How Amazon Crushes Unions
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Most stuff you can buy on Amazon these days is the same garbage that is sold on Wish but you pay ~25-50% more for it to come within a couple of days. Not shopping at either has definitely raised the average life span and quality of goods in my household.
Now I only wish I could find a way to move all our infrastructure off AWS...
In terms of cloud providers: the major three (Azure, GCloud, AWS) seem to be cut from the same cloth... maybe IBM or Oracle cloud are better options (I don't have any experience with either, but both companies obviously have skeleton filled closets)?
But in all seriousness, Oracle at least has very good free tier to get started. You basically get two free okay-provisioned VMs (lite on the CPU to say the least, but mem and desk okay). Very good for self-hosted your own stuff for free!
[0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bl...
Its redeeming feature is having a free tier that isn't Google. The problem with using Google's cloud is that if someone hacks your account and runs up infinite charges as a personal user, you can't file a credit card dispute without disrupting your entire relationship with Google.
The cloud market still has healthy competition - eg Linode, DigitalOcean, Vultr, and innumerable smaller companies. Patronize them, rather heading than to a different behemoth.
I personally wouldn't consider them for anything serious. If folks need a free box for something lightweight, those free tier VMs on Oracle are pretty much the only good thing about it. (I have a VPN and a few small services running on it for my own consumption)
One thing I have noticed is their network seems to have high jitter.
[0]https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/22/aclu_amazon_aws_rekog...
And of course, Microsoft, Google, and others have their own facial recognition software and they all have large contracts with government entities, too. This article mentions the CIA using AWS, but the CIA also has multi-billion dollar contracts with GCP, Azure, and even IBM and Oracle: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/cia-awards-multib...
"Mankind barely noticed when the concept of massively organized information quietly emerged to become a means of social control, a weapon of war, and a roadmap for group destruction." [0]
Is it unreasonable to desire that your dollars don't go to organizations involved in war, oppression, corruption, etc.?
[0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bl...
What we're talking about with Amazon is taking steps to actually fight transgressions that are happening right now.
If only there were competing cloud/PaaS services.
AWS has a lot of neat, domain-specific products and managed services, but it's important to recognize those come with vendor lock-in and that's by design.
If possible, build out your stack to avoid dependence on AWS-only stuff. It's worth it to ask "if I wanted to transition away from AWS in six months, is this addition going to help or hinder that goal?" It's a lot easier to migrate something that uses generic technologies like VM instances, vendor-neutral containerization, and managed databases versus something super specific. And AWS has a lot of super specific stuff, just look at their ever-expanding product list [1].
Once you get away from the specialized domain-specific products, you start to realize that AWS pricing is really nothing special, particularly for VM instances as you've noted.
What is it that you know that all those other well-paid professionals don't?
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-keeps-hiding-...
G Cloud was rumored to have to be #2 by 2023 or they'd shut down, and currently they are trailing quite far behind.
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/learn-why-aws-is-the-be...
If too few people sustain a boycott, then they suffer without accomplishing their goal, so a net negative.
If enough people sustain a boycott, they'll suffer but will also accomplish their goal, so a net positive.
Amazon is the only vendor with 24 hour lockers for pickup - multiple locations within walking distance. There is no Walmart nearby. There is a Target but the pickup line is basically standing in plague-town for an hour, ~25 min away by bus. Best Buy is about 40-45 min away by bus (you will probably be mugged if you are seen with a BB bag).
The effect of Amazon is that at least for now, there's never been a better time to order things online in general. Every website competes with amazon now. Most places ship fast and cheap/free. Sometimes with a minimum order, but same with amazon's add on items. There are exceptions for sure, and I do occasionally still need to buy a thing on Amazon.
Unless you're really into the prime video selection, I suggest everyone cancel their prime and try life without it. I think I got a prorated refund, and you can always reactivate.
This is so true.
When I first started shopping online, it used to take ten days to two weeks to get stuff. Amazon changed that.
Then I remember that before the internet, "Please wait four to six weeks for delivery" was so normal that it was a catch phrase.
Physical books I buy from a small online bookstore I want to support. Oddly enough, they're not much slower than Prime. Even for books not in stock. Plus, they frequently write a nice note, or slip a free zine or custom bookmark into the package. It's a nice touch, and whoever did the packing has equity in the company. They're worker-owned.
Ebooks are still Amazon, though I strip the DRM immediately after purchase so I'm not locked into the Kindle ecosystem. I may try buying a test book from Kobo or Barnes & Noble to see if I can just as easily strip the DRM from them. If so, then I'll probably switch.
Ebay's been good for some stuff. For Pi hobby stuff, I've started buying directly from the various small businesses that specialize. The shipping is longer, but that's not a problem so far.
Some stuff I do buy from Walmart / Sams. They're about as bad as Amazon in many ways, but they do pay their warehouse people a decent wage. Or they did last time I checked. So it's at least marginally better in that respect, and there's not much worry about fake goods from them.
I just really don't understand why people have a hard time giving up Amazon retail, at least when it comes to the majority of HN who can absolutely afford to pay an extra $10 for shipping a few times a year.
In my experience, I get most stuff for the same price from other retailers on Amazon, but with fast shipping and the peace of mind that I can return them easily.
Your point still stands about easy returns, although personally I've noticed Amazon adding a lot more friction when I have a problem in the past year or so.
https://www.redpoints.com/blog/amazon-commingled-inventory-m...
It's obviously a problem to some extent, but I can't help but think news articles like that blow it way out of proportion.
As for returns, I've notice the opposite: it takes me considerably less time and effort to return an Amazon purchase than, for example, a Target purchase. I actually did both this weekend: for Amazon, I walked into a UPS store, handed them the unpackaged product, they scanned a barcode from my Amazon app, and I walked out. The whole thing took no more than 30 seconds. At Target, I had to wait in a line for 20 minutes at the Returns counter, had to show them the receipt, also had to show them the card I used to purchase, and then the system wasn't refunding the correct amount so a manager had to be called over and re-do the entire process with some sort of override. The entire process took, at minimum, 30 minutes.
I hate Amazon's bullshit union tactics like in the OP, but they are still the undisputed king when it comes to overall shopping experience, IMO. And it's not necessarily because Amazon is actually great, it's more because the other companies are still really far behind.
I wouldn't be so sure, since it's not always easy to spot a counterfeit. Take a charger for instance. A counterfeiter can get the case and packaging perfect, but have substandard & legitimately dangerous electronics inside. I don't have the links handy, but I've seen numerous tear-down comparisons that show examples of this.
Obviously counterfeiting is a problem and in an ideal world there would be no counterfeiting at all, but I remain unconvinced that it's something I have to worry about materially affecting my experience as a customer buying stuff from Amazon.
Yet. When one burns down your house, you'll care.
Most people try to head off possibilities like that, rather can just shrug their shoulders and say, "But I saved three dollars!"
But as for stuff like chargers, I've had more experience that the easily-frayed genuine Apple Lightning cables, or the classic exploding Samsung phones, are more of an electrical fire risk than anything I've bought from Amazon, counterfeit or not.
Almost every memory card that isn't Samsung EVO PLUS I've received has been counterfeit.
I've moved to Linode and never looked back.
[UPDATE] Wow. Downvotes for a shout-out to Linode. Didn't know there was so much Linode hate out there. What's up with that? What's wrong with Linode?
- Lack of support for your statement. You simply say that you moved there, not why and what made you move, what's better and so on
- You're complaining about down-votes, leading you into the spiral of downvotes as you'll get more down voted by it
- You're talking bad about AWS and Amazon. HN famously have a ton of AWS/Amazon employees here who are quick to downvote any negative sentiment about AWS/Amazon. No, I don't have any proof, but anything mentioning either in a negative way WILL be downvoted, happened time and time again
I didn't downvote your comment but it reminded me of an old comment about Linode which is still a mystery to me:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10999397
To this day, I have no idea what that was about. Does Linode not do backups?!? Is one of the founders a pedophile?!? Whatever it is, is it unmentionable because of fear of lawsuit?!?
I'm not going to try and cast judgement on individuals' circumstances, I just experience genuine confusion that Amazon can (apparently) still attract top-ish talent.
The "similar" item is not similar enough in my experience.
With so many "Amazon" sellers just rebranding cheap Chinese stuff, it really is better to just go backward in the chain. I suspect that you probably get fewer "counterfeits" since you are looking for "Thing that does <X>" instead of "Brand <Y> thingit."
"a “diversity index” represents the racial and ethnic diversity of every store. Stores at higher risk of unionizing have lower diversity"
Umm, yikes.
Most of us here could tell our bosses to f off and either have enough savings for months (or even years), or at the very least get another job within weeks or days. Even having grown up lower-middle class with zero, often negative, extra money, going years without vacation, etc., it's hard to wrap my head around being forced to deal with abusive supervisors and coworkers because the alternative might be homelessness within weeks.
For a high market price, you need the intersection of a scarce skill (low-supply in labor market) that provides value to other people (high-demand in the labor market). Being a good software engineer is an example - low-supply and high-demand, therefore high wage/salary.
Yes, but that's not the only issue. Some people are incapable of managing their own affairs. Showing up to work on time, not drunk is not in their personal capacity. It's not really their fault; we are not the authors of our neurobiology.
Yes, this is exactly why we got the idea of unions in the first place. Without unions we would still be forced to work at least 6 days a week, and many more drawbacks. The list is huge of what unions have given us (in Europe at least).
When they called to find out why he wasn’t at work on Sunday, and told him they don’t usually give stock grants to people with such a limited investment in the company, that was the end of it.
If you’ve ever been in the parts of Seattle they’re in, they tend to take up the whole sidewalk. Different coworker called them Amholes. After working a contract there I figured out it isn’t because those people have huge egos. It’s because they’re zombies. Surprised more of them don’t get hit by cars.
This is what happens when the Silicon Valley startup festishists end up in charge in the real world.
this comment is similar to saying:
i'm kinda creeped out by car insurance payments. it just feels less about protecting other drivers and more about enriching the insurance companies.
you are right that it does create a new power structure and job roles, that's the point of it! the money you pay is also part of the strike pay you'd get back.
Yeah, me too! And health and homeowners insurance while we're at it. All systems seemingly meant to exploit statistics for the betterment of us all...and yet the 20 most expensive homes in my city growing up were owned by insurance execs... What an oddity!
So i like unions (and have been a member of one), generally, in the same way i like governments. However they need clarity, visibility, and structures to answer to its members. A god-king union is no better than a god-king government.
Imo, they're work. They require care to exist properly, just like governments. But when done right, they're the only source of citizen power in the workforce. Especially in the modern day of mega corporations.
When you have one organized power structure that is using its power to exploit people, the only real way to combat it is with another organized power structure.
Bezoes is worth $196 billion. You're not going to be able to effectively push back against that with bake sales.
Legal support - your boss has done something you disagree with
Strike fund - in the worse case the union uses its savings to support the members for a strike
Full time reps - this is perhaps the one most open to abuse, but in my experience union reps fight for the workers - otherwise they get sacked, they are elected positions.
Pay for legal advice - essential when fighting the big boys
And what you would hope is by paying union dues that your pay rise more than covers the union due.
The fact that amazon is fighting against it so hard, you can only assume its good for workers pay.
Is that an ironic website supposed to give the union a boost/shit on Amazon or is this a real attempt on getting people to dislike paying unions their due? I could not help but to laugh at some of the arguments in it, hence my question. It doesn't seem very sincere.
Refs: 1. https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-reportedly-uses-boxing-mach...
2. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-warehouse-idUS...
3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/13/amazon-...
You can't really relocate warehouses and shipping centers without throwing a wrench in the logistics of the supply chain, especially if you are in the next-day delivery business.
For national logistics, limiting your warehouses to right-to-work states will increase costs so dramatically you would save money dealing with unions.
Welcome to the pay off for the election
It's legal right now, even as clarified in the link you provided, to encourage a boycott of a struck product at a retailer. What's not legal is organizing a boycott of a whole store because they are stocking one or a few products from a supplier whose products are struck. That is, unless it's a company store that is the same employer as the producer of the products for which production is under a strike.
As for everyone that gives money to Amazon, and praises their FOSS offerings, this is what evil companies do in practice.
Unfortunately, some companies like Amazon seems to simply include "break labor laws" on their balance statements in the end of the year, as they keep breaking the laws in order to save short-term costs.
Dude, we tried this. Now people in the US can't have reasonable arguments in public without wanting to kill one another. People somehow gets "cancelled" now, because some 20s-something wanted to "move fast" without thinking of the consequences.
Maybe it's time we try "slow and steady" and see if the world actually ends up more equal and diverse, instead of the opposite, which is the direction we're heading now.
And for the record, if unions hadn't existed, you'd still be slaving away 6 days a week (minimum), 10 hours a day, your children would be working instead of going to school and everything labor related would certainly have been worse. Worth considering since you seem to hold the opinion that "all unions are bad" just because the US is shitty at creating and maintaining unions.
Best answer.
(don't think unions would have changed anything on that point though)
This is not historically accurate.
For example, Henry Ford actually increased wages (without worrying about unions, and he had literal enforcers to bully people.)
He claimed to be doing it for altruistic reasons, and so that workers in his plants could afford a Ford, but the real reason was because he had to, because people could choose to work elsewhere, even if they had to move. Also, he attracted people from other cities and states to move to Dearborn.
This is the real antidote to union-busting and union-towns. Any job that basically needs a person can always be paid minimally, but multiple employers have to compete for that person; perhaps an alternative job is far away, but mobile people will always be worth more because their market is larger. It was a bit different 150 years ago during the Industrial Revolution, because of information asymmetry and the cost of relocation.
So why form a union? Just get a better job from an employer that literally values you more. It's not like these companies don't exist.
For most people your statement sounds like a joke. You can't "Just get a better job".
Most people are stuck in their jobs, that's why they have to put up with the bullshit from managers and customers.
Entire shitty industries wouldn't exist if people weren't blackmailable into working bad jobs.
Please please, get out of your circumstances and try to imagine how others have to live before making generalized statements like that.
Read up a bit on unions and their impact on the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union), and come back with more stories about how a business owner raised his employees salaries so therefore unions are not useful where salaries are not being raised...
I come from France, and we're not perfect, far from it. But I was raised, not so long ago, to tolerate very diverging opinions. I enjoy debating calmly with communists, nationalists, muslims or europeanists. As long as we agree France comes first, our little divergences second, I stay polite and agree to disagree. After all, they may be right, and I wrong, so I just discuss to gain perspective.
What I see in US debates is that everything seems so existential. Hearing someone disagree is so painful and deeply disturbing, on both sides (there seems to be only 2, another problem), that people I see debate seem to forget that end of the day, they and their descendants will have to live together forever. Better embrace the fact it's done and final, and start finding little ways to be nice about it.
Consider this letter from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Rutledge in 1797:
"The passions are too high at present to be cooled in our day. You and I have formerly seen warm debates and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other, and separate the business of the senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the streets to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch their hat. This may do for young men, with whom passion is enjoiment. But it is afflicting to peaceable minds."^1
Or Jefferson's retrospective of the 1800 election:
"we suffered ourselves, as you so well expressed it, to be the passive subjects of public discussions. and these discussions, whether relating to men, measures, or opinions, were conducted by the parties with an animosity, a bitterness, and an indecency, which had never been exceeded. All the resources of reason, and of wrath, were exhausted by each party in support of its own, and to prostrate the adversary opinions. one was upbraided with recieving the Antifederalists, the other the old tories & refugees into their bosom. of this acrimony the public papers of the day exhibit ample testimony in the debates of Congress, of state legislatures, of stump-orators, in addresses, answers, and newspaper essays. and to these without question may be added, the private correspondence of individuals; and the less guarded in these, because not meant for the public eye, not restrained by the respect due to that; but poured forth from the overflowings of the heart into the bosom of a friend, as a momentary easement of our feelings. in this way, and in answers to addresses, you & I could indulge ourselves. we have probably done it, sometimes with warmth, often with prejudice, but always, as we believed, adhering to truth. I have not examined my letters of that day. I have no stomach to revive the memory of it’s feelings."^2
This is not unique to America or even to modernity. A broad reading of history shows that any human society, given enough time, will encounter periods when the stars align and there's a general degradation of civility, sometimes erupting in bloodshed, sometimes being remembered as a generally unpleasant time not to be spoken about.
The problems with American culture in particular being reduced to increasingly hostile and superficial tribal allegiances have antecedents dating back decades, well before AOL was even a thing.^4 The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1985 enabled one-sided echo chambers to emerge via all extant communications media (notable in particular is the emergence of conservative talk radio like Rush Limbaugh).^5
"The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been."^6
---
1 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-29-02-0...
2 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6076
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts
4 http://txti.es/technorealism
5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms
I agree that my first argument was hollow and I don't blame it all on social media. I guess the "social media" aspect of HN actually makes me sometimes rewrite my speech to make more impact than to be 100% expanded to explain my viewpoint, mostly to not bore people.
If improving worker safety (in this case, literally saving hundreds of lives each year) and paying workers a living wage makes your already heavily subsidized company go bust, maybe the company shouldn't have existed in the first place?
Worker's health shouldn't be an economic externality
Is this actually the case? Because this seems like a childish caricature of unions. Could you point me to examples where unions actually implemented this and why?
I've never heard of this before. The idea that a supervisor cannot talk to a unionized employee at all is extreme, to say the least. Having the union there during disciplinary hearings? Sure. All meetings?
Do you have any examples?
This historical perspective is so shallow, and your understanding of the motivation of those involved is so one sided that it's hard to think of anything that might let some light in.
I'll try. Years ago Business owners so mistreated their workers that the workers decided to form unions. This was not easy, as nobody was really on the side of the workers. So it made it easy to bash their heads in. It took many years of many people risking and losing their lives and livelihoods until public support turned towards the strikers. Finally places like Ford had to negotiate rather than curbstomp[1].
This was a win. Rather than relying on the arbitrary benevolence of various ownerships, we codified the 40 hour workweek, overtime, vacation days and sick leave among other things.
Then WWII happened, and the US was the only industrialized nation that was left unscathed. That meant the world wanted to buy our products because for the most part, we were the only ones making products at all. This is the beginning and end of a lot of Americans understanding of our economy and our place in the world. It's why Reagan and Trump were successful with the "Let's / Make America Great Again" mantra.
Because we decided to kill ourselves to be anti-communist, we decided to have very favorable trade policies for places we were formerly at war with, like Japan. That meant we rolled out the red carpet for those cheap little imports. Unions had nothing to do with this.
US automakers did not take the foreign competition seriously. They were too busy trying to defend leaded gasoline and trying to destroy Ralph Nader's reputation because he suggested we have seatbelts. Unions had nothing to do with this either.
The 70's happened. The previously decimated world economies were rebuilt and ready to compete. Americans started to buy more stuff from overseas. Oil became scarce. Stupid self-owns by the US Auto manufacturers gave American cars a reputation for being shit. For one thing, they were so damn heavy that components would break faster. A heavy V8 has more stuff to fail than a little inline four. Again, Unions were not the ones designing the cars.
No one in Detroit blames the Unions. Except maybe historically illiterate managers and engineers. I know, I used carry their golf clubs and clean their boats. Everyone else typically blames NAFTA, consumers buying imports, and the management/ownership of the Big 3.
But here we are. Big companies can outsource. Private Equity can pillage. Agriculture and the meat industry can hire migrant workers with little impediment. But unions are bad because once in awhile a manager has to wait because of work-rules. Or every once in awhile a steward will get busted for corruption. Or "there's this guy who shows up drunk and they can't fire him." I know a drunk incompetent guy who can't get fired too. He makes $500k and is a nephew of a billionaire. Every charge in a unions-are-bad screed can usually be turned around right back at the management/ownership class.
...
This article was about the distribution side of Amazon. Not tech. That being said, I program for a living. I get paid pretty well because I don't move fast and I don't break things. Tech professionals need at least a professional guild. But, they think they are special so they will squander the era when they actually have organizing power.
...
Why would the company care if they do join a union? Can't they simply refuse to negotiate with the union?
"Not represented by a union, but want to be? If a majority of workers wants to form a union, they can select a union in one of two ways: If at least 30% of workers sign cards or a petition saying they want a union, the NLRB will conduct an election. If a majority of those who vote choose the union, the NLRB will certify the union as your representative for collective bargaining. An election is not the only way a union can become your representative. Your employer may voluntarily recognize a union based on evidence - typically signed union-authorization cards - that a majority of employees want it to represent them. Once a union has been certified or recognized, the employer is required to bargain over your terms and conditions of employment with your union representative. Special rules apply in the construction industry."
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/whats-law
That's in the US obviously.
Oh. So once again bad laws cause the whole problem...
Most fields except: retail, food service, food delivery, warehouse work, customer service/support, auto repair, etc. Basically, half the people in the US if not more.
Society rewards contribution it finds valuable. The amount of that reward is an extremely valuable signal for people to find ways to increase the quality or quantity of their contribution.
I guess employees are choosing to let rich people take all the wealth they generate, then. How very generous of employees.
I guess what I'm basically saying is that the evidence indicates that what you just said is bullshit.
I know there are organisational structures in which all kinds of people cooperate to create wealth which is then distributed along to clearly agreed and understood rules to funders, investors and workers. They are called companies and all participants are adult, informed and consenting.
This isn't exactly esoteric knowledge. It's pretty widely known. Your assertion that employees have the power would suggest that employees are choosing to give these gains to the rich. That's just plain nonsense. All those people making minimum wage at Walmart; do they really look to you like they're in the driving seat?
Not aware of any evidence? You don't have to agree with Piketti to be aware of him; to be unaware of his work is to be wilfully ignorant. Best selling economist of the last decade? Enormously widely sold? Discussed in almost every economic forum? If you are genuinely unaware of any of the work on the subject (even those who vehemently disagree are still aware of it), then you are phenomenally ignorant in the field and should probably just not say anything.
But today anybody can own stock in companies so I guess everybody had the opportunity to enjoy those gains.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/8/16112368/pi...
Why do you even bother coming to the internet if you already know everything? I bet, I bet you think of yourself as hyper-rational. That you don't have biases, you're rational. That you can work things out from first principles and if reality disagrees, reality is wrong. I bet you have some fantasy about the "free market" and that by definition everything that happens in it is right and fair.
I do note that your argument has switched right round. Suddenly you realise you were wrong and that employees don't actually have the upper hand? Do you think people don't notice when you backtrack and change your argument mid-way through?
The free market and being rational are tools that are proven to work. They brought all the advances we enjoy every day in our life. I am eager to learn the other tools you propose instead.
Oh, and of course I am aware of Piketty. I also know he is wrong, laughably and demonstrably so. Not the first economist to be wrong, anyway. Turns out being well known doesn't make you right - kind of like Marx I guess.
Possibly this is true for the kind of jobs that many HN readers tend to have. But many, many people have to slog it out in low-skilled or semi-skilled jobs with minimal ability to bargain, and with almost all power on the side of the employer.
I didn't say any of that. I was commenting on the assertion that "today's situation favours the employee in most fields". Which is demonstrably untrue for many people.
And I was also implicitly asserting that society should create the conditions for all workers to be treated decently, whether or not they receive a high salary.
Ah yes, the invocation of the Free Market Fairy https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/
Ironically, flagging a post without bad content is just the sort of passive aggressive crap you have to put up with in a union.
BTW, Amazon is still using Pinkertons to repress unionization attempts[0]. Things haven't changed that much after all.
- [0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-pinkerton-agency-spie...
Things have just gotten more politically correct, because now every employee could record your Pinkertons beating up people and share it with the whole world.
Don't think things have changed for any other reason that we forced them to do that.
We did not. Unless you are seventy. The changing laws of our country that make unions less useful have also gotten rid of private armies.
> The struggle is still the same.
Wow, no. Not at all. Not having people willing or able to hurt you kinda makes all the difference.
The fundamental goal of a union is to force executives at a company to do things that benefit workers that they wouldn't otherwise do.
> Can't they simply refuse to negotiate with the union?
If the union has a small enough fraction of their employee base as members such that they company can afford the productivity loss of a strike, yes. Once a large enough fraction of workers are in the union, the threat of a strike puts enough pressure on executives that it is in their best interest to negotiate.
That’s why the slogan “run the government like a business” doesn’t work. It would mean to ignore the weakest in society (maybe lay them off?) for the benefit of a few at the top.
If it's underpaid, why do it? If you do it, what makes it "under" paid?
By taking the job, you confirm the wage is right.
I'm not saying this is fair.
You can take advantage of people when they’re in dire straits. That’s not indicative of some greater truth about the price of labor but a fact of exploitation.
Then what are you and me, who didn't even offer a rate? If they would've literally starved without the offer, it literally saved their life.
If a persons situation is not made worse by a job offer, then what's the problem? They would've still been worse off without it.
The reason people work at amazon warehouses is because they don't have other choice. For many there simply are no other jobs that pay or treat you better.
It's not my fault the kids skipping class, having fun and making jokes during teacher's lessons are now paid less than me.
Society offers plenty of opportunities but not to people who did noting to prepare themselves to take advantage of them.
Obviously not. This society relies entirely on the fact that a good portion of the population can be blackmailed into doing the bad jobs, while the other small portion enjoys the fruits.
If nobody could be forced to take shitty jobs, how would most of the current industries exist?
This is what we should push for, not artificially and undeservedly reward those jobs more and thus trap ever more people into them.
My grandmother was illiterate. That condemned her to a hard life of struggle and hard work. But she stayed on my father's ass to study. My father stayed on my ass and I am staying on my children's. The lesson was so strong, three generations are benefiting.
For this reason I'm also convinced that every single kid should have access to the same high quality education, independently from how much their family pushes them to it.
I'm also convinced that people should have the chance to get back on studies at a later point in life, because it's a delusion to think that every kid will understand the need for education in their teenage years.
I have to stay on their ass and push them to study. I am motivated to do that because I know how crappy low-level jobs are (I had one). Otherwise my default would be to let them do whatever they want. I love them!
A society which removes the motivation for its members to better themselves is a failed society.
And I don't know a better way to teach most people that fire is dangerous than a controlled burn...
The latter is impossible to answer since "low wage" is relative, much like if everyone had millions of $ for every $ they owned, the currency would simply devalue.
That said, in a nation full of skilled, competent workers, the nation would be more productive overall (more "fruits" to go around), and more competitive abroad - so it's not a zero-sum game in that sense.
> waitresses, warehouse workers
I couldn't care less if waitressing disappeared, I prefer self-serve places; what value is lost?
If no-one wanted to be paid low wages to work in warehouses, either a) warehouse worker wages would go up, or b) an alternative solution would be found, or c) the business is no longer viable and collapses.
> can be blackmailed into doing the bad jobs
and even the people with good jobs probably wouldn't work if they weren't paid. In that sense are they blackmailed too?
> If nobody could be forced to take shitty jobs, how would most of the current industries exist?
By paying more for those jobs, or replacing them. Alternatively, by those industries not existing.
Do you think most industry cannot exist but for the subsidy of paying low wage
Can you give me an example of a healthy industry were the most critical workers are low paid?
If that's how you think people become poor and desperate, I can only surmise that you've never had anything bad happen to you ever.
Never got sick. Never had a family member hurt. Never been the victim of crime. Never fallen on a wet floor. Never had a house fire. Never had your car break down. You always had plenty of food, plenty of money, plenty of infrastructure near you. Never had to worry about the condition of your home, or whether you'd even have a home tomorrow. Someone else paid for your education, your transportation, your entire life when you were growing up.
Consider yourself blessed. And please never run for office.
For hardships you can buy insurance with money or time (family, friends, various organisations) but your choices are entirely your responsibility and there is no way to insure yourself against making the wrong ones.
If I, or a group I'm a part of, controls the majority of the resources, we get to decide allocation of those resources without regard to any other consideration than what we would part with.
So if you go to an area with high unemployment where the businesses only offer at most $5/hr, you can also offer $5/hr even for jobs critical to your business.
If you offer $5/hr where max rate is $5/hr the area isn't any worse off.
"because it provides more value to the company"
If you buy bread for $2, you do so because it has subject value if $2.5. If the bread cost $2.51, you wouldn't buy it.
If you hire someone for $13/hour, you do so because you're willing to pay $11/hour and you've gotten $2/hour of benefit on top.
There's zero transactions anywhere where the value to the company (or individual) isn't higher than what they're paying for it.
They're paying someone $5/hr to provide them with $10/hr of value. The worker should be entitled to at the very least some of that extra value in the form of wages. Actually, all of it, but you know, get what you can.
That's the issue. There's $5/hr of value being essentially taken by the employer.
And before you come with any "but the business needs to profit", that's already accounted for. We're talking about what the worker provides to the company. The company can impart additional value as well. And that is what the company should be profiting. So if the company's infrastructure and economies of scale allow it to effectively sell the employee's effort at $15/hr, it does get to pocket that $5/hr. That's fair.
But like I said, due to the radical power imbalance, employers often get to engage in labor arbitrage. In which they underpay labor because employees often have no recourse. That doesn't make the labor worth less.
The company is therefore happy to pay between $0/hour and $14.99/hour to the employee, depending on the supply of relevant labor.
Where did the $10/hour number come from?
Which is why a lot of people want to steer away from the conversation of what labor is worth. Because we may have to admit that companies are short-changing their workers (no matter where they are working).
> $15/hour, then that is the value of the employee to the company.
That's an assertion that I do not grant you. And by definition of the fictional world I created, would not be true. The value they provide is $10/hr.
But let's assume that it is $15/hr for a second. Then, if the company provides no value whatsoever, then why should they get anything?
Why can't the worker just go and sell to whoever the company was selling to and make the money directly?
That reason is the value the company provides. And it is worth something. And I'm completely willing to acknowledge that. Just because something can be sold for $X doesn't mean any single part of the chain to produce that item provided all of the value.
Yes, I realize that.
I figured out the misunderstanding. Your $10/hour figure is net value after wages ($15/hour - $5/hour), whereas I was assuming you meant gross value provided by the employee to the employer. So, at least we're on the same page regarding that now.
> That reason is the value the company provides.
Yeah, exactly. Labor is one of the factors of production. The company puts all the factors together in a way that individuals cannot (due to scale or whatever), and pays labor a rent based on market prices. It also pays land or capital (other factors of production) rents too, based on market prices in the property and corporate bond markets.
Where we depart is on the normative judgement that labor should be paid more of that surplus value creation than what it's currently getting. The fact is that they currently are capturing some of that value creation, and that amount is determined by supply and demand in the labor market. The reason they don't get more is there's a large over-supply of fungible unskilled labor which just isn't that useful. It's like if there's a glut of capital or an over-supply of land (e.g. in a rural area); the rents go down accordingly because the inputs just aren't scarce. To introduce an intentional mispricing in the labor market, which would need to be done by force, will lead to a misallocation of resources. If inequality is a concern, there are less economically damaging policies to consider.
Where we especially depart is on the framing of this as exploitation. This mindset only leads to more human suffering. If you offer someone a job for $X+1/hour when their alternative is $X/hour, you've made their life better off, and we want to incentivize this as much as possible instead of condemning it because $X+1/hour is "too small". It is after-all what pulled China out of poverty, and if we instead had pushed this exploitation narrative, we might not have seen this humanitarian miracle play out.
And I'm saying that explicitly, it's not up for debate.
The price of the item is the sum of all the value of all parties have put into the item. $15 is the sum of the values all parties invested. The employee invested $10 worth of value, the employer invested $5. But the employee is only getting compensated for $5 of that value because of a radical power imbalance.
Most of China is still poor.
You seem to be hung on this "better off than before" thing. And while it may be technically true, it's kind of missing the point. Something can be better than nothing and still not fair.
Gross value = $15/hour
Net value = $15/hour - $5/hour = $10/hour
This is an uncontroversial and standard use of "gross" and "net". Replace "employee" with anything else ("bitcoin mining rig") and you'll see what I mean.
You can define "net value" above to be the same as just plain "value", and that's fine, I believe we're talking about the same thing there.
"because of a radical power imbalance"
Table salt is cheap because there's an oversupply of table salt. The same with unskilled labor.
House cleaners are cheap. I'd be happy to pay them $100/hour (that's the amount of subjective value it brings me) but I only need to pay them $20/hour - and that's because of an oversupply of house cleaners. I, as an individual, have no power here. There's no power structure I am exploiting to suppress the wages of house cleaners, in fact the market is very decentralized. Power is not a significant causal factor.
"Most of China is still poor."
The employee is paid $5.
What the employee made is sold for $15.
The value of what the employer brings to the table is $5.
So there is $10 of value in what just the employee did. But he's only getting paid for half of that value. The rest is being captured by the employer because the employer can dictate terms.
You're arguing that the radical power imbalance shouldn't be addressed because that that radical power imbalance can be exploited.
And China's income disparity is getting worse. And the rural areas aren't much better off.
Wouldn't it be even better then if they hired people for more than $5/hr?
What's so wrong with paying a fair wage for fair work?
The employee combined with the employer are jointly generating $15/hour, and it's impossible to do attribution from an armchair. We just know that the entire company - the cyborg of labor/execs/machinery/land/IP/relationships/etc - is jointly producing that revenue.
Maybe the employer bought some expensive machinery that the employee relies on, has exclusive and cultivated relationships, rents expensive land, etc.
It's therefore presumptive to assert that the employer is contributing only $5/hour to that entire process. They're contributing $5/hour in wages, plus all the other stuff they bring to the table (machinery etc).
"You're arguing that the radical power imbalance shouldn't be addressed because that that radical power imbalance can be exploited."
Unskilled labor is a fungible commodity just like table salt. That is how labor is priced. Supply and demand. Not power. There's no power structure that's dictating that house cleaners only get $20/hour. I hire a house cleaner for $20/hour because there's an over-supply of house cleaners.
"What's so wrong with paying a fair wage for fair work?"
If you think power determines prices, I can see why you would come to a different conclusion. But I believe power is causally mostly irrelevant here, which is why I'm at my conclusion.
Added bonus that market prices tends to lead to optimal resource allocation (barring negative externalities).
"And China's income disparity is getting worse."
If I pay someone $5/hr to provide them with $10/hr of value, the benefit to the employer is $5/hr.
If I pay someone $10/hr to provide them with $10/hr of value, there is no benefit to the employer.
Why would anyone care to employ anyone for no benefit, beyond charity?
Furthermore, "$X/hr of value" is a little suspect - the $ value of something is only determined after a product or service is sold; and there may be many contributing factors to that sale. Determining what % a given action contributes towards a sale is subjective, and usually resolved in the following manner: "How much would this cost me if I bought from someone else" i.e. determined by the market, the exact thing which would be destroyed by your proposal.
If a product is made by several workers on a production line (and assisted by designers, machine maintainers, sales & marketing etc etc) how do you determine the $ value of each contribution, beyond auction-style competition?
On that point: what is the value of drinking water? If you never drank water you would die, so it is arguably worth a lot - so why pay so little? a lifetime of water keeping you alive is worth thousands of dollars, so why ever pay less that $3 a litre?
Of course, I understand the true aim here: If minimum living wage is $LMW pa then no job should pay less than that.
What complicates this is;
1) people can have multiple jobs to meet $LMW, so maybe an hourly rate should be the standard i.e. if you pay 0.5 $LMV then you should only take half the usual working hours (so people can get a second job) and the job should not be so physically or mentally draining that it would disallow this either.
2) jobs based on commission become tricky as profit is not guaranteed. I suppose you could just pay $LMW and grant commission once you're over some quota. That said, invalidating some of these schemes may be beneficial. Maybe self-funded start-ups should be required to pay themselves a token wage from savings?
3) $LMW will differ by area, QOL is hard to determine and this will require a lot of influence in the market by government. That said, a flat national rate might equalise this; giving benefit to poorer areas, and pushing people out of the areas of concentrated wealth. At the same time, this has negative effects; binding people to poorer areas and pushing them out of concentrations of wealth..
This might not address your concern though, if $LMW is $5/hr, your worker bringing $10/hr of value still won't be paid more.
Final point: lower wages, can bootstrap businesses inter high-paying ones, and careers into higher paying ones (e.g. see low/unpaid internships). Even larger established businesses may be more likely to take a gamble on something if they can initially pay lower wages until the project is profitable. All of this has downside too. It's all a question of shuffling debt - arguably a business owner with no obligation to pay higher wages at a later stage should therefore shoulder all debt from unprofitable stages, and should take on a loan rather than pay lower wages; At the same time, smaller business owners might not have the credit for that; Maybe a better option would be some kind of scheme where lower-paid employees are compensated in company bonds?
The employer is adding $5/hr of value to the end product. That is their profit.
You cannot pay someone $5/hr to provide them with $10/hr of value. You provided them with $5/hr.
You can pay someone $5/hr to provide you with $10/hr of value. In which case, you are undervaluing their work by $5/hr.
What is "$10/hr of value" as distinct for what you paid for it? Is it based on how much you sold the end-product for?
If that's the case, you paid $X/hr to earn an extra $X/hr - in other words no extra profit, is that not correct?
Factory workers in China get paid less than $5/hour, yet this so-called "exploitation" directly led to a large reduction in poverty[1]. If everyone had accepted your framing and refused to do manufacturing business with China on that basis, the consequence of that would be more poverty and human suffering.
If a person is being paid $4/hour and you come in and offer a $5/hour job, you are making their situation better and you are improving their life.
[1]https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/poverty-rate
A wage that just lifted someone out of poverty isn't exploitative by definition, unless we've mangled the definition of exploitation beyond recognition and we're trying to incentivize behavior with our language that literally creates more poverty.
Table salt and unskilled labor are both cheap primarily because there's an over-supply relative to demand.
Cleaners (as an example) provide huge value-add, but it's not unique value-add because there's millions of people that are capable of providing that service, and therefore the market rate is low. There's no centralized power that's dictating that cleaners should earn a low wage.
Some reasons for over-supply of unskilled labor in rich countries are globalization (U.S. workers now need to compete with Chinese factory workers for manufacturing) and technology/automation.
This isn't to understate the incredible difficulty of being poor, but let's not misdiagnose what the real reasons are for low wages.
Yes, by pure math and market economics, I guess you might be right. But by hearth, I'm sure even you realize that it's not that black and white in reality.
* Most labour isn't high value
* Western workers have an expectation of a high standard of living that grew out of post-War economic expansion
* Employer/Employee relations are asymmetric: the former has greater market power to influence pricing than the latter
* Fairness in human relations is an independent notion from the economic clearing price, cf. The Dictator Game
* The most effective techniques at causing change involve at least some appeals to emotion or outrage
Put this together and you'll get this thread.
1) employee / employer relations are not "human relations"; Actual human relationships involve transactions that are more than just monetary. A corporation offering jobs in a location is not otherwise involved in the economics of that place.
2) "The most effective techniques at causing change involve at least some appeals to emotion or outrage"
What techniques/changes? political?
Plenty techniques involving emotion or outrage are among the least effective too.
That's exactly why I said:
employee / employer relations are not "human relations"
But since you responded with smug condescension, it seems like your more interested in implying that I'm stupid (don't understand) and you're clever (I can tutor) than responding in good faith.
I see you've never been poor. I have. Sometimes you take any job, no matter the wage, just to keep the wolves at bay and food on the table.
As though almost all the unprecedented levels of pandemic relief in the US haven’t gone to anything but people that need relief.
Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of dollars went to people making less than $75,000 a year. Seems like a good chunk of the relief went to those most likely to need it.
> Only about 5 percent of that total is funding public health efforts related to the pandemic, according to the nonpartisan number crunchers at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).
This. WTF. I hear this sort of thing and it's always a surprise, no matter how many times I hear it. Like that bullshit about being allocated a certain number of sick days. Like they're basically holiday days, but you can only use them when you're sick. I guess this then means that if you're sick, you're more likely to lose your job and as a bonus in the fucked up nightmare I'm describing, lose your employer-provided access to healthcare. It's like someone set out to deliberately create a system where minor misfortunes amplify to life-ruining catastrophe; instead of a system that catches people, a system that does just the opposite.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/03/03/business/00amazon...
I don't know who signed it (I can read the name "Belinda").. whoever signed it though must have felt a great amount of shame for representing that company.
These aren't bad bosses or people who don't know how to run a business. They just know if their staff unionized and the rest of their industry didn't, they wouldn't be able to compete on price or keep the necessary number of staff.
I think it's easier to pick on Amazon or bezos than it is to deal with the political forces that you've mentioned, or come to terms with needing to unionizing a whole industry before it would stop hurting small businesses.
Management has no reason to oppose changes that cost them nothing with or without a union. In an industry with thin margins, anything that does cost them money puts them out of business. Meanwhile a union that can't achieve meaningful concessions is collecting dues for no benefit, requiring the company to pay more to retain talent and thereby putting them out of business just by existing.
It's funny how the US is often presented hyper innovative, and economically dynamic, while at the same time it is claimed that basic issues like universal health care and workers rights - problems that are solved in many other developed countries - are intractable in the US because of "thin margins" or "the deficit".
Pro-labor operates under the false assumption that employing a small number of well-paid workers is better for society than employing a large number of lower paid workers. Let's say Walmart could afford to pay a "living wage" by replacing their shelves with pallets, laying off most of their shelvers, and redistributing their wages to the other employees. Would that really be any better?
As unions usually live on either/and employee dues and government grants, making sure both the company and the industry overall is doing well is in their best interest, as otherwise the union will certainly not be alive.
So would be useful to see an example of a union NOT wanting good for the company/industry as that would be an outlier compared the the rest of them.
I submit that if business can't exist without a government subsidy that allows them to pay their employees less than a living wage, then the people running the business do not, in fact, know how to run it.
I don't like this fact, and this obviously isn't going to be true for every industry, but these twee 'truisms' don't accurately represent reality.
This is false.
I own a company, in America, and I'm trying to convince my employees to start a union. It hasn't happened yet, but I'll convince them one day
I've been in three different unions and would never "join" one again [my participation was mandatory for the job in each case] and would change careers if my field unionized significantly.
I remember a local news story once where a baker at a local grocery store was caught on film urinating in the cake batter for the store's cakes. His termination was fought, successfully, by the union for violating rules they'd negotiated around filming. That's not a win for anyone.
Of the three unions that I have been in, largely they didn't do shit for me other than take my money. The union didn't help me when I was being sexually harassed by my manager nor did the union help me when my time clock was being manipulated to short me pay.
Also, I've worked some of the shittiest minimum wage jobs America has to offer and I think it's a crock of shit that people _need_ collective bargaining to get a fair deal. It's entirely possible to negotiate a fair employment situation as long as we teach people about boundaries, the law and how to work effectively.
Since becoming a "grown up", I've been able to negotiate my salary and terms of employment quite well. And more importantly, much better than anyone collectively bargaining would be able to for me.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-the-resolut...
Oh? Show me one major regulatory body in the US that has as many union leaders running it as it does leaders from the industries it regulates.