43 ms·

Amazon workers on Staten Island vote to unionize

841 points by jbegley 5y ago

josemanuel 5y ago
Is this an April fool’s joke?
akagusu 5y ago
The fact they spend millions to prevent workers from unionize proves that workers must unionize.
mtgx 5y ago
Unions are the most useful when you're dealing with monopolies. Where there is fierce competition in an industry, most workers probably feel that unions are not needed, as they can get a better paying job by switching companies within the same industry whenever they like. So I wonder if the recent rise in union interest is a symptom of the fact that in the U.S. a lot of industries have been monopolized or oligopolized, and the union option is starting to look increasingly more appealing every year.
- munificent 5y ago
  > as they can get a better paying job by switching companies within the same industry whenever they like. There's definitely a lot of truth to this, but I think it's also important to note that switching costs for jobs can be very high for employees. People can have deep social ties with coworkers, there is no guarantee that the new job is better so the risk of ending up in a worse position (with possibly burned bridges) has to be factored in. In places where the job market is limited, it can mean moving, which can be very difficult. Even in non-monopolistic areas, employment is very far from an efficient market.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  >as they can get a better paying job by switching companies within the same industry whenever they like. Most workers are people without college degrees who can't even go a month without a paycheck or afford to move out of pocket. I don't think many Americans even have any direct concept of what unionization is like, because a lot of them have barely ever been part of organized labour in their lifetime, and their only experience with it is a barrage of negative info put out by Amazon or Musk.
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  Yes, but there is a second requirement for unions (in the US, anyway), which is that they have to have a tight enough labor market to have negotiating leverage. Otherwise, the company just closes the factory/store/warehouse/whatever, and moves it elsewhere. Amazon, in 2022, would appear to satisfy both requirements.
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    This is the fundamental flaw with unions in the United States. In other countries, if a company retaliates against their employee union then all the other unions will refuse to do business with that company. The point of unions, which no one in America gets, is that the union should be directly involved in business decisions. So as soon as there is a union, those employees have to allow that plant to close. Management just doesn't get to run around doing as they please. That's the whole fucking point. I'm not interested in being part of a union if the only points of negotiation are pay/hours/benefits. I want a say over profitability overall. Who we do business with and how. What products we offer, and why. And how we service and treat our customers. Google employees banding together to prevent the company from entering certain lines of businesses, for instance. That is progress.
- pkaye 5y ago
  > So I wonder if the recent rise in union interest is a symptom of the fact that in the U.S. a lot of industries have been monopolized or oligopolized, and the union option is starting to look increasingly more appealing every year. Don't many EU countries have strong unions? Does that imply the industries in those countries are monopolized or oligoplized?
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > Where there is fierce competition in an industry, most workers probably feel that unions are not needed, as they can get a better paying job by switching companies within the same industry whenever they like. Unless the biggest players in the industry are colluding against them as was the case with Google, Apple, Adobe, and Intel: https://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsuit/ https://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsu...
BuckRogers 5y ago
I have some family members that work at Amazon, my understanding is that the conditions at Amazon are hard to pin down because some warehouses are run just fine and others are abusive. That said, everyone working a job has a right to a union. Whether there's workplace abuse going on or not. All human endeavors are corrupt, including gov't, business, and occasionally unions. Collective bargaining is something I wish I had at my disposal. Not to mention I could use it to make life better for my colleagues overseas. No reason they should be paid any or much less than anyone else. They work hard, and we should band together.
- hedora 5y ago
  Everyone should have the right to collective bargaining. The US is a closed shop country, which means that, once a union is in place, it has an effective monopoly for the workers that work for one of its companies. If we switched to open shop, then unions would have to compete for membership. Of course, the existing unions are strongly against this. As an end result, everyone I know that's been a union member in the last twenty years strongly dislikes unions.
  - VictorPath 5y ago
    The stockholders and board of a company have an effective monopoly on workers as well. Why not just have an open company where workers can choose their management in the circumstances in which their surplus labor time is being expropriated?
  - mountainb 5y ago
    The only "workers" who come out ahead in unionized workplaces under current federal labor law are the lawyers.
    - coliveira 5y ago
      This is true in so many areas that, by itself, it doesn't really say anything about unions.
  - 5y ago
gotostatement 5y ago
okay this is amazing. but wtf is this sentence? "No union victory is bigger than the first win in the United States at Amazon, which many union leaders regard as an existential threat to labor standards across the economy because it touches so many industries and frequently dominates them."
- Maximus9000 5y ago
  That's a textbook run-on sentence.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    I don't think its a run-on at all, let alone a text book one.
    - brimble 5y ago
      It's definitely not. People have just gotten used to very short and simple sentences, these days. Some would call a high percentage of all sentences written before, I dunno, 1970, run-on sentences, plus a good deal of the writing in contemporary but non-general-audience publications.
    - Maximus9000 5y ago
      It should be broken into two sentences Original: "No union victory is bigger than the first win in the United States at Amazon, which many union leaders regard as an existential threat to labor standards across the economy because it touches so many industries and frequently dominates them." Sentence 1: No union victory is bigger than the first win in the United States at Amazon. Sentence 2: Many union leaders regard Amazon as an existential threat to labor standards across the economy because it touches so many industries and frequently dominates them. https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammar/runonsentences https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammar/run...
      - sam0x17 5y ago
amelius 5y ago
It's great that people are standing up against the abusive power of big companies. When will Apple (App Store) developers unionize?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  This is more akin to genius bar employees in Manhattan unionizing. Amazon developers are still not unionized.
- strombofulous 5y ago
  Why should developers unionize? I love not being in a union. If my company starts dicking me around I'll quit and find another job. Besides, if I do something so bad my boss wants to fire me, fine then I'll go work somewhere where people want me. I don't want to have to bring in my union rep to argue about it since going somewhere else means losing my tenure and taking a 30% pay cut. The only time unions make sense is when you're doing labor that could be done by anyone and your bus factor is basically infinite. It doesn't make sense for skilled labor
  - Spivak 5y ago
    Unionizing makes sense for people who… * don’t want to have to switch jobs to address grievances * can’t switch jobs because everywhere is shitty (eg actors guild). * an industry has a monopoly on some local resource like forest for lumber or coal mines and so you can’t just start or join a competitor. It’s not really about skilled labor, it’s about mobility and the market forces that prevent it.
  - oblio 5y ago
    You shouldn't be forced to join a union but joining a union should not be an issue for any company. In practice, creating unions is heavily frowned upon and discouraged through various underhanded means. That should tell you that companies view unions as enemies, and collective bargaining in general. And companies for sure don't have your interests in mind. Also for sure you don't have the negotiating power they have.
SecondTube 5y ago
londons_explore 5y ago
Can Amazon now just shut down that warehouse and fire all the workers? It would seem like a sensible business move, even if it involves a little bit of service disruption for users in New York.
- lalaland1125 5y ago
  Yes, Amazon is allowed to do that. The main caveat is that they have to argue in court that the warehouse would be unprofitable given the union's demands.
  - daenz 5y ago
    >they have to argue in court that the warehouse would be unprofitable given the union's demands. They would? Why? How does the existence of a union prevent a company from firing everyone if it wants to? My understanding is that the only power of a union is that all of its members use collective leverage to get better deals. There is no collective leverage action if everyone is fired.
    - relaxing 5y ago
      Federal law.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Yes, but I believe this warehouse employs 8,000 of people. It would probably cost hundreds of millions to rebuild it which is what they'd have to do in this situation. Might be worth it for them, but they'd take a huge pr hit which could tip the scales to not shutting down the warehouse. I think it's likely they build smaller warehouses in the future to make a shut down in response to unionization more palatable.
  - zjaffee 5y ago
    8300 is just the size of the bargaining unit, there are almost certainly far more people working there than just that.
equality 5y ago
This is fantastic news. Well done, Amazon employees! I'm glad to see that Amazon's anti-union propaganda was taken for the nonsense that it is. Hopefully the employees of other Amazon warehouses will be inspired to do the same, after this win for workers.
- 1270018080 5y ago
  Their software engineers should, too. You don't actually have to get pipped, get pinged 24/7, and be ground to dust and thrown away to be a successful software engineer.
  - equality 5y ago
    I very much agree. Every worker should unionize, for the good of us all. Far too much power has been ceded to companies pushing for abusive working practices, that are now largely culturally normalized.
    - dymk 5y ago
      Well, no, I can bargain individually better than a group could try to on my behalf.
      - netizen-936824 5y ago
        So you can singlehandedly get a corporation to improve their working conditions? That's incredible
        dymk 5y ago
        The company caters to _me_, not the other way around. Welcome to being in a high-demand job.
        MartinCron 5y ago
        I guess that's good if you only care about you?
forcer 5y ago
When Cloudflare Workers unionize, that will be world first ;)
Animats 5y ago
What's sad is that this is a "stunning win". It should be a routine event. Now, McDonalds and WalMart.
- sam0x17 5y ago
  Yes, and this is after Amazon personally contested a large percentage of the ballots, and after past events like them making fake drop boxes that allegedly led to failed votes in previous amazon unionization situations.
cs702 5y ago
A single successful effort of unionization at an Amazon facility is more than symbolic: It will encourage -- and serve as a blueprint for -- employees at other Amazon facilities to do the same. Moreover, it will motivate employees at other large companies to try. This has been brewing for a while. It's possible we'll see a generational wave of unionization.
- jasode 5y ago
  >unionization at an Amazon facility is more than symbolic: It will encourage -- and serve as a blueprint for -- employees at other Amazon facilities to do the same. It really depends on how things play out. E.g. what the extra union dues' payments will be in relation to the extra benefits received from union representation. Or maybe Amazon responds with a "business decision" to close JFK8 fulfillment center. So it can have the opposite effect. The strong union at the Boeing factory in Seattle WA negatively influenced the Boeing workers in South Carolina. The SC workers voted in 3 different elections to reject the union. The last voting count was 74% against the union. We have to wait and see what the union can "win" from Amazon.
  - rat87 5y ago
    I think it has more to do with politics. Conservative SC politicians have made it clear that they would rather not have good jobs if they are unionized, they don't wont workers getting ideas
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > maybe Amazon responds with a "business decision" to close JFK8 fulfillment center Given the current labor market, that union could probably bulk sell its labor to someone else willing to come in and pick up where Amazon left off. This is another, less-mentioned benefit of collective bargaining: it aggregates labor.
    - jfjfkfmf 5y ago
      Why would any company actually want to do this when they could just get non union labor in any of the thousands of right-to-work cities?
legitster 5y ago
I had a boss who was an expensive consultant for unions. He explained the reason unions in the US were shrinking is that they are too powerful. They control huge pension and healthcare portfolios and can completely control the relationship with employers, especially in closed shop situations. Comparatively, European unions are much "weaker" - or maybe more accurately their purview is much smaller. They control smaller geographic regions, and in general, all of the heavy lifting for healthcare and pensions and worker rights is handled by the government. So the unions' focus is entirely on the collective bargaining piece. Also, unions tend to be more regulated - they can't carry so much bloat. All in all, everyone, companies included, have less reason to combat unions. I'd be interested to hear if anyone has experience with both and can gauge the accuracy.
- soco 5y ago
  Which leads to the weird situation when a US-based company will fight to the bone their European unions just out of principle, no matter the topic discussed or its legal base. And with the EWCs (European Worker Councils), even worse.
- brimble 5y ago
  > Comparatively, European unions are much "weaker" - or maybe more accurately their purview is much smaller. They control smaller geographic regions, and in general, all of the heavy lifting for healthcare and pensions and worker rights is handled by the government. So the unions' focus is entirely on the collective bargaining piece. Also, unions tend to be more regulated - they can't carry so much bloat. All in all, everyone, companies included, have less reason to combat unions. I'm not sure I'd call unions legally-mandated to hold 33-50% (depending on company size) of the company's board seats "weaker". That's the situation in Germany.
  - tharne 5y ago
    > I'm not sure I'd call unions legally-mandated to hold 33-50% (depending on company size) of the company's board seats "weaker". That's the situation in Germany. I think that's a brilliant policy. It forces the unions to have some skin in the game. If you're on the board, you have a fiduciary responsibility to the company and it's shareholders. In the U.S., most union bosses are happy to bleed a company dry provided the bleed is slow enough for them to make it to retirement (or death in the case of folks with a nice pension). It's even worse with the public unions. Since governments can theoretically keep raising taxes, there's no real limiting factor to how much the unions can demand. The union system is the U.S. is completely broken. I think unions in the U.S. should be both more widespread but much less powerful.
beastman82 5y ago
Everyone loves unions, somehow they overlook the outrageous power of police unions to keep terrible people in their ranks. Also Union actions against nonunion jobs are borderline criminal most of the time.
- kooshball 5y ago
  I would argue private company unions are fundamentally different from public unions like police and teachers whose roles are guaranteed by law.
- M2Ys4U 5y ago
  >Everyone loves unions, somehow they overlook the outrageous power of police unions to keep terrible people in their ranks. Unions represent their members' interests, that's the entire point of unions. It says more about the entire profession of policing (i.e. that there are so many terrible officers that the not-terrible ones can't do anything about them) than it does about unions, to be honest.
  - themaninthedark 5y ago
    How would you purpose that the not-terrible officers do something about the terrible officers? What should the great and inspiring teachers do about the bad teachers?
    - simulate-me 5y ago
      Marginalize them? Give them the unimportant tasks and classes. Put them in positions that limit harm.
      - themaninthedark 5y ago
        Assigning tasks and classes is the job of management, not the fellow union workers. Often, management is not allowed to be in the union as that would be a conflict of interest.
    - 5y ago
bumblebritches5 5y ago
gojomo 5y ago
[on Staten Island]
- dang 5y ago
  We've reverted to the article title now, in keeping with the site guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Submitted title was "Amazon workers vote to unionize in stunning win for organized labor". NYT is known to change headlines so that may not have been the submitter's doing.
Barrera 5y ago
Freakonomics ran a recent episode on unions [1]. A pair of interesting stats were presented near the start: the approval rating for unions stands at 70% in the US (even higher among the young) at the same time that union membership stands at 10%. Both numbers are at multi-decade extremes. I don't think it's any coincidence that this success at Amazon comes right now. After the GFC all regulatory efforts turned to keeping financial markets solvent. That has meant unwavering support for policies that favor those with assets over those who don't. The pandemic happened in early 2020 just as the wheels were flying off the US economy yet again. So what would have played out got masked by many other factors, including direct government transfers. Those stimmie checks of yore are long gone, and it will be a very steep uphill battle to bring anything remotely like that back given the rip-roaring yr/yr increase in CPI and PPI now underway. Those checks are being blamed for the ongoing inflation that more than just the lunatic fringe now thinks is the start of Weimar-style hyperinflation. So with the 2/10 year yield curve now inverted [2], it's just a matter of time before the economic chickens come home to roost once more. Will it be different this time? Will unions step in to fill the gap that government can not? [1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/do-unions-still-work/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/do-unions-still-work/ [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/01/us-bonds-treasury-yields-invert-stoking-recession-fears.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/01/us-bonds-treasury-yields-inv...
- jolux 5y ago
  Why do you say the wheels were flying off the economy in 2020?
  - Barrera 5y ago
    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_events_in_the_U.S._repo_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_events_in_the_U... 2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/12/31/2019s-yield-curve-inversion-means-a-recession-could-hit-in-2020/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/12/31/2019s-yie...
    - ineedasername 5y ago
robomartin 5y ago
I was in a union (not by choice) the first ten years or so of my professional life. To put it in simple terms: I despise them. Yes, of course, they had reason to exist in the dark ages. Today, I think they are in a range between counterproductive and dangerous. Before anyone make a move for the jugular: I make a distinction between union members and union management (the entity). Union members are hard working folks, just like anyone else. They want the best for their families. That's their driving force. Nothing wrong with that at all. We all want the same things. Union management, on the other hand, well, I the tend to be between evil and criminal. Today, US unions, in my opinion, destroy jobs. And they have done this in massive numbers. I still remember having a long conversation with a guy who retired from the printing industry. He explained, in great detail, how the union that ruled his industry absolutely decimated it. He lost his pension, benefits, etc. The problem with US unions is that they exist to squeeze as much from companies as humanly possible. One of the most egregious examples I have seen of this is what the UAW (United Auto Workers) contracts that made US auto companies have more than 10,000 employees getting paid full wages and benefits (about $130K/year) to do nothing. Non-US car companies don't have this unbelievably destructive expense. The effect of squeezing every possible drop out of a business is that you simply cannot be competitive over the long run. The other side effect is that economics and competitive pressures will force you to move portions of your process offshore and automate as much as you possibly can. So, yeah, union leaders likely gave themselves a huge pat in the back for pulling that one off. And they made millions themselves (they get paid very well). And yet, a the ground level, they destroyed jobs, damaged companies, likely caused people to have serious psychological problems and damaged the long term viability of jobs. When a company had hundreds of millions of dollars in dead-weight over head for years and years, sooner or later, there will be consequences. This is like fundamental laws of physics that cannot be violated. In my little slice of the universe, as we are building a new manufacturing business, everything that can be automated will be so. There is no way we can pay someone $15 per hour (EDIT: to put screws into holes). If there was a way to do so and remain viable, I would have no problem with it. The truth of the matter is, this wage is a job killer. The US is already not competitive due to the huge cost of doing business here. This makes it worse. On top of that, the combination of the $15/hr minimum wage, pandemic and other world issues has resulted in serious inflationary issues. Which means that the people who got that $15/hr wage (if they have a job at all), did not, in reality, get a raise at all. So, all we've done by pushing this nonsense is increase costs and destroy jobs. Brilliant. I know they look at all of this in China and cannot believe the US seems intent on destroying itself from the inside. I know because I also manufacture in China and talk to our suppliers all the time. They always tell me about how they are getting new customers because the cost of doing business in the US increases year after year. As I said. Brilliant. Sadly, people will not learn this lesson until things are bad enough to be obvious to nearly everyone. To be fair, what I am saying above requires having a reasonable understanding of business and skin in the game. Most people, the vast majority of people, go through life in complete ignorance of these realities. And so it is to be expected that, when the time comes to make decisions (voting) they are easily swayed into making truly dumb choices from the perspective of those who do have context.
eigenvalue 5y ago
When this has happened at individual Walmart stores in the past, the company would immediately shut down the store and everyone would lose their jobs. A couple years later they would build a new store within 20 or so miles of the old store, free of the union. This was obviously financially painful for Walmart, but it served as such a strong signal to employees to not even try to unionize that it must have paid for itself many times over given Walmart's thousands of stores. I wonder if Amazon has been taking notes from them on this.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  I don't think Amazon wants to shut this warehouse down, my rough understanding is that it's a hugely important warehouse, serving NYC's millions of customers.
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    I know people and it’s already in shut down mode. Do you really think they designed their infra to be that vulnerable? It’s time to make a point and turn the community against the agitators. They destroyed good jobs.
    - 0des 5y ago
      > make a point and turn the community against the agitators. Time and time again this is the proven strategy.
  - INTPenis 5y ago
    So? Why can't it be in Long Island, New Jersey, Newark, or any other place around NYC? It's a sad state of affairs when corporations are allowed to screw citizens over.
    - hn_version_0023 5y ago
      I’m a 46yro male from the US. When have corporations NOT been allowed to screwed over citizens? I think thats been true for the entirety of my life.
alexk307 5y ago
> Employees cast 2,654 votes to be represented by Amazon Labor Union and 2,131 against, giving the union a win by more than 10 percentage points, according to the National Labor Relations Board. More than 8,300 workers at the building This is just sad. Just a hair over 50% of the eligible voters voted; weirdly, approximately the same voter turnout for US elections historically. Does half of any given population just not care enough to vote for something?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  Part of anti-unionization tactics is making employees uncomfortable about even discussing or associating with the topic. Management uses captive audience meetings to personally guilt the employees, which makes employees just want the whole thing to be over with because it’s so uncomfortable. Nobody likes being made to feel guilty but they need a job and don’t really know whats going on; they just want the drama to be over with so they avoid it as best they can.
- alxndr 5y ago
  Short answer? Yes. Long answer probably involves value systems and what individuals are actually doing on that day…
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Perhaps roughly half of the eligible voters correctly estimated that the chance of their vote affecting the outcome is exceedingly low and that the cost of voting (even if it's just a few minutes of time) is not worth that small chance of affecting the outcome.
  - 0des 5y ago
    Or scared of repercussions for voting one way or the other, from employer on one hand or peers on the other.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
rdiddly 5y ago
The summary says workers voted "by a wide margin" for a union, but it looks like it was 2,654 votes for, 2,131 against, which is 55.5% to 44.5% or a margin of 11%. I wouldn't call that a wide margin, but maybe it could be considered so in these sorry-ass times of perpetual 51-to-49 deadlock.
- lambertsimnel 5y ago
  In light of the fairly small margin of victory, maybe some employees were too undecided to vote. I also wouldn't be surprised if the demands of the job left some without the capacity to engage with the question. I share your disappointment, though.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
IanDrake 5y ago
SnowHill9902 5y ago
Unions are disastrous in some countries. See Italy, Argentina, and Brazil. Boiling pot of corruption and extortion.
- adultSwim 5y ago
  Companies are disastrous in many countries. It's a broad organizational structure that can be run many different ways. I just know that at work I am alone and weak. With everyone else I would be on more equal footing with my employer. Instead of quitting, why not make my workplace better?
  - SnowHill9902 5y ago
    It’s better in the short term. After one generation or two of unions getting stronger, everybody ends up losing. There were very strong unions (and rackets) already some decades ago. See how it ended up.
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      Nope. Union membership has been extremely high in Sweden for ~5 generations and everyone benefits greatly from them. You'll find similar in a lot of Europe.
wiredone 5y ago
I really don’t understand this push tbh. Amazon is already the industry leader in pay and benefits for these roles. Why was this needed? In 2022, the only time I tend to see a union do anything, it’s to disrupt and create mob like holds on things (shipping, trucking etc). There seems to be waaay more corruption in anything union related than without. Can someone seriously explain why this is needed or a good thing? Who actually wins in Amazons case outside of corrupt, power hungry union leaders who get to create roles for themselves?
- jackosdev 5y ago
  Spent a long time in Australian mines, some are heavily unionised, what you say is right it does attract the most toxic people, but at the same time even the truck drivers earn a fantastic living they can use to support a family. This is only possible because of the decades of strong unions negotiating better pay so the mines had to share the wealth. So to answer your question, the poorest people in the company benefit, despite the toxicity it can create.
  - csee 5y ago
    > but at the same time even the truck drivers earn a fantastic living they can use to support a family. This is only possible because of the decades of strong unions negotiating better pay so the mines had to share the wealth. How is this to do with unions and not just lack of labor supply, i.e. lack of people with a right to work in Australia who also want to be a truck driver in the middle of nowhere.
- britch 5y ago
  Pay and Benefits are one thing. Working conditions are another. You can pay me 15 an hour (Only $30K a year) but if I have to pee in a bottle or don't have enough schedule consistency to see my kids it's not worth it. Amazon may pay well for now, but let's be honest, Amazon is a monopolistic project. What happens when there's less competition than there is right now? Do you think wages stay where they're at without some kind of pressure? A union is the only ways employees can have any real power in the workplace. Democratically run unions give employees real negotiating power over what it means to go to work day to day. Unions are not perfect but what group of humans ever is? I'd take a union job over a non-union job any day of the week.
RavlaAlvar 5y ago
A good news for anyone work inAmazon robotics branch, I guess?
- paulcole 5y ago
  I remember all these promises of how quick tech bros would be able to automate minimum wage and so-called “unskilled” jobs. Now for the past 18 months every Subway sandwich shop (and the like) in my area is begging people (not robots) to work. I wouldn’t be betting on robots just yet.
  - crackercrews 5y ago
    The supermarkets I go to have been growing their self-checkout sections in recent years.
  - 0des 5y ago
    McDonalds where I am has automated and now sometimes doesn't have someone at the counter
    - crowbahr 5y ago
      Apparently white castle is rolling out burger flipping bots. Unclear how much they do besides flipping burgers but they're clearly investing in that future.
tomcam 5y ago
Not a big fan of most modern day unions, but I hope they unionize the shit out of Amazon. I am happy to pay more. Their treatment of the rank and file is despicable. Here in Seattle I have met very few people who enjoyed their time working at Amazon, and that includes tech folk.
- thathndude 5y ago
  At what point should we be ok with low-level Amazon jobs sucking? I worked at a fast food restaurant. That sucked. But I was also a high school kid with no marketable skills. So I sort of understood I was “putting in my time” and this is the way it goes. I never thought “we should unionize and demand more money.” If Amazon needs career people in these positions, they’ll be forced to treat the employees as career people and not like the fast food industry treats employees like myself.
  - tomcam 5y ago
    I’m sympathetic to that perspective, and it’s the one I would normally take. But the working conditions at Amazon warehouses and for their delivery people seem to include things like peeing and pooping into bottles, breaks too short to get to a bathroom across the warehouse, etc. I had menial jobs myself but never quite so demeaning or physically punishing—holding it in all day seems like hell.
    - thathndude 5y ago
      To be clear, I don’t disagree with this perspective. While I do remember getting yelled at for taking a, literally, 10 second drink break (“you need to ask”), I never found myself peeing in a bottle.
  - matsemann 5y ago
    "I had it bad therefore other should too"..? Why does working in a restaurant have to suck? I've worked at plenty here in Norway during my youth, was always nice. They pay according to a collective agreement, with extra pay for evening and night work. So a pay it was possible to survive on. Why demand that "unskilled" labor should suck? Why want to inflict that pain on others?
cameldrv 5y ago
My dad (manager at a non-union manufacturing company) always said "companies who have a union usually deserve it." From what I've heard about working conditions in Amazon's warehouses, this may be the problem they've run into.
chairmanwow1 5y ago
Well, I’m expecting Amazon to get more expensive
02020202 5y ago
siscia 5y ago
I am very naïve on this, but unions seems to always been portrayed as negative to business and I really don't understand this view. Of course, if you are paying more money from getting the same amount of value from an employer, that is bad for business. But this is not necessarily what can happen, giving more benefits, more stable schedule, better wages, more WLB means being more competitive in the labour market, it means retaining worker more easily. If the company is not wise enough to do it by itself, still it doesn't means that it cannot be a net positive for the company itself. The whole idea of treating humans as leaking, opexed, robots will need to be fixed, but it can be done and it can bring benefits.
- scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
  It is a unique feature of the American landscape, this aversion to unions. Deeply rooted in complicated history of labor in the US from what I understand. Here in Eastern Europe labor unions were at a certain point the source of political power, both for the establishment under socialism, and for the opposition movements before/after the iron curtain dropped. So, here banning or fighting against unions is unthinkable - they are considered a “good” thing. It’s hard to think about this labor/business tension when you realize that all thought on this subject is constantly being monitored, lobbied and influenced.
- 0xB31B1B 5y ago
  The issue employers have with unions is much less about wage bargaining an almost entirely about the duplicative work/labor unions tend to lead to. As a hypothetical, lets say you run a widget factory. Line workers at your widget factory spend 6 hour of their shift making widgets, and 2 hours of their shift packing widgets up after they have completed making their widgets. A union comes in and will say "we can have experts in widget making, and experts in packing, these are 2 jobs, people who make widgets do not have the expertise to pack, and people who pack do not have the expertise to make widgets. From now on, we will have 2 separate job roles, widget makers and widget packers, and a packer will never ever be able allowed to make widgets, and widget makes will never ever be allowed to pack widgets". The company, which used to have a staff of 8 people who did both tasks, will now need a staff of 8, 6 widget makers and 2 widget packers. Seems OK right? Well christmas comes around and there are too many widgets to be packed, last year all 8 people were packing widgets 8 hours per day around the christmas rush, and there wasn't much widget making to be done because after christmas is low on sales. The company needs to hire an additional 6 temporary widget packers to pack widget and the 6 widget makers will be either idle or working with reduced efficiency. This increases the companies expenses with no real value created.

841 points by jbegley 5y ago

josemanuel 5y ago

Is this an April fool’s joke?

akagusu 5y ago

The fact they spend millions to prevent workers from unionize proves that workers must unionize.

mtgx 5y ago

Unions are the most useful when you're dealing with monopolies. Where there is fierce competition in an industry, most workers probably feel that unions are not needed, as they can get a better paying job by switching companies within the same industry whenever they like. So I wonder if the recent rise in union interest is a symptom of the fact that in the U.S. a lot of industries have been monopolized or oligopolized, and the union option is starting to look increasingly more appealing every year.

munificent 5y ago
> as they can get a better paying job by switching companies within the same industry whenever they like. There's definitely a lot of truth to this, but I think it's also important to note that switching costs for jobs can be very high for employees. People can have deep social ties with coworkers, there is no guarantee that the new job is better so the risk of ending up in a worse position (with possibly burned bridges) has to be factored in. In places where the job market is limited, it can mean moving, which can be very difficult. Even in non-monopolistic areas, employment is very far from an efficient market.
Barrin92 5y ago
>as they can get a better paying job by switching companies within the same industry whenever they like. Most workers are people without college degrees who can't even go a month without a paycheck or afford to move out of pocket. I don't think many Americans even have any direct concept of what unionization is like, because a lot of them have barely ever been part of organized labour in their lifetime, and their only experience with it is a barrage of negative info put out by Amazon or Musk.
rossdavidh 5y ago
Yes, but there is a second requirement for unions (in the US, anyway), which is that they have to have a tight enough labor market to have negotiating leverage. Otherwise, the company just closes the factory/store/warehouse/whatever, and moves it elsewhere. Amazon, in 2022, would appear to satisfy both requirements.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  This is the fundamental flaw with unions in the United States. In other countries, if a company retaliates against their employee union then all the other unions will refuse to do business with that company. The point of unions, which no one in America gets, is that the union should be directly involved in business decisions. So as soon as there is a union, those employees have to allow that plant to close. Management just doesn't get to run around doing as they please. That's the whole fucking point. I'm not interested in being part of a union if the only points of negotiation are pay/hours/benefits. I want a say over profitability overall. Who we do business with and how. What products we offer, and why. And how we service and treat our customers. Google employees banding together to prevent the company from entering certain lines of businesses, for instance. That is progress.
pkaye 5y ago
> So I wonder if the recent rise in union interest is a symptom of the fact that in the U.S. a lot of industries have been monopolized or oligopolized, and the union option is starting to look increasingly more appealing every year. Don't many EU countries have strong unions? Does that imply the industries in those countries are monopolized or oligoplized?
AlexandrB 5y ago
> Where there is fierce competition in an industry, most workers probably feel that unions are not needed, as they can get a better paying job by switching companies within the same industry whenever they like. Unless the biggest players in the industry are colluding against them as was the case with Google, Apple, Adobe, and Intel: https://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsuit/ https://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsu...

BuckRogers 5y ago

I have some family members that work at Amazon, my understanding is that the conditions at Amazon are hard to pin down because some warehouses are run just fine and others are abusive. That said, everyone working a job has a right to a union. Whether there's workplace abuse going on or not. All human endeavors are corrupt, including gov't, business, and occasionally unions. Collective bargaining is something I wish I had at my disposal. Not to mention I could use it to make life better for my colleagues overseas. No reason they should be paid any or much less than anyone else. They work hard, and we should band together.

hedora 5y ago
Everyone should have the right to collective bargaining. The US is a closed shop country, which means that, once a union is in place, it has an effective monopoly for the workers that work for one of its companies. If we switched to open shop, then unions would have to compete for membership. Of course, the existing unions are strongly against this. As an end result, everyone I know that's been a union member in the last twenty years strongly dislikes unions.
- VictorPath 5y ago
  The stockholders and board of a company have an effective monopoly on workers as well. Why not just have an open company where workers can choose their management in the circumstances in which their surplus labor time is being expropriated?
- mountainb 5y ago
  The only "workers" who come out ahead in unionized workplaces under current federal labor law are the lawyers.
  - coliveira 5y ago
    This is true in so many areas that, by itself, it doesn't really say anything about unions.
- 5y ago

gotostatement 5y ago

okay this is amazing. but wtf is this sentence? "No union victory is bigger than the first win in the United States at Amazon, which many union leaders regard as an existential threat to labor standards across the economy because it touches so many industries and frequently dominates them."

Maximus9000 5y ago
That's a textbook run-on sentence.
- bawolff 5y ago
  I don't think its a run-on at all, let alone a text book one.
  - brimble 5y ago
    It's definitely not. People have just gotten used to very short and simple sentences, these days. Some would call a high percentage of all sentences written before, I dunno, 1970, run-on sentences, plus a good deal of the writing in contemporary but non-general-audience publications.
  - Maximus9000 5y ago
    It should be broken into two sentences Original: "No union victory is bigger than the first win in the United States at Amazon, which many union leaders regard as an existential threat to labor standards across the economy because it touches so many industries and frequently dominates them." Sentence 1: No union victory is bigger than the first win in the United States at Amazon. Sentence 2: Many union leaders regard Amazon as an existential threat to labor standards across the economy because it touches so many industries and frequently dominates them. https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammar/runonsentences https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammar/run...
    - sam0x17 5y ago

amelius 5y ago

It's great that people are standing up against the abusive power of big companies. When will Apple (App Store) developers unionize?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
oh_sigh 5y ago
This is more akin to genius bar employees in Manhattan unionizing. Amazon developers are still not unionized.
strombofulous 5y ago
Why should developers unionize? I love not being in a union. If my company starts dicking me around I'll quit and find another job. Besides, if I do something so bad my boss wants to fire me, fine then I'll go work somewhere where people want me. I don't want to have to bring in my union rep to argue about it since going somewhere else means losing my tenure and taking a 30% pay cut. The only time unions make sense is when you're doing labor that could be done by anyone and your bus factor is basically infinite. It doesn't make sense for skilled labor
- Spivak 5y ago
  Unionizing makes sense for people who… * don’t want to have to switch jobs to address grievances * can’t switch jobs because everywhere is shitty (eg actors guild). * an industry has a monopoly on some local resource like forest for lumber or coal mines and so you can’t just start or join a competitor. It’s not really about skilled labor, it’s about mobility and the market forces that prevent it.
- oblio 5y ago
  You shouldn't be forced to join a union but joining a union should not be an issue for any company. In practice, creating unions is heavily frowned upon and discouraged through various underhanded means. That should tell you that companies view unions as enemies, and collective bargaining in general. And companies for sure don't have your interests in mind. Also for sure you don't have the negotiating power they have.

SecondTube 5y ago

londons_explore 5y ago

Can Amazon now just shut down that warehouse and fire all the workers? It would seem like a sensible business move, even if it involves a little bit of service disruption for users in New York.

lalaland1125 5y ago
Yes, Amazon is allowed to do that. The main caveat is that they have to argue in court that the warehouse would be unprofitable given the union's demands.
- daenz 5y ago
  >they have to argue in court that the warehouse would be unprofitable given the union's demands. They would? Why? How does the existence of a union prevent a company from firing everyone if it wants to? My understanding is that the only power of a union is that all of its members use collective leverage to get better deals. There is no collective leverage action if everyone is fired.
  - relaxing 5y ago
    Federal law.
colinmhayes 5y ago
Yes, but I believe this warehouse employs 8,000 of people. It would probably cost hundreds of millions to rebuild it which is what they'd have to do in this situation. Might be worth it for them, but they'd take a huge pr hit which could tip the scales to not shutting down the warehouse. I think it's likely they build smaller warehouses in the future to make a shut down in response to unionization more palatable.
- zjaffee 5y ago
  8300 is just the size of the bargaining unit, there are almost certainly far more people working there than just that.

equality 5y ago

This is fantastic news. Well done, Amazon employees! I'm glad to see that Amazon's anti-union propaganda was taken for the nonsense that it is. Hopefully the employees of other Amazon warehouses will be inspired to do the same, after this win for workers.

1270018080 5y ago
Their software engineers should, too. You don't actually have to get pipped, get pinged 24/7, and be ground to dust and thrown away to be a successful software engineer.
- equality 5y ago
  I very much agree. Every worker should unionize, for the good of us all. Far too much power has been ceded to companies pushing for abusive working practices, that are now largely culturally normalized.
  - dymk 5y ago
    Well, no, I can bargain individually better than a group could try to on my behalf.
    - netizen-936824 5y ago
      So you can singlehandedly get a corporation to improve their working conditions? That's incredible
      - dymk 5y ago
        The company caters to _me_, not the other way around. Welcome to being in a high-demand job.
        MartinCron 5y ago
        I guess that's good if you only care about you?

forcer 5y ago

When Cloudflare Workers unionize, that will be world first ;)

Animats 5y ago

What's sad is that this is a "stunning win". It should be a routine event. Now, McDonalds and WalMart.

sam0x17 5y ago
Yes, and this is after Amazon personally contested a large percentage of the ballots, and after past events like them making fake drop boxes that allegedly led to failed votes in previous amazon unionization situations.

cs702 5y ago

A single successful effort of unionization at an Amazon facility is more than symbolic: It will encourage -- and serve as a blueprint for -- employees at other Amazon facilities to do the same. Moreover, it will motivate employees at other large companies to try. This has been brewing for a while. It's possible we'll see a generational wave of unionization.

jasode 5y ago
>unionization at an Amazon facility is more than symbolic: It will encourage -- and serve as a blueprint for -- employees at other Amazon facilities to do the same. It really depends on how things play out. E.g. what the extra union dues' payments will be in relation to the extra benefits received from union representation. Or maybe Amazon responds with a "business decision" to close JFK8 fulfillment center. So it can have the opposite effect. The strong union at the Boeing factory in Seattle WA negatively influenced the Boeing workers in South Carolina. The SC workers voted in 3 different elections to reject the union. The last voting count was 74% against the union. We have to wait and see what the union can "win" from Amazon.
- rat87 5y ago
  I think it has more to do with politics. Conservative SC politicians have made it clear that they would rather not have good jobs if they are unionized, they don't wont workers getting ideas
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > maybe Amazon responds with a "business decision" to close JFK8 fulfillment center Given the current labor market, that union could probably bulk sell its labor to someone else willing to come in and pick up where Amazon left off. This is another, less-mentioned benefit of collective bargaining: it aggregates labor.
  - jfjfkfmf 5y ago
    Why would any company actually want to do this when they could just get non union labor in any of the thousands of right-to-work cities?

legitster 5y ago

I had a boss who was an expensive consultant for unions. He explained the reason unions in the US were shrinking is that they are too powerful. They control huge pension and healthcare portfolios and can completely control the relationship with employers, especially in closed shop situations. Comparatively, European unions are much "weaker" - or maybe more accurately their purview is much smaller. They control smaller geographic regions, and in general, all of the heavy lifting for healthcare and pensions and worker rights is handled by the government. So the unions' focus is entirely on the collective bargaining piece. Also, unions tend to be more regulated - they can't carry so much bloat. All in all, everyone, companies included, have less reason to combat unions. I'd be interested to hear if anyone has experience with both and can gauge the accuracy.

soco 5y ago
Which leads to the weird situation when a US-based company will fight to the bone their European unions just out of principle, no matter the topic discussed or its legal base. And with the EWCs (European Worker Councils), even worse.
brimble 5y ago
> Comparatively, European unions are much "weaker" - or maybe more accurately their purview is much smaller. They control smaller geographic regions, and in general, all of the heavy lifting for healthcare and pensions and worker rights is handled by the government. So the unions' focus is entirely on the collective bargaining piece. Also, unions tend to be more regulated - they can't carry so much bloat. All in all, everyone, companies included, have less reason to combat unions. I'm not sure I'd call unions legally-mandated to hold 33-50% (depending on company size) of the company's board seats "weaker". That's the situation in Germany.
- tharne 5y ago
  > I'm not sure I'd call unions legally-mandated to hold 33-50% (depending on company size) of the company's board seats "weaker". That's the situation in Germany. I think that's a brilliant policy. It forces the unions to have some skin in the game. If you're on the board, you have a fiduciary responsibility to the company and it's shareholders. In the U.S., most union bosses are happy to bleed a company dry provided the bleed is slow enough for them to make it to retirement (or death in the case of folks with a nice pension). It's even worse with the public unions. Since governments can theoretically keep raising taxes, there's no real limiting factor to how much the unions can demand. The union system is the U.S. is completely broken. I think unions in the U.S. should be both more widespread but much less powerful.

beastman82 5y ago

Everyone loves unions, somehow they overlook the outrageous power of police unions to keep terrible people in their ranks. Also Union actions against nonunion jobs are borderline criminal most of the time.

kooshball 5y ago
I would argue private company unions are fundamentally different from public unions like police and teachers whose roles are guaranteed by law.
M2Ys4U 5y ago
>Everyone loves unions, somehow they overlook the outrageous power of police unions to keep terrible people in their ranks. Unions represent their members' interests, that's the entire point of unions. It says more about the entire profession of policing (i.e. that there are so many terrible officers that the not-terrible ones can't do anything about them) than it does about unions, to be honest.
- themaninthedark 5y ago
  How would you purpose that the not-terrible officers do something about the terrible officers? What should the great and inspiring teachers do about the bad teachers?
  - simulate-me 5y ago
    Marginalize them? Give them the unimportant tasks and classes. Put them in positions that limit harm.
    - themaninthedark 5y ago
      Assigning tasks and classes is the job of management, not the fellow union workers. Often, management is not allowed to be in the union as that would be a conflict of interest.
  - 5y ago

bumblebritches5 5y ago

gojomo 5y ago

[on Staten Island]

dang 5y ago
We've reverted to the article title now, in keeping with the site guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Submitted title was "Amazon workers vote to unionize in stunning win for organized labor". NYT is known to change headlines so that may not have been the submitter's doing.

Barrera 5y ago

Freakonomics ran a recent episode on unions [1]. A pair of interesting stats were presented near the start: the approval rating for unions stands at 70% in the US (even higher among the young) at the same time that union membership stands at 10%. Both numbers are at multi-decade extremes. I don't think it's any coincidence that this success at Amazon comes right now. After the GFC all regulatory efforts turned to keeping financial markets solvent. That has meant unwavering support for policies that favor those with assets over those who don't. The pandemic happened in early 2020 just as the wheels were flying off the US economy yet again. So what would have played out got masked by many other factors, including direct government transfers. Those stimmie checks of yore are long gone, and it will be a very steep uphill battle to bring anything remotely like that back given the rip-roaring yr/yr increase in CPI and PPI now underway. Those checks are being blamed for the ongoing inflation that more than just the lunatic fringe now thinks is the start of Weimar-style hyperinflation. So with the 2/10 year yield curve now inverted [2], it's just a matter of time before the economic chickens come home to roost once more. Will it be different this time? Will unions step in to fill the gap that government can not? [1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/do-unions-still-work/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/do-unions-still-work/ [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/01/us-bonds-treasury-yields-invert-stoking-recession-fears.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/01/us-bonds-treasury-yields-inv...

jolux 5y ago
Why do you say the wheels were flying off the economy in 2020?
- Barrera 5y ago
  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_events_in_the_U.S._repo_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_events_in_the_U... 2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/12/31/2019s-yield-curve-inversion-means-a-recession-could-hit-in-2020/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/12/31/2019s-yie...
  - ineedasername 5y ago

robomartin 5y ago

I was in a union (not by choice) the first ten years or so of my professional life. To put it in simple terms: I despise them. Yes, of course, they had reason to exist in the dark ages. Today, I think they are in a range between counterproductive and dangerous. Before anyone make a move for the jugular: I make a distinction between union members and union management (the entity). Union members are hard working folks, just like anyone else. They want the best for their families. That's their driving force. Nothing wrong with that at all. We all want the same things. Union management, on the other hand, well, I the tend to be between evil and criminal. Today, US unions, in my opinion, destroy jobs. And they have done this in massive numbers. I still remember having a long conversation with a guy who retired from the printing industry. He explained, in great detail, how the union that ruled his industry absolutely decimated it. He lost his pension, benefits, etc. The problem with US unions is that they exist to squeeze as much from companies as humanly possible. One of the most egregious examples I have seen of this is what the UAW (United Auto Workers) contracts that made US auto companies have more than 10,000 employees getting paid full wages and benefits (about $130K/year) to do nothing. Non-US car companies don't have this unbelievably destructive expense. The effect of squeezing every possible drop out of a business is that you simply cannot be competitive over the long run. The other side effect is that economics and competitive pressures will force you to move portions of your process offshore and automate as much as you possibly can. So, yeah, union leaders likely gave themselves a huge pat in the back for pulling that one off. And they made millions themselves (they get paid very well). And yet, a the ground level, they destroyed jobs, damaged companies, likely caused people to have serious psychological problems and damaged the long term viability of jobs. When a company had hundreds of millions of dollars in dead-weight over head for years and years, sooner or later, there will be consequences. This is like fundamental laws of physics that cannot be violated. In my little slice of the universe, as we are building a new manufacturing business, everything that can be automated will be so. There is no way we can pay someone $15 per hour (EDIT: to put screws into holes). If there was a way to do so and remain viable, I would have no problem with it. The truth of the matter is, this wage is a job killer. The US is already not competitive due to the huge cost of doing business here. This makes it worse. On top of that, the combination of the $15/hr minimum wage, pandemic and other world issues has resulted in serious inflationary issues. Which means that the people who got that $15/hr wage (if they have a job at all), did not, in reality, get a raise at all. So, all we've done by pushing this nonsense is increase costs and destroy jobs. Brilliant. I know they look at all of this in China and cannot believe the US seems intent on destroying itself from the inside. I know because I also manufacture in China and talk to our suppliers all the time. They always tell me about how they are getting new customers because the cost of doing business in the US increases year after year. As I said. Brilliant. Sadly, people will not learn this lesson until things are bad enough to be obvious to nearly everyone. To be fair, what I am saying above requires having a reasonable understanding of business and skin in the game. Most people, the vast majority of people, go through life in complete ignorance of these realities. And so it is to be expected that, when the time comes to make decisions (voting) they are easily swayed into making truly dumb choices from the perspective of those who do have context.

eigenvalue 5y ago

When this has happened at individual Walmart stores in the past, the company would immediately shut down the store and everyone would lose their jobs. A couple years later they would build a new store within 20 or so miles of the old store, free of the union. This was obviously financially painful for Walmart, but it served as such a strong signal to employees to not even try to unionize that it must have paid for itself many times over given Walmart's thousands of stores. I wonder if Amazon has been taking notes from them on this.

TameAntelope 5y ago
I don't think Amazon wants to shut this warehouse down, my rough understanding is that it's a hugely important warehouse, serving NYC's millions of customers.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  I know people and it’s already in shut down mode. Do you really think they designed their infra to be that vulnerable? It’s time to make a point and turn the community against the agitators. They destroyed good jobs.
  - 0des 5y ago
    > make a point and turn the community against the agitators. Time and time again this is the proven strategy.
- INTPenis 5y ago
  So? Why can't it be in Long Island, New Jersey, Newark, or any other place around NYC? It's a sad state of affairs when corporations are allowed to screw citizens over.
  - hn_version_0023 5y ago
    I’m a 46yro male from the US. When have corporations NOT been allowed to screwed over citizens? I think thats been true for the entirety of my life.

alexk307 5y ago

> Employees cast 2,654 votes to be represented by Amazon Labor Union and 2,131 against, giving the union a win by more than 10 percentage points, according to the National Labor Relations Board. More than 8,300 workers at the building This is just sad. Just a hair over 50% of the eligible voters voted; weirdly, approximately the same voter turnout for US elections historically. Does half of any given population just not care enough to vote for something?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nopenopenopeno 5y ago
Part of anti-unionization tactics is making employees uncomfortable about even discussing or associating with the topic. Management uses captive audience meetings to personally guilt the employees, which makes employees just want the whole thing to be over with because it’s so uncomfortable. Nobody likes being made to feel guilty but they need a job and don’t really know whats going on; they just want the drama to be over with so they avoid it as best they can.
alxndr 5y ago
Short answer? Yes. Long answer probably involves value systems and what individuals are actually doing on that day…
tshaddox 5y ago
Perhaps roughly half of the eligible voters correctly estimated that the chance of their vote affecting the outcome is exceedingly low and that the cost of voting (even if it's just a few minutes of time) is not worth that small chance of affecting the outcome.
- 0des 5y ago
  Or scared of repercussions for voting one way or the other, from employer on one hand or peers on the other.
heavyset_go 5y ago

rdiddly 5y ago

The summary says workers voted "by a wide margin" for a union, but it looks like it was 2,654 votes for, 2,131 against, which is 55.5% to 44.5% or a margin of 11%. I wouldn't call that a wide margin, but maybe it could be considered so in these sorry-ass times of perpetual 51-to-49 deadlock.

lambertsimnel 5y ago
In light of the fairly small margin of victory, maybe some employees were too undecided to vote. I also wouldn't be surprised if the demands of the job left some without the capacity to engage with the question. I share your disappointment, though.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

IanDrake 5y ago

SnowHill9902 5y ago

Unions are disastrous in some countries. See Italy, Argentina, and Brazil. Boiling pot of corruption and extortion.

adultSwim 5y ago
Companies are disastrous in many countries. It's a broad organizational structure that can be run many different ways. I just know that at work I am alone and weak. With everyone else I would be on more equal footing with my employer. Instead of quitting, why not make my workplace better?
- SnowHill9902 5y ago
  It’s better in the short term. After one generation or two of unions getting stronger, everybody ends up losing. There were very strong unions (and rackets) already some decades ago. See how it ended up.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Nope. Union membership has been extremely high in Sweden for ~5 generations and everyone benefits greatly from them. You'll find similar in a lot of Europe.

wiredone 5y ago

I really don’t understand this push tbh. Amazon is already the industry leader in pay and benefits for these roles. Why was this needed? In 2022, the only time I tend to see a union do anything, it’s to disrupt and create mob like holds on things (shipping, trucking etc). There seems to be waaay more corruption in anything union related than without. Can someone seriously explain why this is needed or a good thing? Who actually wins in Amazons case outside of corrupt, power hungry union leaders who get to create roles for themselves?

jackosdev 5y ago
Spent a long time in Australian mines, some are heavily unionised, what you say is right it does attract the most toxic people, but at the same time even the truck drivers earn a fantastic living they can use to support a family. This is only possible because of the decades of strong unions negotiating better pay so the mines had to share the wealth. So to answer your question, the poorest people in the company benefit, despite the toxicity it can create.
- csee 5y ago
  > but at the same time even the truck drivers earn a fantastic living they can use to support a family. This is only possible because of the decades of strong unions negotiating better pay so the mines had to share the wealth. How is this to do with unions and not just lack of labor supply, i.e. lack of people with a right to work in Australia who also want to be a truck driver in the middle of nowhere.
britch 5y ago
Pay and Benefits are one thing. Working conditions are another. You can pay me 15 an hour (Only $30K a year) but if I have to pee in a bottle or don't have enough schedule consistency to see my kids it's not worth it. Amazon may pay well for now, but let's be honest, Amazon is a monopolistic project. What happens when there's less competition than there is right now? Do you think wages stay where they're at without some kind of pressure? A union is the only ways employees can have any real power in the workplace. Democratically run unions give employees real negotiating power over what it means to go to work day to day. Unions are not perfect but what group of humans ever is? I'd take a union job over a non-union job any day of the week.

RavlaAlvar 5y ago

A good news for anyone work inAmazon robotics branch, I guess?

paulcole 5y ago
I remember all these promises of how quick tech bros would be able to automate minimum wage and so-called “unskilled” jobs. Now for the past 18 months every Subway sandwich shop (and the like) in my area is begging people (not robots) to work. I wouldn’t be betting on robots just yet.
- crackercrews 5y ago
  The supermarkets I go to have been growing their self-checkout sections in recent years.
- 0des 5y ago
  McDonalds where I am has automated and now sometimes doesn't have someone at the counter
  - crowbahr 5y ago
    Apparently white castle is rolling out burger flipping bots. Unclear how much they do besides flipping burgers but they're clearly investing in that future.

tomcam 5y ago

Not a big fan of most modern day unions, but I hope they unionize the shit out of Amazon. I am happy to pay more. Their treatment of the rank and file is despicable. Here in Seattle I have met very few people who enjoyed their time working at Amazon, and that includes tech folk.

thathndude 5y ago
At what point should we be ok with low-level Amazon jobs sucking? I worked at a fast food restaurant. That sucked. But I was also a high school kid with no marketable skills. So I sort of understood I was “putting in my time” and this is the way it goes. I never thought “we should unionize and demand more money.” If Amazon needs career people in these positions, they’ll be forced to treat the employees as career people and not like the fast food industry treats employees like myself.
- tomcam 5y ago
  I’m sympathetic to that perspective, and it’s the one I would normally take. But the working conditions at Amazon warehouses and for their delivery people seem to include things like peeing and pooping into bottles, breaks too short to get to a bathroom across the warehouse, etc. I had menial jobs myself but never quite so demeaning or physically punishing—holding it in all day seems like hell.
  - thathndude 5y ago
    To be clear, I don’t disagree with this perspective. While I do remember getting yelled at for taking a, literally, 10 second drink break (“you need to ask”), I never found myself peeing in a bottle.
- matsemann 5y ago
  "I had it bad therefore other should too"..? Why does working in a restaurant have to suck? I've worked at plenty here in Norway during my youth, was always nice. They pay according to a collective agreement, with extra pay for evening and night work. So a pay it was possible to survive on. Why demand that "unskilled" labor should suck? Why want to inflict that pain on others?

cameldrv 5y ago

My dad (manager at a non-union manufacturing company) always said "companies who have a union usually deserve it." From what I've heard about working conditions in Amazon's warehouses, this may be the problem they've run into.

chairmanwow1 5y ago

Well, I’m expecting Amazon to get more expensive

02020202 5y ago

siscia 5y ago

I am very naïve on this, but unions seems to always been portrayed as negative to business and I really don't understand this view. Of course, if you are paying more money from getting the same amount of value from an employer, that is bad for business. But this is not necessarily what can happen, giving more benefits, more stable schedule, better wages, more WLB means being more competitive in the labour market, it means retaining worker more easily. If the company is not wise enough to do it by itself, still it doesn't means that it cannot be a net positive for the company itself. The whole idea of treating humans as leaking, opexed, robots will need to be fixed, but it can be done and it can bring benefits.

scyzoryk_xyz 5y ago
It is a unique feature of the American landscape, this aversion to unions. Deeply rooted in complicated history of labor in the US from what I understand. Here in Eastern Europe labor unions were at a certain point the source of political power, both for the establishment under socialism, and for the opposition movements before/after the iron curtain dropped. So, here banning or fighting against unions is unthinkable - they are considered a “good” thing. It’s hard to think about this labor/business tension when you realize that all thought on this subject is constantly being monitored, lobbied and influenced.
0xB31B1B 5y ago
The issue employers have with unions is much less about wage bargaining an almost entirely about the duplicative work/labor unions tend to lead to. As a hypothetical, lets say you run a widget factory. Line workers at your widget factory spend 6 hour of their shift making widgets, and 2 hours of their shift packing widgets up after they have completed making their widgets. A union comes in and will say "we can have experts in widget making, and experts in packing, these are 2 jobs, people who make widgets do not have the expertise to pack, and people who pack do not have the expertise to make widgets. From now on, we will have 2 separate job roles, widget makers and widget packers, and a packer will never ever be able allowed to make widgets, and widget makes will never ever be allowed to pack widgets". The company, which used to have a staff of 8 people who did both tasks, will now need a staff of 8, 6 widget makers and 2 widget packers. Seems OK right? Well christmas comes around and there are too many widgets to be packed, last year all 8 people were packing widgets 8 hours per day around the christmas rush, and there wasn't much widget making to be done because after christmas is low on sales. The company needs to hire an additional 6 temporary widget packers to pack widget and the 6 widget makers will be either idle or working with reduced efficiency. This increases the companies expenses with no real value created.