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> Even in the successful vote, there were still a lot of "no" votes. I'm gonna steelman those no votes. BigCos don't like unions to the point they can and some

> Even in the successful vote, there were still a lot of "no" votes. I'm gonna steelman those no votes. BigCos don't like unions to the point they can and sometimes do close the place/warehouse alltogether. This is worse than working in non-union shop, especially in economically depressed area.

verve_rat 4y ago
Or, you know, you could have sane laws that make that kind of behaviour illegal.
- Xylakant 4y ago
  Germany in theory has laws against that. But this still happens - the problem is that you can’t just make “close warehouse” illegal and then things come down to what you can and cannot prove about the motivations of the company. And that’s often hard.
  - verve_rat 4y ago
    Sure, nothing is perfect. But it is about raising the cost and uncertainty of the bad action.
    - Xylakant 4y ago
      Definitely, I agree with you. Some protection is better than none, but this is a very hard goal to achieve. Fundamentally, I believe that the goal can only be achieved by normalizing unions - if you know that there‘s a high chance the next warehouse you open will unionize as well, the gamble becomes unattractive fast.
jmyeet 4y ago
Every Amazon warehouse that unionizes make it less possible to close a given warehouse to snuff out a budding union. Amazon is spending millions on union-busting lawyers. From the article, workers had to go to mandatory anti-union classes, which is pretty funny coming from a company where you could get written up for "time off task" by taking a bathroom break. The propaganda the company is pushing is that the company and the workers are working together. They are not. Those workers are being exploited. Bezos considered turnover desirable.
- ETH_start 4y ago
  >>The propaganda the company is pushing is that the company and the workers are working together. They are not. Those workers are being exploited. Bezos considered turnover desirable. While it is propaganda to claim the interests of the workers and company are aligned, it's also propaganda to claim that they're being exploited. A voluntary market interaction, that 95% of the world population would jump at the opportunity to engage in, is by no reasonable definition, exploitive. And society at large will not benefit from forcing Amazon to give Amazon warehouse workers above market wages. Lower turnover will also turn Amazon warehouse work into another union cast, that benefits those who got in early, before union walls closed the door behind them, while making it more difficult for new workers to get a job with Amazon. Amazon itself is also likely to slow its hiring if union action forces its labor costs up.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    No, it's not. You simply use a contrived definition of exploitation that begs the question. Anyone would agree that a set lord monopolizing all the land and asking serfs to enter serfdom contracts for the right to till it is exploitative, and a similar mechanism is at work. It's all a question of degree.
    - ETH_start 4y ago
      My definition is the conventional one. Exploitation when used in the social context generally refers to some kind of non consensual interaction where somebody who is not capable of giving consent like a child is manipulated into accepting something that is not in their interest. It does not refer to a job offer that is the best one on the market that is available to a person. Your definition implies that a job offer that 95% of the world population would rush to accept, that is above market rates for that job and which is voluntary according to any court of law, is exploitation. By what standard can you describe it as such? It is a completely arbitrary definition, unless you are citing marxist theory which says that all investor profit is exploitation, in which case you should disclose your ideological suppositions from the outset so that people understand you are not referring to exploitation in the way it's conventionally understood. As for land, that is completely incomparable to a company. Land is a public resource in a sense so if a Lord monopolizes it they're depriving others of something that they have an equal share in. And no single company or cartel of companies, has anything approaching a monopoly on the job market. So your comparison is wrong on two levels. It's telling that arguments trying to justify the socialist claims of exploitation have to make inappropriate analogies. The substance of the claim cannot be justified on its own grounds.
viraptor 4y ago
[citation needed] The warehouse where the union was established is still there. I can't even find information about any of not-unionised ones closing. Can you link information about any profitable Amazon warehouse which was actually closed as a result of union organising? Also with the current Amazon's turnover rate you can't count on working for more than a year. Their annual turnover is over 100% for warehouses so it may be a loss for the area, but on a case-by-case basis those people would be looking for another job soon anyway.

verve_rat 4y ago

Or, you know, you could have sane laws that make that kind of behaviour illegal.

Xylakant 4y ago
Germany in theory has laws against that. But this still happens - the problem is that you can’t just make “close warehouse” illegal and then things come down to what you can and cannot prove about the motivations of the company. And that’s often hard.
- verve_rat 4y ago
  Sure, nothing is perfect. But it is about raising the cost and uncertainty of the bad action.
  - Xylakant 4y ago
    Definitely, I agree with you. Some protection is better than none, but this is a very hard goal to achieve. Fundamentally, I believe that the goal can only be achieved by normalizing unions - if you know that there‘s a high chance the next warehouse you open will unionize as well, the gamble becomes unattractive fast.

jmyeet 4y ago

Every Amazon warehouse that unionizes make it less possible to close a given warehouse to snuff out a budding union. Amazon is spending millions on union-busting lawyers. From the article, workers had to go to mandatory anti-union classes, which is pretty funny coming from a company where you could get written up for "time off task" by taking a bathroom break. The propaganda the company is pushing is that the company and the workers are working together. They are not. Those workers are being exploited. Bezos considered turnover desirable.

ETH_start 4y ago
>>The propaganda the company is pushing is that the company and the workers are working together. They are not. Those workers are being exploited. Bezos considered turnover desirable. While it is propaganda to claim the interests of the workers and company are aligned, it's also propaganda to claim that they're being exploited. A voluntary market interaction, that 95% of the world population would jump at the opportunity to engage in, is by no reasonable definition, exploitive. And society at large will not benefit from forcing Amazon to give Amazon warehouse workers above market wages. Lower turnover will also turn Amazon warehouse work into another union cast, that benefits those who got in early, before union walls closed the door behind them, while making it more difficult for new workers to get a job with Amazon. Amazon itself is also likely to slow its hiring if union action forces its labor costs up.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  No, it's not. You simply use a contrived definition of exploitation that begs the question. Anyone would agree that a set lord monopolizing all the land and asking serfs to enter serfdom contracts for the right to till it is exploitative, and a similar mechanism is at work. It's all a question of degree.
  - ETH_start 4y ago
    My definition is the conventional one. Exploitation when used in the social context generally refers to some kind of non consensual interaction where somebody who is not capable of giving consent like a child is manipulated into accepting something that is not in their interest. It does not refer to a job offer that is the best one on the market that is available to a person. Your definition implies that a job offer that 95% of the world population would rush to accept, that is above market rates for that job and which is voluntary according to any court of law, is exploitation. By what standard can you describe it as such? It is a completely arbitrary definition, unless you are citing marxist theory which says that all investor profit is exploitation, in which case you should disclose your ideological suppositions from the outset so that people understand you are not referring to exploitation in the way it's conventionally understood. As for land, that is completely incomparable to a company. Land is a public resource in a sense so if a Lord monopolizes it they're depriving others of something that they have an equal share in. And no single company or cartel of companies, has anything approaching a monopoly on the job market. So your comparison is wrong on two levels. It's telling that arguments trying to justify the socialist claims of exploitation have to make inappropriate analogies. The substance of the claim cannot be justified on its own grounds.

viraptor 4y ago

[citation needed] The warehouse where the union was established is still there. I can't even find information about any of not-unionised ones closing. Can you link information about any profitable Amazon warehouse which was actually closed as a result of union organising? Also with the current Amazon's turnover rate you can't count on working for more than a year. Their annual turnover is over 100% for warehouses so it may be a loss for the area, but on a case-by-case basis those people would be looking for another job soon anyway.