My guess on how it's happening is that Amazon Turk workers are presented with tweets and then they select from a list of machine-generated responses. I'd still call those bots.
I think it's more likely they all use shared computers and one person didn't log out of their account. The same way Ted Cruz's account liked a porn tweet about some incest porn, media guy (because as much as I love the idea of Ted f*ing Cruz trolling twitter for some porn I doubt the man runs his own twitter) forgot to log out of the account he was managing, is probably how we got this multi-aged meta human.
Maybe not the ones you're used to but Amazon is a tech company at heart. They have the resources to improve on the algorithms. I'd love to meet the engineer responsible for this.
It seems like they’re using an enterprise account that has a bunch of sub accounts attached to it. It probably brings all replies and subtweets into a single feed that any of the “ambassadors” can have added to their queue to reply to.
Text-banking systems for political campaigns work like this, but those interactions are purely informational and aren’t intended to put a human face on anything. Applying it this way is. . . Very bizarre.
Reminds me of the scene in the Matrix where Neo is fighting Smith and more and more of them came into the fight. I actually read it and it's really creepy. How did they all know this discussion was going on. They really all have 0 followers and are actually following very few people.
... imagine this the other way. Imagine that "@rulesObeyer" is the one with the agenda. Imagine RO is paid by a competitor to spread misinformation and "stir the pot", then re-read the thread. Suddenly RO seems incapable of reason or adapting in the face of clear evidence against its assertions. It makes for a fun read.
(Similarly, "anyone condemning this comment or defending @rulesObeyer must just be @rulesObeyer in disguise, no matter the evidence to the contrary.")
Does rather show how important it is to have good personal heuristics for "this is a real person's account speaking authentically", which is very difficult to verify for strangers.
Precisely. We're even psychologically inclined to agree with RO because "it" is "fighting the good fight" and "fighting The Man", etc. Whether she's legitimately exactly who she says she is or "it" is just a next-level PR AI whose sole purpose is harming Amazon, we have little way of knowing, especially outside this specific example.
On the other hand, this obfuscatory conversation and the allegation that random individual accounts are paid anti-corporate is one that adds to the weight for "inanutshellus may be an Amazon shill account, or at least employee"
Yeah, if this makes front page the odds are nearly 100% that paid amazon shills will fill the comments -- and odds are greater than 50% that it already has been.
"legitimately exactly who she says she is" as if the timeline of her twitter account didn't lend to her identity. Especially in contrast to the Amazon FC accounts which are brand new and follow 0 other twitter users.
The "Amazon Ambassadors" look extremely sketchy even without anyone criticizing them, though. They don't use Twitter except to praise Amazon, they are universally 100% positive without a single complaint, they all echo a few specific talking points, and they openly admit to being paid to make these tweets. (One of them claims that spending two paid days a week tweeting instead of working the warehouse floor doesn't count as "being paid to tweet," but come on.)
Even if @rulesObeyer is also a paid shill, all they're doing is drawing attention to the obvious.
Not seeing it. RO is speaking like a real person with pretty reasonable arguments; the others feel like exactly what she accuses them of being: paid shills.
>are you a robot, did they make a bunch of ai to lie for them instead of helping real workers
Talking to a real human this way is not reasonable. Nor is it an argument.
>how much are you compensated per tweet like this
This is like the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" When the assumption of malintent/guilt is there from the start, you're setting yourself up for a very unreasonable conversation.
>so they’re paying you to tweet that you like your job, which is tweeting about liking your job...lol yes!! you are paid to say that you like your job. it’s your job!
This is very likely false, and she is actively ignoring people who are saying it is false.
I have to agree with GP. While I found the ambassador tweets to be, well, weird, her tweets are the ones that stood out to me as very unreasonable. She does not seem at all interested in anything that contradicts her world view.
It isn't false that they're paid to tweet. One of the Amazon borg replies they tweet for two days (at $15/hour) then work in the warehouse for two days.
>>so they’re paying you to tweet that you like your job, which is tweeting about liking your job...lol yes!! you are paid to say that you like your job. it’s your job!
>This is very likely false, and she is actively ignoring people who are saying it is false.
She's technically correct in the same way that it's technically correct to say that if I take a restroom break while on the clock that I'm getting paid to use the restroom.
If, during the course of doing my job, someone asks me if I like doing my job and I say, "yes", it would technically be correct to say that I was paid for saying that I like my job (since I'm being paid for doing all the things that I do while on the clock it's also technically correct to say that I was paid for tying my shoes or talking to a coworker about some movie if I did those things during a shift). That does not necessarily mean that one of my job duties is telling people how much I like my job.
They are essentially compensated for tweets. They are paid hourly to tweet. And have to be tweeting positive things regularly per hour. Essentially the same thing.
The part about saying they like their job is true. The guidelines for them is everything has to be positive.
A similar thought occurred to me, but it was more in the vein of “what if this person is sockpuppeting on Twitter?” Like a socratic dialogue. It could even be based on real interactions, just reconstructed.
I don’t actually believe that’s what’s happening but it’d be tough to prove one way or the other, if you’re dealing with a sufficiently motivated actor. One of many good reasons not to take social media seriously.
Imagine RO is a former Amazon employee who was severely injured on the job and fired, whose life was destroyed by this faceless company, and who resents the sentiment that it is anything but. It is also a fun read imagining them this way.
Yes, if the situation was different, than my judgement of it would be different. This is not a novel observation.
The context matters - you cannot decouple[0] this interaction from the economic and social structures it arose from.
That's actually a more fitting comparison. When Starfleet talks to the Borg, it's a singular voice coming from the general direction of the Borg ship. But when Rick talks to Unity, she uses one person at a time to talk, switching seamlessly between people as Rick walks around.
A real gem in there was the comment of "there is actually an open door policy at the FCs, which allows us to directly communicate with our managers if we have concerns or issues."
Think about that for a second. The fact that they feel that is notable to call out, saying they "actually" have that... implies that they believe it is normal to not have an open door policy, and not be allowed to talk to their managers about problems.
I have worked warehouse jobs at a couple points in my life, and it was always OK to talk to your manager. It wasn't a perk, it was just how things were.
That could also be interpreted as a response to the people who talk about the warehouse workers like they're slave labor with zero rights. It's like saying "Believe it or not, we actually have an open door policy and can talk to our managers if there are any issues."
The past reports on Amazon warehouses call out how strict and automated the management is: that the local managers don't have the authority to really do much in the way of providing flexibility (or humanity) to people.
Yeah, I don't doubt the reports about it. I was just commenting about how "we actually have an open door policy" doesn't necessarily mean that the employees are brainwashed into thinking that having basic rights is something to applaud.
I think the pushback was that if there's an "open door" policy it is presumed to mean "open communication with the possibility of change or at least suggestions being heard".
If the supervisor you have an "open door" to communicate with has zero flexibility in what they can do to help you then you might as well converse with one of the stock-picking robots.
> That could also be interpreted as a response to the people who talk about the warehouse workers like they're slave labor with zero rights. It's like saying "Believe it or not, we actually have an open door policy and can talk to our managers if there are any issues."
To me, it sounds like an echo of standard anti-union propaganda: e.g. "I don't need a union, because I can work out any problems I have directly with my manager!"
I work in a large and friendly company, in which there seems to be a general fear of speaking up. if a company as employee-friendly as mine has difficulty in moving people towards an open speak-up culture, I think it’s totally reasonable to assume that many companies aren't successful at this, either.
It should therefore be reasonable for an Amazon warehouse employee to point out the counter-case for their experience, without you ascribing negatives to Amazon itself based on this.
My company has a quarterly "engagement" survey. If our supervisor doesn't get a 5 rating (highest) from us, he gets in trouble, so as shit rolls downhill, we get in trouble.
The majority of the team answers the survey questions dishonestly, so as to avoid rolling shit. The others feel it's their only way of expressing discontent short of leaving.
What exactly happens to the supervisor, and what exactly does he do to all of you?
What do you think could be done to make this situation better?
I wonder if something different, maybe more serious needs to happen to the supervisor for getting a low rating? Or I guess the issue is, he gets to retaliate for a whole quarter and your opportunity to ding him further won't be until 3 months later. Maybe there needs to be an avenue for immediately reporting this kind of retaliation, with clear consequences for him? If the higher-ups don't have the kind of trust it would take to create such an avenue, I dunno what can be done. I guess that's what unions are supposed to be for, but the situation already sounds so broken. I guess if a union already existed and was trusted, it could serve as such an avenue of last-resort.
Well he doesn't really get a low rating. The questions (coming from Gallup I assume) are vague enough that if you answer fairly at all, no one would get a 5 across the board. He gets roughly 4.5 on average, but they compare each category to previous surveys.
He doesn't really punish/retaliate so much as make us have a team meeting where we discuss the survey, and then we have to come up with solutions. The surveys are supposed to be anonymous, but who really knows. So the meetings end up with people being vague and non-committal since it's hard to directly criticize your supervisor face to face sometimes.
And each supervisor is compared to their peers, and the organization is also rated. So if people don't feel happy about the workplace 100%, mgmt feels like it's the supervisors fault, not upper mgmt. Just a bad situation all around.
Dang. I wonder if either there could be an anonymous feedback channel to the supervisor, or a meeting could be arranged (with the supervisor's knowledge, so they don't feel like it's behind their back) that specifically excludes the supervisor where people could discuss what changes they would like, including to the supervisor's behavior, that would conclude with the group agreeing on someone to explain to the supervisor what changes they collectively want.
That jumped out at me too. My reading was the implication that if there was a union, you would lose that. It seems like a common anti-union talking point, from what I've seen at Walmart and Whole Foods.
My guess would be that it would be because the member is trying to cut an individual deal on a group problem. This is how the capitalist class practices divide and conquer.
> Modern capitalist societies—marked by a universalization of money-based social relations, a consistently large and system-wide class of workers who must work for wages, and a capitalist class which owns the means of production [....]
I expected another definition in the context of that comment, but fine. According to that, it's anyone who owns the means to production, and is thus the most open class possible. Rather strange to say they're dividing and conquering when anyone can join.
Anyone who owns the means but does not actually do the work of production. This is in contrast to a worker-owned structure. It leads to concentration of power, since the profit from many workers goes to one or a few owners. Each owner is more powerful than any one worker, so workers have to act collectively to have leverage.
This is a fallacy. If you're going to talk about profit then you must also consider that the risk and loss also goes to owners while workers get paid either way.
This is something that should be rather simple to understand in the HN/Startup crowd. Considering that anyone can buy shares or start their own business, my point stands that this is the most non-exclusive club possible.
That's not the same risk. That's a voluntary agreement of work in exchange for cash, and either side can stop at anytime. Legal and contractual obligations like pensions and severance can also be layered on. What assets and liabilities that employee has in their personal life doesn't factor into calculation, they could be independently wealthy for all you know.
Also why does it have to be "large quantities"? Buy 1 share and you're a part owner. Many large companies have stock plans. It's not rare and if you're an employee then by definition you "have money" from working.
> Also why does it have to be "large quantities"? Buy 1 share and you're a part owner. Many large companies have stock plans. It's not rare and if you're an employee then by definition you "have money" from working.
Because the distinction is whether one's primary activity is using capital to gain income, versus working for pay. "Ah but a worker may own some shares!" isn't important. It's tough to nail down color names at transition points, too, but you add a tiny bit of white to some very red paint and no-one's gonna start calling it pink. It's still red.
[EDIT] at the heart of the misunderstanding, here, is a false syllogism, I think. "Pink paint is red mixed with white, you mixed some white in this red, therefore it is now pink"; "The capitalist class own capital, this worker owns some capital, therefore this worker is part of the capitalist class"; "The capitalist class owns capital, this guy owns and operates a hot dog stand, a hotdog stand is capital, therefore this guy is part of the capitalist class". It's quite similar to another that's often seen: "Mugging is taking something by threat of force, governments ultimately back taxation with the threat of force, therefore taxation is the same as mugging" or variations that end up at at some form of "taxation is the same thing as theft, so your thinking is inconsistent if you don't transfer all your bad feelings about theft to taxation, as well".
This thread was about the term, and that's the definition. If you have to change it to "you'll know it when you see it" then perhaps the definition is not so useful. The biggest companies have started from the smallest of ventures so your personal perception of size and importance has nothing to do with the term's qualification.
And no taxes are not theft, they are a contract in exchange for citizenship and sovereignty of the nation. Evading taxes is theft, by you from the government.
> This thread was about the term, and that's the definition. If you have to change it to "you'll know it when you see it" then perhaps the definition is not so useful. The biggest companies have started from the smallest of ventures so your personal perception of size and importance has nothing to do with the term's qualification.
You keep ignoring important parts of what's commonly considered the defining properties of the capitalist class, to make the idea seem less useful and much more slippery than it is. Or maybe taking that one sentence from WP as the entirety of the definition, period (though, again, ignoring important parts of that, even). I'm not sure you're going to find what you need to understand the concept, if you're interested, in an HN discussion.
It doesn't seem that way, it is that way. If you have to muddy the definition to make it fit then it's not very practical. I sense your particular context being a class of people who have power through ownership of means. My point is that ownership is available to anyone, either by buying shares (fine if you say that's difficult) OR by starting their own business (literally minutes away on the internet).
If anyone can join then it's not exclusive. In fact it's entirely welcoming. The economy not only supports it but relies on it, demands it even, and the very people you may claim are the most powerful today includes members who have started with nothing and were far outside that 'class'. The boundary is completely porous and ever-shifting so as to be non-existent outside of a political discussion. There are no chains binding you.
So what is the use of such a definition other than a "us-vs-them" distraction? When the "them" is open to anyone? It seems like the side which is dividing and conquering is not the capitalists.
> It doesn't seem that way, it is that way. If you have to muddy the definition to make it fit then it's not very practical.
OK. I wrote a really long response attempting to get through, but frankly, at this point, you should write a paper and submit to some journals, because this whole line of reasoning would be a significant finding if it stands up to scrutiny.
Everything after that first sentence is entirely about your interpretation of it.
Brevity is a key signal of clarity and cohesiveness. If it takes a journal paper to even attempt a discussion then this entire concept (under your interpretation) is suspect.
Yes. I see you actually did understand that after all.
Are you calling it "muddy", then, because socioeconomic mobility exists? America's socioeconomic mobility is among the lowest of developed nations and getting worse since the 80s, but regardless, in order to even study such a thing requires defining it. Its definition is not muddy, it's widely accepted and studied.
I am genuinely happy for you that you were able to achieve it. I am incredibly grateful my parents were able to achieve it. But such achievements don't mean it's not still a problem.
> This is a fallacy. If you're going to talk about profit then you must also consider that the risk and loss also goes to owners while workers get paid either way.
I think you're falling into a set pattern of argument rather than looking at what's under examination and considering it on merit.
> This is something that should be rather simple to understand in the HN/Startup crowd. Considering that anyone can buy shares or start their own business, my point stands that this is the most non-exclusive club possible.
Please look back over the previous posts in the thread and consider the points that have already been raised.
You're talking to basically a huge crowd of well-paid individuals who can and do frequently swap between employment and self-employment, including employing others.
The people who these talking points might hit better with are people who don't have the capital, or access to such capital, to be able to do such things.
> I don't think your point is going to get across.
Oh, I'm used to Internet discussions with folks of a certain mindset (I here carefully avoid a convenient, self-selected label that I suspect applies in this case, as its introduction is rarely helpful). They're incredibly common online and usually very eager to engage. Years and years of experience, here. I usually avoid it these days because it's almost always fruitless for all concerned, but felt like giving it a go this time.
> You're talking to basically a huge crowd of well-paid individuals who can and do frequently swap between employment and self-employment, including employing others.
Fussell's class-confused middle by socialized attitude, maybe, coupled with the income and means of his upper-middle and so especially off-kilter. "I'm a doctor, I make good money, I run my own practice, therefore the capitalist class is both what I'm part of and easy to join, so it's a silly and not very useful term". That sort of thing.
I came from one of the poorest places in the world. I didn't have access to capital when I was born or young. I do have access now, and it's the ability to be a 'capitalist' under my own efforts which is responsible for that change.
This is why generalizations on audiences are pointless. Don't assume people are incapable of understanding an argument or empathizing with a perspective just because of their current place in life.
Owning a few shares isn't really what's meant. If your way of life still depends on earning wages for the bulk of your adult life, that's usually not what people mean by the term "capitalist" (or "capitalist class"), since it'd be a pretty useless definition.
> And yes, agree that it's a useless definition. I've never seen it used outside of esoteric political debates.
Esoteric? It's a central concept for understanding how capitalist societies are structured. The central concept, even. It's not math, it's language, exceptions or hard-to-pin-down boundary regions don't wholly invalidate or render useless an idea.
> Being a central concept does not mean it's not esoteric.
That might be fair. I wouldn't consider a term well understood by anyone with much exposure to the social sciences (any of them, just about, will run you into it, sooner rather than later, probably) or a more-than-tiny exposure to economics (if we're feeling generous and separate that from the social sciences) or just about any higher liberal arts education, to be esoteric, but I can see that falling within one's tolerances for the term, depending. Probably well North of half the population would be lost by it, or take something other than the intended meaning, that's true.
As always I'm divided on comments like this. The first half is entirely accurate - it's trying to keep individuals from cutting their own deal and undermining the value of the collective bargaining process. I just don't know if we should start using a framework of class conflict to go along with it.
I feel like the point could easily be made without mentioning the "capitalist class", which seems to weaken the argument. But I don't know if the particular word choice terminology has no value? Should a point be inflammatory for those who oppose it? For some people putting it like that, using the ideas of class conflict conflict has value, but it seems to further divide the conversation. Is it more important to tell it like you think it is, or to try and make a point that the most people will agree with? I don't know what the solution is.
If capitalist class were replaced with managerial class? Or just management?
That's how I read it as I'm not sure capitalist class makes a whole lot of sense to me in the context, and I'm sure the commies used exactly the same tactics anyway.
It's just the use of clearly something that's very meaningful to the author, but I wonder if it gets lost or just serves to exacerbate people who aren't viewing it from their same angle, causing the point to be discarded.
It truly depends on the context. Can this type of siloization be detrimental to quick fixes? Absolutely. But are quick one-off sweep-under-the-rug fixes the best thing for less-vocal workers if there is a likelihood that similar problems may be occurring for them? The devil is in the details, and suing a member would hopefully be a last resort in case of a member knowingly stepping on the heads of others. Now, I’m not naive enough to think that all unions are rationally run. But having an environment that is hostile to them on principle doesn’t help.
I work under a union (though I'm not a member yet). Obviously every union is different, and every contract is different, but this sounds completely insane to me.
My first point of contact is always my team lead. If they ask me to do something unsafe, for example, I just say so. If it's not resolved there, I'd go to my job steward. The job steward exists to be the on-site worker advocate. I've spoken to my job steward about an issue maybe once ever.
I can't imagine how not having an advocate would ever be beneficial for me. It's simply an alternate path of escalation for issues which doesn't end at management saying "shut up and do the job".
The simple answer to not wanting to get sued for speaking with your manager is to have your union not write a #@&!*ing contract that allows workers to get sued for speaking with their managers. (Duh?) I'm sure that clause has existed somewhere, and I'm sure they had a reason for it, but my experience is that 99.99% of the time it's just like any other job, but with better pay and working conditions. If your manager is reasonable and listens to your grievances, then the day-to-day is literally no different than non-represented work.
What sort of grievance here I would normally expect a worker to first use the standard grievance procedure (in most cases) before coming to me.
Or is it "Hi Boss we come from the same village / clan /race how about you put me on that sweet work detail/shift".
I have (in the UK) personally overheard a guy working at a well known company say this - Also Fords at Dagenham had a scandal where white workers monopolised the better jobs.
Unions have sued their own members for speaking with managers about grievances.
When someone did an end-run around the agreed-upon way of handling conflict, and thought they'd go leverage their personal friendship with the manager to get what they want? Yeah, I could how that might happen, that's one of things unions often try to prevent.
This may also stem from some union-busting messaging. One of the talking points that you see on anti-union posters and in videos is "unions get in the way of you talking to your manager, when you can talk to your manager directly you can address concerns straightaway with them."
But unions literally are (within the law) whatever their members decide they will be, so if you expect that of your potential union, it just means you expect it of your coworkers.
Because Unions are basically corporations that go by another name and want to gobble up the market share?
Unions are not benevolent. They are bureaucratic organizations that want to grow in power and resources just like a corporation. Their interests just happen to be orthogonal to corporate interests which can be beneficial for employees.
I suppose you could describe many groups of people as corporations by another name so I'm not sure how far that gets us, and I tend to treat groups of people large enough to have emergent behaviours as essentially amoral anyway.
Your market share comments are interesting. I remember Matt Levine making an observation about Uber's 'contractors', if they attempted to unionise could be guilty of price fixing, because they're supposed to be competitors. The corporation seems to be another step along where price fixing within the corporation is allowed, and the union goes a step further again by making monopolistic behaviour ok.
As a society that has decided that a corporation can decide how to organise itself and work together internally, but also a society that has decided that monopoly, or at least the abuse of that monopoly is wrong, these seem to be interesting exceptions.
Yes, that's not how unions are structured by law in the US. Every union is shop-based and organized against a specific employer. They usually throw in with a larger union or an association, but not always. This is where the "Local 404" comes from -- the union itself is the local ###, aligned with the national federation. The union at Powell's Books, for example, is a retail union but they're connected to the ILWU, the longshoremen.
Portland is also undergoing an tremendous unionization battle at a local burger chain (Burgerville); one or two of the shops have successfully unionized, while the rest are still fighting for their right to organize. That's because unions here are at the shop level, and there just couldn't be one burger union that dominated all burger-making.
> The cynic in me thinks, if unions were such a bad thing, why wouldn't the owners let them form, burn the employees, and decertify?
Because unions gets more powerful than any company and can leverage said power against both workers and employers.
Lets take SAG-AFTRA as an example, a union many here at HN says the software industry should mimic. Their contracts with their workers states that the workers are not allowed to work at non-union shops, and their contracts with shops states that they are not allowed to work with non-union workers. This means that you as a worker has to join the union if your workplace unionize no matter if you feel it benefits you or not, and as long as the union control most workers any larger workplace will be forced to join or they will lack workers.
Why would workers not just stop being in the union, since it costs $3k to join and 2% of your salary to stay? Because the entire workforce at a union shop has to quit at once, at the same time the shop has to decide that they are not a union shop any longer. Do you think that will happen? No, of course not, weeding out a union in such a situation is way harder than starting the union in the first place. And even if they organize, the union could organize a picket in return to harass the shop and its worker into compliance.
Edit: Also PR and propaganda could easily make workers believe the union is good for them even if it isn't, kinda like how poor whites think that Republicans are on their side.
> Why would workers not just stop being in the union, since it costs $3k to join and 2% of your salary to stay? Because the entire workforce at a union shop has to quit at once, at the same time the shop has to decide that they are not a union shop any longer.
Or a majority has to elect new leadership in the union who will replace the problematic rules.
Or a majority (either of the whole membership or of workers in a defined subarea) need to vote to decertify (and optionally replace) the union.
Because of these, “everyone has to quit at once” is literally never an issue.
> Also PR and propaganda could easily make workers believe the union is good for them even if it isn't
Sure, but workers opposed to the existing union and employers and union parent organizations competing with the parent of the existing union (or wanting to become the parent of there is no current parent) are all able to deploy “PR and propaganda” (two different names for the same thing) against the established union, too.
You could write the exact same comment about USG, and yet here we are...
"The Market" (or however you want to think about it) is not perfectly efficient - if it were, there would never have been any motivation to form unions because every employee's requirements would already be perfectly reflected in the companies they chose to work for. Rather, sluggish network effects and other non-invisible-hand structures dominate immediate results.
All power tends to concentrate. When it gets large enough, it attracts those who seek and hold power for their own ends rather than any benevolently stated goals. Your scenarios are straightforwardly mitigated by union leadership directly appeasing the leaders of such movements, the same way monopolist companies buy out possible competitors to keep a stranglehold - the creation rate of competition is itself limited.
I don't know too many specifics about SAG-AFTRA itself, but its hold over the entire industry is a good indicator that it is indeed too large. Its size implies politicking on the order of at least a city government. Conversely, that size may also be the minimum necessary to engage in collective bargaining across different production companies, and so any general top-down reform is a bit hazy. My only direct experience with this is seeing casual SAG actors having to do a bunch of extra paperwork to participate in a strictly non-profit hobby short film production. It seemed quite ridiculous and onerous, until I thought about the neighboring gradient of low-budget for-profit film production.
Also entertainment unions provide way more services eg training, chasing late payers for freelancers and running the "call first list" - this is the list of problem employers.
> Is there anything preventing unions from growing huge and essentially dominating entire sectors in the US?
The structure of labor law makes it just as possible for workers with a particular employer or in a particular job class with an employer to decertify—and, if they wish, simultaneously replace—a union (or for a union local to dissociate from a parent organization) as it is to organize one in the first place, which doesn't prevent parent union organizations from getting large, but does limit the success of ones that, in doing so, fail to meet the needs of their members in particular workplaces.
Or convince other employees in your workplace that that union is bad and decertify them (perhaps replacing them with a new union that you and your coworkers form, either independently or affiliated with a better parent union.)
How is that easier than convincing the employer? Seems much harder, especially since the middle-men have a vested interest in perpetuating any problems.
My experience in a union tells me that it isn't. Being unionized doesn't mean that you have to be on the warpath at all time. It just means that if the structure (quite often, not directly your manager) has a big problem, the workers have the necessary logistics to share information and help each other, regardless of the management structure.
In some cases, it may be confrontational, but that's pretty unusual in my personal experience.
Because the amount of force use by employers against unions in very anti social countries such as corporate US is extreme, then you might get that feeling.
But countries where business and unions understand that they're partners and not enemies , both sides usually are not on a war path.
The problem is not big business, or socialism, the problem is of mentality.
Sadly the US business mentality is centered around bullying and zero sum perception of the world.
violence begets violence.
Too bad this brain virus is catching on at other cultures. It'll end up with either a big blowout, or suppression of the masses.
Was your manager not in the union as well...? This is so far outside my experience I can't even understand it. How does union leadership know if you talk to your manager? How do they enforce you not talking to them?
That's more just corporate pr speak to turn something that is incredibly standard into an incredible perk of how great the company is. One of the first places I worked my boss talked about how he let his developers listen to music on the job.
There is a difference between open door as a matter of policy and open door as a matter of practice. I've dealt with both, and the latter actually works, the former does not. Most retail is the former.
I see people saying they are 'chat bots'; any evidence of this other than people's general feeling?
To me the FCA's came off like normal human beings who actually like their job a bit more than average (these people do exist). The people replying to them come off as infantile.
Normal people? They write tweets like they are a single individual, with identical talking point, can't engage with what non-amazonians write to them. And they repeat their tweets.
To me they came off as factory floor workers who were offered a switch to 50% desk work saying nice things about Amazon on Twitter and jumped at the chance. The minute any one of these people diverted from the party line, they’d be back to picking boxes or fired.
They don't seem to be regular FC employees, but I also don't think they're bots. Instead, they appear to be humans with a limited understanding of english who are required to reply based on a manual (like call-center workers).
This explains why different accounts swap out -- the manual was designed for a single conversational thread, but employees are supposed to reply to individual tweets (as picked up from some kind of filtering system).
This is a sort of common pattern -- basically whenever I mention a brand on twitter, I get replies from somebody with "<brand> ambassador" in their display name, & those accounts never follow anybody or reply to their replies. It's gotta be a whole industry. The only difference is that, unlike the accounts run by Comcast or TD Bank or Steak-Umms, amazon's manual seems to demand that the service workers pretend to be regular warehouse workers (rather than customer service / PR).
One comment pointed out that they often tweet via an app called Sprinklr. They are probably real employees being randomly assigned tweets that need user engagement. Sprinklr is a social media advertising service. Paying employees to tweet about their employer is advertisement.
Not "chat bots", "bots". Which is a bit of a misnomer but has come to mean astroturf accounts on Twitter.
A single person or a small group of people manages a large number of social media accounts in order to pretend to represent a certain group of people. Because so many accounts are managed by so few people (whose full-time job it is to engage with others online to try and change their mind), these accounts tend to not have distinguishable voices or viewpoints, when you're talking to one it's like talking to a robot, or, like the linked tweet says, to the borg.
Can somebody explain how to parse the page linked here? This seems like deeplinking Intl the middle of a conversation.
Side note: it feels like Twitter specifically has done immeasurable damage to the discourse. Why does the communication have to be presented so confusingly? To an outsider it seems like it’s to create maximum outrage/confusion/dopamine response. That’s much scarier to me than a customer service team.
You might be hitting a twitter bug or having an issue with their slightly weird phased loading, the top message I get is from 'Amazon News':
> Come take a free tour at an Amazon fulfillment center and see what our warehouses are really like. Check out the locations and reserve your spot online. #AmazonFCTours
Then Diane replies to that and the back-and-forth with Amazon employees begins.
I got the actual start, but there's some scrolljacking going on: it took significantly longer to reach the top than it did to go back down to the "borg" tweet. Maybe you did hit the real top, then were immediately bounced back down?
Came here to ask the same. Twitter is utterly unreadble to me. Since they are linked to quite often, I once wanted to give them feedback that their website is pretty bad and _really_ annoying to use with a browser since they nag and nag and nag about using their app instead (just like reddit). Well, that was fruitless since they of course wanted me to have an account for that... The web is not as good nowadays unfortunately.
Can't people stop linking to Twitter? Not everyone uses twitter, and to non-users, their website sucks.
I’d go with summarized, perhaps with a link. That’s what you are supposed to do if an article you want to link to has a horrible (but not link-bait) title. In this case it has horrible design, it’s no so different.
> So when something of interest (to someone) happens on Twitter it should what? Be ignored? Be summarized without including a link?
Yes? For non-users, it's only marginally less bad than a Facebook page that requires a login, and people mostly don't go aronud sharing links to Facebook threads.
I see this complaint a lot, but I absolutely disagree. It's a conversation back and forth between "Diana Wilde @rulesObeyer" and a series of different accounts in the format @AmazonFC<Name>, culminating in "Diana" saying the tweet that was linked. The lines connecting the tweets very clearly show the flow of responses. There are instances where conversations can be hard to follow if you're not involved, because the replies are more of trees than lists, but this is really not one of those cases.
Žižek is a rather famous philosopher and frequently engages in public discourse. Might be worth it to check his Wikipedia page[1] and/or YouTube presence.
Not saying this is he himself, but obviously not an Amazon employee at least.
There are some people memeing with the names, but you can recognise them because their account names don't follow the same pattern as the shill accounts.
These accounts are not costumer service, they are specifically paid to talk up how nice it is to work for Amazon, amidst reports of incredibly terrible working conditions.
I refuse to believe HN users are this genuinely ignorant about such a basic website. It's really nowhere near as hard to read as anyone here makes it out to be.
The first tweet when I scroll up is an answer in the middle of the conversation. The actual start isn't visible. And if I need to scroll up in order to understand anything, why not load the page from the top instead of jumping to some random place? It's almost like any basic website does this better.
It's buggy, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Looks like the redesign still had some issues to shake out. No need to suggest that the commenters are ignorant.
I took your advice, and the fifth message in the list (by "@amazonfcrafael") starts with "(2/2)". I don't see the (1/2) of that message, so it seems parts of the conversation are missing and I'm looking at some kind of automatically generated subset of all the relevant tweets. But I guess I'm "ignorant"...
You idiots that’s how Brazilian Portuguese gets mangled by google translate. The round poetry in the language gets hammered into a square hole by google .
Come take a free tour at an Amazon fulfillment center and see what our warehouses are really like. Check out the locations and reserve your spot online.
Person forgets to log out of the shared computer they tweet from/grandma poster messes up in whatever app they use to manage the tweets and uses the wrong profile.
As mentioned before, these are likely tweets managed by a centralised messaging system. What is really creepy, however, are the tweets on the accounts themselves.
> I don't get compensated per tweet. I get paid $15/hr whether I am answering tweets or out on the floor stowing. I do this 2 days a week and 2 days a week I stow.
While I think it's weird that Amazon is doing this, I also doubt that the warehouse jobs are bad jobs. I've done manual labor for less than $15/hr and I'd much rather have a job like that than, say, a job in a restaurant.
I also think it's ironic that the instigator here claims to care about "the working class":
> really like? cause your workers are liars? you’re not going to convince the working class that everything is fine by telling us where to avert our eyes, we already know what it’s really like. why don’t you really treat your workers better, you can afford it
She's talking to working class people and when they disagree with her, she accuses them of literally not being human.
If people want to advocate for the working class, they need to step outside of the simplistic fiction that "evil corporations are ruining people's lives by employing them and not treating them well". The truth is much more complicated and jobs don't grow on trees.
> I also doubt that the warehouse jobs are bad jobs
I agree that these folks are probably real people, but you must have missed the last several month's worth of very public information about the conditions in their warehouses.
I find it difficult to distinguish between people with legitimate complaints and people who are ideologically opposed to amazon (BigCo) existing at all.
If the conditions are so bad, why are there more complaints? I'm very distrustful of the media in general and feel like they're pushing an agenda more than anything.
I know people personally that work in distribution centres and they find it a perfectly fine job. It'd hard work, yes, but you see complaints like "boiling hot in summer and freezing in winter", and it's like.. yeah.. Which loading bay isn't like that?
For one there's no reason the whole warehouse has to be as hot as the actual loading docks and the answer to megacorp is treating it's workers poorly isn't really well this whole class of jobs sucks.
The media absolutely pushes an agenda, they are paid to do so. Not many would question that. The difference is, reporting on these things is their job and Amazon is treating their employees like trash. You have to be purposefully ignorant to miss this stuff. It's everywhere! Last Week Tonight broke it down pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9m7d07k22A. The fact you think your anecdotal evidence means anything is puzzling though.
So I post a video in response to someone using anecdotal evidence as a counterpoint to Amazon treating their workers poorly. Included in the video are testimonials from actual Amazon workers and your response is to dismiss the video because it's not real news, not funny and heavily biased. None of the things you listed have anything to do with the evidence presented.
And now I see in your other response in this topic you express anecdotal evidence as well. It's simply a poor way to counterpoint something. It really is.
Honestly, I was just trying to be silly ;) But you don't really expect us to watch your 20 min video do you?
Obviously if folks have bad working conditions, I want them them to improve. But how are 'anecdotes' from people I personally know who work in Amazon FC's any different than 'testimonials' from people on TV. I know at least 2 people who work or have worked in these FC's and they never complained. They worked hard & collected their paychecks.
That doesn't mean this is everyone's experience, I'm sure many have been treated poorly. But it goes both ways, we can't assume because some were treated poorly that it is all FC workers experience.
I have never worked for Amazon, but I have worked for FedEx unloading trailers by hand. It was back breaking work. The things I hear these workers saying remind me of that job. We were expected to throw boxes nonstop until it was finished, and our boxes per minute thru-put was closely monitored & expected to be kept above a certain level.
That type of work is not for everyone, and the 6 months I worked there, I watched countless people try and fail at the job. It was too hard and they quit within days. So, I can imagine what the amazon workers go through.
I don't wish poor working conditions on these people, but I also imagine that some of this is getting blown out of proportion.
Both can be classified as 'anecdotes', I agree, but talking about your work conditions when asked, is a completely different anecdote as opposed to someone not actively complaining when they are with friends/acquaintances.
>Honestly, I was just trying to be silly ;) But you don't really expect us to watch your 20 min video do you?
I don't care if you watch it or not, but if you're going to comment on it and discredit it, it makes you look silly to do so without watching it.
>Obviously if folks have bad working conditions, I want them them to improve. But how are 'anecdotes' from people I personally know who work in Amazon FC's any different than 'testimonials' from people on TV. I know at least 2 people who work or have worked in these FC's and they never complained. They worked hard & collected their paychecks.
You're acting like the people that you know that never complained somehow cancel out the people complaining. That's not how it works.
>That doesn't mean this is everyone's experience, I'm sure many have been treated poorly. But it goes both ways, we can't assume because some were treated poorly that that is all FC workers experience.
It doesn't go both ways. The fact that you think highlighting some of them are being treated well is troubling. That should be the default. That shouldn't be commendable on Amazon's part.
>I have never worked for Amazon, but I have worked for FedEx unloading trailers by hand. It was back breaking work. The things I hear these workers saying remind me of that job. We were expected to throw boxes nonstop until it was finished, and our boxes per minute thru-put was closely monitored & expected to be kept above a certain level.
Sounds like FedEx has some labor issues to me. Do you think treating people like they're robots is a good thing? Both Amazon and FedEx seem to do so.
>I don't wish poor working conditions on these people, but I also imagine that some of this is getting blown out of proportion.
Where is your evidence that would lend credence to this getting blown out of proportion?
You are remembering correctly. But it also pointed out that Amazon sets the standard in the industry and just because they're not the worst doesn't mean they shouldn't get better.
> The fact you think your anecdotal evidence means anything is puzzling though.
It's not evidence. This isn't a peer-reviewed paper, this is an internet chat board. I'm also troubled that although my anecdotal isn't allowed, a comedy show video is 'evidence'.
I'm also not denying that Amazon treat their employers badly. What I'm saying is why the agenda towards Amazon in particular. Many people work in awful jobs but the media just ignores these.
Worst of all, when people who work for Amazon dare to say "it's not all bad", people like you tell them that they're wrong. When I was younger I worked some pretty awful jobs, but often it's people who have never worked jobs like this that think they know best.
I'm friends with a couple people who work (or have worked) in these FC centers. They don't complain about these things. They work their ass off and happily collect their paycheck.
In my younger days, I used to work unloading boxes at FedEx for minimum wage. It was hard, back breaking work, and you better believe at holiday time it was crazy hectic and no time off. So I can imagine what it's like at one of these facilities, it's got to be hard as hell.
I'm sure all of us want these people to have the best conditions possible. The concerning thing to me is the tone of conversations like this in the 'Age of outrage'. It's a lot of virtue signaling, and then attacking of anyone who says anything to the contrary. "Oh you're not outraged about this like I am? Well you're an Amazon shill & hate the workers!"
Isn't the bigger issue, why is it these folks don't have better opportunities available to them? They are working these hard, back breaking jobs likely because it is better than anything else they can find in their area.
"really like? cause your workers are liars?" is not an ad hominem attack, it's contradicting you by pointing to evidence. Eyewitness testimony, by your workers contradicting you, is evidence.
Thank you for explaining, that makes a lot more sense, I see how you could interpret it that way. But no, I think you're misinterpreting. For example, if I said "why are you being so slow?", that could seem like an insult, since "slow" can mean "stupid". However, if the context is that we're playing a game and you keep taking forever on your turn, then "slow" isn't an insult, it's a literal observation.
In this case, compare the thread to a normal conversation. A normal conversation consists of a long chain of alternating messages by two people, comparing and contrasting their two different points of view. This "conversation" consists of a long chain of the original poster expressing their point of view and then a different "FC Ambassador" replying each time, all expressing the same contrasting point of view.
I wouldn’t take the term “Bot” literally - here it’s meant in the same vein as a “Russian troll” or more clearly an astroturfer.
I think many of the people who find fault with rulesobeyer don’t use Twitter. The ambassadors are comoletely robotic in the way they use Twitter - they don’t come across as people, they come across as corporate accounts. Even developer advocates aren’t this robotic.
I feel like I’m looking at stepford wives here and everyone in the comments here are apart of the farce
I insist on taking those terms literally, and you should too. Public discourse isn't going to work if "bot" and "Russian troll" become synonyms for "I don't believe what you're saying and don't think you do either".
It’s like one person was given control over multiple accounts, but forgot that every time they replied they’d appear to be a different person. It’s funny because every now and then they appear to remember, like the person halfway down saying “Hey it’s me again”.
Is it? I think the concern is that the members of the group are paid to share a certain message. They’re not allowed to share how they really feel, since they’re tweeting on the clock.
And the tweeting about loving your job is a pretty cushy job compared to warehouse picking and packing so they're 100% disincentivized to share anything even slightly negative or 'off script.'
I mean, we're talking about amazon here... In a David vs Goliath situation always pay more attention to the side that has nothing to lose (hint: not amazon). Should you listen to these Ambassadors™️ or to the thousands of current/ex amazon employees expressing things that are going in the complete opposite direction ?
I don't get this. There's a reason why they make AstroTurf green. If you're Amazon and you're trying to generate realistic good buzz about your work conditions don't name the accounts "AmazonDrone643278" or similar.
What they're trying to do is a bit of false transparency thinking if they show the people they're paying to tweet are associated with the brand it'll look less fake because "if they were being fake we'd hide it" or something similar. If it was paired with something less artificial and hyper cheery it might have worked but the relentless positivity and the fact that no one person replies more than twice it feel real fake real fast.
No, it's not that, it's really so that Twitter won't shut them down.
Maybe being "honest" is some side-effect, but they wouldn't be doing it if Twitter didn't have a history of deleting Russian troll accounts (for example).
386 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 278 ms ] threadNo real evidence of that and it’s more likely they’re real. Occam’s razor.
Anyone remember that "virtual boyfriend" service that had rotating people behind the "virtual boyfriend" for the same person? It feels like that.
Text-banking systems for political campaigns work like this, but those interactions are purely informational and aren’t intended to put a human face on anything. Applying it this way is. . . Very bizarre.
One person vs an army of faces all engaging in the same conversation. Borg indeed.
(Similarly, "anyone condemning this comment or defending @rulesObeyer must just be @rulesObeyer in disguise, no matter the evidence to the contrary.")
END OF LINE
Does she have an agenda? Yes clearly. She isn't hiding it. She has a long history of laying it right out in the open.
Does Amazon have an agenda too? Yes and they are ham-handedly trying to pretend they don't.
Even if @rulesObeyer is also a paid shill, all they're doing is drawing attention to the obvious.
Talking to a real human this way is not reasonable. Nor is it an argument.
>how much are you compensated per tweet like this
This is like the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" When the assumption of malintent/guilt is there from the start, you're setting yourself up for a very unreasonable conversation.
>so they’re paying you to tweet that you like your job, which is tweeting about liking your job...lol yes!! you are paid to say that you like your job. it’s your job!
This is very likely false, and she is actively ignoring people who are saying it is false.
I have to agree with GP. While I found the ambassador tweets to be, well, weird, her tweets are the ones that stood out to me as very unreasonable. She does not seem at all interested in anything that contradicts her world view.
Which is not the allegation being made.
>This is very likely false, and she is actively ignoring people who are saying it is false.
She's technically correct in the same way that it's technically correct to say that if I take a restroom break while on the clock that I'm getting paid to use the restroom.
If, during the course of doing my job, someone asks me if I like doing my job and I say, "yes", it would technically be correct to say that I was paid for saying that I like my job (since I'm being paid for doing all the things that I do while on the clock it's also technically correct to say that I was paid for tying my shoes or talking to a coworker about some movie if I did those things during a shift). That does not necessarily mean that one of my job duties is telling people how much I like my job.
The part about saying they like their job is true. The guidelines for them is everything has to be positive.
Yes, all of that "evidence" from paid "Amazon FC ambassadors".
And yes, the Amazon people talk like politicians. There are actually many people that think politician-talking inspires confidence.
I don’t actually believe that’s what’s happening but it’d be tough to prove one way or the other, if you’re dealing with a sufficiently motivated actor. One of many good reasons not to take social media seriously.
Yes, if the situation was different, than my judgement of it would be different. This is not a novel observation.
The context matters - you cannot decouple[0] this interaction from the economic and social structures it arose from.
[0] https://everythingstudies.com/2018/05/25/decoupling-revisite...
Their twitter bio makes it pretty clear they're not a real... propaganda account? I'm not even sure what to call the other ones in the thread.
Think about that for a second. The fact that they feel that is notable to call out, saying they "actually" have that... implies that they believe it is normal to not have an open door policy, and not be allowed to talk to their managers about problems.
I have worked warehouse jobs at a couple points in my life, and it was always OK to talk to your manager. It wasn't a perk, it was just how things were.
If the supervisor you have an "open door" to communicate with has zero flexibility in what they can do to help you then you might as well converse with one of the stock-picking robots.
To me, it sounds like an echo of standard anti-union propaganda: e.g. "I don't need a union, because I can work out any problems I have directly with my manager!"
IIRC, this Wal-mart video has a line like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cle_OuOpBZc.
It should therefore be reasonable for an Amazon warehouse employee to point out the counter-case for their experience, without you ascribing negatives to Amazon itself based on this.
The majority of the team answers the survey questions dishonestly, so as to avoid rolling shit. The others feel it's their only way of expressing discontent short of leaving.
What exactly happens to the supervisor, and what exactly does he do to all of you?
What do you think could be done to make this situation better?
I wonder if something different, maybe more serious needs to happen to the supervisor for getting a low rating? Or I guess the issue is, he gets to retaliate for a whole quarter and your opportunity to ding him further won't be until 3 months later. Maybe there needs to be an avenue for immediately reporting this kind of retaliation, with clear consequences for him? If the higher-ups don't have the kind of trust it would take to create such an avenue, I dunno what can be done. I guess that's what unions are supposed to be for, but the situation already sounds so broken. I guess if a union already existed and was trusted, it could serve as such an avenue of last-resort.
He doesn't really punish/retaliate so much as make us have a team meeting where we discuss the survey, and then we have to come up with solutions. The surveys are supposed to be anonymous, but who really knows. So the meetings end up with people being vague and non-committal since it's hard to directly criticize your supervisor face to face sometimes.
And each supervisor is compared to their peers, and the organization is also rated. So if people don't feel happy about the workplace 100%, mgmt feels like it's the supervisors fault, not upper mgmt. Just a bad situation all around.
Unions have sued their own members for speaking with managers about grievances.
Emphasis mine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism
This is something that should be rather simple to understand in the HN/Startup crowd. Considering that anyone can buy shares or start their own business, my point stands that this is the most non-exclusive club possible.
Ability to buy large quantities of shares is not "non-exclusive." Not everyone has money.
Also why does it have to be "large quantities"? Buy 1 share and you're a part owner. Many large companies have stock plans. It's not rare and if you're an employee then by definition you "have money" from working.
Because the distinction is whether one's primary activity is using capital to gain income, versus working for pay. "Ah but a worker may own some shares!" isn't important. It's tough to nail down color names at transition points, too, but you add a tiny bit of white to some very red paint and no-one's gonna start calling it pink. It's still red.
[EDIT] at the heart of the misunderstanding, here, is a false syllogism, I think. "Pink paint is red mixed with white, you mixed some white in this red, therefore it is now pink"; "The capitalist class own capital, this worker owns some capital, therefore this worker is part of the capitalist class"; "The capitalist class owns capital, this guy owns and operates a hot dog stand, a hotdog stand is capital, therefore this guy is part of the capitalist class". It's quite similar to another that's often seen: "Mugging is taking something by threat of force, governments ultimately back taxation with the threat of force, therefore taxation is the same as mugging" or variations that end up at at some form of "taxation is the same thing as theft, so your thinking is inconsistent if you don't transfer all your bad feelings about theft to taxation, as well".
And no taxes are not theft, they are a contract in exchange for citizenship and sovereignty of the nation. Evading taxes is theft, by you from the government.
You keep ignoring important parts of what's commonly considered the defining properties of the capitalist class, to make the idea seem less useful and much more slippery than it is. Or maybe taking that one sentence from WP as the entirety of the definition, period (though, again, ignoring important parts of that, even). I'm not sure you're going to find what you need to understand the concept, if you're interested, in an HN discussion.
If anyone can join then it's not exclusive. In fact it's entirely welcoming. The economy not only supports it but relies on it, demands it even, and the very people you may claim are the most powerful today includes members who have started with nothing and were far outside that 'class'. The boundary is completely porous and ever-shifting so as to be non-existent outside of a political discussion. There are no chains binding you.
So what is the use of such a definition other than a "us-vs-them" distraction? When the "them" is open to anyone? It seems like the side which is dividing and conquering is not the capitalists.
OK. I wrote a really long response attempting to get through, but frankly, at this point, you should write a paper and submit to some journals, because this whole line of reasoning would be a significant finding if it stands up to scrutiny.
Brevity is a key signal of clarity and cohesiveness. If it takes a journal paper to even attempt a discussion then this entire concept (under your interpretation) is suspect.
They're not muddying the definition. You're ignoring part of the definition.
Everyone has been consistent about what the definition is, and you have consistently pretended that part of the definition isn't there.
Are you calling it "muddy", then, because socioeconomic mobility exists? America's socioeconomic mobility is among the lowest of developed nations and getting worse since the 80s, but regardless, in order to even study such a thing requires defining it. Its definition is not muddy, it's widely accepted and studied.
I am genuinely happy for you that you were able to achieve it. I am incredibly grateful my parents were able to achieve it. But such achievements don't mean it's not still a problem.
I think you're falling into a set pattern of argument rather than looking at what's under examination and considering it on merit.
> This is something that should be rather simple to understand in the HN/Startup crowd. Considering that anyone can buy shares or start their own business, my point stands that this is the most non-exclusive club possible.
Please look back over the previous posts in the thread and consider the points that have already been raised.
You're talking to basically a huge crowd of well-paid individuals who can and do frequently swap between employment and self-employment, including employing others.
The people who these talking points might hit better with are people who don't have the capital, or access to such capital, to be able to do such things.
Oh, I'm used to Internet discussions with folks of a certain mindset (I here carefully avoid a convenient, self-selected label that I suspect applies in this case, as its introduction is rarely helpful). They're incredibly common online and usually very eager to engage. Years and years of experience, here. I usually avoid it these days because it's almost always fruitless for all concerned, but felt like giving it a go this time.
> You're talking to basically a huge crowd of well-paid individuals who can and do frequently swap between employment and self-employment, including employing others.
Fussell's class-confused middle by socialized attitude, maybe, coupled with the income and means of his upper-middle and so especially off-kilter. "I'm a doctor, I make good money, I run my own practice, therefore the capitalist class is both what I'm part of and easy to join, so it's a silly and not very useful term". That sort of thing.
This is why generalizations on audiences are pointless. Don't assume people are incapable of understanding an argument or empathizing with a perspective just because of their current place in life.
And yes, I agree that it's a useless definition. I've never seen it used outside of esoteric political debates.
Esoteric? It's a central concept for understanding how capitalist societies are structured. The central concept, even. It's not math, it's language, exceptions or hard-to-pin-down boundary regions don't wholly invalidate or render useless an idea.
That might be fair. I wouldn't consider a term well understood by anyone with much exposure to the social sciences (any of them, just about, will run you into it, sooner rather than later, probably) or a more-than-tiny exposure to economics (if we're feeling generous and separate that from the social sciences) or just about any higher liberal arts education, to be esoteric, but I can see that falling within one's tolerances for the term, depending. Probably well North of half the population would be lost by it, or take something other than the intended meaning, that's true.
I feel like the point could easily be made without mentioning the "capitalist class", which seems to weaken the argument. But I don't know if the particular word choice terminology has no value? Should a point be inflammatory for those who oppose it? For some people putting it like that, using the ideas of class conflict conflict has value, but it seems to further divide the conversation. Is it more important to tell it like you think it is, or to try and make a point that the most people will agree with? I don't know what the solution is.
That's how I read it as I'm not sure capitalist class makes a whole lot of sense to me in the context, and I'm sure the commies used exactly the same tactics anyway.
My first point of contact is always my team lead. If they ask me to do something unsafe, for example, I just say so. If it's not resolved there, I'd go to my job steward. The job steward exists to be the on-site worker advocate. I've spoken to my job steward about an issue maybe once ever.
I can't imagine how not having an advocate would ever be beneficial for me. It's simply an alternate path of escalation for issues which doesn't end at management saying "shut up and do the job".
The simple answer to not wanting to get sued for speaking with your manager is to have your union not write a #@&!*ing contract that allows workers to get sued for speaking with their managers. (Duh?) I'm sure that clause has existed somewhere, and I'm sure they had a reason for it, but my experience is that 99.99% of the time it's just like any other job, but with better pay and working conditions. If your manager is reasonable and listens to your grievances, then the day-to-day is literally no different than non-represented work.
Sounds like pure FUD to me.
Or is it "Hi Boss we come from the same village / clan /race how about you put me on that sweet work detail/shift".
I have (in the UK) personally overheard a guy working at a well known company say this - Also Fords at Dagenham had a scandal where white workers monopolised the better jobs.
When someone did an end-run around the agreed-upon way of handling conflict, and thought they'd go leverage their personal friendship with the manager to get what they want? Yeah, I could how that might happen, that's one of things unions often try to prevent.
This reminds me of that.
My experience being in a union tells me it is.
But unions literally are (within the law) whatever their members decide they will be, so if you expect that of your potential union, it just means you expect it of your coworkers.
Some bad unions: all unions are awful and the solution is to not have unions.
Unions are not benevolent. They are bureaucratic organizations that want to grow in power and resources just like a corporation. Their interests just happen to be orthogonal to corporate interests which can be beneficial for employees.
https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/
I suppose you could describe many groups of people as corporations by another name so I'm not sure how far that gets us, and I tend to treat groups of people large enough to have emergent behaviours as essentially amoral anyway.
Your market share comments are interesting. I remember Matt Levine making an observation about Uber's 'contractors', if they attempted to unionise could be guilty of price fixing, because they're supposed to be competitors. The corporation seems to be another step along where price fixing within the corporation is allowed, and the union goes a step further again by making monopolistic behaviour ok.
As a society that has decided that a corporation can decide how to organise itself and work together internally, but also a society that has decided that monopoly, or at least the abuse of that monopoly is wrong, these seem to be interesting exceptions.
Portland is also undergoing an tremendous unionization battle at a local burger chain (Burgerville); one or two of the shops have successfully unionized, while the rest are still fighting for their right to organize. That's because unions here are at the shop level, and there just couldn't be one burger union that dominated all burger-making.
Because unions gets more powerful than any company and can leverage said power against both workers and employers.
Lets take SAG-AFTRA as an example, a union many here at HN says the software industry should mimic. Their contracts with their workers states that the workers are not allowed to work at non-union shops, and their contracts with shops states that they are not allowed to work with non-union workers. This means that you as a worker has to join the union if your workplace unionize no matter if you feel it benefits you or not, and as long as the union control most workers any larger workplace will be forced to join or they will lack workers.
Why would workers not just stop being in the union, since it costs $3k to join and 2% of your salary to stay? Because the entire workforce at a union shop has to quit at once, at the same time the shop has to decide that they are not a union shop any longer. Do you think that will happen? No, of course not, weeding out a union in such a situation is way harder than starting the union in the first place. And even if they organize, the union could organize a picket in return to harass the shop and its worker into compliance.
Edit: Also PR and propaganda could easily make workers believe the union is good for them even if it isn't, kinda like how poor whites think that Republicans are on their side.
Or a majority has to elect new leadership in the union who will replace the problematic rules.
Or a majority (either of the whole membership or of workers in a defined subarea) need to vote to decertify (and optionally replace) the union.
Because of these, “everyone has to quit at once” is literally never an issue.
> Also PR and propaganda could easily make workers believe the union is good for them even if it isn't
Sure, but workers opposed to the existing union and employers and union parent organizations competing with the parent of the existing union (or wanting to become the parent of there is no current parent) are all able to deploy “PR and propaganda” (two different names for the same thing) against the established union, too.
"The Market" (or however you want to think about it) is not perfectly efficient - if it were, there would never have been any motivation to form unions because every employee's requirements would already be perfectly reflected in the companies they chose to work for. Rather, sluggish network effects and other non-invisible-hand structures dominate immediate results.
All power tends to concentrate. When it gets large enough, it attracts those who seek and hold power for their own ends rather than any benevolently stated goals. Your scenarios are straightforwardly mitigated by union leadership directly appeasing the leaders of such movements, the same way monopolist companies buy out possible competitors to keep a stranglehold - the creation rate of competition is itself limited.
I don't know too many specifics about SAG-AFTRA itself, but its hold over the entire industry is a good indicator that it is indeed too large. Its size implies politicking on the order of at least a city government. Conversely, that size may also be the minimum necessary to engage in collective bargaining across different production companies, and so any general top-down reform is a bit hazy. My only direct experience with this is seeing casual SAG actors having to do a bunch of extra paperwork to participate in a strictly non-profit hobby short film production. It seemed quite ridiculous and onerous, until I thought about the neighboring gradient of low-budget for-profit film production.
Also entertainment unions provide way more services eg training, chasing late payers for freelancers and running the "call first list" - this is the list of problem employers.
The structure of labor law makes it just as possible for workers with a particular employer or in a particular job class with an employer to decertify—and, if they wish, simultaneously replace—a union (or for a union local to dissociate from a parent organization) as it is to organize one in the first place, which doesn't prevent parent union organizations from getting large, but does limit the success of ones that, in doing so, fail to meet the needs of their members in particular workplaces.
In some cases, it may be confrontational, but that's pretty unusual in my personal experience.
The problem is not big business, or socialism, the problem is of mentality.
Sadly the US business mentality is centered around bullying and zero sum perception of the world. violence begets violence.
Too bad this brain virus is catching on at other cultures. It'll end up with either a big blowout, or suppression of the masses.
To me the FCA's came off like normal human beings who actually like their job a bit more than average (these people do exist). The people replying to them come off as infantile.
This explains why different accounts swap out -- the manual was designed for a single conversational thread, but employees are supposed to reply to individual tweets (as picked up from some kind of filtering system).
This is a sort of common pattern -- basically whenever I mention a brand on twitter, I get replies from somebody with "<brand> ambassador" in their display name, & those accounts never follow anybody or reply to their replies. It's gotta be a whole industry. The only difference is that, unlike the accounts run by Comcast or TD Bank or Steak-Umms, amazon's manual seems to demand that the service workers pretend to be regular warehouse workers (rather than customer service / PR).
A single person or a small group of people manages a large number of social media accounts in order to pretend to represent a certain group of people. Because so many accounts are managed by so few people (whose full-time job it is to engage with others online to try and change their mind), these accounts tend to not have distinguishable voices or viewpoints, when you're talking to one it's like talking to a robot, or, like the linked tweet says, to the borg.
Oh come on, this is contrarianism for the sake of contrarianism. The overwhelming consensus is that their behavior is bizarre.
https://twitter.com/TheKenChilds/status/1161847717397696512
https://twitter.com/null_fruit/status/1161992893957099520
Side note: it feels like Twitter specifically has done immeasurable damage to the discourse. Why does the communication have to be presented so confusingly? To an outsider it seems like it’s to create maximum outrage/confusion/dopamine response. That’s much scarier to me than a customer service team.
Diana Wilde @rulesObeyer
16h16 hours ago Replying to @AmazonFCRafael
are you a robot, did they make a bunch of ai to lie for them instead of helping real workers
So still diving into the middle of a conversation.
> Come take a free tour at an Amazon fulfillment center and see what our warehouses are really like. Check out the locations and reserve your spot online. #AmazonFCTours
Then Diane replies to that and the back-and-forth with Amazon employees begins.
This link provides some context.
Can't people stop linking to Twitter? Not everyone uses twitter, and to non-users, their website sucks.
You are not required to read every post on HN, and you can see on the front page which ones go to sites you don't like.
Yes? For non-users, it's only marginally less bad than a Facebook page that requires a login, and people mostly don't go aronud sharing links to Facebook threads.
(Sorry)
E.g. I'm fairly sure Slavoj Žižek isn't working in an Amazon warehouse.
Then again - we're all in this gig economy thing, so maybe anything is possible.
Not saying this is he himself, but obviously not an Amazon employee at least.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek
I refuse to believe HN users are this genuinely ignorant about such a basic website. It's really nowhere near as hard to read as anyone here makes it out to be.
Do you also complain when you get directly linked to a particular line of code in github or a readme?
You sound a lot like @rulesObeyer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village
Edit, also - https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/sprinklr-suppo...
They are people getting paid a few bucks to spew the Word of the Lord ( in this case Jeff Bezos )
It's the corporate version of troll farms.
One of them says:
> I don't get compensated per tweet. I get paid $15/hr whether I am answering tweets or out on the floor stowing. I do this 2 days a week and 2 days a week I stow.
While I think it's weird that Amazon is doing this, I also doubt that the warehouse jobs are bad jobs. I've done manual labor for less than $15/hr and I'd much rather have a job like that than, say, a job in a restaurant.
I also think it's ironic that the instigator here claims to care about "the working class":
> really like? cause your workers are liars? you’re not going to convince the working class that everything is fine by telling us where to avert our eyes, we already know what it’s really like. why don’t you really treat your workers better, you can afford it
She's talking to working class people and when they disagree with her, she accuses them of literally not being human.
If people want to advocate for the working class, they need to step outside of the simplistic fiction that "evil corporations are ruining people's lives by employing them and not treating them well". The truth is much more complicated and jobs don't grow on trees.
I agree that these folks are probably real people, but you must have missed the last several month's worth of very public information about the conditions in their warehouses.
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-describe-pe...
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/11/18260472/amazon-ware...
https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-drivers-warehouse-conditions...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/01/amazon-fu...
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/16/20696154/amazon-prime-day...
https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/amazon-prime-day-fulfil...
I know people personally that work in distribution centres and they find it a perfectly fine job. It'd hard work, yes, but you see complaints like "boiling hot in summer and freezing in winter", and it's like.. yeah.. Which loading bay isn't like that?
Also, it's not really that funny :p
And now I see in your other response in this topic you express anecdotal evidence as well. It's simply a poor way to counterpoint something. It really is.
Obviously if folks have bad working conditions, I want them them to improve. But how are 'anecdotes' from people I personally know who work in Amazon FC's any different than 'testimonials' from people on TV. I know at least 2 people who work or have worked in these FC's and they never complained. They worked hard & collected their paychecks.
That doesn't mean this is everyone's experience, I'm sure many have been treated poorly. But it goes both ways, we can't assume because some were treated poorly that it is all FC workers experience.
I have never worked for Amazon, but I have worked for FedEx unloading trailers by hand. It was back breaking work. The things I hear these workers saying remind me of that job. We were expected to throw boxes nonstop until it was finished, and our boxes per minute thru-put was closely monitored & expected to be kept above a certain level.
That type of work is not for everyone, and the 6 months I worked there, I watched countless people try and fail at the job. It was too hard and they quit within days. So, I can imagine what the amazon workers go through.
I don't wish poor working conditions on these people, but I also imagine that some of this is getting blown out of proportion.
I don't care if you watch it or not, but if you're going to comment on it and discredit it, it makes you look silly to do so without watching it.
>Obviously if folks have bad working conditions, I want them them to improve. But how are 'anecdotes' from people I personally know who work in Amazon FC's any different than 'testimonials' from people on TV. I know at least 2 people who work or have worked in these FC's and they never complained. They worked hard & collected their paychecks.
You're acting like the people that you know that never complained somehow cancel out the people complaining. That's not how it works.
>That doesn't mean this is everyone's experience, I'm sure many have been treated poorly. But it goes both ways, we can't assume because some were treated poorly that that is all FC workers experience.
It doesn't go both ways. The fact that you think highlighting some of them are being treated well is troubling. That should be the default. That shouldn't be commendable on Amazon's part.
>I have never worked for Amazon, but I have worked for FedEx unloading trailers by hand. It was back breaking work. The things I hear these workers saying remind me of that job. We were expected to throw boxes nonstop until it was finished, and our boxes per minute thru-put was closely monitored & expected to be kept above a certain level.
Sounds like FedEx has some labor issues to me. Do you think treating people like they're robots is a good thing? Both Amazon and FedEx seem to do so.
>I don't wish poor working conditions on these people, but I also imagine that some of this is getting blown out of proportion.
Where is your evidence that would lend credence to this getting blown out of proportion?
It's not evidence. This isn't a peer-reviewed paper, this is an internet chat board. I'm also troubled that although my anecdotal isn't allowed, a comedy show video is 'evidence'.
I'm also not denying that Amazon treat their employers badly. What I'm saying is why the agenda towards Amazon in particular. Many people work in awful jobs but the media just ignores these.
Worst of all, when people who work for Amazon dare to say "it's not all bad", people like you tell them that they're wrong. When I was younger I worked some pretty awful jobs, but often it's people who have never worked jobs like this that think they know best.
In my younger days, I used to work unloading boxes at FedEx for minimum wage. It was hard, back breaking work, and you better believe at holiday time it was crazy hectic and no time off. So I can imagine what it's like at one of these facilities, it's got to be hard as hell.
I'm sure all of us want these people to have the best conditions possible. The concerning thing to me is the tone of conversations like this in the 'Age of outrage'. It's a lot of virtue signaling, and then attacking of anyone who says anything to the contrary. "Oh you're not outraged about this like I am? Well you're an Amazon shill & hate the workers!"
Isn't the bigger issue, why is it these folks don't have better opportunities available to them? They are working these hard, back breaking jobs likely because it is better than anything else they can find in their area.
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheKenChilds/status/1161847717397...
I'd guess that Rafael didn't log out of the app (or the nana forgot to do that).
In this case, compare the thread to a normal conversation. A normal conversation consists of a long chain of alternating messages by two people, comparing and contrasting their two different points of view. This "conversation" consists of a long chain of the original poster expressing their point of view and then a different "FC Ambassador" replying each time, all expressing the same contrasting point of view.
Compare that conversation to the first 1 minute of this clip: https://youtu.be/ZsBz_Q62hHk?t=10
It's just a literal observation, not an insult.
(Technically that's Unity from Rick & Morty; I couldn't find a clip of the original Borg from Star Trek doing this.)
I think many of the people who find fault with rulesobeyer don’t use Twitter. The ambassadors are comoletely robotic in the way they use Twitter - they don’t come across as people, they come across as corporate accounts. Even developer advocates aren’t this robotic.
I feel like I’m looking at stepford wives here and everyone in the comments here are apart of the farce
https://mobile.twitter.com/TheKenChilds/status/1161847717397...
Maybe being "honest" is some side-effect, but they wouldn't be doing it if Twitter didn't have a history of deleting Russian troll accounts (for example).
BORG