Union's evidence in Amazon vote 'could be grounds for overturning election' | Hacker News Reader

Union's evidence in Amazon vote 'could be grounds for overturning election'

reuters.com

103 pointsthrowawaysea132 comments

I just finished Sam Walton's Book "Made in America". It's about Walmart, but I heard somewhere it's required reading for all Amazon managers. Anyway, it's a fantastic book, and there's something about their Anti-Union stance in it:

"I have always believed strongly that we don’t need unions at Wal-Mart. Theoretically, I understand the argument that unions try to make, that the associates need someone to represent them and so on. But historically, as unions have developed in this country, they have mostly just been divisive. They have put management on one side of the fence, employees on the other, and themselves in the middle as almost a separate business, one that depends on division between the other two camps. And divisiveness, by breaking down direct communication, makes it harder to take care of customers, to be competitive, and to gain market share."

I just post this because I the vibe in discussions on those union-related posts always seems so aggressive and stand-offish.. It's good to understand many perspectives before picking a side, if any.

(Also this is just an excerpt, there's much more about employee compensation in the book.)

Are Walmart "associates" particularly well off as a result?

I think it's important to remember that Sam Walton died in 1992, and the Walmart of today has very little in common with the Wal-Mart of 1992.

Walmart was a very different company under Sam Walton. Sam tried to visit every store once a year. When he got there he would throw the managers out and talk with the employees to find whether or not the managers were doing their jobs. He also believed in empowering the employees. Employees were responsible for particular sections of the store and had access to sales and inventory data and made decisions about how the section was run. In short Mr. Walton felt that the line employees were the most important people in the organization and treated them accordingly.

This of course did not survive after he passed and Walmart employees are not well off today. The quote about Unions above does seem to fit his philosophy but rings hollow with the changes that occurred after his death.

Computerization of stock control and sales made trusting and empowering the employees much less necessary.

I suspect his attitude would not have lasted even if he had survived.

One of the largest german drugstore chains still operates by that principle and they're successful with it. Computerized sales will not pick up on certain things - for example stuff that is not available in the store but people ask for.

As a contrary to that, many stores have a phone app that lets you look up items in a given store location. I've been using that exclusively for the last few years instead of trying to find someone to help me. I'm sure that these apps can and do report on searches that turn up out of stock items or unknown items.

Of course I do miss the service level I used to be able to get; for example I could walk into a box store and find an employee in the plumbing aisle, describe my problem, and they would not only show me where the item I needed is located, but would also give me tips on installation or even talk me out of the purchase if my problem didn't actually need a replacement part (but and adjustment instead).

When I go to Walmart and try to find the thing on the shelves that the website says is there but is not, I will wrangle an employee for help. Typically they just say that the website isn't always right and leave it at that. As far as I can tell they don't then do anything to correct the website.

It's super anecdotal but my dad has done home improvement work for decades and has found Home Depot to be completely incompetent with stocking their stores these last few years. Many of the employees who have been around say its all due to centralized inventory management (computerized and non-local). The impression is that up until a few years ago, a store could order what they needed based on local demand and not be restricted to only what the algorithm decides.

> Computerization of stock control and sales made trusting and empowering the employees much less necessary.

It also makes distrusting them less necessary because you can know that they've done their jobs because everything is scanned and tracked. You don't have to use stupid proxies for productivity ("if you have time to lean you have time to clean") because you can actually measure inputs and outputs with more detail.

Sam was not anything to be admired. He ripped off his employees pay and when he finally lost the legal battle he threatened any employee that cashed the check.

Better off than what? Than if they had a union?

Maybe we can look at example like the US auto industry to get an answer there? The answer being "if you were an early member of the union, yeah, a later member, not so much".

This is a perspective that will be broadcast by the financial media (usually uncritically) and rammed down the throats of employees in compulsory anti union seminars. It's pretty hard to miss.

Even if it weren't broadcast at us relentlessly it's not like it's in any way surprising.

It would be mildly interesting if he questioned why unions in Europe were vastly less confrontational and acted in a way he purports to prefer, but I imagine that's a topic that would get uncomfortable for him fairly quickly.

Instead he simply declares his sworn enemy "too confrontational".

"We don't need them because it has downsides for me." is an argument for Unions, not against them. The fact that he accepts the need/value for workers in a union, then completely ignores that to say they are not needed because it's bad for the business just shows not even the willingness to pretend to care about employees.

We see, time and time again, that as businesses do better, they don't use that to help employees, they use that as a weapon to treat employees worse. As they get bigger they can drive out competitors who might compete for employees, and can more easily replace any employee, reducing their ability to negotiate more. "What is good for the business is good for the employee." clearly does not hold for most businesses like Walmart.

>And divisiveness, by breaking down direct communication, makes it harder to take care of customers, to be competitive, and to gain market share

That is all true, it also makes it easier for employees to negotiate a better deal for themselves, which then encourages management to replace the people with foreign labor or robots. Such is life.

but they do that without a union. So whats your point?

It's always struck me as weird that unions in the US exclude management, even when "management" is defined as "someone getting paid $2 more per hour to train and schedule workers." The interests of a Wal-Mart bakery manager and other bakery workers are generally closely aligned, so Mr. Walton has something of a point there. And frankly the same is true of knowledge work - the interests of someone like me who's a senior engineer on the IC track are generally closely aligned with someone who took the manager track, which starts out at the same level, and has three or four junior engineers as direct reports.

Now, the interests of the entire staff at any given Wal-Mart store are generally not aligned with those of Mr. Walton, nor are the interests of engineering staff and line managers aligned with the interests of the C-suite. Simply having supervisory authority doesn't really change the pressures on you, especially when there's an IC track (whether baker or engineer) very close to your role. Nor are the interests of the staff of any Starbucks store aligned with those of Starbucks corporate, nor those of almost everyone involved with physically shipping Amazon packages with those of Amazon corporate, nor those of the people racking Google datacenters and those of SVPs at Google, etc.

So there is an entirely natural division that already exists. Our present form of union forces everyone with supervisory authority to take the side of the big bosses. I think if we had unions that could genuinely represent all laborers, they'd work a lot better.

You have to draw the line somewhere though, and I don't think it's as clear-cut as you're making it sound. I'm sure I could find someone who is a director or even VP but is still very close to the "laborer" side of things, especially in tech. Likewise, there are plenty of low-level front line managers with dozens of reports who have no idea what they do day-to-day. It's easy to separate the Waltons from the person icing a cake in a bakery because they're dozens of reports apart. But it's much harder to actually put that line between two individual people at any level of the organization.

Usually the line is drawn at "do they have the power to hire and fire?"

VP is unlikely to be unable to hire and fire but I suppose it's possible for "technical fellows" and the like.

Built into the very fabric of unionism is the acknowledgement that capital and labor have fundamentally different goals, i.e. class struggle. An acknowledgment for which the only logical conclusion is an independent workers movement.

There is a term for unions that don't acknowledge this divide and favor a "collaboration" between capital and labor: Yellow unions. It is not an endearing term and they are (rightfully) outlawed in the US.

I want to go after the presumption that representation foments division. It's an American-made idea and it's not a good one. Take it out and throw it in the bin.

Denmark has two thirds of its workforce under a union. I'm not hostile with my employers and I don't need my union representing me 99 percent of the time. If I have a problem I talk directly to my managers like a {woman, man, transperson}. It's only when my workplace is doing something illegal or trying to screw me that I first go to my union for advice and only after, if their advice hasn't worked, would I ever consider letting my union speak for me.

That's how all Danes do it here. And it works out fine for everyone. So please reconsider this no-good, destructive idea that underlies this logical fallacy.

The fact is that leadership by its nature as leadership, wields power. Workers under leaders need help to protect from gross abuses of power that arise from wielding power.

> It's an American-made idea and it's not a good one. Take it out and throw it in the bin.

Actually, I think your comment belongs in the bin. No one was making generalisations until you stepped in. Denmark may be this unionised Utopia that everyone can learn from (I doubt it) but unions in other countries (e.g. UK, South Africa) can exhibit these counter-productive behaviours as described.

Maybe you mean for white collar workers? The separation between blue collar management and employees is very old: it’s in verses of “We wish you a Merry Christmas”, and is even discussed in the Bible.

I'm also Danish. My dad is a blacksmith, about as blue-collar as it gets, and he would agree with the above representation.

It wasn't so in the past, but for the past 100 years or so, co-operation between unions and employers has been mostly constructive.

This is not a Utopia as some other commenters are saying. It's perfectly achievable if both sides acknowledge they need the other and are willing to discuss issues in good faith.

> It's good to understand many perspectives before picking a side, if any.

With that in mind, I'd point out that the history of unionisation in America (and everywhere) is one of extensive bloodshed as employees have died both from unsafe labour practices [1], as well as from outright murder, intimidation and other attempts at shutting down organisation of labour.

So, yeah, it's divisive. May 1st as the international day for labour demonstrations was put in place to commemorate the Chicago Haymarket Massacre [2], on the request of what is now the AFL-CIO, and to resume the fight for the 8 hour working day that costs many lives and caused far more injuries and people forced out of their jobs - a fight that took many decades.

It's very easy to ask people to not be "divisive" when you're the one with the money and the power, and not the ones who have the rights they have now as a consequence of the deaths and sacrifices of people being "divisive" by daring to stand up for themselves.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

> It's very easy to ask people to not be "divisive" when you're the one with the money and the power, and not the ones who have the rights they have now as a consequence of the deaths and sacrifices of people being "divisive" by daring to stand up for themselves.

The person you're replying to is talking about how people act in discussions about this topic.

So, with that in mind, who can ask you (read: metaphorical you) to not be divisive, aggressive, or stand-offish when discussing unions with lay people?

> The person you're replying to is talking about how people act in discussions about this topic.

Yes, but posted an extremely self-serving (for Walton) quote of Walton, and argued different perspectives were important. So I offered a counter to Walton.

My point being that it is deeply insulting to expect of someone to not be "divisive" when involving parties in a conflict with a century-long history of outright bloodshed, alongside a whole host of brutal practices. It's a classic tactic to put an opponent on the defensive to suggest they're being "divisive, aggressive, or stand-offish" and by extension implying their side is not that and more. You can't metaphorically punch people in the face and then complain afterwards that they're now "aggressive".

Right, but we're not talking about Sam Walton debating you about unions, we're talking about an everyday person who might end up joining one. You either missed the part where OP is talking about behavior in comments on this site or you're willfully ignoring it to make a point about Sam Walton and power. Unless you think it's okay to take the full history of unions and people's suffering on your back and wear it on your sleeve.

I'm guessing this is exactly what people are saying is off-putting about pro union behavior.

Believe it or not, people do find it detestful when companies push back on unions with underhanded techniques. They get off-put when what is clearly propaganda comes out of their mouths. Pro-union people, representing the union online or anywhere else, are held much to the same standard that any company or corporate employee would.

I'd love some German style unions but it's the companies that won't give them a shot.

>But historically, as unions have developed in this country, they have mostly just been divisive. They have put management on one side of the fence, employees on the other, and themselves in the middle as almost a separate business, one that depends on division between the other two camps.

But workers and management really are on two different sides of the fence. We have intrinsically opposed material interests. Management are not our friends.

But my understanding is that's not how unions work in Europe. Typically the unions see themselves as another party that benefits from a successful and profitable company. You are correct that they have different goals, but the difference is is that they want the same thing.

At least in the US, you see much more antagonistic approach. Company is facing cheap imports that hurt sales? Some unions say "fuck you, not my problem, pay me".

The more cooperative relationship in Europe was the result of the labour movement largely winning, in the sense of gaining sufficient political power that the balance of legal protections shifted to a point where the struggles even when heated are generally much less of an existential crisis.

Keep in mind that for many decades, especially from the 1840's onwards, much of Europe was a total powder-key with countries facing revolutions left right and centre, and the political landscape changing rapidly to accommodate this. E.g. Bismarcks massive healthcare and pension reforms in the 1880's were inexorably linked to his fear of revolution. To take another example, in 1923 the Norwegian right wing were absolutely horrified when - after they failed to negotiate a coalition - the king appointed the Labour Party leader to the post of prime minister (at the time Labour was still a communist party); the government was voted down immediately (and the king would have known that would happen), but it still forced the other parties to realise they could not ignore the demands of the labour movement any more.

In the post-war periods the social democratic and socialist parties across Western Europe either got into power or became a substantial threat to the right in most countries, and as a result you saw sweeping welfare reforms, healthcare reforms and others across large parts of the continent.

Unions that had for decades in many cases been outright communists were moderated by the combination of starting to fear the Soviets coupled with major wins for labour rights that made them less inclined to rock the boat.

It's a whole lot easier to win support for a more cooperative approach when people saw negotiation actually working for them, and employer increasingly being willing to sit down from the start rather than employ the kind of tactics Amazon has been accused of using (I'm not taking a stance on whether or not they've done the things they've been accused of, but these kinds of things are not new in terms of US employers fighting unionisation).

US unions have remained far more militant because US employers have remained far more militant. Active use of actual violence on both sides remained prevalent much longer, for starters.

You're not going to see those hostile fronts change unless workers rights are substantially strengthened to the point that not enough people find the hardline approach worthwhile any more.

This view seems to completely ignore the difference structure of unions in the EU.

And unions didn’t win in the US? Have you looked into the auto industry unions at all? The certainly did win for a few decades and it basically broke the back of GM.

> This view seems to completely ignore the difference structure of unions in the EU.

The difference in structure is not that great. The main distinction is that closed shops are extremely rare in Europe, but closed shops are fairly rare in the US too. Other than that, union organizing in the US is still lagging decades behind because such a small portion of the workforce is unionised.

> And unions didn’t win in the US? Have you looked into the auto industry unions at all? The certainly did win for a few decades and it basically broke the back of GM.

No, unions did not win in the US in any shape or form. Union membership in the US is extremely low. Union influence on political parties is extremely low. Union ownership or influence on media is extremely low. US unions struggle to fight for rights that have been taken for granted across most of Europe for half a century or more after unions won them.

US unions were groundbreaking, but their progress stalled outside a few areas and few sectors.

Amazon is offering competitive wages (especially for Albama's cost of living), and benefits from day one.

Maybe a majority of the workers there prefer the status quo?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Once it's determined whether this was a fair vote, we'll know for sure I guess.

> The RWDSU submitted nearly two dozen objections to Amazon's conduct during the election, which it said prevented employees from a "free and uncoerced exercise of choice" on whether to create the company's first U.S. union.

As an iww organizer with friends across the US in Amazon warehouse management and on the ground- no

Unions are just bringing democracy into capitalism. How can any red blooded American oppose them?

Edit: not sure why I'm being down voted, did I say something offensive??

You have democracy in your capitalism already, that's what your elected government and their regulations are.

And who's to say that that has to be the only one?

(Except that there's not even just one; there's a wide range of elections from the national level, to the local, or even maybe down to your city block in some places).

> Unions are just bringing democracy into capitalism. How can any red blooded American oppose them?

Well they had a democratic vote and decided they did not want to be represented by this union. That's democracy working.

In the article it is made very clear that what is being alleged is that it wasn't a democratic vote. What is being alleged is that Amazon threatened to close the warehouse, and/or fire people based upon how they vote. Something that if I understand correctly is illegal, and even if not illegal is definitely not a democratic vote.

> If you read the article

It's against the site rules here to suggest people haven't read the article - please don't do this.

I was replying to a parent comment which said 'how can anyone oppose a union'. Some people legitimately don't want to have to deal with a union, for any of many reasons. For example because the union supports political goals they don't agree with, or because the union favours other employees over them, or they just don't want to have to deal with two overlords, neither of which may be working to their benefit.

If they're asked and they say 'no thanks' then the union should just say 'ok thanks for letting us know' and leave them alone.

There's a weird attitude amongst unions that there is no possible way anyone could not want to be represented by them. That leads them to accuse any vote against them of being illegitimate.

Removed the reading the article bit.

1. OP says: unions are good they bring democracy into things.

2. You say: They had a democratic vote

3. I say: The article is alleging that they didn't have a democratic vote.

Your comment is clearly stating that the vote was democratic, the unions lost, so we should move on. The entire article that this conversation is about is saying that the vote wasn't democratic and was coerced. My response stands, you can't just say "democratic vote, lets move on", because if the allegations are true then there wasn't a democratic vote.

The OP is incredulous that anybody could not want to be in a union.

My point is that some people legitimately do not want to be in a union, and there's nothing unfathomable about this, because they have many downsides. For example where I'm from if you were a Jewish supporter of the Green Party you may find it extremely offensive to have your union representatives promoting the Labour Party.

So you may get a legitimate, democratic, decision to not let the union represent them.

That's the point. Forget about tying it to this particular situation if you want to.

In my state, you can no longer be forced to join a union. At my employer, there are something like 1000 people eligible to join the union. 99% of them are in the union. They often find the people that aren't in the union didn't join simply because they didn't know they could join.

Yes, that's anecdotal, but I've been in two unions at two separate jobs and have literally never met anyone who wishes they weren't in it.

1. At their best unions protect members from managerial malfeasance, but unions also go out of their way to protect incompetents who should be fired. That is soul crushing as a coworker, bad for the company, and possibly harmful to customers.

2. Unions are heavily involved in politics. As a worker, part of your paycheck is being seized to support politicians whom you may vehemently oppose.

3. American unions fixate on seniority and credentials as metrics of merit. This is a poor fit for professions like software engineering and educators, where those only loosely correlate to actual performance.

4. Unions foster adversarial relationships within companies, an us/them mentality against "management". Sometimes the environment is already toxic so nothing is lost, but it can also turn an otherwise reasonable workplace sour.

> American unions fixate on seniority and credentials as metrics of merit. This is a poor fit for professions like software engineering and educators, where those only loosely correlate to actual performance.

Feel free to name a profession where seniority and qualifications correlate well with performance.

Why is this taken as the only way these things can be in the US? My experience in Belgium is very different.

>1. At their best unions protect members from managerial malfeasance, but unions also go out of their way to protect incompetents who should be fired. That is soul crushing as a coworker, bad for the company, and possibly harmful to customers.

As far as I'm aware there's not much our unions here in Belgium can do about that. If there's a legitimate reason they have no interest in spending their funds fighting a court case going nowhere. They do occasionally take action when it's harmfull to the company when there's legitimate reason for firing but this involves the company laying of lots of people when they are closing down a division or plant or so which generally doesn't stop it but makes the closing more fitting to the workers.

>2. Unions are heavily involved in politics. As a worker, part of your paycheck is being seized to support politicians whom you may vehemently oppose.

Our largest unions are very plainly politically aligned. We have a leftist union, christian democrat union, liberal union and then a neutral union or 2 , industry specific unions. Either way tho part of my paycheck does not go to politicians and if it did not to politicians i don't align with. In fact what i pay to the union is a tiny sum. They compete among eachother and these big unions operate at scale.

>4. Unions foster adversarial relationships within companies, an us/them mentality against "management". Sometimes the environment is already toxic so nothing is lost, but it can also turn an otherwise reasonable workplace sour.

I don't think we interact with our unions much on average. My experiences with them were limited to. 1) them blocking entry for trucks ( i could just walk in) when there was a big announced nationwide protest regarding things like wage indexation i believe. 2) Them checking the legality of the contract i was offered and given pointers. 3) Them paying me my unemployment at some point and handling the paperwork.

Comrade you are thinking communist thoughts, it hasn't been that long ago that the U.S. army would end any workers rights protest guns blazing. Protecting the FREEDOM(TM) of US companies to exploit anyone and anything all over the world.

Does that democracy include the right to not join the union?

Yes

I suspect many of the child comments don’t understand how IWW differs from RWDSU.

Perhaps you could be the one to elucidate the distinction.

I would be willing to listen to that line of argument, but having seen the Amazon manager training videos, the doitwithoutdues.com site, the countless other articles, evidence and anecdotes about Amazon's particularly aggressive forms of trying to prevent unionisation, the twitter ambassadors tweeting the official talking points etc.

I don't think we can rule out the possibility we don't actually know what the employees truly think because they're in the middle of an all out propaganda war.

And I certainly don't think Amazon would put so much effort into fighting this if their employee treatment, benefits and compensation and general employer track record made employees genuinely not even consider the Union option.

As an outsider, it just feels like watching media reporting a war. I don't trust it due to propaganda and clearly opposing biases at play between the interested parties.

Voting goes the way I think it should = people rationally voted for their best interest despite all the propaganda

Voting doesn't go the way I think it should = people were clearly swayed by propaganda and didn't vote in their best interest

Either we treat people like adults and trust their voting or we don't. One doesn't get to pick and choose which voting is "right".

In the article it was made very clear that this wasn't about propaganda, what is being alleged is that they have evidence that Amazon threatened and coerced people into voting against the union.

Propaganda may or may not be dirty, but threats of firings, plant closure, etc if the Union passes is illegal. Very very different.

Did you read the comment I was replying to? It wasn’t talking about threats it was talking about Amazon’s anti-union campaign.

Lots of propaganda and dark pattern stuff I saw with my own two eyes used in the campaign, and now possibly even coercion (compulsion to act involuntarily under threat of force) = people may or may not have voted rationally in their best interest despite or because of all the propaganda. my opinion on the result irrelevant either way. in fact i dont even need to mention it, it's that irrelevant. the outcome of the election itself was compromised and there is no magic time travel button to find out what would have happened if we did it over. therefore we must take the results at face value and just really really hope as hard as we can that this is the same outcome as it would have been otherwise

Not lots of propaganda and dark pattern etc etc = people rationally voted for their best interest, again regardless of my opinion on the result

Either we treat elections like they matter and dont unduly manipulate the outcome or we don't. One doesn't get to pick and choose which elections are "questionably carried out"

> And I certainly don't think Amazon would put so much effort into fighting this if their employee treatment, benefits and compensation and general employer track record made employees genuinely not even consider the Union option.

You can say the same thing about any political campaign!

Do you think people must not really want Joe Biden as president because he had to spend $6 billion to persuade them through campaigning?

it's a bit different, voting for a Democrat president is excluding the Republican one.

When you vote for an union, you absolutely do not vote for your employer to become an asshole, it's not "either the union make the employer improve employees work OR the employer does it on its own". The union and the employer could create an alliance to make life better for the employees. Look at what police unions and conservative towns have done, unionized policemen can literally get away with murder.

There is no exclusive choice as to who should plan bathrooms breaks for runners and drivers: either the employer, or the union, as long as people stop having to pee in a bottle, you could even have a coalition with a giant conspiracy to have employee go to the bathroom when they need to.

> Do you think people must not really want Joe Biden as president because he had to spend $6 billion to persuade them through campaigning?

Unironically, yes. But that doesn't mean they would have wanted Trump.

One of my neighbor works fir Amazon warehouse here in NJ, he is quite happy, never heard him complain about it.

Yeap, I agreed with you. The media is untrustworthy and is a propaganda machine. Good thing is they are digging their own grave now.

Have you looked at social media? Most people live by appearances and fake a lot of emotions.

Not saying this is the case with your neighbor, but if they’re just a neighbor, not a close friend, they might simply not feel okay talking about it with you.

I despise my job, but I'm unskilled and considering my pay, benefits, and responsibilities it's the best compromise I've found. I'd tell you, and my coworkers, that I'm happy. But I'm lying and no one wants to hear me complain about the bad hand life has dealt me so I put my face on and pretend, like just about everyone else.

The union is free to pay Amazon employees $15 an hour to watch their propaganda videos.

This paternalism of low wage employees needs to stop. They can make up their own mind and actually have skin in the game as opposed to some tech worker making 10x as much telling them they're being brainwashed

Why are you deeply concerned about paternalism from tech workers who aren't even in contact with the employees in question and are just posting on a message board, and not concerned about potentially-illegal paternalism from the bosses of the employees?

Of course they can make up their own mind - but simply pointing out the existence of propaganda and other factors at play, and the fact that ideology plays a large role in our lives, does not imply 'brainwashing' as much as ideological forces. The tug-of-war between labour and capital has been raging for centuries, and at no time hitherto is it more visible that it has graduated to the ideological battlefield when Amazon starts putting up posters and training their employees on otherwise hilarious videos to push their point of view.

And I think anyone should point that out - whether it's a union organizer in Alabama, a tech worker making 10x the salary (who, by the way, may also have an interest in improving cultural support for unions if they are a tech worker in favour of software engineer unions) or a historian on capital-labour relations. As far as I know, however, no tech worker has contacted anyone in Alabama and told them they're brainwashed.

'Paternalism' would be someone pushing the ballot for them 'for their own interests'. That does not preclude discussion of priorities, rationality, and the rational frameworks (epistemological/ideological/moral/practical/etc.) we have available to discuss how wise those decisions are.

”simply pointing out the existence of propaganda”

Why do you assume only you can see that’s it’s propaganda and they can’t?

I don't assume that. Actually, I assume the opposite - they are more likely to see some propaganda for what it is than I am. But I do think everyone has blind spots, and I do think propaganda is effective, even if you know it's propaganda. Even with a small group of people believing propaganda, peer pressure and the desire for humans to conform with the actions of their in-group can wield significant influence.

In the same way, I have no doubt that many citizens of the USSR or China or Nazi Germany or even the US can see through the propaganda targeted at them. But I don't think anyone would argue with the idea that propaganda was and continues to be effective for a significant (and important) portion of the population.

I would also think that, say, a historian who is an expert on propaganda, or an economist who is an expert on labour relations, a political campaign manager, or a company marketing manager would be able to more accurately and quickly identify propaganda when they see it. Some people can see through certain propaganda. That's not controversial.

You start off saying "they are more likely to see some propaganda for what it is than I am", then go into 2.5 more paragraphs how that's not really true and they are susceptible.

I find Amazon worker susceptibility to propaganda to be a little silly. And I'm talking about "fake news" propaganda, not promotion of a true, but pro-Amazon viewpoint.

Most folks I worked with a lower-paying, manual labor jobs had zero illusions about their employer. They aren't getting the "bring your whole self to work" and "help us change the world" bullshit that the big companies feed their white collar workers. It was very clear that the employer looked out for themselves (e.g. profit) and workers were easily replaceable.

I think people who claim they were manipulated need to give the workers a little more credit.

This is an ahistorical argument that is wildly ignorant of the power dynamics between labor and capital, with a Nassim Taleb-ism shoe-horned in to a place where it doesn't fit.

And isn’t this the core issue behind nearly every political disagreement? Who has power, and how can we take it. I’m not saying that’s always bad, but it is, at the end of the day, about control.

And here I was thinking political disagreement was about solving problems and reaching compromises to everyone's benefit. I guess I'm naive.

Edit: Updated for clarity

Amazon is entirely apathetic to the concerns of their warehouse and trucking staff. That's why they need to wear diapers, soil themselves, shit in bags in the back of their trucks, and piss in bottles. If Amazon was interested in compromising we wouldn't be seeing nationwide coverage of these issues wherever Amazon builds a warehouse.

How doesn't it fit?

You don't live in this neighborhood. You don't work at an amazon warehouse. You probably don't even know anyone who does. You can comment about power dynamics on a forum for software engineers.

They have the power to seek better employment. Youre the one that wants to strip them of the power for them to vote on matters concerning them directly.

Please don't personally attack people here - I fit most of your criteria posted and your post seems very exclusionary.

I don't see the paternalism in the comment you are replying to. Nobody is saying that workers can't make up their own minds.

To me the comment is pointing out that we as outsiders very likely don't know what is going on because reporting is probably biased.

I try not to have a strong opinion about amazon workers, because I am not an amazon worker, so it isn't my business. If they want to unionised, that's their right, if not, that's their right too.

That said, I was deeply unsurprised by the result of the vote. I looked at the pay and benefits and thought "I wouldn't rock the boat if I were them".

It seems odd to me that people think a union would be popular here. Unions I've dealt with were a nightmare of politics and ineffectiveness. Partly that's their own problem, partly its a result of legal frameworks that they're stuck in.

I was also surprised how much of a fuss people made about Amazon when 101 other companies are worse and older and get a free pass (Walmart still has more employees than amazon in the US I think).

I think this and other issues around big tech (Google and competition, Apple and supply chains) are more about their failures to engage in PR than them actually being worse than average. I wonder if we will see a move from all/any of them to plug this gap in their moats

One analysis in a local newspaper was something that blew my mind: in the US your health insurance is tied to your employer?!. Just think about how absolutely insane that is. Your boss has life or death power over you and your loved ones. Apparently that's how Amazon was able to threaten it's workers.

In fairness, that's because amazon gives its workers health insurance. Plenty of similar workers get nothing (Walmart for instance).

More generally I agree this needs totally rethinking, but Democrats have been trying to do that for at least 20 years so it might be a list cause...

> Plenty of similar workers get nothing (Walmart for instance).

That doesn't seem to be the case. https://one.walmart.com/content/dam/themepage/pdfs/Associate...

As I understand it... You only get coverage if you work 30h a week (and pay for it, per your link). Walmart usually schedules people for fewer hours a week to avoid this.

This is why (despite technically providing healthcare) Walmart is number one for employees enrolled in Medicaid [0].

Amazon's insurance kicks in at 20h a week [1]

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-...

[1] https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us

"Competitive" wages are a form of slavery.

It means you don't truly consider the employees value. You just pay him 15 cents more than the guy down the street.

But then the guy down the street will have no one to employ, so he'll have to pay 15 cents more than the other guy, and so on and so forth.

Maybe! If so, a free, fair, and legal vote will tell us that!

> Maybe a majority of the workers there prefer the status quo?

Analysis showed this is what happened. Please don't mistake that to mean the status quo is good. There is an enormous power imbalance between Amazon and the laborers in Bessemer, Alabama.

This has happened many, many times throughout American history. Coal towns are a canonical example of holding all the cards against labor. The hallmarks of that relationship exist here.

IIRC amazon managed to swing it so the cohort voting was dominated by newbies who got hit only by the anti union propaganda, hadn't yet suffered the worst excesses from management and were keen to not rock the boat and lose the job they'd just gotten.

That’s good context. Thank you. It speaks to the power imbalance.

If this is what the workers got without a union, imagine how much better it could be with a union negotiating on their behalf?

>Amazon is offering competitive wages (especially for Albama's cost of living), and benefits from day one.

No. Amazon does not.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/economy/amazon-w...

>The most recent figure for the median wage in greater Birmingham, a metropolitan area of roughly one million people that includes Bessemer, was nearly $3 above Amazon’s pay there, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Exactly. You can work at amazon with zero skills and be only 3 dollars behind the median of a population full of doctors and lawyers...

My impression (over a few decades) is that news stories about a unionization vote (won, lost, or upcoming) near-always proclaim the employer's "vote no" campaign to be exceptionally aggressive and underhanded. Perhaps my news sources quietly ignore the ~99% of unionization votes where such is not the case. But I suspect that both pro- and anti-union readers feel quite flattered by such characterizations, and so journalists have learned to proclaim that in near-all their stories upon the subject.

Whether or not that suspicion is correct, I get the impression that even a slightly-competent union would have fully expected Amazon to fight hard and nasty in this case. A couple stories (from seemingly-pro-union sources) seemed to say that the location was one which Amazon would have chosen, if they had to face a union vote. Compared to other Amazon warehouses, this one paid notably less-bad wages (relative to the local job market), had notably less-evil managers (again, relative), etc.

If that's vaguely correct, then how can the union's decision to fight in Bessemer, AL be explained? "The union is a sock puppet of Amazon's, and losing was the secret plan..." sounds cool. But there are many different unions in this world. Perhaps while a noisy one was picking and losing a fight in Bessemer, the savvier ones were quietly continuing with their own plans for Amazon.

Isn't it a completely rational fear that Amazon would just fire most employees if they unionize against Amazon's wishes. Even if this isn't exactly legal, it would take years to sort it out in court. Rent's due Monday, no one has time to wait for justice to prevail

Well yes, but that sort of precariousness and the obviousness of the power imbalance between the parties is precisely what makes a union so necessary in the first place.

Yes, it's a rational fear.

There should probably be GDPR-style "significant percentage of corporate global revenue" penalties available in these scenarios.

Why do you think it would take years? The NLRB has been known to interject during strikes when either side is breaking the law. It’s not like they can’t act quickly.

Rent's still due Monday.

Hypothetically let's say Amazon is found to be at fault, even if action is taken your still out of work. I consider myself fairly educated, and I still have no idea what remedies exist if Amazon was to close a warehouse due to unionization. For working class people who are more concerned about paying their bills, voting for a union sounds like a very risky proposition. There's a very good chance Amazon would find a legal trick to either lay off a significant numbers of their staff, or convert some workers to being tempts

This sounds like fear mongering. How often do union votes result in closures?

>How often do union votes result in closures?

Would you gamble your family eating on this ?

I still remember being a low wage worker, fear is apart of the job ! Most people can't even go a few weeks without a check, it's not like us where we can quit and take a few months to find a job which ideologically aligns with our views.

More fear mongering. Amazon's not going to set their cash on fire and close the center, they'll take it in the teeth and fight the union tooth and nail at ever step. FTR I'd have voted yes.

See other comments in this thread.

Your sitting from an upper middle class position. Working class people don't want to risk missing a check.

Yeah, I would gamble on it if there were no examples of it happening.

Walmart shut down an entire section of it's business because a group successfully unionized.

One prominent example from recent memory:

"On November 2, 2017, Ricketts posted to both DNAinfo and the '-ist' network sites that both websites would immediately cease operations, a week after Gothamist writers voted to unionize with the Writers Guild of America, East. All content from all DNAinfo sites and all subsidiary sites were taken down. The next day, archives of the sites were returned to functionality. Ricketts's shutdown was criticized as being a mere act of retaliation after the two companies' workers had joined a union."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothamist#Shutdown

anytime a walmart store votes to unionize. its usually stated to close due to some other preexisting reason. but there is a direct correlation between union vote and stores being shut down

Once upon a time Republicans represented the managerial and investor class and Democrats represented labor (1920’s-1990’s).

Now the corporate DNC is just pro mega corps with lip service to corporate safe “progressive” topics that don’t challenge their power. Identity politics etc.

Sorry more of a rant here but I don’t see unions getting much help anytime in the press or national stage and doubt Apple, Google, Wal mart and Amazon will see any real movement towards unionization.

It’s almost like a movie script... see we were open to the idea of unions ... but the people “chose” not to unionize ... wink.

Unions will eventually find ways to persist symbiotically with big business by making it impossible to do small business.

I wish them the best, it needs to happen.

America is lacking a strong militant labor movement. The kind of movement like we saw in Venezuela, or from environmental activists. Chain yourself to your truck, machine, or desk with 5,000 of your comrades and go on a hunger strike prepared to get beat up and flung around by the local pd for a great a-roll. Coordinate with local press to have camera crews in there 24/7 live streaming everything. Since it's a strike, have everyone get busy on social media engaging in the public discourse and sharing dank memes.

Do Amazon employees get a worse deal from the union than from Amazon, via its scale (i.e., healthcare rates, etc)?

>The RWDSU alleged that Amazon's agents unlawfully threatened employees with closure of the warehouse if they joined the union and that the company emailed a warning it would lay off 75% of the proposed bargaining unit because of the union.

Amazon denies this.

Especially the email, either that happened or it didn't. Either way someone needs to go to jail for perjury.

I've seen this one before.

It goes laches, no standing and moot.

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