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Comment by marricks | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting how a lot of this hinges on a mailbox which was placed under Amazon's direction and unclear to employees if Amazon could also read the ballots from it. No doubt that is shady and weird.

I really wish more would/could be done about how Amazon mandated employees watch hours of propaganda and meeting with countless managers about how unions are bad. Almost everyone claims advertisements don't work on them and that if they were bombarded with messaging they wouldn't be affected, but hey advertisement isn't a billion dollar industry for nothing, and similarly I'm sure trillion dollar companies can pay for the best knowledge on union busting.

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> I'm sure trillion dollar companies can pay for the best knowledge on union busting.

Indeed, Amazon have used the Pinkerton detective agency [1] against their employees to root out union activity. For those unfamiliar, the Pinkertons have existed in the US since the 1850s, with a history fraught with violence and questionable ethics, famously the Homestead strike of 1892 [2].

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-pinkerton-spies-worke...

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

I did a research paper back in college on the homestead strike and haymarket riots. Strange to see Pinkerton is still around and unchanged.

Narrowly targeted advertising to a captive audience likely works to some extent but it's rare that an advertiser is ever able to get that. Something like a sports stadium where almost everyone there is a sports fan and can't mute to Jumbotron advertising to them is the closest most advertisers get. In Amazon's case, they have not only an extremely narrowly targeted audience but also one that's extremely captive to seeing the message.

Not only that, most advertisers don't have control over their target's income and healthcare. When someone in control of your life like that tells you they really really don't want you to do something, a lot of people tend to listen.

John Oliver has a good episode on union busting on his HBO show "Last Week Tonight".

I used to think well of those John Oliver pieces until he did one about a subject I knew deeply. Now I assume everything he does is a one sided hit piece that leaves out important details that completely change the picture.

The one on the energy grid was wrong on many levels, and didn't understand fundamentally the relationship between renewables generation and transmission.

What is was specifically wrong? Can you clarify?

What subject do you know deeply and what is your specific criticism of his piece?

I wouldn't encourage anyone to learn about complex topics from John Oliver in the same way I wouldn't encourage them to learn about them from Tucker Carlson. They're both entertainers first and foremost and have little to no obligation to report on the basis of fact and instead exist largely to tell their viewers what they already believe.

Employees there were getting advertisements in both directions though, right?

What a vague way to put it, but of course, sure, there was a unionizing effort. I think an interesting example of how powerful Amazon is is that changed traffic light timing to inhibit the unionizing effort[1]

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/17/22287191/amazon-alabama-w...

There's a difference between putting up a flyer telling people their rights, and having them sit through hours of video as part of their actual job. Scale matters.

The employer can make employees sit through anti-union presentations. The union does not have equivalent access to the employees. There are also borderline illegal practices like saying that unionization might lead the company to shut down the facility.¹

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1. Employers are prohibited from saying that they will fire people who vote for unionization but they are allowed to say that they might shut down a shop that votes for a union. Interestingly, while this is a frequent threat, the instances of an employer ever actually following through are vanishingly small.

> Interestingly, while this is a frequent threat, the instances of an employer ever actually following through are vanishingly small.

The more common occurrence is for the employer to let the union go on strike. Then the employer keeps the shop open by hiring new workers from outside the union and lets the union stay on strike forever. Obviously the effect on the union workers is basically the same.

Sure, if the company is of the sort that can function fine without its workers. This does not really always work out in practice, esp. in today's labor market.

If you start hiring permanent replacements, you're basically killing any chance of a successful negotiation.

IF you don't want the union to begin with, you are OK will the union negotiation failing.

That's sort of the point. Amazon can function just fine without these particular employees, the jobs they are doing don't require any special skills or training, and the already high wages make them very attractive to job seekers. For Amazon, having a union in permanent impotent limbo would be a best case scenario.

There is a Seinfeld about this. Kramer learns from the paper that a strike which lasted for like decades has been 'resolved'.

He goes back to the diner/bakery to demand his job back.

Also, Colt is famous for doing this and it didn't work out so great for them : https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/01/nyregion/workers-rejoice-...

The difference in that case being that they were skilled workers.

They're also a defense contractor, so you're effectively talking about a public sector union and the dynamics of that are completely different.

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