21 ms·

How Amazon Crushes Unions

230 points by alexrustic 6y ago

satya71 6y ago
Missing “How” from title
blinding-streak 6y ago
> Amazon managers openly warned recruits that if they liked things comfortable, this would be a difficult, perhaps impossible, job. For customer service representatives, it was difficult to keep up, according to media accounts and labor organizers. Overtime was mandatory. Supervisors sent emails with subject headings like “YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD.” Umm, yikes.
- pc86 6y ago
  Imagine being in a position where you have to choose between putting up with this hostile bullshit or going hungry/evicted. Most of us here could tell our bosses to f off and either have enough savings for months (or even years), or at the very least get another job within weeks or days. Even having grown up lower-middle class with zero, often negative, extra money, going years without vacation, etc., it's hard to wrap my head around being forced to deal with abusive supervisors and coworkers because the alternative might be homelessness within weeks.
  - klaudius 6y ago
    How does someone get into that position? Are public schools so bad that people come out with no marketable unique skills that would give them natural job security?
    - charlesu 6y ago
      What jobs have natural job security? Either you’re protected by a union, a professional association, or having a rare and valuable skill set. The unions have been busted, professional associations are exclusive by their nature and most people definitionally do not have rare and marketable skills. As a result, an increasingly large fraction of jobs are gig work, part-time, or on contract. That includes work in law and software engineering. Precarity is the natural state of an unregulated, de-unionized job market and it is not a bug but a feature. It has little to do with our public schools.
    - NoThisIsMe 6y ago
      Massive deindustrialization is a huge part of it in the US. There aren't many decent blue collar jobs anymore.
    - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
      Unique skills are rare by definition.
      - mminer237 6y ago
        Each individual skill may be rare, but given how many thousands of different skills there are, the trait of having some rare skill should be common.
        hntrader 6y ago
        But that doesn't mean that it's going to be valued by the market. If it's not valued by the market, the fact that it's rare doesn't help you. For a high market price, you need the intersection of a scarce skill (low-supply in labor market) that provides value to other people (high-demand in the labor market). Being a good software engineer is an example - low-supply and high-demand, therefore high wage/salary.
    - anonuser123456 6y ago
      > Are public schools so bad that people come out with no marketable unique skills that would give them natural job security? Yes, but that's not the only issue. Some people are incapable of managing their own affairs. Showing up to work on time, not drunk is not in their personal capacity. It's not really their fault; we are not the authors of our neurobiology.
      - pc86 6y ago
        There are plenty of alcoholics who can show up to work and wait until afterwards to get drunk. There is a certain level of choice to being so egregious about it that you reek of whisky at a meeting, even if that choice is just saying "f it."
        anonuser123456 6y ago
        Choice is an illusion, a story our brain tells itself to feel better about the reality our consciousness is largely just a witness too.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    > Imagine being in a position where you have to choose between putting up with this hostile bullshit or going hungry/evicted. Yes, this is exactly why we got the idea of unions in the first place. Without unions we would still be forced to work at least 6 days a week, and many more drawbacks. The list is huge of what unions have given us (in Europe at least).
- hinkley 6y ago
  Coworker who lasted two weeks at Amazon before quitting, “I saw a poster that read, ‘You can work, smarter, harder, or longer, but you can’t pick just two.’” When they called to find out why he wasn’t at work on Sunday, and told him they don’t usually give stock grants to people with such a limited investment in the company, that was the end of it. If you’ve ever been in the parts of Seattle they’re in, they tend to take up the whole sidewalk. Different coworker called them Amholes. After working a contract there I figured out it isn’t because those people have huge egos. It’s because they’re zombies. Surprised more of them don’t get hit by cars.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  Supervisors sent emails with subject headings like “YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD.” This is what happens when the Silicon Valley startup festishists end up in charge in the real world.
blinding-streak 6y ago
For reference, Amazon's anti-union site: https://www.doitwithoutdues.com/ https://www.doitwithoutdues.com/
- andyjohnson0 6y ago
  Built and hosted on squarespace. Noted.
- throwaway53453 6y ago
  I have to say, I'm kind of creeped out by union dues. It just feels less about workers helping themselves and more like some workers creating a new power structure and job roles that they can enjoy.
  - user-the-name 6y ago
    And your suggested way to operate an organisation without money is...?
  - hasmolo 6y ago
    without the power afforded by money to the union, it cannot stand up to the company. the dues are functionally an insurance payment for security in your job. this comment is similar to saying: i'm kinda creeped out by car insurance payments. it just feels less about protecting other drivers and more about enriching the insurance companies. you are right that it does create a new power structure and job roles, that's the point of it! the money you pay is also part of the strike pay you'd get back.
    - musingsole 6y ago
      > i'm kinda creeped out by car insurance payments. it just feels less about protecting other drivers and more about enriching the insurance companies. Yeah, me too! And health and homeowners insurance while we're at it. All systems seemingly meant to exploit statistics for the betterment of us all...and yet the 20 most expensive homes in my city growing up were owned by insurance execs... What an oddity!
tootie 6y ago
Not to excuse Amazon or anything, but absolutely every company in America does this. Most of them don't bother with subterfuge though and just go with threats or firings. And one of our main political parties is vehemently anti-union and keeps winning elections.
- rob74 6y ago
  Yeah, it may be par for the course for your average American company, but it's exceptional for tech companies - then again, most tech companies don't have as many high-supply-low-demand jobs as Amazon (or they "outsource" them, like Uber).
- barbazoo 6y ago
  Obviously not "absolutely every company in America does this", this sounds like an attempt to normalize it.
- glasss 6y ago
  I know a few small business owners that have said if their staff unionized they would just close the business. These aren't bad bosses or people who don't know how to run a business. They just know if their staff unionized and the rest of their industry didn't, they wouldn't be able to compete on price or keep the necessary number of staff. I think it's easier to pick on Amazon or bezos than it is to deal with the political forces that you've mentioned, or come to terms with needing to unionizing a whole industry before it would stop hurting small businesses.
  - TurningCanadian 6y ago
    It's in the union's interest to keep the company alive too.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      But then what is its purpose? Management has no reason to oppose changes that cost them nothing with or without a union. In an industry with thin margins, anything that does cost them money puts them out of business. Meanwhile a union that can't achieve meaningful concessions is collecting dues for no benefit, requiring the company to pay more to retain talent and thereby putting them out of business just by existing.
peer2pay 6y ago
I hate Amazon and stories like this make me hate it even more. I stopped ordering anything from them and, if anything, this has actually improved my consumer experience. Most stuff you can buy on Amazon these days is the same garbage that is sold on Wish but you pay ~25-50% more for it to come within a couple of days. Not shopping at either has definitely raised the average life span and quality of goods in my household. Now I only wish I could find a way to move all our infrastructure off AWS...
- jtdev 6y ago
  I've made the same changes in recent months and agree that it's improved my consumer experience significantly. I didn't realize just how much time and energy I was spending sorting through cheap Chinese made junk and counterfeit garbage on Amazon trying to find quality products. In terms of cloud providers: the major three (Azure, GCloud, AWS) seem to be cut from the same cloth... maybe IBM or Oracle cloud are better options (I don't have any experience with either, but both companies obviously have skeleton filled closets)?
  - Zelphyr 6y ago
    IBM’s cloud platform is laughably bad. Avoid at all costs!
  - _huayra_ 6y ago
    Well at least one of the latter definitely has skeletons... [0] But in all seriousness, Oracle at least has very good free tier to get started. You basically get two free okay-provisioned VMs (lite on the CPU to say the least, but mem and desk okay). Very good for self-hosted your own stuff for free! [0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/black-ibm.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bl...
    - mindslight 6y ago
      Oracle's administration interface is horrible. It's an obtuse nonsensical hierarchy, probably specified by someone non-technical writing a requirements document in a vacuum. It'll take you an afternoon to figure out how to get your instances set up, upload your initial image etc. Also your instances will always be behind NAT (having internal IPs), which is odd. Its redeeming feature is having a free tier that isn't Google. The problem with using Google's cloud is that if someone hacks your account and runs up infinite charges as a personal user, you can't file a credit card dispute without disrupting your entire relationship with Google. The cloud market still has healthy competition - eg Linode, DigitalOcean, Vultr, and innumerable smaller companies. Patronize them, rather heading than to a different behemoth.
spaetzleesser 6y ago
Stuff like this always comes to mind when the media celebrates the richest people in the world. This often comes at the expense of low level employees who do dangerous and underpaid work so a few guys can become very rich. And the worse they treat these employees the more the rich guys get celebrated. That’s why the slogan “run the government like a business” doesn’t work. It would mean to ignore the weakest in society (maybe lay them off?) for the benefit of a few at the top.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  > who do dangerous and underpaid work so a few guys can become very rich If it's underpaid, why do it? If you do it, what makes it "under" paid? By taking the job, you confirm the wage is right.
  - comrh 6y ago
    This naively assumes the person has a choice of other opportunities and that the those other jobs aren't also underpaid.
    - jjmarinho 6y ago
      If ALL jobs around you are underpaid, maybe it's your work that is not as valuable as you think. I'm not saying this is fair.
      - croes 6y ago
        Or there is a big imbalance of power.
  - charlesu 6y ago
    Because the alternative is to starve? You can take advantage of people when they’re in dire straits. That’s not indicative of some greater truth about the price of labor but a fact of exploitation.
    - 6y ago
jdasdf 6y ago
I don't get it, why do workers need to vote in order to start/join a union? Why would the company care if they do join a union? Can't they simply refuse to negotiate with the union?
- andyjohnson0 6y ago
  "Your Right to Form a Union "Not represented by a union, but want to be? If a majority of workers wants to form a union, they can select a union in one of two ways: If at least 30% of workers sign cards or a petition saying they want a union, the NLRB will conduct an election. If a majority of those who vote choose the union, the NLRB will certify the union as your representative for collective bargaining. An election is not the only way a union can become your representative. Your employer may voluntarily recognize a union based on evidence - typically signed union-authorization cards - that a majority of employees want it to represent them. Once a union has been certified or recognized, the employer is required to bargain over your terms and conditions of employment with your union representative. Special rules apply in the construction industry." https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/whats-law https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/whats-law That's in the US obviously.
  - jdasdf 6y ago
    > Once a union has been certified or recognized, the employer is required to bargain over your terms and conditions of employment with your union representative. Oh. So once again bad laws cause the whole problem...
    - cratermoon 6y ago
      Those same "bad laws" are why you have a 5-day work week, your retirement plan, overtime (if you are hourly), safe working conditions, sick leave. The list goes on. If you think you'd like to go back before the time when unions didn't exist, let me direct you to the work of photographer Lewis Hine
      - 6y ago
pibechorro 6y ago
Good. Unions ultimately get entangled with regulators and its harmful for everyone. Look no further than public school teachers, getting paid, refuse to work. Meanwhile private school teachers have been working.. if you hate working at Amazon, quit.
- dybber 6y ago
  Your experience with unions seems very limited, please read about unions in countries where the system isn't broken.
  - andrew_ 6y ago
    Unfortunately we're discussing unions forming in a country where there are a lot of issues with dysfunctional unions, and some less than stellar, high-profile history. It will be impossible to dismiss that when having the discussion when the context is within the United States.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Which is really sad, given that it was one of the countries that it was on their genesis.
  - BitwiseFool 6y ago
    The challenge I have with looking at unions in countries that 'do it right', so to speak, is that the union Amazon employees are looking to make will end up being an American-style union.
    - busterarm 6y ago
      It's telling that when shown overwhelmingly that private-sector unions in America are hopelessly broken and corrupt that the only solution the pro-union folks have for the problem is "more unionization". I've been in three different unions and would never "join" one again [my participation was mandatory for the job in each case] and would change careers if my field unionized significantly. I remember a local news story once where a baker at a local grocery store was caught on film urinating in the cake batter for the store's cakes. His termination was fought, successfully, by the union for violating rules they'd negotiated around filming. That's not a win for anyone.
andrew_ 6y ago
What I don't see mentioned in the article are right-to-work states. While still effective to a degree, unions tend to have much less bite in these states. I'm left to wonder if Amazon would have the heft/ability to simply relocate all manual labor to states with right-to-work as law, or if that kind of move would be outside of union-busting laws.
- cratermoon 6y ago
  > simply relocate all manual labor to states with right-to-work as law You can't really relocate warehouses and shipping centers without throwing a wrench in the logistics of the supply chain, especially if you are in the next-day delivery business.
  - andrew_ 6y ago
    I've worked several years in the logistics sector and watched as that happened several times during inclement weather cycles. The logistics supply chain is much more nimble than you might think.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      That works for emergency/temporary logistics where you can temporarily absorb the increased costs as part of doing business. For national logistics, limiting your warehouses to right-to-work states will increase costs so dramatically you would save money dealing with unions.
- cestith 6y ago
  Alabama is a right to work state. Amazon is telling people at the Bessemer warehouse that they could be forced to pay union dues whether or not they join the union, which is not true under Alabama law.
  - Shivetya 6y ago
    However the US Congress is pushing the PRO Act which will basically force you to join any union and it actually forbids right to work laws. It will even permit unions marching against related businesses as a means to intimidate others; in others say your supplier has issues well they can then march on you and vica versa. Welcome to the pay off for the election
pjmlp 6y ago
Fortunely crushing unions is not a legal in many countries. As for everyone that gives money to Amazon, and praises their FOSS offerings, this is what evil companies do in practice.
- capableweb 6y ago
  > Fortunely crushing unions is not a legal in many countries. Unfortunately, some companies like Amazon seems to simply include "break labor laws" on their balance statements in the end of the year, as they keep breaking the laws in order to save short-term costs.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    That only works as long as no one reports them to the respective goverment departments.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      And if you've grown so big that there will be one or two reports every month, make sure you lobby the right people in the government departments.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Not all countries have the same corruption level.
    - jfengel 6y ago
      It works great if the departments don't have a lot of power to stop it. Even if Amazon gets hit with a fine for anti-union behavior, it would be a pittance to their budget, and almost certainly come too late.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Depends on the country.
HenryBemis 6y ago
From the article, the link to the image/"Notice": https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/03/03/business/00amazon-union2/00amazon-union2-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/03/03/business/00amazon... I don't know who signed it (I can read the name "Belinda").. whoever signed it though must have felt a great amount of shame for representing that company.
ArkanExplorer 6y ago
https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21228324/amazon-whole-foods-unionization-heat-map-union https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21228324/amazon-whole-foo... "a “diversity index” represents the racial and ethnic diversity of every store. Stores at higher risk of unionizing have lower diversity"
- Invictus0 6y ago
  Wow, that is wild. Truly divide (on racial boundaries) and conquer.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
elisbce 6y ago
Like the unions didn't already destroy America's auto industry. Now they want to do the same to the tech industry. Supervisors can't talk directly with union workers, they have to go through unions first. Who on earth think this is a good idea? It kills productivity and I'm not even talking about the foreseeable protests down the road. Unions don't work in tech business where you need to break rules and move fast. It kills the big corporations in a few years and subsequently kills the entire job market that it was meant to protect. Ask the residents in Detroit. Now they have no jobs, or jobs with half of the pay before. Happy now?
- capableweb 6y ago
  > where you need to break rules and move fast Dude, we tried this. Now people in the US can't have reasonable arguments in public without wanting to kill one another. People somehow gets "cancelled" now, because some 20s-something wanted to "move fast" without thinking of the consequences. Maybe it's time we try "slow and steady" and see if the world actually ends up more equal and diverse, instead of the opposite, which is the direction we're heading now. And for the record, if unions hadn't existed, you'd still be slaving away 6 days a week (minimum), 10 hours a day, your children would be working instead of going to school and everything labor related would certainly have been worse. Worth considering since you seem to hold the opinion that "all unions are bad" just because the US is shitty at creating and maintaining unions.
  - PoignardAzur 6y ago
    > Dude, we tried this. Now people in the US can't have reasonable arguments in public without wanting to kill one another. Best answer. (don't think unions would have changed anything on that point though)
  - skynet-9000 6y ago
    > if unions hadn't existed, you'd still be slaving away 6 days a week (minimum), 10 hours a day, your children would be working instead of going to school and everything labor related would certainly have been worse. This is not historically accurate. For example, Henry Ford actually increased wages (without worrying about unions, and he had literal enforcers to bully people.) He claimed to be doing it for altruistic reasons, and so that workers in his plants could afford a Ford, but the real reason was because he had to, because people could choose to work elsewhere, even if they had to move. Also, he attracted people from other cities and states to move to Dearborn. This is the real antidote to union-busting and union-towns. Any job that basically needs a person can always be paid minimally, but multiple employers have to compete for that person; perhaps an alternative job is far away, but mobile people will always be worth more because their market is larger. It was a bit different 150 years ago during the Industrial Revolution, because of information asymmetry and the cost of relocation. So why form a union? Just get a better job from an employer that literally values you more. It's not like these companies don't exist.
gavin_gee 6y ago
For any business running at scale, this is a math problem. if the cost of human labor rises, more investment will be made to remove humans from the process and replace them with technology. Amazon was one of the great employers through Coronavirus. Perhaps people should think one step ahead.
- sand_castles 6y ago
  why not replace landlords instead of workers ?
- munificent 6y ago
  Thinking one step ahead is a luxury afforded to people whose current step has them safe, healthy, and able to put food on the table.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
EliRivers 6y ago
Mr. Hough (pronounced Huff) was in a hospital having knee surgery when Amazon called and said he had used up his medical leave. This. WTF. I hear this sort of thing and it's always a surprise, no matter how many times I hear it. Like that bullshit about being allocated a certain number of sick days. Like they're basically holiday days, but you can only use them when you're sick. I guess this then means that if you're sick, you're more likely to lose your job and as a bonus in the fucked up nightmare I'm describing, lose your employer-provided access to healthcare. It's like someone set out to deliberately create a system where minor misfortunes amplify to life-ruining catastrophe; instead of a system that catches people, a system that does just the opposite.
ipsocannibal 6y ago
The union drive Amazon is truely scared of is not of warehouse workers, its of their very hard to replace, highly skilled tech workers. FC workers are on the path to elimination through reliance on robotics. The last steps to full automation, automating picking and packing, are being chipped away by new boxing machines for example. Amazon currently estimates it could have the tech to fully automate all FC's in about 10 years. However, Amazon knows that if FC workers can beat them then other groups are soon to follow, groups with much more education, resources, political connections, and leverage. This is why they fired Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa over their tweats. They needed to show tech workers that if you publically support FC workers in their drive for better working conditions you will be fired. If you want to really bring Amazon to heel then unionize the tech workers. Refs: 1. https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-reportedly-uses-boxing-machines-to-replace-people/ https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-reportedly-uses-boxing-mach... 2. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-warehouse-idUSKCN1S74B9 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-warehouse-idUS... 3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/13/amazon-workers-fired/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/13/amazon-...

230 points by alexrustic 6y ago

Missing “How” from title

> Amazon managers openly warned recruits that if they liked things comfortable, this would be a difficult, perhaps impossible, job. For customer service representatives, it was difficult to keep up, according to media accounts and labor organizers. Overtime was mandatory. Supervisors sent emails with subject headings like “YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD.” Umm, yikes.

pc86 6y ago
Imagine being in a position where you have to choose between putting up with this hostile bullshit or going hungry/evicted. Most of us here could tell our bosses to f off and either have enough savings for months (or even years), or at the very least get another job within weeks or days. Even having grown up lower-middle class with zero, often negative, extra money, going years without vacation, etc., it's hard to wrap my head around being forced to deal with abusive supervisors and coworkers because the alternative might be homelessness within weeks.
- klaudius 6y ago
  How does someone get into that position? Are public schools so bad that people come out with no marketable unique skills that would give them natural job security?
  - charlesu 6y ago
    What jobs have natural job security? Either you’re protected by a union, a professional association, or having a rare and valuable skill set. The unions have been busted, professional associations are exclusive by their nature and most people definitionally do not have rare and marketable skills. As a result, an increasingly large fraction of jobs are gig work, part-time, or on contract. That includes work in law and software engineering. Precarity is the natural state of an unregulated, de-unionized job market and it is not a bug but a feature. It has little to do with our public schools.
  - NoThisIsMe 6y ago
    Massive deindustrialization is a huge part of it in the US. There aren't many decent blue collar jobs anymore.
  - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
    Unique skills are rare by definition.
    - mminer237 6y ago
      Each individual skill may be rare, but given how many thousands of different skills there are, the trait of having some rare skill should be common.
      - hntrader 6y ago
        But that doesn't mean that it's going to be valued by the market. If it's not valued by the market, the fact that it's rare doesn't help you. For a high market price, you need the intersection of a scarce skill (low-supply in labor market) that provides value to other people (high-demand in the labor market). Being a good software engineer is an example - low-supply and high-demand, therefore high wage/salary.
  - anonuser123456 6y ago
    > Are public schools so bad that people come out with no marketable unique skills that would give them natural job security? Yes, but that's not the only issue. Some people are incapable of managing their own affairs. Showing up to work on time, not drunk is not in their personal capacity. It's not really their fault; we are not the authors of our neurobiology.
    - pc86 6y ago
      There are plenty of alcoholics who can show up to work and wait until afterwards to get drunk. There is a certain level of choice to being so egregious about it that you reek of whisky at a meeting, even if that choice is just saying "f it."
      - anonuser123456 6y ago
        Choice is an illusion, a story our brain tells itself to feel better about the reality our consciousness is largely just a witness too.
- capableweb 6y ago
  > Imagine being in a position where you have to choose between putting up with this hostile bullshit or going hungry/evicted. Yes, this is exactly why we got the idea of unions in the first place. Without unions we would still be forced to work at least 6 days a week, and many more drawbacks. The list is huge of what unions have given us (in Europe at least).
hinkley 6y ago
Coworker who lasted two weeks at Amazon before quitting, “I saw a poster that read, ‘You can work, smarter, harder, or longer, but you can’t pick just two.’” When they called to find out why he wasn’t at work on Sunday, and told him they don’t usually give stock grants to people with such a limited investment in the company, that was the end of it. If you’ve ever been in the parts of Seattle they’re in, they tend to take up the whole sidewalk. Different coworker called them Amholes. After working a contract there I figured out it isn’t because those people have huge egos. It’s because they’re zombies. Surprised more of them don’t get hit by cars.
reaperducer 6y ago
Supervisors sent emails with subject headings like “YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD.” This is what happens when the Silicon Valley startup festishists end up in charge in the real world.

blinding-streak 6y ago

For reference, Amazon's anti-union site: https://www.doitwithoutdues.com/ https://www.doitwithoutdues.com/

andyjohnson0 6y ago
Built and hosted on squarespace. Noted.
throwaway53453 6y ago
I have to say, I'm kind of creeped out by union dues. It just feels less about workers helping themselves and more like some workers creating a new power structure and job roles that they can enjoy.
- user-the-name 6y ago
  And your suggested way to operate an organisation without money is...?
- hasmolo 6y ago
  without the power afforded by money to the union, it cannot stand up to the company. the dues are functionally an insurance payment for security in your job. this comment is similar to saying: i'm kinda creeped out by car insurance payments. it just feels less about protecting other drivers and more about enriching the insurance companies. you are right that it does create a new power structure and job roles, that's the point of it! the money you pay is also part of the strike pay you'd get back.
  - musingsole 6y ago
    > i'm kinda creeped out by car insurance payments. it just feels less about protecting other drivers and more about enriching the insurance companies. Yeah, me too! And health and homeowners insurance while we're at it. All systems seemingly meant to exploit statistics for the betterment of us all...and yet the 20 most expensive homes in my city growing up were owned by insurance execs... What an oddity!

tootie 6y ago

Not to excuse Amazon or anything, but absolutely every company in America does this. Most of them don't bother with subterfuge though and just go with threats or firings. And one of our main political parties is vehemently anti-union and keeps winning elections.

rob74 6y ago
Yeah, it may be par for the course for your average American company, but it's exceptional for tech companies - then again, most tech companies don't have as many high-supply-low-demand jobs as Amazon (or they "outsource" them, like Uber).
barbazoo 6y ago
Obviously not "absolutely every company in America does this", this sounds like an attempt to normalize it.
glasss 6y ago
I know a few small business owners that have said if their staff unionized they would just close the business. These aren't bad bosses or people who don't know how to run a business. They just know if their staff unionized and the rest of their industry didn't, they wouldn't be able to compete on price or keep the necessary number of staff. I think it's easier to pick on Amazon or bezos than it is to deal with the political forces that you've mentioned, or come to terms with needing to unionizing a whole industry before it would stop hurting small businesses.
- TurningCanadian 6y ago
  It's in the union's interest to keep the company alive too.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    But then what is its purpose? Management has no reason to oppose changes that cost them nothing with or without a union. In an industry with thin margins, anything that does cost them money puts them out of business. Meanwhile a union that can't achieve meaningful concessions is collecting dues for no benefit, requiring the company to pay more to retain talent and thereby putting them out of business just by existing.

peer2pay 6y ago

I hate Amazon and stories like this make me hate it even more. I stopped ordering anything from them and, if anything, this has actually improved my consumer experience. Most stuff you can buy on Amazon these days is the same garbage that is sold on Wish but you pay ~25-50% more for it to come within a couple of days. Not shopping at either has definitely raised the average life span and quality of goods in my household. Now I only wish I could find a way to move all our infrastructure off AWS...

jtdev 6y ago
I've made the same changes in recent months and agree that it's improved my consumer experience significantly. I didn't realize just how much time and energy I was spending sorting through cheap Chinese made junk and counterfeit garbage on Amazon trying to find quality products. In terms of cloud providers: the major three (Azure, GCloud, AWS) seem to be cut from the same cloth... maybe IBM or Oracle cloud are better options (I don't have any experience with either, but both companies obviously have skeleton filled closets)?
- Zelphyr 6y ago
  IBM’s cloud platform is laughably bad. Avoid at all costs!
- _huayra_ 6y ago
  Well at least one of the latter definitely has skeletons... [0] But in all seriousness, Oracle at least has very good free tier to get started. You basically get two free okay-provisioned VMs (lite on the CPU to say the least, but mem and desk okay). Very good for self-hosted your own stuff for free! [0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/black-ibm.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bl...
  - mindslight 6y ago
    Oracle's administration interface is horrible. It's an obtuse nonsensical hierarchy, probably specified by someone non-technical writing a requirements document in a vacuum. It'll take you an afternoon to figure out how to get your instances set up, upload your initial image etc. Also your instances will always be behind NAT (having internal IPs), which is odd. Its redeeming feature is having a free tier that isn't Google. The problem with using Google's cloud is that if someone hacks your account and runs up infinite charges as a personal user, you can't file a credit card dispute without disrupting your entire relationship with Google. The cloud market still has healthy competition - eg Linode, DigitalOcean, Vultr, and innumerable smaller companies. Patronize them, rather heading than to a different behemoth.

spaetzleesser 6y ago

Stuff like this always comes to mind when the media celebrates the richest people in the world. This often comes at the expense of low level employees who do dangerous and underpaid work so a few guys can become very rich. And the worse they treat these employees the more the rich guys get celebrated. That’s why the slogan “run the government like a business” doesn’t work. It would mean to ignore the weakest in society (maybe lay them off?) for the benefit of a few at the top.

Chris2048 6y ago
> who do dangerous and underpaid work so a few guys can become very rich If it's underpaid, why do it? If you do it, what makes it "under" paid? By taking the job, you confirm the wage is right.
- comrh 6y ago
  This naively assumes the person has a choice of other opportunities and that the those other jobs aren't also underpaid.
  - jjmarinho 6y ago
    If ALL jobs around you are underpaid, maybe it's your work that is not as valuable as you think. I'm not saying this is fair.
    - croes 6y ago
      Or there is a big imbalance of power.
- charlesu 6y ago
  Because the alternative is to starve? You can take advantage of people when they’re in dire straits. That’s not indicative of some greater truth about the price of labor but a fact of exploitation.
  - 6y ago

jdasdf 6y ago

I don't get it, why do workers need to vote in order to start/join a union? Why would the company care if they do join a union? Can't they simply refuse to negotiate with the union?

andyjohnson0 6y ago
"Your Right to Form a Union "Not represented by a union, but want to be? If a majority of workers wants to form a union, they can select a union in one of two ways: If at least 30% of workers sign cards or a petition saying they want a union, the NLRB will conduct an election. If a majority of those who vote choose the union, the NLRB will certify the union as your representative for collective bargaining. An election is not the only way a union can become your representative. Your employer may voluntarily recognize a union based on evidence - typically signed union-authorization cards - that a majority of employees want it to represent them. Once a union has been certified or recognized, the employer is required to bargain over your terms and conditions of employment with your union representative. Special rules apply in the construction industry." https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/whats-law https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/whats-law That's in the US obviously.
- jdasdf 6y ago
  > Once a union has been certified or recognized, the employer is required to bargain over your terms and conditions of employment with your union representative. Oh. So once again bad laws cause the whole problem...
  - cratermoon 6y ago
    Those same "bad laws" are why you have a 5-day work week, your retirement plan, overtime (if you are hourly), safe working conditions, sick leave. The list goes on. If you think you'd like to go back before the time when unions didn't exist, let me direct you to the work of photographer Lewis Hine
    - 6y ago

pibechorro 6y ago

Good. Unions ultimately get entangled with regulators and its harmful for everyone. Look no further than public school teachers, getting paid, refuse to work. Meanwhile private school teachers have been working.. if you hate working at Amazon, quit.

dybber 6y ago
Your experience with unions seems very limited, please read about unions in countries where the system isn't broken.
- andrew_ 6y ago
  Unfortunately we're discussing unions forming in a country where there are a lot of issues with dysfunctional unions, and some less than stellar, high-profile history. It will be impossible to dismiss that when having the discussion when the context is within the United States.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Which is really sad, given that it was one of the countries that it was on their genesis.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  The challenge I have with looking at unions in countries that 'do it right', so to speak, is that the union Amazon employees are looking to make will end up being an American-style union.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    It's telling that when shown overwhelmingly that private-sector unions in America are hopelessly broken and corrupt that the only solution the pro-union folks have for the problem is "more unionization". I've been in three different unions and would never "join" one again [my participation was mandatory for the job in each case] and would change careers if my field unionized significantly. I remember a local news story once where a baker at a local grocery store was caught on film urinating in the cake batter for the store's cakes. His termination was fought, successfully, by the union for violating rules they'd negotiated around filming. That's not a win for anyone.

andrew_ 6y ago

What I don't see mentioned in the article are right-to-work states. While still effective to a degree, unions tend to have much less bite in these states. I'm left to wonder if Amazon would have the heft/ability to simply relocate all manual labor to states with right-to-work as law, or if that kind of move would be outside of union-busting laws.

cratermoon 6y ago
> simply relocate all manual labor to states with right-to-work as law You can't really relocate warehouses and shipping centers without throwing a wrench in the logistics of the supply chain, especially if you are in the next-day delivery business.
- andrew_ 6y ago
  I've worked several years in the logistics sector and watched as that happened several times during inclement weather cycles. The logistics supply chain is much more nimble than you might think.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    That works for emergency/temporary logistics where you can temporarily absorb the increased costs as part of doing business. For national logistics, limiting your warehouses to right-to-work states will increase costs so dramatically you would save money dealing with unions.
cestith 6y ago
Alabama is a right to work state. Amazon is telling people at the Bessemer warehouse that they could be forced to pay union dues whether or not they join the union, which is not true under Alabama law.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  However the US Congress is pushing the PRO Act which will basically force you to join any union and it actually forbids right to work laws. It will even permit unions marching against related businesses as a means to intimidate others; in others say your supplier has issues well they can then march on you and vica versa. Welcome to the pay off for the election

pjmlp 6y ago

Fortunely crushing unions is not a legal in many countries. As for everyone that gives money to Amazon, and praises their FOSS offerings, this is what evil companies do in practice.

capableweb 6y ago
> Fortunely crushing unions is not a legal in many countries. Unfortunately, some companies like Amazon seems to simply include "break labor laws" on their balance statements in the end of the year, as they keep breaking the laws in order to save short-term costs.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  That only works as long as no one reports them to the respective goverment departments.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    And if you've grown so big that there will be one or two reports every month, make sure you lobby the right people in the government departments.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Not all countries have the same corruption level.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    It works great if the departments don't have a lot of power to stop it. Even if Amazon gets hit with a fine for anti-union behavior, it would be a pittance to their budget, and almost certainly come too late.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Depends on the country.

HenryBemis 6y ago

From the article, the link to the image/"Notice": https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/03/03/business/00amazon-union2/00amazon-union2-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/03/03/business/00amazon... I don't know who signed it (I can read the name "Belinda").. whoever signed it though must have felt a great amount of shame for representing that company.

ArkanExplorer 6y ago

https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21228324/amazon-whole-foods-unionization-heat-map-union https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21228324/amazon-whole-foo... "a “diversity index” represents the racial and ethnic diversity of every store. Stores at higher risk of unionizing have lower diversity"

Invictus0 6y ago
Wow, that is wild. Truly divide (on racial boundaries) and conquer.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

elisbce 6y ago

Like the unions didn't already destroy America's auto industry. Now they want to do the same to the tech industry. Supervisors can't talk directly with union workers, they have to go through unions first. Who on earth think this is a good idea? It kills productivity and I'm not even talking about the foreseeable protests down the road. Unions don't work in tech business where you need to break rules and move fast. It kills the big corporations in a few years and subsequently kills the entire job market that it was meant to protect. Ask the residents in Detroit. Now they have no jobs, or jobs with half of the pay before. Happy now?

capableweb 6y ago
> where you need to break rules and move fast Dude, we tried this. Now people in the US can't have reasonable arguments in public without wanting to kill one another. People somehow gets "cancelled" now, because some 20s-something wanted to "move fast" without thinking of the consequences. Maybe it's time we try "slow and steady" and see if the world actually ends up more equal and diverse, instead of the opposite, which is the direction we're heading now. And for the record, if unions hadn't existed, you'd still be slaving away 6 days a week (minimum), 10 hours a day, your children would be working instead of going to school and everything labor related would certainly have been worse. Worth considering since you seem to hold the opinion that "all unions are bad" just because the US is shitty at creating and maintaining unions.
- PoignardAzur 6y ago
  > Dude, we tried this. Now people in the US can't have reasonable arguments in public without wanting to kill one another. Best answer. (don't think unions would have changed anything on that point though)
- skynet-9000 6y ago
  > if unions hadn't existed, you'd still be slaving away 6 days a week (minimum), 10 hours a day, your children would be working instead of going to school and everything labor related would certainly have been worse. This is not historically accurate. For example, Henry Ford actually increased wages (without worrying about unions, and he had literal enforcers to bully people.) He claimed to be doing it for altruistic reasons, and so that workers in his plants could afford a Ford, but the real reason was because he had to, because people could choose to work elsewhere, even if they had to move. Also, he attracted people from other cities and states to move to Dearborn. This is the real antidote to union-busting and union-towns. Any job that basically needs a person can always be paid minimally, but multiple employers have to compete for that person; perhaps an alternative job is far away, but mobile people will always be worth more because their market is larger. It was a bit different 150 years ago during the Industrial Revolution, because of information asymmetry and the cost of relocation. So why form a union? Just get a better job from an employer that literally values you more. It's not like these companies don't exist.

gavin_gee 6y ago

For any business running at scale, this is a math problem. if the cost of human labor rises, more investment will be made to remove humans from the process and replace them with technology. Amazon was one of the great employers through Coronavirus. Perhaps people should think one step ahead.

sand_castles 6y ago
why not replace landlords instead of workers ?
munificent 6y ago
Thinking one step ahead is a luxury afforded to people whose current step has them safe, healthy, and able to put food on the table.

deleted 6y ago

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EliRivers 6y ago

Mr. Hough (pronounced Huff) was in a hospital having knee surgery when Amazon called and said he had used up his medical leave. This. WTF. I hear this sort of thing and it's always a surprise, no matter how many times I hear it. Like that bullshit about being allocated a certain number of sick days. Like they're basically holiday days, but you can only use them when you're sick. I guess this then means that if you're sick, you're more likely to lose your job and as a bonus in the fucked up nightmare I'm describing, lose your employer-provided access to healthcare. It's like someone set out to deliberately create a system where minor misfortunes amplify to life-ruining catastrophe; instead of a system that catches people, a system that does just the opposite.

ipsocannibal 6y ago

The union drive Amazon is truely scared of is not of warehouse workers, its of their very hard to replace, highly skilled tech workers. FC workers are on the path to elimination through reliance on robotics. The last steps to full automation, automating picking and packing, are being chipped away by new boxing machines for example. Amazon currently estimates it could have the tech to fully automate all FC's in about 10 years. However, Amazon knows that if FC workers can beat them then other groups are soon to follow, groups with much more education, resources, political connections, and leverage. This is why they fired Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa over their tweats. They needed to show tech workers that if you publically support FC workers in their drive for better working conditions you will be fired. If you want to really bring Amazon to heel then unionize the tech workers. Refs: 1. https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-reportedly-uses-boxing-machines-to-replace-people/ https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-reportedly-uses-boxing-mach... 2. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-warehouse-idUSKCN1S74B9 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-warehouse-idUS... 3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/13/amazon-workers-fired/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/13/amazon-...