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> undermining progress, improvement, and development An honest question - whose progress? Whose development? Do workers benefit by turning that screw at 5:01?

by btown 5y ago

> undermining progress, improvement, and development An honest question - whose progress? Whose development? Do workers benefit by turning that screw at 5:01? There are many companies where laborers do benefit by having the freedom to work outside the box to benefit their careers, learn, take pride and ownership in a long-term project, foster their own creativity, and in aggregate lift the local community. I’d fully understand your point in such circumstances, and agree that certain unions work against those less-tangible benefits for their members, at times in excess. But Amazon specifically has designed itself to destroy alignment between warehouse workers and company goals. Promotion from the warehouse floor is actively discouraged (this is well documented), turnover is expected and encouraged well beyond industry norms, tasks are rote and automatically fed, no project is long enough to foster ownership, no operating procedure or penny of local profit not controlled by corporate from afar. Does this sound like an a situation where labor and company interests are at all aligned? Amazon will not change this status quo at the behest of any single individual at any level; it sees no strategic value in empowering any such individual. Organizing is the natural consequence of such a situation.

cycomanic 5y ago
>An honest question - whose progress? Whose development? Do workers benefit by turning that screw at 5:01? Yes these sort of tropes are being brought out repeatedly, is there any evidence they actually exist? Let's talk teachers union who people like to criticise a lot. There's still plenty of excellent teachers around who go above and beyond for their students (and if you are invested in what you're doing teaching is definitely not a 9-5 job). So they are not prevented by their union from doing that? I think this is all from the expectation of employees to go above and beyond for their employers. Just do this 10min extra unpaid work because it really needs to be done... On the other hand, no company or contractor will do that, they will charge you handsomely.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Depends very much on the locations. I've worked in union shops where I wasn't union, and I was warned to ensure nobody is watching when I plug in my test equipment for the embedded system I was working on. In a different location for the same company the union guys were cool and would pretend not to see me do that (same union, just different workplace culture in different cities).
slver 5y ago
> An honest question - whose progress? Whose development? Do workers benefit by turning that screw at 5:01? Companies provide service to society. They don't exist in a vacuum. Hence it'd be good if workers are aware of the big picture and don't just stubbornly antagonize their own employers, as if they're in a battle against one another, rather than in cooperation. In Japan when Fukushima blew out, old employees where there to contain the disaster. Do you think they did it for their personal benefit? How far would we go as a society if we're complete egoists? Not that far.
- the-smug-one 5y ago
  >Companies provide service to society.[...] How far would we go as a society if we're complete egoists? Not that far. And yet publicly traded companies are legally bound to maximize the profit for the stock holders.
  - slver 5y ago
    They’re not.
- triceratops 5y ago
  Japan has a different corporate culture to the US. Lifetime employment is still attainable, and company loyalty goes both ways. It's not really fair to compare that to the US, where it's primarily about the bottom line. In this culture, you can't fault workers for looking out for their own interests first.
  - slver 5y ago
    So the argument that it should be all about the bottom line in the US is that in the US it's always all been about the bottom line. Circular argument is circular.
    - triceratops 5y ago
      It's really hard to change a culture because of the vicious cycle that you have pointed out.