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Ask HN: Why bother trying to unionize single Amazon warehouse?

2 points by suncherta ↗ HN
I was reading through related discussions on HN and did not see the answer to this question: what would workers or organized labor (for that matter) gain by organizing just one Amazon warehouse?

Sure, one needs to start somewhere, and it is likely infeasible to organize majority of Amazon warehouses simultaneously.

But what leverage over Amazon would such single unionized warehouse give to labor? And AFAIK without good leverage Union cannot negotiate anything significant for its members, why members still must pay their dues to the union, ending up worse on the balance.

Wouldn't successful unionization of the single warehouse serve more like an inoculation from the organized labor for Amazon? What parts of the picture do I miss here?

5 comments

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nabla9
The US labor laws are very different from most of the other countries.

US has enterprise collective bargaining (as do UK and Ireland). Most other western countries have sectoral collective bargaining as the main method, augmented with national and enterprise bargaining.

The main drawback of US type system is that it pits unions and companies against each other more than necessary. It's more adversarial because companies that are not unionized get competitive advantage over nonunionized companies.

sidibe
I think the left should be fighting for higher taxes to support basic income or stronger unemployment protections instead of this union stuff. I think that aligns people's interests much better than pitting employees against their employers. Give people the freedom to leave their jobs if they want to. If a union is effective in the USA it will generally hurt the business and that has consequences for the employee.
[dead] transtrain
The real issue is how has this level of employee abuse take place since slavery was abolished.

Union organizing can't fix what govt doesn't want to happen. The govt should be enforcing the monopoly laws on the books to beat Amazon down and break it up.

Unionizing is a half to properly breaking Amazon up and forcing it to pay taxes and stop shipping in counterfeit goods.

brendanyounger
Each distribution center is technically it's own LLC (corporation), so employees of the Alabama warehouse work for a different company than ones in a neighboring state. Union forming would need to happen separately for each.
readonthegoapp
don't know details of this effort, but two thoughts come to mind:

1) the threat of a good example -- see how the US still treats Cuba, etc.

2) 'labor' is crushed in america. they/we are nothing. so, any tiny effort, however misdirected, ill-advised, etc. -- is akin to Chinese people protesting in Tiananmen Square -- brave, but not likely to end well.