Leaked memo reveals Amazon’s plans to combat the Teamsters in California | Hacker News Reader

Leaked memo reveals Amazon’s plans to combat the Teamsters in California

vox.com

235 pointshownottowrite181 comments

I read the article expecting to see terrible actions by Amazon fighting the union.

Instead the article was about the Teamsters union convincing local governments to block Amazon from opening buildings, and Amazon "fighting back" by increasing their hiring of needy ex-cons and minorities from local colleges, ending their marijuana drug tests, and otherwise working to ingratiate themselves with their comminities.

The Teamsters don't come out looking like the good guys...

They seem to be very positive influence on amzn

Nice, that's a good way to look at it!

> The Teamsters don't come out looking like the good guys...

This is often the case.

No need to downvote this. Long history of documented corruption.

Add UAW to that list.

>I read the article expecting to see terrible actions by Amazon fighting the union.

>Instead the article was about

Yeah, it's a bait and switch designed to attract Amazon haters with the headline and then convince them Amazon is the good guy in the content. Seems like it worked really well based on comments here. I'm sure vox will be duely rewarded by their Amazon overlords.

"the memo proposed that Amazon should create and foster partnerships with local nonprofits and community organizations that company officials hoped would “provide political cover for local policymakers, neutralize organized labors’ attempts to grow their coalition of third-party validators and spokespeople, and provide a platform for Amazon spokespeople and allies to speak of the true economic and social impact of Amazon in Southern California.”

It's an isolate and destroy campaign. Hiring students and ex-inmates (who will both probably tolerate more exploitation than average employees without speaking up), does not impact Amazon's bottom line nearly as much as unionized workers would. If enough people wind up thinking Amazon provides a net benefit to the communities it operates in then it will help silence those who want unions, tax reforms, or just less corporate welfare.

The teamsters don't look bad so much as they appear to have been badly outplayed by a smart opponent.

It’s also so incredibly cynical. They aren’t supporting these organizations because it’s the right thing to do. It’s just a means to an end, namely preventing workers from organizing.

I wonder how many people who called out Amazon’s supposedly enlightened actions as unlikely to be altruistic or genuine were accused of being conspiracy theorists.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.

Unexpected Adam Smith - nice!

And even apart from questions of economic systems, second-guessing peoples' motives is almost never productive.

Does it matter that their motivation is wrong if it still motivates them to do the right thing? results are what mater.

Well, yes but no. It's good that Amazon is hiring ex-cons and minorities. It's good that Amazon is not testing for weed.

None of those things obviate the need for a union.

Not saying unions are bad per se, but Teamsters are the bad guys in my experience.

It's not about Amazon's terrible actions fighting the union. It's about Amazon's exploitative labor practices, the day-to-day oppression that warehouse workers have to deal with.

Also, let's not forget that Amazon has unlimited funds to cover up and distract from their misdoings while the Teamsters do not.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-wo...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amazon-used-...

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/04/27/amaz-a27.html

the teamsters union isn't exactly a small underdog with no funding either.

Compared to Amazon? Yes, they are.

you could say that to mean the money power of anyone/anything, what's the point in doing that

Using hiring minorities to fight unionization—which could result in far better wages and benefits for those minorities—is terrible. It’s also a textbook example of woke capitalism in action: https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Inc-Corporate-Americas-Justice/d.... The fact they put this

Anyone hiring ex-inmates in large numbers is doing society a great benefit, whether it’s altruism, PR, or both hardly matters to me. It’s not easy managing that cohort and few businesses are even willing to try. Many of those that are have worse work conditions.

I’m 100% on board for tax cuts or subsidies for businesses who keep the formerly incarcerated employed.

Altruism and PR aren't the only options. If the explanation is "they'll be less likely to dare to ask for better treatment" then I think that's a problem.

And that's everyone but Amazon's fault, in this case.

The people who contribute daily to making our society that way are all indeed culpable. However, the people who opportunistically turn a profit from society being that way are the worst of that collection of people.

> opportunistically turn a profit

Would you have felt the same way when companies started hiring former slaves, chinese, irish, italians, women, etc.? What you're identifying is a market advantage that companies can gain by being non-discriminatory. You've zeroed in on a major strength of free market economics. Bigotry costs companies money.

Amazon exploiting that for profit and to increase power against other employees is Amazon's moral decision and their responsibility. They will spin it every way for sure.

But note that they didn't hire ex-cons when not doing so helped them in their power struggle against labor. It was a thing that only happened when unemployment level dropped to the point where labor had a little bit of bargaining power and not at all before. That's a fact that won't be explained in the spin. I'm sure the Washington post will be all over it in their reporting though.

Companies exist to make profit and are a market tool through which we reduce efficiencies. Society sets the conditions through which they operate via culture and perhaps more importantly regulations. Amazon didn’t incentivize the hiring of these employees society did (and the government through subsidies in a lot of states.)

Amazon is making a rational corporate decision. It’s being painted as a great evil by pro-union activists who treat all the other employees as useful idiots and former inmates too ignorant or needy to have their own opinion. It’s disgusting.

The memo doesn't seem to suggest hiring the formerly incarcerated, it only mentions creating partnerships with organizations that work for the formerly incarcerated.

It doesn't say what that partnership would entail, but something like donating to an outreach program for the formerly incarcerated doesn't deserve tax breaks.

I think you missed this part:

> “....By creating a pipeline of workers who would immediately benefit from our benefits compared to other peers in the region, we are creating spokespeople that can improve our reputation, while helping our communities most vulnerable.”

This article is both too cynical and yet not cynical enough.

Of course Amazon is doing good not out of the goodness of it's heart but for good PR. This is true of literally every large corporation.

But that doesn't mean the good they do isn't good.

The way they are "neutralizing" them with ex inmates and vulnerable students is they're making a special effort to hire ex-inmates and underprivileged students.

On a parallel Earth, Vox has published an article praising Amazon to the high heavens for hiring felons and troubled youth.

Nobody wants to hire ex-convicts, yet when they have nothing to lose (like a decent job) they're at far greater risk for recidivism. It's a bummer for the union people, I suppose, but as someone greatly concerned with how our society shows no shame in blatant classism with regards to ex-cons, I really wish Amazon the best with this program and hope it quickly spreads to other companies as well. That their reasons for doing so are not entirely altruistic just doesn't worry me in this particular case.

I totally agree with you about our society’s mistreatment of people who have paid their debts, but I’m not sure I like what Amazon is doing here. It smacks of using people: treating them like props in order to secure private gain.

> It smacks of using people

Work is fundamentally transactional. Those for whom it is more than that are lucky.

> treating them like props in order to secure private gain

I worry about moralizing on behalf of the marginalized. They should be asked whether they'd prefer the option to have the work.

Respectfully, I disagree with the postulate that there is no possibility of solidarity with “the marginalized”, and think this is a good example of why. When you say ask “them,” who do you mean? Ex-convicts, Amazon workers, teamsters, some combination of these, or what? And who are you going to listen to when people (inevitably, even within the same faction) disagree? I think that what this approach does is renders ethical discussions impossible. By denying the possibility of a common rationality in which moral questions can be weighed, ethics is reduced into a collision of interests, and the unsurprising result is that nothing can happen without the approval of the strongest party in the conflict. See Occupy Wall Street for another example of this principle in action.

I see what you're saying. I think the moral thing here is to beat them at their own game. Presumably any ex-cons hired by Amazon can be brought on board as union members just as well as anyone else.

>> I worry about moralizing on behalf of the marginalized. They should be asked whether they'd prefer the option to have the work.

perfect quote! Nothing else really needs to be said.

People who oppose Amazon - I want to see you guys giving thousands jobs to convicts, before criticizing Amazon. Thank you. Talk is cheap

Yes, well, such is the case with the Dave Thomas Foundation, Ronald McDonald House, Product RED… Any good they do is all with the bottom line in mind.

Meanwhile, the felon who gets a $15+/hour gig in an Amazon warehouse during the hardest time in their life, when no other employer in town will give them the time of day and the urges to fall back into those bad habits are creeping in, is probably not going to care much about being "used."

We’re talking about plan to subvert unions. It is one thing to do something that is both good for me and also good for others. It is quite another to do something ostensibly good, but with the ulterior intention of preventing the good of another.

Why is hiring felons and underprivileged youth ostensibly good and not just good?

The felons and underprivileged youths don't pay the salaries of union bureaucrats or provide leverage for those bureaucrats to get kickbacks from management. Obviously, that's just not right!

Giving a job to an ex-con is both good for the ex-con and good for others, as giving the ex-con something to live for greatly reduces the chance that they will return to antisocial behavior.

As a non-Teamster, I'm not really sure what good is done for me if a Teamster gets a job, or what harm is done to me if they don't.

Frankly, the more this idea is being discussed here, the more I'm hoping Amazon hires as many ex-cons as possible and if that means completely busting any union activity in their company in perpetuity, so be it.

My neighbor, who is my rival, wants to get a Red Rider BB Gun. I do not want this to happen, because this threatens my status as the cool kid on the block. If I just buy myself a Red Rider BB Gun, he will call me a copycat and make me look bad. So instead, I buy a Red Rider BB Gun for the dorky kid down the corner, who is not a threat to me. I get to look magnanimous, my rival is thwarted, the dorky kid has a cool toy. It seems that what I have done is certainly good for me, and the dorky kid has for sure gained something, but have I really done a good thing? Or have I done a selfish thing — using the dorky kid as a means to achieve a selfish end (thwarting my rival)? And if we are to say that my intent does not matter, we have to also accept that this has tremendous knock-on implications, especially problematic for concepts upon which we regularly depend, like merit and guilt.

As for whether Unions are good or not, my answer would be that they are good. They represent a tried, effectual response to the “social question” which emerged in the late 19th Century, avoiding the destructive poles of unconstrained capitalism and revolutionary socialism. It is also noteworthy that independent trade unions have historically acted as a bulwark against various totalitarianisms of both left and right. It is also true that some unions have been guilty of violence, corruption, ideological craziness, and narrow selfishness, but I would suggest that this is not a unique problem for unions.

Have you ever worked for a large corporation? Everyone is a prop and replaceable.

So one should stay quiet? And yes. Both at the very bottom and close to the top.

Indeed, if this much union activity causes some good, then more union activity can do more.

If we say that four percent has to be unemployed, who would you choose to be unemployed in the rat race that is life? Just to turn the discussion into something productive.

That is not how fixed unemployment works, the cause of fixed unemployment is people who are in the process of switching between jobs. Permanently unemployed people would reduce labor force participation, not employment as it is measured.

Only if they are not actively searching for a job. OECDs definition: “ The unemployed are people of working age who are _without work_ , are available for work, and have taken specific steps to find work.” This number for the year was around 4.7.

Labor force participation would decrease when people retire or never needed to work in the first place.

But I understand your point, it includes some people that will easily get a job but don’t have a job currently.

Since people who have given up looking for work do not count towards the measured unemployment rate (and more to the point are not part of the concept of minimum unemployment), ex-cons are not a part of that notional 4%.

But the ones in the article did search :)

Those who have enough wealth that they don't need employment to live comfortably. Not sure what this has to do with my post unless you were trying to argue that it's fine for ex-cons to be perpetually among the unemployed; in that case, the idea of our "corrections systems" helping people who do anti-social behavior become productive members of society again is even more of a sham that it already is, so why don't we just go ahead and give all felons the chair?

Is the discussion not productive already?

(because they can pay them less)

And they are less likely to kick up a fuss about poor working conditions when the alternative is no job at all as nobody else wants to hire them.

> higher than average injury rates

We really need some kind of standard for how to present statistics in the news so that it’s not misleading.

If you take a bunch of numbers and average them together some will be higher than the average and some will be lower (unless they’re all the same number), because that’s how averages work.

What is the injury rate? How high is it? Is it an order of magnitude more? Is it one more than the average?

Just making vague scary sounding statements like “higher than average“ is nothing but manipulation.

So apparently “neutralize” is the big bad trigger word here despite this quote?

> Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien told Recode in July that his union is intent on “disrupting [Amazon’s] network until they get to a point where they surrender

I think it's more subtle than that. I personally interpreted the tone of the headline to be hinting at something much more nefarious than "Amazon plans to hire ex-inmates to fight off union influence", and it looks like I wasn't alone. It's a terrible headline that doesn't do a good job of summarizing the key point of the article. A more cynical person than myself might even throw around the term clickbait.

Headline was definitely clickbait, but practically every headline is nowadays. It was written specifically to throw shade at Amazon. Although in my reading Amazon came off a whole lot better than than the union, but I’m a pragmatist and always feel like the effects are always more important than intent. If Amazon is hiring ex-inmates, no matter the intent, that is a positive thing from perspective.

Has Vox ever once published a single article that was positive or at least neutral about Amazon? Why do we allow such insanely biased media? Do people read Vox and think they're receiving an accurate depiction of reality?

It's just hit piece after hit piece after hit piece. I guess you could try to argue that across hundreds of thousands / millions of employees and thousands of products the company never ever does anything worth praising or even worth neutral reporting, and every single thing the company does is evil, but I think we know that isn't remotely true.

So, setting aside that this article is actually low-key pretty positive for Amazon, let's assume you were correct in your read. You're asking why we allow "insanely biased" media? There's a whole amendment--the first one--about that.

Heck, we don't take off the air people spouting replacement theory and backdoor-cheering the attempted overthrow of the duly elected government, and we're supposed to not allow media that throws a few bricks at one of the richest companies in the world?

>Has Vox ever once published a single article that was positive or at least neutral about Amazon?

Why does this matter.

>Why do we allow such insanely biased media?

Great question. You might want to start with all American media and their biases towards, for example, the military industrial complex over the last 70+ years. Why do we allow such insanely biased media?

>Do people read Vox and think they're receiving an accurate depiction of reality?

No, my guess is people read articles on Vox they find of interest, and don't base their depictions of reality on one outlet of news media, which sounds unhealthy. Do you do that?

Purposefully manipulative headlines like this are why I don't trust most articles from sources like vox.

The headline is used in a way to make it seem like Amazon is targeting students that are vulnerable to them, meanwhile Amazon is targeting those that would benefit the most in society, because they are most vulnerable to economic issues, like ex-inmates and students. Vox is doing its best to manipulate their words to make things look as bad as possible.

I wish there were a feature where I could automatically not see articles from certain content providers because they are so skewed and biased.

An ad that locked the browser on my iPhone telling me I won various prizes lowered my trust of Vox as well.

The article claims "around 80 percent of families with children in the LAUSD live at or below the poverty threshold". Click the source to find the actual quote, "about 80% of Los Angeles Unified students come from families living in poverty". These statements are clearly not interchangeable - a good reminder to take all statistics from pop journalism sites like this with a grain of salt.

Are they using ex-inmates to harass unions and infiltrating students on unions? Nope. They are just hiring ex-inmates and students more which is a positive thing regardless of the motive. Being employed makes students and ex-inmates less vulnerable. Just skip the article.

This headlines made me think (thought unlikely) that Amazon is hiring ex-cons and dropouts to beat the shit out of union organizers.

Amazon also burns through employees so quickly that they may be forced to resort to these sources. But they will burn through them as well.

I’m a huge supporters of unions, but Amazon has been very open about their opposition to unions. The fundamental argument for unions is that companies serve shareholders at the expense of workers. Opposing unions is some kind of shocking corporate malfeasance, it’s just the nature of capitalism.

I really dislike sensationalized headlines like this. A more accurate one might say:

> Amazon's plan to counter pressure from the Teamsters Union focuses on investing in non-profits.

For those who didn't read the article:

A leaked Amazon memo shows that the Teamsters Union is effectively putting pressure on Amazon by convincing its members to pressure politicians into not granting Amazon tax breaks, land grants, etc.

Amazon is worried that this represents a real threat to expansion as having local politicians turn against them will almost certainly mean their competitors like UPS (who is friendly with the Teamsters) will outcompete them.

So, Amazon is going to invest in local charities like those for ex-convicts and low-income students. This has two purposes:

1. Give politicians an excuse to give Amazon tax breaks (look at what they invest in the community).

2. Build positive sentiment with local members who will talk to politicians on Amazon's behalf. They'll be especially motivated to if Amazon threatens to pull funding from their non-profits.

Sensationalized? This is disinformation.

"Disinformation" that uses the exact phrasing from the Amazon document?

You can absolutely misrepresent what someone is saying by using quotes out of context.

Except it is not.

They will spend money on literally anything else except wage increases.

They were the first to $15, literally leading a nationwide wage increase for low skill labor, and now they pay closer to $18 by me. For people trying to hate Amazon at any cost, the goalposts keep shifting. If Amazon announced $20 minimum tomorrow, there is no doubt in my mind that people would still be griping.

And even when people concede that Amazon pays industry leading wages, it's "whatabout" the urine bottles as if the heavily unionized UPS drivers don't also do this.

https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/what-do-you-do-w...

https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles.36...

https://www.browncafe.com/community/threads/urine-bottles-in...

Turns out public bathrooms aren't always available around suburbia, and leaving a truck unattended is a bad idea. I'm not trying to lick boots here or anything, but the constant shitting on Amazon's non-tech business gets really uninteresting. As if it's all generated by a GPT-3 bot.

That’s because $20 is still humiliatingly low for the workload

They do actually require that you work, yes.

There are plenty of lower paid jobs for those only interested in being a chair filler.

But the pay is quite good for the required skillset.

I'm not sure which planet you are on, but warehouse workers earn way less than $20/hr in most of the US, Europe or anywhere else.

Just because warehouse owners have the leverage to make it impossible to demand more doesn't make it any less humiliating.

Many warehouses pay well over 20$/hour and others significantly less. What’s rarely mentioned is while Amazon’s compensation is roughly in line with industry norms, the workload is however much worse.

Care to give some support for this intangible and unverifiable complaint?

Just take a look at amazon warehouse worker turnover rate. No other company in the industry comes anywhere close. Amazon's strategy is to gamify work and force the workers to put the pedal to the metal until they burn out and quit.

>Just take a look at amazon warehouse worker turnover rate. No other company in the industry comes anywhere close.

But all that says is "people don't want to work on amazon". It doesn't say why they don't want to work there. The parent post made a specific claim (ie. "the workload is however much worse"), which is consistent with worse working conditions, but not proof of it.

Well what are the reasons people would quit?

1. Low pay. As this thread pointed out Amazon actually pays above average for the warehouse industry. It doesn't make sense that their turnover is higher than other warehouse if people leave because the pay is too low.

2. Dislike of "big tech" and corporate capitalism more generally. Basically these are people who saw someone complain on twitter and quit. I doubt people that would quit of morals would take the job in the first place, this seems like a non-issue.

3. Unprepared for the workload that comes with warehouse work. All warehouse work is tough, if this is your first warehouse job you might not be ready for physical labor. This seems reasonable to me since Amazon advertises their warehouse jobs more than other warehouse companies.

4. Amazon's workload is higher than other warehouses. Given what we know about the workload on their white collar workers and the stories I've heard about the warehouse work this seems like the biggest contributor to their high turnover to me.

Interested in hearing what you think the cause of their turnover could be.

1 and 4 are linked.

Fit able bodied workers willing and able to put in a full day of hard labor have more options and are therefore more expensive. Aka if you get laid off of a 25$/hour construction job you might temporarily work at Amazon while looking for work, but you’re not staying for years. Amazon workers may therefore be under paid for their capabilities independent of industry norms.

5. Double the workplace accident rate of the rest of the industry also plays a role. You don’t just lose workers directly as people also quit out of fear for their health.

6. It’s in part a seasonal job. Amazon doesn’t need or want a steady workforce and can play with their quotas to lay people off without paying for unemployment.

> No other company in the industry comes anywhere close.

Arguably not the same industry (but devastatingly adjacent): have a look at FedEx warehouses. Recently as low as $13.xx/hr, same sort of grueling work, plus the privilege of not knowing whether you'll need to show up at 4:00 AM or 7:00 AM. You don't get to know that until the night before, when you call a phone number around 8 or 9 to listen to a recorded message that will tell you. (Even then, you might show up only to find tape over the time clocks with a note that they're going to be starting later, after all, with the expectation that you'll just hang out off the clock in the meantime and then start at the new designated time.¹) And you have no idea how long you'll be working, either (except that it won't be 8 hours). 5–6 hours is possible. ~3 hours is probable. So you'll need to work 6 or 7 days just for the chance that you might get close to 30 hours. Ridiculously high turnover, as expected.

1. Yes, really. This is begging for a DoL inquiry; "Package Handlers are always paid for TIME WORKED [...] In the future please meet with your manager before just leaving. Thank you." — says a FedEx Ground facility's Area Manager, "Crystal", in an email.

Just because you don’t like a statement doesn’t mean it’s unverifiable, objectively:

Average Warehouse Worker Hourly Pay “Avg. Base Hourly Rate (USD)” $14.99/ hour and $19.57 is top 10%. https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Warehouse_Worker/Ho...

As to the job sucking, “Amazon warehouse workers suffer serious injuries at twice the rate of rivals, study finds“ https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/12/study-amazon-workers-suffer-...

You didn't provide any info regarding the workload, but it seems like the injury rate is a legitimate issue. Amazon says that it's getting better in the article, and that it spent $300 million on safety (a very low number considering how much the company makes).

I said the workload was worse, higher injury rates than norms is worse.

If you want verification: "We’re developing new automated staffing schedules that use sophisticated algorithms to rotate employees among jobs that use different muscle-tendon groups to decrease repetitive motion and help protect employees from MSD risks.” https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3xeba/amazons-new-algorithm...

In other words they are concerned that are pushing people to do their jobs faster than humanly possible but assumed they could make that pace sustainable by rotating jobs over the day rather than say reduce the pace to a sustainable level.

Quoting statistics from labor union coalitions [0] (usually mob controlled and heavily influenced by their agenda) is really flimsy evidence, aside from the fact that causal inference is not a part of it. So, yes, I reassert this is 'unverifiable' unionist talking points.

According to their own data, Amazon only had higher rates of "light duty" injury (most of which are not "serious" as they claim). This is easily explained by Amazon's need to report all cuts and bruises due to the targets on their backs, while others gladly omit them--especially say, unionized ones where the leaders would logically tell them to keep cuts and bruises silent to juice their numbers.

[0] The Strategic Organizing Center (SOC) is a democratic coalition of four labor unions: Service Employees International Union (SEIU), International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), Communications Workers of America (CWA) and United Farmworkers of America (UFW). Together, SOC-affiliated unions represent more than 4 million workers.

Well, clearly their mistake was failing to consult hwers on Hacker News when evaluating the market for warehouse labor.

$20/hr is increasingly difficult to live on in higher COL areas of the US, but annualized at 40 hours per week, it's pretty close to the US median individual income. a household with two adults making that much would be well above the median household income. "humiliatingly low" is an exaggeration.

I'm sure people would still be griping, but nothing is static. The cost of everything keeps increasing and honestly, depending on where you live even at 20 dollars an hour it will be hard to make ends meet.

There will always be a struggle between labor and employer where each will seek to maximize their share, it's the system we have set up. I really don't think people should be faulted for pushing for more when it's literally a companies goal to pay people as little as is functionally possible.

Amazon is the target because they are the largest. If you increase the wage Amazon pays, you increase the wage their competitors pay.

> when it's literally a companies goal to pay people as little as is functionally possible

The meme that “fiduciary duty” means “maximise revenue at all costs” needs to die. This is a falsehood that has been debunked repeatedly.

Your two sentences in this thread is hardly debunking anything. What is Amazon maximizing if not profit? It certainly is not employee share of revenue or employee well being.

The point is that there’s no law that says companies must maximize profit at the expense of everything else. The fiduciary duty is to be responsible with shareholder’s money, not to maximize return on investment.

It doesn't matter if it is the law or not if Amazon is made up of a large group of managers with competing interests that all boil to maximizing profit in order to meet their individual key goals. The GP said nothing about it being the law, simply that it is how Amazon, as a giant megacorporation, acts in practice.

It does matter because assuming it as a matter-of-fact prevents discussing or even conceiving alternatives. It prevents you from asking: What should the companies fiduciary duty be? (Perhaps respecting the law and not busting unions?)

Corporations are allowed to exist to create a positive net good. ie: the social contract works so long as we can plausibly reason that they, you know, actually benefit people more than they harm. Maximizing profit is a lie told to children for reasons I won't get into, but when it displaces the social contract, the end result is a justification of all sorts of socially pathological behavior, this included.

Everything you just said stopped being true in the 70s and 80s. Yes, B-corps are a thing, but the laws as currently constructed encourage profit extraction above nearly everything else.

That would be true if people believed economists like Milton Friedman created reality instead of what was really much more mundane. Those who do so are attributing supernatural powers to a mere mortal.

It is true, regardless of what you believe. There is a ton if empirical evidence for it.

Having the patience to push and set legal precedent isn't a superpower. Not sure what your point is here.

I just don't base truth on what Milton Friedman supposedly says or what legal precedent is. There are much better epistemological firmaments than those on which to ground reality.

Corporations have no fiduciary duty to produce a profit. Thinking that they do has been attributed to Milton Friedman's 1971 NY editorial [0], but some argue that the notion can't be pinned on him [1] It's more accurate to say that fiduciary responsibilities are to ensure the corporation doesn't violate the law and that the firm doesn't go out of business [2].

[0] 'The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits', Friedman

[1] https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Shareholder-Value-Myth-Shareholders-C...

The only point of a company is to maximize shareholder value. You're right, that doesn't always mean "maximize revenue at all costs.” It usually does though, because especially as a growth company that's what shareholders want. Obviously there are competing priorities, but overall most shareholders want to maximize discounted profit, and all their priorities reflect how that should be done.

That’s not true though. The shareholders are people so what they want are as varied as what people want.

Does Elon want SpaceX to be super profitable or does he want to make life multi planetary? (They aren’t mutually exclusive, but it’s weird to think that he is just trying to make as much profit as possible).

One can also consider that the state is also a party because they license and privilege corporations and stockholders.

> but it’s weird to think that he is just trying to make as much profit as possible

Why is it weird to think that?

More wealth isn’t enough to satiate his ego, he absolutely craves legacy. As of now he’ll still be a small footnote in history, kids will likely learn about Henry Ford 150 years from now but Musk isn’t worth much of an appearance. Tesla is just an iterative step in EV / battery manufacturing, and is likely to be dwarfed by competition over the next 50 years, even if it does really well.

SpaceX gives him the chance to truly make history. People will learn about our first manned trip to Mars and the first colony. Perhaps even for thousands of years.

I wasn’t trying to guess his motives. More his actions don’t match someone trying to maximise profit.

Because all their profits come from NASA and starlink… so building a mars capable vehicle doesn’t really make sense from the profit motive perspective. It won’t be profitable in his lifetime.

People in control have much more ability to have the company execute their vision. As an investor the only thing you can do is say yes or no to management. Since the group of investors all have different side goals the one thing they agree on is making money, so management optimizes for that. Then everyone sees that the company exists to make money, so people that are interested in other things self select out. In the end all the shareholders are interested in maximizing the share price.

> The cost of everything keeps increasing and honestly, depending on where you live even at 20 dollars an hour it will be hard to make ends meet.

And if you bump everyone to $20, things will get more expensive and then you'll have to bump them to $22, and then everything will get more expensive so you'll...

A wage-price spiral would be preferable to the asset inflation that two decades of zero-interest policy have brought us.

I think you’ve just invented the Wage-Price Spiral.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage-price_spiral

Except that's not at all true. Historic raises in the minimum wage did not cause an inflationary response in goods nor currency.

>Historic raises in the minimum wage did not cause an inflationary response in goods nor currency.

The "historic raises in the minimum wage" were also very conservative and decried by proponents of $15/$20/whatever minimum wage as being too low. A one time pay bump won't cause serious issues, but giving in to ever increasing demands for minimum wage (ie. $15 last year, $20 this year, $25 the year after) will.

Minimum wage should be going up all the time to keep it inline with inflation. That's the point of minimum wage.

Minimum wage used to ride regularly, then since 2005 has remained constant while in real terms reducing by about 40%

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1065466/real-nominal-val...

> Minimum wage should be going up all the time to keep it inline with inflation. That's the point of minimum wage.

Except that if you adjusted the minimum wage in 2005 to account for inflation, you'll only get $7.93 today[1]. I doubt the people clamoring for a $20 minimum wage today are doing it on the basis of "keeping up with inflation".

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL

May I ask what are your sources for that claim? Honest question.

This is so exaggerated as to be silly. The cost of "things" has many components, and only a small fraction of them trace back to the hourly wage of low-paid domestic workers. Increasing low-end wages by 10% does not result in 10% additional inflation.

Considering that at the same time that inflation has been at the highest in years, corporate profits have been the highest ever. Maybe those two are much more related than wage and inflation?

Amazon is far from the first company bumping to 15$/hour. Even when they finally joined the 15$ club they where still underpaying people at the time as shown by their retention statistics.

That’s the thing about free markets, workers get to say no. They can trade lower pay for a vastly less crappy job, or get better treatment for similar pay elsewhere etc.

What’s less obvious is Amazon benefited from building out their infrastructure more recently than other companies which let them target sweet spots with large untrained workforces which made their jobs more appealing locally. But eventually they needed to pay market rates.

> as shown by their retention statistics.

>That’s the thing about free markets, workers get to say no.

I like how these sentences are consecutive.

The goalposts are “good working conditions”. You can track this with retention, which is notably terrible at Amazon.

If the workers want unions… why not just let them have unions? Amazon is hell bent on suppressing worker power. Acting like Amazon isn’t doing anything wrong here is wishful thinking. We can keep pretending like the needs of the workers are immaterial to the functioning of society or we can let workers have some modicum of control over their workplace conditions. But right now Amazon is trying to crush workers rights and that’s deplorable even if you’re tired of hearing about it.

In theory, a union is merely an organization of like-minded people much like the workmans' guilds of the medieval era. In practice, a union is a country club operating as an extension of state power. It is highly liable to create perverse incentives. There is no such thing as worker power in and of itself so long as the government dictates the terms of unionization.

> Amazon is trying to crush workers rights

What workers' rights are being violated when Amazon decides who may or may not be a future employee at an Amazon warehouse? That's what an employer should do. Amazon is not obligated to hire union-friendly workers.

There have been a lot of things done in the USA to make unions worse. Such as the Taft-Hartley act which placed significant restrictions on union power. This isn’t the fault of unions but of state power meant to weaken unions as a concept. Whatever flaws there may be with unions in practice in this country, I believe they still do offer an opportunity for workers to directly advocate for their needs in a way that has real consequences for an employer who tries to trample them. This is what Amazon is opposing. If you have an issue with how unions are implemented in this country, complain about that. But don’t misunderstand the value in workers rights.

> What workers' rights are being violated when Amazon decides who may or may not be a future employee at an Amazon warehouse?

You can try to distill the action in to its parts to rob it of its meaning. I could say “I’m merely holding this pointy object and moving my hand forward? Surely I should have a say over how I move my body?” But you would know you’re being stabbed all the same.

I don’t know why you want to pretend like Amazon’s efforts to crush unions are valueless. Workers are human beings who deserve some control over their workplace. Amazon is trying to prevent that. That’s what I and many are calling out as wrong and worth opposing.

EDIT: By the way the issue is not just about amazon’s hiring practices. I am referring to the wide variety of anti-union tactics Amazon is using to interfere with labor power. Take the point of this article. Amazon will try to make donations to sway political power in their favor so they can continue to get tax breaks without unions. These individual actions can be imagined as devoid of context and valueless, but the point of this action is clear: Amazon does not want its workers to have a say in their workplace.

That’s because the higher pay comes at the cost of peeing in bottles aka losing human dignity.

It feels like there’s no shortage of people out to defend Amazon either.

Did you read the comment? It claimed that amazon is not the outlier here.

If someone is willing to sell their dignity (which I guess is now defined by whether or not you urinate in a bottle) then why should we stop them?

We’re not talking about safety or child labor where there’s a moral duty to put up guard rails.

Because what happens is every single company will start doing this in practice. Not to mention that overworking people to the point that they do not believe they can even take a real rest break is a safety issue.

This already happens at other companies, check the grandparent comment.

I have found a few articles which claim Amazon's contracted delivery drivers (which is a pretty sketchy practice tbh) work 14 hour days.

14 hour days aren't great, but I don't think it's particularly stunning. Nurses regularly work 12 hours shifts and often pick up more hours for overtime pay. Truck drivers drive a maximum of 11 hours a day, which is probably pretty close to what Amazon delivery drivers do once you consider time picking up packages and getting up to deliver them.

If delivery drivers work ~40 hours a week (~3 days a week on, 4 days off) that sounds like a pretty okay arrangement. If they're working 14 hours a day, 5 days a week, then that's rough. Based on some quick Googling it seems like they target a 40 hour work week, but maybe there are some articles of them being pressured/forced to do more.

As a society we should not create our support creating through inaction an environment where people feel it’s necessary to sell their dignity. Would you agree?

Amazon is big enough that it can create systemic problems where free market doesn’t work. If everyone in a town is being run out of business, people feel they have no choice but to take up that job.

> As a society we should not create our support creating through inaction an environment where people feel it’s necessary to sell their dignity. Would you agree?

I would agree, but how do you reconcile that with many desiring legalization of sex work? Surely that is 'worse' than urinating in a bottle?

Does Amazon run other local warehouses 'out of business'? I wouldn't imagine there to be much competition between local warehouses unless there was a shortage of labor.

Because every time something like that gets accepted, that moves the Overton window down, and makes it easier to take the next step. "What if they want to sell one of their kidneys? They are theirs. What if a little action in the backroom is needed for a promotion? They can always say no".

We should be building a better society for future generations, not for a few billionaires.

> What if they want to sell one of their kidneys?

I thought of this specifically when I wrote my comment, which is why I added the bit about "moral duty". Selling your kidneys is harmful. There's the inherent risk of surgery, not to mention it's a part of your body that you would otherwise keep.

I think the examples you are giving are things we should protect against, but I do not believe that urinating in a bottle is comparable at all.

You're going to urinate no matter what. The only thing different here is where it is at. Many people choose to go camping and urinate outdoors. Most choose a toilet. Some people (even those that aren't on the clock at an Orwellian-esque company!) choose a bottle when they are desperate, e.g. on a road trip.

>If someone is willing...

I'm gonna stop you right there and point out that while nobody ever puts a gun to one's head when it comes to taking a job, it's never that cut and dry. They may not normally be willing, but they may be desperate enough under the right circumstances. That desperation, hell even willingness in and of itself, doesn't justify on-the-job abuses.

I think that there might be some disconnect here. I personally wouldn't want to urinate in a bottle, but it really isn't that big of a deal to me. It's gross, but not something I'd really care about if it meant I got paid decently. There are also purpose-made products for camping that turn urine into a gel.

Of course I say this as a software engineer, so I'm very privileged and probably a bit disconnected from the choices these workers have to make.

Does any job have dignity anymore?

I'm a white guy on a team of a all Indian developers and I spend half of my time kissing butt to fit in, just so I can get the basic information I need to do my job.

Before that I was a truck driver and peed in a bottle and that actually had more dignity then kissing butt all day.

Single moms useing only fans to keep paying these skyrocketing rents.

They literally made half the work force submit to experimental vaccines or get fired.

This is 2022 America.

There's no such thing as work place dignity in the majority of jobs anymore.

> They were the first to $15[...] now they pay closer to $18 by me

This is bullshit.

I'm sure there's some Hollywood accounting justification for this claim, but over 10 years ago close to $18/hr is what you could expect to make as associate working in the distribution center of another big corporate behemoth: Walmart. We're talking low-skill grindwork smack dab in the post-economic collapse, and that $18/hr figure does not account for the "veteran" workers on the receiving end of the more-or-less guaranteed annual pay bumps that come with just continuing to work there. (They were making $20+/hr.) Again, not now in the current post-COVID era (because otherwise who cares), but over 10 years ago.

It blew me away when a few years ago I learned that Amazon was only paying something like $13.

So Amazon is $15 today? Who cares. Almost every fast food place around is paying close to that now, I'm told. $15 is so low that no one was getting paid that low at the Walmart DC that I'm familiar with, which (again, since it bears repeating) was over 10 years ago.

Relating to those pay bumps: Amazon has targets for staff turnover, which will potentially purge anyone who gets incremental pay increases even if they start doing that (which AIUI they don't really)

> "whatabout" the urine bottles as if the heavily unionized UPS drivers don't also do this.

Anecdotal I guess, but every time I see either an Amazon or UPS driver at my house they seem pretty relaxed. They pull into the drive, walk to the door with the package, and walk back to the truck. They don't seem rushed. Maybe they pee in a bottle in their truck but based on my observations that's probably just the easiest thing for them to do, at least for the males.

When I delivered pizza in the late 1980s I ran back and forth from my car to the customer's door. 30 seconds saved could mean being ahead of the next driver getting back to the store, where it was FIFO.

Just to play Devil's Advocate: a company can cut donations or most other expenditures anytime it wants. An increase in wages is effectively a permanent commitment, and the only way to reduce wage expenditures is to cut the workforce. This is why companies tend to prefer bonuses, etc, rather than pay bumps, even for individual employees.

Companies also want to retain the ability to fire at will, with simple HR processes, and to reward based on performance instead of seniority.

> and to reward based on performance instead of seniority

Or reward based on bootlicking, office politics and sexual favours. If you think companies are efficient and promote based on merit, I have a casting couch to sell you.

> and to reward based on performance instead of seniority

You say that like it's a bad thing. (Also, generally unheard of in the types of places we're discussing; you don't get paid more for being good. You get paid more for be good enough for longer.)

If I ever become a Devil, remind me not to choose you as my advocate. Your comment makes them look worse.

Just a few months ago Amazon raised the maximum base salary from $160k to $350k

Most people that work for Amazon in the warehouse like working there. All you're hearing are from the union plants that are coordinating with media that both want to see Amazon fail. Meanwhile the fact that unions are having such a hard time gaining traction show that most of the members feel like they don't need it. The idea that you can intimidate hundreds of thousands of workers across the US is ludicrous.

Could it not also be that unions are having a hard time gaining traction because Amazon is taking illegal anti-union measures in their warehouses? The NLRB gave merit to complaints of illegal activities like threatening workers who were voting to unionize: https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgdejj/amazon-repeatedly-vio...

> Most people that work for Amazon in the warehouse like working there.

Isn't the retention rate at Amazon warehouses abysmal?

Because everyone else quits after a month?

Obviously, companies don't want to spend more on labor than they have to. But I doubt that's any company's major concern with unions. The issue, as I see it, is the lack of flexibility once unions take hold. Now you have a large democratic body with a lot of control over hiring and firing and with undue input about who in the company does what and according to which rules, which means, ultimately, over the company's ability to address novel challenges.

Just to take one silly example, when I worked at the phone company we weren't allowed to move our phones ourselves any time we moved desks. That was a task that by contract had to be performed by a union lineman. So a guy would show up, eventually, and unplug your phone from one desk and then plug it into another.

That kind of nonsense was in place all throughout the company. All kinds of ridiculous details were written down and enforced. The phone company barely even tries to be competitive, so whatever, I guess. You probably pay for that in your cellphone bill, but it's not the end of the world.

But if you're actually trying to be nimble and efficient, then that kind of stuff makes it a lot harder.

Can't companies negotiate contract terms with unions that preserve the flexibility they desire while addressing the concerns the workers had?

This is very interesting. I’ve heard that warehouses have poor conditions, but not poor pay.

Anecdotally a friend of mine said that the warehouses pay very well, especially in smaller towns where there are less opportunities for young people who need short term work or flexible working hours.

Do competing warehouses pay better?

Why do you consider the headline sensationalist? They are using the same language used in their memo:

> provide political cover for local policymakers, neutralize organized labors’ attempts to grow their coalition of third-party validators and spokespeople [...]

Quotation marks implies they are directly quoting from the leaked memo, i.e. not a sensationalized headline.

That's not how quoting works. You can't just quote one word and then put something else behind it. There's a difference between "neutralizing unions" and "neutralizing labor's attempt to ..."

It's like the difference between "we need to kill him" and "we need to kill his attempt to pass a law that would..."

"labor" as a noun is a synonym for union

Yes, the point isn't the word used, but that they want to "neutralize" a campaign's effects not the union. That's just not how quotes work.

> There's a difference between "neutralizing unions" and "neutralizing labor's attempt to ..."

The term neutralize as used here (i.e. "to counteract the activity or effect of : make ineffective", Merriam-Webster dictionary) actually make both sentences nearly identical.

Hey, I gave to a charity. Why don't local politicians give me tax breaks?!?

Honestly, this sort of idea is such an anathema to the idea of fairness, and an indictment of politics.

Be a big enough company, and then you can effectively bribe politicians into giving you money from local tax payers that you can then use to destroy those same local businesses and communities. Genius.

> Hey, I gave to a charity. Why don't local politicians give me tax breaks?!?

Aren't charitable donations tax deductible?

I don't think that amazon is doing that. Nor Elon.

They have offshore tax operations AND demand special treatment, subsidies or tax breaks for deigning to operate in some area.

I disagree that it’s sensationalized. The intentions do seem to work towards neutralizing.

Tax breaks and land grants are giving Amazon a massive advantage over all local businesses.

Even if you are against labour right and purely pro-business, how is a local shop suppose to complete? You are just destroying you local businesses in favour of a multinational that pays almost no taxes. I do not understand why this practice is allowed.

Next time you're at a union meeting, ask them about any boxes they own at sports stadiums. Ask if you as a paid union member can use the box that you are paying for with your dues.

While I don't like things like luxury boxes for the big wigs, a union exec would have the same justification as any business exec would. In fact, a union exec might have even more justification as I can imagine nearly their entire job is schmoozing executives and politicians.

An even better opportunity for the executives and politicians being schmoozed to meet a real dues-paying union worker.

You could make the same argument about bags of coke and keeping hookers on retainer.

At a point you need to draw the line admit what is simply corruption.

While you're at it ask your corporate boss if you can use his private jet since it is your labor making him wealthy after all. I'm sure he'll be very generous.

I agree that powerful people aren't great but it seems ridiculous to imagine that union bosses are the worst offenders.

I think what makes it uniquely terrible is that it comes from someone who claims to be for the little guy, and reeks of hypocrisy. The capitalist is pretty naked about their intent, etc

I'll take the hypocrite who is acting in my best interest over the openly hostile one who is trying to fuck me over.

Not even close to the same thing. One is you giving someone money to do something and they spend it on themselves, the other is you getting paid from your employer who bought a jet with their return on investment.

Not american, but our union owns summer cottages that members can use. Otherwise unions are really simple, they get % of my pay, so more I make, more they make and its other way around with my job, less I make, more they make.

Are you saying this as an argument against unions? Or as an argument for better, more democratic unions?

Or just look up their LM-2.

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