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Full disclosure: I've always been anti-union for my own personal approach to life. I do see the value in unions, I've just always, to this point, been a go-it-a

Full disclosure: I've always been anti-union for my own personal approach to life. I do see the value in unions, I've just always, to this point, been a go-it-alone-and-fight-my-own-battles kind of person. I don't want to be beholden to a union or their rules any more than I want to be beholden to an employer beyond my contractual obligations for which I'm paid. That said, people should take note of what happened when Walmart used these tactics. Employees then went on to suffer such things as zero hour contracts, contracts where time was just shy of the legal requirement to give them benefits, pay was no more than the minimum required in any given state/province and people became slaves to their jobs because they couldn't afford the time off to find other jobs because then they wouldn't be able to make ends meet or there were no other jobs so Walmart had zero incentive to pay any more than absolutely required to by law. etc. etc. etc. because humanity is only afforded if legally required [which I personally find disgusting]. These are tactics to prevent a coalition of employees from having their rights heard and maintained... even with this coalition someone is fighting to maintain and win your rights(!!!!!) There's something very wrong with anyone having to fight for their rights to be given, but that's another discussion. In a commercial environment that allow employers to behave this way, where the only advantage to winning your rights is in a coalition of the workforce holding employers to account, unions absolutely must not only be allowed but must also be protected. Its okay if you're bullheaded enough or within your means enough to walk away if your rights aren't given fair consideration and honoured, but if you're in a position where you're a prisoner to your job, i.e. can't afford to take time off to find another job/other income, or there are no other jobs in your area and you don't have the means to leave etc. you don't have any bargaining chip. No employer should ever have the privilege of keeping you prisoner, nor preventing you from having a means to bargain for your very right to fair treatment. Amazon needs to be severely reprimanded for this and taught a lesson about what it means to honour employees' rights.

tyingq 6y ago
You appear to perhaps be from the UK (saw "honour"). Employees in the UK have quite a lot more protection by default than they do in the US. I do respect your go-it-alone-and-fight-my-own-battles position, but consider that you might feel differently if you were in a US "right to work" state.
- balabaster 6y ago
  I don't know what it means to live in a "right to work" state. I assume that means that everyone has a right to reasonably paid employment? I don't understand how this situation could come to be. What if there were no employers? That situation can only occur if there are enough jobs to maintain gainful employment of every citizen of the state. In such a situation I would likely only remain around as long as there was work willing to pay me what I need to maintain a lifestyle to which I was attracted. I left Kamloops, BC in 2001 because the only jobs available there sucked (in my eyes). I was frowned upon as a snob because I turned down 3 union jobs which appeared to be the pinnacle of success in Kamloops at the time. I couldn't understand why that seemed to be the height of ambition there. I moved to Vancouver Island in the hope of better. I loved it there, but I left there in 2004, because again the only jobs available had shit pay and I couldn't afford any kind of enjoyable lifestyle. Now I live outside Toronto and enjoy a much more financially comfortable lifestyle... at the cost of an almost complete lack of scenery admittedly. I've never been one to stick around when the economic situation wasn't viable. I couldn't see myself sticking around in a "right to work" state if that's what it meant. I don't really see how it would change my opinion either.
  - nextaccountic 6y ago
    > I don't know what it means to live in a "right to work" state. I assume that means that everyone has a right to reasonably paid employment? It's the opposite! It means you can be fired for any reason whatsoever.
  - arachnids 6y ago
    "Right to work" is American euphemism for your employer being able to fire you at will for no cause
    - phabora 6y ago
      Not really euphemism. More of an Orwellian term.
    - yohannparis 6y ago
soperj 6y ago
So they were both reduced hours and beholden to their jobs with no time off?
- xphilter 6y ago
  How is that contradictory?
  - soperj 6y ago
    if they have reduced hours, then they have time to find another job.
    - ska 6y ago
      What about irregular scheduling? Surely that can have a big impact on ability to find/keep other work I imagine.
- koolba 6y ago
  Easily possible. Show up for one hour, ever other hour, to perform task X. I pay you for four hours and you need to be on call for eight daily.
  - fastball 6y ago
    So... quit?
- vertex-four 6y ago
  When you’re paid minimum wage in the US, and you’re not permitted to perform a full-time job, you probably have to hold down multiple jobs; you probably also don’t get things like healthcare from any of them. Zero hours contracts in theory mean you can refuse work (at least that’s how it works in the U.K.), but obviously you’re going to be fired for doing so, so you’re essentially constantly on call for both/all your jobs.
  - soperj 6y ago
JPKab 6y ago
Something that adds insult to injury is the amount of moral posturing Amazon engages in when it comes to social justice issues. What could be a bigger social justice issue than paying working class people proper wages and benefits? It just screams out to me how hollow and PR driven their support of social justice organizations and initiatives is. And more importantly, the silence from these same social justice initiatives is deafening. I strongly suspect that paying working class employees more money would have a far higher positive impact on black communities than donating money to activist organizations.
- hpoe 6y ago
  Almost like identity politics is used by those in power to distract us from real issues that have concrete impact on people's lives, instead fostering an us vs them attitude to keep us ignorant that both sides are being played by the same people.
  - azinman2 6y ago
    Or… they actually do mean what they say, but don’t connect the dots and ultimately have a bigger incentive to cognitively shift their perspective when it comes down to their own bottom line. Amazon as a company is about low prices made up by scale, and is famous for continuously optimizing costs. Humans are just one cost to optimize, and are likely a big one given the number of people involved for their business model. These are also not “corporate employees,” which are also infamously not treated well, but the grunts that are low skilled and highly replaceable.
    - arrosenberg 6y ago
      This response has the echoes of so many dark parts of human history. If that's actually true, then Amazon needs to be destroyed for all our sake.
      - sudosteph 6y ago
        If it's destroyed, another retailer will take it's place. I worked at Target back in the day, and I still remember the onboarding videos they showed us. Half of it was ridiculous drivel about how much they love employees and support LGBT and minorities, and the other half was literal anti-union propaganda and fear-mongering. When it came right down to it, Target is just as happy to treat human workers as disposable tools as anyone else. Most every succesful retail company treats workers as unworthy of decent pay, benefits, or even human friendly scheduling.
phabora 6y ago
Some people are privileged enough to be able to get jobs where they don’t need collective bargaining to get decently fair compensation and decent working conditions.
TameAntelope 6y ago
Anti-union tactics are so... nasty. It's crazy to me how any of this is even tried in the 21st century. It's so obviously wrong and in a ton of cases illegal, the only reason I can think of that this is done so aggressively is that these tactics are "effective" based on their invention in the early-to-mid 20th century, and nobody's bothered to try and innovate since. Does Amazon really see unionization as an existential threat? Surely at some point, a company as large as Amazon or Walmart can handle a worker's union. What other perceived "existential threats" are they handling with these kinds of tactics, that we just don't know about because it's not as public? (Disclaimer: I benefit substantially off of Walmart's continued ability to make money.)
- ImaCake 6y ago
  The weird thing about this anti-union stuff is that there is fair argument to be made that Amazon would do just as well if they let them unionise and get what they wanted. Australia has a long history of strong unions and the result has been a strong economy and effectively run state. Same kind of thing in many other countries. Those of us outside of the US are often surprised by how little rights are given to workers there.
passivate 6y ago
>Its okay if you're bullheaded enough or within your means enough to walk away if your rights aren't given fair consideration and honoured, but if you're in a position where you're a prisoner to your job, i.e. can't afford to take time off to find another job/other income, or there are no other jobs in your area and you don't have the means to leave etc. you don't have any bargaining chip. This is the core issue. Would a federal level solution work? Maybe then people won't feel like the only solution is to form a union.

tyingq 6y ago

You appear to perhaps be from the UK (saw "honour"). Employees in the UK have quite a lot more protection by default than they do in the US. I do respect your go-it-alone-and-fight-my-own-battles position, but consider that you might feel differently if you were in a US "right to work" state.

balabaster 6y ago
I don't know what it means to live in a "right to work" state. I assume that means that everyone has a right to reasonably paid employment? I don't understand how this situation could come to be. What if there were no employers? That situation can only occur if there are enough jobs to maintain gainful employment of every citizen of the state. In such a situation I would likely only remain around as long as there was work willing to pay me what I need to maintain a lifestyle to which I was attracted. I left Kamloops, BC in 2001 because the only jobs available there sucked (in my eyes). I was frowned upon as a snob because I turned down 3 union jobs which appeared to be the pinnacle of success in Kamloops at the time. I couldn't understand why that seemed to be the height of ambition there. I moved to Vancouver Island in the hope of better. I loved it there, but I left there in 2004, because again the only jobs available had shit pay and I couldn't afford any kind of enjoyable lifestyle. Now I live outside Toronto and enjoy a much more financially comfortable lifestyle... at the cost of an almost complete lack of scenery admittedly. I've never been one to stick around when the economic situation wasn't viable. I couldn't see myself sticking around in a "right to work" state if that's what it meant. I don't really see how it would change my opinion either.
- nextaccountic 6y ago
  > I don't know what it means to live in a "right to work" state. I assume that means that everyone has a right to reasonably paid employment? It's the opposite! It means you can be fired for any reason whatsoever.
- arachnids 6y ago
  "Right to work" is American euphemism for your employer being able to fire you at will for no cause
  - phabora 6y ago
    Not really euphemism. More of an Orwellian term.
  - yohannparis 6y ago

soperj 6y ago

So they were both reduced hours and beholden to their jobs with no time off?

xphilter 6y ago
How is that contradictory?
- soperj 6y ago
  if they have reduced hours, then they have time to find another job.
  - ska 6y ago
    What about irregular scheduling? Surely that can have a big impact on ability to find/keep other work I imagine.
koolba 6y ago
Easily possible. Show up for one hour, ever other hour, to perform task X. I pay you for four hours and you need to be on call for eight daily.
- fastball 6y ago
  So... quit?
vertex-four 6y ago
When you’re paid minimum wage in the US, and you’re not permitted to perform a full-time job, you probably have to hold down multiple jobs; you probably also don’t get things like healthcare from any of them. Zero hours contracts in theory mean you can refuse work (at least that’s how it works in the U.K.), but obviously you’re going to be fired for doing so, so you’re essentially constantly on call for both/all your jobs.
- soperj 6y ago

JPKab 6y ago

Something that adds insult to injury is the amount of moral posturing Amazon engages in when it comes to social justice issues. What could be a bigger social justice issue than paying working class people proper wages and benefits? It just screams out to me how hollow and PR driven their support of social justice organizations and initiatives is. And more importantly, the silence from these same social justice initiatives is deafening. I strongly suspect that paying working class employees more money would have a far higher positive impact on black communities than donating money to activist organizations.

hpoe 6y ago
Almost like identity politics is used by those in power to distract us from real issues that have concrete impact on people's lives, instead fostering an us vs them attitude to keep us ignorant that both sides are being played by the same people.
- azinman2 6y ago
  Or… they actually do mean what they say, but don’t connect the dots and ultimately have a bigger incentive to cognitively shift their perspective when it comes down to their own bottom line. Amazon as a company is about low prices made up by scale, and is famous for continuously optimizing costs. Humans are just one cost to optimize, and are likely a big one given the number of people involved for their business model. These are also not “corporate employees,” which are also infamously not treated well, but the grunts that are low skilled and highly replaceable.
  - arrosenberg 6y ago
    This response has the echoes of so many dark parts of human history. If that's actually true, then Amazon needs to be destroyed for all our sake.
    - sudosteph 6y ago
      If it's destroyed, another retailer will take it's place. I worked at Target back in the day, and I still remember the onboarding videos they showed us. Half of it was ridiculous drivel about how much they love employees and support LGBT and minorities, and the other half was literal anti-union propaganda and fear-mongering. When it came right down to it, Target is just as happy to treat human workers as disposable tools as anyone else. Most every succesful retail company treats workers as unworthy of decent pay, benefits, or even human friendly scheduling.

phabora 6y ago

Some people are privileged enough to be able to get jobs where they don’t need collective bargaining to get decently fair compensation and decent working conditions.

TameAntelope 6y ago

Anti-union tactics are so... nasty. It's crazy to me how any of this is even tried in the 21st century. It's so obviously wrong and in a ton of cases illegal, the only reason I can think of that this is done so aggressively is that these tactics are "effective" based on their invention in the early-to-mid 20th century, and nobody's bothered to try and innovate since. Does Amazon really see unionization as an existential threat? Surely at some point, a company as large as Amazon or Walmart can handle a worker's union. What other perceived "existential threats" are they handling with these kinds of tactics, that we just don't know about because it's not as public? (Disclaimer: I benefit substantially off of Walmart's continued ability to make money.)

ImaCake 6y ago
The weird thing about this anti-union stuff is that there is fair argument to be made that Amazon would do just as well if they let them unionise and get what they wanted. Australia has a long history of strong unions and the result has been a strong economy and effectively run state. Same kind of thing in many other countries. Those of us outside of the US are often surprised by how little rights are given to workers there.

passivate 6y ago

>Its okay if you're bullheaded enough or within your means enough to walk away if your rights aren't given fair consideration and honoured, but if you're in a position where you're a prisoner to your job, i.e. can't afford to take time off to find another job/other income, or there are no other jobs in your area and you don't have the means to leave etc. you don't have any bargaining chip. This is the core issue. Would a federal level solution work? Maybe then people won't feel like the only solution is to form a union.