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If it’s a genuine mistake, absolutely nothing. I’m implying that it was far more likely to be intimidation rather than a mistake.

oh_sigh 4y ago
What exactly is intimidating about a sheriff showing up, seeing that everything is okay, and then moving on with their life?
- dundarious 4y ago
  It seems pretty obvious to me that calling the police on someone for some activity, is intended as a way to stop that activity, potentially by force, and potentially giving a pretext for terminating that employee. The "everything is okay" outcome was not what the caller wanted, and was in no way guaranteed. If you call the police on your neighbors for spurious reasons, and the cops come and discover it was a spurious complaint, your neighbors are going to think you are targeting them and trying to get them in trouble, even if in the end "everything is okay". Especially if you have a cosy relationship with the cops, and you actually own the home your neighbors are renting, for example.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    I think the caller wanted them off Amazon property. And they got that in a sense, because apparently they were never on Amazon property. If you think this was some kind of corporate intimidation, how many people would you guess were involved with the decision? Why isn't Amazon hiring scary bike gangs with plausible deniability to come harass the organizers instead of cops who generally enforce the law? Sorry. But I just can't see it. "We're a trillion dollar organization with hundreds of thousands of employees with global reach. Our preferred intimidation methods involve a bumpkin county sheriff who knows how to enforce the law"
    - dundarious 4y ago
      Amazon has literally hired Pinkertons to surveil workers, and they have been accused of retaliatory firings, etc. There's no outlandish or fanciful conspiracy here. Amazon are publicly known to be vehemently anti-union, and executives do encourage local management teams to try to curb union activity as much as possible, and appear to have fired local management at another facility for failing to do so, so the existence of this imperative seems pretty solid: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/technology/amazon-fires-managers-union-staten-island.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/technology/amazon-fires-m... What's likely to have happened is that a person in local management wanted to stop union solicitation, so they called the cops with little regard for whether it was actually legitimate or not, in the hope that the cops might at least recommend the organizer move their activity to a less "aggravating" (i.e., less effective) location.

oh_sigh 4y ago

What exactly is intimidating about a sheriff showing up, seeing that everything is okay, and then moving on with their life?

dundarious 4y ago
It seems pretty obvious to me that calling the police on someone for some activity, is intended as a way to stop that activity, potentially by force, and potentially giving a pretext for terminating that employee. The "everything is okay" outcome was not what the caller wanted, and was in no way guaranteed. If you call the police on your neighbors for spurious reasons, and the cops come and discover it was a spurious complaint, your neighbors are going to think you are targeting them and trying to get them in trouble, even if in the end "everything is okay". Especially if you have a cosy relationship with the cops, and you actually own the home your neighbors are renting, for example.
- googlryas 4y ago
  I think the caller wanted them off Amazon property. And they got that in a sense, because apparently they were never on Amazon property. If you think this was some kind of corporate intimidation, how many people would you guess were involved with the decision? Why isn't Amazon hiring scary bike gangs with plausible deniability to come harass the organizers instead of cops who generally enforce the law? Sorry. But I just can't see it. "We're a trillion dollar organization with hundreds of thousands of employees with global reach. Our preferred intimidation methods involve a bumpkin county sheriff who knows how to enforce the law"
  - dundarious 4y ago
    Amazon has literally hired Pinkertons to surveil workers, and they have been accused of retaliatory firings, etc. There's no outlandish or fanciful conspiracy here. Amazon are publicly known to be vehemently anti-union, and executives do encourage local management teams to try to curb union activity as much as possible, and appear to have fired local management at another facility for failing to do so, so the existence of this imperative seems pretty solid: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/technology/amazon-fires-managers-union-staten-island.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/technology/amazon-fires-m... What's likely to have happened is that a person in local management wanted to stop union solicitation, so they called the cops with little regard for whether it was actually legitimate or not, in the hope that the cops might at least recommend the organizer move their activity to a less "aggravating" (i.e., less effective) location.