Hacker News Reader

Comment by ticviking | Hacker News Reader

Amazon could avoid this by not squeezing so hard.

Over squeezing labor leads to pushback.

Amazon _has_ avoided this by not squeezing so hard. They have no unionized employees. The latest vote lost by a 75-25 margin, humiliating the union organizing the process.

The Teamsters wants to force this issue in the political arena because they can't win votes.

There are a lot of reasons not to take much away from the Bessemer vote. Well ahead of the vote there were lots of signs that the organizers hadn't, you know, organized.[0] Humiliated, absolutely, but by their own ineptitude.

[0] https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/bessemer-alabama-...

Really? This was national news for weeks. President Biden flew down there and talked to them!

I cannot possibly imagine what more organizing could have accomplished.

i think the public media publicity campaign was well organized but the on the ground campaigning to the actual warehouse workers themselves was not. IE there were more interested in a national story and just assumed they had the workers in the bag.

Organizing involves building close relationships amongst a larger and larger network of people. The President flying somewhere doesn't do that. The article describes this.

The Democratic party often confuses activism and media presence with organizing, and focuses on get-out-the-vote and media strategy without having done the work of organizing strongly-tied networks on the ground. The Obama campaign was the exception, because Obama had worked as an on-the-ground organizer.

If they can't organize a vote campaign, do you really want them negotiating your employment terms against a company like Amazon?

Yes? Organizing is very very hard. There are lots of people bad at organizing who still are capable negotiators and who understand my interests as a worker and how to protect them.

The union in this case isn't some cash-poor startup with people filling multiple roles that they aren't qualified for. They certainly have more than enough resources and experience to do much better... or, as the case may be, to start with a different location that would have been more receptive.

Resources maybe, but not necessarily experience. Very little actual organizing has been done over the past several decades. McAlevey's book No Shortcuts is worth a read on this front.

Also, the RWDSU is not affiliated with the Teamsters. This is a different (and much better-resourced) union looking to step up and do the work better.

In this community, I think you can say, "The more you tighten your grip, Bezos, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com