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For our younger readers, here's how the game works: 1. Amazon makes a big show about fighting unionization. Police, media, all the rest. 2. While doing (1), t
by donw 4y ago
For our younger readers, here's how the game works:
1. Amazon makes a big show about fighting unionization. Police, media, all the rest.
2. While doing (1), they quietly install leaders in the union movement that will do what they are told. The easiest way is to buy off whatever organic leadership emerges, but anybody can't be bought outright can be... persuaded.
3. Once (2) is complete, the proverbial dam breaks, and management is "forced" to accept unionization. There might be a few token concessions to show the masses that they have won a victory.
4. Now that there's a union, they act as legally independent enforcers for whatever the owners want, backed by the social force of the worker mob.
This is how unions worked in the Soviet Union and its various client states. I've found Soviet organizational patterns be the most predictive model for understanding the current state of things.
Workers absolutely had union representation to collectively bargain against "management" (the State).
Your union just happened to bargain its way to whatever the State wanted them to do. Union bosses lived very comfortable lives.
If you complained to the union, they'd hold one of the rigged votes that socialists are so famous for, and in the end, you'd likely be branded a "counter-revolutionary" and a "spreader of misinformation", and face consequences.
- kadoban 4y agoThis seems to me to be an unlikely way a company would fight a union in the modern US. Do you have any examples of this happening? My doubt is largely because they can just stop them existing and face little to no consequences. Why bother being cute?
- raxxorraxor 4y agoThis is an extremely common modus operandi. It is like the police invades groups suspected of crime too. This isn't some elaborate conspiracy plan, it is one of the most effective ways to undermine any group. And of course PR is important, even and especially if you own a newspaper.
- donw 4y ago> My doubt is largely because they can just stop them existing and face little to no consequences. Why bother being cute? If Amazon's workforce manages to organize outside of the penumbra of the company boot, then there absolutely will be negative consequences for Amazon. Why not just get ahead of that using a cheap, time-tested, and well-proven strategy that makes your position even stronger?
- kadoban 4y ago> Why not just get ahead of that using a cheap, time-tested, and well-proven strategy that makes your position even stronger? The cheap, time-tested way is just busting the union. I've yet to hear any examples of unions working like you propose in the US, but there's as many examples as you could want for companies preventing unions from existing.
- Cederfjard 4y agoBecause bribery and ”persuasion”, as you call it, is illegal and thus carries a lot of risk? Not to mention what a PR catastrophe were it to be uncovered. Not saying that it’s impossible, but the certainty you’re expressing this theory with doesn’t seem warranted.
- raxxorraxor 4y agoOf course you don't get a bribe like a bag full of cash, you just get a promotion to be able to manage your new responsibilities.
- donw 4y ago> Because bribery and ”persuasion”, as you call it, is illegal and thus carries a lot of risk? You're thinking like a commoner. Which I get, I'm a commoner, too. I certainly wouldn't try that kind of "persuasion". That'd land me in jail for a million years. But the the rules are different when you're a member of the ruling class or serving their interests. It's unfortunate. It really is. But that's how things are.
- thetinguy 4y agoDidn’t Stalin kill millions of socialists in order to wrestle control into his hands? Weren’t Bolsheviks explicitly anti-socialism?
- spopejoy 4y agoStalin found reasons to kill everybody over time, including Bolsheviks. Bolsheviks were "socialist" because at the time socialism and communism were largely interchangeable terms; you might be thinking of the various factions with "social" in their names that vied with Bolsheviks around the revolution (Social Democrats, Social Revolutionaries). Socialism certainly didn't have the "softer" connotation it has now.
- wolverine876 4y agoWhat does this have to do with the US, and US unions, or any unions in free, democratic countries? > one of the rigged votes that socialists are so famous for What socialists are famous for rigged votes? The Soviet Union was famous, but they weren't socialist. Is Sweden famous for rigged votes?
- drewcoo 4y ago> The Soviet Union was famous, but they weren't socialist. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics wasn't socialist? Just famous? What?
- raxxorraxor 4y agoDemocratic People's Republic of Korea is a direct democracy. It comes directly from the absolutist ruler.
- claytongulick 4y agoThey were no true Scottsman. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
- tsimionescu 4y agoThey were as socialist as they were democratic - which is to say, in name only.
- donw 4y agoYou have to understand the theory behind the religion of Socialism/Communism/Democracy/Whatever The Current Re-Brand Is. A Socialist society is one in which True Equity has been achieved. The State sort of just fades out of existence, as it is no longer needed to ensure cooperation. This has never happened, because it will never happen, ergo cue the cries of "True Communism has never been tried!" The fact that every attempt has made the Nazis look like a troop of Jainist Girl Scouts is immaterial. Slaughtering a hundred million people while redefining the depths of human misery is fine and dandy, as long the goals are noble. Can't make that omelette without breaking a few eggs.
- atmosx 4y agoHere is alternative view: https://www.epi.org/blog/union-decline-rising-inequality-charts/ https://www.epi.org/blog/union-decline-rising-inequality-cha...
- escape_goat 4y agoI will trust our younger readers to draw their own life lessons here, but the general model being described is that of the "company union." They were outlawed in the United States in 1935.
- donw 4y agoRule of law isn't exactly fashionable these days.
- effingwewt 4y agoEspecially with amazon breaking the law via union busting using dirty and outright illegal tactics. More and more laws feel like a smokescreen to stop us from doing what they can. ie- laws for thee, but not for me.
- fragmede 4y agoIn 1935, with the Wagner Act, which guaranteed the right to unionize and to strike, also guaranteed several other rights. Among them, unions (and corporations, natch) are allowed to donate money, shops are allowed to be closed/union shop, and codified the NRLB.
- jonathankoren 4y ago[Citation needed]