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The most important think is if Amazon workers want to unionize.
by disposekinetics 5y ago
The most important think is if Amazon workers want to unionize.
- fennecfoxen 5y agoWould that this were the most important thing in the Amazon unionization effort. We would maintain measures like an actual election with secret ballots — instead of card check, where the Teamsters can see if you've signed the card, and pressure you if you haven't. The Biden administration, I understand, wishes the return of card-check.
- disposekinetics 5y agoI totally agree. I support the theory behind unions, but the practices by employers and unions make me wish for less coercion all around.
- fennecfoxen 5y agoLook on the bright side: it used to be a whole lot worse. I mean on both sides, too. The Pinkerton thugs get all the press, and are rightly condemned, but for coverage of the union men beating their non-union colleagues to death with clubs, blinding a man with thrown stones, I refer you to coverage such as McLure's Magazine article The Right To Work (1903) which gave its name to the type of law: http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/Right%20to%20work.pdf http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/Right%20to%20work.... I like the distinction that it draws at the beginning, too: "PUBLIC opinion seems to be coming around to the view that the trades' union is here to stay. From many unexpected quarters we hear every now and then a more generous acknowledgment that the organization of labor is not only as inevitable as the combination of capital, but a good thing in itself. At the same time, and from the same fair minds, you hear expressions of passionate indignation at the abuse of power by unions. This means that public opinion is beginning to distinguish between unionism and the sins of unionists, as it is between organized capital and the sins of capitalists." All we have to contend with today, here, are the vengeful downvotes.
- disposekinetics 5y agoI like the way it was put. I love unions but I'm frustrated by the 'sins of unionists'
- chalst 5y agoI'm not an expert on US union law, but AFAICS, American workers have a choice between card check, which in principle allows intimidation by unions, and the NLRA process, which has been documented as enabling intimidation by employers. Do you have another proposal?
- bpodgursky 5y agoThis was expected as soon as Biden appointed a union machine boss as Secretary of Labor.
- teclordphrack2 5y agoWhy is that. I don't want my tax dollars going to welfare for their workers. I have skin in that game.
- jdavis703 5y agoThere are plenty of reasons to support unions, but this sort of corporate welfare could be eliminated by increasing the minimum wage.
- gruez 5y agoPaying people minimum wage is "corporate welfare"? How so?
- jdavis703 5y agoBecause the alternative is the taxpayer winds up paying for those workers’ healthcare, food and housing (Medicaid, SNAP and Section 8 vouchers).
- gruez 5y agoYou're forgetting the alternative where the person ends up getting unemployed instead, in which case the taxpayer pays 100% for those workers’ healthcare, food and housing.
- disposekinetics 5y agoIt isn't a binary, the question is the right representation as much as anything else.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoWhy would governments magically stop subsidizing Amazon if their workers unionized?