-op, S Corp, C Corp etc. is to pool the resources of its owners and serve their interests.
Unions are just another type of corporation.
Serve the interests of the majority... and even like a corporation sometimes they don't even manage to do that.
Human organizations kinda stink sometimes, although I wouldn't really endorse another kind...
This becomes more complex as you go from small business to startup with investors to a larger business, but the principles remain the same.
Nobody starts a business to have others dictate to them what to do with their business, and to be told whose interests they should really be serving. I’m not sure why you would expect that to change just because the company in question is valued at over a trillion.
What would an organisation that serves your interests look like?
Why don't you try to start one - and see how corporate management responds?
Why should I? You can start an organisation if you want, but you'd need to argue why it's in my interest if you want me to lend what little individual power I have. And the employer can present their arguments as well, which is fine. But if you think I'm going to trust you've got my interests at heart just because you're not my employer, then you're delusional. Why should I trust you more than them?
Their interests may align to mine even if they're doing it for their own benefit. And if the union's interests don't align to mine, then I'm better off without the union and with the employer.
I don't think that's a hypothetical scenario, either.
For example if the union wants to pay by seniority and the employer wants to pay by results, and I have low seniority but good results, who am I better aligned with?
For example you morally support allowing new people to enter your field but the union is mostly comprised of more established people and they vote for credentialism to restrict supply.
Probably I'm very aligned with my employer on wanting to lower barriers to entry for the field!
Why the rudeness?
I'd also note that you appear to demand 100% alignment with your ethics from unions in return for your support ("think of any situation"), but are fine with being somewhat aligned with your employer.
You seem to already have chosen a tribal affiliation.
You said I since I didn't agree with you I must not be politically astute so I returned the favour!
> I'd also note that you appear to demand 100% alignment with your ethics from unions in return for your support ("think of any situation"), but are fine with being somewhat aligned with your employer.
But my employer pays me. And they're an essential part of the agreement. The union wants me to pay them, and they're optional, so yes I expect them to do a better job aligning to me otherwise why bother with them? What is the point joining a union, lending them what little power you have, as well as actually giving them money, if they aren't very aligned?
My current work negotiation is me and my employer. I have what I want and my employer has what they want. Why involve a third party, who may want something completely different, possibly morally offensive to me? Why do that?
I guess you're going to say 'because the union acts in your interest'. Well, let me tell you - there's a whole world of people out there offering to 'act in my interest' in return for something. Most of them are charlatans. Beware.
No, I did not. If you can't be bothered to keep track of whom you're talking to, I'm done with you.
The person I was replying to said it. You asked why I was rude to them.
Unions complicate an otherwise cut and dry relationship of your employer trying to extract value from you and you trying to extract value from your employer until you reach an equilibrium.
Consensus-building and making of viable compromises has always been part of governance, any institution comprises people with diverse, sometimes competing interests.
That said, the usual workplace conflict between employee and management is about working conditions and promotion. And for that it's useful to have a paid witness on your side, because HR is always working for the employer.
Codes of conduct are fashionable these days, but at the end of the day they are upheld by HR, which will always work in favour of the company.
But I'm not sure the union is going to be on my side. I know that's their pitch, but lots of people claim they want to act on my behalf - I'd be a fool to trust most of them!
If you aren't, check the agreements the union has with you and your employer. These are contracts with enforceable terms and are upheld.
Stop and think this through for just a second.
Try this thought experiment:
If I want dogs in the office and my colleague wants dogs banned, you’re telling me you think the union will simultaneously negotiate for both our positions with our employer?
Does not compute. It is not possible for them to be on everyone's side.
This just isn't true.
If I'm a junior worker in a union with a pay-by-seniority agreement because the majority of workers are senior, then they aren't on my side are they? They're on the side of the majority senior workers. They're on the side against me and my aspirations to get paid more.
Well... until you start looking at advancing into upper management and realize that seniority-based hiring decisions and credentialism are very often in the best interest of the established managers and higher-ups.
In most large companies, the people making hiring decisions in upper management probably don't want to lower barriers of entry for their fields. They want to hire people who look like them, who have gone to the same schools as them and worked the same jobs as them, and they want to set up a performance system that makes it hard for them to get fired or demoted.
It's easy to make the mistake of thinking of corporations like they're some kind of impartial oiled machine, but the reality is that they're made of people who are just as biologically prone as anyone else is to forming cliques and gatekeeping their own jobs.
No, unions are not just another type of corporation. They are a very special type of corporation: One which is exempt from anti-trust laws.
What you’re failing to understand is that while there are different types if corporations as legal constructs, with differing advantages and disadvantages mostly related to their overall tax liability, a corporation in the general sense is just a group of people come together for a common goal. Usually that goal is profits. You join up with 5 people putting in 20% of the money, you are entitled to 20% of the future proceeds.
So if you take a distribution of $1000, all other shareholders holding equal shares, they must also take a distribution of $1000, or equal to their share of equity in the company.
A union has a different structure, different legal privileges and burdens, and different goals, but fundamentally it is a group of people with a common goal. I think where they tend to fall down is that unions can grow so large that the power is so diffused amongst individual members that even people in unions may come to resent the union more than their employer, particularly if they are always in the minority on union issues. In which case they might find they are actually more in alignment with their employers rather than their union leaders.
That does not violate anti-trust law in the US. It is not a special exemption the union has, it doesn't violate anti-trust law in the US even if there isn't a union involved, for employees to "collude" to get higher wages.
Or if there are such laws I'm not aware of, feel free to share. But I gather you think it ought to be illegal? Why?
Should employers be able to make an anti-union case? I'd have to say yes on free speech grounds, but I'd also say that they really should be subject to more restrictions on what kind of anti-union organizing they can do than the union should be on what kind of pro-union organizing they can do. Yes, that's deliberately giving the union an advantage -- but, again, management has the advantage of being the side that literally writes the checks.
> unions once established have their own balance of power, and that's not in favor of the individual.
I mean, that's kind of the point, in a way, isn't it? The employee/employer power balance is almost always weighted toward the employer, because the employee alone is one individual and the employer is a corporation. Employees acting as a collective are theoretically on more equal footing. That doesn't guarantee every single individual employee will support every collective action the union makes.
I’m still waiting for the Teachers’ Union to endorse the Libertarian party one day soon -I’m sure it’s gonna happen.
Some of us see the need for aspects of regulation and frameworks, others prefer the more idealist semi pastoralist view of the world. I’m more in the Johnson camp ;)
I'm not so sure about that.
I have strong libertarian (small 'l') leanings, specifically that government should stay the hell out of people's lives and bodies as much as possible. And that humans should be free to do pretty much whatever they want as long as they don't interfere with others doing the same.
But that's where I part ways with the Libertarian (big 'L') Party.
Because I do believe that, human nature being what it is, that the government does have a role to play in helping those who are disadvantaged in our society.
What's more, I believe that government has a role to play in evening the playing field and attempting to make sure that everyone has equal opportunity to succeed in our society.
The Libertarian Party doesn't believe in any of that, so I have no interest in supporting them.
I'd note that privatized everything (not saying you support that) isn't libertarian at all. Rather it's anarcho-capitalism[0], which would completely destroy our society.
While the implementation of the idea that minorities should be protected against the "tyranny of the majority" by the government has been pretty poor in the US, it has improved somewhat in recent years.
I look forward to that progress continuing. And the Libertarian Party won't be the one's that help us do that.
It's a very revealing tell that this is even being asked.
Generally, why do Libertarians seem to act as if Rest of World owes them, but relationships are solely for their personal benefit with no reciprocity of any kind?
I’m also not surprised how Amazon wants their members to vote either.
If you think they do not represent them, then maybe the solution is to develop better union structures that are more democratic and representative.
But by and large, teachers do not support the Libertarian party and instead favour the Democratic party, quite heavily in fact. So why is it wrong that their alignment follows their base?
However, using that line of thinking people voluntarily join a company too.
Often to work for a company with union rep one HAS to join, whether one agrees or not, so it’s not entirely voluntary in a strict sense.
All this said, I do believe Amazon is treating their warehouse workers unfairly and they deserve pushback though I admit I do not favor bringing in a Union due to my past member experiences with them.
A choice between starvation and warehouse job at amazon where you’re penalized for taking a bathroom break is not a choice made freely.
They are indeed not a cure, but the cure to the symptoms we are seeing is nothing short of a total overhaul of the capitalist system, which is both not politically feasible, and requires something like unions to make politically feasible to begin with. That is because by definition such a changé even if it was in the larger interests of society wouldn't be in the interests of capital.
Exploitation or at the minimum the potential for it exists in every economic system. It’s not a feature exclusive to capitalism as much as people dream it to be so. Even in a barter economy, can I not take advantage of another worker? Of course I can!
Workers unions in socialist countries were basically illegal, there was only one legally allowed union pretty much. In the Soviet Union the role of labour unions were mostly for the state to resolve interpersonal problems, and in theory to allow the state to receive feedback from employees to optimize production, but not in practice due to dysfunctions because of the broken political and economic framework.
But that brings us right back to my original point: if my choice is starvation or $5/hour, I'm going to take the $5, but that's a coercive choice. I was forced into it by the threat of death. Now explain to me how that's different from holding a gun to someone and forcing them to work? You didn't determine the value of my labor, you determined that I don't want to die.
So an attempt to increase the cost of labor (minimum wages, credentialing/protectionism) is an attempt to extract the true value of labor, even though the threat of death-by-starvation remains. Like a previous commenter said - unless we want to radically re-org our society - that threat of death is irreducible. For example, if every person was granted enough arable land to subsist off of by the state, we'd see a very different labor market.
To repurpose a famous Churchill quote "Unions are the worst solution to labour equality except all the others that have been tried before."
In contrast, for the union, even if you were forced to join, you'd still have democratic control over the union itself.
So there is a big difference. It's the difference between choosing in which dictatorship to live and living in a (sometimes direct!) democracy.
So it is no wonder that unionized teachers would oppose the Libertarian Party, libertarians want children to get a good education and allow parents to choose the type of education their child gets, taking away large amounts of power from Teachers who believe they should supplant parents and "know better".
This has never been more clear than in the Age of COVID where the hypocrisy of Teachers and their union has been on full display with their refusal to teacher (aka their job)
The three Rs are kind of incidental.
Now to be clear, we do need to grow up to be functional adults, but public schooling is not the only one option to achieve that.
It's a sneaky name designed to make you conflate the two.
Every parent has a voucher, that voucher can be redeemed at a school of their choice, could be the public school, could be a private school, etc.
School vouchers can easily lead toward incentivizing minimizing education spending.
Oh also, private schools are often not held to the same standards of avoiding religious teaching as public schools are (by virtue of being a public service). The result is that the vouchers can end up funding religious education, but that's a whole other can of worms.
It is completely false to charatice a school choice program as "more choices for the rich" as the rich already have those choices, poor and middle class people have zero choice because their money has already been taken to fund the public schools. redirecting this money to better more efficient systems is preferred and gives the poor and middle class choice that is normally reserved for the wealthy
>> This voucher results in funds being diverted from public schools
yes, that is by design and the desired outcome of libertarians.
>>Oh also, private schools are often not held to the same standards of avoiding religious teaching as public schools are (by virtue of being a public service). The result is that the vouchers can end up funding religious education, but that's a whole other can of worms.
Another red herring and strawman, but I (and most libertarian) are fine with the limited amount of religious education that would result from school choice if it means dismantling the failed and unethical public school system we have today.
I am sure you are a huge supporter of the Public School System and see nothing systemically wrong with it. We disagree with this position
I do actually see a lot wrong with the school system, I think the fact that education is largely funded from local property taxes goes strongly against most ideals around American opportunity and that the highly localized management means that a cartel of local officials can run a system into the ground with only limited options available to the DoEd to address is quite problematic.
There's a bunch of things wrong with the school system, certainly, but I can't see how partial privatization would do anything but exacerbate the issues.
Nothing I say will change anyone's minds on this topic, it is one of those things where no amount of data or facts will change minds. You either believe in a unionized Public school that only fails because we do not spend enough money, or you recognize that giving a monopoly over education to a group of people based on geography will always result in bad outcomes no matter how much money you spend.
While Libertarian and Authoritarian do exist on a spectrum in some ways, you are either on the Libertarian side of that spectrum or the Authoritarian Side.
The GGP seemed to think that there was something particularly bad about the detailed six page instructions. But the GP correctly pointed out they do the same thing in regular government elections (to milk as many voters as they can).
Nothing. The outrage is about them telling you to vote no. If they were trying to help you fill out your ballot in good faith, there wouldn't be a problem.
>The outrage is about them telling you to vote no.
Which, indeed, you correct yourself on in the next sentence, to say that the issue is that it pretends to be neutral ballot instructions, but, if followed, end in you voting no, and are thus misleading (just guessing -- again, no one here seems to be making it easy to understand what they're objecting to).
If so, it would have been helpful for the OP to communicate that the first time around. Remember rtpg joined in to clarify, but actually objected to something else, the power imbalance -- and yet s/he seemed to believe s/he was agreeing with the initial comment!
Not everyone can read minds about what a speaker thinks is the most salient part, and we don't deserve to be ridiculed for asking.
If you want others to be outraged, it helps to clearly communicate what they're supposed to be outraged about -- starting form a clear model.
There's no assumption or mind reading needed. To be honest, I don't see how OP could have been more clear:
> Detailed, 6 step instructions on how to open a ballot and mark no? Thanks, amazon.
We all know, before that comment, Amazon wants you to vote no. The OP was adding to that, in criticism of Amazon, by saying there are detailed six page instructions on how to vote the way they want. But that doesn't tell me what's to be outraged about -- as the first response noted, that is exactly what every other campaign does.
If the OP wasn't claiming Amazon was outrageous beyond the mere fact of asking for no, then why even bring up a six page instruction set?
After an explanation that you clearly understood, I'm not sure why you're still complaining about conversational opacity.
Edit: I did get some completely separate, independent arguments, if that’s what you mean, but I’m saying I got no explanation of the original comment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26263369
There were others that gave different reasons, but none that made any sense of the "OMG six pages of instructions! Horrible!"
Imagine a handy guide from your bank that included instructions for how to wire money to its author.
Second paragraph of response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26265969
It seems possible that Amazon may not have properly accounted for that.
Vote No propaganda is bad because unions are good.
Vote Yes propaganda is good because unions are good.
If you are not convinced that unions age good in the first place, then it all falls apart.
>Vote No propaganda is bad because unions are good.
>Vote Yes propaganda is good because unions are good.
Double standard? Not really. Definitely not the peak of critical reasoning, though. But I'm not judging anti-union vs pro-union propaganda by anything but their motives.
>If you are not convinced that unions age good in the first place, then it all falls apart.
Ah, but I do. Not inherently, and not always. But net positive in my opinion. Sure, if I change my beliefs to contradict, it will not make sense. Just as if I believed unions were bad and net negative, union propaganda would be considered scummy but amazon propaganda wouldn't.
I always try to judge critically, and in my personal opinion, pro vs anti has a clear benefit for the worker on one side. This doesn't mean I think the other shouldn't exist. I don't think that means a double standard, since in my eyes they aren't the same. If they were literally the same, say Amazon wanted the Yankees to win and the workers wanted the Red Sox to win, and I insisted on one side over the other, then it would be a double standard (like 1984, they do it = bad, we do the same thing = good).