Amazon walkout to go ahead after 1,700 employees sign on, organizers say | Hacker News Reader

Amazon walkout to go ahead after 1,700 employees sign on, organizers say

seattletimes.com

84 pointsfnordpiglet21 comments

> In Seattle, participating employees will gather outside the Spheres in South Lake Union Wednesday from noon to 1 p.m., organizers said.

Not much of a walkout. That just sounds like lunch break.

You realize this shows the leadership team that there is worker organization.

There isn’t a lot of tech unions, so we could see the ball rolling on this which could result in something very powerful.

Nobody was ever impressed by "industrial action" that starts and finishes during a long lunch break.

Shows solidarity without threatening anyone’s livelihoods. You can’t get fired for simply taking a lunch break.

But also shows you’re not willing to take any risk for your principles. Probably a strategic error.

I work near the spheres (not for Amazon!) and took my own lunch break around 12:20 today. I was hoping to witness the walkout crowd, but did not see anything out of the ordinary.

I think that this comment is downplaying the power of labor organization and mocking it in a way that is anti-worker and pro-corporation.

Maybe this is not a big walkout, maybe it won’t lead to change, but I don’t see the merit in mocking it.

We all actually have incredible power over our employers once we get beyond the extremely difficult part that involves organizing and fighting professional anti-organization efforts that corporations employ (along with sympathizers like this that make organizers look like wimpy losers on their lunch break).

If it doesn’t lead to change, what is the purpose?

I am sympathetic to their goals, but pragmatically, if a particular action doesn’t get you closer to your goals, why do it? It’s just performance art if it doesn’t have any tangible effect.

Every organization of every type starts small. They don’t all become large.

We could say the same thing about every failed startup company that was a peer to Amazon in the 90s, I guess they were all just performance art corporations.

Why even bother getting up in the morning, right?

I’m just not a big believer in doing things that don’t work. Even large scale protests rarely achieve meaningful results. Labor walkouts, Occupy Wall Street, BLM, COVID protesters and the truckers, Just Stop Oil, PETA theatrics, the weekly marches on Washington for this cause and that cause: have any of them actually changed anything?

When it comes to how companies operate, only shareholders get to vote. I don’t like it, but that’s how it is. Convince shareholders, and they’ll motivate management/leadership. When it comes to government policy changes, convince voters and they will elect people who might implement that change.

Protesting and picketing is “doing nothing, loudly.”

Labor walkouts have changed the lives of millions of people in the 20th century. You have grown spoiled living in the 21st century, and have completely discounted the contributions of generations before you.

It’s always a solid point when you’re like “100 years ago this stuff mattered!”

I would expect shareholders to start caring if labour appears organized enough to threaten continued operations of the company.

"Doing nothing" can have quite an impact on a company's bottom line. A walkout like this may be a precursor to a vote to unionize, which may be a precursor to a strike action, which may lead to collective bargaining that results in better working conditions. Doing nothing can accomplish something, and has done for centuries.

The biggest issue with modern activism is that it acts like peaceful vocal protest is the end of the line when really it's in the middle of a wide spectrum of options. If the people making the decisions don't care about you there is no construct of words that will have any effect on their behavior. If a sociopath is beating his wife or robbing his neighbor, debate club persuasion is not the tool for the job.

Someone already explained the purpose in one single sentence in this thread. It demonstrates to owners and other workers that some workers are organizing and willing to use their aggregate power.

If the action doesn't lead to change, then all you have demonstrated is that workers organizing is ineffective and not something which the company should fear. Its the owners that the aggregate power is far less than they may have feared.

You can't write a news story about a bunch of people doing nothing, can you?

I think it cheapens the term “walkout” if they’re not actually walking out on anything. They’re not withholding labor or participation in anything.

They would have to take vacation hours if they wanted to withhold labor.

>>In its note, the organizers for Wednesday’s walkout called the mandate a “top-down, one-size-fits-all” approach and advocated for Amazon to return to its former policy that allowed leaders to decide for their own teams where employees should work.<<

Doesn't sound like they're asking for much.

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