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Amazon loses effort to install camera to watch counting of ballots in union vote
- dzonga 6y agoone of those times, you wish every working man knew what efforts are made into bursting unions. And then reflect internally, are unions bad for a company to put in such an effort to keep their works unorganized. once unions disappeared in america, the working man lost wages, political representation and so on.
- lnanek2 6y ago> once unions disappeared in america, the working man lost wages I've worked the same role in union shops and non-union before. Non-union paid more and had less deadbeat co-workers to navigate around. Depends on your profession and skills, honestly. Probably a benefit for amazon pick and drop workers. Really sucks at mixed union and non-union tech companies, though. At my current company programmers aren't even allowed to move our own computer between desks because only union people are allowed to do that, and getting the union people to do it will take over a week and be done at an inconvenient time interrupting work.
- babelfish 6y agoAt non-union shops it's not like you can move your desk wherever you want either, most offices without hot desks have a floor plan and an office manager who all seating changes go through. Don't blame the union for that.
- bendbro 6y agoAnd this office is not an office with hot desks, and not every office even wants hot desks. The behavior of unions monopolizing a job type in a company is absolutely to blame.
- BitwiseFool 6y agoI'm pretty sure the OP is talking about how the Union requires that the equipment transfer is only done by a union employee. And, you'd get fined if you did it yourself. I don't think they're talking about the process being complicated, but rather that the union forcefully inserts itself into the process.
- asdff 6y agoI don't see that as an issue, I see that as a feature. What good is the union if a company can just remove union workers from the process in the name of "efficiency" or whatever metric increases profit at the expense of the employees? The other commenter complained it took a week to get a new desk. To me that's another great thing. That means the staff doing this sort of thing aren't over worked and have some agency to dictate their workload, and me as a worker would respect that system since I too benefit from this ability to collectively negotiate the terms of my job. Personally, I don't care if my company is running the most efficient operation, because usually that means overworking and underpaying your staff to do so.
- 1123581321 6y agoThe culture these policies create isn’t proactive and healthy. It’s hard to explain if you haven’t experienced it. It’s dismaying and demoralizing to see someone deliberately punt on their job for hours or days without trying to hide it, just because they can. It makes you want to work somewhere else before you turn into them.
- asdff 6y agoI've seen that behavior all the time in my work experience and I've never been in a union job. There are shitty, frusterating, lazy workers in every job at every level, from entry level to the C level, and plenty of them find a way to not get fired and keep skirting by. I don't think saying workers can be lazy in a union is a very compelling argument, especially considering the collective negotiating ability the union gives you that will just be gone if everyone was left to negotiate with management themselves. I've set to see an argument against a union that couldn't simply be pointed to a non union workplace just as well.
- cblackthornekc 6y ago> At my current company programmers aren't even allowed to move our own computer between desks because only union people are allowed to do that This is also likely an insurance limitation as well. Where I work most employees are insured for basic injuries on site. Only those required to move equipment have the add on that they might move equipment weighing 50 lbs or more. So if I move a desk that weighs 51 pounds and throw out my back, getting work to pay for it might be difficult because I should have gotten facilities to do it as they have the heavy weight add on.
- bluGill 6y agoThe network cable I want to plug into a open jack doesn't weight 50lbs though. I've worked in places where I need a union electrician to do that task though. Fortunately the union was cool in that location and just ignored my crawling under my desk, I'm told in other offices they were a lot more strict.
- cblackthornekc 6y agoI work in a secure facility, when not WFH due to the pandemic. Each jack is numbered, and my computer is tied to that number. If I plug into another jack, I won't connect. I have to get IT to move it for me because it requires them to make some changes to switches. We're not union, but have the same rules. It feels like you're trying to blame the union for pretty standard practices at established companies.
- labawi 6y agoDoes an electrician configure switches at your facility? I think this was a case where no reconfiguration was involved.
- lukewrites 6y agoI work in a non-union office and we also have the same policy. I don’t think this reflects it all upon unions.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jstanley 6y ago> are unions bad for a company to put in such an effort to keep their works unorganized. It's completely plausible that unions are bad for both employers and employees.
- simion314 6y agoOnly a good union example will invalidate your argument, maybe check history and find such a good example then attempt to reformulate some valid hypothesis or try something not that easy to disprove. While you try to find some bad example of unions and show us how they ruined some companies consider that I will respond with similar examples where the CEO and the board did even worse stuff - so maybe we skip the examples comments and we can conclude that there can be bad unions and bad CEOs (or board/whatever), the main difference is that one group controls a lot of money and can create a lot of PR to present the other group as evil.
- laurent92 6y ago> check history Classic. But historically, advances in wages and advantages tightly follow the economic curve: Employers increase wages when skills and economic development gets better. Not correlated with unionization, even when the union is here when the paper is signed and brandish it as a success (looking at you, Congé Payés in France in 1936, many companies were already doing it when the union gathered with the bosses to say “We do it”).
- simion314 6y agoI think you were manipulated with some examples, so let me know such example that you are thinking of, also try to fit your view with my examples: "miners union demand pay on time and safer conditions", "actors union demand safety", "teacher union demands a raise equal with inflation" . Your view is that this groups should wait until the free market will solve their issue? Many people here are comparing their programming job with someone that works an unskilled low paying job, this people can't individually demand things like "hey, put it in my contract that you will allow me 2 minutes toilet breaks, not 1 like the others, I am a 10X worker see my CV on GitHub"
- beaner 6y agoThis is exceptionally hilarious considering the Washington Post's (Bezos' paper) perspective on voter fraud this last presidential election.
- jaywalk 6y agoBut at least this time it fits with their fairly new "Democracy Dies in Darkness" tagline.
- jamesgreenleaf 6y agoThere are a number of ways you can read that tagline.
- _red 6y agoMaybe WP will run an article stating that workers from Walmart should be allowed to vote in their election...
- josefresco 6y ago> perspective on voter fraud What's their perspective exactly?
- beaner 6y agoThat even questioning whether it may be happening is itself a fascist assault on democracy.
- dheera 6y agoHonestly I don't understand why we can't have cameras installed at ALL voting-related facilities.
- stuaxo 6y agoIn this case Amazon would be seeing who was voting.
- ddoolin 6y agoIt's not secret apparently: > During this portion, the NLRB will read off each voter’s name and both sides will be allowed to contest ballots, likely based on factors such as whether an employee’s job title entitles them to vote or an illegible signature. Any contested ballots will be set aside.
- wavefunction 6y agoDoesn't sound like they know the actual vote though? At least how you've quoted the description. Just the name and title of the employee.
- ddoolin 6y agoFair, I hadn't considered that. It does seem like the actual vote should be private.
- hooande 6y agoif it isn't secret...why do they need cameras to watch the ballots? if all the votes and names will be read aloud, there's no way to cheat and change a vote
- opo 6y agoAccording to the article: >...Amazon had sought to place a video camera in the NLRB’s Birmingham office, where votes will be tabulated, to keep an eye on the ballot boxes in the off hours between counting, according to an NLRB order denying Amazon’s request. The camera feed would have been accessible by both Amazon and the RWDSU.
- ddoolin 6y agoDoesn't anyone have an idea of the likelihood of this passing?
- tyingq 6y agoI do enjoy the irony of Amazon being paranoid about a little box and what might be happening inside it.
- jl2718 6y agoImagine a world where cryptography doesn’t exist, so we have to trust volunteers to hand-count easily-forged pieces of paper.
- jayd16 6y agoCryptography won't help if you want a secret ballot.
- uncoder0 6y agoCouldn't you use something like monero but, I guess then you couldn't audit it.
- drdaeman 6y agoNot true, there's a lot of research into voting systems that provide both secrecy and various verifiabilities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy...
- throway98752343 6y agoA voting system where voters can prove which way they voted is vulnerable to coercion or retribution. The manager rounds up the workers and "suggests" they all compare how they voted. Those who voted "pro-company" will likely reveal their vote. So for everyone who refuses to reveal their vote, the manager checks a box next to their name on the attendance sheet. There may be a voting system that provides all the desired guarantees, but I doubt such a system is also easily understood and trusted by the average voter.
- kevinsundar 6y agoYou can partially defeat this by allowing people to change votes. Then everyone has something that "proves" they at some point voted pro-company but they could have changed it later.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoNo idea about the camera (there's lively discussion here about that already), but the other measures like sealing the ballot boxes and restricting/auditing access all sound like "make sure the results won't be contentious". It's totally in Amazon's interest (but also in the interest of anyone who wants a fair vote) to avoid any doubt/claims about tampering.
- bellyfullofbac 6y agoWell, from a strategic point of view, if you think you're on the losing side, wouldn't it make more sense to create doubts about the procedure? Then you can scream "Rigged election!"...
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoOn the company side? Not necessarily. Having a union "peacefully" is probably better than having a union while screaming about rigged elections, creating strife and chaos within your own company. Companies' union-busting attempts are often the best advertising a union can wish for.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> if you think you're on the losing side, wouldn't it make more sense to create doubts about the procedure? If you think you're on the winning side, you'd also want the results to be unimpeachable.
- dmwallin 6y agoThere's no such thing as perfect and unimpeachable and attempts to move the needle eventually have diminishing results and steadily increasing costs on the system. If you let a side push the definition of whats acceptable beyond what is a reasonable standard you make it increasingly likely the procedure will fail in some inconsequential way and give bad faith actors more ammunition to make unreasonable claims about the validity of the results.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoApparently the union and Amazon were both granted the ability to have four observers present during the counting. Amazon wanted wanted to watch the ballot box itself (not the votes or counts or ballots) during off hours so both parties can confirm that it wasn't tampered with. > Amazon had sought to place a video camera in the NLRB’s Birmingham office, where votes will be tabulated, to keep an eye on the ballot boxes in the off hours between counting, according to an NLRB order denying Amazon’s request. The camera feed would have been accessible by both Amazon and the RWDSU. That doesn't sound as nefarious as the headline suggests. In fact, it seems strange that the secure ballot box would be deliberately stored somewhere without security cameras.
- mschuster91 6y ago> In fact, it seems strange that the secure ballot box would be deliberately stored somewhere without security cameras. I've been a voting official a couple of times in Germany. Here, the ballot boxes (which are literal trash cans, just in a different color) get loaded with everything (ballots, tabulation aids, even the pencils) at the end of the day and sealed off, then over night left behind in the room where the election and counting happens (usually a school classroom), and at the beginning of the next day we verify the seals haven't been tampered with, unload the cans and continue counting.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoAmazon requested similar measures, including tamper-proof tape: > According to the motion, Amazon asked that the NLRB change or reset the security locks to the storage room’s door where the ballots will be held, provide Amazon and the RWDSU with an electronic or physical log of when the storage room door is opened during the counting process and use tamper proof tape on the ballot boxes or storage room door to “ensure no unauthorized access to the envelopes, ballot boxes, or storage room occurs.” These measures seem rather basic and in the interest of both sides, to be honest. It's strange that there's so much resistance.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
- WalterBright 6y agoThere must be a secure audit trail from the voter to the final tally. That's how public trust in the result is garnered.
- bluGill 6y agoThere have been cases in the past where someone did a vote for me or [some violent act that they were capable of following up on]. The audit trail needs to break someplace between the individual voter and the actual vote they cast. We still need a good trail to believe that all votes were counted correctly, only people who should vote voted, and nobody voted more than they were allowed. This is a hard problem.
- AdmiralAsshat 6y ago>During this portion, the NLRB will read off each voter’s name and both sides will be allowed to contest ballots, likely based on factors such as whether an employee’s job title entitles them to vote or an illegible signature. Any contested ballots will be set aside. What kind of job title would disqualify an employee from being allowed to vote to unionize?
- kmeisthax 6y agoPresumably being in management.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoThe union isn't a blanket union for all Amazon employees. It only covers about 5,800 employees who want to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). An AWS engineer casting a vote for the warehouse workers to unionize would be invalid, for example.
- tzs 6y agoEngineers in the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union seems absurd, but strange things like that can happen. For example, a lot of engineers in aerospace and defense (including software engineers) were members of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of American (UBC). That came about because when Howard Hughes built the Spruce Goose he hired a bunch of UBC labor. They only built one Spruce Goose, but as the company did other things, many of those workers stayed, and UBC continued to represent them. When Hughes started Hughes Aircraft, more workers turned to UBC to represent them. As late as 2000, Local 1553 of UBC was still representing all kinds of engineers at various companies that have arisen out of the various splits and mergers that the Hughes companies have been involved in. I don't know if that is still the case. There's something funny about satellites and missiles, which are about as far from wood-based projects as you can get, being built by people represented by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. But then there is "Japan developing wooden satellites to cut space junk" [1], so maybe it isn't so funny after all. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55463366 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55463366
- 6y ago
- BurningFrog 6y ago“The people who cast the votes decide nothing; the people who count the votes decide everything” --- Usually attributed to Joseph Stalin https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/stalin-vote-count-quote/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/stalin-vote-count-quote/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mariodiana 6y agoVoter fraud is rare. I think I read that in the Washington Post.
- mullingitover 6y agoThe right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation actually has an extensive database of voter fraud, and while they try to make a big deal about the number of cases that have been found, the unwritten fact is that the rate is infinitesimally low.
- tamaharbor 6y agoWhy is everyone against fair elections?
- KirbyTetro 6y agoI don't think everyone is, Georgia recently made an effort toward free and fair elections.
- throwawaysea 6y agoAmazon's request seems very reasonable. The NLRB is a union-favoring body - I can understand why Amazon may distrust the process, the participants, the overseers, etc. Both sides should want this process to be as secure as possible if we are to not end up in a state where we doubt the results. For this union vote and election in general, I simply do not accept arguments that there must be things just left up to chance (like voter ID or security of the ballot box). We should strive to make the process as bulletproof as possible. Having cameras, a log of when the storage room is opened, and tamper-proof tape seems like a very low bar to set and I am not sure why this request was not granted.
- tracker1 6y agoI hope that they manage to secure the union. I don't think that unions have a place a lot of times, that said, the imbalance of employers like Amazon seem out of step with what should be negotiation, and setting what at least appear to be unreasonable terms. Not to say that unions and employees can't overreach and overreact, in this case I hope they get things through. I also hope that Amazon doesn't close their local facilities as a result.
- qubex 6y agoUpon meta-consideration, I believe (but cannot prove, even subjectively) that it speaks volumes of the cumulative consultancy expertise Amazon has evidently hired to bear down upon this issue just how reasonable Amazon’s requests felt. Sure, the headline optics of the webcam are bad, but the other requests... what’s not to dislike about them? More careful security and anti-tampering measures, what’s not to like about that? Sure, it’s a bit onerous, but also, who wouldn’t be willing to pay that one-off onus in order to head off the prospects of a contentious result further down the line? And that’s the thing: I can’t quite answer my own implicit question. I’m pretty sure Amazon is really really upset about this, and they’re preparing to contest the legitimacy of the result, somehow? Is that what I’m getting the feeling of? I’m really not sure, but the whole request’s troughs and valleys strikes me as decidedly odd, and I feel strangely impinged-upon by it. Manipulated, even. EDIT: Several commenters have remarked below that it is actually a federal agency which conducts the election process. This is implied (or explicitly stated) to be FUD: Amazon preparing to discredit the election’s integrity by remarking that the unions hadn’t accepted their requests when it wasn’t the unions who could grant satisfaction of those requests (but rather, the appropriate governmental federal agency).