Amazon Workers’ Union Drive Reaches Far Beyond Alabama
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It's like when you're teaching and the students don't understand a thing you said, they'll have no questions. It's always the kids who understood 75% of what you said who has a question. One of the goals of every liberation movement (labor, feminism, racial justice, etc.) is making people aware of their shared struggle and it's causes. The Teamsters are far from radical but the fact that things can even be negotiated at all has a way of making people aware that decisions of management are not forces of nature.
If the warehouse workers were happy with the status quo, why would they be trying to unionize in the first place?
If you were making a low wage and easily replaceable would you bitch about your job to random people who asked you if you liked it or smile and say its great?
May be it's not a coincidence?
[1] https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_et...
Why is the US so rich if it has so much cultural diversity unlike Norway then?
Another possible reason is that there are unions and then there are unions. The same way as bringing democracy to Libya does not magically make it prosperous [1].
https://www.statista.com/statistics/455600/gross-domestic-pr...
You can't only associate correlation and causation when it's convenient.
Also, nice dog whistle with the "lower cultural diversity index".
It’s pretty anti-intellectual to shut down some hypothesis just because you don’t want it to be true.
Please also note two things that I am NOT saying: I am not stating that there are no benefits to a heterogenous culture, and I am also not saying that one type of culture is necessarily better than the other in all respects.
If you have any arguments against that statement itself, please make them instead of attacking my character.
It’s pretty anti-intellectual to shut down some hypothesis just because you don’t want it to be true.
I’m just sad that there’s topics that are not really possible to have any kind of rational discussion about just because they might lead to un-comfortable conclusions or even if they sound like they might be too close to “forbidden thoughts” (even though they are not, I don’t think anything I said was actually “racist” and deserved your dog-whistling comment)
Or "racist pseudoscience" is a newspeak for "I don't like what you're saying, but I cannot think of any reasonable objection"?
Here, the bit where you said that cold climate resulted in Norwegians have genetically higher intelligence than other countries.
They openly admit they're boned if the wells run dry or oil goes out of fashion so they hedge by investing in everything else with the game of making enough money in a short enough time (off oil) that they can fund themselves with the appreciation on the nest egg after oil is no longer a money printer. (Saudi Arabia and other wealthy oil funded states are doing similar things to diversify/hedge against future income reduction)
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Energy/Oil/P...
Maybe foreign countries should learn why America continues to create superstar firms in every industry.
If you think other regions aren't producing value in the tech ecosystem, nationalism is getting in the way of your eye.
Amazon wages are $15/h or more, more than double the Federal minimum wage of $7.25/h.
It's worth calling out that my car was paid off (and a Prius so gas/insurance was cheap), and my rent was really low ($300 a month because of arrangement with the landlord). Work also covered almost all of my insurance, which I think is unusual for jobs in those range. If those things weren't true, I probably would have saved little or nothing unless I started cutting back and focusing on buying cheap food to eat instead of just being happy with cooking instead of eating out.
Home ownership is possible if you save for years, or if you can get a grant to help with the downpayment (had a friend who did that). It's not pleassant, but it's doable imo.
I don't think you could have a family on a single $15/hr income. Even at 2 $15/hr incomes I would think it was hard, but I don't have children so maybe they're cheaper than I think. Although no one has ever said their children were cheaper than they thought.
So, I think it's possible to make a living on $15/h. Is it ideal? No.
You would think all these highly educated Europeans would understand that it's better to dissolve their unions so they can work two jobs to support the kids they never get to spend time with. They don't seem to understand that the true meaning of life is to be be exploited by large corporations. So sad.
Props to em for having a logistics network, but if the abuse of their workforce is what keeps them competituve, I'd frankly prefer their collapse, as I'm not sure the distribution model we've settled on now is any better than what it replaced given the way it's adversely effected local brick and mortars.
I'd rather everybody have a shot at being a distributor than only a single monolithic company outcompeting by ignoring half the pre-reqs of business.
It's not a legitimate strategy. Labor has the right to organize. End of story. If they've gotten to the point of Union building, obviously, a non-trivial number feel they are being taken advantage of, and believe energy investment in collective bargaining is the way to go. That is their choice, and as much a free market exercise as anything else.
Businesses don't have a right to deal only with workforces who do not organize. They might be able to orchestrate things to prevent that momentum from building; but if you know it's happening, beyond stating your case, as an employer, it is your duty to remain hands off and let them sort it out amongst themselves. The American Laborer has been shortchanged long enough. The growth-at-all-costs economy is a crime against the nation as a whole.
I figured that would be plain as day?
pregnant women have been forced to stand for hours on end, with some pregnant women being targeted for dismissal
You don't think that is wrong? If your philosophy is to put profits above everything else, then I suppose Amazon is amazing.
United Auto Workers union settles corruption probe with Justice Department
“During our five-year investigation, we have uncovered a startling level of corruption and fraud by a number of senior leaders of the UAW.”
The probe has led to the convictions of 15 people, including two past UAW presidents, three Fiat Chrysler executives and a former GM board member who was a union leader.
The United Autoworkers Union, one of the largest in America, robbed its members of tens of millions of dollars to enrich the corrupt union officials at the top.
https://reason.com/2019/04/09/janus-211000-workers-fled-seiu...
Two of the largest public sector unions in the country lost more than 210,000 so-called "agency fee members" in the wake of last year's Supreme Court ruling that said unions could no longer force non-members to pay partial dues.
Even though unions were preparing for a mass exodus in the wake of the Janus ruling, the numbers are staggering. In 2017, AFSCME reported having 112,233 agency fee payers (compared to 1.3 million dues-paying members), but that figure dropped to just 2,215 in the union's 2018 report. The SEIU reported having 104,501 agency fee-payers in 2017 (compared to 1,919,358 dues-paying members), but just 5,812 of them at the end of 2018.
Unions can't get their members to voluntarily join and pay fees. If they really were so good, why do they need coercion to get people to join? All union membership should be voluntary. Convince people to join and pay fees by their own free will, don't force them by law or social pressure.
Are there some one-off cases of bad situations at Amazon? Yes, for sure. Just as unions are not a panacea, neither is every warehouse in an 800,000 person company.
Unions have their problems, nobody is disputing that. Even with all their problems, it is better to have unions than not have them at all.
Also, it is not one off case with Amazon.
Have you thought about what a person can do with 200B dollars? Why would one need that much money? Sure, if they made it without fucking up the environment, without treating their employees badly, without bending tax rules etc etc, then more power to them. But that is not the case, is it?
In combat sports, there are weight categories and there are strict rules. Know why? It provides a level playing field. In today's capitalism, there is no level playing field. It is like a 100 pound man (workers) fighting a 300 pound man (wealthy companies with politicians in their pockets). If you want to continue to argue that unchecked capitalism is the way to go, it is upto you.
That process is called unionization, and collective bargaining. The thing you don't like, is that Unions can also utilize network effects to a similar degree that owners and management can, even if it is now technically illegal due to the Taft-Hartley act to secondary strike, or wildcat strike. It is also, by spirit of the law, illegal to overly frustrate unionization efforts. So if one side is going to play fast and loose with boundaries, I wouldn't expect a great deal of sympathy when the other side does as well and you find yourself on the wrong side of it.
But take heart, don't be a dick, and be open with your workers, treat them with respect, and recognize they could be helping someone else so a replacement of higher quality is not a given and you'll likely never have to worry about a big unionization push! Realize that shareholders aren't the be all end all of the world, and that while they will flee at the first sign of rough times, a worker treated well will weather the rough times for the company, and the other people there.
Unions are the lesser of two evils. Too much paperwork and drama! Save everyone a bit, and don't make it worth their time. That's all it takes.
If America had proper workers rights and labor laws, suddenly these “superstars” would disappear.
I wonder if this is actually true, looking at how much a company like Amazon rakes in. They have cash to spend. They could probably spend it towards living wages & safety measures for their workers & still have a hefty sum left over.
The interesting (and unanswerable) question is what Amazon would look like today is those hypothetical "proper workers rights and labor laws" had been in place 20 years ago.
Do you think a European warehouse worker would feel "exploited" by the much higher wages Amazon pays?
Whatever the rights and laws you consider are "proper", if that resulted in the death of all large corporations, I would argue such rights and laws are "improper".
I like corporations. When the pandemic occurred, basically the only thing that still worked like normal was my internet, Netflix, and Amazon. The Postal service was a piece of shit. So there's one data point!
Also, you are proud of a company that squeezes the living daylight of its workers? That treats its suppliers like crap? That is doing every trick in the book to discourage unions?
That is a very modern american trend. In the past, citizens were proud of inventions. Germans were proud of BMW cars. Americans were proud of American rockets. The Japanese were proud of their electronics. Now Americans are proud of having the best mall, the most profitable distribution platforms. Ok. Cultural values changes. Maybe I'm old but I would rather be proud of technological innovation than marketplace innovation.
I agree that it isn't "sexy", in the same way that SpaceX or Google are "sexy", but that doesn't make it "not a technology company". There's plenty of sexy tech companies out there doing fuck-all for anybody but collecting nice VC paychecks.
If you're making the same argument as Peter Thiel, that there's a lot more 1-N (incremental) innovation now than there is 0-1 (brand-new) innovation, I agree and I think that sucks. I think that's why many people (including myself) cheerlead for Elon - he's actually leading companies doing cool sci-fi-style innovation.
I live in the North of England, not exactly an urban hub.
As soon as somebody invents matter teleportation I'm sure we'll get a better service. For now, I'll keep considering amazon a best in class service for their scale. And it's definitely a technology company.
Amazon as a business is about rent seeking and taxing internet commerce and engages in predatory monopoly behavior. They are actively suppressing tech competition and free market activity in e-commerce space.
The Amazon workers union should expand to cover he entire country.
Anyone that thinks this is about free market and Amazon is just a private company doesn’t have a clue. Amazon is quasi government actor now, where they are the only game in some small company towns. Jeff Bezos owns Washington Post and exerts undue influence on many politicians. Amazon has contracts with CIA and military.
As a software engineer, do you want a future where Amazon is the only employer and can undercut the salary to their liking?
I must have missed those American high speed rail or 5G companies, and if I take a look at global construction firms I see a lot of Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Chinese and South Korean names, but barely an American one. The US has really been great at putting apps on our phones, but the country kind of forgot how to built things in the actual world. Which by the way at this point manifests in a very physical way in the infrastructure of large American cities.
The US might be the first country where affluent upper middle-class people get their groceries delivered by drone within the same day, but it seems to be forgetting how to built roads and subways for everyone else.
[0] https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/high_speed_rail_...
Neither are nuclear power plants, is that an argument against them? I guess in the US nowadays it is which is why its nuclear infrastructure is decaying as well. Many of the arguments in the paper seem terrible and seem to be in reverse fashion. It says that gas is cheap so rail is unattractive. Absolutely right, but that's terrible, so make gas more expansive with a carbon tax while you're at it. It says American cities are designed around the car. That's terrible as well, redesign them. Any serious argument about high speed rail looks decades into the future anyway, so you might as well fix cities while you're at it.
Planes aren't a substitute for the kind of benefits that rail gives you. With rail you can get from one metropolitan area, centre-to-centre to another one over medium distances in two hours. That's terrible with a plane or a car.
Also, the US overall is spread out but many of its population centers are not. The North-East seems like a great corridor for rail, covering 50 million people give or take?
I'm pro-nuclear, but as a society we need to think hard about what things we subsidize. Subsidizing says, "We acknowledge this is not self-sustaining, so we will make taxpayers pay for it, enriching some subset of society at the expense of others."
So is nuclear, which by your admission is unprofitable, the best way to get clean energy? Or are there things we can do to adequately price externalities caused by other forms of electrical generation? Why not wind or solar?
To circle back to rail - I'm definitely not convinced that we need to invest insane amounts of time, money, and physical space to high-speed rail. The northeast corridor already has rail - does it need to be a bullet train? Would it be better to invest that money in clean(er) airplanes that use less carbon? What about electric cars, electric busses, and something exotic like the hyperloop?
Just parroting that "High speed rail good! All other travel bad!" does not make it so. We have ample evidence that high speed rail is not the panacea that proponents make it out to be. In fact, the governor of California recently cancelled their attempt at a bullet train from LA to San Francisco because it was a giant over-budgeted disaster. https://reason.com/2019/02/14/californias-bullet-train-proje...
Which numbers are you looking at? Countries like Norway, Ireland, Qatar or Switzerland normally top the lists of richest countries today let alone ever known. The USA doesn't break the top 10 on the list published by the CIA. Only after removing alleged tax havens might it hit #9.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
To say that that left a bitter taste in people's mouths around here toward them is an understatement.
Per capita or other distributional measures don't come into the typical usage.
Relative to the vast majority of westerners, the Average American is absolutely killing it. It's a shame that so much rhetorical energy is expended in a constant attempt to gaslight Americans about their financial situation in comparison to the Europeans. The reality is that the average American makes almost 50% more than the average EU resident[0].
[0] https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-disposable-income.htm#in... [1] https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-net-worth.htm#indicator-... [2] https://data.oecd.org/hha/household-debt.htm#indicator-chart
But since you posted these links, it's fair to note that they don't rebut some of the common critiques of American wealth:
- the OECD wealth figures apply to the average, not median, American. Our wealth is very unevenly distributed, so our average is not a good measure. (Also the $182k figure in the OECD doc is nearly double the $104k US Census counted[1].)
- as widely documented elsewhere, American finances are much more precarious due to the design of our labor markets, social safety net, and (especially) healthcare system. Americans in general have more of their financial security at risk at all times than EU residents. And we have to save for more big expenses (like college) than residents of other countries. So having more wealth does not directly translate into more financial security.
1 - https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2017/demo/wealth/wealth-a...
I think that is incorrect. AFAIK, you do not have to pay the portion of union dues related to political activity, but you do need to pay the dues relating to workplace bargaining activity.
Naturally, the union accounting shows that well over 75% of the dues go to these activities that you have to buy with dues, even in a right-to-work state.
Amazon is asking for $15/hr to be made national minimum wage, but getting no support right now. Tell me again why isn’t $15/hr minimum wage getting any support?
Those small businesses that would get "hit hard" by a $15 minimum wage? We're indirectly subsidizing those businesses with our federal taxes; those businesses are value-destroying enterprises.
(Edit: It's not just small businesses getting this taxpayer subsidy. Walmart and other large employers similarly transfer wealth from taxpayers to their shareholders by relying on government welfare programs to allow their employees to continue to do their jobs. In a very real way, Walmart dividend checks are paid in part by US taxpayers.)
I read this campaign mainly as a public relations move in attempt to undermine union bargaining for substantial material demands, and am happy to hear other views.
[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-17/amazon-am... [1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3gj87/why-amazon-is-floodin...
It is extremely distortionate to set the minimum wage at the current median. There is not remotely enough margin available to make that reallocation possible without radically reducing income for the majority of workers either through job loss or income reduction.