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Comment by fxtentacle | Hacker News Reader

Wow, just wow. "Don’t buy that dinner, don’t buy those school supplies, don’t buy those gifts because you won’t have that almost $500 you paid in dues." It seems Amazon's main argument for why people shouldn't join a union is that Amazon's wages are so low that they cannot financially afford to.

That's almost like saying

"You're too poor to fight for your rights. Know your place."

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> "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.

St. Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store.

For context about "experimental polities" like the failed Toronto SideWalk labs [1], I've linked an article below [2].

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/07/sidewalk-labs-shuts-down-t...

[2] https://theconversation.com/will-silicon-valleys-new-company...

"But higher wages can buy many dinners."

"Explain how!"

"Money can be exchanged for goods and services"

Simpsons FTW

Historians will be comparing the Simpson's to the Delphi Oracle in Ancient Greece, except one was pretty damn accurate.

But see, when your union negotiates, the result is uncertain. It might end up with you getting more money, with you getting the same amount of money, or with your union rep murdering a baby and then framing you for the crime. Do you really want to take that chance?

Or it might end up with you losing your job to a robot.

Amazon will do that anyway if it's cheaper. It probably is cheaper, union or not.

People will lose their jobs en masse regardless of unions. The concentration of wealth and capture of surplus that we will see in the coming decades will probably make feudalism look like child's play

It's not a foregone conclusion. While I'm sure some in the gilded age or in the 1920s thought that, it didn't last forever.

If you are unhappy with the terms or products of a company, you are free to shop or work elsewhere. That is the difference. "Capture of surplus" is hate speech - without those companies, there would be no surplus to begin with, that anybody could capture.

If you believe those companies will capture so much surplus, you could also buy some of their stock and participate.

The things you read I swear.

> 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

Where there's a will, there's a way. Have you checked out crowdfunding these days? It's probably never been easier.

> you are free

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.

Could you explain a bit more why it ought to be classified as hate speech?

Kroger is unionized and they pay 1/2 of what Amazon does in my area. I don't think unionizing low skill work necessarily leads to higher wages

In the end, we can also expect that Amazon's money will some day be exchanged for robots, and most of these employees will lose the Amazon jobs.

Only if the robots join the Union!

And yet when comparing apples to apples, unionized workers apparently earn an average of 11.2% more[0].

0. https://www.epi.org/publication/why-unions-are-good-for-work...

This rhetoric is bad, but even worse is how the $500 is portrayed. At first glance, I interpreted it to be $500 over a much shorter duration, like on a monthly basis, versus ~$10/week, which even at $15/hr seems manageable enough if it means higher wages, better treatment and/or benefits.

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?

"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." - History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides

Jeff Bezos is now seriously contemplating changing this to their company slogan: "You're too poor to fight for your rights. Know your place."

This is exactly saying that. It’s like we’re back to the 19th century.

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