10 ms·

Wow. Posting antiunion posters throughout the workplace, holding mandatory weekly antiunion meetings, and having your boss come to the floor and talk about unio

Wow. Posting antiunion posters throughout the workplace, holding mandatory weekly antiunion meetings, and having your boss come to the floor and talk about unions is already pretty scummy before the new vote was even certain. And those posters are just absurd. "Your dues will pay for a six figure salary for the union president" rings hollow when your labor led to Bezos' net worth.

willcipriano 5y ago
100k is close to middle class for someone with a family at this point. Homer Simpson makes six figures, Mr. Burns mortgage is six figures. Something like quarter million would've landed better I suspect. This is the sort of thing people in stuffy boardrooms come up with as opposed to a advertising team, lacking polish.
- hpoe 5y ago
  That may be true in SV or something like that, but I am guessing in Alabama, for someone making $15-$20 an hour six figures seems like quite a bit. Heck I'd consider myself upper middle class and I make low six figures.
  - ma2rten 5y ago
    Even in SV someone working at an Amazon warehouse is not making more than that.
  - acdha 5y ago
    According to https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/AL https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/AL, the median income is $50k so it's good but hardly lavish and https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Alabama/Mobile/Household-Income https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Alabama/Mobile/Household-... has the 80th percentile just under $100k whereas 95th percentile is $154k. I think it's easy to forget just how uneven things have become since the middle of the previous century: someone making more money than 95 out of every 100 Alabama residents is doing quite well compared to most of the people in the state and is still nowhere near CEO-level compensation.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Household income.
      - adventured 5y ago
        You're right about the data the parent is quoting, however it's worth pointing out that the national median income for a full-time (35+ hours per week) job in the US is over $50,000 (excluding benefits and other forms of compensation).
      - acdha 5y ago
        Thanks for pointing that out but I don't think it dramatically changes the broader point: if you're making $40-50k/year, someone making $100k is making a good deal more than you but their life isn't dramatically different — bigger house, nicer car, etc. but they still have to go work every day, don't have servants, etc. and they're still going to pay attention to the cost of things like daycare or college or fear the financial impact of a medical bill. No question that it's better but it's going from average to “highest income person you know who isn't your doctor” rather than executive class income.
  - rytcio 5y ago
    Anywhere on the western half of the US requires $100k+ to have a place to live that isn't a studio apartment or having roommates
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- jpatt 5y ago
  In the Bay, Seattle, or NY, maybe. In Bessemer, AL where the vote is being held, the median family income is $40k. Still a ridiculous talking point.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    Bessemer's middle class are poor in national terms, they are aware of other areas in the country and likely don't limit themselves to their zip code when making comparisons. Median Value of owner occupied housing units: National[0] - $217,500 Bessemer, AL[1] - $86,500 Median household income: National - $62,843 Bessemer, AL - $32,301 [0]https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219 [1]https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/bessemercityalabama https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/bessemercityalabama
  - sb057 5y ago
    Warehouse employees in Bessemer are not making $40k. More like $20k with minimal benefits if they're lucky. Keep in mind that's before a couple grand in income and sales taxes.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > 100k is close to middle class If a large minority of it is derived from capital directly or the majority of it is derived from the worker’s labor applied to their own capital. If it is derived from wage labor and is the worker’s entire income, its just relatively high-income working class, and isn’t “close to” middle class.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Agreed. There is a truly bizarre tendency for people to try to reinvent class based on income, realize it doesn't work very well, add some sort of interest or social dimension to it, and slowly reinvent the classical concept of class with the labels shuffled around. We've already had good class labels, working class, labor aristocracy, middle class, struggling capitalist class (small business owners ie petite bourgeoisie), and major capitalist. I think it should be some kind of law of the internet. Any discussion of socioeconomic topics ends up reinventing the classic class system on a long enough time scale.
BrianOnHN 5y ago
> "Your dues will pay for a six figure salary for the union president" rings hollow when your labor led to Bezos' net worth. This illustrates an important point: The upper-class is using the lower-class against the middle-class.
- kevmo 5y ago
  The upper class is destroying the middle class.
  - hirundo 5y ago
    The US middle class is disappearing…into the upper middle class. https://www.aei.org/economics/the-us-middle-class-is-disappearing-into-the-upper-middle-class-but-theres-more-to-the-story/ https://www.aei.org/economics/the-us-middle-class-is-disappe...
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      The AEI doesn't mention it, but a large part of the middle -> upper middle shift is increasing participation in the labor force by women[1]. Which is a good thing! But it doesn't support the claim that the US, as a whole, is moving middle class families into the upper middle class through positive socioeconomic shifts. It merely demonstrates that more labor means more paychecks. [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002
      - bushbaba 5y ago
        Is two income households truly a good thing? A different perspective is that two income households enabled housing costs to rise, rents to rise. And causes the cost of having a child increase due to childcare costs. Overall maybe society is better having 1 parent (male or female) stay at home to raise the children. Or re think our North American living situation ideals of 1 family per house.
        5y ago
oh_sigh 5y ago
Except the employees don't pay Bezos anything...he pays them. Literally the exact opposite where the employees are paying for the union president.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  The money Bezos uses to pay them comes from selling their labor, and without the laborers neither Bezos nor the union president would get that money. Pretty similar.
  - salawat 5y ago
    The Union warchest is a function of the membership's pooled income which is ultimately set by... Management. Getting the best among you as negotiators and coordinators to do the actually hard work of jumping through all the Administrative hoops to hopefully benefit everyone is pretty tough. The fact the most effective at doing so have a tendency to carve themselves out a niche doing so is more of an internal union matter.
- lghh 5y ago
  Employees pay Bezos the surplus value of their labor. Their wages are what Bezos allows them to keep, not what Bezos pays them.
  - nickff 5y ago
    This seems to be predicated on the labor theory of value, which is wrong. Put differently, if a company loses money, is it always because the employees aren’t working hard enough?
    - boomboomsubban 5y ago
      >if a company loses money, is it always because the employees aren’t working hard enough? Or a company could be ordering their employees to work in an unprofitable way, or the company could be spending the money on unnecessary non-labor expenditures...
busterarm 5y ago
Having been in three different unions for low-payed, unskilled labor like being a warehouse picker is, I can tell you that the union was never on my side for anything and mostly served to help management pay everyone the minimum rather than based on performance. And yes, the union reps got the best positions, the best hours and two salaries. The next best positions and best hours went to their friends. The unions only stepped in for the most egregious cases but not in the way you might think: When Buffalo NY's Tops International Market fired their baker for literally urinating in the cake batter used to make the store cakes, the union stepped in to defend the employee because as part of the union contract employees were not supposed to be on camera to perform their duties. They fought hard to get their baker reinstated and won. Outside of federal employment and outside of hollywood, where the strongest unions are anyway, the history of union activity in the US is quite unremarkable. It is most frequently anti-consumer and often works against the long term interests of the workers that it's supposed to represent. Literally 99% of the time I hear somebody shouting support of unions here, they've either never been in one or they've always been the reps. Voices like mine, of those who've been in unions and got the shit end of the stick, get shouted down. I would rather die than participate in a labor union again, for as long as I live.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  I had a similar experience in IBEW Local 58 before I left the trade to pursue a career in tech. I'm not sure why the negative experiences of those who've seen the dark side of union orgs, aren't welcome.
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    They tend to be "I was overqualified for my temp hustle and they didn't specifically cater to my needs." Yet they still picked union jobs, likely as it provided them better conditions than the alternatives.
    - busterarm 5y ago
      > they didn't specifically cater to my needs That's the issue though. The inability to be treated as an individual. Time is the most precious commodity in life that we have -- the only thing that we can't get back. Nobody values your time as much as you will. I don't know about you, but being able to negotiate my own exchange of time/labor allows me to conserve as much of that resource as I can. I can negotiate for myself to the fullest. I have the option to walk away and negotiate elsewhere -- in most unionized positions in the US that is simply not possible. Nobody negotiating for you is going to put the same value on your time that you do. It's not fair-trade.
bastardoperator 5y ago
I worked at the LA Zoo in high school for The Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association doing food service. It was a teamsters shop. I was making upwards of 22 dollars an hour when minimum wage was 4.25 back in 1995 at 16 years old. I don't understand how people in lower paying positions are not seeing the value here or not jumping at the opportunity to vote. It is pretty absurd to make the six figure claim when the boss is sitting on a 13 figure bag of money.
- monetus 5y ago
  Organized crime and corruption are what distract. Just the word teamster sets off a chain reaction of emotions when I've used it. If I had to make a parallel, it would be to political corruption. If they view all politicians as corrupt, why would they want politicians in their workplace? Unions are thrown under a blanket of grift, and not looked at in much granularity.
  - bastardoperator 5y ago
    The average workplace is already full of politicians and fiefdoms. Many are actively working against you behind the scenes. Entire departments are devoted to it (HR). If they choose to have a small world view, they can never be helped. As someone living in Los Angeles at the time, many union jobs are well respected (e.g. studio, trade, etc).
- ghufran_syed 5y ago
  Unions help the well-connected get better paying jobs, at the expense of less well-connected people who would be willing to do the job for less, but still at a rate that makes sense for them. So the question is not “do unions help union members?” (they almost certainly do), it’s “do unions help workers like me?” - maybe the average worker is not confident that they can move to their next job if the industry is unionized?
- refurb 5y ago
  You were making 5x the minimum wage working in food service? Back in 1995?
ghufran_syed 5y ago
Why is it “scummy”? If the employer chooses to pay their employees to attend meetings where the employer gives their point of view about unions, how is that different from a union spending their own money holding a union meeting to express their views to the employees? Or do you think workers can’t be trusted to decide what’s in their best interests if exposed to both sides of an issue?
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  >If the employer chooses to pay their employees to attend meetings where the employer gives their point of view about unions, how is that different from a union spending their own money holding a union meeting to express their views to the employees? With union meetings, both parties chose to be there. With the work meetings, one side is compelled to be there as part if their work duties. And yes, they pay them to be there, but that also implies that if they don't listen to what is said at those meetings they'll stop paying them. As most work meetings are about things employees have to do or they'll be fired.
- andybak 5y ago
  > How is that different from a union spending their own money holding a union meeting to express their views to the employees? The company meetings are compulsory. The union meetings aren't. > Or do you think workers can’t be trusted to decide what’s in their best interests if exposed to both sides of an issue? We like to believe ourselves to be discerning, rational beings, unswayed by propaganda but study after study and the existence of the entire advertising industry provides strong evidence this is not the case.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >The company meetings are compulsory. The union meetings aren't. Would you still object if the union could hold mandatory meetings, if they were able to pony up the cash?
    - andybak 5y ago
      I think I'd prefer both sides offer non-mandatory meetings - your scenario is problemmatic in other ways.
makomk 5y ago
There's a really obvious difference between those two things: every cent of the union's funds is actual money that is taken out of employees' paychecks and comes right out their pockets, whereas Bezos' net worth isn't. Like, not only does it not come out of employee's pay even indirectly, it's not even money - it's just shares held times the last price a single share traded at. It may be measured in the same units as actual money like paychecks and spending, but it's not and cannot be used as such. Bluntly, all the populist activists and politicans who spin Bezos' wealth as actual cash that could be spent on things like food and healthcare if he stopped hoarding it are conning people by taking advantage of their desire to have someone to blame.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  Bezos's money might not be cash, but it's still relatively liquid: he owns about 10% of Amazon's shares, and could liquidate a very small percentage of that to generate billions of dollars of cash on hand. And, as a matter of fact, that's precisely what he's being doing[1]. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2021/11/04/jeff-bezos-just-sold-2-billion-worth-of-amazon-stock/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2021/11/04/jeff-bez...
- quitit 5y ago
  These discussions neglect a few things: JB has enormous net worth outside of public shares. Including over 16B in cash. https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/jeffrey-p-bezos/ https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/jeffrey-p-be... To the discussion of public shares: Yes he couldn’t cash out all 177B for cash, however a significantly large portion (i.e many billions) can be over a relatively short span of time, additionally shares still possess a barter-like function. These are not small numbers and indeed such sums could be used to resolve some pretty significant issues (see Bill Gates who is in a similar public-share-wealthy position.) As for taking part of their pay for union fees. This is like trying to save on toothpaste: The small cost of union fees will deliver benefits for these employees that would easily outstrip contribution costs. Such an argument would only be valid for employees that already have good pay and benefits/ where a union wouldn’t be able to deliver significant change.
- Devasta 5y ago
dillondoyle 5y ago
And those antiunion meetings and 'direct report check ins' aren't even legal. there's a whole industry of anti-union consultants who go around giving these captive presentations. Throwing 1st amendment issues aside, I think it should be illegal. Or else require equal time to the union reps to give their pitch.
refurb 5y ago
What’s the issue? A company can legally campaign against a union and it’s pretty clear that the employees rejected it by a 2 to 1 margin. I highly doubt a new election will flip the result. The labor board issue was with the voting procedure.
throwawaylinux 5y ago
Another crazy thing is that they track risk of unionization in their sites. Greater "diversity" has lower risk of unionization. Makes you think.

willcipriano 5y ago

100k is close to middle class for someone with a family at this point. Homer Simpson makes six figures, Mr. Burns mortgage is six figures. Something like quarter million would've landed better I suspect. This is the sort of thing people in stuffy boardrooms come up with as opposed to a advertising team, lacking polish.

hpoe 5y ago
That may be true in SV or something like that, but I am guessing in Alabama, for someone making $15-$20 an hour six figures seems like quite a bit. Heck I'd consider myself upper middle class and I make low six figures.
- ma2rten 5y ago
  Even in SV someone working at an Amazon warehouse is not making more than that.
- acdha 5y ago
  According to https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/AL https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/AL, the median income is $50k so it's good but hardly lavish and https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Alabama/Mobile/Household-Income https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Alabama/Mobile/Household-... has the 80th percentile just under $100k whereas 95th percentile is $154k. I think it's easy to forget just how uneven things have become since the middle of the previous century: someone making more money than 95 out of every 100 Alabama residents is doing quite well compared to most of the people in the state and is still nowhere near CEO-level compensation.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Household income.
    - adventured 5y ago
      You're right about the data the parent is quoting, however it's worth pointing out that the national median income for a full-time (35+ hours per week) job in the US is over $50,000 (excluding benefits and other forms of compensation).
    - acdha 5y ago
      Thanks for pointing that out but I don't think it dramatically changes the broader point: if you're making $40-50k/year, someone making $100k is making a good deal more than you but their life isn't dramatically different — bigger house, nicer car, etc. but they still have to go work every day, don't have servants, etc. and they're still going to pay attention to the cost of things like daycare or college or fear the financial impact of a medical bill. No question that it's better but it's going from average to “highest income person you know who isn't your doctor” rather than executive class income.
- rytcio 5y ago
  Anywhere on the western half of the US requires $100k+ to have a place to live that isn't a studio apartment or having roommates
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
jpatt 5y ago
In the Bay, Seattle, or NY, maybe. In Bessemer, AL where the vote is being held, the median family income is $40k. Still a ridiculous talking point.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- willcipriano 5y ago
  Bessemer's middle class are poor in national terms, they are aware of other areas in the country and likely don't limit themselves to their zip code when making comparisons. Median Value of owner occupied housing units: National[0] - $217,500 Bessemer, AL[1] - $86,500 Median household income: National - $62,843 Bessemer, AL - $32,301 [0]https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219 [1]https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/bessemercityalabama https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/bessemercityalabama
- sb057 5y ago
  Warehouse employees in Bessemer are not making $40k. More like $20k with minimal benefits if they're lucky. Keep in mind that's before a couple grand in income and sales taxes.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> 100k is close to middle class If a large minority of it is derived from capital directly or the majority of it is derived from the worker’s labor applied to their own capital. If it is derived from wage labor and is the worker’s entire income, its just relatively high-income working class, and isn’t “close to” middle class.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Agreed. There is a truly bizarre tendency for people to try to reinvent class based on income, realize it doesn't work very well, add some sort of interest or social dimension to it, and slowly reinvent the classical concept of class with the labels shuffled around. We've already had good class labels, working class, labor aristocracy, middle class, struggling capitalist class (small business owners ie petite bourgeoisie), and major capitalist. I think it should be some kind of law of the internet. Any discussion of socioeconomic topics ends up reinventing the classic class system on a long enough time scale.

BrianOnHN 5y ago

> "Your dues will pay for a six figure salary for the union president" rings hollow when your labor led to Bezos' net worth. This illustrates an important point: The upper-class is using the lower-class against the middle-class.

kevmo 5y ago
The upper class is destroying the middle class.
- hirundo 5y ago
  The US middle class is disappearing…into the upper middle class. https://www.aei.org/economics/the-us-middle-class-is-disappearing-into-the-upper-middle-class-but-theres-more-to-the-story/ https://www.aei.org/economics/the-us-middle-class-is-disappe...
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    The AEI doesn't mention it, but a large part of the middle -> upper middle shift is increasing participation in the labor force by women[1]. Which is a good thing! But it doesn't support the claim that the US, as a whole, is moving middle class families into the upper middle class through positive socioeconomic shifts. It merely demonstrates that more labor means more paychecks. [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002
    - bushbaba 5y ago
      Is two income households truly a good thing? A different perspective is that two income households enabled housing costs to rise, rents to rise. And causes the cost of having a child increase due to childcare costs. Overall maybe society is better having 1 parent (male or female) stay at home to raise the children. Or re think our North American living situation ideals of 1 family per house.
      - 5y ago

oh_sigh 5y ago

Except the employees don't pay Bezos anything...he pays them. Literally the exact opposite where the employees are paying for the union president.

boomboomsubban 5y ago
The money Bezos uses to pay them comes from selling their labor, and without the laborers neither Bezos nor the union president would get that money. Pretty similar.
- salawat 5y ago
  The Union warchest is a function of the membership's pooled income which is ultimately set by... Management. Getting the best among you as negotiators and coordinators to do the actually hard work of jumping through all the Administrative hoops to hopefully benefit everyone is pretty tough. The fact the most effective at doing so have a tendency to carve themselves out a niche doing so is more of an internal union matter.
lghh 5y ago
Employees pay Bezos the surplus value of their labor. Their wages are what Bezos allows them to keep, not what Bezos pays them.
- nickff 5y ago
  This seems to be predicated on the labor theory of value, which is wrong. Put differently, if a company loses money, is it always because the employees aren’t working hard enough?
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    >if a company loses money, is it always because the employees aren’t working hard enough? Or a company could be ordering their employees to work in an unprofitable way, or the company could be spending the money on unnecessary non-labor expenditures...

busterarm 5y ago

Having been in three different unions for low-payed, unskilled labor like being a warehouse picker is, I can tell you that the union was never on my side for anything and mostly served to help management pay everyone the minimum rather than based on performance. And yes, the union reps got the best positions, the best hours and two salaries. The next best positions and best hours went to their friends. The unions only stepped in for the most egregious cases but not in the way you might think: When Buffalo NY's Tops International Market fired their baker for literally urinating in the cake batter used to make the store cakes, the union stepped in to defend the employee because as part of the union contract employees were not supposed to be on camera to perform their duties. They fought hard to get their baker reinstated and won. Outside of federal employment and outside of hollywood, where the strongest unions are anyway, the history of union activity in the US is quite unremarkable. It is most frequently anti-consumer and often works against the long term interests of the workers that it's supposed to represent. Literally 99% of the time I hear somebody shouting support of unions here, they've either never been in one or they've always been the reps. Voices like mine, of those who've been in unions and got the shit end of the stick, get shouted down. I would rather die than participate in a labor union again, for as long as I live.

andrew_ 5y ago
I had a similar experience in IBEW Local 58 before I left the trade to pursue a career in tech. I'm not sure why the negative experiences of those who've seen the dark side of union orgs, aren't welcome.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  They tend to be "I was overqualified for my temp hustle and they didn't specifically cater to my needs." Yet they still picked union jobs, likely as it provided them better conditions than the alternatives.
  - busterarm 5y ago
    > they didn't specifically cater to my needs That's the issue though. The inability to be treated as an individual. Time is the most precious commodity in life that we have -- the only thing that we can't get back. Nobody values your time as much as you will. I don't know about you, but being able to negotiate my own exchange of time/labor allows me to conserve as much of that resource as I can. I can negotiate for myself to the fullest. I have the option to walk away and negotiate elsewhere -- in most unionized positions in the US that is simply not possible. Nobody negotiating for you is going to put the same value on your time that you do. It's not fair-trade.

bastardoperator 5y ago

I worked at the LA Zoo in high school for The Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association doing food service. It was a teamsters shop. I was making upwards of 22 dollars an hour when minimum wage was 4.25 back in 1995 at 16 years old. I don't understand how people in lower paying positions are not seeing the value here or not jumping at the opportunity to vote. It is pretty absurd to make the six figure claim when the boss is sitting on a 13 figure bag of money.

monetus 5y ago
Organized crime and corruption are what distract. Just the word teamster sets off a chain reaction of emotions when I've used it. If I had to make a parallel, it would be to political corruption. If they view all politicians as corrupt, why would they want politicians in their workplace? Unions are thrown under a blanket of grift, and not looked at in much granularity.
- bastardoperator 5y ago
  The average workplace is already full of politicians and fiefdoms. Many are actively working against you behind the scenes. Entire departments are devoted to it (HR). If they choose to have a small world view, they can never be helped. As someone living in Los Angeles at the time, many union jobs are well respected (e.g. studio, trade, etc).
ghufran_syed 5y ago
Unions help the well-connected get better paying jobs, at the expense of less well-connected people who would be willing to do the job for less, but still at a rate that makes sense for them. So the question is not “do unions help union members?” (they almost certainly do), it’s “do unions help workers like me?” - maybe the average worker is not confident that they can move to their next job if the industry is unionized?
refurb 5y ago
You were making 5x the minimum wage working in food service? Back in 1995?

ghufran_syed 5y ago

Why is it “scummy”? If the employer chooses to pay their employees to attend meetings where the employer gives their point of view about unions, how is that different from a union spending their own money holding a union meeting to express their views to the employees? Or do you think workers can’t be trusted to decide what’s in their best interests if exposed to both sides of an issue?

boomboomsubban 5y ago
>If the employer chooses to pay their employees to attend meetings where the employer gives their point of view about unions, how is that different from a union spending their own money holding a union meeting to express their views to the employees? With union meetings, both parties chose to be there. With the work meetings, one side is compelled to be there as part if their work duties. And yes, they pay them to be there, but that also implies that if they don't listen to what is said at those meetings they'll stop paying them. As most work meetings are about things employees have to do or they'll be fired.
andybak 5y ago
> How is that different from a union spending their own money holding a union meeting to express their views to the employees? The company meetings are compulsory. The union meetings aren't. > Or do you think workers can’t be trusted to decide what’s in their best interests if exposed to both sides of an issue? We like to believe ourselves to be discerning, rational beings, unswayed by propaganda but study after study and the existence of the entire advertising industry provides strong evidence this is not the case.
- gruez 5y ago
  >The company meetings are compulsory. The union meetings aren't. Would you still object if the union could hold mandatory meetings, if they were able to pony up the cash?
  - andybak 5y ago
    I think I'd prefer both sides offer non-mandatory meetings - your scenario is problemmatic in other ways.

makomk 5y ago

There's a really obvious difference between those two things: every cent of the union's funds is actual money that is taken out of employees' paychecks and comes right out their pockets, whereas Bezos' net worth isn't. Like, not only does it not come out of employee's pay even indirectly, it's not even money - it's just shares held times the last price a single share traded at. It may be measured in the same units as actual money like paychecks and spending, but it's not and cannot be used as such. Bluntly, all the populist activists and politicans who spin Bezos' wealth as actual cash that could be spent on things like food and healthcare if he stopped hoarding it are conning people by taking advantage of their desire to have someone to blame.

woodruffw 5y ago
Bezos's money might not be cash, but it's still relatively liquid: he owns about 10% of Amazon's shares, and could liquidate a very small percentage of that to generate billions of dollars of cash on hand. And, as a matter of fact, that's precisely what he's being doing[1]. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2021/11/04/jeff-bezos-just-sold-2-billion-worth-of-amazon-stock/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2021/11/04/jeff-bez...
quitit 5y ago
These discussions neglect a few things: JB has enormous net worth outside of public shares. Including over 16B in cash. https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/jeffrey-p-bezos/ https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/jeffrey-p-be... To the discussion of public shares: Yes he couldn’t cash out all 177B for cash, however a significantly large portion (i.e many billions) can be over a relatively short span of time, additionally shares still possess a barter-like function. These are not small numbers and indeed such sums could be used to resolve some pretty significant issues (see Bill Gates who is in a similar public-share-wealthy position.) As for taking part of their pay for union fees. This is like trying to save on toothpaste: The small cost of union fees will deliver benefits for these employees that would easily outstrip contribution costs. Such an argument would only be valid for employees that already have good pay and benefits/ where a union wouldn’t be able to deliver significant change.
Devasta 5y ago

dillondoyle 5y ago

And those antiunion meetings and 'direct report check ins' aren't even legal. there's a whole industry of anti-union consultants who go around giving these captive presentations. Throwing 1st amendment issues aside, I think it should be illegal. Or else require equal time to the union reps to give their pitch.

refurb 5y ago

What’s the issue? A company can legally campaign against a union and it’s pretty clear that the employees rejected it by a 2 to 1 margin. I highly doubt a new election will flip the result. The labor board issue was with the voting procedure.

throwawaylinux 5y ago

Another crazy thing is that they track risk of unionization in their sites. Greater "diversity" has lower risk of unionization. Makes you think.