Amazon's Global Quest to Crush Unions
newrepublic.com
newrepublic.com
I worked in one of the Seattle buildings. It was still a culture of people crying at their desks, incompetent managers being checked out or just stressing out everyone around them.
Then you had the more seasoned people who figured out how to play the game. Something is broken or had some outage?
Find a way to blame another team. Think of the most sleezy used car sales manager you’ve met in the finance office of a car dealership. Now give them a “Sr. software development manager” role. That’s Amazon for ya.
Managers going on vacations to Hawaii while their teams are slaving away over the weekend to meet unrealistic deadlines. Utter lack of leadership. A house of cards held together by H1Bs and other visa situations where people put up with it out of fear of losing their jobs and having to leave the country.
I pray the government breaks up that scam. It’s a stain on humanity.
Hiring people into the country on Visas, because then they have to perform to very high levels and crazy demands else they have to go back home?
That's evil genius stuff right there.
Come visit Amazons campus around Denny Triangle and SLU in Seattle.
The majority of the foot traffic (Amazon employees) are #1 Indian nationals.
If you sponsor someone from Bangalore or Chennai, you pay some up front costs. But that person is going to work double/triple time and deal with a huge amount of shit. Otherwise, they have to pay themselves to move back to India within a limited amount of time.
If you see organizations like Prime Video, Alexa, Kindle - pretty much the entire org is Indian. You want to tell me white, black, Hispanic people can’t code?
The HR pipelines are set up where most new recruits come through specific colleges that have an abundance of Indians studying abroad.
If someone from Chennai has to be on a miserable on call, they’d rather do that and send their kid to a school in Seattle or Redmond, instead of moving back to India.
Of course. And the union's and worker's job is to squeeze every ounce of value they can out of Amazon.
It's how marketplaces work.
Not to mention most of amazon’s workplaces are not unionized, so it’s amazon vs a single worker in the marketplace. Who’s gonna win in that pairing?
> Who’s gonna win in that pairing?
If Amazon is so powerful, why aren't all its employees working at minimum wage?
The US is full of people who don't work for Amazon. Plenty of choices.
In the 1930s the US government provided an "employer of last resort" to prevent giving people like bezos from wielding this kind of power and growing the economy but apparently these days weak moral platitudes suffice.
Nobody forces anyone to live in depressed areas. Move. Even penniless immigrants cross the southern border and manage to move to every part of the US.
In economically depressed area, Amazon can offer a penny better than a few handful employers and people will try and see if they can earn a better living, even if they heard enough story about how stressful it is working at Amazon.
Move? You might be wealthy enough to do so, but do you think those living in those area have enough money to afford that? The so called penniless immigrants, they paid their way to get to the border and try to cross the border illegally. You are talking about those who are living in the country legally, and not in a situation to move.
Every corner of the US was settled by penniless people, including the colonists who arrived here penniless.
If employees don't agree on stuff to the point there's a 50-50 divide, then they aren't actually united. There is no union. That's fine, as long as Amazon accepts whatever result. It's also totally possible that 99% want to unionize so they can apply maximum leverage on Amazon and extract better pay and benefits out of them.
The minority doesn't get a choice. There's a big difference between a choice and a vote.
If union contracts only applied to people who voluntarily joined the union, then it might be fair.
Last I checked, these employees don't _have_ to work for Amazon.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/06/amazon-is-the-no-1-company-t...
Wells Fargo at number 2? Come on.
From the LinkedIn article:
LinkedIn Top Companies is a ranking of the 50 companies that are investing in their talent and helping people build careers that will set them up for long-term success.
Our 2022 LinkedIn Top Companies list is the 6th annual ranking of the 50 best workplaces to grow your career, all based on unique LinkedIn data. These are the companies that are offering stability in our ever-changing world of work — the ones that are not only attracting workers, but retaining them.
And this survey has nothing to do with quality of environment. This list, and the accompanying article, are completely meaningless.
But there is also a huge difference between "best employer to grow your career" and "best employer to work for".
Simply having the Amazon name on your resume is great for your career, but your career will probably be outside of Amazon.
I guess someone else would acquire them regardless, but Amazon seems the worst outcome.
I don't mean to necessarily disagree with the general tone of what you're saying, though. I felt some of that while I was there.
The trick to happiness at Amazon is staying the hell away from anything tier 1 -- or, hell, just anything with direct lines to external customers. Those "9s" we give are delivered on the backs of engineers. I'd for sure break down and cry too if I was getting paged 50 times per week because the response time of some subsystem went outside SLA by 5ms.
Chill org, chill life.
As for Amazon: they are the poster child for unionization. They treat their workers as disposable pieces of meat with no rights, and if you want to get unionized, that's how you do it.
People who have actual experience with unions in this country have a more jaded view of them: they tend to be run by cliques of people who enjoy the high life on their members' dime (cf. Teamsters). "Filing a union grievance" is often not at all a wise career move. However, I can still totally understand an Amazon warehouse worker voting for a union.
It means "unions are highly encouraged, and companies pretty much have to recognize them."
Your impression is not entirely false.
Compared to the US, Western Europe is paradise on earth for employees.
There are so many rights taken for granted by Western European employees that your average US-peep could only dream of.
Where Western Europe does have problems is around contractors and the so-called gig economy (zero-hours contracts). That's still a bit of a grey area in many respects.
No, it isn't. For example,
> 80% of the French earn less than €3k a month (equivalent to $36k a year) and 50% less than €2k a month ($24k a year). This is BEFORE taxes on income.
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1564868574879129600
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...
After taxes and healthcare, adjusting for instability, the median European worker is better off. The top-performing American, on the other hand, is far better off than their European counterpart*. This is the design. Immigration + better life for the ambitious at the cost of a worse life for the median. It’s a recipe for brain drain and it works, though we must be honest at what cost.
*non-aristocratic
It also does not match what the St. Louis Fed says [1], which says the US median individual income was $36k in 2019.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income#Median_equival...
> Net in France means after the taxes your employer pays but before the taxes you pay on your income. I know it's confusing!
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1564875547792080898
The benefits would have to be really, really sweet to consider making half as much a "worker's paradise."
While I agree with you in regards to things like quality of life, health care, food, housing and many services, in a globalized economy certain goods that one might want to purchase don't scale that much depending on where one lives.
For example, consider an iPhone 13, in this case a black one with 256 GB of storage and not bound to any particular carrier: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-13
It costs 929$.
Now here's the same model in a local store here in Latvia, also an iPhone 13, black color, 256 GB of memory: https://www.1a.lv/p/mobilais-telefons-apple-iphone-13-melna-...
It costs 939€ or around 934$.
You hear a lot about people in US making over 100k$ (with varying taxes) per year, over here this year I'll probably make around 36k$ before taxes and 24k$ after taxes. So essentially when the cost of goods in a globalized economy (for these products that cannot be produced locally) remains consistent across different nations, someone in the US will realistically have a purchasing power that is many times larger than mine.
Actually I wrote about my personal finances on my blog a while ago "On finances and savings": https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings
Note: I don't consider myself as someone who can actually afford Apple devices, just using them as one example of that kind of a good; nobody is going to give you a car 2-3x cheaper just because you're from Latvia either, or a computer, or many other goods.
Of course, your argument does hold true for other things, for example it's possible to rent a studio apartment here for around 300-400$ per month. Also my university degrees were free (though people with worse grades might have to pay if there are not enough budget places allocated) and I haven't had any significant healthcare expenses myself as of yet.
Everyone needs these, not everyone needs an iPhone. Which means a country where everyone has their basic needs covered but no one has an iPhone, I would say, is a better country to live in (on average) than a country where half of the people have iPhones and houses and the other half doesn't have either houses or iPhones.
I think a lot of people fall into a trap of looking at their own circumstances and virtually move themselves to the other country, of course, as a software developer living in the bay area it's very unlikely you'll find a better place to live. You already have everything. But if you were to think "which country would you rather have been born in" the equation changes. Because in a country like the USA the chance of being poor or marginalised (think being born a woman or LGBT in a red state) is much higher than, say, France. Of course if you look at developing countries like Latvia the equation might change.
So, really, I think it's important to think about how much of our basic are covered for how much of the population.
This is fair, it's just that I feel like focusing on PPP often makes people miss out on certain aspects of the greater picture.
For example, why many might choose to work for either US companies if possible, or even travel to US to work and build as much capital as they can, before settling down either back home with a substantial amount of money, or alternatively choosing another country.
Of course, at that point one also cannot disregard how good or bad any given country is from a social standpoint, like human rights issues and so on.
I'd suggest that some sort of a smartphone is more or less necessary to function in a modern society, as might some sort of a laptop/netbook and an Internet connection, at least when you intend to live with any semblance of fitting in. Given that complex electronics aren't produced locally, you're dealing with whatever the market prices are.
Essentially, you have to be able to communicate through WhatsApp, or browse the web to use many of the governmental e-services, or do online banking and be able to confirm payments, or digitally sign documents which is getting increasingly more inevitable thanks to the "eParaksts" ("eSignature") system we have. Technically you could go without those, but it'd be a cumbersome life that wouldn't respect your time as much.
And whilst the situation regarding public transportation is better in Latvia and certain other countries when compared to US (or at least so I've been told, possibly owing to the much smaller size of the country), the fact that many might need to own motor vehicles hasn't become untrue either, especially the further into the rural regions you go and the more items you need to transport.
Of course, instead of finding happiness in being able to purchase bread, milk and cheese, some choose to work for foreign companies and make many times more money than they could ever hope to make locally, to lead more comfortable lives, a trend that's also useful to note. Or, curiously, many of them simple emigrate, given that they don't find satisfying local salaries and thus add to the "brain drain" that certain developing nations are facing. This also shouldn't be overlooked.
Another interesting thing I've noticed people utterly miss out on in our own industry is the claim that "developers are expensive, tools/software/servers are cheap", which gets more and more untrue the more in the direction of less well off countries you look. I don't doubt that in some places a beefy EC2 instance would essentially mean the salary of another developer.
Focusing just on PPP and being able to purchase the bare essentials utterly misses out on these finer points of what the differences in the absolute numbers actually mean.
That said, absolutely there is an arbitraged disparities going on where some contractor in India is making $10K/yr while someone in the US is making $250K/yr. Are statically priced global goods fair? Perhaps not, or perhaps the issue is our inability to agree on the worth of a human's labor, and the people who exploit that deficiency. Many US companies are now looking outside the US towards Europe for lower cost engineers, so who knows how long the levels.fyi salaries are going to last in the US.
In the US, you need to make good money because everything is out of pocket. If you don't, your quality is life is poor. This is also why whenever Americans compare their life to Europe, it's always numbers based. It's all we know: big numbers, better life.
Not to mention things that are not easily qualified by pure numbers, such as work culture, vacation time, public transit.
Europe has vastly more progressive and people friendly political, economic system and cultural setup. This is speaking as an American in tech with a relatively high income.
"But you have to wait months for a specialist in Canada!"
That's different from the US system, how? Have you ever tried to get appointments? We're also booking many months out.
"Want this live saving surgery? Let's see if insurance will cover it first, you might impact our profits. "
K...
It all sucks, but at least everyone gets it in some places as opposed to the system working for a privileged few. Ironically, the US does have socialized medicine, it's called Medicare, which is wildly popular.
The US healthcare system is one of the strongest arguments for government take over.
Sure there's some waiting lists but when I have something that may be serious I get seen right away.
In the Netherlands I've also had great care and even subsidized housing when I was making minimum wage.
At least in Berlin there's been big movements towards controlling rent prices, building social housing, socialising the current housing that exists. Etc.
So although it is a problem, is it going to be a problem in 20 years? What's being done in the USA, as a counterpart, to solve these problems? Everyone talks about unaffordable housing in the USA but their zoning laws are still horrible. So any changes will have to go through that first.
In that regard, I think European countries are in a much better standing to solve these problems.
I'll just state quality of life is flat out better in the US than Europe, and anything you use to show otherwise just proves that I'm right since you're just trying to reduce it to X metric.
Its not only about the money my friend !
Please read the next line of my post, the one with the word "rights".
I think you will find it is an indisputable fact that employment rights in Western Europe are centuries ahead of the US.
I mean, there was another thread right here on HN posted yesterday about some guy worrying about mat/pat leave in the US. That's a given in Western Europe and woe betide the employer that tries to mess with your mat/pat rights !
Overall quality of life umbers suggest the opposite of what you say in the above comment. We should always go by data and objectivity:
https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/compare_countries_res...
Also, HDI for the US is higher that of France:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hdi-by-co...
It's OK for different people to weight each of those things differently.
It's up to you to decide if that's a more fair comparison or not, but we are not most people so I find inequality an extremely important measure to adjust for.
I think I'd rather be poor or middle class in France than I would the USA. But I would prefer to be wealthy in the USA than in France.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/eurocrisispress/2021/06/15/weaponiza...
Compare the top causes of personal bankruptcies in the USA and France. Medical debt is one of the top causes in the USA. I wasn't able to confirm this with a quick search, but I sincerely doubt that's true of France.
(The other replies here seem to have missed that Marazan's point was about financial ruin from medical expenses, and was not a general point about quality-of-life.)
Marazan's just randomly equated:
"You could live with dignity here in France on minimum wage"
with
"It means an adverse medical condition doesn't financially cripple you for life."
That is an important component of dignity but not the only one. Homelessness is another component. And frankly, after being in Paris and living in SF, I am much more worried about folks in Paris.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_...
Funny that a perfectly reasonable comment is downvoted to the max because folks here can't deal with an objective truth that goes against their beliefs "US bad Muh Europe good".
I don't know about that, but - your French employer can certainly live off of you when you're making minimum wage.
> how about the US?
It's questionable whether you could live in dignity in the US regardless of what your salary is... just looking at the situation in Jackson, Mississipi right now, or the state of public transport or healthcare in a country as rich as the US makes you feel like someone is playing a cruel joke at people's expense.
This is ameliorated by federalism. If you don't want to live in crazytown, you can pull up roots and move to another state with a government that actually tries to identify and solve real problems.
I think the same dynamic plays out everywhere on Earth in different forms. In some places the folks seeking to avenge their honor, and the false friends stoking their grievances, are fewer, but there are some everywhere.
In my experience there's not much dignity in the US working for minimum wage.
My statutory minimum holiday allowance is 20 days[0], plus public holidays, plus sick leave[1], plus extra leave for things like weddings and funerals, plus parents get 3 years parental leave[2].
[0] my actual paid holiday allowance is higher than that
[1] for example, I opened a tin of tomatoes badly during the pandemic, and gouged out a 2 mm x 2 mm x 20 mm region of skin on my finger, bleeding profusely. I got a paid week off work for it to heal.
[2] Not sure the details, looks like it changed recently, but I think at least some of that is paid leave, between €(300+150) and €(1800+900) per month.
As an american worker, this is unimagineable. My company just announced that they've increased the maternal leave to a whole 3 weeks... To show off how progressive and forward they are
Meanwhile heavily unionized casino workers in Las Vegas are having the company help them finance their houses, months of maternal leave, and will even help people pay for school. All for blue collar work
The costs are irrelevant, you can move anywhere for those three years.
Because at first glance, SF rents are so bad that learning to fly and owning a small aircraft isn't immediately obviously the more expensive option, like it would be in Europe.
Outside that, you're better off in Western or Northern Europe, or Canada.
Hard to employ the entire country as software engineers making 400k in SF.
Money is one of the means to reach quality of life but not the only one. As QoL goes I am much better off here. Having good social security and healthcare (which is entirely free in Spain) are part of that. Not having to worry or paying $1000+ insurance per month like in the US really makes life more relaxed.
I was contacted by a FAANG recently for a job interview but as it was in the US and not remote I declined (I work for another multinational but not a FAANG). I live alone and I like exploring the world, I've also lived in two other countries :) But the US is not one I'd pick. Probably would have when I was younger and didn't have a care in the world though.
I'm in a company where the employees own and run it. We chose to have the company pay all health insurance and the first $8000 of the deductible. 99% of the time there is $Zero out of pocket for families each year.
We has been running like this for 20 years.
But it also means that once you're between jobs you're really heavily out of pocket. It would be a reason to have to stay in a horrible job.
So $2000 a month and there's still deductibles??? Wow.
Not uncommon to have health insurance and not to be able to afford to use it.
Many times, it's just a different way of money routing to run the services that sustain a society. Nothing is free, it doesn't really matter if you first get the money into your bank account and then distribute it to hospitals and schools personally or you don't see the money in your account and it's distributed on your behalf to schools and hospitals.
Fun fact, in Europe they sell plane tickets to America where you can go and pay for your education and healthcare like just like an American.
The real plight of our times is housing anyway and that unfortunately is a global plight.
I’m not even at a FAANG company and I have a 3,000 sq ft newer house, I drive a tesla, I have a nanny for my children. I have plenty saved for retirement, I can vacation to Europe or Hawaii i luxury every couple years.
The average EU employee is what, in a two bedroom with half a kitchen and no yard?
the average unskilled employee maybe?
an average swe can live a decent life, while the worker, every human actually benefits from universal healthcare.
As long as you’re not in coastal California or NYC you can own a house and live a decent lifestyle with that.
The initial hospital stay was two months, one enterily on the ICU. Afterwards months of rehab. Now special needs kindergarten and later on in school he will need a nurse to accompany him. Most of that is paid for except some medical items the medical provider deemed not necessary. Also time was not an issue, both where able to stay away from work for months and get paid sick leave for that time.
It still wrecks me to see him in that condition and his parents are still in shit condition but that's grief and exhaustion but not existential fear due to lack of income or .medical costs.
And yes, of course there are cases that will fall through gaps. But at least most of the cases are covered, and it does not depend on having enough money.
I am a swe and my wife is a geneticist. We both get middle pay, we both could get more money if we switched but we currently enjoy having more time for our two children.
House is 150m2, we could have aimed for a bigger one but consciously choose a smaller directly on the city center were almost anything is walk or bike able.
We have no need for a nanny, both our children (2,5)are at the kindergarten, completely free of charge.
Most of these rights are given by employment law, not union contracts, so unions are less relevant.
I worked for ~2 years as a contractor for a government entity in Canada. ~3500 headcount of employees. What I observed there was sickening. This was a place that had white-collar unions for all non-management employees. This union had completely hijacked the mission of this institution. It was no longer about serving the people that this entity was created to serve, but rather to protect the union and its contributors.
The software we were in charge of writing had direct, material impact on the physical and mental well beings of people in the province. Life and death. And at times I saw things like a deployment of features being delayed by weeks/months because a union member who was responsible for _manually_ deploying the changes was on vacation. To automate that deployment meant automating a union employees job and was impossible. These features directly served the needs of people that were in critical need of them.
On the other hand, I have family friends who work for UPS and other delivery services and see the brutal toll it takes on their body and mind. Pushed to absolute limits and exploited because they don't have a union.
But to me, it seems unions can and often do exploit people. After witnessing all of this I've developed a very dim view of humanity. We all just want to exploit someone.
That being said, there will always be some need for collective bargaining. I only wish it were possible to limit these extreme union grabs for power.
1. Unions are great and everyone should be part of one. Anyone who points out the bad parts of unions is an evil conservative and hates the middle/lower class.
2. Unions are evil and cause nothing but problems. Anyone who supports unions is a fool who doesn't see the horrors they cause.
Any discussion that includes the viewpoint that unions have both good points and bad points (as you allude to above) has a high likelihood of being attacked by _both_ sides.
It also doesn't help that it appears to very hard to actually set things up so that you get the good sides of a union without also getting the bad sides.
the works council (aka 'company codetermination') involves employee elected colleagues in company leadership decisions like during, hiring, reorgs, raise distribution, working hours, shift planning guidelines, ... while the unions focus on salary and compensation negotiations
Frankly, anyone who raids PCA funds the way they do is evil, plain and simple.
This is why we need more PPP (private-public-partnerships) here.
Just look at the MTO. It use to be an absolute cesspool or inefficiency which would make the old USSR envious.
Drivers license expired? Time to go stand in line where there are two tellers and 6 people "on break" in the back. The lineup is out the door, but who cares? Certainly not the union slugs who work there.
They finally introduced kiosks, which charged a "convenience fee" (probably at the request of the unions).
Fast forward, there is now a PPP in place for the MTO. Automation all over the place, you can renew your license online (FINALLY).
if not for the ability to step away from their union staff, none of this would have taken place. The union fights changes which leads to efficiency as this often means job losses.
Any "tech" the government builds looks like it was done by high school students and it is a shame they pay for this garbage.
Again, imagine you went to your bank site, and it looked like it was built 10 years ago and never been updated?
https://www.cato.org/commentary/americas-ports-problem-decad...
This is exactly why Milton Friedman was against unions. Unions would eventually evolve into this amalgamation that only protects the union and its contributors while disallowing other qualified workers from getting jobs at the respective companies.
Just saying it doesn't have to work that way.
“Amazon workers at a Coventry warehouse have voted they are ready to take strike action over pay. More than 300 workers voted in the consultative ballot at the fulfilment centre in the West Midlands, with 97 per cent saying they were ready to walk out.”
I completely get why unions are necessary. But it would be like me hiring a divorce attorney for my own wife.
A business is almost never going to want a union. And it seems weird to expect them to.
I think nearly everyone agrees that unions are going to have a negative impact on profits, that hasn't a point of contention in the debate.
This is also why unions have largely fallen out of fashion except in industries where the workers are well off. Unless you are wealthy enough to burden several months, if not years, without work striking isn't an option and thus the union becomes toothless.
Unions have "fallen out of fashion" in the US because there are not enough labor protections in place. Even now you hear of Starbucks and Amazon even going so far as hiring firms to do hit jobs on union leaders. If you think this is because they are afraid of downtime, rather than having to actually share more of their profits with workers, suit yourself.
The original claim replied to was that profit would decline, not disappear... Talk about a bad take.
> enough labor protections in place.
That's the remainder of the story. Because labour laws have appeared over the decades and centuries, one doesn't have to forego financial stability to save their life like people once had to. Workers now become de facto members of the government union which has already negotiated minimum standards for all. That wasn't always the case.
Those who are in a position to be able to walk away from an income for months at a time may hold on to eek out an ounce more, but it's simply not worth it to low paid workers who rely on a regular paycheque. The cost of losing a home and going hungry greatly outweighs any potential returns.
If you were prioritizing your life then I came and tried to rob you, what would be the chance that you prioritize my angle of attack?
Unions are literally built to prey on that cost that a company IS prioritized and by distracting it with legal hell it becomes slower and risks losing its position in the marketplace and thus potentially vulnerable to negoitations that are unfaorable because of exploiting what would otherwise be prioritization. Your example is just that the vampire sucked too much blood, and has a clear boundary of policy.
For decades they met union demands to avoid costly legal fights.. and in the end?
this is rather old, but telling: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2000/nov/09/2
Instead of restructure, the uion opted for bankruptcy? Way to "protect jobs"?
"The company's attempt to buy more time failed after union leaders rejected a new restructuring plan that would have cut a fifth of the 19,000-strong workforce. The union said its members would have to be paid £70m in wages arrears before it would consider the proposals."
Well, it suggests that unions are effective at creating negative consequences for the company. Those consequences could be "more costly to do business because the employees are paid more"; in theory, a good outcome. They could also be "more costly to do business because it's not against the rules for someone to plug in the monitor in their office because all electronics must be handled by a certified union member" (which actually happens); in theory, a bad outcome.
Not all "bad for the company" things are "good for the employees".
How can a company get honest feedback from their employees without the employees fearing reprisals? A union is one way of doing it since employees (usually) trust their union to take their grievances to the employer with little risk to the employees as individuals or as a group. There was a case a few years ago where a European company opened a factory in the right-to-work state and wanted its workers in a union because that's how it maintained employee relations in their home country. They were confused by the hostility towards unions in that state, both by workers and by the government. IIRC, it was semi-skilled manufacturing so exploiting the workers would be self-defeating if they kept leaving for other jobs.
How does this make sense? Is your ethical framework simply loving everything businesses hate?
"the fact individuals are anti-income tax should tell you all you need to know.."
"the fact criminals are anti-law enforcement should tell you all you need to know.."
Why would a business support unions? Often UNION members dont support other union employees.
Go to a major unionized auto factory sometime and look at the parking lot and try to find "imports".
These same "pro union" individuals also shop at walmart knowing it is not unionized because they like the lower prices.
All of the things you complain about happen on the business side of the table. People are people and do stupid shit with power. Why are Azure VPs buying shit from Amazon? Why do companies park burned out executives for a few years on gardening leave?
Does that work as well, or is this one of those "one way street" deals in your mind?
When have companies "consolidated and exerted unlimited political power"? Did they end up facing "anti-trust" laws? get broken up as a result?
> All of the things you complain about happen on the business side of the table.
Are you sure about that?
here's the head of the UAW being placed on leave for fraud:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/uaw-president-leave-corrupt...
Let me guess, the "business" made him do it?
I have no idea what point you are making with Azure?
Why do you care about how the UAW guy defrauded his organization? And why would the company? Amazon fires blue collar workers for peeing too long, why is the stewardship of their dues relevant at all? If anything, they benefit from compromised union leadership.
Not everyone is a FAANG SWE who can get a new gig right away. Some of the proles benefit from protection from the capricious decisions of their employer.
that really is a stretch don't you think?
Perhaps they are buying imports because they know the quality of the product they are building? Perhaps they know the "imports" are better and will last longer?
Does Azure offer socks? what if the Azure VP wanted socks for their kids
You seem to think an Azure VP shopping at Amazon (which only compete on the cloud computing space) is the same as a Unionized autoworker buying a car from a non-union shop????
> Why do you care about how the UAW guy defrauded his organization?
you are the one who said corruption only happens on the "business side of the table".. now you are shown this is incorrect your new position is "why do i care"?
If companies are virtual people can band together and seek collective action, so should actual people. Governance of unions, professional associations, etc are another, irrelevant matter.
Spooky23 2 hours ago | root | parent | next [–]
If you allow companies to consolidate and exert unlimited political power, workers need to be able to self-organize to ensure their interests are represented. Full stop. All of the things you complain about happen on the business side of the table. P "
Clearly you wrote about "business side of the table" when corruption exits on both sides of the table. Often the Unions corruption is rather bad as well (teamsters and organized crime anyone?)
you confuse me, now we are talking about "forest for the trees?"
Statements like this always seem like things people throw out there when they are unable to build a compelling case?
Because in non-right to work states, the workers are forced to contribute part of their paycheck to the UAW. So "the UAW guy defrauded his organization" should really read "the UAW guy defrauded the employees he was supposed to represent."
They did. It was a dirty business.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Alliance
People died.
I took what he wrote, replaced "union" with "company" and asked if this made sense too?
One thing about "fairness" is it should run in both directions.
The point is that there needs to be a better balance of power between both unions (which have literally bankrupt companies) and corporations (which have done really shitty things like "company towns").
Unions may or may not have bankrupted companies, but did they ever engage in the same level of violence, physical intimidation, or criminal behavior as these union busting alliances?
I like unions, but... yes? Pretending that they haven't is ridiculous. There's a reason that people are complaining that police officers can act (nearly) as horrible/brutal as they want to and fact (close to) no consequences. That reason is their union. There's also video of union members physically and mentally attacking people for crossing picket lines, etc.
When people get power, the bad eggs start causing problems for everyone else. And they also tend to gain power, so wind up making decisions for "the organization". This is true of both companies _and_ unions.
The Teamsters in another union that has been mired in controversy due to their behavior.
They got to the point they were simply moving bad teachers around from school to school so our government had to pass laws to rebuild the entire corrupt process.
https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/s02007
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-june-7-2...
This nurse murdered a number of patients. her union protected her and hid her misconduct. Instead of being fired, back door deals were made to transfer her from hospital to hospital.
it was easier, firing her would create union problems and so the hospitals agreed to "go with the flow" and allow her to continue killing.
Here (Ontario, Canada) we have dozens and dozens of police collecting full salary for YEARS pending criminal trials.
Cant fire them, cant do anything about it.
Instead of "defund the police" we need a way to reduce the police union power and FIRE bad cops.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Wettlaufer
She killed many people before finally turning herself in. Her union PROTECTED her, hid her mistakes, etc.
Derek Chauvin had like 6 misconduct write-ups.
Elizabeth had over 200
there is no "may or may not".. Unions DID bankrupt several companies.
It is odd you wrote what you did because how many times has the US government ever have to intervene in a corporation due to mob involvement?
"FEDS AGREE TO REDUCE OVERSIGHT OF ONCE-MOB-CORRUPTED TEAMSTERS UNION"
the Department of Justice has a nice site on unions and organized crime
https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ocgs/infiltrated-labor-unio...
As i said, there is a line between "too powerful unions" and "too powerful companies".
You tell us, how much violence did teamsters and their MOB inflict?
where's mr Hoffa?
https://people.howstuffworks.com/10-businesses-supposedly-co...
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/65365/7-businesses-you-p...
https://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/behind-real-estates-...
> Are you sure about that?
> here's the head of the UAW being placed on leave for fraud:
Corporate executives commit fraud and malfeasance all the time on a scale commensurate with their greater power and wealth. They rarely face serious consequences for it. The Wells Fargo fake accounts scandal broke over 5 years ago and hasn't resulted in criminal charges for anyone. Purdue Pharma essentially murdered tens of thousands of people, and the end result for the Sackler family will be that they won't get to keep all of the billions they made off of it. And, of course, the 2008 financial crash. I could go on.
Because i was asked to point out corrupt unions therefor by showing that corrupt corporations exists they "cancel out" one another?
I'd look at US laws to determine why no one was ever prosecuted. In each of the examples you provided it is clearly US crimes and the US justice systems failures?
FWIW, the police are investigating Jerry Dias :
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/unifor-jerry-dias-1.6...
That point is true about unions, too.
That's untrue. Especially when workers own part of the company as a part of their compensation.
I hate them. They made me (and many others that I know) miserable.
Eg Hollywood vs some other union.
What sector do you work in?
And we have specialized unions, e.g. Cockpit for pilots or the equivalant for train conductors. The latter is funny, because there is more than one union representing those at DB.
On a more general note, all employees benefit from the conditions negotiated between employers and unions (if there are any that is), regardless of union memebership. Legally, unions obly negotiate for members, technically rmployers don't make a difference. All that of course up to a certain salary sealing, everything above is outside union territory.
Large companies also elect a company wide works council which in the case of publicly listed companies is part of the board. (50% of the votes with a shareholder friendly tie breaking mechanism).
Works councils are traditionally dominated by unions but not always and there isn't a membership requirement to be represented.
Unions offer industry sector wide representation and also negotiate collective agreements that companies agree to (more or less) willingly and of course they coordinate strikes if need be.
As a German I can also say that unions and Betriebsräte are not only looking for the employees but also looking that the business has a future. And that's a common ground with the employers, which is why there is not this kind of animosity as in the US. Also, as I said: Even managers in Germany know that the success of the company is a group effort.
They are more demanding when the company does well, but willing to chip in when the company is in trouble.
It was FAR from an ideal framework, but it did mean we still had industrial capacity going into WWII.
I’m sympathetic to unions, though, as many companies really are a terrible place to work, and employees need better representation in those situations. I just wish there was a better option than unions.
"Albert" is my pen name, not my actual name. Albert was my dad's brother, who was killed in his very first day on the job at Swift & Co. in the Chicago stockyards. He either fell off a scaffold, or it collapsed, I'm not sure which.
Was there a meatpacker's union then, and did Albert belong to it? I don't know.
Worker safety is a sine qua non of unions. In some industries, the union enforces safety regulations rigorously; in others, the workers' comp laws force the companies to watch out for it. Before unions, the companies didn't have to care, and there were no laws.
As other people have pointed out here, safety laws protect everyone whether or not they belong to a union.
It turns out that the centralized government can conduct safety inspections and enforce safety rules.
It's one of the reasons unions fell out of favor in America. They never enforced safety, and many fell in with the mafia instead to shake down companies while providing no service.
Amazon would s*t bricks, if the same standards would be implemented in US, as in UK, Germany or France. That's the reason why they're so afraid of it.
I never understood why Americans thinks this is bad. This means that the local company can handle labour laws and you pay extra for the workers to avoid having to learn the laws of yet another country. The local company could even be labour owned and negotiate with the employer as if it was a union, and even if it isn't the workers will likely be unionized anyway and they can easily organize against Amazon if Amazon abuses them.
If that company unionizes, they drop the contract and avoid their name in the headlines.
Everything in this article points to European labor laws working exactly as intended. The "weakening of norms" seems entirely confined to a) low strike participation and b) that Amazon continues to find people willing to work for them.
It's a nightmare. Do not ever engage a union worker if you ever want to get anything done.
The article says "they choose to identify with the lowest paying sector", but that sector in Italy is "logistics" which makes pretty much perfect sense for warehouse workers.
There was probably a time when unions made more sense. When much of the work is exactly the same and people are just cogs in a big machine, well, I think the idea of collective bargaining makes sense. But while Amazon warehouse workers and delivery teams are doing pretty similar work, there are still differences. Some people just do more work and I don't see anything wrong with rewarding them.
Now all of that being said, I can see a better argument for breaking up Amazon to ensure more competition. I feel like an open labor market is the best way for workers to earn good treatment. When the market was tight, Amazon responded with higher pay and more benefits-- without the need of a union to get in the way and collect dues.
My union is fighting to raise my stake in the business I work for. Even if that means there are a couple new rules from the union it's still a hugely net positive.
I’m sure there are some bad unions but that doesn’t mean we should give up on the concept any more than bad moves by companies means we should give up on the concept of private business.
s/HOA/Union/ and this statement is still true
That’s also what goes wrong in an HOA. If the majority want you to paint your fence then that’s it to have to paint it.
Some agency gained is better than no agency at all.
Sure! But often only by seniority.
So the guy who has been around the longest, but doesn't do a great (because the union will protect him) gets the best hours and best bonuses. Can you do a better job? Sure! But it doesn't matter, you don't have seniority.
Take that same scenario and apply it across a bunch of other issues you might have with coworkers and you'll get a sense how unions can go wrong.
Unions basically mean you give up individual autonomy in your job in exchange for group protection.
In some cases that's an improvement, in some cases it's not.
CEO = homeowner
Union = HOA
Employees = Grass on your lawn???
Like if you like long grass, the HOA can dictate you can’t do that. Or if you like pay by performance but the majority of the union wants pay by seniority they can dictate that to you.
And while it sounds good in theory... in practice many people hate HOAs. They hate not being able to decide what to do themselves and they hate the pettiness and politics of it.
And if you're in the majority in the union then you're also ok.
The problem is when you're in a minority for some reason.
Once the board members gave themselves the ability to write rules without a vote, they started going after everyone for petty violations, like parking a car in your driveway for too many days or having the wrong colored door mat. And they have the legal power to foreclose on your house if you don’t play along.
Yeah, this is a terrible analogy.
i use to like r/antiwork on Reddit but dumped it over a year ago. It isnt about "antiwork" but "union drives". The answer to almost any workplace issue seems to be "join a union" but what about the major Union failures?
Here (Canada) we had an issues with a meat processing plant in Alberta. It didnt take long for the striking workers to lash out at their union as well for lack of support. The union felt there were not enough people for them to get involved. while they were content to take their union dues, they were reluctant to get involved in costly legal battles?
Unions are also a business as well, subject to the exact same "corruption" charges as any other organization, so it is ironic that r/Antiwork advocates them?
Look at the recent news from the head of the very powerful auto workers union (which also includes clergy?) here and his mystery $25,00. Naturally his excuse is his "prescription medication and alcohol abuse made me do it".
People complain about the "CEO" pay, but how much do union leaders earn?
Unions were very good in the past and did a lot for the country, but people would be far better off changing laws instead of joining unions.
This is what really kills me about r/anitwork. Not everyone can join a union, but legal changes apply to everyone. I actually had someone tell me once "why should my union fight to help ohters"?
The union often turns into another bureaucracy which has forgotten its original mission, and now exists just to feed itself. Your meat processing plant example is a good one -- the union leaders apparently just want to keep their cushy life and avoid trouble.
Nonetheless, as I said, if you're an Amazon warehouse worker and the company doesn't give a shit about you, then yeah, a union could look like the least-bad alternative.
The idea of "forgotten its missing" really rings true here.
Every election they create some sort of "working family coalition" or such and spend millions on attack-ads. They have their guy in government and want them to win?
Why exactly are unions involved in politics? Why is this even allowed? Is this something the dues-paying members support, having millions of their dollars used on attack-ads?
Finally the party the unions seem dislike won a majority and passed laws to prevent this in the future: https://www.blakes.com/insights/bulletins/2021/ontario-passe...
The law was struck down as "unconstitutional" so the leading party used the "notwithstanding" clause to make it pass.
Look who was fighting it - "Working Families Ontario " This is not families, but unions. I dont know why they dont simply say "Ontario unions" instead of "working families"?
One takeaway from my time in the US is they really need to address its "lobbying" rules. We have a bit of a lobbying problem here, but no where near the level we see to the south.
When you do crazy things like rule that corporations are "natural people" when clearly they are not..
I have no clue how to fix this, but Lobbying is really bad which is why it is tightly controlled in most other countries.
You've never dealt with American unions. Trying to get a union worker to help you do something means filling out paperwork to do things like moving a chair from one room to the next room.
At the company level unions in the 1980s became synonymous with organized crime. They would call strikes whenever they wanted a bribe.