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Don't quotas already exist in other forms of unionized work; like I recall hearing electrical unions have designated time quotas for completing certain jobs? Ma

Don't quotas already exist in other forms of unionized work; like I recall hearing electrical unions have designated time quotas for completing certain jobs? Maybe that memory is off though or inaccurate.

colejohnson66 5y ago
At least in those instances, the union can negotiate for better (longer) quotas. In Amazon’s case, there’s no union to represent them. There’s the companies (that contract with Amazon) that the drivers work for, but they’re less powerful because there’s another company right next to you.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  In other words, they don't have a cartel/monopoly?
  - cma 5y ago
    Amazon shareholders get stringent minority shareholder protection and legally protected collective voting schemes and can openly collude together against workers. A union gives somewhat similar rights to a similar stakeholder.
    - missedthecue 5y ago
      How can I, and Amazon shareholder, go collude with other Amazon shareholders? Tell me how this is possible. I've never heard of it. You can only collude with someone you were in competition with. Shareholders of the same company by definition cannot collude with each other because they are not competing. Collusion would be Walmart and Target and Costco and Amazon unionizing together to negotiate wages.
      - nicoffeine 5y ago
        "collude: cooperate in a secret or unlawful way in order to deceive or gain an advantage over others" Shareholder votes are public, but anonymous. The more typical scenario is that you hold on to the shares and create demand for the stock as a sign of your approval. Unless you own tens of thousands or more shares, you were probably not invited to the perfectly legal but private discussions about the proposals. Shareholders recently voted against every single proposal that was also opposed by Amazon.[1] [1] https://www.geekwire.com/2021/final-tally-amazon-shareholders-vote-proposals-pay-equity-privacy-tech/ https://www.geekwire.com/2021/final-tally-amazon-shareholder...
      - cma 5y ago
        >by definition I said "can openly" collude, not plain unadorned collude. Amazon buys a competitor and suddenly what would be considered collusion prior is washed clean, because someone else could bid too? My whole point is how silly this transformation from illegal to legal is, if at the same time you want to prevent unions. Unions BTW have similar restrictions to your second half of your comment (secondary strikes are illegal).
- Jensson 5y ago
  Amazon workers have the right to unionize if they want to. If state politicians can't convince them to unionize and instead have to pass laws targeting just that company because they didn't unionize then maybe there is a problem with the politicians instead.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    This argument could be used against any kind of worker protection law. What’s different about this one?
missedthecue 5y ago
That's because repairing an electrical outage is unpredictable. There are a lot of uncontrollable variables. However, jobs like manufacturing definitely have quotas. I know for a fact that they exist at the heavily unionized auto-manufacturing facilities in the US.
da_chicken 5y ago
If they do, I'm sure they're not so tight that the electrician won't be able to stop and go to the bathroom, or facilitate soft bans on potentially mandatory break times. How often have you seen linepersons diligently working after a heavy storm while doing the pee-pee dance?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- klyrs 5y ago
  Submitting a trademark application for "Work Ethic" branded adult diapers; watch this space.
SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
While the PR campaign is pretty strongly against quotas, the underlying law doesn't attempt to prohibit quotas, only provide a straightforward avenue for employees to challenge quotas which are too strict to let them take breaks and such.
kelnos 5y ago
I think quotas are fine, as long as they aren't unreasonable to the point that workers need to forego bathroom breaks in order to meet them. I think the problem is that Amazon probably does this completely backwards. Quotas should be based on tracking the output of all your workers and deciding on some percentile to use as a baseline. And this output needs to be tracked when no quotas are in place, so you get an idea of what "normal" work looks like. Instead, I expect that Amazon essentially says "we want at least X packages to move through here every Y hours, and we want to spend no more than $A on warehouse workers, so that means we'll hire no more than B workers, so they'll just have to work as hard as it takes". That's obviously a recipe for unrealistic expectations and a lot of overwork. Since you bring up unions, the quotas are almost certainly negotiated by the union, so (hopefully) what's negotiated will be much fairer to the workers. But of course Amazon fights against their warehouse workers unionizing, in no small part due to this.

colejohnson66 5y ago

At least in those instances, the union can negotiate for better (longer) quotas. In Amazon’s case, there’s no union to represent them. There’s the companies (that contract with Amazon) that the drivers work for, but they’re less powerful because there’s another company right next to you.

missedthecue 5y ago
In other words, they don't have a cartel/monopoly?
- cma 5y ago
  Amazon shareholders get stringent minority shareholder protection and legally protected collective voting schemes and can openly collude together against workers. A union gives somewhat similar rights to a similar stakeholder.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    How can I, and Amazon shareholder, go collude with other Amazon shareholders? Tell me how this is possible. I've never heard of it. You can only collude with someone you were in competition with. Shareholders of the same company by definition cannot collude with each other because they are not competing. Collusion would be Walmart and Target and Costco and Amazon unionizing together to negotiate wages.
    - nicoffeine 5y ago
      "collude: cooperate in a secret or unlawful way in order to deceive or gain an advantage over others" Shareholder votes are public, but anonymous. The more typical scenario is that you hold on to the shares and create demand for the stock as a sign of your approval. Unless you own tens of thousands or more shares, you were probably not invited to the perfectly legal but private discussions about the proposals. Shareholders recently voted against every single proposal that was also opposed by Amazon.[1] [1] https://www.geekwire.com/2021/final-tally-amazon-shareholders-vote-proposals-pay-equity-privacy-tech/ https://www.geekwire.com/2021/final-tally-amazon-shareholder...
    - cma 5y ago
      >by definition I said "can openly" collude, not plain unadorned collude. Amazon buys a competitor and suddenly what would be considered collusion prior is washed clean, because someone else could bid too? My whole point is how silly this transformation from illegal to legal is, if at the same time you want to prevent unions. Unions BTW have similar restrictions to your second half of your comment (secondary strikes are illegal).
Jensson 5y ago
Amazon workers have the right to unionize if they want to. If state politicians can't convince them to unionize and instead have to pass laws targeting just that company because they didn't unionize then maybe there is a problem with the politicians instead.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  This argument could be used against any kind of worker protection law. What’s different about this one?

missedthecue 5y ago

That's because repairing an electrical outage is unpredictable. There are a lot of uncontrollable variables. However, jobs like manufacturing definitely have quotas. I know for a fact that they exist at the heavily unionized auto-manufacturing facilities in the US.

da_chicken 5y ago

If they do, I'm sure they're not so tight that the electrician won't be able to stop and go to the bathroom, or facilitate soft bans on potentially mandatory break times. How often have you seen linepersons diligently working after a heavy storm while doing the pee-pee dance?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
klyrs 5y ago
Submitting a trademark application for "Work Ethic" branded adult diapers; watch this space.

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago

While the PR campaign is pretty strongly against quotas, the underlying law doesn't attempt to prohibit quotas, only provide a straightforward avenue for employees to challenge quotas which are too strict to let them take breaks and such.

kelnos 5y ago

I think quotas are fine, as long as they aren't unreasonable to the point that workers need to forego bathroom breaks in order to meet them. I think the problem is that Amazon probably does this completely backwards. Quotas should be based on tracking the output of all your workers and deciding on some percentile to use as a baseline. And this output needs to be tracked when no quotas are in place, so you get an idea of what "normal" work looks like. Instead, I expect that Amazon essentially says "we want at least X packages to move through here every Y hours, and we want to spend no more than $A on warehouse workers, so that means we'll hire no more than B workers, so they'll just have to work as hard as it takes". That's obviously a recipe for unrealistic expectations and a lot of overwork. Since you bring up unions, the quotas are almost certainly negotiated by the union, so (hopefully) what's negotiated will be much fairer to the workers. But of course Amazon fights against their warehouse workers unionizing, in no small part due to this.