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Amazon employs hundreds of thousands of people. I'm sure that a substantial bureaucracy would be needed in order to represent them effectively. Or are you sayi

by pkkim 5y ago

Amazon employs hundreds of thousands of people. I'm sure that a substantial bureaucracy would be needed in order to represent them effectively. Or are you saying that the Teamsters bureaucracy in particular is bloated relative to what their organization needs? I'm not familiar with them.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
The Teamsters grew to the behemoth they are today because of Jimmy Hoffa in the 70s, who was heavily connected to the mafia and eventually gunned down.
- slipframe 5y ago
  > Jimmy Hoffa [...] eventually gunned down. I just want to clarify that we don't know if he was specifically gunned down. He was declared dead years after he went missing. The exact circumstances of his presumed death aren't known, but it's generally believed to be the mob that did it.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
    Thanks for the clarification.
- teclordphrack2 5y ago
  And. Thanks for the smear job with no context.
- edm0nd 5y ago
  And? That doesn't invalidate anything the Teamsters do or have done IMO.
fastball 5y ago
I feel like the modern Union should basically just be a mobile app where you vote on stuff and elect a couple reps to champion the things you vote on and if management doesn't want those things the app coordinates striking / etc. Is there an app for this? Seems like it would solve a problem. To be fair I want an app like that for democracy in general.
- pkkim 5y ago
  A couple things: * Unions could definitely use better software, but I don't think software can replace their core functionality. * Many companies whose main product is a seemingly simple mobile app require surprisingly large staffs. * Are unions actually bloated? The Teamsters for example had 616 regular staff and spending of $209 million in 2019, over a membership of 1.3 million workers. That seems reasonable to me. https://www.unionfacts.com/union/Teamsters https://www.unionfacts.com/union/Teamsters (anti-union but nonetheless useful site) * Unions do lots of things besides electing representatives, voting on issues, and coordinating actions, all of which are big jobs in themselves. This may include contract negotiation, job training, research, organizing, and other things I can't think of right now. * To focus specifically on organizing for a moment, a union is a coordination problem which takes a lot of work to overcome. Quoting myself from another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24079465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24079465): > The labor organizer's job is to convince the worker, who likely and often rightly fears for her job if she actively and publicly supports the union, that it's still the right thing to do. Not only convince intellectually, but psychologically prepare the worker to stick with the union effort in the face of a concerted effort from the employer to defeat it. To do that the organizer needs to ask the right questions, listen carefully, build trust, and finally push, and potentially do this repeatedly with the same person. It is psychologically demanding and not everyone can do it; I tried and I couldn't. A chatbot cannot convince a factory worker with kids to feed that he needs to stick up for his coworkers who in turn will stick up for him.

by pkkim 5y ago

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago

The Teamsters grew to the behemoth they are today because of Jimmy Hoffa in the 70s, who was heavily connected to the mafia and eventually gunned down.

slipframe 5y ago
> Jimmy Hoffa [...] eventually gunned down. I just want to clarify that we don't know if he was specifically gunned down. He was declared dead years after he went missing. The exact circumstances of his presumed death aren't known, but it's generally believed to be the mob that did it.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  Thanks for the clarification.
teclordphrack2 5y ago
And. Thanks for the smear job with no context.
edm0nd 5y ago
And? That doesn't invalidate anything the Teamsters do or have done IMO.

fastball 5y ago

I feel like the modern Union should basically just be a mobile app where you vote on stuff and elect a couple reps to champion the things you vote on and if management doesn't want those things the app coordinates striking / etc. Is there an app for this? Seems like it would solve a problem. To be fair I want an app like that for democracy in general.

pkkim 5y ago
A couple things: * Unions could definitely use better software, but I don't think software can replace their core functionality. * Many companies whose main product is a seemingly simple mobile app require surprisingly large staffs. * Are unions actually bloated? The Teamsters for example had 616 regular staff and spending of $209 million in 2019, over a membership of 1.3 million workers. That seems reasonable to me. https://www.unionfacts.com/union/Teamsters https://www.unionfacts.com/union/Teamsters (anti-union but nonetheless useful site) * Unions do lots of things besides electing representatives, voting on issues, and coordinating actions, all of which are big jobs in themselves. This may include contract negotiation, job training, research, organizing, and other things I can't think of right now. * To focus specifically on organizing for a moment, a union is a coordination problem which takes a lot of work to overcome. Quoting myself from another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24079465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24079465): > The labor organizer's job is to convince the worker, who likely and often rightly fears for her job if she actively and publicly supports the union, that it's still the right thing to do. Not only convince intellectually, but psychologically prepare the worker to stick with the union effort in the face of a concerted effort from the employer to defeat it. To do that the organizer needs to ask the right questions, listen carefully, build trust, and finally push, and potentially do this repeatedly with the same person. It is psychologically demanding and not everyone can do it; I tried and I couldn't. A chatbot cannot convince a factory worker with kids to feed that he needs to stick up for his coworkers who in turn will stick up for him.