This practice really should be banned, IMO. The employer is taking advantage of the fact that the employee typically needs the job to survive. Recall the statistic where many Americans would have to borrow to cover an unexpected $400 expense. Do you think someone in that position is going to do anything to jeopardize their job? The employer is literally coercing the employee into attending these "information" sessions by threatening their survival, and it needs to stop. This is not a free association any more than you "choosing" to drive on the correct side of the road, when the alternative is to starve, or miss rent / mortgage.
> The employer is literally coercing the employee into attending these "information" sessions by threatening their survival, and it needs to stop.
I don't get it. The employer is paying you for your time. Why does it matter whether it's stacking boxes or sitting in front of a TV?
> This is not a free association any more than you "choosing" to drive on the correct side of the road, when the alternative is to starve, or miss rent / mortgage.
Are they threatening to fire the employees if they form a union?
Boxes don't spew propaganda at you while you stack them. At least not yet.
Edit: Yep, predictable. Y'all want to upvote "fingers crossed for yes," but then downvote for suggesting employers shouldn't be able to propagandize against unions. Let's just make it go away rather than have a discussion, yeah?
Edit in response to your edit: no, but they're literally threatening to fire anyone who doesn't sit and listen to their propaganda. Amazon doesn't give a relative shit if they fire you, but you sure do if you don't have $400 to your name.
"Are they threatening to fire the employees if they form a union?"
Not in an overt way that you could take to the NLRB...they aren't dumb. But the message is often clear enough. For example:
"At a mandatory meeting Thursday for workers, where the warehouse’s leadership pressed its case to vote against the union, the 51-year-old rebutted the company’s suggestions that the RWDSU’s goal was to raise money to pay for union leaders’ cars and meals. One Amazon manager took a picture of his employee badge, a tactic Richardson believed was intended to intimidate him."
To be clear, Amazon REQUIRES workers to attend its "information sessions" while at work. Union organizers have no comparable power. To say that it's fair because the time is paid for is just whistling Dixie--Amazon is using its power to feed employees their propaganda with great efficiency. This is a brazen psychological asymmetry, and parity of information (in all forms--including time spent considering valid arguments pro or con, etc.) means everything when it comes to fairness in group decision-making processes.
> Why does it matter whether it's stacking boxes or sitting in front of a TV?
Should it be OK if the company shows an anti-LGBTQ video or religious propaganda? There should obviously be limits to what an employer can coerce their employees into watching, and I think the vast majority of employees would agree that they shouldn't have to watch anti-union or other politically-charged propaganda.
Treating people with respect is politically charged, but it shouldn't be. The side of that argument that thinks racial slurs, sexual advances, hurtful stereotypes and treating employees differently because of race, religion or sexuality should be OK in a workplace is wrong. It's no more propaganda than telling people not to punch each other or spit in each others faces.
> I don't get it. The employer is paying you for your time. Why does it matter whether it's stacking boxes or sitting in front of a TV?
Just because I signed a contract that I'm willing to stack boxes for X amount of money doesn't mean they can tell me to clean toilets or manage a team.
That would be fair. When I said "this practice should be banned," I meant the way it is now, where the employer gets to abuse their position to shove their opinion down peoples' throats. Make them invite in a union rep and give them equal time, and I'd be good with it.
Well about that. There is presently a case before SCOTUS regarding a law in California that allows union organizers to go onto private farm property and sell their message to the workers there if the workers quarters are not accessible to organizers otherwise up to some defined amount of time for up to some defined amount of days out of the year.
Google tells me 3 hours a day, 120 days a year.
It is being argued by the property owner’s that this is a taking. Not even a regulatory taking, just a straight up taking.
Oral arguments were heard last Monday. Advisory Opinions (a podcast) had a pretty good take on the oral arguments, but SCOTUS hasn’t put out an opinion yet.
Arguably that would infringe on Amazon’s own First Amendment interest. Their house after all.
That said I have no idea how this case is going to turn out. I’m not sure if they would have been better off arguing it was a regulatory taking because there was some indication they could have narrowly won that. SCOTUS may not issue an opinion, but punt this back down.
Arguing that it was a taking was a bold move. I can see it, but that is a tough argument to make and win on.
No, it wouldn't. They could still host sessions outside of work, and make them truly voluntary. There is no particular reason Amazon must speak their message in their house, under threat of dismissal, except to coerce employees into listening.
When you work for someone else, it is your employer’s prerogative to spend your time how they want. They can pay you for useful productive work or they can fritter it away talking your ear off in the office, within the confines of the agreement.
Certainly it would be fairer to the union organizers for Amazon to not spend work time on anti-union messages, but there isn’t a legal problem with it. Amazon’s house, Amazon’s choice. The union has to work with the time people are willing to give them outside of the time they sell to Amazon.
> When you work for someone else, it is your employer’s prerogative to spend your time how they want. They can pay you for useful productive work or they can fritter it away talking your ear off in the office, within the confines of the agreement.
This is correct. The employer's ability to de facto force someone to sit and listen to a prescribed message, while the union doesn't have the same ability is precisely why either both sides should have that power, or neither.
> Certainly it would be fairer to the union organizers for Amazon to not spend work time on anti-union messages....
Are you against fairness?
> Amazon’s house, Amazon’s choice. The union has to work with the time people are willing to give them outside of the time they sell to Amazon.
Or are you somehow missing or overlooking the fact that I'm literally proposing a change to what the law is?
So, you're in favor of employers being able to threaten their employees' survival in order to get what they want? Because that's de facto what happens. Sure, it's not the anarcho-capitalist definition of "coercion," but that's a ridiculous concept, anyway.
I’ve been in that position. If you work for someone that is threatening your livelihood, it’s time to start looking somewhere else for a new job, and renegotiating the terms of your employment.
One of the things my first boss told me at my interview was: if you want to just be a body, you can be a body and there is plenty of work out there for bodies. How well represented you are really depends on how much you step up for yourself. Unionizing is a legitimate option for private sector employees, but they don’t need to expend their employer’s resources to accomplish it.
If you view everyone else around you as just an easily programmed droid, then sure, fairness might matter. I don’t see people that way: they’re free agents and they can make their own choices. Not choosing to unionize is also a legitimate choice, and this vote could go either way.
Why do I have to assume everyone's a preprogrammed droid in order to want everyone to have a fair choice? Why wouldn't you rather just be presented with a fair choice to begin with? Should I have to question your motives whenever you offer me a choice between A or B?
Your M.O. just seems like it would have you bouncing from job to job forever, until you exhaust the labor market, because, if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that if there's a power imbalance in an economic relationship, it will eventually be exploited for profit. To not exploit it would be economically irrational.
And, to be clear, if the workers did freely choose not to unionize, after being presented with all the information on the same terms by both sides, good on them. That's a decision I respect.
But, back to the actual point, why would you support the employer's right to de facto coerce employees in any way?
> Why do I have to assume everyone's a preprogrammed droid in order to want everyone to have a fair choice?
I have not sighted these ballots, but it’s a yes/no choice isn’t it? Unionize or don’t unionize: that’s a fair choice. You don’t need equal time to have a legitimate election, time can buy you mindshare but you’re not buying an election overseen by the NLRB.
> Your M.O. just seems like it would have you bouncing from job to job forever
I do just fine.
> But, back to the actual point, why would you support the employer's right to de facto coerce employees in any way?
Because no one in an employer-employee relationship is entitled to that relationship: not the employer, not the employees. If Amazon really can fire everyone and replace them, then the employees made a bad call going ahead with this. If they can’t, then Amazon is stuck with the outcome and they’re going to have a rough few years, maybe they’ll sit there in the C suite trying to figure out how it was this happened and how they could have prevented it.
I also don’t see the government having a compelling interest here, and your proposal is toothless without government enforcement. One of the last things I want is for the government coming down on the side of unions, just as I don’t want them coming down on the side of corporations, therefore it doesn’t have any reason to transfer assets or their use from one private party to another. A union has to be earned on your own time, and your time at your workplace is your employer’s time.
Also there is a potential this could backfire on Amazon too. Think of it this way: if Amazon employees have legitimate complaints, I don’t know one way or the other where they do, but let’s say they do, and rather than seeing their complaints serviced, extra bathroom breaks, better health and safety standards and so on, Amazon corporate decided the best use of their time and resources was a load of anti-union propaganda, then why wouldn’t they unionize? In their position, I would do it just to defy my corporate overlords.
I don’t think these warehouse employees are lacking in either information or choices here. Amazon holds loads of advantages, that doesn’t mean they can’t lose this fight. If unionization fails here, that doesn’t necessarily mean it necessarily would have succeeded without an anti-union drive. How Amazon spends their money, possibly throws away their money, is ultimately their choice and I’m not looking to empower the government to take that away from them.
> I have not sighted these ballots, but it’s a yes/no choice isn’t it? Unionize or don’t unionize: that’s a fair choice. You don’t need equal time to have a legitimate election, time can buy you mindshare but you’re not buying an election overseen by the NLRB.
Yes, it's a binary yes / no. You're correct, you don't need equal time to have a legitimate election, but you do in order to have a fair election. Do you favor giving one side (Amazon) more power than the other to influence the vote?
> Because no one in an employer-employee relationship is entitled to that relationship: not the employer, not the employees.
This is irrelevant. There is a relationship. You want it to be an abusive one? I don't get it.
> I also don’t see the government having a compelling interest here, and your proposal is toothless without government enforcement.
Government has a legitimate interest in serving the people. If it does not do that, there may as well be no government. Notice I said "people," and not "unions." I am not proposing that government come down on the side of unions; rather that government come down on the side of the people, by making the employer / employee relationship as fair as possible in this context. Again, why would you oppose this? What's wrong with restoring fairness to an unbalanced relationship?
I truly don't even understand the point you're trying to make here, other than "Amazon should be able to abuse workers because workers don't deserve jobs." If that's literally your point, I'm afraid we're done here.
Because they shouldn't be able to abuse the power asymmetry in the employer / employee relationship to advocate for their position, while denying the union an equal opportunity.
Alternatively, they don't have to pay for it. They can choose to just not have the "information" sessions.
This is a false dichotomy.
As an employer, if I’m paying I can do whatever I want within the law.
Who says a third party acting against my interests should get any air time at all?
That depends. Are you in favor of coercively using your influence over your employees to get what you want, or would you rather have them have all the information and arguments on both sides?
Are you saying that the employees of Amazon are not intellectually capable to determine when they are being told an untruth? How are you able to determine, when they are not?
Please don't try to play rhetorical games like that. I asked that of you, since you implied that the workers at Amazon cannot determine what you have been able to discern. You are the person with 40 comments on this page repeating what is essentially the same comment.
AFAIK they don't pay corporate income taxes... because they don't make corporate income (aka profit). They do pay other forms of taxes, eg. payroll, medicare, unemployment, sales tax.
If they have good arguments against unionization, I don't think it would be necessarily against their interest to have employees hear the other side as well.
That assumes people can tell the difference between good and bad arguments. If you look at the divergence between popular beliefs on economics and the spread of field consensus, that case gets really hard to make. The truth is usually a lot harder to communicate than populist soundbites are.
Well, only one side gets that opportunity at the moment. Would you rather that be the case, that neither side be able to do it, or that both sides be able?
"do we believe that a union is going to make it easier for a delivery driver in Idaho to find a bathroom?"
I believe they would put in a grievance process that makes it painful for Amazon to set unrealistic quotas, etc, yes. Separate from whether there's a bathroom in a rural area, if that's what you mean.
OK fair enough - workers uniting to have better negotiating power are not automatically socialism.
In my country the special legal protections for unions are socialism (special worker rights in general are). And so is the claim that workers are being exploited and employers have all the power and so on. That's straight from the socialist propaganda booklets.
> This practice really should be banned, IMO. The employer is taking advantage of the fact that the employee typically needs the job to survive.
I assume Amazon is paying for the time these employees have to spend in the mandatory information sessions? I don't see the problem.
Amazon MUST get the opportunity to present its case even if anti-union is not a popular stance. If the deal offered by Amazon is so bad then what is the harm? We should not be shielding people from information because we don't believe they're smart enough to see through it... that reeks of elitist paternalistic thinking.
I know they're not. I am literally arguing that if they're going to sit there and say "nice job you've got there... wouldn't it be too bad if you lost it," and then "invite" you to a "mandatory information session," which you can "freely" choose not to attend, then the union should get equal time at this session.
>then the union should get equal time at this session.
Why? They're not footing the bill. I'd agree with giving the union the option to do this, if they can compensate amazon equal to the hourly wage that the workers are paid, but I doubt labor unions have enough of a bankroll to make this viable.
It's not a threat. It literally has to be mandatory since the decision will have large impacts on the current employees and the company. Employees need to know what they are voting on. It's not as simple as union good, company bad and you're being disingenuous painting it as such.
Yes, they need to know what's being voted on. But that's not the purpose of company-sponsored, mandatory "information" sessions. The purpose is to coerce employees into sitting down and listening to anti-union propaganda, and you know it.
Would you be in favor of the union being able to hold a mandatory information session, also under threat of dismissal? Why or why not?
It's "mandatory" if they want to keep their jobs, but they can "freely" choose to quit. Or, so the party line goes. It's also "mandatory" that you drive on the correct side of the road, but you can "freely" choose not to, and risk arrest, injury, or death.
But do they officially make the claim that they would fire anybody who doesn't attend?
I personally would want to fire anybody who wants to form a union, if I was in the situation. Why should anybody be forced to employ somebody who wants to make trouble in their organization?
The union has access to the employees out of work hours.
Why should the union get compensated time to express their position. If the Union wants to comp Amazon access to their employees and lost productivity then sure maybe, but I don't see that being proposed. It's always Amazon who must "give" something.
Amazon has the same access outside of work hours. They can host events and invite employees just as easily as the union can. The union has zero access during work hours.
Amazon must "give" something because Amazon "has" 99% of the cards.
Not how it works mate. Unions are also private parties, and your desire to see more unionization does not entitle one private organization to the time, money and/or resources of another.
I know that's not how it works. I'm saying that's not how it should work. Amazon should not be able to abuse its employees by forcing them to go to mandatory "information" sessions under threat of dismissal, precisely because the union doesn't have that power. Either both should have it, or neither should. Which would you prefer?
Edit: I notice you've done this exact same thing in another comment subthread here. Are you deliberately overlooking the fact that I'm proposing a change to "how it works?" That means "that's not how it works, mate" is completely irrelevant.
If you’re going to put me on the spot, I come down on Amazon’s private property rights, employer’s prerogative and First Amendment interest in their own warehouse; I also come down on the side of the private sector employees to unionize, and exercise their own rights if that is what they want to do, but not by spending their employer’s resources and time on the effort.
I am a proponent of work/personal separation, and union efforts are a personal effort up until the point they succeed, if they succeed. That isn’t fair to the union but life is tough in the aluminum siding business.
Edit in response to your edit: we can go back and forth, I’m watching the other subthread too. Feel free to consolidate if you like.
Just for nuance - I mostly hope they don't. The track record of modern unions is spotty as far as I can tell and I'd rather that big gamble isn't taken with Amazon.
Still, I hope it ends up being a push in the right direction.
I would agree.... modern unions are almost a joke (rug color doesn't match what we agreed on, so back to negotiations!)... or police unions, where officers with significantly questionable backgrounds are re-hired...
But against amazon, how do you fight? They probably are paying 50 people right now to do cost calculations on if it's more profitable to shut down the warehouse and move a few miles down the road, vs. accept the union.... and they have the capital to seriously consider it...
If the government wont do anything to protect workers, unions are basically like class action lawsuits... a terrible option, but the only one remaining (except for the groups that are legally forbidden from unionizing)
Oddly, in countries with strong sectoral bargaining, there is less government intervention, because the unions work things out directly with the employers. IMO that solution is better in the end, as the unions and employers are better positioned to understand the issues than the government is.
Of course for any of this to work, you need strong institutions, and ours in the US are very weak IMO. But that just means we need to keep building, not give up.
It's not the employers fault if an employee needs a job to survive.
And the 400$ story really needs to be analysed some more. I don't think it means most of those people are broke, just that they don't keep that much cash around for immediate use. It might all go into saving accounts or other investments (including mortgage).
I just googled it, apparently the story is 40% of Americans don't have 400$ in cash for an emergency. On the other hand, the median income in the US is 65000$ - that is 50% of all Americans earn more than 65000$. I don't think any of those are in the situation to not be able to come up with 400$. And below the 50% there won't be such a steep fall of income.
However, it is such a nice story, so none of the leftist media seems to want to question it.
Regardless of it being the employer's "fault" that the employee depends on the job, they are still exploiting the fact that they can literally disrupt that employee's chance at survival.
That is just the same story, which is based on a survey. At least it mentions that many people would decide to pay for such an expense with credit, even though they would have the cash.
And just because some person has financial issues, they are not being exploited. It is still not the employers fault if a person is in that situation.
While I sympathize with that problem, the solution in my opinion is not unions, but the creation of more jobs. Then workers who would be fired could simply find another job.
The ~65k figure is the household income and not individual income [1]. Furthermore, household income is not evenly distributed by race, and this is relevant because 85% of the workers in this warehouse are black [2].
The first article says poverty rate is 11%, which just goes to show that the "400$ expense story" is misleading (making it sound as if 40% were in trouble). I don't have time to read the details, but "poverty" is also an arbitrarily defined cut off.
The average weekly salary for American full-time workers were about $990 in 2020. Assuming 10 vacation days per year, that comes out to $49 500. Note also that only about 110 million Americans are employed full-time. The remaining are either underemployed, students, minors, retirees, etc.
> The employer is literally coercing the employee into attending these "information" sessions by threatening their survival
I used to be mildly in favor of unions, but the use of this kind of loaded language is why I'm starting to oppose them. It just give me the impression that the pro-labor side are a bunch of entitled whiners, even though I logically know that vast majority of the people voting pro-union are perfectly reasonable. At the end of the day, you're being paid to sit in a room. Nothing is stopping you from daydreaming or planning your next dinner.
That's not the same deal. Amazon's deal is "here, watch this anti-union propaganda. We won't pay you any more than we usually do, and you're fired if you don't."
Would you be in favor of the union having the same power? Why or why not?
In that case, there's no equivalent comparison because one's an employer and the other is not. That doesn't change my original point that the description was loaded.
> Hey, guys, we're going to have 2 mandatory information sessions, one put on by the company and one put on by the union. They'll be during work hours and you'll get paid your normal rate.
Or
> Hey, we're holding some optional information sessions outside of work. Here's the info. The union is holding their own session, too. Feel free to come to both, or neither. It won't affect your job at all.
But there is no union yet. This is only about the election. Does the union get the same ability to "inform" the electorate as Amazon? Can the union threaten peoples' jobs to get them to come to "information" sessions?
It depends and is too early to tell. Specifically, it depends on whether this is a random ad hoc labor curfuffle (sp?) or a catalyst for increasing union sympathy and adoption.
Do unions really incentivize automation? UAW blocks American automakers from transitioning to the Toyota production system, so unions would likely block any attempts of automation as well.
I believe the above comment was suggesting that if the union vote passes, Amazon will swiftly begin to get rid of as many human workers as possible and invest heavily in robotics to replace them.
Maybe these unions can achieve what no government nor VC funded competitor could: Bring down this behemoth.
On the other hand: The growth trajectory for AMZ (ie. being the sole "shop" in, say, 20 yrs) will make the accumulated expenses for GM-UAW-style shenanigans look like peanuts.
You can find examples of powerful unions benefiting workers without taking the company down, but rather, keeping the company in check. Pilots and Flight Attendants do pretty well with airlines.
Actually, that makes it a great example right now. Air travel is down drastically. I would expect most of them would be out of work if they weren't unionized. That's not the case. Many of them are being paid quite a lot to sit at home right now. And no major airline is declaring bankruptcy, despite the prolonged decline.
They did, with quite a lot of pressure from their unions to push for that. The unionized workers got more favorable pay/leave programs than the non-unionized ones.
AA filed once in 2011, United once in 2002, Delta once in 2005, Southwest hasn't. There may be some coming, but airlines got hit pretty hard with the pandemic.
And there are plenty of airlines that were acquired or folded, but I don't think laying that at the union door makes sense.
Having a party in power that calls itself socialist in no way means a country is operating with a socialist system. At least not by any remotely accurate definition.
I am not referring to parties with "socialist" in the name, I refer to actual reforms they want to introduce.
In my country we still have the party that was the socialist party of socialist Germany. We also have the "social democrats" who have now decided to officially demand "democratic socialism", which is just socialism (they formerly were not socialist, but they are becoming so). We have the Green party, which thinks that we will all die soon from various environmental issues, and planning economies are the only remedy. The EU itself is regulating more and more things and gravitating towards a planning economy.
One example that was discussed here recently is the introduction of rent controls in the German capital (Berlin). That is literally planning economy - they set a maximum price for housing. And they announced they want to do that in all of Germany if they win the next election.
There is still time. In my humble opinion, Amazon has eclipsed Wal-Mart in terms of being evil in regard to their treatment of employees and suppliers.
It would be a lot more expensive than it is for Walmart to close a store. This is a large distribution center. Besides, this vote has gotten so much attention that closing it after they unionize would surely attract the attention of the NLRB.
Knowing the area, I would doubt it is voted on favorably. Many people in the South are very leery of unions, and that's without people running PR for/against it.
Case in point: workers at a VW plant rejected unionization in 2014 despite the company all but supporting it:
> Volkswagen did not oppose the U.A.W. partly because its officials were eager to create a German-style works council, a committee of managers and blue-collar and white-collar workers who develop factory policies, on issues like work schedules and vacations. Volkswagen, which has unions and works councils at virtually all of its 105 other plants worldwide, views such councils as crucial for improving morale and cooperation and increasing productivity.
The campaign against unionization was largely driven by local politicians spreading F.U.D., which was relatively easy given widespread anti-union sentiments in the South and general union skepticism among the general U.S. population.
This is going to backfire so hard if it passes. Amazon will not accept becoming a Union shop they will fire everyone, automate what they can, and hire new people for what they can't and start firing people every year if they need to.
100% unskilled labor can't successfully unionize anymore. In the old days they had the mob and strategic use of violence to force the Union into a position of power but that is no longer possible.
Seriously! For all the folks crying foul about how unions are awful and won't work and folks will get automated out of a job, I feel like they simply have zero clue about unions in Europe.
Is Amazon pulling out of the European market? Are the unions so onerous that it's unprofitable to do business there? Have there been massive waves of layoffs and replacing union workers in Europe with robots?
Yes, automation is coming, and yes society as a whole has to reckon with what it means to have an automated society with a drastically different labor market. But the fact that Amazon is energetically growing and pursuing business in Europe, proves what a strawman this whole idea is, that unions are somehow inherently ridiculous or could never possibly work.
Guess what, they're working, in production today, and have been for decades. The fact that entrenched powers don't want it to work in the US, doesn't mean it can't work.
Automatable task gets automated, 100% unskilled labor gets replaced with robots. I don't believe that's backfiring, I believe it's the only way for Amazon to keep doing what it does without being "evil".
They absolutely still have the mob and strategic use of violence. The mob is social media, wielded by corporate media. Strategic use of violence didn't end last summer. See: Salem, OR. It will erupt again if powers that be deem it beneficial.
Well, then it will be fully mask off for amazon. And it is historically unwise from a societal standpoint to surpress all ways of peaceful worker participation. We'll see what road the US/amazon will go.
From what I understand, companies do tend to automate more if labor costs rise. If your employees cost $30/hr instead of $15/hr, it makes sense to invest in their productivity. This is one reason higher minimum wages aren't the disaster their opponents claim they are. Companies invest in productivity to maintain their profitability. Higher wages do also reduce capital's share of profits, though, which is the intended outcome.
>Companies invest in productivity to maintain their profitability. Higher wages do also reduce capital's share of profits, though, which is the intended outcome.
Shouldn't it be the other way around? Businesses have to invest more in productivity to maintain their profitability, thereby increasing the capital's share of profits because they need to pay for the capital?
Imagine being one of the richest people in the world and still fussing over what is chump change for you. Trading a marginal increment in wealth over his reputation. Practically it doesn't matter whether you have 100, 90 or even 50 billion USD, you can afford anything.
If you're competitive just because a union, maybe we should question why you're only competitive when abusing your employees? And close that loophole for other companies while we're at it.
Ha on pulling the rhetorical trick of "when did you stop hitting your spouse?"
There are many things employers do that employees dislike. Not all all of them are abuse. A union will attempt to remove the dislikes, abusive or not. The removal of non-abusive dislikes will limit the employer's competitiveness. In the absence of genuine abuses, say after an effective union is instated and when all abuses have been removed, a non-union shop is therefore at a competitive advantage in the market place over a union shop. The union overhead becomes purely frictional and it never goes away.
Sure, but the mere presence of a vote to start a union in a workplace is signs that something fucked up is happening, even though it might not affect everyone there.
Or you think they are trying to create/join an union because they are just mad at Amazon?
It's not a rhetorical trick. If a business is competitive only because it abuses employees, that business should not exist, at least in its current form. If businesses don't want the mean old union to come and make them stop doing stuff, they shouldn't invite conditions that lead people to vote for unions.
I hope it's an optional union. I'd be significantly more pro-union if employees could choose to leave the union whenever without having to leave the job.
IMO, part of the reason why unions are so controversial is that, once formed, they're hard to dismantle when run poorly. Fixing union problems requires that employees engage in a form of politics that no one should be forced to do just to have a good blue-collar job.
The advantages of unionized labor should be so good that enough employees will opt-in to keep the union powerful.
Free-ridership problems exist and are very big with unions, even those with indisputably good effects. This is why unions can't always be voluntary.
> employees engage in a form of politics that no one should be forced to do just to have a good blue-collar job.
I agree that nobody should have to do politics to have a good blue-collar job. Unions arise out of the necessity to play politics with management in order to keep such jobs in existence.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to say a statement you disagree with is "illogical."
Why shouldn't businesses be able to freely & voluntarily enter into any contract they want to? If the contract with the union stipulates that they will only hire union workers, workers are free to voluntarily pick a different job where the employer has freely not entered into such a contract. No captive markets here, unless an employer has a captive labor market over its employees.
> workers are free to voluntarily pick a different job where the employer
Then there's no point for a union. (Remember, unions aren't for employees who can negotiate directly with their employer, or who generally benefit from an open labor market.)
> an employer has a captive labor market over its employees
And that's where unions are critical. But, getting back to my original point, it creates a "who's watching the watchers" situation.
You don't have to look far to learn about the corruption in the Detroit UAW. The kickbacks made the national news. But, more importantly, after such a scandal do we really believe that the Detroit UAW was looking out for their members' best interests?
That's why I firmly believe those kinds of unions need to be optional. Ultimately, employees in a captive labor market need to be able to effortlessly walk away from their union. It needs to be as simple as canceling a newspaper. Otherwise, it becomes very hard to have a "check and balance" if the union becomes corrupt.
Federal law prohibits making union membership a condition of employment. It also forces unions to represent non members. Alabama law says non members don't have to pay for the services a union is forced to provide them.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 212 ms ] thread> ...lengthy mandatory "information sessions"...
This practice really should be banned, IMO. The employer is taking advantage of the fact that the employee typically needs the job to survive. Recall the statistic where many Americans would have to borrow to cover an unexpected $400 expense. Do you think someone in that position is going to do anything to jeopardize their job? The employer is literally coercing the employee into attending these "information" sessions by threatening their survival, and it needs to stop. This is not a free association any more than you "choosing" to drive on the correct side of the road, when the alternative is to starve, or miss rent / mortgage.
I don't get it. The employer is paying you for your time. Why does it matter whether it's stacking boxes or sitting in front of a TV?
> This is not a free association any more than you "choosing" to drive on the correct side of the road, when the alternative is to starve, or miss rent / mortgage.
Are they threatening to fire the employees if they form a union?
Edit: Yep, predictable. Y'all want to upvote "fingers crossed for yes," but then downvote for suggesting employers shouldn't be able to propagandize against unions. Let's just make it go away rather than have a discussion, yeah?
Edit in response to your edit: no, but they're literally threatening to fire anyone who doesn't sit and listen to their propaganda. Amazon doesn't give a relative shit if they fire you, but you sure do if you don't have $400 to your name.
Not in an overt way that you could take to the NLRB...they aren't dumb. But the message is often clear enough. For example:
"At a mandatory meeting Thursday for workers, where the warehouse’s leadership pressed its case to vote against the union, the 51-year-old rebutted the company’s suggestions that the RWDSU’s goal was to raise money to pay for union leaders’ cars and meals. One Amazon manager took a picture of his employee badge, a tactic Richardson believed was intended to intimidate him."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/09/amazon-...
Should it be OK if the company shows an anti-LGBTQ video or religious propaganda? There should obviously be limits to what an employer can coerce their employees into watching, and I think the vast majority of employees would agree that they shouldn't have to watch anti-union or other politically-charged propaganda.
Just because I signed a contract that I'm willing to stack boxes for X amount of money doesn't mean they can tell me to clean toilets or manage a team.
Google tells me 3 hours a day, 120 days a year.
It is being argued by the property owner’s that this is a taking. Not even a regulatory taking, just a straight up taking.
Here we go: Cedar Point Nursery v Hassid ( https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/cedar-point-nurs... )
Oral arguments were heard last Monday. Advisory Opinions (a podcast) had a pretty good take on the oral arguments, but SCOTUS hasn’t put out an opinion yet.
That said I have no idea how this case is going to turn out. I’m not sure if they would have been better off arguing it was a regulatory taking because there was some indication they could have narrowly won that. SCOTUS may not issue an opinion, but punt this back down.
Arguing that it was a taking was a bold move. I can see it, but that is a tough argument to make and win on.
Certainly it would be fairer to the union organizers for Amazon to not spend work time on anti-union messages, but there isn’t a legal problem with it. Amazon’s house, Amazon’s choice. The union has to work with the time people are willing to give them outside of the time they sell to Amazon.
This is correct. The employer's ability to de facto force someone to sit and listen to a prescribed message, while the union doesn't have the same ability is precisely why either both sides should have that power, or neither.
> Certainly it would be fairer to the union organizers for Amazon to not spend work time on anti-union messages....
Are you against fairness?
> Amazon’s house, Amazon’s choice. The union has to work with the time people are willing to give them outside of the time they sell to Amazon.
Or are you somehow missing or overlooking the fact that I'm literally proposing a change to what the law is?
I’m against prescribed fairness written into statute.
One of the things my first boss told me at my interview was: if you want to just be a body, you can be a body and there is plenty of work out there for bodies. How well represented you are really depends on how much you step up for yourself. Unionizing is a legitimate option for private sector employees, but they don’t need to expend their employer’s resources to accomplish it.
If you view everyone else around you as just an easily programmed droid, then sure, fairness might matter. I don’t see people that way: they’re free agents and they can make their own choices. Not choosing to unionize is also a legitimate choice, and this vote could go either way.
Your M.O. just seems like it would have you bouncing from job to job forever, until you exhaust the labor market, because, if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that if there's a power imbalance in an economic relationship, it will eventually be exploited for profit. To not exploit it would be economically irrational.
And, to be clear, if the workers did freely choose not to unionize, after being presented with all the information on the same terms by both sides, good on them. That's a decision I respect.
But, back to the actual point, why would you support the employer's right to de facto coerce employees in any way?
I have not sighted these ballots, but it’s a yes/no choice isn’t it? Unionize or don’t unionize: that’s a fair choice. You don’t need equal time to have a legitimate election, time can buy you mindshare but you’re not buying an election overseen by the NLRB.
> Your M.O. just seems like it would have you bouncing from job to job forever
I do just fine.
> But, back to the actual point, why would you support the employer's right to de facto coerce employees in any way?
Because no one in an employer-employee relationship is entitled to that relationship: not the employer, not the employees. If Amazon really can fire everyone and replace them, then the employees made a bad call going ahead with this. If they can’t, then Amazon is stuck with the outcome and they’re going to have a rough few years, maybe they’ll sit there in the C suite trying to figure out how it was this happened and how they could have prevented it.
I also don’t see the government having a compelling interest here, and your proposal is toothless without government enforcement. One of the last things I want is for the government coming down on the side of unions, just as I don’t want them coming down on the side of corporations, therefore it doesn’t have any reason to transfer assets or their use from one private party to another. A union has to be earned on your own time, and your time at your workplace is your employer’s time.
Also there is a potential this could backfire on Amazon too. Think of it this way: if Amazon employees have legitimate complaints, I don’t know one way or the other where they do, but let’s say they do, and rather than seeing their complaints serviced, extra bathroom breaks, better health and safety standards and so on, Amazon corporate decided the best use of their time and resources was a load of anti-union propaganda, then why wouldn’t they unionize? In their position, I would do it just to defy my corporate overlords.
I don’t think these warehouse employees are lacking in either information or choices here. Amazon holds loads of advantages, that doesn’t mean they can’t lose this fight. If unionization fails here, that doesn’t necessarily mean it necessarily would have succeeded without an anti-union drive. How Amazon spends their money, possibly throws away their money, is ultimately their choice and I’m not looking to empower the government to take that away from them.
Yes, it's a binary yes / no. You're correct, you don't need equal time to have a legitimate election, but you do in order to have a fair election. Do you favor giving one side (Amazon) more power than the other to influence the vote?
> Because no one in an employer-employee relationship is entitled to that relationship: not the employer, not the employees.
This is irrelevant. There is a relationship. You want it to be an abusive one? I don't get it.
> I also don’t see the government having a compelling interest here, and your proposal is toothless without government enforcement.
Government has a legitimate interest in serving the people. If it does not do that, there may as well be no government. Notice I said "people," and not "unions." I am not proposing that government come down on the side of unions; rather that government come down on the side of the people, by making the employer / employee relationship as fair as possible in this context. Again, why would you oppose this? What's wrong with restoring fairness to an unbalanced relationship?
I truly don't even understand the point you're trying to make here, other than "Amazon should be able to abuse workers because workers don't deserve jobs." If that's literally your point, I'm afraid we're done here.
Alternatively, they don't have to pay for it. They can choose to just not have the "information" sessions.
So, do you want them to have all the information or not?
Are you in favor of coercing workers to watch anti-union propaganda without giving the union an equivalent opportunity to persuade them?
Here’s the million dollar question:
do we believe that a union is going to make it easier for a delivery driver in Idaho to find a bathroom?
I believe they would put in a grievance process that makes it painful for Amazon to set unrealistic quotas, etc, yes. Separate from whether there's a bathroom in a rural area, if that's what you mean.
In my country the special legal protections for unions are socialism (special worker rights in general are). And so is the claim that workers are being exploited and employers have all the power and so on. That's straight from the socialist propaganda booklets.
I assume Amazon is paying for the time these employees have to spend in the mandatory information sessions? I don't see the problem.
Amazon MUST get the opportunity to present its case even if anti-union is not a popular stance. If the deal offered by Amazon is so bad then what is the harm? We should not be shielding people from information because we don't believe they're smart enough to see through it... that reeks of elitist paternalistic thinking.
But no, Amazon isn't required to pay you for the time you spend talking to your union rep, no.
Why? They're not footing the bill. I'd agree with giving the union the option to do this, if they can compensate amazon equal to the hourly wage that the workers are paid, but I doubt labor unions have enough of a bankroll to make this viable.
Would you be in favor of the union being able to hold a mandatory information session, also under threat of dismissal? Why or why not?
I personally would want to fire anybody who wants to form a union, if I was in the situation. Why should anybody be forced to employ somebody who wants to make trouble in their organization?
Why should the union get compensated time to express their position. If the Union wants to comp Amazon access to their employees and lost productivity then sure maybe, but I don't see that being proposed. It's always Amazon who must "give" something.
Amazon must "give" something because Amazon "has" 99% of the cards.
Edit: I notice you've done this exact same thing in another comment subthread here. Are you deliberately overlooking the fact that I'm proposing a change to "how it works?" That means "that's not how it works, mate" is completely irrelevant.
I am a proponent of work/personal separation, and union efforts are a personal effort up until the point they succeed, if they succeed. That isn’t fair to the union but life is tough in the aluminum siding business.
Edit in response to your edit: we can go back and forth, I’m watching the other subthread too. Feel free to consolidate if you like.
Good enough. I think I'll hop over there and ditch this one if it's all the same. No need to spew things all over the place.
Still, I hope it ends up being a push in the right direction.
But against amazon, how do you fight? They probably are paying 50 people right now to do cost calculations on if it's more profitable to shut down the warehouse and move a few miles down the road, vs. accept the union.... and they have the capital to seriously consider it...
If the government wont do anything to protect workers, unions are basically like class action lawsuits... a terrible option, but the only one remaining (except for the groups that are legally forbidden from unionizing)
Of course for any of this to work, you need strong institutions, and ours in the US are very weak IMO. But that just means we need to keep building, not give up.
And the 400$ story really needs to be analysed some more. I don't think it means most of those people are broke, just that they don't keep that much cash around for immediate use. It might all go into saving accounts or other investments (including mortgage).
I just googled it, apparently the story is 40% of Americans don't have 400$ in cash for an emergency. On the other hand, the median income in the US is 65000$ - that is 50% of all Americans earn more than 65000$. I don't think any of those are in the situation to not be able to come up with 400$. And below the 50% there won't be such a steep fall of income.
However, it is such a nice story, so none of the leftist media seems to want to question it.
Read.
Regardless of it being the employer's "fault" that the employee depends on the job, they are still exploiting the fact that they can literally disrupt that employee's chance at survival.
And just because some person has financial issues, they are not being exploited. It is still not the employers fault if a person is in that situation.
While I sympathize with that problem, the solution in my opinion is not unions, but the creation of more jobs. Then workers who would be fired could simply find another job.
How exactly do you figure exploiting someone's precarious financial position isn't exploitation, anyway?
[1] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/29/technology/amazon-union-v...
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf
also, you are trying to solve a 21st century problem with a 19th century tool. that's not going to work.
Which is entirely irrelevant to the fact that these people depend on their jobs.
> also, you are trying to solve a 21st century problem with a 19th century tool. that's not going to work.
The modern version of the flush toilet was invented over 400 years ago. I'd say it still works in the 21st century, yeah?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet#Pre-modern_flush_...
I used to be mildly in favor of unions, but the use of this kind of loaded language is why I'm starting to oppose them. It just give me the impression that the pro-labor side are a bunch of entitled whiners, even though I logically know that vast majority of the people voting pro-union are perfectly reasonable. At the end of the day, you're being paid to sit in a room. Nothing is stopping you from daydreaming or planning your next dinner.
Would you be in favor of the union having the same power? Why or why not?
> Hey, guys, we're going to have 2 mandatory information sessions, one put on by the company and one put on by the union. They'll be during work hours and you'll get paid your normal rate.
Or
> Hey, we're holding some optional information sessions outside of work. Here's the info. The union is holding their own session, too. Feel free to come to both, or neither. It won't affect your job at all.
Would you be in favor of either one of these?
That doesn't diminish much if a few thousand of them unionise.
It depends and is too early to tell. Specifically, it depends on whether this is a random ad hoc labor curfuffle (sp?) or a catalyst for increasing union sympathy and adoption.
It's definitely not that, this is a big push from the national unions trying to try out new models.
seems on point
On the other hand: The growth trajectory for AMZ (ie. being the sole "shop" in, say, 20 yrs) will make the accumulated expenses for GM-UAW-style shenanigans look like peanuts.
And there are plenty of airlines that were acquired or folded, but I don't think laying that at the union door makes sense.
[0] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/unions-wo...
[1] https://www.howmoneywalks.com/understanding-unions-factors-a...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs4cdbnNKdg
Don’t confuse social democracy in Europe with socialism. Or unions, for that matter.
In my country we still have the party that was the socialist party of socialist Germany. We also have the "social democrats" who have now decided to officially demand "democratic socialism", which is just socialism (they formerly were not socialist, but they are becoming so). We have the Green party, which thinks that we will all die soon from various environmental issues, and planning economies are the only remedy. The EU itself is regulating more and more things and gravitating towards a planning economy.
One example that was discussed here recently is the introduction of rent controls in the German capital (Berlin). That is literally planning economy - they set a maximum price for housing. And they announced they want to do that in all of Germany if they win the next election.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Volkswagen did not oppose the U.A.W. partly because its officials were eager to create a German-style works council, a committee of managers and blue-collar and white-collar workers who develop factory policies, on issues like work schedules and vacations. Volkswagen, which has unions and works councils at virtually all of its 105 other plants worldwide, views such councils as crucial for improving morale and cooperation and increasing productivity.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/business/volkswagen-worke...
The campaign against unionization was largely driven by local politicians spreading F.U.D., which was relatively easy given widespread anti-union sentiments in the South and general union skepticism among the general U.S. population.
100% unskilled labor can't successfully unionize anymore. In the old days they had the mob and strategic use of violence to force the Union into a position of power but that is no longer possible.
Is Amazon pulling out of the European market? Are the unions so onerous that it's unprofitable to do business there? Have there been massive waves of layoffs and replacing union workers in Europe with robots?
Yes, automation is coming, and yes society as a whole has to reckon with what it means to have an automated society with a drastically different labor market. But the fact that Amazon is energetically growing and pursuing business in Europe, proves what a strawman this whole idea is, that unions are somehow inherently ridiculous or could never possibly work.
Guess what, they're working, in production today, and have been for decades. The fact that entrenched powers don't want it to work in the US, doesn't mean it can't work.
Point being if you're going to make an aggressive claim of that type you'll have to back it up with evidence.
If you don’t Amazon treats you as expendable, if you do, you will only accelerate automation further resulting in fewer unskilled jobs.
It's a rather pathetic threat to make. Either it happens or it doesnt - unionization won't make automation technology intrinsically better.
Shouldn't it be the other way around? Businesses have to invest more in productivity to maintain their profitability, thereby increasing the capital's share of profits because they need to pay for the capital?
You are not making any sense. If it's all so great in AI robotics land, it would be here already.
To be fair, that could backfire as well. There seems to be some anti-big-tech sentiment floating around in the US Congress right now.
I guess money corrupts.
There are many things employers do that employees dislike. Not all all of them are abuse. A union will attempt to remove the dislikes, abusive or not. The removal of non-abusive dislikes will limit the employer's competitiveness. In the absence of genuine abuses, say after an effective union is instated and when all abuses have been removed, a non-union shop is therefore at a competitive advantage in the market place over a union shop. The union overhead becomes purely frictional and it never goes away.
Or you think they are trying to create/join an union because they are just mad at Amazon?
Unions have innate interests in having more union members.
https://www.eballot.com/blog/the-union-organizing-process-ex...
IMO, part of the reason why unions are so controversial is that, once formed, they're hard to dismantle when run poorly. Fixing union problems requires that employees engage in a form of politics that no one should be forced to do just to have a good blue-collar job.
The advantages of unionized labor should be so good that enough employees will opt-in to keep the union powerful.
> employees engage in a form of politics that no one should be forced to do just to have a good blue-collar job.
I agree that nobody should have to do politics to have a good blue-collar job. Unions arise out of the necessity to play politics with management in order to keep such jobs in existence.
That statement is illogical. It reeks of treating labor as a captive market to prop up an organization that no longer provides value.
That's why the union has to be voluntary. Either it provides value and employees continue to participate, or fades away like a bad restaurant.
Why shouldn't businesses be able to freely & voluntarily enter into any contract they want to? If the contract with the union stipulates that they will only hire union workers, workers are free to voluntarily pick a different job where the employer has freely not entered into such a contract. No captive markets here, unless an employer has a captive labor market over its employees.
> workers are free to voluntarily pick a different job where the employer
Then there's no point for a union. (Remember, unions aren't for employees who can negotiate directly with their employer, or who generally benefit from an open labor market.)
> an employer has a captive labor market over its employees
And that's where unions are critical. But, getting back to my original point, it creates a "who's watching the watchers" situation.
You don't have to look far to learn about the corruption in the Detroit UAW. The kickbacks made the national news. But, more importantly, after such a scandal do we really believe that the Detroit UAW was looking out for their members' best interests?
That's why I firmly believe those kinds of unions need to be optional. Ultimately, employees in a captive labor market need to be able to effortlessly walk away from their union. It needs to be as simple as canceling a newspaper. Otherwise, it becomes very hard to have a "check and balance" if the union becomes corrupt.
https://www.wired.com/story/boston-dynamics-new-robot-has-a-...