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Amazon is intimidating and harassing organizing workers in Montreal
- usrn 4y agoNow that the Americans did it the Canadians won't want to.
- rhines 4y agoCan we not treat Hacker News like some Reddit thread, making low effort political jokes in an attempt to curry upvotes? If that's not what you were doing, and instead were being serious, then do note that Canadians ape American culture more heavily than any other nation I can think of, so this characterization is not correct.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago> an attempt to curry upvotes Offtopic, but sometimes a witty (at best), or just butty (at worst), joke is made only for it's own sake, sometimes it's for other's amusement and sometimes it's for upvotes as well.
- faangiq 4y agoIt’s get screwed by Amazon or get screwed by some union boss. The only winning move is not to play.
- reocha 4y agoUnionised workplaces tend to have higher wages and better benefits, by not playing one will just end up in a non-unionised workplace with worse wages. UK data: https://www.statista.com/statistics/287278/uk-trade-union-wage-premium/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/287278/uk-trade-union-wa... USA: https://work.chron.com/union-wages-12818.html https://work.chron.com/union-wages-12818.html
- newaccount2021 4y ago
- rob74 4y ago
- bryanlarsen 4y agoCitizens of the United States of Mexico are called Mexicans. Citizens of the United States of America are called Americans.
- themitigating 4y agoIt's incorrect but widely assumed that if someone says "America" they mean the USA. What's funny about it?
- rob74 4y agoThat Canada is also located in America, and if someone from Canada identifies "America" with the US they are belittling their own country? I mean, the sentence wouldn't have been less understandable if they had used "US-style" instead of "American-style"?
- junofan 4y agoCanada is located in North America.
- themitigating 4y agoEveryone uses the term "America" to the US and even if they are referring to the both continents they say "The Americas". There isn't even a contient named "America"
- prmoustache 4y agoI know a number of mexican people who hate that dubious automatic America / USA association.
- refurb 4y ago
- hrdwdmrbl 4y agoNote: this website often contains highly unreliable material and often publishes articles defending such things as the Berlin Wall.
- andrepd 4y agoYes, imagine a website publishing opinion pieces with diverse viewpoints, some of which you find repulsive... I fail to see how that is relevant for this particular article.
- skeeter2020 4y agoBecause it's not presented as an opinion from a single viewpoint but as news, which we expect (perhaps naively) to be balanced and have multiple viewpoints. That's the failure.
- chrislo 4y agoOn the About Us page: > Jacobin is a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture. https://jacobin.com/about https://jacobin.com/about
- ETH_start 4y agoThe founder of the magazine defended the Berlin Wall and the killing of the surrendered Romanov children.
- wittycardio 4y agoKilling the Romanov children makes a lot of sense if you're trying to end a regime whose legitimacy is passed down by blood
- andrepd 4y agoI for one am glad that freedom of speech exists (in practice as well as theory) and that people can express those two opinions, one of which I agree with and the other which I don't :)
- Pv9KKy3 4y ago
- baud147258 4y ago> If union organizers repeatedly approach me is that harassment then as well or even more likely to be harassment? no because those organizers aren't harassing you, they're fighting for truth and justice, so are not held to such petty standards like respecting the law /s
- jmyeet 4y agoIt's a testament to how effective propaganda can be when you see how easily you can get people to vote against their own interests. It's crazy to me that anyone who works in these Amazon warehouses votes agains tunionization but they do [1]. Even in the successful vote, there were still a lot of "no" votes. Unionization in the US is the lowest of all OECD nations (~10%) [2]. Is it any wonder US workers don't get paid maternity leave, often don't get health insurance and get 2 weeks vacation? This is why wedge issues matter. They sow discord to prevent class solidarity. You know who actually does have class solidarity? Billionaires. And the politicans they own. [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/02/amazon-union-vote/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/02/amazon-... [2]: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=TUD https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=TUD
- fallingknife 4y agoOr maybe it's you who has fallen for propaganda. I think it's most likely that they know their own interests better than you do.
- geysersam 4y agoWhatever their interests are, they will be easier to achieve by unionizing. Not organizing only makes your interests irrelevant. That can hardly be in anyones own interests.
- chrisseaton 4y ago> Whatever their interests are, they will be easier to achieve by unionizing. For example, say you're a talented younger worker and the majority of the union votes for pay by seniority, that's going against your interests.
- geysersam 4y agoBeing in the union means you have a chance to influence those kinds of decisions.
- aaa_aaa 4y ago
- OnePlusfans99 4y ago
- dools 4y agoUnions and vaccines are similar in that they are a collective action against which people only complain due to their effectiveness. That is to say, all the libertarians complaining about unions and vaccines can do so comfortably only because they have never been exposed to the horrors they helped to prevent .
- missedthecue 4y agoPeople "only" complain due to their effectiveness? OPEC is also a union, have I no grounds to complain about them? What about when meat packing companies cartelize together to raise their incomes? Competition is a good thing whether in labor or oil or chicken markets.
- adam-a 4y agoWhat are you talking about? OPEC is not a labour union, which is clearly what’s being discussed here. You may as well say a horse is a duck because they both shit.
- missedthecue 4y agoOPEC works the same way as a union. They are both groups of competitors that band together to form a cartel, using similar tactics to increase the price of the product the sell. In one case, oil, in the other, labor.
- camdat 4y agoUnions are made up of workers and their combined labor. OPEC is not. This is definitional.
- missedthecue 4y agoOPEC is made up of oil producing countries and their combined output. They are extremely similar except that one deals in labor, and the other in petrochemicals.
- skeeter2020 4y agoThe linked piece is pretty biased, describing a text message and literature as "harassement"; have you seen the tatics the unions use to recruit and try to certify?
- martimarkov 4y agoThe law says the worker has the right to listen to the employer. If I get propaganda posters and text messages - do I still have that right or is that taken away from me? If it is taken away - harassment
- missedthecue 4y agoIt's Jacobin. It would be like trying to prove the corporate tax is too high by linking to cato.org
- belval 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- noisy_boy 4y agoAs reasonable as the neighborhood strongman saying "of course you have the right to reject my proposal..."
- zero_shift 4y agoCan you explain why you skipped over these? > management has worked to isolate pro-union workers and threatened to relocate the warehouses if unionization succeeds. > One worker said his life has become miserable since he uttered the word “union” at work. “Every coworker who talks to me, after a few seconds, they are interrogated by the manager. When they do that, people don’t want to talk to you anymore. I’m being isolated,” he said.
- fundad 4y agoI can
- ppod 4y agoBecause it's vague and hearsay. The most frustrating thing about these debates is that the pro-union side are so hostile to anyone who questions anything, as though they assume that anyone who doubts the union must be a business owner. I'm a worker, I would like to be part of a union that worked. But I don't see unions that work, I just see unreasonable and propaganda-like articles like these. When there is a dispute, if I try to look at it dispassionately, I usually find that I disagree with the union. So where does that leave me if I want to improve my rights as a worker?
- elicash 4y agoYou can be anti-union, that's fine. It's even legit to be pro-union but to say that for you personally, you're such an amazing performer that employers are fighting over you and so maybe the union is good for most but not you personally. For example, maybe NBA players would make much less without the union but LeBron personally would make more. Maybe you're the LeBron of developers! (There's no debate on whether bargaining collectively leads to greater leverage in negotiation overall. It clearly does.) And you're also not the person who wrote the initial comment. But it seems dishonest of them if they first said: > I fail to see how any of the things mentioned in the article are "intimidating and harassing" ...but to then shift the goal posts to saying that yeah, okay, the things left out would be intimidating and/or harassing but they just don't believe the allegations to be true.
- newsclues 4y agoIt’s not just Amazon it’s big and small businesses that operate this way. I rather focus broader reform than just focusing on Amazon.
- GoodJokes 4y ago
- sanp 4y agoI don’t know why you are being downvoted. In fact, it is your local McD franchisee who is doing the most to ensure that min wage workers do not get organized.
- newsclues 4y agoBecause people want to just hate Amazon and Bezos, and feel good that they are on the right side. I came to HN because Reddit turned into a cesspool and it seems like the cesspool followed.
- chmod775 4y agoMeta: Right now there's thirteen top level comments on this story, and only one of them isn't heavily downvoted, flagged, or dead. At least some of the comments on this story objectively shouldn't be flagged, because they're made in good faith by reputable accounts, while most comments could be taken straight from Facebook. On a five hour old submission with 200 votes you'd normally expect some worthwhile discussion, but the few people who try are struggling.
- gedy 4y agoThis mirrors real life interactions with union organizers in my family (as workers). Anything less than rah rah the union you get shunned and ostracized as some business shill. These bullying tactics are why I avoid unions.
- effingwewt 4y agoLol ah, yes, Amazon is the good guy here and magically it's now the union organizers who are harassing employees. Just when I thought my eyes couldn't roll any harder.
- effingwewt 4y ago
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- photochemsyn 4y agoThe general issue with the largest employers in the neoliberalized countries (Amazon, Walmart) relative to the outsourced sectors (manufacturing mainly) is that wages are now much lower for the blue-collar worker, who is now doing service/shipping (~$15/hr -> ~$30k/yr) rather than manufacturing (~$30/hr -> ~$60k/yr). Amazon employs about one million people in the United States, and unionization and collective bargaining could easily result in a doubling of their labor costs. This would certainly benefit the local economies surrounding Amazon warehouse locations, but would mean profits and dividends would fall. This is a significant number, an increase in labor costs by about $30B per year. Amazon's gross profits vary year-to-year, but are on the order of $150B, so they can clearly afford to pay their workers a wage that would allow them to move up to respectable middle-class status - and this would also likely result in less employee turnover as well. The investors and executives would have to absorb the costs, but isn't that reasonable?
- missedthecue 4y agoAmazon net income is less than $30B. They also do not pay dividends.
- mrep 4y agoAnd that is basically all AWS. Retail has actually lost money in the past 3 quarters.
- fithisux 4y agoIf they cannot afford a good salary, then the business is a liability
- missedthecue 4y agoThis is a fun soundbite, but it's completely arbitrary and meaningless. You could just as easily and accurately come up with something along the lines of "if a union causes its employer financial distress, it is a liability".
- jleyank 4y agoThey might want to be somewhat careful here so as to not piss off the provincial government. As a foreign, anglophone company, I’m sure there’s a rule or inspection they can produce if they need to to make Amazon’s life miserable. And they won’t care if Amazon leaves.
- 908B64B197 4y ago> They might want to be somewhat careful here so as to not piss off the provincial government. As a foreign, anglophone company, I’m sure there’s a rule or inspection they can produce if they need to to make Amazon’s life miserable. I don't think the government will get involved at all. Seems they had these specific labor laws for decades. It'll just go to court and get settled there. I doubt Amazon are the first to try skirting these.
- lbrito 4y ago>I don't think the government will get involved at all. Oh man, then you really don't know about Québec!
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y agoAmazon shouldn't mess with the French. They will get their heads chopped off.