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Comment by idownvoted | Hacker News Reader

Maybe these unions can achieve what no government nor VC funded competitor could: Bring down this behemoth.

On the other hand: The growth trajectory for AMZ (ie. being the sole "shop" in, say, 20 yrs) will make the accumulated expenses for GM-UAW-style shenanigans look like peanuts.

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You can find examples of powerful unions benefiting workers without taking the company down, but rather, keeping the company in check. Pilots and Flight Attendants do pretty well with airlines.

I feel like there has to be a better example than one of the least-healthy industries lol

Actually, that makes it a great example right now. Air travel is down drastically. I would expect most of them would be out of work if they weren't unionized. That's not the case. Many of them are being paid quite a lot to sit at home right now. And no major airline is declaring bankruptcy, despite the prolonged decline.

To be fair, airlines did get billions of dollars in direct grants from the federal government to pay workers.

They did, with quite a lot of pressure from their unions to push for that. The unionized workers got more favorable pay/leave programs than the non-unionized ones.

Right, but we call that "crony capitalism."

Don't forget the Screen Actors Guild.

https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines writes about how the pilot’s union has been driving airlines into recurring bankruptcy.

AA filed once in 2011, United once in 2002, Delta once in 2005, Southwest hasn't. There may be some coming, but airlines got hit pretty hard with the pandemic.

And there are plenty of airlines that were acquired or folded, but I don't think laying that at the union door makes sense.

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