30 ms·

Amazon activist’s firing deemed illegal by labor board officials

302 points by herbstein 5y ago

UIUC_06 5y ago
A very long time ago, someone said something that's stuck with me: Some companies are good to invest in. Some are good to be a customer of. Some are good to work for. But very few companies are all three. Amazon's definitely not the last of those three.
- biohax2015 5y ago
  Costco is all three!
  - kortilla 5y ago
    Not so much on the investment side. https://www.google.com/finance/quote/COST:NASDAQ?comparison=NASDAQ%3AAMZN&window=MAX https://www.google.com/finance/quote/COST:NASDAQ?comparison=...
    - UIUC_06 5y ago
      I guess I need to study Google Finance some more. All I did was, I added in a comparison to the S&P, and Costco jumped to 54,628% and Amazon to 164,805%. I'm sure there's some logical explanation for this. Anyhow, I don't know anyone who works for Costco. Do you? Costco Wholesale Corporation $481.61 +$480.73 54,628.41% Amazon.com, Inc. $2,852.86 +$2,851.13 164,805.20% S&P 500 4,397.94 +4,277.54 3,552.77%
    - Forge36 5y ago
      Compare against other companies/s&p 500 you'll find it's good, but not the best. That's ok. https://g.co/finance/COST:NASDAQ?window=5Y&comparison=NASDAQ%3AAMZN%2CNASDAQ%3ANDAQ%2CINDEXSP%3A.INX https://g.co/finance/COST:NASDAQ?window=5Y&comparison=NASDAQ...
    - cromka 5y ago
      I'd call it a value stock. I invested a while ago specifically after having realized how good the foundations of that company are. How happy the customers are, how happy are the employees and how great PR they have. The most surprising is how Kirkland clothing had been picked-up by the street wear communities. From my observation, this only really happens to "good" companies that we, the older generation, would thought of boring.
mef 5y ago
https://archive.ph/GjnfJ https://archive.ph/GjnfJ
- jtbayly 5y ago
  Thanks. Any idea why sometimes these links just put me on a reCaptcha loop? It's not me failing the reCaptcha. I get accepted as a human and then get the same "One more step" page again.
  - tobyjsullivan 5y ago
    It’s almost certainly a broken implementation. I have no idea here but, as an example, I’d expect the behaviour you describe if someone tried to mix Recaptcha V2 and Recaptcha V3. They might get a score from V3 and, if that score is low, they challenge with V2 as an “escape hatch” to prove you’re not a bot. But then they might have messed it up and redirect you back to a V3 check which still gets a low score. Cycle repeats. In fact, they may well be testing an upgrade from V2 to V3 which could behave the same if they test both at once instead of A/B test. This is pure speculation. Probably 100 other ways they can mess it up.
  - e4e78a06 5y ago
    I've had these problems when I have uBlock Origin + a news paywall bypass plugin enabled. I'm guessing something to do with cookies being wiped or scripts being blocked is the issue.
  - dundarious 5y ago
    Apple Private Relay always leads to a loop for me. Mozilla VPN (presumably Mullvad as well) does not.
    - jtbayly 5y ago
      Thanks, that seems like the most likely, as I have it turned on.
  - LadyCailin 5y ago
tyingq 5y ago
Apparently the activist is homeless: https://www.nysfocus.com/2021/11/23/a-homeless-amazon-worker-tried-to-organize-a-union-then-amazon-fired-him/ https://www.nysfocus.com/2021/11/23/a-homeless-amazon-worker... And “[NLRB] will issue a complaint if the case does not settle” sounds like some nice leverage to have.
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  Do these complaints have any kind of teeth? I feel bad for the workers, especially the one mentioned. It’s of little comfort to a homeless person to have their complaints upheld if it doesn’t result in a change in their material circumstances.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    They can force compliance with an order, but no power for punitive awards, fines, etc. So basically they can force giving the job back with back pay. If I were this particular worker, knowing the NLRB will force at least that, I would ask for something much higher to settle. Though I suppose if you're homeless, you may not have that option to wait.
  - kadoban 5y ago
    They have some teeth, yeah. Not enough that Amazon won't do similar things again though, I'm sure. Back pay and reinstatement are possible outcomes (in general for complaints, tbh I have no idea for this one), so it could have a real effect on the wronged.
- pandemicsoul 5y ago
  It always amazes me, in situations like this, that people just end up suffering even though the machine is "working on their behalf." Like, I used to have this idea – I have no idea where it came from – that if a crime happened to you, the government would step in and help you. Like, if your family member is murdered in your home, they'd come in and clean it up and help you fix the door since you'll be inconsolable. Or, if you get fired for something like this that the government would help you get back on your feet and make sure you have a place to stay and pay your bills. How utterly childish and naive that was. This country has no safety net and that's terrifying.
KarlKemp 5y ago
I am Jeff's complete lack of surprise... Let's hope the complaint is sustained. It's bad enough that this tactic is even tried. The right to unionize is meaningless if organizers can be silenced this easily. It's difficult to balance at-will employment, the right to fire people for cause, and the protection of union leaders and members. But there have been far too many cases like this in the last few months alone to believe these are all justified by individuals' behavior and not attempts to stop unionization.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > But there have been far too many cases like this in the last few months alone to believe these are all justified by individuals' behavior and not attempts to stop unionization. To play devil's advocate, a sociopath could recognize the PR problems it creates for a company to fire someone working toward unionization, and therefore start agitating when it becomes clear they're about to be fired, or just before they do something they know would otherwise be over the line. That doesn't mean everyone working toward unionization is a sociopath, but the population of people fired "while unionizing" will contain both sets of people, and therefore be larger than you might expect.
  - KarlKemp 5y ago
    That's not "devil's advocate", that's just an example of the meaning of "difficult to balance". There's this idea in the tech crowd that laws governing circumstances that aren't quantifiable or boolean with zero doubt or error are either entirely impossible or tantamount to just anything-goes subjectivity of judges. But the entire purpose of a system of laws and the courts is to match the ambiguity of the rules to the complexity of life. Because, as it turns out, it's the cases that can be captured by a fixed set of algorithms that are almost non-existent. Which is sort-of the problem "smart contracts" ran into, and that motivated them to create the useless simulation of real-world ownership that is NFTs.
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      > That's not "devil's advocate", that's just an example of the meaning of "difficult to balance". You expressed skepticism that this many people could be fired for legitimate reasons while promoting unions. That makes sense if you assume that misconduct and union organizing are independent variables. But since individuals engaged in misconduct have the incentive to become union organizers to make it more expensive for the company to punish them, that isn't true, and the observed result would be expected either way. Your original argument was that the uncertainty was resolved. > But the entire purpose of a system of laws and the courts is to match the ambiguity of the rules to the complexity of life. The entire purpose of a system of laws and the courts is to let what the law actually says happen unless the balance of political power strongly favors something else happening, in which case the other thing happens and a justification gets retconned by the judge. We all know how big corporations work. They have a big book of rules that nobody reads and therefore everybody violates continuously. Then if anybody screws up or becomes disfavored, management opens up the book to see which rule(s) they violated so they can be punished or fired for cause. It's the same thing that happens with laws and prosecutors. It works the same way whether the reason they're getting fired was the same as the rule they violated or not. It's that way on purpose because it makes it easy for management to fire someone for things they're not allowed to prohibit, by finding something the target did which they are allowed to prohibit. But that still doesn't tell you which thing it was in a particular case, and a judge doesn't have any good way of knowing that either. Probably the best you could do is look at whether there were a lot of other people breaking the rules, but everybody else has the incentive to conceal that because anybody who admits to breaking the rules would be subject to firing as well, which the company would have the incentive to do both to show that they're being consistent and to punish anyone who admits that breaking the rules is common. The ambiguity was created on purpose, but that doesn't make it easy to resolve.
warent 5y ago
> “One day I’m working extra hard and the supervisor just stopped me after I took a quick break and kept saying, ‘Smith, go back to work, go back to work,’” Smith said. “I’m thinking, I’m over here, hot, about to faint, working extra hard.” Imagine behaving this way. How do you look in the mirror and feel anything but revulsion? Happy that this guy's shitty behavior and Amazon's toxic culture is being put on blast like this. Hope Daequan gets a massive settlement.
- it_does_follow 5y ago
  I once lead a team through a massive layoff during the pandemic, fought with leadership to save their jobs (and succeeded), and focused on making sure their work was balanced enough to keep them distracted from what was going on but not a source of stress. My top priority was to ensure that they did not suffer undue stress during the incredibly difficult period of early pandemic coupled with layoffs, focused on making their work as meaningful as possible for them. We still posted some record revenue months. I was fired for this, ultimately because I was not aggressive enough with the team. You get toxic managers like this in toxic companies because it is the only way to not only get promoted but to survive. I recognized early in the pandemic that I could either be the person I wanted to be, the leader I wanted to be, or have a job in 6 months. I chose the former, but don't blame people who are forced to choose the latter. edit: I should clarify that I do mean forced to choose the latter in that last sentence. There is a difference between a 30k/year worker being moved to a 45k/year manager role and needing to keep that job to survive and a 200k/year software engineer choosing to behave this way for a 250k/year job.
  - luckydata 5y ago
    I do blame them. Until we have stronger labor movement in this country we'll be at the mercy of this stuff, no matter how "special" or irreplaceable you think you are.
    - pg_1234 5y ago
      This ... and as to blame ... at some point you have to admit the managers are just being evil for the money.
kepler1 5y ago
Does anyone else find scant/zero information in this article about what exactly the circumstances of this worker's case is? The story goes on and on about the general topic on other Amazon-related labor recent news, but I find that the total information about this specific case in this article is approximately 1 sentence. What did the worker do, what did Amazon do? 0 information. Not a lot of journalistic content for a "Bloomberg Equality" desk.
- deltree7 5y ago
  It's just another hit piece to stay in relevance.
- ARandomerDude 5y ago
  The details aren't important. You just need to know the narrative: "Amazon = bad because capitalism = bad."
  - gruez 5y ago
    That makes sense if you're the dailybeast or whatever, but bloomberg?
- avs733 5y ago
  two reasons... 1) It's a bloomberg article, their style is short and to the point, their goal is the outcome. They would rather be first and concise than thorough. 2) The bloomberg article is about the finding about the complaint not the details of the complaint.
qualifiedai 5y ago
- idop 5y ago
  He wasn't an "activist" before joining Amazon. He was homeless.
  - scollet 5y ago
    Activism and homelessness aren't even character traits so I'm not sure what GP is talking about.
Cupertino95014 5y ago
- tylersmith 5y ago
  I avoided back surgery and regained the ability to stand without pain after 2 prednisone epidurals. There certainly were some unpleasant side effects, but I was warned about the potential for them and they were far more mild than the condition that was relieved.
- keyanp 5y ago
  It’s often used as a short term medication for aggressive gastrointestinal inflammation: https://www.massgeneral.org/children/inflammatory-bowel-disease/steroids https://www.massgeneral.org/children/inflammatory-bowel-dise...
- kwantam 5y ago
  Are you a doctor? Are you a veterinarian? If no, how likely do you believe it is that you are better informed than a trained professional after a web search for side effects? Prednisone is on the WHO's list of essential medicines. It a vital drug for, among other things, cases where immune activity needs to be modified. The fact that it can be dangerous when misused is not in any way evidence that it should never be used. Put simply, your stance is anti-science. I hope that you will reconsider it. Whether or not you do, I hope that no one reading your comment puts any weight on your opinion, which is not grounded in fact or knowledge.
  - twofornone 5y ago
    >how likely do you believe it is that you are better informed than a trained professional after a web search for side effects How much "training" do you think doctors get with respect to the thousands of drugs that they may prescribe? Doctors are almost all specialists, and read the same side effects labels (or google them these days) that you do. You are not required to rely exclusively on your doctor's risk/benefit analysis for a given prescription. Furthermore, as the commenter pointed out in his example, often times doctors simply do not know what is causing a problem and will throw drugs at it - a lot of medicine is guesswork. >Prednisone is on the WHO's list of essential medicines Which says nothing about its side effect profile >The fact that it can be dangerous when misused is not in any way evidence that it should never be used. Drugs have side effects even when not misused. >Put simply, your stance is anti-science. I hope that you will reconsider it. Whether or not you do, I hope that no one reading your comment puts any weight on your opinion, which is not grounded in fact or knowledge. Not treating a doctor's word as gospel truth is hardly "anti-science" - on the contrary, blind faith is anti-science. And what is researching a drug's side effect profile if not grounding oneself in "fact or knowledge"? Doctors make mistakes. Not proactively sanity checking their treatments is irresponsible when you have the same resources that they do.
Animats 5y ago
"Unprecedented wave of activism", right. Workers have been kept down so long that nobody knows labor history any more.[1] [1] https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/february/flint-michigan-sit-down-strike https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/februa...
- thr0wawayf00 5y ago
  Just like how most people think we always worked 40 hours per week throughout human history.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  well relative to the past 10 years not what happened many many decades ago
  - manquer 5y ago
    Unprecedented does not mean in the recent past though, it means without precedent, i.e. never happened ever before.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Cort3z 5y ago
The amount of popups and overlays on this webpage is out of control to a degrees that I simply left before ever getting to the content.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
indymike 5y ago
My grandfather was a plant superintendent in a union meat packing shop. His take on unions was interesting: Unions happen when an employer mistreats employees. A company that mistreats employees deserves the union.
- autoexec 5y ago
  This is why I don't understand companies who argue that unions just make it harder for people to improve their conditions by making it impossible for employees to communicate directly to management. If the problems employees have could be fixed without unions they would have been fixed already.
  - indymike 5y ago
    > This is why I don't understand companies who argue that unions just make it harder for people to improve their conditions by making it impossible for employees to communicate directly to management. In a well functioning company where managers and employees are well-treated, the Union is at best an extra step, and it does actually prevent direct interaction in some cases. That said, it a badly run company that exploits its employees, talking to management is dangerous for workers.
yoelo 5y ago
It seems like he is currently missing https://twitter.com/AmirKhafagy91/status/1485032049366994945 https://twitter.com/AmirKhafagy91/status/1485032049366994945

302 points by herbstein 5y ago

A very long time ago, someone said something that's stuck with me: Some companies are good to invest in. Some are good to be a customer of. Some are good to work for. But very few companies are all three. Amazon's definitely not the last of those three.

biohax2015 5y ago
Costco is all three!
- kortilla 5y ago
  Not so much on the investment side. https://www.google.com/finance/quote/COST:NASDAQ?comparison=NASDAQ%3AAMZN&window=MAX https://www.google.com/finance/quote/COST:NASDAQ?comparison=...
  - UIUC_06 5y ago
    I guess I need to study Google Finance some more. All I did was, I added in a comparison to the S&P, and Costco jumped to 54,628% and Amazon to 164,805%. I'm sure there's some logical explanation for this. Anyhow, I don't know anyone who works for Costco. Do you? Costco Wholesale Corporation $481.61 +$480.73 54,628.41% Amazon.com, Inc. $2,852.86 +$2,851.13 164,805.20% S&P 500 4,397.94 +4,277.54 3,552.77%
  - Forge36 5y ago
    Compare against other companies/s&p 500 you'll find it's good, but not the best. That's ok. https://g.co/finance/COST:NASDAQ?window=5Y&comparison=NASDAQ%3AAMZN%2CNASDAQ%3ANDAQ%2CINDEXSP%3A.INX https://g.co/finance/COST:NASDAQ?window=5Y&comparison=NASDAQ...
  - cromka 5y ago
    I'd call it a value stock. I invested a while ago specifically after having realized how good the foundations of that company are. How happy the customers are, how happy are the employees and how great PR they have. The most surprising is how Kirkland clothing had been picked-up by the street wear communities. From my observation, this only really happens to "good" companies that we, the older generation, would thought of boring.

mef 5y ago

https://archive.ph/GjnfJ https://archive.ph/GjnfJ

jtbayly 5y ago
Thanks. Any idea why sometimes these links just put me on a reCaptcha loop? It's not me failing the reCaptcha. I get accepted as a human and then get the same "One more step" page again.
- tobyjsullivan 5y ago
  It’s almost certainly a broken implementation. I have no idea here but, as an example, I’d expect the behaviour you describe if someone tried to mix Recaptcha V2 and Recaptcha V3. They might get a score from V3 and, if that score is low, they challenge with V2 as an “escape hatch” to prove you’re not a bot. But then they might have messed it up and redirect you back to a V3 check which still gets a low score. Cycle repeats. In fact, they may well be testing an upgrade from V2 to V3 which could behave the same if they test both at once instead of A/B test. This is pure speculation. Probably 100 other ways they can mess it up.
- e4e78a06 5y ago
  I've had these problems when I have uBlock Origin + a news paywall bypass plugin enabled. I'm guessing something to do with cookies being wiped or scripts being blocked is the issue.
- dundarious 5y ago
  Apple Private Relay always leads to a loop for me. Mozilla VPN (presumably Mullvad as well) does not.
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    Thanks, that seems like the most likely, as I have it turned on.
- LadyCailin 5y ago

tyingq 5y ago

Apparently the activist is homeless: https://www.nysfocus.com/2021/11/23/a-homeless-amazon-worker-tried-to-organize-a-union-then-amazon-fired-him/ https://www.nysfocus.com/2021/11/23/a-homeless-amazon-worker... And “[NLRB] will issue a complaint if the case does not settle” sounds like some nice leverage to have.

aspenmayer 5y ago
Do these complaints have any kind of teeth? I feel bad for the workers, especially the one mentioned. It’s of little comfort to a homeless person to have their complaints upheld if it doesn’t result in a change in their material circumstances.
- tyingq 5y ago
  They can force compliance with an order, but no power for punitive awards, fines, etc. So basically they can force giving the job back with back pay. If I were this particular worker, knowing the NLRB will force at least that, I would ask for something much higher to settle. Though I suppose if you're homeless, you may not have that option to wait.
- kadoban 5y ago
  They have some teeth, yeah. Not enough that Amazon won't do similar things again though, I'm sure. Back pay and reinstatement are possible outcomes (in general for complaints, tbh I have no idea for this one), so it could have a real effect on the wronged.
pandemicsoul 5y ago
It always amazes me, in situations like this, that people just end up suffering even though the machine is "working on their behalf." Like, I used to have this idea – I have no idea where it came from – that if a crime happened to you, the government would step in and help you. Like, if your family member is murdered in your home, they'd come in and clean it up and help you fix the door since you'll be inconsolable. Or, if you get fired for something like this that the government would help you get back on your feet and make sure you have a place to stay and pay your bills. How utterly childish and naive that was. This country has no safety net and that's terrifying.

KarlKemp 5y ago

I am Jeff's complete lack of surprise... Let's hope the complaint is sustained. It's bad enough that this tactic is even tried. The right to unionize is meaningless if organizers can be silenced this easily. It's difficult to balance at-will employment, the right to fire people for cause, and the protection of union leaders and members. But there have been far too many cases like this in the last few months alone to believe these are all justified by individuals' behavior and not attempts to stop unionization.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> But there have been far too many cases like this in the last few months alone to believe these are all justified by individuals' behavior and not attempts to stop unionization. To play devil's advocate, a sociopath could recognize the PR problems it creates for a company to fire someone working toward unionization, and therefore start agitating when it becomes clear they're about to be fired, or just before they do something they know would otherwise be over the line. That doesn't mean everyone working toward unionization is a sociopath, but the population of people fired "while unionizing" will contain both sets of people, and therefore be larger than you might expect.
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  That's not "devil's advocate", that's just an example of the meaning of "difficult to balance". There's this idea in the tech crowd that laws governing circumstances that aren't quantifiable or boolean with zero doubt or error are either entirely impossible or tantamount to just anything-goes subjectivity of judges. But the entire purpose of a system of laws and the courts is to match the ambiguity of the rules to the complexity of life. Because, as it turns out, it's the cases that can be captured by a fixed set of algorithms that are almost non-existent. Which is sort-of the problem "smart contracts" ran into, and that motivated them to create the useless simulation of real-world ownership that is NFTs.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    > That's not "devil's advocate", that's just an example of the meaning of "difficult to balance". You expressed skepticism that this many people could be fired for legitimate reasons while promoting unions. That makes sense if you assume that misconduct and union organizing are independent variables. But since individuals engaged in misconduct have the incentive to become union organizers to make it more expensive for the company to punish them, that isn't true, and the observed result would be expected either way. Your original argument was that the uncertainty was resolved. > But the entire purpose of a system of laws and the courts is to match the ambiguity of the rules to the complexity of life. The entire purpose of a system of laws and the courts is to let what the law actually says happen unless the balance of political power strongly favors something else happening, in which case the other thing happens and a justification gets retconned by the judge. We all know how big corporations work. They have a big book of rules that nobody reads and therefore everybody violates continuously. Then if anybody screws up or becomes disfavored, management opens up the book to see which rule(s) they violated so they can be punished or fired for cause. It's the same thing that happens with laws and prosecutors. It works the same way whether the reason they're getting fired was the same as the rule they violated or not. It's that way on purpose because it makes it easy for management to fire someone for things they're not allowed to prohibit, by finding something the target did which they are allowed to prohibit. But that still doesn't tell you which thing it was in a particular case, and a judge doesn't have any good way of knowing that either. Probably the best you could do is look at whether there were a lot of other people breaking the rules, but everybody else has the incentive to conceal that because anybody who admits to breaking the rules would be subject to firing as well, which the company would have the incentive to do both to show that they're being consistent and to punish anyone who admits that breaking the rules is common. The ambiguity was created on purpose, but that doesn't make it easy to resolve.

warent 5y ago

> “One day I’m working extra hard and the supervisor just stopped me after I took a quick break and kept saying, ‘Smith, go back to work, go back to work,’” Smith said. “I’m thinking, I’m over here, hot, about to faint, working extra hard.” Imagine behaving this way. How do you look in the mirror and feel anything but revulsion? Happy that this guy's shitty behavior and Amazon's toxic culture is being put on blast like this. Hope Daequan gets a massive settlement.

it_does_follow 5y ago
I once lead a team through a massive layoff during the pandemic, fought with leadership to save their jobs (and succeeded), and focused on making sure their work was balanced enough to keep them distracted from what was going on but not a source of stress. My top priority was to ensure that they did not suffer undue stress during the incredibly difficult period of early pandemic coupled with layoffs, focused on making their work as meaningful as possible for them. We still posted some record revenue months. I was fired for this, ultimately because I was not aggressive enough with the team. You get toxic managers like this in toxic companies because it is the only way to not only get promoted but to survive. I recognized early in the pandemic that I could either be the person I wanted to be, the leader I wanted to be, or have a job in 6 months. I chose the former, but don't blame people who are forced to choose the latter. edit: I should clarify that I do mean forced to choose the latter in that last sentence. There is a difference between a 30k/year worker being moved to a 45k/year manager role and needing to keep that job to survive and a 200k/year software engineer choosing to behave this way for a 250k/year job.
- luckydata 5y ago
  I do blame them. Until we have stronger labor movement in this country we'll be at the mercy of this stuff, no matter how "special" or irreplaceable you think you are.
  - pg_1234 5y ago
    This ... and as to blame ... at some point you have to admit the managers are just being evil for the money.

kepler1 5y ago

Does anyone else find scant/zero information in this article about what exactly the circumstances of this worker's case is? The story goes on and on about the general topic on other Amazon-related labor recent news, but I find that the total information about this specific case in this article is approximately 1 sentence. What did the worker do, what did Amazon do? 0 information. Not a lot of journalistic content for a "Bloomberg Equality" desk.

deltree7 5y ago
It's just another hit piece to stay in relevance.
ARandomerDude 5y ago
The details aren't important. You just need to know the narrative: "Amazon = bad because capitalism = bad."
- gruez 5y ago
  That makes sense if you're the dailybeast or whatever, but bloomberg?
avs733 5y ago
two reasons... 1) It's a bloomberg article, their style is short and to the point, their goal is the outcome. They would rather be first and concise than thorough. 2) The bloomberg article is about the finding about the complaint not the details of the complaint.

qualifiedai 5y ago

idop 5y ago
He wasn't an "activist" before joining Amazon. He was homeless.
- scollet 5y ago
  Activism and homelessness aren't even character traits so I'm not sure what GP is talking about.

Cupertino95014 5y ago

tylersmith 5y ago
I avoided back surgery and regained the ability to stand without pain after 2 prednisone epidurals. There certainly were some unpleasant side effects, but I was warned about the potential for them and they were far more mild than the condition that was relieved.
keyanp 5y ago
It’s often used as a short term medication for aggressive gastrointestinal inflammation: https://www.massgeneral.org/children/inflammatory-bowel-disease/steroids https://www.massgeneral.org/children/inflammatory-bowel-dise...
kwantam 5y ago
Are you a doctor? Are you a veterinarian? If no, how likely do you believe it is that you are better informed than a trained professional after a web search for side effects? Prednisone is on the WHO's list of essential medicines. It a vital drug for, among other things, cases where immune activity needs to be modified. The fact that it can be dangerous when misused is not in any way evidence that it should never be used. Put simply, your stance is anti-science. I hope that you will reconsider it. Whether or not you do, I hope that no one reading your comment puts any weight on your opinion, which is not grounded in fact or knowledge.
- twofornone 5y ago
  >how likely do you believe it is that you are better informed than a trained professional after a web search for side effects How much "training" do you think doctors get with respect to the thousands of drugs that they may prescribe? Doctors are almost all specialists, and read the same side effects labels (or google them these days) that you do. You are not required to rely exclusively on your doctor's risk/benefit analysis for a given prescription. Furthermore, as the commenter pointed out in his example, often times doctors simply do not know what is causing a problem and will throw drugs at it - a lot of medicine is guesswork. >Prednisone is on the WHO's list of essential medicines Which says nothing about its side effect profile >The fact that it can be dangerous when misused is not in any way evidence that it should never be used. Drugs have side effects even when not misused. >Put simply, your stance is anti-science. I hope that you will reconsider it. Whether or not you do, I hope that no one reading your comment puts any weight on your opinion, which is not grounded in fact or knowledge. Not treating a doctor's word as gospel truth is hardly "anti-science" - on the contrary, blind faith is anti-science. And what is researching a drug's side effect profile if not grounding oneself in "fact or knowledge"? Doctors make mistakes. Not proactively sanity checking their treatments is irresponsible when you have the same resources that they do.

Animats 5y ago

"Unprecedented wave of activism", right. Workers have been kept down so long that nobody knows labor history any more.[1] [1] https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/february/flint-michigan-sit-down-strike https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/februa...

thr0wawayf00 5y ago
Just like how most people think we always worked 40 hours per week throughout human history.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
well relative to the past 10 years not what happened many many decades ago
- manquer 5y ago
  Unprecedented does not mean in the recent past though, it means without precedent, i.e. never happened ever before.
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Cort3z 5y ago

The amount of popups and overlays on this webpage is out of control to a degrees that I simply left before ever getting to the content.

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indymike 5y ago

My grandfather was a plant superintendent in a union meat packing shop. His take on unions was interesting: Unions happen when an employer mistreats employees. A company that mistreats employees deserves the union.

autoexec 5y ago
This is why I don't understand companies who argue that unions just make it harder for people to improve their conditions by making it impossible for employees to communicate directly to management. If the problems employees have could be fixed without unions they would have been fixed already.
- indymike 5y ago
  > This is why I don't understand companies who argue that unions just make it harder for people to improve their conditions by making it impossible for employees to communicate directly to management. In a well functioning company where managers and employees are well-treated, the Union is at best an extra step, and it does actually prevent direct interaction in some cases. That said, it a badly run company that exploits its employees, talking to management is dangerous for workers.

yoelo 5y ago

It seems like he is currently missing https://twitter.com/AmirKhafagy91/status/1485032049366994945 https://twitter.com/AmirKhafagy91/status/1485032049366994945