23 ms·

Amazon Workers to Stage Coordinated Black Friday Protests in 15 Countries

309 points by nimbius 6y ago

supernova87a 6y ago
As great as seeing workers get better wages and working conditions would be, I observe that Amazon and other companies (let's just call them "employers") simply have the upper hand in having a surplus of global labor wanting to work for the wages and conditions offered. (see the other story about "what happened in 1971" and the general stagnation of wages for the last few decades) It's not like Amazon or others are forcing workers to take these jobs. This is voluntary, inevitable, equilibrium supply and demand of labor -- where willing labor is in great surplus lately compared to what was a previously stable pool of middle class jobs seeking employable bodies, leading to a very weak bargaining position. The floodgates of global labor competition were opened with a lot of underdeveloped countries' peoples willing to take up jobs at low (but high for them) pay, and that has rippled through every developed country's labor economy. Until there is a relative shortage of willing workers, the situation will not change hugely I fear. (Aside from pockets of shortage due to education, credentials, monopolies of labor, other barriers to entry, etc)
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 6y ago
  It's a shame these large companies are are driven to extract as much value from their workers as possible.
  - EliRivers 6y ago
    Ah, the curse of the Shareholder Value obsession. A doctrine from the previous century that's so pernicious people assume it's law.
- room271 6y ago
  Unionisation and collective bargaining does achieve progress, as does regulation. Minimum wages are a great example of the latter. I'm not quite sure what is driving your passivity here.
  - supernova87a 6y ago
    Minimum wages are the very textbook definition of protecting some workers at the expense of other workers, are they not? They don't solve the underlying problem. And I don't know where you come up with the notion of passive, I'm just stating an observation.
    - namdnay 6y ago
      > Minimum wages are the very textbook definition of protecting some workers at the expense of other workers, are they not I guess so, if you assume that the total salary envelope is fixed. In which case, minimum wages protect lower-paid workers at the expense of higher-paid workers. Which is fine in of itself. But on top of that I think we have to assume that the salary envelope has some elasticity. Maybe minimum wage increases the total salary cost, and decreases returns on capital - so helping lower-paid workers at the expense of investors. Again, why not
      - supernova87a 6y ago
        > In which case, minimum wages protect lower-paid workers at the expense of higher-paid workers. Which is fine in of itself. Um, no, actually the complete opposite. Minimum wage protects the workers who are able to get the job at the minimum wage, at the expense of those even lower-paid -- the ones who would've been employed if the wage had been less (and now are not employed).
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        EliRivers 6y ago
        That's certainly not considered absolute fact. There is a lot of data showing increases in minimum wage without associated increase in unemployment.
        supernova87a 6y ago
- CPLX 6y ago
  > inevitable One of the greatest PR successes of the modern era has been the effort to convince the masses that an unacceptable relationship between labor and the owners of capital is inevitable. It is not. As should be no surprise to anyone with a knowledge of history the inherent tension between these two groups has formed the basis for nearly all political competition. When confronted with an example of that conflict persisting, such as today’s labor action described in the article, it’s not particularly good analysis to assume away the basic premise of what’s happening in step one.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    What happens when an owner of capital manufacturers a product in a country where people are willing to earn 5% of an American salary, and then sells it in America for 50% of the cost that an owner of capital who chose to manufacture in America? The root cause is consumers will purchase from the sellers that offers the lowest price, and so the sellers that drives down labor costs to offer the lowest price will survive.
    - matthewmacleod 6y ago
      America says, among other things, "you may not import products form countries without suitable labour standards" and works to solve that problem.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        That isn’t part of the relationship between an owner of capital and labor. And good luck getting votes by pushing a policy that will cause prices to rise causing people to be able to purchase less (even if it is in most voters’ long term interests). Voters will focus on the fact that they need to reduce consumption in the immediate future.
    - CPLX 6y ago
      The same thing that happens with any action that people take in their own narrow self interest that society deems detrimental. The society, in the form of its government, regulates it. People will also show up and harvest your crops and sell your daughters into slavery without government intervention. The fact that a lot of people want to do something and will do so without the government stopping them doesn’t prove the inevitability of that thing happening.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  It's voluntary on some level sure, but it's also true that in any single 'negotiation', Amazon has an enormous advantage by virtue of size. Corporations bargain collectively automatically, because they're already collectives. This is especially true in the case of enormous corporations with many thousands of employees. When someone is getting hired by Amazon, it's literally a million versus one. That's a lot of leverage to bring to a negotiation, so it makes sense that a union would be necessary to even the odds for unskilled labor.
- sp332 6y ago
  "Employers" as a group have the upper hand currently, but only because they were willing to kill to get it. Union busting up to and including a bunch of murders got us where we are now. In a democratic system with one vote per person, workers would have much more power than employers.
jhowell 6y ago
For any future world's wealthiest, is having a non contentious relationship with employees a reasonable endeavor? The fact that this is about money while the person in charge has the most money of anyone living doesn't seem to be a desirable or targeted position given their fine tuned logistical approach to the world.
- ponker 6y ago
  Bill Gates had a non contentious relationship with employees. The key is to only create white collar jobs.
  - toyg 6y ago
    Not quite. Larry Ellison created white-collar jobs, but still the Oracle workforce unionized and mobilized in several EU countries. White-collars are traditionally less likely to fight only because they tend to enjoy better mobility and have better incentives to stay silent (even if they don't maximize their earning potential, their social standing typically compensates). If you mistreat them enough, they will react like anyone else.
    - posix_me_less 6y ago
      Is there any reporting on how Oracle mistreated its employees? Can the unionization be taken as proof that they did get too far?
      - toyg 6y ago
        If i remember correctly, it was a reaction to rounds of layoffs-by-spreadsheet.
    - ponker 6y ago
      Of course you can create white collar jobs and have your employees hate you. My claim was only that it's impossible to have your employees NOT hate you if you are the richest man in the world and they're doing blue collar labor for you. If you create only jobs where people are earning six figures in front of a desk and living comfortable lives, they might envy but don't begrudge you $100 billion. But if you're asking someone to do tough physical labor for $15 or $20 an hour while you make a billion dollars a day or whatever, no way they won't try to knock you off that pedestal.
TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> While everyone has been cursed by COVID, Amazon has done well but not because of its own merits. It’s done well because of the unprecedented state interventions to protect local health Can someone explain how amazon did well because of state intervention in local health? I don’t see the connection.
- strig 6y ago
  Local retail is closed/reduced so people need to shop online.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  Lockdowns, for example. Intervention--> more online shopping.
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    Got it. Thanks. The intervention is the forced closure of local businesses.
- 8note 6y ago
  Even without the state intervention, a lot of people feel safer with ordering things than shopping for them during covid
forgotmypw17 6y ago
Everything you buy comes with a hidden cost which outweighs the monetary cost by several orders of magnitude. Is it made of and/or packaged in plastic? Each dollar you spent is a vote for more oil extraction. Does it include paper and cardboard? You just voted for deforestation. Are you buying non-organic food? You just submitted X votes for more pesticide use. Are you buying mass-produced "organic" food? You just voted for more land use and "alternative" pesticides. It's not an easy thought to face, and many turn away from it and criticize the messenger. But you must face it if you want to call yourself a conscious, aware being. We can't stop buying things altogether in today's world, but thinking and considering each purchase is achievable.
- irthomasthomas 6y ago
  Yep, those hidden costs are a PITA, like... Are you buying organic vegetables? You just voted for 80% more land use, 50% more emissions, more water, labour etc. And endogenous pesticides in your food which can't be washed off.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Organic producers are not pesticide free, and some of the pesticides they apply are more harmful than modern pesticides used by non organic producers. Most paper and cardboard is produced from managed forests, where the harvested trees make room for more trees, the forest isn't destroyed.
- blablabla123 6y ago
  > Everything you buy comes with a hidden cost which outweighs the monetary cost by several orders of magnitude. Unless you buy your stuff in a specialized store e.g. a zero packaging store. Even when you buy stuff in a normal store, if it says 100% recycling paper and has a high price tag, you can assume it doesn't involve deforestation and probably not everybody in the supply chain has been screwed over. I won't argue that everyone has to buy all things in specialized organic stores because the effort would be unreasonable. But everyone with a high salary should have a bias towards things with the higher price tags from relatable brands/producers.
- hobbes78 6y ago
douglaswlance 6y ago
They're just forcing Amazon to invest more in automation. It's not going to go their way, not in the long term.
- _Understated_ 6y ago
  The automation is inevitable. Amazon aren't keeping that a secret. At most, they are singling out their Fulfillment Center to be the first trials but the automation is coming regardless of the strikes. Imagine being able to run a warehouse in total darkness, with no heating or ventilation. The cost savings from things like having toilets and a canteen could be worth a bit too. You could also expand into the car park and use up most of that since you already own the land. It's too good an opportunity to pass up I reckon (from an Amazon perspective anyway!)
  - 8note 6y ago
    I don't think you'll be able to escape ventilation and plumbing. There will still be people going to those fulfillment centers for maintenance and the like. The parking lot size is likely determined by mandatory minimums too, so there's not as much gain there either
- kadoban 6y ago
  Nothing goes anyone's way in the long term. In the meantime though, these people have hard jobs that in many cases don't pay enough to actually live.
- tyingq 6y ago
  You could have said the same for the UAW, but I suspect the lifetime earnings and working conditions for those auto workers were much better than they would have been without the union.
- dagw 6y ago
  They're fucked long term no matter what they do. That doesn't mean they have accept being fucked short term as well
- 6y ago
x87678r 6y ago
> "Meanwhile, Amazon warehouse workers risked their lives as essential workers, and only briefly received an increase in pay." This concerns me but I still haven't seen any evidence that Amazon warehouse workers are treated differently to any other unskilled manual labor. Is Amazon different because its super successful right now? Or because it uses tech to make people work harder.
- onion2k 6y ago
  It's the business that's owned by the world's richest person. It's going to get a lot of focus.
- Grimm1 6y ago
  That's my thinking, Amazon just seems to be a popular target. Even though they pay warehouse workers double the federal minimum wage at $15 and provide benefits. From what I've read negative instances are isolated to specific managers which isn't really different from any other job and doesn't make for a systematic abuse of employees. If I was an unskilled worker Amazon seems like a pretty good bet.
  - mola 6y ago
    So basically you have no idea about what the situation is (nor do I) but you choose to believe that Amazon is in the right. That's called bias.
    - Grimm1 6y ago
      Empirically at my own account? How could I, without working for them, but I do read the news and follow these events. That's not bias that's a somewhat informed opinion and a conscious decision. I suppose I could go talk to people as a further step, but frankly I don't care that much and that's what journalism is supposed to be for. That's not to say I don't have bias, just that it's not some magical word you can say to make someone's statement irrelevant or that in this context you were even correct.
      - 6y ago
dalbasal 6y ago
It seems that union politics is swinging back. If we choose 1980 as a nominal endpoint for the union pendulum, it feels like 2020-ish may be the other one. Honestly, I don't know if that's a good or bad thing... 40 years is a long time, considering the "pendulum" took a long time getting to 1980. I'm not sure what from past experience transposes to the present and how. The world is very different. What does an amazon union even look like? How do unions operate legally/practically in global firms? What "package" would they want to negotiate for. One union? Many unions? Structure. Strategy. Tactics. Etc. I feel like most discussions fall into generic "for" and "against" union points. Realistically, unionisations is a wide space. Sports league unions. Newspaper Guilds. Germany's DGB. America's Teamsters. Teachers unions... all very different, and different in different eras. What, besides achieving a union and negotiating power, would an amazon union want to be?
- coldpie 6y ago
  Agree on the pendulum analogy. Unions are effectively dead right now in 2020. A balance is needed, so you're seeing the shift back to protecting workers. But 40 years of anti-workers-rights propaganda is a tough line to break through > What, besides achieving a union and negotiating power, would an amazon union want to be? Well, part of the issue is Amazon's union-busting efforts prevent that conversation from even happening[1]. But they do have specific demands[2]: """Employees backing the union effort said in interviews Tuesday that the issues at the warehouse include safety concerns, inadequate pay, and 12-hour shifts with insufficient breaks and unreasonable hourly quotas, after which they lose more of their day waiting unpaid in long lines for security checks.""" [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dm8bx/leaked-amazon-memo-details-plan-to-smear-fired-warehouse-organizer-hes-not-smart-or-articulate https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dm8bx/leaked-amazon-memo-de... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-12/employees-at-amazon-s-new-nyc-warehouse-launch-unionization-push https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-12/employees...
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    re: Amazon's union-busting efforts. This is one of the reasons I feel the pendulum has maxed. That said, this takes us straight to the familiar for/against discussion, just with a sharper edge. The union busting debate needs to be had too, but it doesn't tell us much about the type of union they want to build and what that means. The linked article (thanks) is another case in point, I think. It talks about union busting. Ways in which (like your quote) working conditions aren't good. ... OK. I don't mean to disparage... IMO, the elephant in the room isn't being addressed. What would a "union win" in amazon (or other young megacorp) mean? More pay, how much more, how would that work? Let's compare to another field: sports. The UFC is currently experiencing player union agitations. What a "union win" looks like is fairly defined. Other sports leagues are unionized. The realistic range of outcomes is understood. Forget the conflict side for a moment, what's the goal?
NoblePublius 6y ago
Amazon protest reporting never seems to mention that 99.99% of employees don’t participate. NYC Fake News loves to report it when there are five people with signs in front of Amazon warehouse with 5000 workers inside.
xyst 6y ago
Explains why Amazon recruiters are constantly pinging me to join one of the “supply chain” teams. They likely will pay very well but I suspect I won’t be happy in the long run.
- abledon 6y ago
  did you get the expanding store-blob coding problem? Those are fun atleast!
Out_of_Characte 6y ago
So, which 15 countries? Bangladesh mexico US and """Europe""" isn't precise. Which amazon workers are actually disstatisfied with amazon's operations under local laws? Why bother protest if vice gives anonymity for amazon?
- sp332 6y ago
  It's specific unions, not broken down exactly by country. https://makeamazonpay.com/ https://makeamazonpay.com/
CryptoPunk 6y ago
I am no fan of the domination of numerous markets by megacorps, but two wrongs don't make a right, and the entire moral principle behind this movement is wrong, and I hope the companies being targeted by these movements find ways of defending themselves from their unjust demands. This is why I think companies should completely disassociate from service providers, via gig-economy type arrangements that limit their engagement with any one employee. As soon as they make someone an employee, there is a major risk that that person will adopt a whole bunch of baggage from a couple of centuries of labor movement lore, that convinces them that they are an integral part of that company and entitled to more than just what the mutually agreed employment contract cedes to them.
ludditetech 6y ago
Wealth disparity and its huge gulf answers all the arguments, corporations will take till they are chastened, bit like a tick?
djeiasbsbo 6y ago
I don't get the Amazon hype at all. Never ordered anything from them. The last time I checked, their website looked very counter intuitive and also down right ugly. Many products are seemingly garbage or counterfeit, the review system is bad and the workers and sellers are not treated well or properly respected... and I could go on. I don't want to lecture anyone about ethics, but it's astonishing how little personal responsibility anyone takes when it comes to using services from such a company. Doing business with them is just completely off-putting to me.
- fuzxi 6y ago
  Main selling points: Near-universal breadth of products Typically decent prices on products Generous return policy with free return shipping Fast shipping (not so much anymore) The combination of these means that buying from Amazon is largely a low-friction experience. Even though the website is horrible to navigate, you can order most of what you need on one site without searching for deals or coupons. Even though the site is filled with knock-offs and fake products, they ship quickly and are free to return, so there's little risk. People (myself included, though I'm trying to do more of my purchasing locally or on other sites) get suckered in by the convenience and then don't have enough reason to switch to other stores, despite the overall subpar experience.
aborsy 6y ago
Is there data on how big companies such as Amazon treat workers? People I talk actually want to work for Amazon. The pay is great! Granted, these are software developers. Where can I see data on the wages and perks of warehouse workers? I would like to see how they are treated by Amazon and non-Amazon.

309 points by nimbius 6y ago

As great as seeing workers get better wages and working conditions would be, I observe that Amazon and other companies (let's just call them "employers") simply have the upper hand in having a surplus of global labor wanting to work for the wages and conditions offered. (see the other story about "what happened in 1971" and the general stagnation of wages for the last few decades) It's not like Amazon or others are forcing workers to take these jobs. This is voluntary, inevitable, equilibrium supply and demand of labor -- where willing labor is in great surplus lately compared to what was a previously stable pool of middle class jobs seeking employable bodies, leading to a very weak bargaining position. The floodgates of global labor competition were opened with a lot of underdeveloped countries' peoples willing to take up jobs at low (but high for them) pay, and that has rippled through every developed country's labor economy. Until there is a relative shortage of willing workers, the situation will not change hugely I fear. (Aside from pockets of shortage due to education, credentials, monopolies of labor, other barriers to entry, etc)

DEADBEEFC0FFEE 6y ago
It's a shame these large companies are are driven to extract as much value from their workers as possible.
- EliRivers 6y ago
  Ah, the curse of the Shareholder Value obsession. A doctrine from the previous century that's so pernicious people assume it's law.
room271 6y ago
Unionisation and collective bargaining does achieve progress, as does regulation. Minimum wages are a great example of the latter. I'm not quite sure what is driving your passivity here.
- supernova87a 6y ago
  Minimum wages are the very textbook definition of protecting some workers at the expense of other workers, are they not? They don't solve the underlying problem. And I don't know where you come up with the notion of passive, I'm just stating an observation.
  - namdnay 6y ago
    > Minimum wages are the very textbook definition of protecting some workers at the expense of other workers, are they not I guess so, if you assume that the total salary envelope is fixed. In which case, minimum wages protect lower-paid workers at the expense of higher-paid workers. Which is fine in of itself. But on top of that I think we have to assume that the salary envelope has some elasticity. Maybe minimum wage increases the total salary cost, and decreases returns on capital - so helping lower-paid workers at the expense of investors. Again, why not
    - supernova87a 6y ago
      > In which case, minimum wages protect lower-paid workers at the expense of higher-paid workers. Which is fine in of itself. Um, no, actually the complete opposite. Minimum wage protects the workers who are able to get the job at the minimum wage, at the expense of those even lower-paid -- the ones who would've been employed if the wage had been less (and now are not employed).
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - EliRivers 6y ago
        That's certainly not considered absolute fact. There is a lot of data showing increases in minimum wage without associated increase in unemployment.
        supernova87a 6y ago
CPLX 6y ago
> inevitable One of the greatest PR successes of the modern era has been the effort to convince the masses that an unacceptable relationship between labor and the owners of capital is inevitable. It is not. As should be no surprise to anyone with a knowledge of history the inherent tension between these two groups has formed the basis for nearly all political competition. When confronted with an example of that conflict persisting, such as today’s labor action described in the article, it’s not particularly good analysis to assume away the basic premise of what’s happening in step one.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  What happens when an owner of capital manufacturers a product in a country where people are willing to earn 5% of an American salary, and then sells it in America for 50% of the cost that an owner of capital who chose to manufacture in America? The root cause is consumers will purchase from the sellers that offers the lowest price, and so the sellers that drives down labor costs to offer the lowest price will survive.
  - matthewmacleod 6y ago
    America says, among other things, "you may not import products form countries without suitable labour standards" and works to solve that problem.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      That isn’t part of the relationship between an owner of capital and labor. And good luck getting votes by pushing a policy that will cause prices to rise causing people to be able to purchase less (even if it is in most voters’ long term interests). Voters will focus on the fact that they need to reduce consumption in the immediate future.
  - CPLX 6y ago
    The same thing that happens with any action that people take in their own narrow self interest that society deems detrimental. The society, in the form of its government, regulates it. People will also show up and harvest your crops and sell your daughters into slavery without government intervention. The fact that a lot of people want to do something and will do so without the government stopping them doesn’t prove the inevitability of that thing happening.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
It's voluntary on some level sure, but it's also true that in any single 'negotiation', Amazon has an enormous advantage by virtue of size. Corporations bargain collectively automatically, because they're already collectives. This is especially true in the case of enormous corporations with many thousands of employees. When someone is getting hired by Amazon, it's literally a million versus one. That's a lot of leverage to bring to a negotiation, so it makes sense that a union would be necessary to even the odds for unskilled labor.
sp332 6y ago
"Employers" as a group have the upper hand currently, but only because they were willing to kill to get it. Union busting up to and including a bunch of murders got us where we are now. In a democratic system with one vote per person, workers would have much more power than employers.

jhowell 6y ago

For any future world's wealthiest, is having a non contentious relationship with employees a reasonable endeavor? The fact that this is about money while the person in charge has the most money of anyone living doesn't seem to be a desirable or targeted position given their fine tuned logistical approach to the world.

ponker 6y ago
Bill Gates had a non contentious relationship with employees. The key is to only create white collar jobs.
- toyg 6y ago
  Not quite. Larry Ellison created white-collar jobs, but still the Oracle workforce unionized and mobilized in several EU countries. White-collars are traditionally less likely to fight only because they tend to enjoy better mobility and have better incentives to stay silent (even if they don't maximize their earning potential, their social standing typically compensates). If you mistreat them enough, they will react like anyone else.
  - posix_me_less 6y ago
    Is there any reporting on how Oracle mistreated its employees? Can the unionization be taken as proof that they did get too far?
    - toyg 6y ago
      If i remember correctly, it was a reaction to rounds of layoffs-by-spreadsheet.
  - ponker 6y ago
    Of course you can create white collar jobs and have your employees hate you. My claim was only that it's impossible to have your employees NOT hate you if you are the richest man in the world and they're doing blue collar labor for you. If you create only jobs where people are earning six figures in front of a desk and living comfortable lives, they might envy but don't begrudge you $100 billion. But if you're asking someone to do tough physical labor for $15 or $20 an hour while you make a billion dollars a day or whatever, no way they won't try to knock you off that pedestal.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago

> While everyone has been cursed by COVID, Amazon has done well but not because of its own merits. It’s done well because of the unprecedented state interventions to protect local health Can someone explain how amazon did well because of state intervention in local health? I don’t see the connection.

strig 6y ago
Local retail is closed/reduced so people need to shop online.
dalbasal 6y ago
Lockdowns, for example. Intervention--> more online shopping.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  Got it. Thanks. The intervention is the forced closure of local businesses.
8note 6y ago
Even without the state intervention, a lot of people feel safer with ordering things than shopping for them during covid

forgotmypw17 6y ago

Everything you buy comes with a hidden cost which outweighs the monetary cost by several orders of magnitude. Is it made of and/or packaged in plastic? Each dollar you spent is a vote for more oil extraction. Does it include paper and cardboard? You just voted for deforestation. Are you buying non-organic food? You just submitted X votes for more pesticide use. Are you buying mass-produced "organic" food? You just voted for more land use and "alternative" pesticides. It's not an easy thought to face, and many turn away from it and criticize the messenger. But you must face it if you want to call yourself a conscious, aware being. We can't stop buying things altogether in today's world, but thinking and considering each purchase is achievable.

irthomasthomas 6y ago
Yep, those hidden costs are a PITA, like... Are you buying organic vegetables? You just voted for 80% more land use, 50% more emissions, more water, labour etc. And endogenous pesticides in your food which can't be washed off.
maxerickson 6y ago
Organic producers are not pesticide free, and some of the pesticides they apply are more harmful than modern pesticides used by non organic producers. Most paper and cardboard is produced from managed forests, where the harvested trees make room for more trees, the forest isn't destroyed.
blablabla123 6y ago
> Everything you buy comes with a hidden cost which outweighs the monetary cost by several orders of magnitude. Unless you buy your stuff in a specialized store e.g. a zero packaging store. Even when you buy stuff in a normal store, if it says 100% recycling paper and has a high price tag, you can assume it doesn't involve deforestation and probably not everybody in the supply chain has been screwed over. I won't argue that everyone has to buy all things in specialized organic stores because the effort would be unreasonable. But everyone with a high salary should have a bias towards things with the higher price tags from relatable brands/producers.
hobbes78 6y ago

douglaswlance 6y ago

They're just forcing Amazon to invest more in automation. It's not going to go their way, not in the long term.

_Understated_ 6y ago
The automation is inevitable. Amazon aren't keeping that a secret. At most, they are singling out their Fulfillment Center to be the first trials but the automation is coming regardless of the strikes. Imagine being able to run a warehouse in total darkness, with no heating or ventilation. The cost savings from things like having toilets and a canteen could be worth a bit too. You could also expand into the car park and use up most of that since you already own the land. It's too good an opportunity to pass up I reckon (from an Amazon perspective anyway!)
- 8note 6y ago
  I don't think you'll be able to escape ventilation and plumbing. There will still be people going to those fulfillment centers for maintenance and the like. The parking lot size is likely determined by mandatory minimums too, so there's not as much gain there either
kadoban 6y ago
Nothing goes anyone's way in the long term. In the meantime though, these people have hard jobs that in many cases don't pay enough to actually live.
tyingq 6y ago
You could have said the same for the UAW, but I suspect the lifetime earnings and working conditions for those auto workers were much better than they would have been without the union.
dagw 6y ago
They're fucked long term no matter what they do. That doesn't mean they have accept being fucked short term as well
6y ago

x87678r 6y ago

> "Meanwhile, Amazon warehouse workers risked their lives as essential workers, and only briefly received an increase in pay." This concerns me but I still haven't seen any evidence that Amazon warehouse workers are treated differently to any other unskilled manual labor. Is Amazon different because its super successful right now? Or because it uses tech to make people work harder.

onion2k 6y ago
It's the business that's owned by the world's richest person. It's going to get a lot of focus.
Grimm1 6y ago
That's my thinking, Amazon just seems to be a popular target. Even though they pay warehouse workers double the federal minimum wage at $15 and provide benefits. From what I've read negative instances are isolated to specific managers which isn't really different from any other job and doesn't make for a systematic abuse of employees. If I was an unskilled worker Amazon seems like a pretty good bet.
- mola 6y ago
  So basically you have no idea about what the situation is (nor do I) but you choose to believe that Amazon is in the right. That's called bias.
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    Empirically at my own account? How could I, without working for them, but I do read the news and follow these events. That's not bias that's a somewhat informed opinion and a conscious decision. I suppose I could go talk to people as a further step, but frankly I don't care that much and that's what journalism is supposed to be for. That's not to say I don't have bias, just that it's not some magical word you can say to make someone's statement irrelevant or that in this context you were even correct.
    - 6y ago

dalbasal 6y ago

It seems that union politics is swinging back. If we choose 1980 as a nominal endpoint for the union pendulum, it feels like 2020-ish may be the other one. Honestly, I don't know if that's a good or bad thing... 40 years is a long time, considering the "pendulum" took a long time getting to 1980. I'm not sure what from past experience transposes to the present and how. The world is very different. What does an amazon union even look like? How do unions operate legally/practically in global firms? What "package" would they want to negotiate for. One union? Many unions? Structure. Strategy. Tactics. Etc. I feel like most discussions fall into generic "for" and "against" union points. Realistically, unionisations is a wide space. Sports league unions. Newspaper Guilds. Germany's DGB. America's Teamsters. Teachers unions... all very different, and different in different eras. What, besides achieving a union and negotiating power, would an amazon union want to be?

coldpie 6y ago
Agree on the pendulum analogy. Unions are effectively dead right now in 2020. A balance is needed, so you're seeing the shift back to protecting workers. But 40 years of anti-workers-rights propaganda is a tough line to break through > What, besides achieving a union and negotiating power, would an amazon union want to be? Well, part of the issue is Amazon's union-busting efforts prevent that conversation from even happening[1]. But they do have specific demands[2]: """Employees backing the union effort said in interviews Tuesday that the issues at the warehouse include safety concerns, inadequate pay, and 12-hour shifts with insufficient breaks and unreasonable hourly quotas, after which they lose more of their day waiting unpaid in long lines for security checks.""" [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dm8bx/leaked-amazon-memo-details-plan-to-smear-fired-warehouse-organizer-hes-not-smart-or-articulate https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dm8bx/leaked-amazon-memo-de... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-12/employees-at-amazon-s-new-nyc-warehouse-launch-unionization-push https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-12/employees...
- dalbasal 6y ago
  re: Amazon's union-busting efforts. This is one of the reasons I feel the pendulum has maxed. That said, this takes us straight to the familiar for/against discussion, just with a sharper edge. The union busting debate needs to be had too, but it doesn't tell us much about the type of union they want to build and what that means. The linked article (thanks) is another case in point, I think. It talks about union busting. Ways in which (like your quote) working conditions aren't good. ... OK. I don't mean to disparage... IMO, the elephant in the room isn't being addressed. What would a "union win" in amazon (or other young megacorp) mean? More pay, how much more, how would that work? Let's compare to another field: sports. The UFC is currently experiencing player union agitations. What a "union win" looks like is fairly defined. Other sports leagues are unionized. The realistic range of outcomes is understood. Forget the conflict side for a moment, what's the goal?

NoblePublius 6y ago

Amazon protest reporting never seems to mention that 99.99% of employees don’t participate. NYC Fake News loves to report it when there are five people with signs in front of Amazon warehouse with 5000 workers inside.

xyst 6y ago

Explains why Amazon recruiters are constantly pinging me to join one of the “supply chain” teams. They likely will pay very well but I suspect I won’t be happy in the long run.

abledon 6y ago
did you get the expanding store-blob coding problem? Those are fun atleast!

Out_of_Characte 6y ago

So, which 15 countries? Bangladesh mexico US and """Europe""" isn't precise. Which amazon workers are actually disstatisfied with amazon's operations under local laws? Why bother protest if vice gives anonymity for amazon?

sp332 6y ago
It's specific unions, not broken down exactly by country. https://makeamazonpay.com/ https://makeamazonpay.com/

CryptoPunk 6y ago

I am no fan of the domination of numerous markets by megacorps, but two wrongs don't make a right, and the entire moral principle behind this movement is wrong, and I hope the companies being targeted by these movements find ways of defending themselves from their unjust demands. This is why I think companies should completely disassociate from service providers, via gig-economy type arrangements that limit their engagement with any one employee. As soon as they make someone an employee, there is a major risk that that person will adopt a whole bunch of baggage from a couple of centuries of labor movement lore, that convinces them that they are an integral part of that company and entitled to more than just what the mutually agreed employment contract cedes to them.

ludditetech 6y ago

Wealth disparity and its huge gulf answers all the arguments, corporations will take till they are chastened, bit like a tick?

djeiasbsbo 6y ago

I don't get the Amazon hype at all. Never ordered anything from them. The last time I checked, their website looked very counter intuitive and also down right ugly. Many products are seemingly garbage or counterfeit, the review system is bad and the workers and sellers are not treated well or properly respected... and I could go on. I don't want to lecture anyone about ethics, but it's astonishing how little personal responsibility anyone takes when it comes to using services from such a company. Doing business with them is just completely off-putting to me.

fuzxi 6y ago
Main selling points: Near-universal breadth of products Typically decent prices on products Generous return policy with free return shipping Fast shipping (not so much anymore) The combination of these means that buying from Amazon is largely a low-friction experience. Even though the website is horrible to navigate, you can order most of what you need on one site without searching for deals or coupons. Even though the site is filled with knock-offs and fake products, they ship quickly and are free to return, so there's little risk. People (myself included, though I'm trying to do more of my purchasing locally or on other sites) get suckered in by the convenience and then don't have enough reason to switch to other stores, despite the overall subpar experience.

aborsy 6y ago

Is there data on how big companies such as Amazon treat workers? People I talk actually want to work for Amazon. The pay is great! Granted, these are software developers. Where can I see data on the wages and perks of warehouse workers? I would like to see how they are treated by Amazon and non-Amazon.