7 ms·

From a non-US point of view, this whole anti-union strategy from Amazon is somehow hilarious to witness on top of being sad. This kind of propaganda feels like

From a non-US point of view, this whole anti-union strategy from Amazon is somehow hilarious to witness on top of being sad. This kind of propaganda feels like its coming from another age, or dimension.

Grimm1 6y ago
Right out of the 1900's in fact, gilded age part 2: technologic boogaloo.
- x2w8TGm8BSTd853 6y ago
  Are the Pinkertons fair game just like they are in Red Dead Redemption 2? Oh, my: but I don’t have a horse. Hope this won’t prevent me from taking part.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Someone1234 6y ago
The depressing part is that this is actually an improvement over the violence and intimidation tactics of America's past. The US has never been a particularly union supportive country. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
- pydry 6y ago
  There's still time to return to the good old days when the boss called in a private air force to drop poison gas and bombs on striking workers.
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    Yes, this is a good reminder that the first areal attack on US soil was not Pearl Harbor, but was against striking workers in 1921 at the Battle of Blair Mountain. "By August 29 battle was fully joined. Chafin's men, though outnumbered, had the advantage of higher positions and better weaponry. Private planes were hired to drop homemade bombs on the miners. A combination of poison gas and explosive bombs left over from World War I were dropped in several locations near the towns of Jeffery, Sharples and Blair." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain Someone else in the thread mentioned a revived push for "company towns", which is exactly what these workers were fighting against. Being fired from their company meant losing their job and their house, since it was owned by the company. Honestly, it's not much different from being fired in 2021 and losing your job and your health insurance.
    - scollet 6y ago
      This is a good reminder that the Tulsa Massacre occurred about 4 months earlier.
- Nacdor 6y ago
  Amazon uses agents from a company named Pinkerton to spy on their workers: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dp3yn/amazon-leaked-reports-expose-spying-warehouse-workers-labor-union-environmental-groups-social-movements https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dp3yn/amazon-leaked-reports... No idea if it has any relation to the original Pinkerton strike-breakers, but using that name is pretty callous given its history.
  - fl0wenol 6y ago
    It is one and the same. What's more is that it isn't some sort of ironic twist of circumstances, it's just that there aren't a lot of organizations you can call for that kind of work at scale.
nabla9 6y ago
The sadness is build into the US labor laws. The US has enterprise level bargaining (as does UK). In enterprise bargaining anything that helps workers hurts enterprises against their nonunionized competition. It's a bad system to have as a main method. Most other countries have versions of sectoral bargaining system, sometimes with some national and enterprise level aspects. Once you understand the difference, it's easier to understand why in the US unions and enterprises have so bad relationship.
- malf 6y ago
  That explains a lot. Thanks!
faitswulff 6y ago
Amazon literally employs a union busting company from the last century (edit: from two centuries ago, apparently): > The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was founded as a private police force in Chicago in 1850, and quickly expanded its reach; its detectives initially focused on catching thieves and burglars, but soon became the bane of the labor movement for their work as enthusiastic, vicious strikebreakers. Throughout the Civil War era and in the decades after, Pinkerton operatives left their bloody mark on strikes, protests, and massacres, and gained a ruthless reputation for protecting the interests of capital by any means necessary. > [...] > The Pinkertons, who are now a subsidiary of Swedish security company Securitas AB, are reportedly cozying up to 2020’s version of the Gilded Age robber baron: Silicon Valley tech bosses like billionaire vampire Jeff Bezos, who has hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to reportedly surveil workers in at least one of Amazon’s European warehouses and infiltrate its worksite, according to documents obtained by the publication. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/who-were-the-pinkertons https://www.teenvogue.com/story/who-were-the-pinkertons And yes, that is a Teen Vogue link, and yes, it’s worth reading.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  When Teen Vogue calls someone a "billionaire vampire", is that a compliment, or are vampires out again?
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    Billionaire vampire is out, vampire billionaire is ambiguous though I think the YA romance industry has moved on since 2010.
  - tyingq 6y ago
    I do get the joke, but to balance it a bit, the writer is a freelancer, and does appear to have pretty good chops around labor issues. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmkelly https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmkelly
    - lovegoblin 6y ago
      Yeah, Teen Vogue has plenty of solid journalism.
onion2k 6y ago
I'm going to assume you're not in the UK, because this is straight out of UK government's playbook during the 70s and 80s when they were union busting the mining and engineering unions. The page on Wikipedia about the union leader Derek Robinson is an eye-opener ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Robinson_(trade_unionist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Robinson_(trade_unionist... ) ... pay close attention to the work of MI5 in bringing his union activity to an end.
- Ozzie_osman 6y ago
  There was a pretty big smear campaign against Arthur Scargill too. https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-07-26/miners-strike-1984-5-lies-damned-lies-and-press https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-07-26/miners-strik...
TrackerFF 6y ago
In the US, almost everything boils down to money and special interest. Amazingly enough, unionization hasn't been outlawed, despite the massive efforts from industry.
- cat199 6y ago
  > Amazingly enough Not so amazing when you look at DNC backers, July 30, 1975, etc. More radical unions (e.g. IWW) tend to look at the 'mainstream' unions as 'bosses unions' or 'controlled opposition', and the more libertarian minded often similarly view the relationship between unions and capital as power plays by big corps to raise the 'free market' price of labor and consolidate power.
  - walshemj 6y ago
    From the UK the IWW is seen not as a real union but as a "club" - the is a direct quote to me from a DGS (Senior Union Officer) They do seem stuck cosplaying Edwardian trades union activists - instead of actually concentrating on the actual TU issues.
pfortuny 6y ago
Which looks even worse than Victorian England and the factory workers (or the women at textile works)... So unbelievably immoral.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
In Europe, at least in some countries, forming a union is a right and there is no need to organise a ballot so companies can do much less to prevent it but they obviously still do all they can. As long as they act within the law it's fair game really because it's obviously not in a company's interest to have unions.
- walshemj 6y ago
  Forming is one thing actually getting recognition is much harder.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Again, this depends on the country. Where forming an union is a right, the obligation for the company to recognise it may also be the law. For example on France there are unions at Amazon and they are recognised. Why? Because in law there is nothing Amazon can do about either. This is annoying for companies but it cuts down on the BS.
fallingfrog 6y ago
The back of the union movement in the United States was pretty much broken when Ronald Reagan broke an air traffic controllers strike by firing 11,359 of them and replacing them with members of the military. He also imposed a lifetime ban on rehiring any striking worker. Then they decertified the union. Sent a message. Their justification for this was that the strike was illegal, after Reagan himself declared it illegal via an executive order. https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/05/reagan-fires-11-000-striking-air-traffic-controllers-aug-5-1981-241252 https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/05/reagan-fires-11-00...
- Google234 6y ago
  You are spreading fake news. From your article: “ In 1955, Congress had made such strikes punishable by fines or a one-year jail term”
  - fallingfrog 6y ago
    Thank you, I missed that. Spreading falsehoods of any kind is not my intention.
- fallingfrog 6y ago
  Edit: these kinds of strikes were evidently made illegal in 1955, by an act of Congress, it wasn’t that Reagan simply declared it illegal.

Grimm1 6y ago

Right out of the 1900's in fact, gilded age part 2: technologic boogaloo.

x2w8TGm8BSTd853 6y ago
Are the Pinkertons fair game just like they are in Red Dead Redemption 2? Oh, my: but I don’t have a horse. Hope this won’t prevent me from taking part.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Someone1234 6y ago

The depressing part is that this is actually an improvement over the violence and intimidation tactics of America's past. The US has never been a particularly union supportive country. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...

pydry 6y ago
There's still time to return to the good old days when the boss called in a private air force to drop poison gas and bombs on striking workers.
- ModernMech 6y ago
  Yes, this is a good reminder that the first areal attack on US soil was not Pearl Harbor, but was against striking workers in 1921 at the Battle of Blair Mountain. "By August 29 battle was fully joined. Chafin's men, though outnumbered, had the advantage of higher positions and better weaponry. Private planes were hired to drop homemade bombs on the miners. A combination of poison gas and explosive bombs left over from World War I were dropped in several locations near the towns of Jeffery, Sharples and Blair." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain Someone else in the thread mentioned a revived push for "company towns", which is exactly what these workers were fighting against. Being fired from their company meant losing their job and their house, since it was owned by the company. Honestly, it's not much different from being fired in 2021 and losing your job and your health insurance.
  - scollet 6y ago
    This is a good reminder that the Tulsa Massacre occurred about 4 months earlier.
Nacdor 6y ago
Amazon uses agents from a company named Pinkerton to spy on their workers: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dp3yn/amazon-leaked-reports-expose-spying-warehouse-workers-labor-union-environmental-groups-social-movements https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dp3yn/amazon-leaked-reports... No idea if it has any relation to the original Pinkerton strike-breakers, but using that name is pretty callous given its history.
- fl0wenol 6y ago
  It is one and the same. What's more is that it isn't some sort of ironic twist of circumstances, it's just that there aren't a lot of organizations you can call for that kind of work at scale.

nabla9 6y ago

The sadness is build into the US labor laws. The US has enterprise level bargaining (as does UK). In enterprise bargaining anything that helps workers hurts enterprises against their nonunionized competition. It's a bad system to have as a main method. Most other countries have versions of sectoral bargaining system, sometimes with some national and enterprise level aspects. Once you understand the difference, it's easier to understand why in the US unions and enterprises have so bad relationship.

malf 6y ago
That explains a lot. Thanks!

faitswulff 6y ago

Amazon literally employs a union busting company from the last century (edit: from two centuries ago, apparently): > The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was founded as a private police force in Chicago in 1850, and quickly expanded its reach; its detectives initially focused on catching thieves and burglars, but soon became the bane of the labor movement for their work as enthusiastic, vicious strikebreakers. Throughout the Civil War era and in the decades after, Pinkerton operatives left their bloody mark on strikes, protests, and massacres, and gained a ruthless reputation for protecting the interests of capital by any means necessary. > [...] > The Pinkertons, who are now a subsidiary of Swedish security company Securitas AB, are reportedly cozying up to 2020’s version of the Gilded Age robber baron: Silicon Valley tech bosses like billionaire vampire Jeff Bezos, who has hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to reportedly surveil workers in at least one of Amazon’s European warehouses and infiltrate its worksite, according to documents obtained by the publication. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/who-were-the-pinkertons https://www.teenvogue.com/story/who-were-the-pinkertons And yes, that is a Teen Vogue link, and yes, it’s worth reading.

throwaway894345 6y ago
When Teen Vogue calls someone a "billionaire vampire", is that a compliment, or are vampires out again?
- rtkwe 6y ago
  Billionaire vampire is out, vampire billionaire is ambiguous though I think the YA romance industry has moved on since 2010.
- tyingq 6y ago
  I do get the joke, but to balance it a bit, the writer is a freelancer, and does appear to have pretty good chops around labor issues. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmkelly https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmkelly
  - lovegoblin 6y ago
    Yeah, Teen Vogue has plenty of solid journalism.

onion2k 6y ago

I'm going to assume you're not in the UK, because this is straight out of UK government's playbook during the 70s and 80s when they were union busting the mining and engineering unions. The page on Wikipedia about the union leader Derek Robinson is an eye-opener ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Robinson_(trade_unionist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Robinson_(trade_unionist... ) ... pay close attention to the work of MI5 in bringing his union activity to an end.

Ozzie_osman 6y ago
There was a pretty big smear campaign against Arthur Scargill too. https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-07-26/miners-strike-1984-5-lies-damned-lies-and-press https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-07-26/miners-strik...

TrackerFF 6y ago

In the US, almost everything boils down to money and special interest. Amazingly enough, unionization hasn't been outlawed, despite the massive efforts from industry.

cat199 6y ago
> Amazingly enough Not so amazing when you look at DNC backers, July 30, 1975, etc. More radical unions (e.g. IWW) tend to look at the 'mainstream' unions as 'bosses unions' or 'controlled opposition', and the more libertarian minded often similarly view the relationship between unions and capital as power plays by big corps to raise the 'free market' price of labor and consolidate power.
- walshemj 6y ago
  From the UK the IWW is seen not as a real union but as a "club" - the is a direct quote to me from a DGS (Senior Union Officer) They do seem stuck cosplaying Edwardian trades union activists - instead of actually concentrating on the actual TU issues.

pfortuny 6y ago

Which looks even worse than Victorian England and the factory workers (or the women at textile works)... So unbelievably immoral.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

In Europe, at least in some countries, forming a union is a right and there is no need to organise a ballot so companies can do much less to prevent it but they obviously still do all they can. As long as they act within the law it's fair game really because it's obviously not in a company's interest to have unions.

walshemj 6y ago
Forming is one thing actually getting recognition is much harder.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  Again, this depends on the country. Where forming an union is a right, the obligation for the company to recognise it may also be the law. For example on France there are unions at Amazon and they are recognised. Why? Because in law there is nothing Amazon can do about either. This is annoying for companies but it cuts down on the BS.

fallingfrog 6y ago

The back of the union movement in the United States was pretty much broken when Ronald Reagan broke an air traffic controllers strike by firing 11,359 of them and replacing them with members of the military. He also imposed a lifetime ban on rehiring any striking worker. Then they decertified the union. Sent a message. Their justification for this was that the strike was illegal, after Reagan himself declared it illegal via an executive order. https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/05/reagan-fires-11-000-striking-air-traffic-controllers-aug-5-1981-241252 https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/05/reagan-fires-11-00...

Google234 6y ago
You are spreading fake news. From your article: “ In 1955, Congress had made such strikes punishable by fines or a one-year jail term”
- fallingfrog 6y ago
  Thank you, I missed that. Spreading falsehoods of any kind is not my intention.
fallingfrog 6y ago
Edit: these kinds of strikes were evidently made illegal in 1955, by an act of Congress, it wasn’t that Reagan simply declared it illegal.