Apparently the activist is homeless: https://www.nysfocus.com/2021/11/23/a-homeless-amazon-worker...
And “[NLRB] will issue a complaint if the case does not settle” sounds like some nice leverage to have.
And “[NLRB] will issue a complaint if the case does not settle” sounds like some nice leverage to have.
This country has no safety net and that's terrifying.
It's not childish. It's a totally reasonable expectation of how the world should work. Don't pass that off as childish, instead ask why the government is failing to meet its most basic obligations.
It's only naive because the government has totally failed the people. There's no reason (other than a system designed to protect the interests of the wealthy instead of the needy) that it works this way. We should forge a world where such expectations aren't naive.
No safety net whatsoever?
It is terrifying and unfortunate for those who do not have that luxury though, and strong local communities can help there. We need to do a more. But I think in all cases where I have the option I'd prefer to rely on those close to me than the government.
But it also emphasizes how much impact one can have just helping those in need directly instead of complaining about how crappy the government is.
Sometimes that's the case, but all to often your family breaks the net in an attempt to catch you and end up homeless as well.
The government's role is not that of a protector of people, but instead a protector of its own autonomy. That is, government carries out a means of control (law, tax, policy, decree, etc.), and protects its ability to control from threats local and foreign. That is completely independent to the wealfare of its citizens.
The ideal of a government having a role in the safety, welfare, health, or interest of the citizens it controls is bizarre. It's a view that presumes goodness in group, where there is no indication of that ever being the case at any point in human history. It is, in a more disturbing and worrying light, a view that reassigns the government as a kind of parental figure, when it should be abundantly clear that nothing of the sort is the case. It would be like a newborn chick, presuming the snake in its nest a protector, instead of a looming threat. The issue is, leaders are paid to lie and assure citizens of the opposite. Without a great amount of personal investment - or first hand experience - some may even start to believe such tawdry, grasping hisses as fact. The actions of such a cabal is apparent once it is measured.
Ignorance to that does not make you stupid, or childish, or any other number of things. It simply means that you did not know, what you later learned. From the sounds of it, this is a thing that has bothered you, and I am sorry to hear that it has weighed heavily on you. Just keep in mind that you are not alone in this sadness. It is a thing that may pass. Just keep in mind the facts of the situation you are in, and that anyone - ANYONE - who claims to do whatever "needs doing" to be in "the public interest" is most certainly one who moves about on their stomach.
On a related note: It may be beneficial to point out that, in a similar vein, police officer have no legal responsibility to protect citizens or their property - their role is not of protection, as some sort of "public utility bodyguard", but instead one of law enforcement. This is a slightly more nebulous point, as the so-called motto of law enforcement (in America, at least) is "To protect and serve". The fact of the matter is that it has been affirmed in SCOTUS that no law enforcement officer will be held responsible for failing to act to protect a citizen, even to the point of grevious harm or death. Laws are far more telling of the reality of the thing, than any non-binding, hopeful motto. A motto is merely a desire of public perception.
Seriously, the number of people who have had to mop up their kid's blood or pick chunks of their dead loved one's brains out of carpeting is depressing to think about. If you've got money there are people who will come and do it for you, but those services aren't cheap.
Police won't even pay to repair a door they broke down in error. https://reason.com/2010/01/26/dc-police-raid-wrong-home-city...
The property damages are bad enough, but they also don't do anything for the mental trauma they cause when they force you to stand handcuffed and naked in the middle of the room while a team of cops swarm around taking video and destroying your things, or they make your kids sit right next to the corpse of the family dog they murdered after busting in. It's beyond unacceptable how little help people get from the government even after they were directly abused by it.
Even the lawsuits which may or may not get you anything at all are expensive, time consuming, and stressful yet you somehow have to manage it while processing everything that happened to you.
If I were this particular worker, knowing the NLRB will force at least that, I would ask for something much higher to settle. Though I suppose if you're homeless, you may not have that option to wait.
Back pay and reinstatement are possible outcomes (in general for complaints, tbh I have no idea for this one), so it could have a real effect on the wronged.
> During his second week at Amazon, Smith was approached by workers involved in organizing the Amazon Labor Union. Although Smith loved his job, he thought there were things that could be improved. In particular, he said, he was concerned about the warehouse’s extremely rapid pace of work and lack of breaks.
https://www.nysfocus.com/2021/11/23/a-homeless-amazon-worker...
> Everyone else working around me was working at their own pace and he was just on me sending me more carts to sort and telling me to work faster
One reason he gave for joining the union was "the warehouse’s extremely rapid pace of work."
Reasonable people acting reasonably is how we got to where we are, and there are a lot of people who aren’t happy with the results. I’m sure you would like those people to remain calm, but I don’t know that it’s wise to expect that they will continue doing so forever.
Wait, are you saying he should take a step back and make fewer good decisions? You don't think this was a major bad decision, but you also don't think he should have made it?
I'm trying to follow the line of logic that says that people who make mistakes should stop doing anything else even if they're not making a new mistake. I mean, that sounds a lot like saying that he made a bad choice and therefore he just shouldn't participate in society now regardless of the role or appropriateness of his actions, even after serving his sentence. And if that's the implication, I'd push back against that sentiment pretty hard.
I'm saying he should not trust his own decision making process right now, considering how often those decisions have led him to a negative outcome.
"Wait and see" is very tricky advice to give to someone who was working at Amazon out of a homeless shelter. How confident are you that staying homeless and not taking steps to try and improve his working conditions would have had a better outcome for him?
I am skeptical that "this had costs" is a good enough reason to say that this was a bad decision. A big part of coming out of rock bottom for people is the active decision not to stay at rock bottom, so if you don't think it was a major bad decision and you're just pointing out that it was risky... that's not a good enough criticism for me to be sympathetic to. From what I can tell, pretty much every life decision is risky when you're homeless.
There's also something of a chicken and egg problem here. Bad jobs are sustainable because they hire desperate people. If you're advocating that people who have made mistakes and ended up in desperate places shouldn't do bold things or make major life changes, then that is essentially saying that they should stay in those positions (even though I know that's not what you mean to imply). Who is going to challenge the status quo around desperate jobs if we say that the people working those jobs aren't supposed to advocate for themselves?
But I think the pushback comes from the response/followup to that statement. We're on a forum of relatively privileged tech people, and I think it's good for us to talk about the fact that others don't always get to take advantage of the rights they have on paper, and it's good for us to advocate that they should be able to.
There's pushback to these kinds of comments in the same exact way that there's pushback to comments that, for example, say that Google is tracking everything, and people just need to understand that. Okay, you've identified something about the current world that people don't like, but that is still happening. Now what?
The average privileged person in tech doesn't need to learn how to keep their head down, they need to learn how to get very angry when underprivileged people's rights are taken away, and they need to learn how to make a bigger, more public fuss about vindictive social policies towards people with criminal records. It's one thing to acknowledge that society is cruel towards people with a criminal record, but the followup should always be, "and that is unjust and we should change it".
There is some value in recognizing reality, but there is also value in being outraged over outrageous things even in situations where they are common.