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I think amazon can come up with a way to make the job less stressful and all that, but I think the articles point that amazon comes in and replaces jobs that we

by xt00 9y ago

I think amazon can come up with a way to make the job less stressful and all that, but I think the articles point that amazon comes in and replaces jobs that were unionized basically misses the point. Over the past 20 years tons of factories shut down because they realized they could get the same thing built someplace else for far cheaper — in many cases unions had helped the people get paid more and more for the same-ish work for years. So the delta between what the factory in Mexico or China would cost could be massive. So in the case of amazon they are not a factory and they can’t really be moved, but they can decide to contract out their fulfillment to another company who is willing to do it and reset the game by bringing in a new workforce that gets paid less again. So it would seem like the smart thing to do would be to keep the pressure on amazon and target specific things they don’t like, but getting unionized and then demanding way more pay and easier conditions will basically drive amazon to contracting out the fulfillment centers to somebody else and you are back to where you started..

barrkel 9y ago
What if the choice as a consumer is between two products, one of which costs 20% more than the other but gives employees a better life? It's a somewhat hypothetical question because markets will usually push the more expensive manufacturer into a market niche with fairly heavy marketing costs to sell their ethical USP. The trouble is that prices don't necessarily price everything in; you don't know how much misery you're buying when you hand over your cash. Child labour, sweatshops, corrupt resource extraction in despotic regimes - real externalities disappear when you only compare on price. People agitate to change the game, since the market is inefficient at solving this problem. Either they lobby to pass labour standards laws, or they unionize. The trouble then becomes arbitrage: unscrupulous employers don't want their negative externalities priced in, so they switch to labour elsewhere, taking advantage of beggar-thy-neighbour strategies employed by other regions and countries. As long as there is free trade to anywhere with lower standards of life and labour, work will tend to migrate towards it. The risk is that competitive regional strategies will keep labour oppressed. The alternative is regional and international pacts, much like the EU, that try to prevent this kind of arbitrage and "regulatory dumping". Of course nothing is perfect. Unions can themselves be corrupt, politicians can be captured by labour action groups, and consumers can suffer. Regional and international pacts can use their mechanisms that enforce fair competition to favour local businesses over remote businesses, or entrench monopolies. There's no panacea.
gt_ 9y ago
Why doesn’t ‘Stater Brothers’ (the other warehouse in the article) outsource like you say? ‘Stater Brothers’ is paying their unionized employees double the hourly wage with extra earnings potential and significantly better benefits. Are you saying Amazon’s ability to relocate the jobs makes outsourcing easier? I can’t think of much else. What is the difference between unionizing and “keeping the pressure on amazon and target specific things they don’t like”? One begets the other. And do we have any evidence there is any pressure on Amazon to begin with?
- xt00 9y ago
  The size of the stater brothers operation sounds much smaller than amazon’s. So I would assume the potential upside would be small for somebody to come in and compete. But good point. I’ve been following the whole union thing with Boeing for years and the situation I described is exactly what happened with them for both the machinists and the engineers. Both groups are heavily unionized for Boeing in the Seattle area. After years of the union continuously pushing Boeing to improve wages and benefits, and that made Boeing start looking for a way to get around the union.. moved to “right to work” states, moved head quarters, outsourced to other contractors.. basically the unions pushed the company to diversify their options for building planes. And this is in one of the most expensive product categories you can imagine. So in low margin industries, unionization is without a doubt risky for the future of those workers. You may say I’m speaking the company line but a review of history in the factories in the US shows that unless the company can directly compete with the overseas competitors, they are run out of business by people buying the cheaper and often similar quality product. There are many people in China right now trying to automate as much of their business as possible so that people in more developed countries cannot undercut them once they figure out how to automate before they do.. and if a particular factory in China decides not to do it to help keep their workers, somebody else will do it that currently is not rich and doesn’t own a factory.. why should they let the other guys who already own the factory be the last people to own a factory and no innovation after them? So yea they will get funding and start their own automated factories. So it’s a continuous race to the bottom and every time people say “oh hey stop, we are good” somebody sneaks past them and keeps the race going.. I think the real take away is we need to figure out how to have something like a union that helps people but doesn’t basically hurt the companies competiveness globally.. maybe having the people get paid the same but the robots do more.. the people should push for that instead of unionizing and asking for more money to work less.. because let’s not kid ourselves, that is what people that are unionizing are hoping happens..

by xt00 9y ago

barrkel 9y ago

What if the choice as a consumer is between two products, one of which costs 20% more than the other but gives employees a better life? It's a somewhat hypothetical question because markets will usually push the more expensive manufacturer into a market niche with fairly heavy marketing costs to sell their ethical USP. The trouble is that prices don't necessarily price everything in; you don't know how much misery you're buying when you hand over your cash. Child labour, sweatshops, corrupt resource extraction in despotic regimes - real externalities disappear when you only compare on price. People agitate to change the game, since the market is inefficient at solving this problem. Either they lobby to pass labour standards laws, or they unionize. The trouble then becomes arbitrage: unscrupulous employers don't want their negative externalities priced in, so they switch to labour elsewhere, taking advantage of beggar-thy-neighbour strategies employed by other regions and countries. As long as there is free trade to anywhere with lower standards of life and labour, work will tend to migrate towards it. The risk is that competitive regional strategies will keep labour oppressed. The alternative is regional and international pacts, much like the EU, that try to prevent this kind of arbitrage and "regulatory dumping". Of course nothing is perfect. Unions can themselves be corrupt, politicians can be captured by labour action groups, and consumers can suffer. Regional and international pacts can use their mechanisms that enforce fair competition to favour local businesses over remote businesses, or entrench monopolies. There's no panacea.

gt_ 9y ago

Why doesn’t ‘Stater Brothers’ (the other warehouse in the article) outsource like you say? ‘Stater Brothers’ is paying their unionized employees double the hourly wage with extra earnings potential and significantly better benefits. Are you saying Amazon’s ability to relocate the jobs makes outsourcing easier? I can’t think of much else. What is the difference between unionizing and “keeping the pressure on amazon and target specific things they don’t like”? One begets the other. And do we have any evidence there is any pressure on Amazon to begin with?

xt00 9y ago
The size of the stater brothers operation sounds much smaller than amazon’s. So I would assume the potential upside would be small for somebody to come in and compete. But good point. I’ve been following the whole union thing with Boeing for years and the situation I described is exactly what happened with them for both the machinists and the engineers. Both groups are heavily unionized for Boeing in the Seattle area. After years of the union continuously pushing Boeing to improve wages and benefits, and that made Boeing start looking for a way to get around the union.. moved to “right to work” states, moved head quarters, outsourced to other contractors.. basically the unions pushed the company to diversify their options for building planes. And this is in one of the most expensive product categories you can imagine. So in low margin industries, unionization is without a doubt risky for the future of those workers. You may say I’m speaking the company line but a review of history in the factories in the US shows that unless the company can directly compete with the overseas competitors, they are run out of business by people buying the cheaper and often similar quality product. There are many people in China right now trying to automate as much of their business as possible so that people in more developed countries cannot undercut them once they figure out how to automate before they do.. and if a particular factory in China decides not to do it to help keep their workers, somebody else will do it that currently is not rich and doesn’t own a factory.. why should they let the other guys who already own the factory be the last people to own a factory and no innovation after them? So yea they will get funding and start their own automated factories. So it’s a continuous race to the bottom and every time people say “oh hey stop, we are good” somebody sneaks past them and keeps the race going.. I think the real take away is we need to figure out how to have something like a union that helps people but doesn’t basically hurt the companies competiveness globally.. maybe having the people get paid the same but the robots do more.. the people should push for that instead of unionizing and asking for more money to work less.. because let’s not kid ourselves, that is what people that are unionizing are hoping happens..