6 ms·

From a European perspective, it is simply crazy that 1.6M workers [0] failed to unionize so far. Not that Unions are simply great and effective - unions bring

From a European perspective, it is simply crazy that 1.6M workers [0] failed to unionize so far. Not that Unions are simply great and effective - unions bring their own set of problems. But a company this large shouldn't have been able to fight unionization for so long. [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/234488/number-of-amazon-employees/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/234488/number-of-amazon-...

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Propaganda and individual exceptionalism are a hell of a drug.
- macinjosh 4y ago
  Every human being is exceptional. You won't convince me otherwise. We are all unique and have something to offer. Your kind of thinking is anti-human and leads to a world where the only options for people in work and society are what someone else has already decided is best for them. I'd rather live my life according to my principals instead of getting the same serving given to everyone else. When I am forced to join a union agency is ripped away from me and given to the collective. Not everyone has the same beliefs and values as you do, so perhaps a little humility is in order.
  - archagon 4y ago
    > Not everyone has the same beliefs and values as you do, so perhaps a little humility is in order. Practice what you preach, mate. “Anti-human”? Yikes.
  - butUhmErm 4y ago
  - malermeister 4y ago
    Every human is unique in their skills and wants, but not their basic needs. We all need food, healthcare, housing etc. and it's unconscionable that some jobs in the US don't provide for those basics. If you join a union, agency is not ripped away from you, it is given to you. Alone, the fast food worker cannot demand a pay raise. Together, they all can. Nobody is talking about "the same serving as everyone else", this is about raising the minimum serving to be reasonable so nobody has to suffer. Agency is being taken away by capitalist exploitation, not by attempts to counteract it.
  - kdtsh 4y ago
    Calm down Casey Jones, one is forcing you to do anything.
  - parkingrift 4y ago
    If everyone is exceptional then truly no one is exceptional.
mistrial9 4y ago
American Union corruption is an ugly story, quite a lot of it in New York, NY .. later Detroit. The battle against communism fits well here, as the far-right criminals who did run NY Unions were the choice of the insider capitalists, versus the serious-Left that thought of the idea. Proof of this extreme statement? How about a Jeopardy question -- "What New York City famous gangster got his start as a mafia boss with his appointment to run the New York airport union" ..
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Funny how people only ever talk about those supposedly horrible unions instead of the nurses and teachers unions that made sure my mom could feed her kids or my family members are paid fairly for their hard work, often hard PHYSICAL LABOR in a supposed knowledge industry.
  - buscoquadnary 4y ago
    Actually most of the people I hear that talk about Teacher's union are expressing negative opinions of them, citing things like rubber rooms, and the impossibility of getting rid of bad teachers. Not necessarily saying I have an issue with unions per se, but the two unions I hear people complaining about the most are the teachers and the police unions. It seems generally people don't like public sector unions from the people I've talked to.
    - sophacles 4y ago
      Those examples sound to me like great examples of unions doing thier job: protecting their members. All the places that I've heard of that weaken or eliniate various unions in the name of protecting the powerful shortly produce stories of ever increasing demands for unpaid work and firings for not doing the unpaid work, or firings/censures/punishments for not violating the laws of physics (e.g. my friend who was given a pay cut because every teacher was required to do an hour of 1:1 time with each of their students each week, but her band was 200+ kids).
      - 4y ago
nopenopenopeno 4y ago
Europe doesn’t have the NLRB and great many stifling anti-union laws passed in the US during the cold war.
NathanKP 4y ago
I think this comes down to how many in the US see jobs in the general. A job working in an Amazon fulfillment center is seen by most as a kind of "stepping stone" job. Literally anyone can get the job very easily, and as a result its not considered to be a "good job" in the first place. There is an understanding that you work this type of job if you are fresh out of high school with no experience, or you don't have any skills so you can't find better work, etc. So it's considered okay to suffer in the short term, as you don't plan to stay in this type of job for the long term anyway. In fact Amazon leans into this by offering programs to pay tuition for fullfillment center workers to learn tech skills, etc. Part of the draw of the job is that you can more easily pivot from the role into new better roles. So with this background its not hard to see why workers don't bother to join a union or invest that much in improving working conditions in their current role. They want to be moving on to another job or better role in a year or less anyway. Disclaimer: I am an Amazon employee, and I am speaking from my own personal viewpoint, not for Amazon.
- ahelwer 4y ago
  I wouldn't say this is how such jobs are seen by most. This is certainly how such jobs are seen by people who have landed a tech job though. We can't all be tech workers, managers, consultants, or other such professions. Somebody has to move the packages around in the real world. To consign this and other essential (to borrow a word from early pandemic times) jobs to transitory, stepping-stone status is the opposite of how it should be. It doesn't matter, in the grand scheme of things, whether my git commits go in by the end of the week. The professions where it does matter whether something happens by the end of the week ought to be made much more attractive places to be.
  - brutal_chaos_ 4y ago
    I have parents, neither are in the tech sector, that believe this. I would say a fair number of people outside of tech believe this too. I have also used vocational rehabilitation services and they don't treat those jobs with such disrespect, but I definitely got the feeling some jobs are stepping stone jobs.
  - 4y ago
ars 4y ago
That's because while they are both called "Union" a European union and an American one are not the same thing! This explains some of the difference: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/17/15290674/union-labor-movement-europe-bargaining-fight-15-ghent https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/17/15290674/u... And from my understanding in Europe you can pick whichever Union you like (maybe you can confirm?) While in the US the employer is locked to a single Union. That single difference explains why they are unpopular in the US.
- hyperman1 4y ago
  Can confirm. In belgium there are 3 big unions, organized by ideology. They each have 2 names, as we are bilingual nl/fr : * ACV/CSC - catholic * ABVV/FGTB - socialist * ACLVB/CGSLB - liberal. Note how these ideologies roughly correspond to old political parties. Catholic , as an example, has lost most of its religious meaning. The unions also tend to strike together, causing sector strikes over the whole nation.
hulitu 4y ago
In the US unions were treated from the beginning as enemy of the state.

toomuchtodo 4y ago

Propaganda and individual exceptionalism are a hell of a drug.

macinjosh 4y ago
Every human being is exceptional. You won't convince me otherwise. We are all unique and have something to offer. Your kind of thinking is anti-human and leads to a world where the only options for people in work and society are what someone else has already decided is best for them. I'd rather live my life according to my principals instead of getting the same serving given to everyone else. When I am forced to join a union agency is ripped away from me and given to the collective. Not everyone has the same beliefs and values as you do, so perhaps a little humility is in order.
- archagon 4y ago
  > Not everyone has the same beliefs and values as you do, so perhaps a little humility is in order. Practice what you preach, mate. “Anti-human”? Yikes.
- butUhmErm 4y ago
- malermeister 4y ago
  Every human is unique in their skills and wants, but not their basic needs. We all need food, healthcare, housing etc. and it's unconscionable that some jobs in the US don't provide for those basics. If you join a union, agency is not ripped away from you, it is given to you. Alone, the fast food worker cannot demand a pay raise. Together, they all can. Nobody is talking about "the same serving as everyone else", this is about raising the minimum serving to be reasonable so nobody has to suffer. Agency is being taken away by capitalist exploitation, not by attempts to counteract it.
- kdtsh 4y ago
  Calm down Casey Jones, one is forcing you to do anything.
- parkingrift 4y ago
  If everyone is exceptional then truly no one is exceptional.

mistrial9 4y ago

American Union corruption is an ugly story, quite a lot of it in New York, NY .. later Detroit. The battle against communism fits well here, as the far-right criminals who did run NY Unions were the choice of the insider capitalists, versus the serious-Left that thought of the idea. Proof of this extreme statement? How about a Jeopardy question -- "What New York City famous gangster got his start as a mafia boss with his appointment to run the New York airport union" ..

mrguyorama 4y ago
Funny how people only ever talk about those supposedly horrible unions instead of the nurses and teachers unions that made sure my mom could feed her kids or my family members are paid fairly for their hard work, often hard PHYSICAL LABOR in a supposed knowledge industry.
- buscoquadnary 4y ago
  Actually most of the people I hear that talk about Teacher's union are expressing negative opinions of them, citing things like rubber rooms, and the impossibility of getting rid of bad teachers. Not necessarily saying I have an issue with unions per se, but the two unions I hear people complaining about the most are the teachers and the police unions. It seems generally people don't like public sector unions from the people I've talked to.
  - sophacles 4y ago
    Those examples sound to me like great examples of unions doing thier job: protecting their members. All the places that I've heard of that weaken or eliniate various unions in the name of protecting the powerful shortly produce stories of ever increasing demands for unpaid work and firings for not doing the unpaid work, or firings/censures/punishments for not violating the laws of physics (e.g. my friend who was given a pay cut because every teacher was required to do an hour of 1:1 time with each of their students each week, but her band was 200+ kids).
    - 4y ago

nopenopenopeno 4y ago

Europe doesn’t have the NLRB and great many stifling anti-union laws passed in the US during the cold war.

NathanKP 4y ago

I think this comes down to how many in the US see jobs in the general. A job working in an Amazon fulfillment center is seen by most as a kind of "stepping stone" job. Literally anyone can get the job very easily, and as a result its not considered to be a "good job" in the first place. There is an understanding that you work this type of job if you are fresh out of high school with no experience, or you don't have any skills so you can't find better work, etc. So it's considered okay to suffer in the short term, as you don't plan to stay in this type of job for the long term anyway. In fact Amazon leans into this by offering programs to pay tuition for fullfillment center workers to learn tech skills, etc. Part of the draw of the job is that you can more easily pivot from the role into new better roles. So with this background its not hard to see why workers don't bother to join a union or invest that much in improving working conditions in their current role. They want to be moving on to another job or better role in a year or less anyway. Disclaimer: I am an Amazon employee, and I am speaking from my own personal viewpoint, not for Amazon.

ahelwer 4y ago
I wouldn't say this is how such jobs are seen by most. This is certainly how such jobs are seen by people who have landed a tech job though. We can't all be tech workers, managers, consultants, or other such professions. Somebody has to move the packages around in the real world. To consign this and other essential (to borrow a word from early pandemic times) jobs to transitory, stepping-stone status is the opposite of how it should be. It doesn't matter, in the grand scheme of things, whether my git commits go in by the end of the week. The professions where it does matter whether something happens by the end of the week ought to be made much more attractive places to be.
- brutal_chaos_ 4y ago
  I have parents, neither are in the tech sector, that believe this. I would say a fair number of people outside of tech believe this too. I have also used vocational rehabilitation services and they don't treat those jobs with such disrespect, but I definitely got the feeling some jobs are stepping stone jobs.
- 4y ago

ars 4y ago

That's because while they are both called "Union" a European union and an American one are not the same thing! This explains some of the difference: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/17/15290674/union-labor-movement-europe-bargaining-fight-15-ghent https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/17/15290674/u... And from my understanding in Europe you can pick whichever Union you like (maybe you can confirm?) While in the US the employer is locked to a single Union. That single difference explains why they are unpopular in the US.

hyperman1 4y ago
Can confirm. In belgium there are 3 big unions, organized by ideology. They each have 2 names, as we are bilingual nl/fr : * ACV/CSC - catholic * ABVV/FGTB - socialist * ACLVB/CGSLB - liberal. Note how these ideologies roughly correspond to old political parties. Catholic , as an example, has lost most of its religious meaning. The unions also tend to strike together, causing sector strikes over the whole nation.

hulitu 4y ago

In the US unions were treated from the beginning as enemy of the state.