Inspired by Alabama’s union battle, Amazon workers elsewhere consider organizing
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
It felt like they thought their workers were stupid, or at least, easily connived into making choices against their own interest. I think there's a good chance they get proven wrong.
Edit, to add: An employee could absolutely decide against a union on ideological grounds or because it doesn't make sense for their personal situation - my point here is more that Amazon's approach seems to think their employees are rubes who will do whatever the bright posters say they should.
The fact is that there is no solid argument against unionization in an industry like warehouse work. Anything the union might do wrong the bosses might do as well, except in the union the worker can vote and influence those decisions.
The reason the arguments are so dumb is that there aren't any downsides to the union vs not having a union. Unions aren't perfect but they're almost always better than not having one
Whenever the selfish faux-self-bootstrapping "fascist lite" folks come out against raising the minimum wage by pointing to countries that don't have it (e.g. many Scandinavian countries iirc) saying "see? you can have high wages without a minimum wage". Well sure, we don't need a minimum wage if we had a heavily unionized workforce like pretty much all of those countries!
I don’t think this is a very compelling argument.
In general, many things are good for both the employer and employee, or bad for both employer and employee. For example, the employer and employee probably both agree on whether a government subsidy for the industry is good for them.
Suppose someone was proposing that 1% of wages at a factory be set on fire in the dumpster out back. You’d expect both the employee and the employer to oppose that. The employee wants that 1% and the employer doesn’t want to have to raise wages 1% to prevent their employees from going to work somewhere else where 1% of wages aren’t being set on fire.
If you believe the employer’s argument that unions aren’t useful and basically just exist to fund their own operations through dues, then it’s analogous to the “light 1% of the wages on fire” scenario.
But why would the company care if all the employees decided to light 1% of wages on fire? I'm sure there are a lot of things employees buy that hurt worker productivity (e.g. alcohol, pot in many states), but beyond jobs that require clean urine tests I don't see big companies like Amazon asking public officials to change traffic light timings around liquor stores to make it less convenient for employees to buy their performance-hindering substances [0].
However, I understand that for someone barely scraping by, in a country that basically went to war with unions and labor, a union can be a very hard sell when they aren't ubiquitous like in many European nations.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/17/22287191/amazon-alabama-w...
Even if you're running the squeaky-cleanest operation possible and don't treat your workers like crap, any organization would want to oppose unionization on purely rational time & overhead grounds.
In our case, unionization lead to an increase in revenue and more sales for the company.
Unionization has its benefits primarily for employees but there are benefits for employers. It really depends on the nature of the business.
A union can be a bulwark against employers treating employees like garbage because relatively high un- and underemployment means they have a steady stream of employees who won't say "no".
They might if some people voting to join a disc golf team resulted in everyone else being forced to pay dues despite not being interested in disc golf.
I may be wrong but I thought that only applies to public sector unions, so it may not apply to the Amazon case
The boss is only interested when they don't have unilateral control over who gets fired and why.
Saying the boss is not interested is totally not true. When I went to school we ALL knew (even the kids) that one teacher simply basically did not teach. It didn't matter they were totally protected. Principle would have fired them in a minute. Old white dude, massive seniority, union officer I think so he also may have gotten time off teaching for that ? Anyways, the rest of the teachers were amazing, but imagine you are a female minority teacher having to deal with extra class sizes because of this dufus. At least when I was growing up the union officers was an old boys club situation.
I can recall so many counter examples. Relatives, drinking buddies, snitches, people whom the boss was somewhat in awe of because they saw them as "rock stars", people for whom firing would have reflected badly on the boss, people who were good at pulling the wool over his eyes.
Generally the people I've seen fired were for insubordination not laziness - often they worked much harder than other workers.
If you think Amazon is hiring based on this - fantastic, they are doomed by only hiring lazy drinking buddies and relatives. Reality? Amazon has probably a very driven workforce and working culture. But maybe you are right it's all just a bunch of drinking buddies.
No different than if a union doesn't kick out shitty union members no? The same still holds true. Anything a bad union does, a bad boss can do, at least with a union you have a vote.
Unions work much better in public sector where they can't go out of business. Police unions, prison guard unions, teacher unions etc. I wouldn't say service or accountability is that great in these systems.
When you're competing with a Mexican, a Bangladeshi or a slave in Thailand all working for a pittance it doesn't necessarily matter how hard you work. Unemployment or poverty wages are your two choices.
Police unions and prison worker unions are more effective because they tend to aid rather than threaten capital. Teachers unions by contrast are not, which is why most governors declare outright war on them.
Curious if this means you are against public sector unions? I.e., where the organization can’t “go under” or, if it does, it may represent a real public risk
In terms of workers, the govt can't go "out of business" so seems pretty rational to join a union in that context?
The other issue is politicans are total idiots. I've done enough work in govt to know that the folks making policy NEVER EVER ask the folks in charge of delivering on something what small changes would make things 100x more efficient, fraud resistant and more.
For example, PPP loans.
Everyone in govt knows that employers make payroll tax payments every other week, file quarterly reports and annual W-2's and W-3's for staff. So if you are going to do a paycheck protection program - two options. One, use the data YOU ALREADY HAVE ON FILE to auto generate loans (2.5 months of payroll) using a simple signup form with very little risk of fraud - funds can only go into the same payroll accounts deposits made from etc.
Instead, we got a totally stupid system where massive fees were paid to folks who had no clue to supposedly screen folks using easily alterable documents. The fraud if they care to look is going to be high AND the pain was extreme for folks applying. All of which could have been avoided. My point - a unionized workforce would not have messed this up as badly as a bunch of whacko political appointees with no clue, so I'm not necessarily against public sector unions if it helps with retention.
Typically, in private union shops there is a check and balance between union demands and the viability of a business. Meaning, if a union gets too greedy they create a threat to their own existence by potentially driving their employer out of business. I witnessed this in the automotive sector when unions had to renegotiate their rates in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Workers brought in afterwards were often making less than half of what they would have made if brought in before renegotiation. I don’t think that same check exists (or is at the very least slower and weakened) in the public sector because the govt is a monopoly and can often raise taxes. Sure citizens can try to elect politicians that buffer this but at best it’s a process that takes years to enact and at worst is ineffectual. Because they have a captive “customer” base and a “company” that can’t go out of business, it provides a theoretical avenue for extortion. Besides all of that, civil servants are intended to serve the populace (hence the term servant) and not be strictly motivated by personal gain; they generally take an oath, meaning they are expected to answer to a higher calling. (I also have lots of reasons to believe public unions are beneficial but like I said, just wanted to potentially give a side you weren’t familiar with)
Regarding PPP, there’s been some good links in this thread that show public sector unions are quite strong despite the dwindling private sector unions. Meaning government policies are not enacted devoid of union influence. High level policies will almost always be driven by political appointees so I have doubts that an even more unionized public sector would impact on these policies
Not for everyone of course.
One model I've seen some pretty large success with is employee ownership of companies. They seem to tolerate the total disaster flake outs less than unions do. I've seen unions fight for the drunk guy who hit someone with a forklift. My exposure to employee ownership shows it is complicated and there can be problems, but for whatever reason stuff happens.
Collectives on the other hand didn't really work - too many opinions? I know berkeley's collectives all fell apart.
With the government job security, that always struck me as a reason to not need a union. Why pay dues if the largest benefit is already provided? (Of course there are other benefits, but I imagine job security is usually near the top)
This actually does not happen. A business can be profitable while keeping quite a lot of dysfunction inside.
Unions and collective bargaining at their best give the employees leverage for better pay and profit share. They do create bad incentives around making it hard to fire bad employees and making things slow.
Unionization doesn't remove this ability, you know.
All staff here benefit because we get some of the union benefits even though we’re not union eligible.
edit: They left the anti-union web page up:
https://criticalgsu.wordpress.com/six-arguments/
https://s3.amazonaws.com/thumbnails.thecrimson.com/photos/20...
You can see a couple of the unit-untion posters in the slide show. There were lots of others.https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2018/04/union-election
I have seen this in the entertainment industry. Newsrooms wanted to replace camera people with what were effectively industrial robots that moved the cameras around the studio as needed. Unions put up all sort of barriers, as is their mandate. Similar fights happened when projectionists were replaced by digital tech.
UPS is an interesting similar example along these lines. They have seen dramatic increases in deliveries per driver over the last ~30 years due to many process improvements.
I attended a talk by Jack Levis, a now retired leader on their delivery optimization system. One thing the union negotiated for was driver pay to scaling along with packages delivered. As a result, drivers can reasonably make 100k with some overtime.
With that said, I imagine a “no robot” policy would be a non-starter for Amazon to enter into such a contract
Tell that to the "party" who is going to be fired. We can go on about the economic impacts of mechanization, what is good or not for the business, we can even talk about the rise of AI. None of that matters. The core of a union is protecting the current jobs of their current workers. That means standing up for people who are going to lose their job regardless of the cause.
The article refutes this to an extent. One of the interviewees works at Amazon for ~$15/hr despite having previously work in an automotive plant for ~$23/hr, implying that they don’t exactly have a much choice to find better jobs but settle for whatever they can get
[0] https://www.westport-news.com/news/article/Marty-the-robot-d...
Then the question for workers becomes would you like to have this job for longer with current conditions or for less time with better conditions.
I don't think an Amazon warehouse worker union is going to be able to get any sort of long term job availability promises from Amazon (but I could be wrong, of course).
It's a gamble. You're hoping that what the union brings will have fewer downsides than your current situation. In the case of these warehouse jobs, it seems like things suck enough where those tradeoffs would be acceptable.
Where I draw the line is this idea that all unions are beneficial or warranted. No. They should be looked upon with a critical eye like everything else.
Is it higher wages they want? Better benefits? Work less hours? What does "better working conditions" logistically break down to?
Ridiculous. If they're well-treated now, it is not by the benevolence of the company, but more likely because they could be paid much more and still turn a handsome profit.
Assertion 2: not being the bottom of the barrel means improvement is not to be sought.
Clearly a ridiculous position again: others having a shitty situation does not mean that you should count your blessings and stop seeking improvement.
I'm guessing Amazon already pays between $15-$17/hr. What would you like to see, $20? $25? Wouldn't that just push Amazon to automate harder/faster, putting these people from $15/hr -> $0/hr when they are out of a job altogether when it vanishes?
Just to start: maybe they could get bathroom breaks!
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse...
Pretty much every union becomes a job protection scheme where bad workers are protected from being fired, and they feel the need to speak politically for the workers in broader issues than simple worker safety, etc.
In today's climate it seems like they'd feel the need to act like school administrators, policing nonsense and being a bigger threat to your job than the management. The union would probably be refusing to box Dr Seuss books, etc.
Considering that Amazon workers are paid fairly well, and treated well (pee stories notwithstanding), it's not an open and shut decision as it would be for other jobs.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/23/amazon-be...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/us/politics/amazon-union-...
* Improved safety and a system for reporting safety issues without fear of retaliation
* Improved working conditions in general: many amazon warehouses are not airconditioned and get so hot in the summers they park an ambulance outside for when someone collapses from heat stroke.
* Job security. currently you can be fired without cause, or with causes like falling behind on the absurd production quotas. With a union you have due process to protect your job.
* More breaks (imagine only getting ONE break, 4 hours into the work day). I'm a healthy, able bodied person, but what if I need to pee more than once in 4 hours?
* Contractual pay and benefits. Sure they pay $15/hr now and offer benefits. What's stopping them from cutting that wage or cutting those benefits if costs from another sector cut into profits? Nothing
I've read many lists, like the one you posted (thanks), and mostly I do not find them believable and where I do, I don't find them compelling.
> but what if I need to pee more than once in 4 hours?
OSHA specifically forbids limiting bathroom breaks for any employee. Sure, they'd like you to pee on your break, but they can't enforce it - they cannot fire you for this, despite that it is at-will employment.
Ditto all the health/safety claims made. All this is covered by existing law and the courts are very worker friendly.
> Job security - currently you can be fired without cause
Which are the conditions under which I hire a babysitter.
> or with causes like falling behind on the absurd production quotas.
Quotas are the exact opposite of unstated rules, and are generally good. If you can't pack n widgets in an hour, don't take the job.
Also, if someone can perform at quota it's not absurd.
> What's stopping them from cutting that wage or cutting those benefits if costs from another sector cut into profits? Nothing
If your job stopped being productive or profitable they'd stop paying you to do it. And you think they should be prevented from doing this?
Amazon warehouse workers are not paid well or even fairly well. They are not treated well. Amazon does its absolute best to treat its workers exactly as well as the minimum required by law, and even then it regularly attempts to cut back on even that. It took more than a decade for Amazon to install A/C units in its SoCal warehouses, even though those facilities are located in an area with 100+ degree summer temperatures.
Also, school administrators aren't generally part of a union. The teachers are, and they weren't the ones behind Dr. Seuss. (And on that note, the teachers are not responsible for Dr. Seuss being a huge racist who incorporated disgustingly racist imagery in children's books.)
Lol, like the "Eskimo fish". Maybe stop getting your news from Tumblr.
You're clearly arguing from outrage and memes.
> Amazon warehouse workers are not paid well or even fairly well. They are not treated well.
So not even fairly well that they're always fully staffed.
> Amazon does its absolute best to treat its workers exactly as well as the minimum required by law
No, they pay better, have better (ie, existant) perks and benefits, etc. There's pretty much no metric on which there is a legal minimum, that Amazon only just hits. It's actually wildly competitive.
But even if they were "just doing the minimum", do you overpay on taxes? For your car? Do you 'tip' Amazon when you order an item? How many pieces of flair is enough and can we please just make that the new minimum?
If you were really serious you wouldn't peddle this fake Amazon warehouses are bad narrative, you'd work for everyone else who isn't at a job that good. Instead of destroying something good, work to bring it to others.
Have you actually read any of Dr. Seuss' works?
Literally every non-white human character is depicted in a subservient role. Asians are depicted with buckteeth and slanted closed eyes. In several works, Asians are literally depicted as half-human, half monster. In every instance, Black people are depicted as sambo dolls with monkey faces. The Cat in the Hat is based on a blackface minstrel show.
No, they pay better, have better (ie, existant) perks and benefits, etc. There's pretty much no metric on which there is a legal minimum, that Amazon only just hits. It's actually wildly competitive.
Amazon pays the minimum wage of the location the warehouse is located in, except in Alabama where they just raised the wages to fight off the unionization efforts. Many Amazon warehouse employees don't qualify for benefits because most of them are deliberately scheduled below the 30-hour minimum to qualify for benefits, which is illegal in some states (like CA) but not in states like Alabama. Amazon has been disciplined by CA's labor department many times for violating the state labor code with respect to its mistreatment of its warehouse workers.
Do you 'tip' Amazon when you order an item?
Why would I tip Amazon? Amazon is a multi-billion dollar company that earns billions of dollars in profit every quarter. I do tip the delivery driver that delivers food from a restaurant when I order delivery.
If you were really serious you wouldn't peddle this fake Amazon warehouses are bad narrative, you'd work for everyone else who isn't at a job that good. Instead of destroying something good, work to bring it to others.
Amazon warehouses are bad. By choice. They could be good jobs if Amazon didn't deliberately mistreat its warehouse employees. They have the profits from Amazon.com (i.e., the store) to pay for relatively simple things, like an additional restroom so employees don't have to piss themselves on the line, or for A/C or heater units so employees don't freeze in the winter or pass out from the heat in the summer. But Amazon chooses not to do that.
If Amazon would be destroyed by spending .000001% of their profits on not mistreating their employees, then they deserve to be destroyed. Because their competitors are more than capable of surviving despite not treating their employees like shit.
So the cat is black people? What do the eggs represent?
Honestly, making non-racist media out of old racist stuff seems like a good thing. If you could take some WW2 German folk dance and rip out the part about Hitler, you should do so. To the degree that anyone remembers it used to be about him, it literally craps on his memory.
> Asians are depicted with buckteeth and slanted closed eyes.
"Man from the pre-information age uses old-timey stereotypical imagery!" Shocker.
> In several works, Asians are literally depicted as half-human, half monster.
You're confusing depictions of individuals - Hirohito (and Hitler) - populist and brutal leaders of countries who we were at war with, and broad statements about everyone with a certain biology.
When an "ordinary" asian was depicted you get minor stereotypes like conical farmer's hats and chopsticks, but that's the point of trying to illustrate other cultures and normalize their day-to-day lives.
> Literally every non-white human character is depicted in a subservient role.
Most Seuss books don't have a hierarchy, like who is in charge, the cat? The sneeches who have stars, or those without? (Real answer: the guy with the machine.)
This is just silly race-baiting. It mocks anyone who has had actual encounters with actual racists. Seuss is pretty much the least racist person you'll find, judged by his body of work which contains literal messages of love thy neighbor despite their appearance.
Also on this topic, orcs - literal metaphors for black people because Tolkien/WotC is a monster, or just a fantasy race?
> Why would I tip Amazon?
You expect them to pay more than they need to but don't want to yourself - their employees took that job knowing the wage. Perhaps your extra payment is the marginal dollar that Bezos doesn't need to reinvest to make AWS a success, and he (recognizing your good example) would give it to his employees.
> I do tip the delivery driver
But not the warehouse worker or anyone else. It's performative, and rude to expect a worker with a good job to grovel with their hand out for your scraps.
> like an additional restroom so employees don't have to piss themselves on the line
Yeah, that's not real. I mean, I don't doubt that some warehouse, somewhere, didn't have all the bathrooms operational one day. But you are specifically not allowed to be punished for going to the bathroom and employers have to have enough for all employees. You can call in inspectors, or simply take pictures, and sue pretty easily.
> or for A/C or heater units so employees don't freeze in the winter or pass out from the heat in the summer.
Again, if the boss did something that was likely to cause harm or death there'd be actual complaints, with legal weight.
The unionists are no more credible than the anti-Seussians.
In my opinion, they have spies, moles, agents amongst the workers. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those agents are in important positions, and they could be then now requested to do something stupid.
If they don't have these agents, they could also just approach someone now.
They could offer them something to do something outrageous or negative for the movement. Then, they also control various media outlets where they talk about it in every news segment.
I'm pretty sure there is some serious intelligence operations in the background,why would they leave this to chance?
Yeah, they're not gonna leave it to chance. It's pretty wonderous to watch, really. They're gonna pull every card they have. Take these, for instance:
Amazon got in touch with the city and changed the traffic light patterns to make traffic worse for union voters:
https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/17/22287191/amazon-alabama-w...
And even installed an official postal box on their site so they can monitor who is voting for later scrutiny/intimidation:
https://www.al.com/business/2021/02/mailbox-stirs-controvers...
Oh, and Amazon sponsored their busy employee's working time to make them attend mandatory sessions on why unions are bad:
https://www.al.com/news/2021/02/alabama-amazon-employees-pus...
> On December 15th, the county increased the green light duration in an effort to clear workers off the worksite faster. There’s no indication that the county was aware of the ongoing organizing drive or any effect the traffic light changes might have on the effort.
Improving traffic flow is somehow now an anti-union activity?
Oh, I agree. I'm sure you are right. I'm just surprised that with all that intelligence, the path they chose to take was so blunt.
Either they're missing something, or I am - only time will tell, I guess.
They may still decide to do it. But there are potential costs.
There are legitimate reasons to dislike unions, but the reason companies rely on these "ham-fisted" tactics is because the employees are generally less sophisticated than people on HN and the tactics work.
Can you define what you mean by “less sophisticated” and what you think drives this discrepancy?
The irony to me is that I see a lot of comments on HN that would indicate many don’t have much knowledge of how unions work, so I don’t know that the claim of sophistication holds true in every domain
It’s more base level of education. I think it’s worth watching to see what I mean.
I think the truth is that absolute karma counting (i.e. 5000 up, 4900 down is a -100 comment) makes things appear more significantly skewed than they are.
There are bad unions out there, but I don't think they're a majority.
I wish I was in a union now.
For example, it may be illegal for public servants to strike. The government may not go out of “business”. Civil servants tend to skew towards white collar professions. Point being, there are a different set of incentives and tactics in pubic vs private unions
I'm just waiting for Amazon's last-ditch appeal to actual consumers... "Don't let these dirty poors around rural shittown America result in Amazon Prime yearly subscriptions going up $10 and products costing an additional $0.17!"
I can't speak for union organizers, as I'm not one, but I don't think this is exactly how one sees people who're acting against their own interests. It's more of a frustration/confusion/concern they don't have all the facts.
It's absolutely possible for someone to have all the relevant information at hand, and make a decision I wouldn't make. I think what's got me more surprised is the blunt and obviously propagandistic way Amazon is messaging on this; I think they risk coming off cartoonishly corporate/self-interested.
> 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.
Who's going to take this messaging seriously?
Like political advertising, the point of most of the messaging on both sides is not aimed at changing minds, it is aimed at getting supporters fired up to turn out.
They sure want to make them look like stupid:
VICE News reveal company executives discussed a plan to smear fired warehouse employee Christian Smalls.
"He’s not smart, or articulate, and to the extent the press wants to focus on us versus him, we will be in a much stronger PR position than simply explaining for the umpteenth time how we’re trying to protect workers," wrote Amazon General Counsel David Zapolsky in notes from the meeting forwarded widely in the company.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dm8bx/leaked-amazon-memo-de...
This made me laugh. Of course they've got an asterisk next to their promise. But the site itself is just sad. The points made are "justified" with completely unrelated FUD:
> 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.
This sentence doesn't make any logical sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#The_Washington_Post
Every Post article about Amazon includes that disclaimer.
Good PR doesn't try to hide mistakes that are out in the open and will try to maintain the pretence of objectivity.
It would be interesting to see how much WaPo gets the benefit of the doubt when reporting on Amazon here vis a vis RT reporting on Russia:
https://www.rt.com/usa/515972-amazon-alabama-traffic-light-u...
(there are plenty of non RT sources for this but the feeling you get when you see me using RT as a source neatly illustrates my point)
You're right in a sense. I wouldn't trust North Koreans to report on themselves and I wouldn't trust Amazon to do it either, pretty much no matter what they said.
Hollywood.
Everyone from the highest paid stars to the set-builders are union members - you literally cannot say a word on film if you're not union, and Hollywood is globally competitive in spite of (or because of?) this. The talent is still able to negotiate individually (a common, yet inaccurate aspersion thrown at unions is that someone will take over role of negotiations - but that's just for the baseline)
For contrast, the ancillary VFX industry is not unionized, and there are endless horror stories of exploitation there.
1. Many labor organizations do not consider police and prison guard unions to be legitimate labor unions, because police represent and enforce the interests of the ruling class not of the labor class and have historically been weaponized footsoldiers brought in specifically to brutalize organized labor movements. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-to-know-police-unions-l... has a moderately good exposition of the subject. If you don't like overt editorial politicization, skip the first paragraph.
2. I think you have to clarify what you mean by "competitive". If you start from the premise that no advancement or profit is worth stepping on the necks of people with less power, then the only metric that makes sense for evaluating organized labor is fair treatment of the laborers. You will _of_course_ get more coal out of the ground faster and cheaper if, for instance, you use slaves or have zero rules protecting the health and safety of the miners. But you get that exactly by abusing the health and safety of the miners. So does one value cheap coal or not killing people? If one values only price above all else, then of course treating laborers well comes at a cost. I don't think we have a general sense that Chinese labor is treated well despite being an economic powerhouse because everything from there is cheaper and we just _really_ love to externalize costs. Also, don't we regularly have scandals where steel from China fails to meet some quality standard and causes bridges and buildings to collapse? Is it competitive to produce something dangerous for less money? If less up-front cost is the primary goal, then yes. Should that be the goal?
[0] https://libguides.rutgers.edu/c.php?g=336678&p=2267003
[1] https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2020/4/1/21201936/ufc-coronaviru...
Most upper-middle class stuff is heavily protected by union like organizations, many of which restrict membership count and lobby against immigration in their field based on maintaining salary levels and their standards of living.
Wapo title: Amazon fights aggressively to defeat union drive in Alabama, fearing a coming wave
Subtitle: Amazon’s relentless push to beat back a union drive among warehouse workers mirrors the company’s past efforts to oppose unions in Seattle, New York, Canada and the United Kingdom
It seems backwards at first, unions after all are supposed to protect the workers. However, union to exist needs a reason for people to join and that reason is that they negotiate better wages and better healthcare, for example.
This is not a speculation on my part but direct observation of Democratic primaries, Manchin's opposition to 15 minimum's wage and local union negotiations.
> We know striking works. By standing up and going on strike for $15/hr and union rights we won $70 billion in raises for 24 million people across the country — more than 30 percent of the nation’s workforce.
It also partners with major unions: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/fight-for-15-teams-u...:
> The campaign marks just how influential Fight for 15 has become since it formed in 2012. Working in partnership with SEIU and other advocacy groups, its workers have helped drive minimum wage increases in multiple states...
Also, your contrarian thinking seems to carry the assumption that the union organizations are somehow independent of their membership and are more interested in the organization's selfish interests than the achievement of its goals, which I think is generally not true. If that was true, I think you'd need a situation where the union was both 1) a monopoly and 2) undemocratic, because union members are basically customers of their union, and those are the conditions an organization needs to exploit its customers.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/02/23/culinary-workers-bucked-...
I also know few instances where worker unions negotiated better benefits, wages for existing members while letting employer hire new employees at lower wages as a compromise.
> That is probably why other union leaders, like the SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry and Association of Flight Attendants-CWA’s Sara Nelson, support Medicare for All. The advocacy group Labor for Single Payer lists 21 unions who support it. But the controversy lingers, kept alive in part by politicians who oppose Medicare For All.
It's not always very clear whether one healthcare plan would be better than another, especially when the details haven't actually been worked out for the replacement. It sounds like the Culinary Workers Union has built an impressive healthcare system, and wants to be sure their members don't have their healthcare downgraded under a new plan.
Increased wages are much more clear cut. It's not like union employees making $30/hr are going to get their wages reset to the minimum because that was increased to $15/hr.
> I also know few instances where worker unions negotiated better benefits, wages for existing members while letting employer hire new employees at lower wages as a compromise.
And that's likely because those unions were in weak negotiating positions, not because (like you were originally proposing) they wanted to stand in the way of better worker benefits to make themselves more attractive in comparison. IIRC, those lower-paid new hires are also represented by the same union.
United mine workers seems to be the one (minor) exception, and it's about 1% of what he gets.
It's total speculation.
* Unions can't strike when they have a contract in place
* Unions can't strike in solidarity with each other (ie the teamsters can't strike to help a longshorement strike)
* There can't be more than one union covering the same workforce
* Unions must give advance notice of strikes
etc
shouldn't that be covered by contract law? eg. if company A enters into a contract with company B to supply them with widgets, then company A decides to "strike", they'd get sued for breach of contract. Doesn't the same apply to labor contracts?
https://i2.wp.com/mercatus.org/sites/default/files/totalcont...
But yes, their entire purpose is to form a cartel in order to extract rent from the buyers of labor.
Wow. I find this take to be so twisted as to be laughable.
A union's entire purpose is to advocate for the needs and desires of the members of said union. That could be for basic safety or fairness. For instance, coal mine owners used to knowingly incorrectly weigh coal carts, paying workers less than they agreed to pay them. Workers were being cheated, subjected to brutal conditions, and they had no power to ensure that the mine operators treated them reasonably well.
It's, quite frankly, shocking that someone would say a union's purpose is to extract rent given the abuses of labor within the past century.
If this is truly their purpose, as you purport it to be, there is no reason why they shouldn't be subject to anti-trust rules. Why is there only one UAW? Why is there only one Teamsters? Why is there only one ILWU? Because having a monopoly on the sale of labor allows for effective cartelization.
Three competing auto worker unions could act as effective intermediaries just the same as one. Of course, we both know full and well that the "intermediary" and "level playing field" excuses are laughable diversions.
That might be true in the past, but it doesn't seem to be the case anymore. see for instance the numbers for 2020: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/top-organizat...
Because people got tires of capitalist exploitation enabled by the combination of the balance of wealth in capitalism and the absence of those special allowances.
> I feel like unions are just a separate service company
They aren't, in fact, and your feelings don't change that.
> but with a monopoly granted by the law.
Unions may be granted a monopoly with very tightly defined scope with a prescribed mechanism for removal, but unions exist without such monopolies (unions can be formed and exist before winning a certification election.)
> If people want to "organize", why not form their own service company that contracts out their labor?
That's called a labor cooperative, and it's a completely different thing than a union. Unions exist within labor coops (and many organizations promoting labor coops promote unionization both in general and within coops.)
> Otherwise, the entire notion feels like a serious abridgement on the freedom of those who own the company.
Insofar as the “freedom” of capitalist property rights are—both in practice and, despite some facially class-neutral post-hoc rationalizations, in the original motivation for which they were sought by the mercantile class against the traditional structure of the feudal economy a mechanism by—a mechanism by which a particular narrow class exercise dominant power over the rest of society, that's the whole point of not only legally-empowered unions, and also the rest of the changes since the peak of capitalism in the late 19th Century by which the developed world has abandoned pure capitalism for the modern mixed economy.
Professionals with credentials have some power in the market, they can command a price.
Unskilled labour cannot. Without regulations, they would be paid $2 an hour, i.e. what the market will bear.
If you thought the 'Dollar Store' was cheap, imagine the '25 cent store' - where people survive on extreme minimums.
Favellas and tiny illegal homes pop up, without plumbing etc. and entire mini-industries are created around the ultra-low working class.
A $1 Trillion dollar corporation has 'all the power' an individual has none, and it's existential: 'work for just enough wages to barely keep you alive or die'. That's what the market will push towards and a lot of people will think that it's fair.
The market allocates money based on power. That's it. In a purely market based anything, if you don't have power - you die, or close to it.
People living in favelas with no plumbing can't hope to send their children to school etc. so it creates generational problems.
This is why we have minimum wage, safety laws, anti-discrimination etc.
That said - unions can often be a detriment and their power can be good only for the members and nobody else. It's not a black and white issue.
What I don't get is how unions are any different from the kind of local monopoly we dislike in cable companies, or a cartel (when a union operates broadly across an industry). They inhibit competition and choice, and limit liquidity in the labor market through their policies. They override individual freedoms - and I don't mean just for the corporation who is forced into a contract with them, but also because they force everyone else who wants to work to join their organization and pay dues. Often time, paying dues also means supporting these organizations' activities that go beyond bargaining for working conditions or wages. For example, the NEA (the main teachers union, which is the largest union in the US) frequently engages in politics and adopts progressive political positions as their official positions/guiding principles. This type of monolithic centralization feels undesirable to me for the same reason monopolies feel undesirable.
In my opinion, the balance would be better if we let people organize without reprisal but requiring that what results is simply a separate entity (a separate company) who is selling their labor and has to survive based on their economic competitiveness. That way there is still choice and competition in labor.
As for the dire picture you paint of favelas - maybe there's some minimum safety net we need to provide (which we have in the form of welfare, SNAP, and more). But if we're talking about generational issues - I also feel people should not have children if they cannot afford to raise them well. Otherwise, what we're saying is that people can keep supplying unskilled laborers and the rest of society is obligated to employ them at certain wages or otherwise support them. That seems unfair to me in a different way.
Those without any leverage whatsoever, unskilled workers rate will be the 'absolute minimum required to survive'.
Somewhere around $2/hour over the long haul. Millions of people living in tiny, one room apartments, without basic amenities.
We know people will accept this to survive because they do, all around the world.
Factors are non-market issue such as social welfare programs, incidental wealth (i.e. kids with upper middle class parents, living at home choosing not to work), general attitudes, the difficulty of the labour (outside vs. inside), the relative buying power of the $2 (i.e. in a remote area, it may be possible to have 'micro homes' and get by, and social acceptance.
Wages for undocumented labour might be a hint at the number though that's probably more than $2, my bet is that's somewhere north of $6-8 right now.
My $2 take is 'long view' i.e. we see favelas in Brazil, people will accept that quality of life unless there are institutional pressures otherwise.
Also consider that the unemployment rate does not count those who have stopped looking for work.
I'm sure many other organizations would love the power to force people into their subscriptions. And I'm sure their high ranking officials would come up with incredibly good reasons as to why they are absolutely essential to social justice or whatever
And unions are not the US government.
I'm sure many other organizations would love the power to force people into their subscriptions. And I'm sure their high ranking officials would come up with incredibly good reasons as to why they are absolutely essential to social justice or whatever.
What?