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Would the labor board have provided such a convenient ruling if it were right leaning political activists masquerading as employees fighting for employee rights

Would the labor board have provided such a convenient ruling if it were right leaning political activists masquerading as employees fighting for employee rights? For that matter why are the actions of political activists protected at all? From past discussions on HN, my recollection is that these two were not fighting for labor rights or wages or conditions. They were climate change activists that would spam employees with political activist content unrelated to work. Big tech companies are already very much taken over by left leaning ideology, and forcing companies to allow such employee activism seems highly inappropriate and bad for society.

GavinMcG 6y ago
The labor board may well have done nothing if Amazon had fired them for activism. But they fired them once they did start bringing up labor issues: > Amazon has fired two employees and asked a third not to return to work, after the group organized a virtual event for warehouse employees to speak to tech workers at the company about its workplace conditions and coronavirus response. > The two employees who were fired on Friday, Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham, had in late March circulated a petition on internal email lists that called on Amazon to expand sick leave, hazard pay and child care for warehouse workers. The petition also asked Amazon to temporarily shut down facilities where workers were confirmed to have the virus so the facilities could be sterilized. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/business/stock-market-covid-coronavirus.html#link-b8bac86 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/business/stock-market-cov...
- thu2111 6y ago
  Yeah but that's pretty meaningless, because left wing activists have figured out that there's no specific requirements on what a union is meant to achieve, therefore literally any activism can be connected to "agitating to form a union" in some vague way and instantly become not only legally protected, but will rope in government agencies that are themselves captured by left wing activists. This is how you get stuff like Kickstarter being "unionized" to force management to keep online violent anti-conservative campaigns that were violating the ToS. It's got nothing to do with conventional labor protection of the sort unions were historically meant for. The only similarity is that it's about capturing institutions from the inside to take them over without having to actually buy the firm or get into management directly, except you don't even have to strike or win an employee vote. You just make yourself unfireable and spend 100% of your work time on self-aggrandizing political activism. If this stuff keeps up the already bad reputation of unions in the USA will get drastically worse, as they won't even have the classical workers rights arguments to fall back on.
  - GavinMcG 6y ago
    What are you on about? Pay, benefits, and safety are core workplace concerns. There's no roping-in going on: Amazon fired them once they began bringing up labor issues.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      There's a discussion elsewhere in this thread about how they were engaged primarily in climate change related activism.
      - GavinMcG 6y ago
        Which Amazon didn't fire them for.

GavinMcG 6y ago

The labor board may well have done nothing if Amazon had fired them for activism. But they fired them once they did start bringing up labor issues: > Amazon has fired two employees and asked a third not to return to work, after the group organized a virtual event for warehouse employees to speak to tech workers at the company about its workplace conditions and coronavirus response. > The two employees who were fired on Friday, Maren Costa and Emily Cunningham, had in late March circulated a petition on internal email lists that called on Amazon to expand sick leave, hazard pay and child care for warehouse workers. The petition also asked Amazon to temporarily shut down facilities where workers were confirmed to have the virus so the facilities could be sterilized. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/business/stock-market-covid-coronavirus.html#link-b8bac86 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/business/stock-market-cov...

thu2111 6y ago
Yeah but that's pretty meaningless, because left wing activists have figured out that there's no specific requirements on what a union is meant to achieve, therefore literally any activism can be connected to "agitating to form a union" in some vague way and instantly become not only legally protected, but will rope in government agencies that are themselves captured by left wing activists. This is how you get stuff like Kickstarter being "unionized" to force management to keep online violent anti-conservative campaigns that were violating the ToS. It's got nothing to do with conventional labor protection of the sort unions were historically meant for. The only similarity is that it's about capturing institutions from the inside to take them over without having to actually buy the firm or get into management directly, except you don't even have to strike or win an employee vote. You just make yourself unfireable and spend 100% of your work time on self-aggrandizing political activism. If this stuff keeps up the already bad reputation of unions in the USA will get drastically worse, as they won't even have the classical workers rights arguments to fall back on.
- GavinMcG 6y ago
  What are you on about? Pay, benefits, and safety are core workplace concerns. There's no roping-in going on: Amazon fired them once they began bringing up labor issues.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    There's a discussion elsewhere in this thread about how they were engaged primarily in climate change related activism.
    - GavinMcG 6y ago
      Which Amazon didn't fire them for.