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Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

And yet roughly half of Amazon warehouse workers have been successfully propagandized into not supporting unionization. I can sympathize to a degree with those who aren't subjected to such conditions not understanding how this works in practice (to be fair, a lot of Americans simply don't care if others are suffering straight up) but for those subjected to this? Many of them are still temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

The American Dream.

Labor organization is the only effective tool against dehumanizing and exploitative labor practices.

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Or they are afraid of retaliation and losing their jobs? Amazon hits them with anti-union propaganda from day one. We’ve seen Walmart close locations that plan to unionize.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/union-walmart-shut-5-stores...

This could be easily fixed by introducing a law forcing companies to give out half of company’s shares to the union. The only reason this doesn’t happen is political - peoples votes don’t matter, what matters is company lobbying.

Confiscating ownership of 50% of a company seems like a pretty big line to cross. I don't think it's purely about political imaging. That would have all kinds of ripple effects, both in terms of the direct results of doing it and of the indirect results of setting the precedent.

Questioning pope’s infallibility used to be a pretty big line too, and now we know it was all just bluff; there was never a proper reason not to cross it.

To put it differently: the law must keep up with times. The law we have wasn’t designed for the business models we have today, from Facebook to Uber.

Amazon used to provide one unit of stock to each full-time employee --- folks gave that up for a higher base salary and other compensation.

Kind of silly to be complaining that the employees don't own enough of the company when they gave that ownership up as a bargaining position.

employees are able to collectively bargain at any time for better compensation though, that's the point of a union

This line of thinking is so out of the ordinary for me. I'm sure you could fix one side of the equation by forcefully taking from the other... but on what ethical grounds?

Ethically the company is not a human, and thus doesn’t have any inherent rights. The only rights it can have are those that were granted to benefit society - or because of corruption/lobbying.

> half of Amazon warehouse workers have been successfully propagandized into not supporting unionization

Isn't it possible that they're adults who carefully considered the pluses and minuses and made their own decisions?

Or are you saying a No vote could only be explained by denying any agency to the workers?

> Isn't it possible that they're adults who carefully considered the pluses and minuses and made their own decisions?

Of course it's possible. It just seems unlikely that they are carefully considering unbiased plusses and minuses, and instead have been fed an astonishing amount of propaganda designed to massively inflate the amount of minuses.

You could argue that pro-union stuff is propaganda as well, but it doesn't come with an underlying threat of "we will try to fire you if you don't support us" that the anti-union stuff does.

> been fed an astonishing amount of propaganda designed to massively inflate the amount of minuses

Can you demonstrate that the pro-union forces are prevented from countering this propaganda, calling it "lies," etc.? In other words, maybe the workers heard the other side and didn't agree. Is that not allowed?

As for the "underlying threat" -- how is it "underlying"? Aren't the union elections by secret ballot? Are you saying they're not really secret, or what?

> Can you demonstrate that the pro-union forces are prevented from countering this propaganda, calling it "lies," etc.?

Easily. Companies do everything in their power to discourage pro unionizing talk from happening. They hire specialized union-busting PR firms whose job it is to spread anti-union rhetoric and prevent pro-union voices from being heard. The mere existence of these PR firms shows how much of an uphill battle any kind of pro union movement has.

> In other words, maybe the workers heard the other side and didn't agree. Is that not allowed?

Of course it's allowed. It's just not likely that it's actually happening this way.

> As for the "underlying threat" -- how is it "underlying"? Aren't the union elections by secret ballot? Are you saying they're not really secret, or what?

The election is only a tiny piece of the process of unionizing. What about people vocally supporting unionizing to their other coworkers? Or putting up pro-union posters on break room bulletin boards, or any other public pro union activity? You know, trying to get their voices heard and convince people to vote their way? In theory those people are protected by laws but it's easy enough for a company to fire them for "performance reasons" or whatever else.

You're coming across incredibly naive to the reality of how cutthroat corporations really are. They don't play fair, especially not when someone threatens their control by talking about unionizing.

When you've had Democratic control of the NLRB for at least 17 years since 1990, and their appointees bend over backwards to make it easy for the unions, there should have been a lot more union victories. I think you need to face up to the fact that most private sector workers nowadays see no value to it.

"You're coming across incredibly naive" - maybe I just don't agree with you. Is that not allowed?

I don't think it's a coincidence that proles are getting juiced liked lemons in a country where everyone is taught to hate anything that even resembles socialism.

> everyone is taught to hate anything that even resembles socialism

And yet polls show that the younger population has a largely positive opinion of socialism, or at least, much more positive than it used to be. So is this "teaching" ineffective, or what?

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