Amazon Unlawfully Confiscated Union Literature, NLRB Finds | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Unlawfully Confiscated Union Literature, NLRB Finds

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406 pointscf100clunk234 comments

Because my engagement with unions has only been positive, I am interested in the amazing number of people who seem motivated to say how negatively they feel about unions. I get that in an oppositional sense, if you don't want what a union wants, then they tend to cast into the bad, but for the middle ground who are not VCs, owners, Managers, and are candidates for union membership, I find it really strange how much people cast them into a class of "money grabbers for no benefit"

Do people feel the same about life insurance, car insurance? Its not that you actually intend being harrassed or sacked (fall ill, have a car accident) It's that you don't want to find yourself on the wrong side of an employment dispute (accident claim) without some insurance.

Unions may be taking your hard earned money. They may be doing things which you don't like (do I love my car insurance company?) But, they have a neccessary role in risk management.

We talk about risk management in the ICT sector all the time. Why can't we talk about risk management for labour hire?

Amazon used "dirty tricks" to win this election. I am sure the Union bust some minor rules too, but overall I am reasonably confident that the vote was neither free, nor fair. I also do think there is no latent 100% pro-union vote out there, and that a large number of the polled workers don't want a union, or the cost of the union, or the risk of jobloss from Amazon if they join the union (which is illegal but still has a risk of happening) -So I don't for a minute believe a re-vote will magically reverse the signal with an overwhelming result.

What interests me, is the basis for opposition to the union in the first place. Do people really think the garment workers in New York were backing the wrong horse? Do people think the machineguns which Ford arranged to turn on a union march in Detroit didn't happen?

"oh, that would never happen now..."

Well, many people have had issues with unions creating an environment where most employees 'soldier' (work slowly and uncreatively), by protecting the unproductive, and preventing the productive from being rewarded.

Another issue is that unions seem to 'strangle' marginal, unprotected (by tariff) industries; they drive up the employer's costs, which can kill a business if prices can not be adjusted to compensate (because of foreign competition). In cases where domestic companies are protected, the unions tend to try acting as a cartel and raising the whole industry's cost structure (e.g. auto manufacturing 1940-1970).

Lastly, unions have been known to use violence and intimidation, generally in one-on-one situations (against managers and anti-union employees) rather than the large scale that the Pinkertons (and the like) were known for.

"preventing the productive from being rewarded" plays strongly to the Amazon model of competitive warehouse labour. I get what you're saying but this also is a reflection of what piece rate, and "fire the bottom 10%" does to the nature of work.

The strangling of marginal industries: Yes, I also see this. The problem is that around 2 in 3 startups and small enterprises fail, and oftentimes, amongst the losers are unpaid workers. Small companies starting on unrealistic expectations need to balance asking workers to do "more" for "less" and meeting legal minimums. If the employer really only worked off their family labour, and had no basis to hire for pay, then has the union really been the reason for failure, or just the trigger? It could have been the public health board, the bank, or any of the other creditors: If the cost of labour was the sole reason, then there's something to talk about here but it goes to the VC funding, and where money flows in small enterprise.

The last one, Look I get get, I know these things happen. They happen in construction labour, wharfside labour, in the print unions in the UK (News Ltd 1970s)_and coal mining. They don't seem to happen in garment work, in office work, clerical, health, banking, ICT. It's not a charactersistic of unions per se, as of .. a generation of specific unions, in physically intense labour, or protecting a very small circuit of rights.

The wharfies basically lost. Intermodal carriers won. The miners lost. Construction labour unions usually lose in the longer run. Gang infestation of construction unions in Australia has been a huge problem, and mega-union mergers fed this to some extent.

I don't have "rebuttal" to what you say. Except to note, Those are not predominant features of what unionisation "is" worldwide. This isn't the experience of unions in most of Europe, or Asia.

Look at what public sector unions have done in the US - they protect the work and harm the citizen. They fight school choice, fight to keep terrible laws, protect police from any accountability, and that doesn't even begin to describe the damage they're doing the civic finances through unfunded pension liabilities.

Sorry? you blame the union for the unfunded pension liability?

How can that be the unions fault?

I'm not in America, I can't speak to what influence the union has in the civil service. This is simply not my experience of unions in Britain or Australia. The reverse in fact.

Police unions are an abberration, but teachers are treated much better and schools are higher quality in States with real teachers unions.

My southern state had a teacher's union, but since the law forbids teachers from collective bargaining, I'm not sure it counts.

>> the unions tend to try acting as a cartel

At least on this, the calculus may change if the company is a monopoly or cartel.

> Well, many people have had issues with unions creating an environment where most employees 'soldier' (work slowly and uncreatively), by protecting the unproductive, and preventing the productive from being rewarded.

> Another issue is that unions seem to 'strangle' marginal, unprotected (by tariff) industries; they drive up the employer's costs, which can kill a business if prices can not be adjusted to compensate (because of foreign competition). In cases where domestic companies are protected, the unions tend to try acting as a cartel and raising the whole industry's cost structure (e.g. auto manufacturing 1940-1970).

Regarding the question of raising the industries cost structure, isn't this the same as software engineers currently asking for very high salaries? Why should workers not use their bargening power to negotiate higher salaries?

> Lastly, unions have been known to use violence and intimidation, generally in one-on-one situations (against managers and anti-union employees) rather than the large scale that the Pinkertons (and the like) were known for.

So what is your take on corporations?

What union has prevented an employer from raising an employees salary? I find it hard to believe that any union has ever done that.

> In cases where domestic companies are protected, the unions tend to try acting as a cartel and raising the whole industry's cost structure (e.g. auto manufacturing 1940-1970).

Germany has much stronger unions than the US. Especially in the automotive industry and German car makers doesn't seem to be doing that badly.

Almost every collective bargaining agreement precludes any employee being rewarded beyond its terms.

Union is fine as long it's voluntary. If I can keep doing my job and choose whether I join one or not, there's no problem as far as I'm concerned. But does that happen? Unions typically move to mandate that everyone has to be their member, typically making bullshit argument that everyone benefits from their presence, so everybody has to be their member.

Anything that's not voluntary is wrong. You don't force your friend to be your friend. You don't force your wife to be your wife. Why would you force people to join your club if they don't want it?

US law says no one can be forced to join a union. Unions are forced to represent non members. Most states force unions to do it for free if a non member chooses. The others force non members to pay for the services the union is forced to provide.

I may not understand something...In such case why is there a vote? If union is a voluntary organization, then why can't people who are for unionizing just open an organization and join it at will? Who prevents them, it's their own private club, there is no need to vote. People open unions when they choose without asking anybody for permission, why can't these folks?

Membership is voluntary. Representation isn't.

My only interaction with unions directly has been when I was an underpaid wage slave in high school, before I got into the professional workforce. The union steward at the store I worked at stole from the company and did drugs /at work/. I was forced to pay union dues even though I firmly rejected membership, as they were taken from my paycheck regardless of my membership and I was harassed by the steward and other union workers for not wanting to join the union. As far as I could tell the only benefit offered was a guaranteed $0.25/hr raise every year I stayed at a company where I was not intending to remain employed any longer than necessary, and the downside was they effectively took $0.17/hr off my wage to cover the union dues.

I'm sure if I'd planned to work at a grocery store until I was 40, the union would have been of great benefit, but since I had an intention to go into tech as soon as possible and leave the small town I grew up in, it wasn't of much benefit to me. Meanwhile, I was exposed to the grift, drug use, theft, corruption, and underhanded tactics that the union members used, sometimes in direct furtherance of stated union objectives. Based on the hearsay of family experiences with unions, this seems commonplace, at least in the US. Unions had mob ties back in the day, and they still exist primarily as racketeering organizations, but on more legal footing.

I don't consider them anything like an insurance company and my relationship to them as an employee would be nothing like my relationship to an insurance company as a customer.

Nothing I am saying here in any way defends Amazon's heinous actions. I believe that employees absolutely have a right to unionize and that unions can also provide necessary and essential functions to protect workers. But they are not perfect, and it's not hard for me to imagine the experiences others have had. You asked why so many people dislike unions... well there's why I dislike unions and would never join one myself.

>I'm sure if I'd planned to work at a grocery store until I was 40, the union would have been of great benefit

This is an important point to consider, the malfeasance (which is a feature of poorly-run enterprises of all kinds, and not particular to nor characteristic of all unions) aside. Some people DO intend to continuously work jobs that are menial, but basic and necessary to the functioning of a community. The American economy has changed much in the past 50 years, 100 years, 150 years. Wrt your example, one thing has not: the necessity of human labor in the "last mile" of distributing food to consumers. That is to say, it has been possible for several generations to spend one's entire productive life in a such a role. Note here that we're not talking about protecting inefficient businesses or even specific jobs; we're talking about protecting the people who are happy to fill a necessary role without moving "up or out." We shouldn't have a problem with that in a country where we cut individuals - not their businesses - millions in tax credits. And in regards to change in the business environment as economies and technologies evolve: much as techies are loathe to admit it, successful and healthy change must happen on a human scale, without leaving people behind. Unions help to avoid the socialization of the costs of abrupt change.

Based on your argument against unionizing yourself, which is that you won't benefit $0.25 yearly raise, I think you're actually arguing in favor of the insurance comparison. For example, if the only people who paid into national health insurance were the people needed it, and only then when they needed it, the national health insurance would be pointless.

Unions reward and protect unproductive employees at the cost of productive and prospective employees. For the employer, this results in subpar capital allocation and fragility to future market forces.

I would be skeptical of a union for 3 reasons:

1 - seniority hierarchy

2 - protection of incompetent employees

3 - having more rules to follow and 2 bosses to please

That said, I have never been in a union, but this is the reputation.

I work a white collar union job in the US where there is no seniority hierarchy. I assume in most professional type union environments this is the case aside from experience requirements for senior job titles (and, to be fair, these would tend to be more strict than in the nonunion world; if the job spec says 10 years experience, you need 10 years).

To chime in on number 2, again my personal experience is the opposite: incompetence needs to be documented and proven to an arbitrator in the worst case. You can't be "incompetent" because of stack ranking or your boss doesn't like you.

On 3, I can only laugh. Union leadership and my shop steward have no say in my day to day work whatsoever other than as a backstop if management isn't following the contract. Even in this case the expectation is typically do whatever the boss says and grieve it later. Exceptions for safety or serious ethical concerns and that's about it.

Does every single one of these things not already apply to regular business scenarios? Dealing with people who get ahead by playing the people game is already a thing. As is seeing the sometimes incompetent get promoted. As to having a second boss, if you want to look at it like that, then I think you have a very strange concept about what collective bargaining is supposed to achieve, and what the actual dynamic between workers and company owners actually is.

> I am interested in the amazing number of people who seem motivated to say how negatively they feel about unions

Unions turn a relationship that I want to be 1-1 into 1-many. I don't want that for myself and won't work where they have them but support the right for others to push for union adoption and don't have many other opinions on them in a general sense. I think people make it more than what it has to be, I just want things to be simple more than I want some fuzzy sense of fairness. If I think I'm treated unfairly I'll just ask them to change it and if they won't I quit, problem solved.

I'm interested why you say the relationship with your employer is a 1 to 1 relationship. In the vast majority of cases (i.e. if you don't work for a 2 person company) wouldn't that be a many to 1 relationship?

As a follow up, why do you not want your relationship be a "1 to many" relationship. To pick up the OP original question, why do you have an issue for with your employment being a 1 to many, but not the dealings after a car accident?

1-1 in the sense that there's 1 company and me. Not 1 company and all of the employees, that somehow have to agree, or accept what previous employees decided or whatever. On my end of the contract, I want only me.

> To pick up the OP original question, why do you have an issue for with your employment being a 1 to many, but not the dealings after a car accident?

I didn't give my opinion on my preferences on car accidents, of which I've had a few so you're just assuming I don't have a problem with that either. I don't see what car accidents have to do with employment contracts, and the parents point was about insurance and it was a terrible parallel. People are free to chose whichever insurance company they want and do not have to negotiate terms based on what others want, I can call them up and ask for a discount or shop around until I get one, regardless of what other customers pay, the same way I can negotiate my salary when there's no unions around.

> 1-1 in the sense that there's 1 company and me. Not 1 company and all of the employees, that somehow have to agree, or accept what previous employees decided or whatever. On my end of the contract, I want only me.

That is a pretty arbitrary distinction. If you argue that it's 1 company, you might as well argue that it's 1 union, so that is a 1-1 relationship as well.

Sorry I don't want to be dismissive, but I'm really trying to understand your argument and to me saying you want 1-1 instead of 1-many is simply restating you don't want a union. There is no reasoning that I can understand.

>> To pick up the OP original question, why do you have an issue for with your employment being a 1 to many, but not the dealings after a car accident?

>I didn't give my opinion on my preferences on car accidents, of which I've had a few so you're just assuming I don't have a problem with that either. I don't see what car accidents have to do with employment contracts, and the parents point was about insurance and it was a terrible parallel. People are free to chose whichever insurance company they want and do not have to negotiate terms based on what others want, I can call them up and ask for a discount or shop around until I get one, regardless of what other customers pay, the same way I can negotiate my salary when there's no unions around.

I somewhat agree that the insurance example is not the greatest analogy (none typically are great), but from the rest you write I understand that you feel that if there is a union you can not negotiate pay? Most of the places I'm aware of still let you negotiate pay even if there are unions. Another question, is this a matter of principle, or do you believe you can negotiate a better deal than the union? If so why?

I don't care about a better deal, I care about being personally responsible for the outcome of my life. I put way more value in being responsible for my own outcome, even if it'd be worse, than to have someone else do it for me or to feel like I'm part of a package deal with others. You don't have to feel the same way, but the same I way I support other's rights to unionise I think you should allow for people that have a different value system than yours.

I have never worked for a union but recently spoke with a friend who was very upset with with his union because they didn't feel like it represented their interests.

It represents all the workers at his firm, including desk engineers and field technicians. The desk workers wanted to work from home and management was on board but the union killed it. The union leadership wanted all workers to work from home 2 days a week or none at all. Management said that is crazy because the literal job of field workers requires to be in the field.

To follow on your point, it's interesting how much people take the results of unionization for granted.

Do people not enjoy two day weekends? 8 hour workdays? Workplace safety regulations? Prohibitions on child labor? It wasn't unbridled capitalism that gave us those things, it was organized labor. Union membership strongly correlates with a healthy middle class.

Some people want to work for companies that foster competitive environment and reward employees who are motivated to go and/or perform above and beyond what is expected of them. Unions seldom help to create such environment.

Unions make only sense for companies like Amazon, even if you think your benefits are good.

What I dislike about those that tried to form in the US was their direction. Unions aren't to make your workplace welcoming or a safe space (only real safety) or about diversity and all that teenage advertising soft crap or rescuing the climate.

It is about plain benefits and compensation and about unifying the interests of workers towards a company that has much more leverage. If unions would focus on that, I think they would be much more successful.

Plain old propaganda. Company owners have the loudest voices. Newspapers and TV stations will cater to their owners' needs.

I don't have a mandatory life insurance and my state mandates only liability car insurance, which is much less than my current coverage. Not only that, but I can choose among many different providers. If I don't like something in my insurance policy it takes a phone call to switch to another provider.

If unions had been like insurance then nobody cared what union you joined. The lack of choice, both in joining/staying out and in which union to join, is what makes me anti-union.

This could work out. Each time the employer violates an NRLB rule during an organizing campaign, even if the employer wins, there's another election in 3 months. Until the union wins or the employer stops breaking the rules.

I think it's clear that the union wants a do-over and is looking for any technicality that might give them another chance.

Does anyone really believe that the Amazon employees voted against the union because Amazon removed some union material from the break room one day? Of course not. The employees knew what they were voting for and were fully capable of researching it themselves.

The real question is what does the union plan on doing differently to sway the employees to vote differently next time? Repeatedly trying to overrule the employees about their own voted decisions isn't likely to be popular among those who voted against the union, which is most of them. They'll need a better narrative on top of this if they want to get anywhere.

Or alternatively, maybe they don't care so much about this election as they do about making Amazon look bad. Maybe they know these workers don't want to unionize, but they're going to use this opportunity to try to convince the public that the workers were misled by Amazon. If they can't win the workers at this location, maybe they can try to win the public on a wave of anti-Amazon publicity for a do-over in another location.

If it had no influence, then why remove the material and break the law?

should we presume this was strategically ordered by upper management and not just someone at the location just assumed outside material wasn't allowed?

yes

> should we presume this was strategically ordered by upper management and not just someone at the location just assumed outside material wasn't allowed?

They don't even need to do that. It's far smarter to set a policy forbidding that, then set up the incentives so some lower level guy feels a lot of pressure to break it. If he does, he's your fall guy. That way you can have your cake and eat it too: unethical conduct to support your objectives, muddy enough waters to shield you from blame, and a nice little PR show about how ethical you are and how much you care.

We should presume everyone in management has perfect knowledge of all the rules in play, and that everyone voting on unionizing has no idea what is going on because of some pamphlets which have been removed.

part of executive responsibility is training your staff on how to perform job duties in compliance with the law.

if they weren't strategically ordered to break the law, they were perhaps strategically not ordered to not break the law.

erroneously or maliciously, the law has still been broken, and the organization bears responsibility.

> I think it's clear that the union wants a do-over and is looking for any technicality that might give them another chance.

Well, what do you expect?

If Amazon was innocent here they could just let people vote whenever they want and people would most likely not vote for union (because they would not have reason).

Instead they chose to fight against the vote which is not exactly inspiring confidence in their innocence, especially when they bend and break the law in the process.

I've heard this line of reasoning before, but it feels weak & the absurdity is obvious if you apply it to any other scenario (replace "Amazon" and "union" with "Republican" and "Democrat" & then swap the positions around - it's not a valuable statement as it conveys very little information beyond virtue signalling & an appeal to emotion).

If you don't show up and present your case, the other side could win by default, not because they make the best case.

You're basically advocating for presenting a one-sided view to people and having them make a decision that way. This would imply that the union has a morally higher ground but I find that hard to believe as a union is just composed of people who are going to just employ the same tactics as Amazon if they could (albeit more limited at this time due to financial & structural reasons).

Is concept of union perfect? No it is not.

But the point is that in a sufficiently large corporation people mean shit and the company has disproportionate power over individual employees.

For example, in a small town with one large company there might just not be any other jobs.

The whole point of unions is to discriminate against the employer, to provide some leverage to employees to not be completely treated like shit.

If you are sufficiently large company you need to take correspondingly large responsibility and costs of maintaining that workforce.

In my view Amazon falls into both "sufficiently large" category as well as history of being shitty employer.

It is not a one-sided process, Amazon has already had great many chances to show they can do better but they chose to not use those chances to correct their behavior.

Maybe. On the other hand the Teamster’s links to organized crime (and general corruption) would seem to indicate unions can become just as malignant. Additionally there have been situations in the past where the union was responsible for the company going under.

Like I said, the weakness in this argument is it presumes that forming a union is strictly better. Maybe it is in this case. Maybe it’s not. Muzzling any speech to the contrary isn’t great though. Both sides should be able to be full throated advocates of their position as long as they do so fairly and within the limits of the law.

The NLRB is the one making the recommendation for a new election, and, since they found that Amazon interfered with the election not just by removing this material, but in a number of other ways, why shouldn't they recommend holding a new election?

What's the alternative? When corporations violate labor law and interfere with union elections, do nothing about it? More broadly, if Amazon trusted the employees to research and vote of their own volition, why interfere (as determined by the NLRB) at all?

> Does anyone really believe that the Amazon employees voted against the union because Amazon removed some union material from the break room one day?

Except that's not the only thing that happened, which is clear in the opening paragraph of the article. Their were multiple infractions, one of which (giving "workers the impression that their organizing activity was being surveilled") would definitely without a question would cause people to vote against a union and be fearful of getting involved or gathering more information. And regardless of how many times it happened, it was illegal.

I think they're betting that most people at Amazon were pro-Union but had a "I'm worried Amazon will find out my vote, so I'll let others do the voting for me" mentality. And now that it lost, they're hoping it's a wake-up call that votes matter.

I think the accusation that Amazon "gave workers the impression that their organizing activity was being surveilled" makes it clear the union believes people were afraid to vote.

Rules are rules. If Amazon wants to keep the shop Union free, they have to do the hard work of persuading people rather than doing illegal shit.

> Does anyone really believe that the Amazon employees voted against the union because Amazon removed some union material from the break room one day? Of course not.

The truth is I don't think I know what it's like to live as an Amazon warehouse worker. When I grew up in California I didn't learn anything about unions until I was like 30 years old. Now to me unionization makes perfect rational sense, so I had assumed the union vote failed due to a lack of knowledge about unions amongst the workers. Like if you're a busy worker who needs their job and is afraid of company retaliation and you really don't have time to go to meetings and learn about the law and you can't really take a risk, then the "safe" thing is to vote no. Until I really learned about worker power, I probably would have done the same.

So actually yes I can see how Amazon removing literature could have impacted the vote. Looking at the original count:

"The result of the NLRB's initial vote count was 1,798 votes against the union and 738 in favor." [1]

The article also says are 6000 workers at the plant. So the question is, could the literature have helped 531 people change their mind, or brought more in from the non voting crowd? Seems perfectly plausible.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/the-amazon-union...

Both sides are following a standard script. Do you really believe that the only thing did Amazon did wrong was removing some literature? That's just like nailing Capone for not paying his taxes. The union found something that stuck and they went with it. Amazon will carry on intimidating employees to vote against and bringing in temporary external employees to boost the electorate with people who the union don't know exist.

If Amazon weren't an awful employer maybe they'd actually let their employees decide what they wanted instead of hiring union busting private security like Pinkertons.

Not that I think this union drive will succeed any time soon.

> Until the union wins

I think that's hyperbole and could be left at the second half of your sentence:

> Until ... the employer stops breaking the rules.

However, I also think that simply having another election isn't sufficient. I honestly believe that interference like this is clearly unlawful and should be criminally punished as such.

> I honestly believe that interference like this is clearly unlawful and should be criminally punished as such.

It is clearly unlawful, but is it criminally unlawful?

> It is clearly unlawful, but is it criminally unlawful?

Well I am not a lawyer. But some searching suggests interference violates Section 7 or Section 8 of the NLRB. The NLRB website [0] appears to be down for me at the moment so I can't look up exact info though.

[0]: https://www.nlrb.gov/

Edit: the site is still sorta spotty but sometimes works.

[1]: https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/nation...

As soon as somebody from the upper crust person seems likely to be guilty of breaking a law, they law stops being one that is criminal to break. Historically, most laws were to protect the aristocracy from unhappy and desperate commoners. Even the bail system is based on keeping the poor locked up but letting the affluent go home, since the poor are considered the dangerous ones

Steal a chocolate bar? Jail. Poaching in the kings forest? Death. Caught with drugs without a lawyer? Jail and possible death depending on the jail conditions

Manipulate an election via gerrymandering or lose a million peoples life savings in crooked finance deals? Dumping dangerous chemicals in the local river/lake? Editorial in that weeks paper about how that person should feel bad, plus a bonus

Like in many other activities, a "do over" is benefits one side or the other. When used as a punishment for cheating, the do over is usually waived if the team who is being punished lost. See a lot of the objections in legal cases, which are not appealed by the winners but would be if they lost.

A good example of this is in American Football where a team can waive a flag (heh) that penalizes the other team and replays the down if they prefer the outcome of the play above the potential penalty. A common example, team A passes but the pass is intercepted by team B player, then a player on A does a "holding" foul on the player that did the interception. The punishment for holding usually means you redo the play, but that would give the ball back to team A, clearly team B prefers to keep possession due to interception over slightly punishing and redoing the play with the ball back in A's possession.

Point of order, that would likely be offensive pass interference.

A more common scenario is the defensive team commits an offsides penalty. This is essentially a free play for the offense since they can take the penalty if anything goes wrong, but if they're able to advance the ball a significant amount, they can decline the penalty.

Thank you that is a better example.

I understand what you are trying to get at, but the holding you described occurred after the interception (the turnover). So Team B can accept the penalty and would still have the ball.

A slight change of ordering makes your point. Team A drops back to pass and holds a Team B player going towards Team A QB. The QB then throws an interception. In that scenario, Team B would decline the holding penalty, upholding the interception.

You can't commit holding on the ball carrier. It would have to occur before the catch, and in that case, it's offensive pass interference.

Regardless, your second example, of the offense committing holding and the defense declining due to an interception is legit. That happens occasionally.

The actual infraction isn't that important (I just interpreted they meant some infraction), but what is important is that they stated the foul happened after the interception, so it could not be OPI, as that must occur after the QB throws and before the player intercepts.

Edit: I think we just took what was more important for the OPs point differently. I took the point as a penalty occurred, not a specific one. And you see it as "how could holding have happened". Which, if we are being pedantic, also wouldn't happen in the scenario you described. If it was called holding, it would have had to occur before the pass, making it not OPI. =).

Unfortunately leaving it at just a "do over" does actual harm to employees; namely that their unjust compensation and work conditions aren't rectified through union action. As long as that's cheaper to Amazon then there's no incentive to change. And so I still believe that this a do over is good direction but not enough.

interfere with creating a union? believe it or not, jail

You jest but I think if it's demonstrated that non-owning employees (eg, managers) are interfering then a fine totalling some significant percent of every manager's wage should be a minimum penalty to interference with creation of unions. If it's demonstrated that someone with ownership or stake in the company is interfering then indeed jail time should be on the table.

Companies should play fair or face the punishment. If employees truly don't want a union then don't interfere with their vote.

This infraction is about a different Amazon facility, it is unrelated to the vote to unionize.

It’s also likely to increase union votes. People typically respond poorly to petty intimidation.

Can we start with unionizing the tech industry. Pay rates are fixed. You cannot promote someone fast or fire someone based on performance. Let's try that out and see what happens. I'm not claiming Amazon is saint, but the fact is their pay is better than most other competitors for blue collar work and there was a reason why employees overwhelmingly rejected the unionizing plan.

Tech unions do not generally have fixed pay rates / promo schedules.

Amazon warehouse pay is lower than prevailing warehouse pay used to be (amzn brought down the market rate as they're so prolific).

Don't forget that in ubertechland if you complain about sexual harassment or racism, you get punished! And your only recourse is to complain about it in social media. Or hire a lawyer and go bankrupt. Much better than unions!

Also, unionised workplaces do allow for terminating underperforming employees. It's just that companies need to try to actually help the employee first, and have clearly defined polices that lay out the process and allow the employee to appeal. The tech method of software deciding you get fired and no human can override is soooooooo much better.

I moved from one of Australia's largest software firms into a union role and got a 40% pay rise, and it's set in contracts exactly what I get paid and what increases I get. Which I much prefer than my pay rise depending on whether management would prefer to reward their friends.

Tell me you’ve never interacted with a white collar union worker without telling me you’ve never interacted with a white collar union worker…

None of this happens at any of the recently unionized journalists I know or the long-unionized film industry members.

The surveillance seems like the more troubling ruling. Having a security guard stand outside a union meeting and photograph the attendants seems like a thinly veiled threat, and if I were in that situation I would likely jump ship.

>The NLRB’s report on the Bessemer election found that Amazon illegally discouraged labor organizing, in part by pushing post office officials to install a mailbox outside the warehouse where workers were urged to drop their mail-in ballots, which an NLRB officer wrote “destroyed the laboratory conditions and justifies a second election.”

Stupid question: how does getting a new post box discourage organising? I feel like I'm missing some clever trick...

> Amazon had a ballot collection box installed in an employee parking lot “without authorization” from the NLRB’s regional director. The NLRB definitively denied Amazon’s request for a drop box on the warehouse property. Amazon installed one anyway. The box was placed under the view of Amazon security cameras, creating "an impression of surveillance." An employee testified to having seen company security guards open the mailbox.

In general, if you have a postbox tied to the company, then only people supporting the company will feel comfortable using it. Hence the votes will be biased anti-union.

But why? The post box is presumably run by the USPS, not Amazon.

> An employee testified to having seen company security guards open the mailbox.

If this is true, then apparently not.

"An employee testified to having seen company security guards open the mailbox."

Ignore the "testified" part -- even if this was just a rumor that somebody started, imagine the impact it would have.

Thanks, that makes more sense at least.

> After the box was installed, Amazon sent a text message to workers urging them to vote against the union and to use the mailbox outside of their facilities—where Amazon surveillance cameras were trained.

From an earlier article on the subject.

I do worry it's a bad sign for union organizing if these are the types of issues they are focused on. A USPS post office box outside the warehouse. I mean, this is the big deal justifying a second election? I don't get it. The ballots are in envelopes, the envelopers or in a PO box. Heck, some people mail things (where I am) but dropping it on office managers deck in a box for outgoing mail.

Because normal people are not filing complaints about the OPTION to use a mailbox run by USPS -> this just doesn't feel that compelling as a reason to run an entire election over.

It's hard to prove that Amazon manipulated the USPS postbox (even though there is good evidence) but it's easy to prove that they violated the rules by setting up a postbox that was easy for them to manipulate and which they practically forced employees to use.

Reminds me of Sicily. Most local people used to go into the voting booth with a friend of the local mayor. They didn't have to. They could have gone alone. Hell, they could have complained that they were being intimidated. Strangely they didn't... You'd have fit in well.

How would it be easy for them to manipulate it? There were security cameras on it. People are acting like this is suspicious, but actually, it would be suspicious if there was no surveillance.

Security cameras controlled by who exactly?

How did they force employees to use this mailbox?

They mailed these ballots to people at their houses. Literally that's another union complaint that folks who'd left the company got ballots because the cutoff for mailing happened before they left.

So employees would need to bring this ballot INTO the company and then use the mailbox.

The odd thing - the union is trying to make it HARDER for folks to vote. They blocked workers from just voting at the place they go to work every shift. Instead we have this big thing about having to mail in ballots. Then they block / complain about a USPS mailbox. What happened to voting rights? I'm also curious, who contested the 500 or so ballots that were not counted? Was that also the union?

> I do worry it's a bad sign for union organizing if these are the types of issues they are focused on.

I read an article a year or so ago which talked about how the south is one of the hardest areas to organize. I was super perplexed at first on why the union was so set on organizing this particular warehouse in a somewhat union hostile region rather than one in any of the states with populations that would by default be more open to the idea. It dawned on me that maybe the union expects to lose. They may have chosen one of the more difficult areas to organize as a practical experience exercise for knowledge gain to share with the workers who will be organizing in the areas with a higher union participation rates.

I really wish I could find the article again, it was long-form comparing the mean quality of life in states with higher union participation vs those with lower and it delved pretty deeply into the wider ripple effects of unions and the impacts on quality of life in wider society.

If anyone either remembers this article or if their googlefu is better than mine, please share, the content of it is incredibly relevant today and I suspect it will be even more so over the next few years.

Note how security guards are being employed to carry out the will of management, even though no safety/security situation obtains.

In general, security arrangements involve a transaction of unquestioning obedience to authority in exchange for preferential treatment, which can then be leveraged by the authority holder to pursue illegitimate ends, eg doing things that are outside the legal scope of managers (in the private sector) or elected officials (in the public). Because security personnel are delegated enforcement authority, instant challenges to them are treated as breaches of security; challenges can only be made administratively, even though the act of enforcement can change the fact situation sufficiently to render the administrative challenge impossible or moot (ie people give up because pursuing the administrative route is often not worth the trouble).

The security officer's dilemma is that doing their job requires them to not think very much about what they are asked to do. If they begin to have thoughts of their own about what is ethical or not and decline to assist an authority figure who asks them to do something unethical, then they risk loss of their security status and are suddenly treated as a security problem themselves. It's int he interest of authority figures to excuse and cover for minor lapses of security officer behavior so that when the authority figure wants something illegitimate, they have leverage over their security apparatus. Overly scrupulous security personnel don't get promoted.

It's worth considering that a high portion of our economy is based on the use of guard labor (not including regular law enforcement) and that this may have or perpetuate distorting economic effects: https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Faculty/Glenn_Lo...

Note how security guards are being employed to carry out the will of management

Yes, it falls under the concept of "Guard Labor", basically any workers who don't contribute even indirectly to planning and management or implementation of projects & initiatives. That can be actual guards, managers whose only purpose is to make sure people are doing their job, etc. Work required to keep the status quo as the status quo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_labor

I wonder if the security guards belong to a union.

Even when guard labor is unionized, they tend to not to have any solidarity with other unions. See: cops.

This is why there is so much animosity toward police. Law enforcement doesn't advance the interests of the unionized elite that now runs society, including the mainstream media, which is entirely unionized.

The unions wanted Kenosha burned down (which is why CNN's unionized staff described the protests as "fiery but mostly peaceful" with a backdrop of burning buildings [1]) and no police or pesky militias protecting it, in order to demoralize the population and get more subservience from them.

[1] https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-panned-for-on-air-graphic-...

What kind of cryptopunk sides with the police?

Basic policing is a necessity for a free society, and it's precisely basic policing that the union-aligned left-wing political movements want defunded.

These movements have no problem with their figureheads spending tens of thousands on their own private security attachments [1] or billions of dollars being spent to expand the number of tax enforcers [2] or to bolster policing to protect the political elite. [3]

[1] https://nypost.com/2021/07/31/aoc-has-spent-thousands-on-per...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-to-seek-80-billion-to-bol...

[3] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-capitol-police-armed-wi...

"defunded" has unfortunately become a catch-all but with actually has a few different interpretations:

At one end of the extreme it can mean that someone actually wants traditional police forces fully disbanded.

At the other end it can mean someone simply wants much more aggressive police reform with funding contingent on that reform.

Somewhere in the middle would be a person who wants some policing money diverted to specializing professional to respond to non-criminal calls, or to respond jointly with police to potentially dangerous calls that might be de-escalated with expert intervention.

People make a mistake when they use "defund" without specifying such details.

The kind that is more crypto currency than crypto punk, per their bio.

> the unionized elite?

That's some really weird world view you got there.

* The pay gap between public sector workers and private sector workers continues to grow. Many public sector workers are now in the top 10% of income earners, and they number in the millions. Their political power is also greater than the sum of their wealth, because of their numbers. Each one has enough financial interest in the unions' agenda succeeding to potentially engage in PR/lobbying for that cause. Thus they have the critical mass of supporters to shape narratives. Seeing kids talk about how much they hate Trump - something they learned from their unionized teachers - drives that home.

* Pensions for public sector workers are bankrupting states, yet there is no political force capable of scaling them back. The kind of job security they gain through their collective bargaining agreement is also degrading the quality of the public service, in public education:

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/111/3/671/1839935?login...

And policing:

https://academic.oup.com/jleo/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jl...

And every other public sector. The inexorable rise of social spending stems from the growing power of public sector unions:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...

The work forces of media outlets have their own guilds, e.g.:

https://nytimesguild.org/

Which combined with left-wing labor laws, means they receive the benefit of barriers to competition from other workers who may want their jobs. Thus they have a financial conflict of interest in how they cover the news, to favor the left-wing political narratives over anything favorable to the concept of a free market and contract rights.

Public sector jobs on average pay over 10% less than comparable private sector jobs, and even unions don't fully eliminate that pay gap. [0] You're cherry picking specific jobs & unions to paint a false narrative: Police & teachers' unions don't tell the whole story.

Barriers to competition is a separate topic and worthy of discussion, but on the issue of overall pay rates relative to private sector workers you are simply wrong.

[0] https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-public-sector-pay-gap....

The EPI is a mouthpiece for unions. It's heavily funded by public sector unions. Nothing that comes from them is credible.

The fact is an increasing proportion of top 10% income earners are unionized public sector workers, and the pay gap between public sector and private sector workers has indeed increased. Look at the gap between federal and private workers for example:

https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-bulletin/federal-pay-outpace...

“Unionized elite”? CNN wanting Kenosha to burn down so people will serve them?

You and I are not experiencing the same reality.

I guess if you're not unionized and making $8 an hour minimum wage then a $20/hour union job might seem elite in comparison. But you don't even need to scratch the surface to see that no "elite", at least as it pertains to income, is a union member with the outlier exceptions of SAG members who get paid far above scale. So, roughly 0.0000009% of the unionized workforce. Everyone else in a union? Blue collar and mostly low level white collar workers.

A significant fraction of public sector workers are in the top 10% by compensation, and with job security that has a market value hard to quantify. I would qualify that as elite. They are also not a tiny percentage of the population. They have the soft power that comes with being part of a bloc constituting millions of people.

The lower edge of the top 10% is about $110,000. Not a lot of public sectors earn that much, so it's not a significant fraction. When they do earn that much, comparable jobs in the public sector almost always pay more, and only pay as much as they do because they require either a higher level of education, a specialized skill, a high level of personal danger, or some combination of these.

Also you started by mentioning unionized workers as a whole, not just public sector. Let's be consistent about who you're talking about, because a large portion of public sector jobs are white collar jobs requiring higher education, while large portions of typical union labor is much less well paid and has lower salary accordingly https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Union_Laborer/Hourl...

>>Not a lot of public sectors earn that much, so it's not a significant fraction.

Yes, a significant fraction earn that much. According to salary.com, the median compensation of a public school teacher in New York is $100,000:

https://www.salary.com/tools/salary-calculator/public-school...

A significant fraction of those above the median would be receiving compensation above $110,000.

salary.com may be undercounting pensions too, given a USA Today FOIA request found that 3,800 NYS teachers earn over $100,000 a year for their pension:

https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/alb...

>>Overall, 3,800 educators in New York got more than $100,000 a year in pensions in 2019, according to the data obtained from the state Teachers Retirement System through a Freedom of Information by the USA TODAY Network New York.

And that the average pension for NYS public teachers is $44,859:

>>the average pension for school officials was $44,859 last year for the 160,960 retirees in the system, the records showed.

This is significant given NYS public school teachers can retire at 55, and that pensions for NYS teachers have increased since many of the current retirees were employed.

Another report shows that a NYS teacher with 35 years of experience receives a pension of $87,945 on average:

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/pensions-retired-n...

Now consider those pension payments, amortized over their career, are on top of all the other benefits, and an average base salary of $71,501 for public school teachers in NYS.

And this doesn't capture the value of their job security. It's incredibly hard to fire New York state public school teachers:

https://www.the74million.org/article/investigation-nyc-tried...

>>Also you started by mentioning unionized workers as a whole, not just public sector

Approximately half of unionized workers are in the public sector:

https://www.epi.org/publication/2019-union-membership-data/

So whatever fraction of unionized public sector workers are in the top 10% by compensation, we can surmise that the proportion for unionized workers as a whole is at least half that.

Exactly my point.

He specifically mentions guard labor toward the end of his post.

Odd tangent, but the wikipedia page says this:

> Guard labor is wage labor and other activities that are said to maintain (hence "guard") a capitalist system.

I'm confused by the emphasis on "a capitalist system" here. Wouldn't it be much more fruitful to study guard labor in the context of communist systems? Guard labor in communist systems is much more prevalent, reaching an immense scale. Think 2% of the East German population belonging to one agency of the secret service (the Stasi), the immense forced reeducation camps in Xinjiang, or the extensive censorship and monitoring that has taken place in all communist countries.

Isn't it kind of a waste of time for scholars who want to study guard labor to focus on capitalism?

The East German system was capitalist, not communist. The guards were paid wages.

By definition, wages can't exist in a communist system, because there's no currency in communism. Thus wage labor can't exist, thus guard labor can't exist.

Guards certainly can, sure, but not guard labor. I think the wikipedia article is just making clear that this term only applies to capitalist economic systems.

The concentration camps in Xinjiang from the CCP's genocide against the Uighur Muslims isn't an artifact of communism, it's a result of Han Supremacy and a totalitarian government creating an Other. Further evidence: The CCP doesn't identify between minority populations anymore. There is only Han and Other. The CCP isn't communist: they jail communists. A famous one (in the PRC literary circles) just killed himself after years of cops breathing down his neck. [1] . I, and many others, argue that the PRC operates a state capitalist economy [2].

[1] https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/07/translation-the-countr...

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

EDIT: Sadly I'm a bit of a troublemaker and am limited to 5 posts on HN a day. I'm beginning a motorcycle trip for the next couple of days so please allow me to respond here to some people kind enough to challenge me:

To habibur:

> That's focusing too much on pure definition of words and terminologies.

I think, especially for words like "communism," nothing is more important than fighting mightily for the proper definition. Developed nations the world over are undergoing a resurgence of communist thought and workers-rights movements, and the establishment is leveraging the purposefully negatively-tinged word "communism" to fight against worker's rights. "Communism" is being abused right back to McCarthy era flexibility.

Definitions are being abused. Right-leaning political parties across the world are turning workers against eachother by poisoning leftist terminology. I've had more conversations than I can count with people who profess to be hardline conservatives, and then drop line after line of strongly leftist, pro-worker dialogue.

To Supermancho:

There is always currency in capitalism. Communism is a radically different philosophy regarding the organization of society. Actually, perhaps not as radical as you might think, there's ample evidence that many societies operated under proto-communist systems for the first hundred thousand years of human pre-history, and this continued straight into the age of discovery, as recorded by European explorers in the Americas and Africa.

That currency "has always existed" is something economists often postulate but fail to provide evidence for. I'm speaking of course of the classic barter->simplification of means of exchange->currency myth. Common ownership has existed for a very, very long time.

> By definition, wages can't exist in a communist system, because there's no currency in communism.

There is always currency and there is always an exchange of currency for services, regardless of what you want to call the system humans are operating under.

ie In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.

That's focusing too much on pure definition of words and terminologies.

China, CCP, East Germany, USSR -- all were communist from the conventional meaning of the word as we use it.

There exists no "pure communism". Doesn't mean we can't use the word "communist" to indicate anyone historical or present.

As I understand it, the current CCP is a product of the cultural revolution being widely recognized as a mistake and consequently people with different ideas coming to power after Mao was dead.

It seems too glib to say "oh they're not communist" as it sounds to me like saying they're just not true to the revolution for no particular reason.

Well, I'm happy to get into more detail as to why I and many others argue that they aren't communist.

From first principles [1] for example, a communist society is one whose:

> socioeconomic order [is] structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and the state.

To start, I hope we can agree to leave aside American McCarthy-esque definitions of communism, which I will rather glibly but also partially seriously describe as "anything and anyone Americans don't like." If you'd like, I can provide ample examples of American politicians throughout history describing things that are unarguably not communistic, as communist. Good faith means I think we can avoid this.

Ok, so first principles.

1. The PRC doesn't have common ownership of the means of production, nor did it ever. At the start, production was done through enforced labor in camps. There's no common ownership there, merely what I would argue is some kind of serfdom, if not outright slavery. Nowadays, there still is no common ownership, not only because PRC industry isn't very nationalized, and the parts that are couldn't be considered "commonly owned" because the People have very little say in the activities of the government, and those that do have dramatically larger net worths and buying power, which brings me to

2. The PRC has massive income disparity [2], with each income class having very different standards of living and material comfort. Not even housing or food is guaranteed in the PRC. This isn't classless society. It isn't even close.

3. The PRC obviously operates in a moneyed society. They not only print currency, they also operate many international banks. I really can't think of anything more capitalist than a bank :P

4. Though an oft-argued aspect of the first principles of communism (when I looked at this wikipedia page a few days ago, it was written as "sometimes state," and the week before that it was written as it reads now), at the very least one could argue that a totalitarian centralized government with utter control of the currency, speech, media, and general activities of every one of a billion people across several thousand square kilometers, does not satisfy the "lack of state" requirement of communism.

Marxist-Leninists and tankies would at this point say something like "the PRC needs to industrialize before it can achieve Communism" or that they're on the path to communism for some other reason, but I argue that productivity was at a level that could support communism as early as 30 years ago, and furthermore, the PRC has quite obviously no plan for achieving commuism, and Xi Jinping's multiple power-grabbing moves indicate to me that the CCP will never voluntarily rescind power back to the People.

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

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

>Marxist-Leninists and tankies would at this point say something like "the PRC needs to industrialize before it can achieve Communism" or that they're on the path to communism for some other reason

I am very much not an expert on this, but would they really? Wouldn't they be on the side that Khrushchev betrayed all that was right and good and so did Deng Xiaoping, so the bad guys won?

I ran across a reddit group once that appeared to consist of unironic, and self-identified "tankies" and I don't recall them discussing China much. They mostly defended Stalin and North Korea.

My impression is that Marx himself did envision communism developing out of industrial capitalism, it seems vaguely plausible to me that someone would consider the US and Europe, and say, clearly, communism must lie on the other side of that sort of capitalism, and we must develop to that point first. But these presumably would not be the "tankies".

/r/LeftistTikToks is a tankie subreddit (unfortunately, started out as a pretty interesting leftist subreddit), and I created this flytrap there to demonstrate pro PRC tankies: https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftistTikToks/comments/murksh/taiw...

My understanding is that the word "tankie" came about as a CCP focused ideology, insomuch as we describe them as people who preferred tank man would have been run over.

You made a lot of good points but startin goff witht he wages = capitalism therefore communism has never existed kind of doomed your post. By that logic any sort of token exchange system is capitalism, but I think your definition is over-expansive.

Correct.

East Germany had public capitalism. Surplus (profit) was disbursed to the government.

Whereas the USA also has private capitalism. When surplus goes to private investors.

We also have public investment and private profit. Wags call it "socialism for corporations" and the like. Kleptocracy? Whatever we call it, it's not capitalism.

Yeah, East Germany and contemporary mainland China are about as communist as the DPRK is democratic.

>> Guard labor is wage labor and other activities that are said to maintain (hence "guard") a capitalist system.

> Isn't it kind of a waste of time for scholars who want to study guard labor to focus on capitalism?

No, it isn't. That's a lot like saying it's a waste of time for political scientists to study democratic governments, when they should be focusing on (mostly defunct) Soviet-style ones, which is nonsense. I've never heard of this "guard labor" concept before, but it seems to actually lend some insight into the still-existing system that we actually live in.

Honestly, your comment kind of reads as an attempt (maybe even subconscious) to distract attention away from contemplating and critiquing the capitalist system.

A key issue that is not clearly defined in article.

Was the security officer in question, did he/she work for Amazon? Or was he/she a contractor to Amazon? Most security officers are contract

Contractors (security officers) can be hung out to dry (terminated) and Amazon can say the security office was not following the Standard Operating Procedures of the contract.

Which is exactly why they used a security guard, to inject that deniability.

This is how corruption in corporations works. It's all about not putting things down in writing and setting unlawful expectations all while adding layers of obfuscation to avoid personal liability.

Amazon will fire the guard, the guy that hired the guard, the manager of the floor, etc. All the way up to middle management. And they'll do that HAPPILY because the cost of firing that group of people is a lot less than the cost of having a union in their warehouse.

While I don't work in an warehouse/fulfillment center, the security guards in my building at AWS are contractors. And the badge visible hanging from the guard's vest doesn't look like any Amazon badge I've personally seen.

It's quite unlikely that the guard was a direct Amazon employee.

Union busters. There are professional union busting services for hire.

I mean, of course their are. But I just can't get over it. It breaks my brain.

Goons, piss bottles, wage theft... What's a little bit of petty larceny?

If it's unlawful, will Amazon be punished? Doesn't breaking the law usually mean punishment?

People get punished. Corporations receive (at most) a small fine that usually amounts to far less than what their crimes netted them.

Anyone paying attention expected and suspected Amazon to play shady games. Good to see the results.

I'm honestly not sure why anyone cares?

It's impossible for me to have a positive view of Amazon (the company) at this point. There's way too much evidence pointing to the contrary.

Your comment is a broad generalization, yet provides no examples of evidence.

The link they are commenting on is part of the evidence, which I assume is why they commented on it

This is the comments section on that very evidence.

Is it possible to have a positive view of any large company? They are all doing a lot of good things and a few bad things. Beyond that it depends on how good their PR department is.

Would like to know if there are any large companies that actually defy this general rule. Costco is a common counter-example, but even they’re imperfect:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/11/business/costco-5-dollar-chic...

Few people expect perfection.

Hmm maybe "positive view" is the wrong approach. I think "impossible to not have a negative view" is better wording.

Indiffernce is generally how I feel about a lot of companies.

My perspective on Amazon is negative.

Cox Cable fought for their customers. What did it get them? A billion dollar fine.

I wonder when the change happened. It seems like there's a fairly broad consensus now, but different people seem to cite different time periods for when things took a bad turn.

I had consistently great experiences ~3-8 years ago, but I remember needing to be careful about 3rd party sellers towards the end of that time period.

Thing is, I stopped ordering online about a year before the pandemic started. When I returned to Amazon 18 months ago, it felt like the balance had shifted towards the majority of listings being fraud/low quality/unexpectedly comingled/etc.

Personally, I blame a shift in perspective. It feels like their retail teams' views on who "The Customer" was shifted from the person placing the order, to the 3rd-party sellers.

When do y'all think that happened? 2015? 2017? 2019?

For me I can restore it in my blog. At the beginning of 2019 a first article about how Amazon might not be the best option to buy everything anymore, citing the bad quality of user reviews, the potential problem with fakes and the subpar experience with the website (specifically: The search evidently being skewed towards sponsored and not towards good offers, and missing filters to find products by their properties). Then summer 2019 a report on a disastrous support experience (in a case that included a received obvious fake) and the decision to not buy there anymore.

That was very fast, in retrospective. I liked Amazon quite a bit before that, the early 2019 articles even clearly reads like that. No criticism before that. Instead a few positive support experiences.

But that's just me, and not necessarily a US perspective. The fake problem for example I thought to be more prominent outside of Europe. On the other hand, that amazon seemed to fight against unions had been reported here before, to boycott the site because of that was a fairly common position.

Also, I wonder how it would have been if I had been more invested into the ecosystem - there is no Kindle in my home, no Echo, and I started to buy there relatively late. Though a site of mine used their affiliate marketing program even back in 2011...

It’s not just views on Amazon as a company to do business with. Attitudes around these parts have soured on Amazon as a company to work for too.

I find it weird that this attitude change might be recent. As early as 2015 people were writing about what a pressure cooker Amazon's white-collar workplace is[1]. I also had acquaintances who worked there and reported that it's a pretty punishing environment as early as 2008. I guess it takes 10+ years for this kind of perception to permeate?

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/mgbzbx/at-amazon-employees-t...

I’ve personally only noticed (and thought) of Amazon as a bad place to work as an engineer in the past 2-3 years, but perhaps I missed a trend.

Amazon can restore good will with me by fixing their shitty vesting schedule. But it’s probably shitty because even highly compensated engineers figure out that working there is too shitty to tolerate so they had to lock them in with backloaded vesting.

If you're so concerned about it you can just buy the stock with the 2 year signing bonus that makes up for the stock vesting.

I hardly think "owning stock" is the goal, rather than "receiving compensation". Vesting schedules that backload compensation to discourage quitting early are hostile to employees, and makes them feel unfairly "locked in" because they lose a disproportionate amount of their unvested compensation relative to the percentage of the vesting period that they have spent working.

By comparison, Facebook vesting is evenly spread across four years, with refreshers granted every year, so that people can expect to receive relatively stable compensation for as long as they stay at the company. There's no "bad" time to leave when it comes to your vesting schedule, so you don't feel "locked in" for anything beyond the total value that you'll always be leaving on the table, regardless of when you leave. Refreshers don't even have a vesting cliff anymore, so you don't even feel the need to stick around for a particularly good batch if you don't want to.

You're receiving an equivalent amount of cash. If you want to invest it, you can. If not, you're still getting a consistent amount of money for four years (or more if stock goes up).

Velocity of money is more important than the amount.

"Give some of the money we pay you back to the company" vs. "here's some valuable securities which you can sell at some point in the near future when they are worth more than what you'd have paid for them".

Or you can join one of the other companies that gives you a sign on bonus and a normal, even distribution beating schedule.

If you’re getting the same amount of money or more does it matter? A lot of companies don’t offer bonuses at all.

> It seems like there's a fairly broad consensus now

Opinion polling shows Amazon has a 72% approval rating, higher than almost any other institution in America. https://reason.com/2021/07/06/poll-people-like-amazon-more-t...

The headline is tricky there. It's only higher than almost any of the institutions that they are asking about in that poll, which only includes three private companies (Amazon, Facebook, Twitter) and a bunch of government organizations or civil movements. I would guess a lot of private companies and most of big tech rate higher than Amazon, specially if they are thrown in with a bunch of things like ANTIFA, BLM and Israel or Palestina when they ask the question.

Here's the poll, page 15: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OgPzcB75uxXiFmTjUUb-ITIr7BF...

> It's only higher than almost any of the institutions that they are asking about in that poll [...] I would guess

This is pure speculation. 72%, at a minimum, undermines the notion that there is "fairly broad consensus now" about viewing Amazon unfavorably. The fact that they poll higher than many government organizations seems especially relevant on an article about the NRLB.

People mistake their own feelings (and the feelings of their social groups) for the consensus view. Polling can clarify when our perceptions of consensus are incorrect.

> Here's the poll, page 15

It's also screenshotted in the article.

72% is a C in most schools. I wonder how they'd do against Comcast or Bank of America.

>72% is a C in most schools

Applying school grading criteria to organizational approval ratings doesn't make any sense. The current sitting president has an approval rating of 51%. That translates to a "F". Does that mean he's failing at his job?

Amazon's historically had pretty good favorability ratings, especially compared to the rest of tech.

Last year, before the pandemic upended everything, it was at 91% according to the annual Verge Tech survey (no, I don't think they've posted the 2021 iteration).

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21144680/verge-tech-survey...

Axios-Harris (Dec '20 - Feb '21) polled Amazon at #10 with a composite score of 80%, six ranks above Apple (and far above others like Facebook and Twitter, which ranked in the bottom ten slots). But even Twitter's composite score was 63%, which means people can't hate it _that_ much.

https://theharrispoll.com/axios-harrispoll-100/

Oh this is interesting thanks! There's little signal within the top 5/10. I have the feeling after this year Amazon will go down but of course I'm really biased by how they treat their engineers as mostly everyone I know in tech in the Bay Area is.

I think there's a lot of (very much warranted!) bias against tech within the industry, whether it's Google's treatment of its AI ethics researchers (Gebru, Mitchell), Amazon's fake review problem, or Elon Musk marketing Tesla vaporware (full self-driving by 2018, anyone?).

Meanwhile, non-tech people see a workplace with legendary perks and benefits, cheap products with fast delivery, and luxury cars that double as a form of virtue signaling.

Remember when Consumerist ran their Worst Company in America series, and it was always Wal*Mart, Comcast, Verizon, Bank of America, or AT&T/Time-Warner in the final four? Makes me wonder where Amazon would end up today if they still ran the poll.

I feel that people shouldn't be surprised by this. Amazon delivers you stuff extremely conveniently and cheaply enough that you don't really need to think about it. That is about the extent to which most people are engaging with them.

When'd they become a shady flea market putting laughably little effort into policing the wares sold thereon, while still showing "amazon" branding all over the page and generally not making it clear enough that they weren't taking direct responsibility for the listing, and then keeping that up year after year because it made them a whole fucking bunch of money and no-one made them stop, despite knowing that lots of their income was a result of fraud, borderline-scams, and unsafe or unfit-for-use-but-too-cheap-to-bother-returning products?

I'm pretty sure that was way before 2015. That's when they became indefensibly-bad actors, IMO.

In 2007 I was considering a move to the Bay Area and I focused my job research first on Amazon. You can find negative anecdotes about any large company. But still, without even remembering the details, I remember that research resulting in a strong takeaway that I wanted to have nothing to do with the company.

So then it was sometime around the early 2010s that the first wave of bad press came out about the way they treat workers, and I remember being unsurprised.

Thing is, at this point Amazon has mastered the art of getting away with employee-hostile practices.

Take, as a separate example, their PIP culture. The bar to get into amazon is fairly low (compared to peer companies) and so they tend to use PIP to maintain a high turnover and filter out unproductive employees. There's no shortage of engineers wanting to apply to Amazon (increasingly from overseas) and this churn seems to be OK because they have very good systems in place to onboard employees fast. For an engineer early in their career having AMZN on their resume can be worth the pain. At least among my peers in senior and staff/principal levels there's very little desire to jump ship to amazon though.

Similarly, they can treat warehouse workers like crap because there are others willing to line up to take their place. Regardless of the conditions.

What it boils down to is that many of amazon's employees simply don't have a better choice. And I'm not sure what can really help with that.

I spent a year working at a very large company that's well known in my part of the country, not because I wanted to work there, but because it was nice to have on my resume. But at least their compensation wasn't back-loaded.

>I'm not sure what can really help with that.

A basic social safety net. If companies are forced to compete with minimum living standards that are guaranteed to all people, it prevents their worst excesses.

Can we just be honest and say that Amazon - it's leadership, especially Bezos - is greedy/sociopathic and frankly detrimental to long term human survival (based on the zero-sum approach to success), but that it's so convenient that we privileged people will still buy stuff off Amazon?

As with factory farming, if people could see the conditions which their "food" (living beings) were subjected to, they would make different decisions... we would probably make different buying decisions if we had friends or family who worked in the worst jobs for Amazon.

I used to love bacon...

With Bezos abdicating CEO, will be interesting to see to what extent lack of his influence will change company culture.

I expect the rot is pervasive throughout the c-level, but hope to be surprised.

Clearly this is what tipped the election from a union win to a 70/30 union loss.

This might be unpopular opinion but...

More robots and more automation comes on line everyday, soon there will be less and less employees at these facilities regardless of unions.

Unions or government regulation where not able to save the type writer or the typewriter union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Women_Clerks_an... dissolved in 1989

The market(capitalism) is going to do what the market(capitalism) does.

There's nothing wrong with that opinion but you aren't considering all the other things unions do for their members.

A union can't make those jobs last forever but it can try to make working conditions better for as long as the job lasts.

That's a fine opinion. I happen to agree that some what you imply is true.

But you can claim that about a lot of things that we choose to treat differently. Property crime is inevitable, and yet we devote significant resources to fighting that. Same with death.

If you don't want to devote resources to figuring out what to do with a lot of "surplus humanity", they'll help you make up your mind later.

Why wouldn't robots be in unions in the future? It will be part of giving robots human rights and social progress. You won't be able to own robots like they are slaves. Robots will demand and get more.

"The market(capitalism) is going to do what the market(capitalism) does. "

And unions do, what unions do: try to negotiate better conditions for their members. Whether they provide a net benefit to society, is a different and I think very case specific question.

also, the market/capitalism doesn't do what capitalism does. Society functions in that construct because it is still beneficial for the majority of its population Revolutions rarely happen over pure ideological reasons. Usually, ideology is used as a means to an end for a given situation.

This is awesome!

I would argue that all revolutions/wars are not ideological, there is always underlying economic component to it.

It's not an unpopular opinion but rather pretty obvious. That does not in any way change the fact that Amazon is beholden to the employees it has right now and still needs to follow labor laws. They are welcome to simultaneously build as many robots as they want.

Whatever you think of union, take this into account: You shouldn't be basing your opinions on your biases. Replace "Union Literature" with:

- Soccer Literature

- LGBT+ Literature

- Harry Potter Literature

Do you agree with all this to also be confiscated would it be freely distributed at work?

Yes, I don't like Harry Potter and I shouldn't have to hear about him if I don't want to.

All this can take place off site.

Fortunately the law disagrees with your regressive, anti-employee perspective.

Are you familiar with at-will employment?

If I'm the owner of company and employee talks to be about Harry Potter in the break room. Later that day, or on the spot, I can terminate that employee, without cause or reason.

Sure they the employee can sue me for wrongful termination, but the laws are stacked against the employee. (I have been on both side of the argument.)

Please reference a law to support your claim.

You might want to study up on your law, history and economics.

I think you either haven't actually read the article, any of the replies in this thread or you're just a troll.

We're not here to educate you, just look up the current US labor laws and see for yourself whether or not your argument has any standing.

>Please reference a law to support your claim.

If I do reference a law to support that claim, do you promise to stop posting on HN?

Having worked extensively with employment law and little union work I feel comfortable you will never find an example.

However there never can be can be a resolution to your proposal, so with that I will have to pass on your entertaining offer.

I will just leave this here for anybody who cares about employment law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

From your link:

> The National Labor Relations Act provides protection to employees who wish to join or form a union and those who engage in union activity. The act also protects employees who engage in a concerted activity.

That's the law you should be looking for. Check it out. It has some provisions about distributing union literature in break rooms and stuff. Pretty interesting.

So are we arguing about the security officer or the person that was disturbing material?

"In Spence’s case, the NLRB has made a finding of merit to the charges, and has indicated that it plans to issue a formal complaint. A finding of merit is not an official decision, but a crucial step in an ongoing proceeding. Amazon will now have the opportunity to settle. If Amazon does not agree to do so, then the NLRB will schedule a hearing before an administrative law judge."

From the article the NLRB appears following the letter of the law. I'm not a big fan of labor laws, but they are the law so it's good know that everybody is getting a fair chance. Violations happen and there are penalties.

"An NLRB investigation found that Amazon illegally prohibited Connor Spence, a Staten Island employee involved in union organizing, from distributing pro-union literature in a break room on May 16—and then confiscated the literature—also in violation of U.S. labor law, according to evidence provided by the NLRB to the union’s attorney. "

As far as I can see, Connor Spence wasn't terminated. He filed a complaint via the NLRB. Good for him, we should always have a healthy distrust of corporation and governments.

Were there could be confusion, was my explanation of AT-WILL employment regarding some other comment about Harry Potter be discussed at the work place. Had Spence been fired for spreading union material then yes it probably would have been a violation of labor laws.

Although I have been restless down voted and trolled and trashed. The real crux of the issue and the article might be here, with who told the security officer to do what and when. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28055091

> Had Spence been fired for spreading union material then yes it probably would have been a violation of labor laws.

Nope, still wrong. It's a violation to prohibit, it doesn't need to lead to any retaliation to be a violation [1]. Hence the complaint.

If the security officer, even if a contractor acts as an agent of Amazon, it's on Amazon. Even because they didn't train the officer about the NLRA (or they did? who knows? it's on the agency to investigate). That's why when you do some corporate mandated training, you need to acknowledge and sign that you completely understood whatever was in there. To cover the company's ass.

> Although I have been restless down voted

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:If_ten_people_say_yo...

[1] https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/olms/regs/compliance/...

Hopefully, that will conclude our conversation in positive light as we might been discussing the wrong topic.

Anyways, I wish you well. Anger (even silly internet rage) on my part is not a burden I want bear.

Not worth getting angry over internet comments, stranger. It's all good. I wish you all the best!

My family all work in labor law. These suits come up regularly. Over-confident and under-educated small-time business owners such as yourself get owned by employees regularly for this very reason.

I have no need to crack a book and cite labor law to you. Use Google or something. Or don’t. Pray you avoid future lawsuits.

You’re ridiculous, but also morally reprehensible.

Yet you don't work in labor law...

Coward.

Of course I don’t. I married a lawyer. I like engineering, they like law.

Not sure how that makes one a coward, though I can definitely see how disrespecting your employees’ labor rights does.

What a beautiful example of false equivalence. Union literature has special protection because it's a certain type of literature. You cannot just "replace" with what you want. Certain things are protected by law. That's how laws work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Relations_Act_o...

The comments in this whole thread point on a severe lack of understanding around labor laws and ethics. At the same time it attracts the archetypal free-market laissez faire pseudo intellectual.

I don't know what it is about software engineers, but it seems like there's a whole lot of them who seem to think you can learn everything you need to know about the world from one or two volumes of libertarian polemics.

Tech culture is infested with Horatio Alger stories of supposedly hard work, grit and gumption leading to success and riches. When you get Sand Hill Road investors they constrict an origin story with you that follows this path. So luck and pre-existing family wealth and connections get written out of the stories of people like Musk, Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos, you name it. The true believers get drawn into tech.

Only after careful readings do you get to "wow this rich smart kid was incredibly lucky"

Instead, all these things work together to promote an illusion of unbiased meritocracy where if you got a clever idea and work hard you'll make it. The rich, smart, and luck get scrubbed out and replaced with a "Flowering of New England" Protestant Work Ethic.

For the more cynical people they go to the likes of Christensen, Geoffrey Moore, Drucker, Steve Blank, Ries & Trout, Blanchard, etc who are certainly not critical of free markets, labor or capitalism in any way.

You walk away from them with a less trusting and more cut throat version of essentially the same story.

So it's constantly reinforced which is why it's really not that surprising that programming has a lot of people who frankly believe in essentially free market magic, unfounded hogwash and other nonsense, it's the only thing on offer.

The myth of fantastic riches that avail themself to those who struggle is essentially one of the most common narrative archetypes there is. It's thousands of years old, even the cornerstone of many religions.

Ironic, because the comment you are replying to is completely wrong.

Labor laws are stupidly complicated and a single one liner from an HN comment is almost guaranteed to be wrong in some way. You shouldn't believe anything you read in an HN comments thread about them, on either side of the issue (including this one, because I'm probably wrong in some fashion too!)

In this particular example, it's not a false equivalence at all. The NLRB specifically does not give special protection to union literature. As long as the employer treats all literature equally (such as soccer literature, harry potter literature, etc), they are allowed to ban non-work literature in work areas during work time. Union literature does not get any special treatment.

see: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/shop-talk-rules-unio...

Yes, they can ban all literature, or they can ban none of it. They can't ban some and allow some, which is what happened here.

How do you know that's what happened here? The OP linked article does not contain such information.

According to the article you posted that only applies when and where employees are working. Union literature is given special treatment in that companies must allow it to be distributed in non-work areas such as the break room, which is where it was distributed and confiscated in this case.

No, the linked article specifically states that union literature is not given any special treatment, at all. Companies can indeed restrict it from being spread, even in break rooms, if: 1) not spreading materials in the break room is necessary to maintain work productivity, and 2) all other materials are treated equally and are also not allowed to be distributed in break rooms.

edit: the above is actually for union discussions in break rooms. It's not clear if the same rules apply for literature in break rooms, but given that other parts of the article specifically call out that all literature must be treated equal in other areas (ie not break rooms), I'm not convinced that it doesn't apply.

The stance of the NLRB regarding union materials is that it is explicitly not given any special treatment, neither in regards to protecting its spread, nor in regards to preventing its spread. It must always be treated equally to materials on other topics: either everything is banned, including union materials, or nothing is banned, also including union materials.

Increasingly, strong unions are equally as fictional as Harry Potter in America.

There's laws like this on both sides of union laws in the US. Certain things that are protected activities, and then there's things that unions can't do, too. It's not like this is a one-sided thing. Unions have protections like this, but also limits in US law.

You can't replace union literature with any of those things because they are not even close to the same thing.

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