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Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’

• Barrin92 6y ago
  Is that even legal? I thought the US or most states at least like most other countries have laws against undermining the ability of employees to organise.
  • scarmig 6y ago
    Hah. In the US, there are laws, but their effectiveness depends on enforcement. Additionally, there's an entire industry of employer-side law firms focused on union busting, who advise employers on how to do as much as possible without crossing the legal line or getting caught when doing so.
    • throwaway894345 6y ago
      I would be curious to know what European labor laws are like. I'm also curious about what kinds of tactics these companies resort to which are sufficiently legal. Can anyone recommend good labor books?
      • ciceryadam 6y ago
        Generally you need to have a minimal number of employees that form the committee of a new union. You register at the Court, inform your employer. Anyone who wants to be represented by the union can join you. The employer must inform you about organisational changes / salaries / etc. You can add your union to a confederacy of unions, biggest of which has a place at the tripartite table during Labor law updates - so it's the state, employer groups and labor unions deciding about yearly wage increases.
      • scarmig 6y ago
        To paint the American landscape a bit more, the majority of what are called "union avoidance" activities are legal: since employers are employing the workers, they have a captive audience, and use that to the full extent of their ability, usually with the help of outside legal consultants. A lot of what goes on is surveys, videos, forced informational sessions, etc. Much of it can be compared to targeted public relations. Even when an employer stays within the full bounds of the law, they're usually substantially advantaged over the labor organizer: full information about the workforce and a captive audience goes really far. So where do the violations of law come in? A lot of it comes from very murky, subjective boundaries: employers can't threaten to shut down a plant or time wage increases in a way to interfere with a union organizing campaign. But a lot of what union avoidance specialists' work involves is consulting at exactly how to do the above in a legal way. It will end up in court, and if the consultants did their job right, the employer will win. Beyond that, you get into activities like firing workers purely because they're involved in union activities: here the labor avoidance consultants will sometimes help with building a paper trail to target workers viewed as problematic. Another illegal activity is spying, either on union meetings or workers and organizers when they're off premises. Oftentimes, employers want to do this on their own volition, and union busting consultants actively work to curtail this (or at least make sure any firings happen in a legal, documented way).
  • lordofgibbons 6y ago
    If you've ever worked in retail, one of the first "training" videos they show you is an anti-union informational video. One of the big points of the videos is to report union organizers to management ASAP. This kind of training is extremely common for low wage jobs in the U.S. If almost all large retailers are doing it, it mustn't be illegal, or not enforced.
    • jwilber 6y ago
      Saw these videos during my first job (cart attendant at Target). This behavior happens at every big company, both in and outside of tech. I remember the video being incredibly weird - they basically posited unions as bad because nonmembers would feel socially isolated from member. Eg - in one clip two workers would be gossiping about info from a members-only meeting and the moment a nonmember walked up to them, they became quiet and it turned into this strange teen drama.
    • ksrm 6y ago
      Found an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6bFEs4ZoXw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6bFEs4ZoXw
    • notJim 6y ago
      The House has passed a bill [1] that would make it illegal to make these meetings mandatory, btw. Obviously won't pass with a GOP senate, but could happen if the Dems manage to retake government. [1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/2474 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/2474
  • fortran77 6y ago
    Yes, but you can "track" it. It's the actions you take against it which may be constrained by law.
• throWaythxMod 6y ago
  Why doesn't Amazon do what all monopolies do, lobby the government and cause Regulatory capture to corner the market? It's easy, spend 100M dollars on a law that makes warehouse labor a mandatory union. Mom and pop companies can't afford to fill out government/union paperwork for their 3 employees and customers can't go to cheaper alternatives. But this means Amazon and Amazon employees win.
  • SQueeeeeL 6y ago
    Unions are probably the biggest threat to Amazon in the long term, as their interests are directly against Amazon, they'd rather there be 100 competitors they can buy out/drive out of business one at a time; then a single union who could easily shut them down (by striking)
• gonzo41 6y ago
  Jeff has a lot of money. Surely workers rights don't hit the bottom line that hard. Does Jeff not know that everyone will remember him for this behavior?
  • throwaway894345 6y ago
    > Does Jeff not know that everyone will remember him for this behavior? This presupposes that Jeff cares about his legacy. I genuinely don't know what drives him; my best guess is 'making Amazon ever more successful'.
    • me_me_me 6y ago
      Wasn't there an article about him saying that he fancy himself as real life capt. Picard?
      • hevelvarik 6y ago
        Ok haircut checks out everything just fell in to place
      • dencodev 6y ago
        do you think jeff poorly practices a penny whistle in private? god does that man suck
    • marcusverus 6y ago
      Jeff likely knows that a mogul's legacy is crafted long after the boom years. See Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Gates, Nobel, etc.
  • pydry 6y ago
    It's not just about money. It's about power.
• hoorayimhelping 6y ago
  This article is ridiculous. It makes a bunch of unfounded assumptions and provides very little in the way of facts to support its claims. Did anyone actually read the job postings before jumping to conclusions? >Monitor various collection platforms for incidents that pose direct and indirect risk to Amazon operations, personnel, or brand; There is nothing in there about union busting or making sure employees don't organize. This author is naive to think that Amazon isn't dealing with state level threats. They likely need state level intelligence. https://web.archive.org/web/20200901125940/https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/1026060/intelligence-analyst https://web.archive.org/web/20200901125940/https://www.amazo... https://web.archive.org/web/20200901142713/https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/1213610/sr-intelligence-analyst https://web.archive.org/web/20200901142713/https://www.amazo...
  • Jasper_ 6y ago
    > There is nothing in there about union busting or making sure employees don't organize. Literally from your own link: > Analysts must be capable of engaging and informing L7+ ER Principals (attorney stakeholders) on sensitive topics that are highly confidential, including labor organizing threats against the company (emphasis mine)
• Communitivity 6y ago
  This does not surprise me. I've been waiting to see corporate intelligence agencies pop up. When you think about it, Amazon had an operating budget last year of around $309 billion [1], already 75% of Germany's at $399 billion [2]. Facebook has an operating budget of around $35 billion, but that is still enough to field a small intelligence arm. Also, that is Facebook..not all Facebook properties combined. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/operating-expenses https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/operat... [2] https://www.dw.com/en/german-parliament-passes-record-budget/a-51463550#:~:text=The%20total%20German%20state%20budget,Bundestag%20chamber%20during%20Friday's%20debate https://www.dw.com/en/german-parliament-passes-record-budget....
  • saddlerustle 6y ago
    Most of Amazon's revenue is retail sales. Buying a product for $10 and selling it for $10.10 is not comparable to $10 of government spending. After deducting cost of sales and cost of fulfilment you're left with ~$60 billion.
    • m0llusk 6y ago
      Are you sure about that? My understanding is that the bulk of their profits are from Amazon Web Services. That is potentially a factor that contributes to this skewed and awkward framing of labor.
      • csours 6y ago
        You are both right. The bulk of PROFITS is in AWS. The bulk of ECONOMIC ACTIVITY is in amazon.com sales.
  • dylan604 6y ago
    Wasn't there previous news stories of FB doing exactly this? A 3rd party was hired to investigate something. It's all fuzzy, so if I'm totally wrong, someone please correct me.
  • HarryHirsch 6y ago
• motohagiography 6y ago
  Why would Amazon want to prevent workers from unionizing? Look what it did for teaching, policing, mail delivery, port security, taxi driving, waste management, public service, and construction.
  • cperciva 6y ago
    I can't speak to unions' effects on taxis -- I don't know if I've ever been somewhere which has unionized taxi drivers -- but I'm guessing Amazon isn't aiming to have a workforce which can shoot innocent people with impunity.
  • kwistzhaderach 6y ago
    Did that help the company make more profit?
  • xnyan 6y ago
    Ageee. Amazon, walmart and co union bust because they are really really concerned with promoting healthy labor markets. Nothing at all to do with the fact that union workers make significantly more money than non-union labor.
    • delfinom 6y ago
      Depends? The union supermarket chain by me makes basically pays pennies above minimum wage and they get the part-time status only scheduling shtick.
  • ouid 6y ago
    I think there is a growing part of america that is coming around to the idea that the path to more negotiating power for laborers is not unions. It is through basic income and social safety nets.
    • mattacular 6y ago
      How would basic income and social safety nets increase labors negotiating power?
• anoxor 6y ago
  Having been a part of a union I was mandated to enter when I took the job until the supreme court ruled that wasn't legal, actual unions are a far cry from how they are portrayed as helping the worker. I would honestly do anything in my power to not have to work in a union again. They are set up as antagonistic between administration and workers, and adds a layer of bureaucracy that I've only seen be negative. I've worked with people who effectively could never be fired and were so bad at their jobs they spread negativity with everyone they encountered.
  • Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    Isn’t this kind of separate from Amazon’s actions though? Unless you’re positing that Amazon is actually acting in the interest of their employees, or thinks they are?
    • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      False dichotomy. Two things can both be true: Amazon is not acting in the interest of their employees, and unions are also not acting in the interest of the employees.
    • bpodgursky 6y ago
      It's possible for unions to be bad for both the employees and the employer, and only good for professional middlemen bureaucrats and national parent union leadership.
  • api 6y ago
    I've heard nothing but bad things about American unions from both management and many (but not all) workers. I strongly believe that we need labor organization, but I also wonder if someone needs to (cliche alert!) disrupt the space with a new model or just new unions that are not run by bureaucratic chair warmers or the mob. The biggest thing that always blows me away about unions is the work rules. Person A can't so much as lift a finger to do something outside their designated work area, etc. I can't even imagine running an organization with that kind of bureaucracy. How could you optimize process? It's a wonder any union shop with that kind of elephant on its back can get anything done, ever.
• reading-at-work 6y ago
  Not surprised. Tech companies (Facebook and Google in this case, and probably others) have been known to retain Pinkerton agents to monitor employees. Yes, those Pinkertons. “Among other services, Pinkerton offers to send investigators to coffee shops or restaurants near a company’s campus to eavesdrop on employees’ conversations.” https://newrepublic.com/article/147619/pinkertons-still-never-sleep https://newrepublic.com/article/147619/pinkertons-still-neve...
  • dylan604 6y ago
    This is awesome in a very very sad way. Several years ago, I started working for a company that was in the build up to a Yea/Nay vote for joining the union. During that time, 2 "goons" showed up at my apartment to discuss the benefits of joining the union and why not joining would be bad. However, these very "intelligent" goons showed up during the day, you know, working hours where I had a very low chance of being home. I don't know if they were just that dumb, or if they were trying to influence what they thought were family members. Instead, it was my flatmate from England. She told me just laughed at the thought of me joining a union, and not so politely told them to bugger off and closed the door on them. Ultimately, the vote failed miserably. All of that to say, that I'm not surprised that anti-union shenanigans are at the same level as the pro-union shenanigans.
    • smnrchrds 6y ago
      What makes you call them goons? Politicians, activists, all sorts of people go door knocking around the time of elections and referendums. What made this interaction so different that you call them goons sent there to intimidate you, not activists trying to attract your vote?
      • MrStonedOne 6y ago
        corpitized unions (anything union organisation bigger then 1 location of 1 employer) are goons.
        • 6y ago
• backtoyoujim 6y ago
  Never ask the drivers about unionizing. I'm not saying that they will report it to their boss who will mess with your orders and deliveries. But I am also not not saying that.
  • dylan604 6y ago
    A nod is as good as a wink to a blind man. Got something that helps you lean towards that conclusion?
• ancorevard 6y ago
  I've not seen good come out of unions in decades. Example of unions that are net negative for society: police unions, teacher unions.
  • Daishiman 6y ago
    Disregarding unions all over the EU...
  • mattacular 6y ago
    There hasn't been significant union power in the US in decades.
  • horsemessiah 6y ago
    Teachers unions are definitely not a net negative...
    • pb7 6y ago
      Teachers unions exist at the detriment of children's education.
  • dylan604 6y ago
    I have lots of friends in the "movie making" business. Lots of crew members like camera department, set construction, etc. Before Obama care, the only way these folks could afford health insurance was to join the union. Even my actor friends have used the medical coverage as their sole reason. They are not looking to be SAG members for SAG work (we're in Texas so not necessary), but use it for the other benefits. It's the only time it has made sense to me, within my lifetime. Otherwise, I think unions have way more power than what they need at this time. Now, they have to do things to justify their existence. Would things go back to the way they were before unions if they didn't exist?
    • 52-6F-62 6y ago
      > Otherwise, I think unions have way more power than what they need at this time. Now, they have to do things to justify their existence. Unions have long offered things like group health insurance, and other benefits. I'm not sure what you mean since those are not new offerings. Aside: Union membership has been on the decline for decades, not increasing in power.
• refresher 6y ago
  The relevant excerpts from the job listings: >Analysts must be capable of engaging and informing L7+ ER Principals (attorney stakeholders) on sensitive topics that are highly confidential, including labor organizing threats against the company, establish and track funding and activities connected to corporate campaigns (internal and external) against Amazon, and provide sophisticated analysis on these topics >Analysts must be capable of creating and deploying sophisticated search strings tailored to various business interests and used to monitor for future risk; Engaging business leaders (L6+) directly is core to this support, and may cover topics including organized labor, activist groups, hostile political leaders. >Analysts are expected to close knowledge gaps by initiating and maintaining engagement with topical subject matter experts on topics of importance to Amazon, including hate groups, policy initiatives, geopolitical issues, terrorism, law enforcement, and organized labor
  • BitwiseFool 6y ago
    Previous employment with the Pinkerton Detective Agency is preferred.
  • sangnoir 6y ago
    > ...hostile political leaders. Nice! It's always good to see corporates fight against elected politicians that are hostile to projects like HQ 2. This is not dystopian at all.
    • kmlx 6y ago
      dystopian? democracy is a flawed system so politicians should expect pushbacks.
      • sangnoir 6y ago
        Yes - Dystopian. You're likely familiar with the dystopian trope where unchecked corporate entities supersede nation-states. I got reminded of that here. In my ideal democracy, I do expect pushback, but I'd like for it to come from actual voters. If you believe that not only are "corporations are people (my friend)", but should be able to go mano a mano with individual politicians (not lobbying), here's a quick thought experiment: how would you feel if that sentence were from a document by TikTok Inc?
• efficax 6y ago
  Pinkertons!!
• dakial1 6y ago
  US law does not protect employees' right to unionize? I'm from Brazil where we have some strict (too strict IMHO) labor laws and this type of hunt (and punishment) for union makers is wildly illegal here.
  • dcre 6y ago
    Technically this is probably illegal in the US as well, but enforcement is very weak. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/employee-rights https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-right...
• bg24 6y ago
  Off-topic - US should hire lots of intelligence analysts and AI experts to track social network driven threats to our nation.
• downvoteme1 6y ago
  They already have a company stores. Just hire your own police force and we can be back to colonial America .
• wnevets 6y ago
  Whenever unions are mentioned on HN there always seems to be a coordinated effort to attack them in the comments, very interesting.
  • alecb 6y ago
    A total coincidence that 15 FWD: FWD: UNIon RUInEd My Life stories immediately dominate the conversation whenever a story like this hits the front page.
    • wnevets 6y ago
      Yes I too used to belong to a scary union. I was forced pay dues and there was this bad employee that didn't get fired! Now at my non-union job we only have the best employees and managers because we are allowed to fire the bad ones.
  • csb6 6y ago
    Yeah, it’s discouraging. But Hacker News is a place for capitalists (self-identified) or wannabe capitalists to hold discussions, and the site is run by a venture capital firm, so makes sense. Still discouraging to see the lack of education HNers have on unions. Maybe ignorance is a better word.
    • umvi 6y ago
      > Still discouraging to see the lack of education HNers have on unions. Maybe ignorance is a better word. In theory unions are great. In practice America's implementation of unions end up as a crappy caricature of the theoretical one and are nothing like their European counterparts.
      • csb6 6y ago
        Maybe recently, with many American unions struggling just to survive, but historically (in the late 1800s to middle 1900s) American unions have been incredibly effective and pioneering.
• tehjoker 6y ago
  Man, it sure would suck if the lowest ranked and most precarious Amazon employees got a bigger piece of Bezo's pie. What an awful world that would be. /s
• NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
  While being in Basic Income meetings frequent subject was "what will happen to people rights when AI takes over" sadly this is example of the answer of what is the most probable outcome...
• imglorp 6y ago
  > The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 is a foundational statute of United States labor law which guarantees basic rights of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining for better terms and conditions at work, and take collective action including strike if necessary. It's truly late stage capitalism if companies can impede labor organizing so brazenly in public like this and have only encouragement at the federal level to go further. HN a few days ago (the 787 structural issue) was also talking about Boeing closing plants and sacrificing safety to avoid union labor.
  • imcoconut 6y ago
    do have the link(s) for that Boeing thread?
    • imglorp 6y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24305067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24305067 The whole thread is interesting.
• throwawaymanbot 6y ago
  Typical. Im done with Amazon. Not going to use their AWS products either anymore. His contempt for the populace just adds to the issues facing Americans today.
• kelnos 6y ago
  It's mind-boggling to me that we allow this sort of thing, and that brazenly putting on a job description that you want to hire someone to help thwart legally-protected labor organizing isn't something a company can get fined -- or worse -- over.
• TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
  It perhaps shouldn't be surprising that a website for wannabe capitalists views workers having greater negotiating power extremely suspiciously, yet is enthusiastic towards employers having near-absolute power over their employees.
• GoodJokes 6y ago
  At some point you have to question people that choose to work at Amazon who have other options. At the very least.
  • yibg 6y ago
    I worked at Amazon and I had other options. What about me do you have to question?
    • em-bee 6y ago
      were you aware of amazons practices before you started to work there? if yes, how did that factor into your decision to take the job?
      • yibg 6y ago
        Do you mean specifically around their anti union stance? It wasn’t widely in the news back then. But I also don’t want to be part of an union and most of the unions I’m aware of in North America are not shining examples. So I’d be ok with working there today given what I know.
        • em-bee 6y ago
          i wasn't looking specifically at that, but anything they are doing to take advantage of employees, third-party sellers or customers, etc. that said, i really just wanted to elaborate on the question itself, without expecting a detailed response because i don't think it's fair to single out individual employees for working at a company with issues. even if you can change jobs easily, other companies are not necessarily better, and they may have other problems. with that in mind i appreciate your response even more.
• baron816 6y ago
  I don’t know why this is even controversial. American style unions are bad for business, plain and simple. And Amazon is legally required to put the interests of its investors first. Amazon is going to be doing whatever it can to discourage unionization, that’s just what’s going to happen, and I find it hard to blame them.
  • grecy 6y ago
    > American style unions are bad for business, plain and simple They're not bad for business, they reduce profits, and they limit the ability of a company to exploit it's workers.
    • ativzzz 6y ago
      > they reduce profits, and they limit the ability of a company to exploit it's workers. Right, so bad for business. Great for most workers though.
      • grecy 6y ago
        I would define "bad for business" as something that reduces the core business - less sales. Reducing profits is a different thing. Business can still be booming while profits are not through the roof.
  • dcre 6y ago
    Maybe it's controversial because it's blatantly illegal under the National Labor Relations Act. https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/1300856270572916736 https://twitter.com/MattBruenig/status/1300856270572916736
    • refurb 6y ago
      Gathering information on union organizing is illegal? I don’t think so. Spying, yes, but I don’t see that in the description. And your Twitter post is gone.
• techdevangelist 6y ago
  Or maybe they found their candidates based on the free publicity around the posting..
• TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
  They must have found the perfect candidate!
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• interrupt_ 6y ago
  It seems perfectly fine and honest from them. Did anyone expect any different? I'm not saying it's bad, just that's the reality of the job.
  • save_ferris 6y ago
    It seems perfectly fine and honest to post a job listing and then take it down hours later due to backlash, claim it was a mistake, and refuse to answer follow-up questions on it? What part of that sounds honest to you?
    • fsckboy 6y ago
      they honestly posted a job, they honestly got backlash, they honestly decided it was a mistake, they honestly refused to answer follow-up questions. What part of that is not honest? Honestly, I think you simply don't like that they don't agree with you 100% and act as you would have them act, and you should honestly admit that, and honesty would require that you stop accusing them of being other than honest on the basis of what you outlined.
      • apendleton 6y ago
        Yeah, (dis)honesty isn't what was noteworthy about this. It's just optically very strange. Like, the fact that they employ people to do this is totally unsurprising to me, but the fact that they're willing to say so in public job posting seems really tone-deaf. Like, what hiring manager thought this was a good idea, and how oblivious must they be of how Amazon is publicly perceived?
    • HenryBemis 6y ago
      This is their business. This is how they want to run it. We can either boycott them or not. I have worked most of my life in mega big corporations, and I cannot say "oh I didn't know that bankA did this and bankB did that". I am either stupid, complicit or indifferent. Amazon will look after Amazon's interests (aka the shareholders). The little people have rights defined by laws. As long as they are not breached, Amazon (and every Amazon out there) will match on. To avoid any misunderstanding, I do not condone the majority of Amazon's practices and thus I don't buy from them (or at least they are low in my list of preferred options). But since we got capitalism, and since the US is the HQ of capitalism.. then why is anyone surprised? Facebook will spy. Amazon will squeeze every cent they can, and so on..
• scohesc 6y ago
  "Made in error!" The excuse heard round the world.
  • not2b 6y ago
    The error was that they stated so bluntly in a public job listing that they wanted a union buster with an intelligence background. They still are looking for someone like that, of course (or many someones), the error was that the job posting wasn't written in a properly deniable way.
    • acephal 6y ago
      Maybe they can ask Sammy Gravano for recommendations
• AsyncAwait 6y ago
  I very much doubt they no longer intend to hire somebody for such activities, this was just way too much in the open.
  • AndyMcConachie 6y ago
    https://pinkerton.com/ https://pinkerton.com/
    • shadowgovt 6y ago
      They still operate. Among the things they do: secret shoppers at sports stadiums to confirm that the vendors selling alcohol are carding.
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      This page is quite interesting in its omissions: https://pinkerton.com/our-story https://pinkerton.com/our-story
  • eli_gottlieb 6y ago
    They'll go through an adequately discreet private headhunter. Those responsible for this leaking to the media, have been sacked.
• coldpie 6y ago
  It's too late this year (I bought some cat food during the winter), but next year I'm shooting for zero orders from Amazon.
  • architectonic 6y ago
    This is what counts most!
• andrepd 6y ago
  Disgraceful. But will anything be done, judicially, legally? Not a chance. Tells you all you need to know.
  • shadowgovt 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure it isn't illegal to seek out an employee with strike-busting knowledge.
    • fault_lines 6y ago
      It is, however, illegal to engage in, or create the impression of engaging in, surveillance of union activities.
      • shadowgovt 6y ago
        .
        • fault_lines 6y ago
          I'm sure they could finagle a job description to say this and maybe even get away with it, but unfortunately the job description they did use was unambiguously "spying on labor organizing", which makes it an open and shut case.
    • MiroF 6y ago
      Sure, but you're already treading in murky legal waters. Just this posting could be viewed as Amazon trying to create the impression that it is actively surveilling labor organizing activities, which it's illegal to suggest, even if you're not actually engaging in that practice.
      • YetAnotherNick 6y ago
        What is illegal in surveilling employees during work hour on workplace or on work device? It's not like amazon is bugging the house of workers. In all the companies I worked, I am pretty sure I signed contract allowing that. It's a different story that I have technical ability to turn off all the remote disable/access software they install on my work device.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• whoisjuan 6y ago
  This is just proof that not everyone is following the same narrative that you’re personally following or understands reality the same way you do. It’s beyond me how that job post would make sense to anyone besides someone who is disconnected from the usual contending rhetorics Amazon is involved in. Nobody raised a flag on how that would look like for them? You gotta be pretty oblivious to read that and say “yeah that looks good to me”. I’m not even discrediting the value or purpose of that particular position since I have zero context besides the ad but I don’t understand how can you sprinkle those terms and reference those specific groups without reflecting deeply how it could be perceived.
  • ryanmarsh 6y ago
    Are you commenting on the optics or the ethics? In a broader context, I don’t understand how others see this as a victory. As if taking the job post down means it’s not still part of their strategy.
    • whoisjuan 6y ago
      Mainly on the optics. I know that’s shallow but I’m commenting on how it looks because perhaps that’s a symptom of something deeper. Maybe people involved on these projects are so oblivious that it never occurred to them that they may be contributing to something that could be borderline unethical. What’s kind of ridiculous about this is that you can tell these job requirements were written by a lawyer or similar. People that are trained and presumed to have a somewhat acute skill to evaluate the ethical complexities of a situation.
  • tallgiraffe 6y ago
    "This just proof that not everyone is following the same narrative that you’re personally following." Your post is a perfect recursive function.
    • whoisjuan 6y ago
      hahaha
• rightbyte 6y ago
  How is workers' rights for white collar at Amazon? I guess the company culture is ever prevailing, or is it a apartheid system?
• Animats 6y ago
  They can just outsource the work to a union-busting company.
  • e12e 6y ago
    Isn't vertical integration and in-sourcing Amazon DNA?
• badrabbit 6y ago
  Why is this a surprise? If you work in infosec at any multinational you would know activists (hacktivism) and hostile nations/leaders are a serious threat you track. Has no one heard of Dataminr? What do people think it's used for. The "labor" part is a bit unusual but given their business it kinda makes sense. This reminds me of how back in 2016 right before November US elections,I read threat intel reports and conference style presentations from threat intel vendors talking in detail about Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and the Steele dossier, this was before buzzfeed decided to publish it (all other media refused at the time). This is all public stuff now but big corps are very interested in learnig about the latest strategic intel so they can adopt. And that's perfectly fine so long as no laws are broken. This is similar to how big corps get a scoop on emargoed CVEs so they can patch before it's made public. A lot of times this is what intelligence community people do when they want to settle down and make money. I'll bet good money whoever they hire has background at FBI,NSA or DIA.
  • coldpie 6y ago
    Who said it was a surprise?
    • badrabbit 6y ago
      We're seeing it here because people made a big deal out of it on social media.
• setgree 6y ago
  Beyond the creepiness of the tasks required, what sticks out to me is the persistent use of Amazon-specific jargon: > Analysts must be capable of engaging and informing L7+ ER Principals (attorney stakeholders) Does anyone who doesn’t work at Amazon know what “L7 + ER Principals” means? Perhaps these are universally understood terms in some fields, but my guess is that the “error” was posting this publicly, and it was meant to be an Amazon-internal job posting. Sometimes, for legal reasons, these sorts of jobs are required to be posted publicly, but not in a way that makes the underlying content clear to anyone [0]. So another possibility is that the mistake was posting the job with too many specifics. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21851281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21851281
  • sp332 6y ago
    A quick search shows that L7 also exists at Facebook and Google at least. It's a senior (staff) software engineer. https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engineer/L7/ https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi... Not sure about the ER part though.
    • nix23 6y ago
      Better then have a HR...because a Human is NOT a resource, funny that everyone thinks this is normal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource
    • nixass 6y ago
      Levels don't scale the same among FAANGs
      • dmoy 6y ago
        In particular L7 at Amazon is roughly equivalent to L6 at Google, E6 at Facebook, 66-67-ish at Microsoft, and 5-ish at apple.
  • saagarjha 6y ago
    I see this a lot in job postings; they often use internal language that you need to somehow learn to translate. This is particularly true with positions, which makes no sense because you then need to figure out what exactly “L7” is relative to the scale you have in your head.
• davisr 6y ago
  It's so nice to know they group "organized labor" in with "terrorism" and "geopolitical issues." I will never purchase anything from an Amazon-related company.
  • nix23 6y ago
    >"organized labor" in with "terrorism" and "geopolitical issues." For sure, all three are bad for the online shopping business...long live the unlimited capitalism!! BTW: When did you heard "Freedom Fighter" the last time in the "Free Press"?
• bassman9000 6y ago
  Yet another step towards NeoFeudalism, with The Corporations as the new Lords.
• e12e 6y ago
  Should probably be merged with: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24345259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24345259 Even if not quite a dupe.
• hpen 6y ago
  Do unions really provide a better work experience for the worker? Genuine question.
  • heavyset_go 6y ago
    According to the BLS, white collar union members in the US have higher salaries, better benefits, more paid time off, and better retirement benefits. They also report having higher life satisfaction[1]. The same trend exists for blue collar union members, too. [1] https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.baylor.edu/dist/2/1297/files/2010/09/Union_Membership_and_Life_Satisfaction_10.27.14-nlder4.pdf https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.baylor.edu/dist/2/1297/f...
• newbie789 6y ago
  It's fascinating how emotional of a topic this is on HN. A lot of people seem to be taking a staunch binary, black-and-white, us-vs-them approach to this issue. I've known friends that hate their unions (usually retail), and those that love their unions (electricians, UPS drivers etc.) These are of course just a small group of anecdotes and not representative of a comprehensive dataset so I don't really have a strong opinion one way or another if the question is "are unions horrifically evil or a godsend that's universally necessary." The framing of this type of debate doesn't seem to foster good faith discussion. My only personal experience with being in a union was a call center job I had when I was 18. I don't recall dues being much, and everybody got full health coverage (including dental and vision) at 25 hrs/wk, and that ended up being a big draw for a lot of people in the area. So that was pretty cool. I've also worked at a lot of places that weren't union where the employees were paid well, received benefits and treated fairly. That was also pretty cool. I guess to me if I were to have an opinion it'd be something along the lines of "If people want to unionize, they have a legal right to do so, and I don't have any particular issue with that. If it works out with a positive outcome, great! If it doesn't, that sucks!" I'm definitely not in favor of people being bullied or misled to go either way on this issue. It literally just seems like something people should talk about in good faith and make their decision accordingly. It's just a choice.
  • ashtonkem 6y ago
    There are two separate issues here. They’re only tangentially related. 1) Unions, good or bad? 2) Is it appropriate for a company like Amazon to spy on their work force to stop them from unionizing, as compared to persuading their work force that unionizing would be bad?
    • newbie789 6y ago
      The majority of my post was addressing the way that this is being discussed on here. There have been a lot of nasty comments on this issue ranging from accusing people of being Pinkertons and bots, to posts about declining meritocracy etc. It seems as though this thread has had a whole lot of posts conflating the two issues you mentioned and it just muddies the waters imho. As I mentioned, I think it should be a good-faith discussion across the board and I'm not a fan of bullying or misleading people. I could be misunderstanding this but the discussion about your second point has been in some cases in this thread been supplanted by people arguing about who is on the "right side" rather than the more immediate discussion of "is this an acceptable practice?" Like I said earlier, it's really fascinating how emotional this gets.
• centimeter 6y ago
  An interesting thing from Amazon’s labor organizing risk rubric: increased diversity drastically decreases the risk of employees organizing. In case you were curious why all the big companies are so strongly pro-diversity, that’s a pretty compelling reason for them.
• YetAnotherNick 6y ago
  I am surprised from the reactions here. What is the best way to deal with worker union blackmails according to you? I know people like to portray worker and amazon as good guy and bad guy, but I think most of us has seen some demands that are pretty outrageous from them. I think it is best if both sides have contact person with whom they can negotiate. Don't get me wrong, I think worker unions are essential for pushing the demands of underprivileged and should exist, but nobody should agree every demand from them.
  • whoisjuan 6y ago
    I think the problem is mainly the methods. Delta, for example, actively runs campaigns to deter their employees for joining the union. I don't know how is that perceived in general but I assume that people in general consider that more acceptable than the idea of running internal counterintelligence to prevent the formation of unions. The reality is that Amazon is under so much scrutiny that pretty much any program on this area would be criticized.
  • GavinMcG 6y ago
    Unions don't end up with outright control over business. Generally speaking, companies and unions do continue to negotiate throughout the term of a contract, which negotiations are formalized in Memoranda of Understanding. And during contract negotiations, if negotiations over a particular issue stall, the law empowers companies to make a "last and final" offer, which is then included in the contract presented to the workforce. (This is U.S.-specific.) The idea that a company must "agree to every demand" from a union seems to me a strawman. Bargaining ideally maximizes net value, and true collapses in bargaining are rare. "Outrageous" demands that are met, therefore, represent a company's unwillingness to reallocate the value of those demands towards other contract elements (that is, to say "we can't do that, but we'll offer this instead"). If they were truly too costly, the company would have either a) refused the terms, or b) failed to bear the cost and gone under.
    • YetAnotherNick 6y ago
      Yes, that's why amazon is hiring people who are expert in negotiations.
• puranjay 6y ago
  At what point would it be unethical to continue using Amazon?
• civilized 6y ago
  Bemused at the knee-jerk downvotes against anyone who has an opinion on unions in EITHER direction. As in so many internet spaces, partisan zealots are degrading our ability to converse. I hope the mods figure out how to keep them from turning HN into yet another dunghole.
• skeptic76 6y ago
  As far as my understanding goes, companies of any size have the right to exercise a sort of capital strike at their discretion. The perfectly legal shuttering of The Gothamist after their newsroom unionized a while back is a good example of that (the story is a fascinating read!) (0) I would honestly love to hear from those that aren't favorable towards unions about why it's acceptable for business management and ownership to punitively destroy jobs and value over ideological issues, but it's unacceptable for the employees to have that option as part of collective bargaining? (0) https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/03/561830256/billionaire-owner-shuts-down-dnainfo-gothamist-sites-a-week-after-workers-unioni https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/03/561830256...
• vonwoodson 6y ago
  Never forget The Ludlow Massacre: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
• smitty1e 6y ago
  What Amazon needs is competition.
  • switch11 6y ago
    agreed
• m0llusk 6y ago
  This is actually a really interesting recursive algorithm: That is, the job listing for analysts to track labor organizing threats turned out to be a labor organizing threat.
• bitemealienboi 6y ago
  This is not unexpected. Merely the product of capitalism. We build an economic system that rewards selfishness and drive for profit at all costs. Successful companies generate profit. More profit is generated by charging the highest cost for the lowest quality product and paying the worker as little as possible. Unions threaten that profitability. Its simple math. Its cheaper to hire analysts to track and snuff out labour movements than it would be to capitulate to the demands of any labour movements that formed, such as wage increases or benefits. Why are we shocked and appalled when the system we created does what it does best?
• Qwertious 6y ago
  HN title: Amazon deletes job listings for analysts to track ‘labor organizing threats’ My thoughts after reading the title: "Oh good, I always thought Amazon was scummy and lacked integrity, but credit where credit is due, they did good here. . The actual article's title and body: Amazon deletes their own job listings for union-busters, as a PR response due to public outcry. My thoughts: #$%@!