Hacker News Reader

Comment by LatteLazy | Hacker News Reader

That's pretty overwhelming too, 71% No.

It would be interesting to hear from them why. I think we all have opinions (I certainly do). But I've never worked at amazon so my opinion is low value...

View on HN

I'm curious if it's the same reason I put up with !@#$ earlier in my career: I don't have the luxury of taking risks and I'm just really not interested in upsetting my employer.

You tell me there's a better world on the other side of the hill, but I'm just trying to keep my children from starving this month. I can't even begin to think about the uncertainty and risk of trying to get there.

Some commentary: I think this is one reason why social safety nets are tremendously valuable. The reason I eventually took the risk was because being without a job was not a potential death sentence. I would have unemployment insurance for a while and universal healthcare would take care of my kids if they had sudden needs.

In other countries not hiring someone because of their union affiliation is flat out illegal. (Thanks to union and political struggles to protect collective bargaining as a right)

A lot of things are illegal in life ... but lawsuits take time and money most people don't have.

In the US many would argue that it's not collective bargaining if you are making the employer accept an union; it's putting a gun to the employer's head in the negotiations. Employers are people too! And an employer could be a small to medium company that is barely surviving against overseas competition.

I understand others would say that the employer is more powerful to begin with and thus it's just a way to balance things. And without that, workers would be exploited and society would be worse off.

The reason I'm writing this is that there are two sides of this discussion with pretty good arguments. So just because other countries think differently, it doesn't mean that they are doing the right thing.

Modern morality is very simple

Majority is more important than the minority.

Poor is better than rich.

Dumb is better than smart.

Alabama is an at will employment state. Amazon doesn't need to provide any reason for employment termination. If this warehouse unionizes, Amazon may choose to relocate their warehouse. This is in a suburb of Birmingham, population over a million. So the workers probably aren't unusually desperate for work.

> I'm just really not interested in upsetting my employer.

This is the purpose of a union! Because you band together, the employer can't punish you individually. Sure they might be able to fire/replace everyone, but without a union they could target you specifically and there would be no leverage or help.

Yeah I can think of lots of reasons for this loss.

1. It's always harder to get people to vote to change the status quo. Even if people think the change is going to be good, people are usually risk averse so you need to work harder to change things vs stay the same.

2. Their general opinion about unions is poor.

3. Their specific opinion about this union and the unionization effort is poor.

4. Dues were too high vs benefits.

5. Worry about retaliation from Amazon.

6. I imagine a lot of people don't really think of their Amazon warehouse job as a career. Most people working there probably only plan to do it for a few years, in which case the value of union membership falls dramatically.

Just some ideas.

My guess is the messaging about dues. Lots of people focused on the short term hit to their paychecks. Most of the stories reference $500/month. That does seem high.

Data I can find for other unions shows somewhere between 1 to 4 percent of gross pay as typical for union dues. Assuming $15/hour, 4 percent of gross pay would be $144/month. But, if $500/month is accurate, it's 13.8% of gross pay for $15/hour workers, and 10.4% of gross for $20/hour workers. That's very high.

Edit: $500/year. There were many news stories with the inaccurate $500/month quote.

That short term hit can have long term consequences.

If I'm scraping by already, I'm not looking forward to taking another hit to an already stretched paycheck.

It does seem like the union missed an opportunity here. They should have offered some ramp up, or reconsidered the $500/month.

If that's indeed accurate, it's 13.8% of gross pay for $15/hour workers, and 10.4% of gross for $20/hour workers. That seems really high.

Edit: It's apparently $500/year, see other posts though, many news stories did post $500/month.

If that is indeed the primary motivator, that folks are literally getting paid so little that they can't afford the union dues then two things should happen

The union should wave union dues until wages rise

and ???

This seems not unlike Walmart informing employees that it is paying them so little that they qualify for Food Stamps.

Looking forward to the Amazon paper, "Pareto Optimal Employee Compensation for Maintaining Fluid Labor Markets"

Alabama is a right to work state. No one has to pay dues.

https://www.justia.com/employment/unions/right-to-work-and-u...

> A union is an exclusive collective bargaining agent, which means that it must fairly represent all of the workers in the bargaining unit, including those who have decided not to be members or pay dues.

Well, yes. But enough people have to vote "yes" for the union to do so. And fear of high dues could be a reason why many are voting no. Even though voting yes doesn't require them to do so.

I'm trying to look at it from the workers' perspective.

I can't trust the Union to waive dues. Especially if they haven't said they would. Even if this would benefit me in the long run, I kind of need a place to stay, food to eat, and transportation to work in the interim and if I'm already one bad day away from being destitute, It seems like throwing that extra $5 - $10 a check is only going to exacerbate that issue.

I've been in tight situations. Where I've had to juggle 0% financing and dick around with minimum payments just to keep myself at level. Charges I had to incur due to various emergencies at the time. I wouldn't have been able to afford to unionize in those days.

Now I have a much better job. I just moved into a pretty nice house and my biggest concerns are whether my curtain rods are going to arrive before my curtains and if a larger TV wouldn't be more optimal for the living room. So I try and be cautious about not going too "Lucille Bluth" when I hear that what I would now consider a small expense be a major factor in someone's decision. I realize my situation has changed a lot compared to where I started.

For someone making 20 an hour that would amount to about 400-2000 less per year (1 to 4 percent). With nothing to really show for it at first. At my current pay scale I would grumble about that amount but not be too worried about it. But at the lower end it matters more and I would probably be very angry about it.

$144/month is expensive for many.

Is there anything preventing a competitor from funding union dues? Paying dues on half a million Amazon warehouse employees is not cost effective, but starting a snowball rolling in warehouse unionization may be possible. ~2k employees per warehouse x $100/month. Walmart could fund union dues for one warehouse for a year for about 1 million dollars.

Walmart is historically just as anti-union as Amazon. No idea if it's still true, but anti-union material used to be part of every employee's initial training.

Why would the dues be that high? I only pay $50 per month for my union, and that’s in Denmark with much higher costs.

No idea, but the figure is in many news stories, and I don't see the union disputing it.

The $500 figure seems to have come from the now defunct "doitwithoutdues.com" website that Amazon made. Strangely, it just says $500[1], and not "$500/month". But, "$500/month" is indeed in a lot of news stories[2].

Pretty sad for the union if the true figure is lower, and they failed to get that message out.

Edit: Apparently it is $500/year, though many news stories are saying $500/month.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210223103728/https://www.doitw...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+union+vote+%22%24500%...

The second link is just a Google search. Here’s a link to an actual story that reports it as 500/year

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/early-vote-counts-sho...

Yes, there's lots of them saying $500/month.

https://apnews.com/article/what-to-know-amazon-union-vote-ex...

https://www.wmcactionnews5.com/2021/03/30/lighting-fuse-amaz...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-labor-union-push-alabama...

Though Amazon did seem to be saying $500/year in most of their messaging: https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/a3uk0eKNWqaQAaE6u9Y8qjPmCJk=...

The "doitwithoutdues.com" site just said $500, without saying "month" or "year".

Commented in the other thread, but the original google link you posted did make this clear and I was just lazy / misreading it

I also found 500/month articles when searching for dues that workers would have to pay. Seems to me that union had worst PR campaign possible. Maybe it's good that this union is not representing Amazon workers.

For reference, I searched UPS union dues and it comes up right at the top - 2.5x base salary.

It was $500/year, not per month

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/early-vote-counts-sho...

Interesting, the union missed an opportunity to fix a lot of misinformation:

https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+union+vote+%22%24500%...

What is this supposed to demonstrate? Searching 500/lifetime would also turn up Google results. Still haven’t seen an actual article reporting the figure as monthly

Sigh, okay, if you don't want to scan the results (https://imgur.com/a/ZPXCmu9), which did have other keywords, here's a few. There are many more.

https://apnews.com/article/what-to-know-amazon-union-vote-ex...

https://www.wmcactionnews5.com/2021/03/30/lighting-fuse-amaz...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-labor-union-push-alabama...

My mistake! Your original link does indeed make the erroneous reporting clear.

I would guess, fear of retribution from amazon. If the voting was nationwide it could have lowered the fear that amazon could treat one location better in things like expansion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com