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Amazon joins companies arguing US labor board is unconstitutional

DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
judge2020 3y ago
Without the board, employees would not be allowed to exercise their right to negotiate together without actually losing their job, which I'd say is fairly unconstitutional.
- godzillabrennus 3y ago
  America already feels like a corporation not a country to a large part of the working class. Further undermining the safeguards for labor will have a huge impact on the labor movement. The pendulum will swing mighty hard the other direction in response. This is a dumb move by corporate America.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Will cause reasonable people do unreasonable things. Sometimes I wonder how lacking the aggregate critical thinking is of the folks at these orgs having these back room conversations, or that they’ve never opened a history textbook. I suppose the result of their positions, disconnection from median reality, and perception of risk. "I put a dog in a corner, why did it viciously attack me!?"
    - Draiken 3y ago
      It's very hard because I don't see how we would ever actually trigger any sort of revolution anymore. I personally live way too comfortably to justify to myself the possibility of being arrested, hurt or even killed for anything I believe in. I hate myself for that, but the logical part of my brain simply won't let me do it. Even when I was making much less, I still had this same mentality. For better or worse, the line that must be crossed for millions to actually get together and do something about it is much, much lower in this day and age. If there's one thing that is clear to me, is that when many of the rights we have today, that were fought and conquered with blood, people had much worse conditions of living. People were already in terrible situations, so taking personal risk in order to fight for something better was not so far fetched. Another aspect is that we now live much more individualized lives. We no longer have the communities we had before, nor the similar shared communities. Only individuals that actively seek like-minded people and causes to fight for, end up together. The vast majority lives in their own bubble. P.S: dang, if you read this, can you tell me if I can even comment on anything with any "ideological" overlap anymore. I don't wanna break any site rules but it's really hard for me to know where you draw the line for this stuff. I just enjoy discussing these matters and I'm not trying to create flame wars or anything like that.
  - moshegramovsky 3y ago
    You're absolutely right. And yet some people are still surprised by the political climate in America that is being created as a result. I keep saying that someone (I don't care who) needs to do something about housing, healthcare, and wages before there's even bigger trouble. Dumb move by Amazon. First time after hearing criticism of them for over 20 years that I actually felt like I was wrong about them.
    - delfinom 3y ago
      Amazon has been on the late stage capitalism warpath for awhile now. They even have internal reports that they are going to exhaust the labor pool due to their hiring and firing practices at warehouses within a few years. The latest news from the Amazon delivery side? They are looking to reduce the minimum hiring age from 21 to 18. That just screams trying to scrape the barrel of the nearly exhausted labor pool and they don't give a single fuck why they are in the predictament they are facing.
  - spaceribs 3y ago
    They're feeling the squeeze for sure, Millennials don't feel invested in the market (because we have no investments due to multiple fleecings across the last 15 years), and Gen Z is radicalized beyond belief against capitalism. The mood is that Boomers are only going to be "in charge" for so long, and when that tape runs out, things stop being so predictable. I bet they'll ratchet up as much of these alienating policies as possible just to ensure the overton window buffers out progressive action before they don't have the means to anymore. A cheap but effective tactic for them to take.
    - moate 3y ago
      The future sure does look more and more radical, going to be interesting to see what flavor wins out (reds or browns).
    - squigz 3y ago
      > Gen Z is radicalized beyond belief against capitalism. This is a strangely heated way of describing it.
      - spaceribs 3y ago
        It's a strangely heated topic for them, far more than the previous two generations. I'm generalizing of course, this is just based on my own personal experiences with Gen Z, there's a lot of variability within any generation. That said, the identified causes of suffering have shifted inexorably.
  - jmward01 3y ago
    The problem with the idea that 'the pendulum will eventually swing back' is that it isn't true. History's graveyard has way more countries in it than are currently in existence. Every one of those dead countries/societies saw the pendulum 'swing back' every time except the last one.
  - m_0x 3y ago
    > America already feels like a corporation not a country There is a concerning percentage of US citizens that actively wants this. "He will run America like one of his business"
- happiness_idx 3y ago
  "rights" are purely metaphysical super natural constructs they're only enforced via might. Enjoy your corporate overlord fiefdoms
  - wredue 3y ago
    Funny how few people understand that “rights” are not fundamental. What good is a “right” that nobody observes you actually have? Rights are granted by the legal observation of said right. If your right boils down to words without observability, it’s not a right.
    - vundercind 3y ago
      They’re a convenient term for “freedom we care about a lot”. They’re good as a propaganda (neutral sense) tool. Folks getting hung up on “well that’s a right and this other thing can’t be because technically…” are definitely missing the last 200ish years of thought in that area, though. As are the ones who think rights are actually better-protected than other freedoms (aside from the PR boost of the name! And maybe “popular” rights are better-enshrined in law, but that’s not inherent in their being a right—we could so-protect anything) There’s no set list that’s definitely correct and they also don’t “exist” in any meaningful sense if they can’t be exercised (any more than Tinkerbell exists). It’s just a nice label. Which isn’t nothing! But they’re not “real” in the sense some people suppose they are, even philosophically. I think a lot of this confusion stems from focus in US schools on the political philosophy state-of-the-art c. 1776 as an underpinning of a kind of US Civil Religion. Most of that stuff’s kinda crap. Go read the famously influential Second Treatise, it’s actually a pretty easy read and not that long. It’s plainly (to a modern reader) not strong.
      - wakawaka28 3y ago
        This all seems like an awfully pretentious way to say "I disagree with the founding fathers of the US. They lived a long time ago so they are obviously wrong, ammirite?" No, you're not right. Human nature hasn't changed in thousands of years, much less hundreds. While we might have better technology than they did, we're still just a bunch of monkeys trying to get along.
- Strang 3y ago
  The right to assembly is a restriction on the government, not private enterprise.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - gh02t 3y ago
    The Supreme Court has already upheld that the right for employees to organize is a fundamental one and that Congress can enforce it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Steel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Ste.... > ...the statute goes no further than to safeguard the right of employees to self-organization and to select representatives of their own choosing for collective bargaining or other mutual protection without restraint or coercion by their employer. > That is a fundamental right. Employees have as clear a right to organize and select their representatives for lawful purposes as the respondent has to organize its business and select its own officers and agents. Discrimination and coercion to prevent the free exercise of the right of employees to self-organization and representation is a proper subject for condemnation by competent legislative authority. It's the mechanism of enforcement that seems to be in question here, but IANAL.
- akerl_ 3y ago
  I don’t really have a strong opinion one way or the other about the labor board, but presumably that can’t be the justification for why we need a labor board. Most things that are criminally or civilly punishable don’t have specific government entity that enforces them. There’s no free speech board.
  - moate 3y ago
    It was a compromise to help move away from the old way of dealing with labor disputes, which involved murders on both sides. The local cops were almost always in the pockets of the wealthy (which has of course changed in the intervening century of course) so congress helped set an independent federal agency to regulate disputes. Go read about the events surrounding the Wagner act’s passage, it should help you pick a side.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- bluGill 3y ago
  I don't see anything in the constitution about that. If nothing else, the NLRB forces people who otherwise like their job to join a union they may not like, which seems equally unconstitutional.
  - Osmose 3y ago
    The point of a union is that if you don't like it you can advocate to it for changes with less of a power imbalance than if it was the company that you didn't like. The union can't fire you like the company can. To paraphrase a common argument about why we don't need unions, if you don't like the union, why not just find another job?
    - ARandomerDude 3y ago
      > I don't see anything in the constitution about that. > The point of a union is… Those comments are unrelated. You can like an idea but that doesn’t mean it’s constitutional, which is why amendments exist. Conversely, you can very much dislike an idea that may be in the Constitution. “Good idea” and “legal” are distinct categories.
      - Osmose 3y ago
        Rightness and legality are intertwined in a world where laws are slower than public opinion and people can voluntarily choose to do more than only what the law allows for. But a more direct criticism of the legal aspect would be: getting a job is voluntary from a legal perspective, how does that make joining the associated union a compelled action? The union is part of the job. Besides, union security agreements already _are_ heavily regulated in the US.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      > less of a power imbalance than if it was the company that you didn't like. Not really. Sure you in theory vote for union leaders, but in practice it ends up being just as bad as any other politics and so you don't really have any more ability to change things. > The union can't fire you like the company can. What is the difference between being fired and being told we don't have any work for you? Labors often do lose their job - they may still be in the union and thus early in line if there is another job, but they don't have control of when jobs come up.
- roamerz 3y ago
  >which I'd say is fairly unconstitutional. Genuinely curious, what part of the Constitution protects their right to negotiate?
  - bluish29 3y ago
    The NLRA was passed in 1935 which is the law that have the following: > Section 7: Employees have the right to self-organize, form, join, or assist labor unions, bargain collectively with employers through representatives of their own choosing, and engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining. > Section 8(a)(1): Employers cannot interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights under Section 7. Shortly after that, it was challenged [1]. In short, The Supreme Court upheld the act in a 5-4 decision, acknowledging Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce, even indirectly through labor regulations. This was not the only case. The supreme court weighted on many aspects of the act [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Steel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Ste... [2] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/unions-have-right-of-access-for-nlra-employees-after-scotus-ruling-18 https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/unions-have...
    - roamerz 3y ago
      Thank you. The first link did not work. I think the correct one is: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Steel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Ste....
      - bluish29 3y ago
        Thanks, fixed.
  - kemayo 3y ago
    The National Labor Relations Act creates a right to collective bargaining for private sector employees. It's not a fundamental constitutional right, but it is a right. I've seen arguments about it being impossible for the state to restrict union activities under the 1st amendment because of freedom of association, and trying to shoehorn it into the 14th under a due process theory (can't deprive liberty without process). These are both restrictions on state activity, i.e. saying that the state can't outlaw unions, rather than saying that a private sector company couldn't just immediately fire anyone who joins a union.
- ryan93 3y ago
  You are saying that people are entitled to block others from taking a job they wont do?
dirtybirdnj 3y ago
[flagged]
- bmitc 3y ago
  It's a bit amazing to me that the U.S. went from the overly paranoid state of the 1950s through 1980s to now. Because now, these megacorps are exactly as you say in that they're effectively city-states (or more like country-states) embedded into the country, and they have their own agendas, economies, etc. that do not necessarily align with the U.S. Further, they have such power that they are able to control and shape the agendas and economies of other companies, people, states, and even countries. I think it's a summary of just how much of congress and the government at large has been purchased and otherwise outcompeted.
  - pwillia7 3y ago
    How is this different than Dupont, US Steel, etc though? Honest question
- akerl_ 3y ago
  [flagged]
photochemsyn 3y ago
Corporate personhood is unconstitutional, the rights of human beings don't apply to imaginary legal constructions designed to protect the holders of capital from having any criminal or civil responsibility for the actions of the corporations that they ultimately control. It's a system in which major shareholders benefit from the criminal and reckless behavior of executives (who get large bonuses for taking the risk, although as the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage fraud episode demonstrated, even they don't face much real risk for engaging in criminal activities on behalf of their shareholders). At the very least, if corporations are people, they should be subjected to the death penalty for engaging in egregious misconduct - state seizure of all corporate assets with no compensation to shareholders followed by restructuring makes sense in such cases, e.g. Boeing, Purdue Pharma, etc.
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  Until corporations can be arrested, they cannot be given the same rights as people.
- Strang 3y ago
  Corporate personhood includes the ability for corporations to own property, enter contracts, and serve as plaintiff or defendant. And corporations have civil rights only as a tool of shareholders' civil rights. For example, Citizens United was a corporation formed expressly for the purposes of political speech.
  - moate 3y ago
    Corporate personhood is a way for a “corporation” to take responsibility for the actual humans that comprise is. It’s a passing of responsibility from the real to the unreal. All founders/CEOs should be responsible for their creations. You want to helm a massive, un-democratic monster of “innovation and job creation” in order to accrue wealth? Fine, but you’re putting yourself at a major risk.
    - tomoyoirl 3y ago
      It sounds like you are confusing corporate personhood with limited liability.
louwrentius 3y ago
Isn’t it funny that your country is a democracy maybe, but every company is a dictatorship?
- UncleOxidant 3y ago
  Exactly. Some years ago I worked with a Russian who had been previously laid off from a megacorp. He couldn't make sense of it still a couple years later. I said "Think of it this way, every corporation is like a mini-Soviet Union complete with a five year plan" To which he replied: "No, at least in the Soviet Union they always had a job for you"
- throwawa14223 3y ago
  You make a strong argument for dictatorship.
  - erik_seaberg 3y ago
    Competing dictatorships of experts seem pretty efficient when workers are free to move.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 3y ago
  Yes it's funny. It's also no secret, and people talk about it. They make musicals about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKC8iPeIvEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKC8iPeIvEA Also, what about families? Aren't those dictatorships too or is the similarity superficial?
roughly 3y ago
Someone once described Social Security as an anti-guillotine fund, and I think the basic premise applies here, as well.
- Log_out_ 3y ago
  They yearn for socialism and this is how they express it.
  - acdha 3y ago
    Imagine finding internet humor in an online forum! Fetch the fainting couch! More seriously, while almost nobody is calling for actual guillotines there is a huge problem looming: income inequality started getting worse 40 years ago and that trend is only going to get worse as automation becomes more capable. Pair that with the demographic trends (fewer workers supporting more retired people) and climate change, and this century is shaping up to be quite volatile compared to most people’s lived experience. History has taught us that one of the greatest sparks for conflict is lack of hope; a slight increase in the taxes rich people pay will reduce that risk and it’s hardly a communist uprising to go back to the rates which balanced the budget two decades ago.
  - foofie 3y ago
    > They yearn for socialism and this is how they express it. Socialism is not the bogeyman you think it is. Some of us who were fortunate enough to benefit from living in countries in western Europe can tell you that basic rights such as 10 weeks of paid parental leave including for the father is a very nice thing to have.
    - hobotime 3y ago
      Paid leave has nothing to do with "workers owning the means of production." My employees get a ton of paid leave because I respect them, not because our business is socialist.
      - larkost 3y ago
ITB 3y ago
These mega corps are the product and the cause of America being the wealthiest country on earth.
- delfinom 3y ago
  Cause of 1% of Americans owning all of the wealth of America.
- soco 3y ago
  According to Wikipedia, not USA is the wealthiest country on earth.
  - foreverobama 3y ago
    [dead]
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  America isn't wealthy, only the shareholders are. Per the Fed: https://www.stlouisfed.org/institute-for-economic-equity/the-state-of-us-wealth-inequality https://www.stlouisfed.org/institute-for-economic-equity/the... ("The State of U.S. Wealth Inequality | February 05, 2024") > How much wealth inequality is there in the U.S.? > The top 10% of households by wealth had $6.5 million on average. As a group, they held 66.6% of total household wealth. > The bottom 50% of households by wealth had $50,000 on average. As a group, they held only 2.6% of total household wealth.
  - delfinom 3y ago
    Let's not forget that the US poverty line is artificially kept low using an outdated formula to generate better outlooks and not show the economy has been destroyed since the 1960s for the average person. Officially the formula is >The official poverty line as currently defined by the Census Bureau is "three times the cost of a minimum diet in 1963" – meaning it's measured by how much families spent on food five decades ago. If the poverty formula were correctly updated to reflect shelter (i.e. housing/rent), I bet 50% of Americans would be classified as living in poverty.
alsetmusic 3y ago
This is one of the many reasons that I’m traveling the world to look for a new home. I love my city and surrounding metro. I wrote an angry diatribe when an asshole politician criticized it. A friend suggested submitting it to a local paper and it got published there. I wanted to live here for the rest of my life. America is too hostile towards regular people. Its values don’t match mine. I’ll sadly accept a lot of things in my life changing in ways I regret to separate from it.
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  >America is too hostile towards regular people. So many family members constantly remind me that "your brain is capable enough to escape most of America's problems, just earn more money..." And I keep having to remind them that I don't want to out-compete against others, just so I can have basic healthcare (not attached to employment). Universal healthcare would "lift all the boats," and not just the yacht-owners'. >This is one of the many reasons that I’m traveling the world to look for a new home. I just applied for my passport, and am looking forward to worldly exploration.
  - jackson1442 3y ago
    > I just applied for my passport, and am looking forward to worldly exploration. Congrats! Travel is super important to gain perspective - culturally, politically, and socially. As an added bonus, having a passport makes ID verification much less of a pain in the ass (typically you just need a passport rather than a state ID + other documents).
lnxg33k1 3y ago
Amazon joins SpaceX.. la creme de la creme
- moate 3y ago
  Don’t foget Starbucks and Trader Joe’s!
tschellenbach 3y ago
Feels like there is a balance between ensuring good protection and still allowing markets to be efficient.
jmward01 3y ago
Rational companies go to the absolute extent of the law. If they don't then some other company will and they will die. That means I don't look at a company and call it 'evil' based on them taking advantage of legal thing x, y or z. What defines evil to me are companies that lobby for or support in other ways expanding harmful policies or reducing protections for people. I honestly don't know the details of the arguments involved here but the high level read smells of evil.
- boplicity 3y ago
  > If they don't then some other company will and they will die. This really isn't true. There are many companies out there that go above and beyond, in terms of acting ethically. In fact, it can be a competitive advantage to do so, for many reasons. (One, being employees who believe in your mission and buy into it, are far more likely to be productive long-term employees.)
  - jmward01 3y ago
    I should qualify 'when it helps them make money'. There are lots of companies that do use the optics of 'being kind' to make money. Additionally, there are companies have influential people leading them that sway their actions in 'nice' ways at the expense of profit but this isn't, strictly speaking, rational behavior for a company. The reality is that the majority do go to what they believe to be the limits of the law so long as it helps them make a profit and this is totally ok. It is the companies that then lobby to change the limits to favor themselves at the expense of actual people that I believe are evil.
  - Andrex 3y ago
    Acting ethically can be turned into a PR boost, but it would take time and money to do so.
skhunted 3y ago
At some point the U.S. will have to either do away with the fiction that corporations are people or just say normalize the notion that the people serve corporations. We should change JFK’s statement a bit. Ask not what corporations can do for you but rather what you can do for them. We’ve legalized foreign campaign contributions as long as it comes from a corporation so why not ban labor protections and whatnot? The country needs a major reset in terms of governance and representation. Things like banning the labor board brings us closer to having that reset.
- foreverobama 3y ago
  [dead]
- moate 3y ago
  I’m firmly of the opinion that the best outcome for the radical left would be a second Trump presidency as it would likely aid in recruitment and disillusionment with the current paradigm. Let your enemy show how truly debased and unhinged they can be so that everyone is forced to pick a side. People wonder why political discourse has shifted away from “the middle” and it’s because people are realizing they were lulled into relative political passivity during the clinton-obama eras. The number of older Americans who were beneficiaries of the cold-war era American Prosperity are giving way to a younger generation that feels everything was withheld from them (imo rightfully so) by those in power. So yea, let Elon and Bezos blow up the NLRB, I’m sure it will help shares in the short term and drive labor militancy in the long term. Win win!
  - wredue 3y ago
    You are strongly underestimating the stupidity of these people. There is a reason for the saying “a conservative would let their leaders shit in their mouth as long as they thought a liberal might have to smell it”. These people are highly conditioned to believe that them losing is actually a win so long as someone else is also losing and they STILL vote for it. Thinking that losing even harder is going to sway these people is off base. They enjoy losing. They don’t care if they lost even harder. Even when they recognize that they lost, which is a hugely rare occurrence (they’re not hurting the right people, for example), they just blame the left anyway. Right wing politicians are on record stating “well why didn’t you stop us!? This is your fault!” When they shit blows up in everyone’s face. We really need to stop projecting our morality on to these people. They do not care, and when they do care, it’s your fault, not theirs.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
woodruffw 3y ago
If I understand it correctly, Amazon's argument here appears to be that the NLRB's statutory authority (i.e., its power to adjudicate labor disputes) is essentially unconstitutional, as it deprives Amazon (and other companies) of the ordinary trial process. If this interpretation is correct, the consequences are disturbing: a ruling against the NLRB here would imply absolute judicial supremacy, and not a system of checks and balances. In effect, it'd break the US Government's regulatory backbone: any regulatory decision could be challenged not within its statutory limits (or for exceeding its statutory limits), but on the basis of statutory regulation itself being unconstitutional. In effect, it would amount to a government whose regulatory framework is not controlled by the elected branches, but by the sole unelected one.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  Yeah that's why the Trump court loves it. It's the federalist society long game.
  - vundercind 3y ago
    Bust up federal regulatory authority -> force states into a regulatory race-to-the-bottom to attract business -> profit.
- extheat 3y ago
  The 5th Circuit court of appeals has already ruled similarly that the SEC's in house courts are unconstitutional, and that Congress can't delegate its legislative/judicial powers to the executive branch in that case under the separation of powers [1], a case that will likely be heard by the SCOTUS. By extension, if that is upheld, the idea is that this same principle could be applied to other executive branch administrative courts like in use at the NLRB. [1] https://www.winston.com/en/blogs-and-podcasts/government-program-fraud-false-claims-act-and-qui-tam-litigation-playbook/fifth-circuit-holds-that-secs-use-of-in-house-courts-to-adjudicate-enforcement-actions-is-unconstitutional https://www.winston.com/en/blogs-and-podcasts/government-pro... "Fifth Circuit Holds That SEC’s Use of In-House Courts to Adjudicate Enforcement Actions Is Unconstitutional"
ragamuffin 3y ago
Slavery was constitutional.
- beauzero 3y ago
  Actually still is if you are found convicted of a crime. 13th amendment section 1. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/
throwawa14223 3y ago
On the face of it Amazon seems to be clearly in the right. What's the argument the other way?
tomoyoirl 3y ago
Let’s be unpopular today… The Board may be a good thing, it may be a bad thing, ane plaintiffs have an agenda (100%). But the court is not supposed to rule on that at all, or what is right and wrong. It’s supposed to rule on the law. If the NLRB they’re operating a parallel court system outside of the regular court system, where they’re both a prosecutor outside normal Executive Branch oversight, and a judge outside the Judicial Branch, that’s exactly the sort of thing a Supreme Court full of (establishment) conservatives is going to strike down, not because they hate labor (though it might also be true) but because it violates the power structures prescribed by the Constitution, and their philosophy is that these should actually be upheld. The legislature doesn’t just get to set that sort of a thing up to be independent of the other two branches, any more than they get to have a general police power; it’s a usurpation.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  > The legislature doesn’t just get to set that sort of a thing up to be independent of the other two branches, any more than they get to have a general police power; it’s a usurpation. This is a profound misunderstanding of how checks and balances work. The legislature absolutely has the ability to produce statues and dictate their regulation, and the judicial branch absolutely has the ability to conduct judicial review over statues and whether their regulation exceeds the scope of the proscribed statue. Neither has supremacy over either; they're equally empowered branches of the government. What the judicial branch isn't empowered to do is to diminish the regulatory authority of the legislative branch. It can review individual laws and their regulatory scope, but it can't erase Article I, Section 8 itself.
- feedforward 3y ago
  This is the argument conservatives made in the 1950s and 1960s against blacks having the right to vote, drink from water fountains, swim in public swimming pools, sit anywhere on a bus etc. They said they were not against blacks per se, but against federal encroachment, communists in the civil rights movement etc.
- jrs235 3y ago
  Corporations are created [and recognized] by and UNDER Government. Their owners are provided the privilege of limited liability because of it. IF they wish to not be under the regulations then the owners can operate outside of their corporate veil and be fully liable for any and all actions they collectively take...
hgh 3y ago
These seems to dovetail with an existing case involving the SEC and it's authority that is under review by the Supreme Court: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/sec-v-jarkesy-the-threat-to-congressional-and-agency-authority/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/sec-v-jarkesy-the-t...
Osmose 3y ago
What gets me about opposition to unions as limiting a free market is that unions solve a very real problem with the efficiency of employee negotiations. A union is a much more efficient way to discover what the employees want from their workplaces than negotiating individually with them one by one. When negotiations break down, the union makes it clear and potentially strikes or takes other steps to pressure the company. When individual employee negotiations break down, you get churn and underperformance and dissatisfaction. People will often see burnout or mismanagement and assume it's an individual issue vs a breakdown in the contract between workers and the company.
- 303uru 3y ago
  You know what else gets me about union opposition? Unions help everyone. When I was managing union employees, despite not being in the union as a manager myself, I was paid better, had better benefits, etc... Rising tides lift all ships.
- MandieD 3y ago
  That’s generally how it works in Germany. We have had more strikes than usual the last few years, but they’re usually really short. In my particular industry, having a very strong but pragmatic union that the companies know can make their very expensive production lines stop motivates everyone to quickly work things out. I decided to finally join IG Metall after they got us a quickly-negotiated 8% raise during the post-Covid inflation. They were realistic enough to give phase-in time, so there’s still been some sting for us, but we’ve not felt motivated to strike.
  - caballeto 3y ago
    Unions do not help everyone. Unions often impose artificially high labor costs, which results in a lower amount of jobs being created. The real impact soon becomes apparent when companies start to lay off those union employees because their margins are slim and they try to automate as much as possible, instead of hiring people to do the job. See the recent UPS layoff, just after 6 months of a great union deal: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/difficult-disappointing-ups-lay-off-144500181.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/difficult-disappointing-ups-l...
jmyeet 3y ago
These efforts may succeed. The current Supreme Court is on a tear of revoking precedents and inventing new legal standards. One is historical tradition, which is nonsense. Another is the major questions doctrine, which is also nonsense. It basically says that if the court decides an issue is important enough the court can overrule the other two branches. This is coming to a head this term with a case that threatens to overturn another Supreme Court precedent called Chevron. This 40 year old decision says that courts should give deference to regulatory agencies where there’s ambiguity. Congress and multiple administrations have relied upon this when writing law. It’s what allows the administrative state to exist and function. This court seems set to decide that Congress has to be explicit on every little thing, which is completely unworkable. And that’s the point: to cripple executive oversight. It’s the rich and powerful neutering regulations and oversight to the detriment of everyone else so they can make even more money because regulations hurt profits. That’s all that’s going on here.
- dmatech 3y ago
  The major questions doctrine itself is a relaxation of strict separation of powers. Normally there is strict separation between lawmaking, judicial functions, and enforcement. MQD at least allows the "minor questions" to be exceptions. I know that a lot of people think separation of powers is inefficient and outdated, but it's still the law of the land.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    I see the "major questions doctrine" the opposite way. I see it as a power grab by the judiciary to deign to decide that some things are too important to trust to the text Congress wrote into the laws they passed. The Court is telling Congress "you weren't specific enough when you wrote this law and the agency is taking advantage of your ambiguity, and we won't allow it". Instead, the Court should say, "what this agency is doing is plausibly within the bounds of this legal text due to its ambiguity". If Congress would like to clarify, they are free to do so. The Court should not be saying "we believe this is too important of an issue for ambiguity to allow this action", they should only ever say "we believe this action is unambiguously in violation of this law". (And FWIW, what I described is pretty much just what Chevron deference already is.)
deleted 3y ago
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thegrim33 3y ago
Meta: I find it so hard to believe this comment thread is comprised of actual citizens/humans making these comments and not shills/bots intentionally manipulating the conversation. I truly wish I had the ability to look into accounts and see their post history, connection history, see what accounts they have, see which accounts are upvoting and downvoting, see if this is actually organic conversation or to what degree it's all manipulated. How insane is it to be at the point where we have no visibility into whether we're conversing with other people or are being completely manipulated? I don't know how society can move forwards like this. We need some sort of transparency.
- erik_seaberg 3y ago
  I use my True Name™ to remind myself this could be subject to legal discovery (through no fault of mine). But I like the marketplace of ideas not caring about the pedigree of a good idea.
- Andrex 3y ago
  I don't think the idea of a "public square" is long for the internet, if it hasn't already been abandoned. Enforced social (and possibly evolutionary) norms scale in-person to a couple hundred people, but not thousands or millions of semi-/anonymous participants. If I want to be sure I'm talking to real people, the only way is to know them IRL. My personal solution is to set up my own town squares exclusive to my friends, but that doesn't scale either. I don't know if there's a solution.
yieldcrv 3y ago
well I have a gripe with the existence of Administrative Law Judges but ouch, didn't see the NLRB coming being the one on the chopping block to cause this change hope congress, the people, or the states and their people will create a system that is more durable I’m all for accelerating this outcome, just always a shock to see what angle it comes from
exabrial 3y ago
I think the problem is the original purpose of unions has been a line bit distorted. Originally it was supposed to protect workers from getting injured and making human capital just expensive enough to make your employees valuable assets you retain. I have to be careful with my next comment, because reading it on the internet can sound like I personally look down another group of people, which I do not; my goal is to point out that it is not skilled labor. When we’ve gotten to the point of “package handler unions” and “barista unions”, I think the system is abused. I completely agree with thongs like fire sprinkler installer unions on the other hand. The other issue i have is forced union dues. Nobody should be forced into paying a private organization money. That is comically unconstitutional
- benpacker 3y ago
  Most of this is inaccurate. The history of unions is long and complex. Although there has been tension historically between craft unionism and industrial unionism (the original term for lower skilled work), that was mostly in the pre-war period and not really related to the purpose of unions. No one is forced into paying union dues now anymore than someone is forced to take any particular job. Workers negotiate a contract with their employer that includes a commitment to include all employees as part of the union. It's just a contract.
imglorp 3y ago
Regardless of this terrible concept, at-will workers will always have substantial power here. Any time they walk out as a unit, the company is dead until the rift is resolved. Undoing the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 would be a tragedy but even then, the workers were getting employers' ears.
macinjosh 3y ago
No one ITT mentions that the constitution can be ammeneded. Instead of arcane arguments we could try to make new compromises with each other.
Farfignoggen 3y ago
NLRB was set up by Congress to enforce the National Labor Relations ACT! So it's basically a court that's set up to adjudicate Labor Disputes and enforce Labor Laws/Regulations and promote negotiated solutions rather than Strikes and Walkouts. And in fact if there's a strike planned then the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service has to be notified in advance of any Strike Vote! Go on strike without notifying the FMCS and the strike is not legal and can result in a Union losing their case there in Labor Court(NLRB). So if one wants to go back to the old days of the Pinkerton Thugs and wildcat strikes and outright social conflict then just try and get rid of the NLRB and related Laws and Courts.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  Right — but there’s a broad question of if Congress can establish special courts. This is being asked about more than labor, including taxes and regulations. The rise of special administrative courts is arguably denying people their rights to be heard in courts, which while you say benefits average people here, is also harming them when in disputes with the FDA/USDA. Should we save labor unions at the cost of Big Ag destroying small farmers? Unfortunately, there’s not a simple solution here. (Though, I’m generally against the rise of the administrative state — so I think special courts are inherently wrong.)
  - nateglims 3y ago
    Big ag also has many advantages in the regular court system. Like simply having more capital.
    - zmgsabst 3y ago
      Of course — and even more advantages in special administrative courts, where even reaching a regular court to assert your rights is so expensive most small farmers can’t afford it and where Big Ag doesn’t have to expend any money at all since their paid-for pol does the fighting using taxpayer funds. Removing special courts doesn’t solve the disparity; but it does improve the situation for small farmers trying to provide their communities with wholesome foods. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of better.
arunabha 3y ago
I'm surprised there is so little interest in this story on HN. There are three different submissions for this which reached the front page, but then rapidly dropped to below page 3.

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judge2020 3y ago

Without the board, employees would not be allowed to exercise their right to negotiate together without actually losing their job, which I'd say is fairly unconstitutional.

godzillabrennus 3y ago
America already feels like a corporation not a country to a large part of the working class. Further undermining the safeguards for labor will have a huge impact on the labor movement. The pendulum will swing mighty hard the other direction in response. This is a dumb move by corporate America.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Will cause reasonable people do unreasonable things. Sometimes I wonder how lacking the aggregate critical thinking is of the folks at these orgs having these back room conversations, or that they’ve never opened a history textbook. I suppose the result of their positions, disconnection from median reality, and perception of risk. "I put a dog in a corner, why did it viciously attack me!?"
  - Draiken 3y ago
    It's very hard because I don't see how we would ever actually trigger any sort of revolution anymore. I personally live way too comfortably to justify to myself the possibility of being arrested, hurt or even killed for anything I believe in. I hate myself for that, but the logical part of my brain simply won't let me do it. Even when I was making much less, I still had this same mentality. For better or worse, the line that must be crossed for millions to actually get together and do something about it is much, much lower in this day and age. If there's one thing that is clear to me, is that when many of the rights we have today, that were fought and conquered with blood, people had much worse conditions of living. People were already in terrible situations, so taking personal risk in order to fight for something better was not so far fetched. Another aspect is that we now live much more individualized lives. We no longer have the communities we had before, nor the similar shared communities. Only individuals that actively seek like-minded people and causes to fight for, end up together. The vast majority lives in their own bubble. P.S: dang, if you read this, can you tell me if I can even comment on anything with any "ideological" overlap anymore. I don't wanna break any site rules but it's really hard for me to know where you draw the line for this stuff. I just enjoy discussing these matters and I'm not trying to create flame wars or anything like that.
- moshegramovsky 3y ago
  You're absolutely right. And yet some people are still surprised by the political climate in America that is being created as a result. I keep saying that someone (I don't care who) needs to do something about housing, healthcare, and wages before there's even bigger trouble. Dumb move by Amazon. First time after hearing criticism of them for over 20 years that I actually felt like I was wrong about them.
  - delfinom 3y ago
    Amazon has been on the late stage capitalism warpath for awhile now. They even have internal reports that they are going to exhaust the labor pool due to their hiring and firing practices at warehouses within a few years. The latest news from the Amazon delivery side? They are looking to reduce the minimum hiring age from 21 to 18. That just screams trying to scrape the barrel of the nearly exhausted labor pool and they don't give a single fuck why they are in the predictament they are facing.
- spaceribs 3y ago
  They're feeling the squeeze for sure, Millennials don't feel invested in the market (because we have no investments due to multiple fleecings across the last 15 years), and Gen Z is radicalized beyond belief against capitalism. The mood is that Boomers are only going to be "in charge" for so long, and when that tape runs out, things stop being so predictable. I bet they'll ratchet up as much of these alienating policies as possible just to ensure the overton window buffers out progressive action before they don't have the means to anymore. A cheap but effective tactic for them to take.
  - moate 3y ago
    The future sure does look more and more radical, going to be interesting to see what flavor wins out (reds or browns).
  - squigz 3y ago
    > Gen Z is radicalized beyond belief against capitalism. This is a strangely heated way of describing it.
    - spaceribs 3y ago
      It's a strangely heated topic for them, far more than the previous two generations. I'm generalizing of course, this is just based on my own personal experiences with Gen Z, there's a lot of variability within any generation. That said, the identified causes of suffering have shifted inexorably.
- jmward01 3y ago
  The problem with the idea that 'the pendulum will eventually swing back' is that it isn't true. History's graveyard has way more countries in it than are currently in existence. Every one of those dead countries/societies saw the pendulum 'swing back' every time except the last one.
- m_0x 3y ago
  > America already feels like a corporation not a country There is a concerning percentage of US citizens that actively wants this. "He will run America like one of his business"
happiness_idx 3y ago
"rights" are purely metaphysical super natural constructs they're only enforced via might. Enjoy your corporate overlord fiefdoms
- wredue 3y ago
  Funny how few people understand that “rights” are not fundamental. What good is a “right” that nobody observes you actually have? Rights are granted by the legal observation of said right. If your right boils down to words without observability, it’s not a right.
  - vundercind 3y ago
    They’re a convenient term for “freedom we care about a lot”. They’re good as a propaganda (neutral sense) tool. Folks getting hung up on “well that’s a right and this other thing can’t be because technically…” are definitely missing the last 200ish years of thought in that area, though. As are the ones who think rights are actually better-protected than other freedoms (aside from the PR boost of the name! And maybe “popular” rights are better-enshrined in law, but that’s not inherent in their being a right—we could so-protect anything) There’s no set list that’s definitely correct and they also don’t “exist” in any meaningful sense if they can’t be exercised (any more than Tinkerbell exists). It’s just a nice label. Which isn’t nothing! But they’re not “real” in the sense some people suppose they are, even philosophically. I think a lot of this confusion stems from focus in US schools on the political philosophy state-of-the-art c. 1776 as an underpinning of a kind of US Civil Religion. Most of that stuff’s kinda crap. Go read the famously influential Second Treatise, it’s actually a pretty easy read and not that long. It’s plainly (to a modern reader) not strong.
    - wakawaka28 3y ago
      This all seems like an awfully pretentious way to say "I disagree with the founding fathers of the US. They lived a long time ago so they are obviously wrong, ammirite?" No, you're not right. Human nature hasn't changed in thousands of years, much less hundreds. While we might have better technology than they did, we're still just a bunch of monkeys trying to get along.
Strang 3y ago
The right to assembly is a restriction on the government, not private enterprise.
- deleted 3y ago
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- gh02t 3y ago
  The Supreme Court has already upheld that the right for employees to organize is a fundamental one and that Congress can enforce it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Steel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Ste.... > ...the statute goes no further than to safeguard the right of employees to self-organization and to select representatives of their own choosing for collective bargaining or other mutual protection without restraint or coercion by their employer. > That is a fundamental right. Employees have as clear a right to organize and select their representatives for lawful purposes as the respondent has to organize its business and select its own officers and agents. Discrimination and coercion to prevent the free exercise of the right of employees to self-organization and representation is a proper subject for condemnation by competent legislative authority. It's the mechanism of enforcement that seems to be in question here, but IANAL.
akerl_ 3y ago
I don’t really have a strong opinion one way or the other about the labor board, but presumably that can’t be the justification for why we need a labor board. Most things that are criminally or civilly punishable don’t have specific government entity that enforces them. There’s no free speech board.
- moate 3y ago
  It was a compromise to help move away from the old way of dealing with labor disputes, which involved murders on both sides. The local cops were almost always in the pockets of the wealthy (which has of course changed in the intervening century of course) so congress helped set an independent federal agency to regulate disputes. Go read about the events surrounding the Wagner act’s passage, it should help you pick a side.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
bluGill 3y ago
I don't see anything in the constitution about that. If nothing else, the NLRB forces people who otherwise like their job to join a union they may not like, which seems equally unconstitutional.
- Osmose 3y ago
  The point of a union is that if you don't like it you can advocate to it for changes with less of a power imbalance than if it was the company that you didn't like. The union can't fire you like the company can. To paraphrase a common argument about why we don't need unions, if you don't like the union, why not just find another job?
  - ARandomerDude 3y ago
    > I don't see anything in the constitution about that. > The point of a union is… Those comments are unrelated. You can like an idea but that doesn’t mean it’s constitutional, which is why amendments exist. Conversely, you can very much dislike an idea that may be in the Constitution. “Good idea” and “legal” are distinct categories.
    - Osmose 3y ago
      Rightness and legality are intertwined in a world where laws are slower than public opinion and people can voluntarily choose to do more than only what the law allows for. But a more direct criticism of the legal aspect would be: getting a job is voluntary from a legal perspective, how does that make joining the associated union a compelled action? The union is part of the job. Besides, union security agreements already _are_ heavily regulated in the US.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    > less of a power imbalance than if it was the company that you didn't like. Not really. Sure you in theory vote for union leaders, but in practice it ends up being just as bad as any other politics and so you don't really have any more ability to change things. > The union can't fire you like the company can. What is the difference between being fired and being told we don't have any work for you? Labors often do lose their job - they may still be in the union and thus early in line if there is another job, but they don't have control of when jobs come up.
roamerz 3y ago
>which I'd say is fairly unconstitutional. Genuinely curious, what part of the Constitution protects their right to negotiate?
- bluish29 3y ago
  The NLRA was passed in 1935 which is the law that have the following: > Section 7: Employees have the right to self-organize, form, join, or assist labor unions, bargain collectively with employers through representatives of their own choosing, and engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining. > Section 8(a)(1): Employers cannot interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights under Section 7. Shortly after that, it was challenged [1]. In short, The Supreme Court upheld the act in a 5-4 decision, acknowledging Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce, even indirectly through labor regulations. This was not the only case. The supreme court weighted on many aspects of the act [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Steel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Ste... [2] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/unions-have-right-of-access-for-nlra-employees-after-scotus-ruling-18 https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/unions-have...
  - roamerz 3y ago
    Thank you. The first link did not work. I think the correct one is: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Steel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLRB_v._Jones_%26_Laughlin_Ste....
    - bluish29 3y ago
      Thanks, fixed.
- kemayo 3y ago
  The National Labor Relations Act creates a right to collective bargaining for private sector employees. It's not a fundamental constitutional right, but it is a right. I've seen arguments about it being impossible for the state to restrict union activities under the 1st amendment because of freedom of association, and trying to shoehorn it into the 14th under a due process theory (can't deprive liberty without process). These are both restrictions on state activity, i.e. saying that the state can't outlaw unions, rather than saying that a private sector company couldn't just immediately fire anyone who joins a union.
ryan93 3y ago
You are saying that people are entitled to block others from taking a job they wont do?

dirtybirdnj 3y ago

[flagged]

bmitc 3y ago
It's a bit amazing to me that the U.S. went from the overly paranoid state of the 1950s through 1980s to now. Because now, these megacorps are exactly as you say in that they're effectively city-states (or more like country-states) embedded into the country, and they have their own agendas, economies, etc. that do not necessarily align with the U.S. Further, they have such power that they are able to control and shape the agendas and economies of other companies, people, states, and even countries. I think it's a summary of just how much of congress and the government at large has been purchased and otherwise outcompeted.
- pwillia7 3y ago
  How is this different than Dupont, US Steel, etc though? Honest question
akerl_ 3y ago
[flagged]

photochemsyn 3y ago

Corporate personhood is unconstitutional, the rights of human beings don't apply to imaginary legal constructions designed to protect the holders of capital from having any criminal or civil responsibility for the actions of the corporations that they ultimately control. It's a system in which major shareholders benefit from the criminal and reckless behavior of executives (who get large bonuses for taking the risk, although as the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage fraud episode demonstrated, even they don't face much real risk for engaging in criminal activities on behalf of their shareholders). At the very least, if corporations are people, they should be subjected to the death penalty for engaging in egregious misconduct - state seizure of all corporate assets with no compensation to shareholders followed by restructuring makes sense in such cases, e.g. Boeing, Purdue Pharma, etc.

nine_zeros 3y ago
Until corporations can be arrested, they cannot be given the same rights as people.
Strang 3y ago
Corporate personhood includes the ability for corporations to own property, enter contracts, and serve as plaintiff or defendant. And corporations have civil rights only as a tool of shareholders' civil rights. For example, Citizens United was a corporation formed expressly for the purposes of political speech.
- moate 3y ago
  Corporate personhood is a way for a “corporation” to take responsibility for the actual humans that comprise is. It’s a passing of responsibility from the real to the unreal. All founders/CEOs should be responsible for their creations. You want to helm a massive, un-democratic monster of “innovation and job creation” in order to accrue wealth? Fine, but you’re putting yourself at a major risk.
  - tomoyoirl 3y ago
    It sounds like you are confusing corporate personhood with limited liability.

louwrentius 3y ago

Isn’t it funny that your country is a democracy maybe, but every company is a dictatorship?

UncleOxidant 3y ago
Exactly. Some years ago I worked with a Russian who had been previously laid off from a megacorp. He couldn't make sense of it still a couple years later. I said "Think of it this way, every corporation is like a mini-Soviet Union complete with a five year plan" To which he replied: "No, at least in the Soviet Union they always had a job for you"
throwawa14223 3y ago
You make a strong argument for dictatorship.
- erik_seaberg 3y ago
  Competing dictatorships of experts seem pretty efficient when workers are free to move.
0xdeadbeefbabe 3y ago
Yes it's funny. It's also no secret, and people talk about it. They make musicals about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKC8iPeIvEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKC8iPeIvEA Also, what about families? Aren't those dictatorships too or is the similarity superficial?

roughly 3y ago

Someone once described Social Security as an anti-guillotine fund, and I think the basic premise applies here, as well.

Log_out_ 3y ago
They yearn for socialism and this is how they express it.
- acdha 3y ago
  Imagine finding internet humor in an online forum! Fetch the fainting couch! More seriously, while almost nobody is calling for actual guillotines there is a huge problem looming: income inequality started getting worse 40 years ago and that trend is only going to get worse as automation becomes more capable. Pair that with the demographic trends (fewer workers supporting more retired people) and climate change, and this century is shaping up to be quite volatile compared to most people’s lived experience. History has taught us that one of the greatest sparks for conflict is lack of hope; a slight increase in the taxes rich people pay will reduce that risk and it’s hardly a communist uprising to go back to the rates which balanced the budget two decades ago.
- foofie 3y ago
  > They yearn for socialism and this is how they express it. Socialism is not the bogeyman you think it is. Some of us who were fortunate enough to benefit from living in countries in western Europe can tell you that basic rights such as 10 weeks of paid parental leave including for the father is a very nice thing to have.
  - hobotime 3y ago
    Paid leave has nothing to do with "workers owning the means of production." My employees get a ton of paid leave because I respect them, not because our business is socialist.
    - larkost 3y ago

ITB 3y ago

These mega corps are the product and the cause of America being the wealthiest country on earth.

delfinom 3y ago
Cause of 1% of Americans owning all of the wealth of America.
soco 3y ago
According to Wikipedia, not USA is the wealthiest country on earth.
- foreverobama 3y ago
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toomuchtodo 3y ago
America isn't wealthy, only the shareholders are. Per the Fed: https://www.stlouisfed.org/institute-for-economic-equity/the-state-of-us-wealth-inequality https://www.stlouisfed.org/institute-for-economic-equity/the... ("The State of U.S. Wealth Inequality | February 05, 2024") > How much wealth inequality is there in the U.S.? > The top 10% of households by wealth had $6.5 million on average. As a group, they held 66.6% of total household wealth. > The bottom 50% of households by wealth had $50,000 on average. As a group, they held only 2.6% of total household wealth.
- delfinom 3y ago
  Let's not forget that the US poverty line is artificially kept low using an outdated formula to generate better outlooks and not show the economy has been destroyed since the 1960s for the average person. Officially the formula is >The official poverty line as currently defined by the Census Bureau is "three times the cost of a minimum diet in 1963" – meaning it's measured by how much families spent on food five decades ago. If the poverty formula were correctly updated to reflect shelter (i.e. housing/rent), I bet 50% of Americans would be classified as living in poverty.

alsetmusic 3y ago

This is one of the many reasons that I’m traveling the world to look for a new home. I love my city and surrounding metro. I wrote an angry diatribe when an asshole politician criticized it. A friend suggested submitting it to a local paper and it got published there. I wanted to live here for the rest of my life. America is too hostile towards regular people. Its values don’t match mine. I’ll sadly accept a lot of things in my life changing in ways I regret to separate from it.

ProllyInfamous 3y ago
>America is too hostile towards regular people. So many family members constantly remind me that "your brain is capable enough to escape most of America's problems, just earn more money..." And I keep having to remind them that I don't want to out-compete against others, just so I can have basic healthcare (not attached to employment). Universal healthcare would "lift all the boats," and not just the yacht-owners'. >This is one of the many reasons that I’m traveling the world to look for a new home. I just applied for my passport, and am looking forward to worldly exploration.
- jackson1442 3y ago
  > I just applied for my passport, and am looking forward to worldly exploration. Congrats! Travel is super important to gain perspective - culturally, politically, and socially. As an added bonus, having a passport makes ID verification much less of a pain in the ass (typically you just need a passport rather than a state ID + other documents).

lnxg33k1 3y ago

Amazon joins SpaceX.. la creme de la creme

moate 3y ago
Don’t foget Starbucks and Trader Joe’s!

tschellenbach 3y ago

Feels like there is a balance between ensuring good protection and still allowing markets to be efficient.

jmward01 3y ago

Rational companies go to the absolute extent of the law. If they don't then some other company will and they will die. That means I don't look at a company and call it 'evil' based on them taking advantage of legal thing x, y or z. What defines evil to me are companies that lobby for or support in other ways expanding harmful policies or reducing protections for people. I honestly don't know the details of the arguments involved here but the high level read smells of evil.

boplicity 3y ago
> If they don't then some other company will and they will die. This really isn't true. There are many companies out there that go above and beyond, in terms of acting ethically. In fact, it can be a competitive advantage to do so, for many reasons. (One, being employees who believe in your mission and buy into it, are far more likely to be productive long-term employees.)
- jmward01 3y ago
  I should qualify 'when it helps them make money'. There are lots of companies that do use the optics of 'being kind' to make money. Additionally, there are companies have influential people leading them that sway their actions in 'nice' ways at the expense of profit but this isn't, strictly speaking, rational behavior for a company. The reality is that the majority do go to what they believe to be the limits of the law so long as it helps them make a profit and this is totally ok. It is the companies that then lobby to change the limits to favor themselves at the expense of actual people that I believe are evil.
- Andrex 3y ago
  Acting ethically can be turned into a PR boost, but it would take time and money to do so.

skhunted 3y ago

At some point the U.S. will have to either do away with the fiction that corporations are people or just say normalize the notion that the people serve corporations. We should change JFK’s statement a bit. Ask not what corporations can do for you but rather what you can do for them. We’ve legalized foreign campaign contributions as long as it comes from a corporation so why not ban labor protections and whatnot? The country needs a major reset in terms of governance and representation. Things like banning the labor board brings us closer to having that reset.

foreverobama 3y ago
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moate 3y ago
I’m firmly of the opinion that the best outcome for the radical left would be a second Trump presidency as it would likely aid in recruitment and disillusionment with the current paradigm. Let your enemy show how truly debased and unhinged they can be so that everyone is forced to pick a side. People wonder why political discourse has shifted away from “the middle” and it’s because people are realizing they were lulled into relative political passivity during the clinton-obama eras. The number of older Americans who were beneficiaries of the cold-war era American Prosperity are giving way to a younger generation that feels everything was withheld from them (imo rightfully so) by those in power. So yea, let Elon and Bezos blow up the NLRB, I’m sure it will help shares in the short term and drive labor militancy in the long term. Win win!
- wredue 3y ago
  You are strongly underestimating the stupidity of these people. There is a reason for the saying “a conservative would let their leaders shit in their mouth as long as they thought a liberal might have to smell it”. These people are highly conditioned to believe that them losing is actually a win so long as someone else is also losing and they STILL vote for it. Thinking that losing even harder is going to sway these people is off base. They enjoy losing. They don’t care if they lost even harder. Even when they recognize that they lost, which is a hugely rare occurrence (they’re not hurting the right people, for example), they just blame the left anyway. Right wing politicians are on record stating “well why didn’t you stop us!? This is your fault!” When they shit blows up in everyone’s face. We really need to stop projecting our morality on to these people. They do not care, and when they do care, it’s your fault, not theirs.

deleted 3y ago

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woodruffw 3y ago

If I understand it correctly, Amazon's argument here appears to be that the NLRB's statutory authority (i.e., its power to adjudicate labor disputes) is essentially unconstitutional, as it deprives Amazon (and other companies) of the ordinary trial process. If this interpretation is correct, the consequences are disturbing: a ruling against the NLRB here would imply absolute judicial supremacy, and not a system of checks and balances. In effect, it'd break the US Government's regulatory backbone: any regulatory decision could be challenged not within its statutory limits (or for exceeding its statutory limits), but on the basis of statutory regulation itself being unconstitutional. In effect, it would amount to a government whose regulatory framework is not controlled by the elected branches, but by the sole unelected one.

jeffbee 3y ago
Yeah that's why the Trump court loves it. It's the federalist society long game.
- vundercind 3y ago
  Bust up federal regulatory authority -> force states into a regulatory race-to-the-bottom to attract business -> profit.
extheat 3y ago
The 5th Circuit court of appeals has already ruled similarly that the SEC's in house courts are unconstitutional, and that Congress can't delegate its legislative/judicial powers to the executive branch in that case under the separation of powers [1], a case that will likely be heard by the SCOTUS. By extension, if that is upheld, the idea is that this same principle could be applied to other executive branch administrative courts like in use at the NLRB. [1] https://www.winston.com/en/blogs-and-podcasts/government-program-fraud-false-claims-act-and-qui-tam-litigation-playbook/fifth-circuit-holds-that-secs-use-of-in-house-courts-to-adjudicate-enforcement-actions-is-unconstitutional https://www.winston.com/en/blogs-and-podcasts/government-pro... "Fifth Circuit Holds That SEC’s Use of In-House Courts to Adjudicate Enforcement Actions Is Unconstitutional"

ragamuffin 3y ago

Slavery was constitutional.

beauzero 3y ago
Actually still is if you are found convicted of a crime. 13th amendment section 1. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/

throwawa14223 3y ago

On the face of it Amazon seems to be clearly in the right. What's the argument the other way?

tomoyoirl 3y ago

Let’s be unpopular today… The Board may be a good thing, it may be a bad thing, ane plaintiffs have an agenda (100%). But the court is not supposed to rule on that at all, or what is right and wrong. It’s supposed to rule on the law. If the NLRB they’re operating a parallel court system outside of the regular court system, where they’re both a prosecutor outside normal Executive Branch oversight, and a judge outside the Judicial Branch, that’s exactly the sort of thing a Supreme Court full of (establishment) conservatives is going to strike down, not because they hate labor (though it might also be true) but because it violates the power structures prescribed by the Constitution, and their philosophy is that these should actually be upheld. The legislature doesn’t just get to set that sort of a thing up to be independent of the other two branches, any more than they get to have a general police power; it’s a usurpation.

woodruffw 3y ago
> The legislature doesn’t just get to set that sort of a thing up to be independent of the other two branches, any more than they get to have a general police power; it’s a usurpation. This is a profound misunderstanding of how checks and balances work. The legislature absolutely has the ability to produce statues and dictate their regulation, and the judicial branch absolutely has the ability to conduct judicial review over statues and whether their regulation exceeds the scope of the proscribed statue. Neither has supremacy over either; they're equally empowered branches of the government. What the judicial branch isn't empowered to do is to diminish the regulatory authority of the legislative branch. It can review individual laws and their regulatory scope, but it can't erase Article I, Section 8 itself.
feedforward 3y ago
This is the argument conservatives made in the 1950s and 1960s against blacks having the right to vote, drink from water fountains, swim in public swimming pools, sit anywhere on a bus etc. They said they were not against blacks per se, but against federal encroachment, communists in the civil rights movement etc.
jrs235 3y ago
Corporations are created [and recognized] by and UNDER Government. Their owners are provided the privilege of limited liability because of it. IF they wish to not be under the regulations then the owners can operate outside of their corporate veil and be fully liable for any and all actions they collectively take...

hgh 3y ago

These seems to dovetail with an existing case involving the SEC and it's authority that is under review by the Supreme Court: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/sec-v-jarkesy-the-threat-to-congressional-and-agency-authority/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/sec-v-jarkesy-the-t...

Osmose 3y ago

What gets me about opposition to unions as limiting a free market is that unions solve a very real problem with the efficiency of employee negotiations. A union is a much more efficient way to discover what the employees want from their workplaces than negotiating individually with them one by one. When negotiations break down, the union makes it clear and potentially strikes or takes other steps to pressure the company. When individual employee negotiations break down, you get churn and underperformance and dissatisfaction. People will often see burnout or mismanagement and assume it's an individual issue vs a breakdown in the contract between workers and the company.

303uru 3y ago
You know what else gets me about union opposition? Unions help everyone. When I was managing union employees, despite not being in the union as a manager myself, I was paid better, had better benefits, etc... Rising tides lift all ships.
MandieD 3y ago
That’s generally how it works in Germany. We have had more strikes than usual the last few years, but they’re usually really short. In my particular industry, having a very strong but pragmatic union that the companies know can make their very expensive production lines stop motivates everyone to quickly work things out. I decided to finally join IG Metall after they got us a quickly-negotiated 8% raise during the post-Covid inflation. They were realistic enough to give phase-in time, so there’s still been some sting for us, but we’ve not felt motivated to strike.
- caballeto 3y ago
  Unions do not help everyone. Unions often impose artificially high labor costs, which results in a lower amount of jobs being created. The real impact soon becomes apparent when companies start to lay off those union employees because their margins are slim and they try to automate as much as possible, instead of hiring people to do the job. See the recent UPS layoff, just after 6 months of a great union deal: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/difficult-disappointing-ups-lay-off-144500181.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/difficult-disappointing-ups-l...

jmyeet 3y ago

These efforts may succeed. The current Supreme Court is on a tear of revoking precedents and inventing new legal standards. One is historical tradition, which is nonsense. Another is the major questions doctrine, which is also nonsense. It basically says that if the court decides an issue is important enough the court can overrule the other two branches. This is coming to a head this term with a case that threatens to overturn another Supreme Court precedent called Chevron. This 40 year old decision says that courts should give deference to regulatory agencies where there’s ambiguity. Congress and multiple administrations have relied upon this when writing law. It’s what allows the administrative state to exist and function. This court seems set to decide that Congress has to be explicit on every little thing, which is completely unworkable. And that’s the point: to cripple executive oversight. It’s the rich and powerful neutering regulations and oversight to the detriment of everyone else so they can make even more money because regulations hurt profits. That’s all that’s going on here.

dmatech 3y ago
The major questions doctrine itself is a relaxation of strict separation of powers. Normally there is strict separation between lawmaking, judicial functions, and enforcement. MQD at least allows the "minor questions" to be exceptions. I know that a lot of people think separation of powers is inefficient and outdated, but it's still the law of the land.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  I see the "major questions doctrine" the opposite way. I see it as a power grab by the judiciary to deign to decide that some things are too important to trust to the text Congress wrote into the laws they passed. The Court is telling Congress "you weren't specific enough when you wrote this law and the agency is taking advantage of your ambiguity, and we won't allow it". Instead, the Court should say, "what this agency is doing is plausibly within the bounds of this legal text due to its ambiguity". If Congress would like to clarify, they are free to do so. The Court should not be saying "we believe this is too important of an issue for ambiguity to allow this action", they should only ever say "we believe this action is unambiguously in violation of this law". (And FWIW, what I described is pretty much just what Chevron deference already is.)

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thegrim33 3y ago

Meta: I find it so hard to believe this comment thread is comprised of actual citizens/humans making these comments and not shills/bots intentionally manipulating the conversation. I truly wish I had the ability to look into accounts and see their post history, connection history, see what accounts they have, see which accounts are upvoting and downvoting, see if this is actually organic conversation or to what degree it's all manipulated. How insane is it to be at the point where we have no visibility into whether we're conversing with other people or are being completely manipulated? I don't know how society can move forwards like this. We need some sort of transparency.

erik_seaberg 3y ago
I use my True Name™ to remind myself this could be subject to legal discovery (through no fault of mine). But I like the marketplace of ideas not caring about the pedigree of a good idea.
Andrex 3y ago
I don't think the idea of a "public square" is long for the internet, if it hasn't already been abandoned. Enforced social (and possibly evolutionary) norms scale in-person to a couple hundred people, but not thousands or millions of semi-/anonymous participants. If I want to be sure I'm talking to real people, the only way is to know them IRL. My personal solution is to set up my own town squares exclusive to my friends, but that doesn't scale either. I don't know if there's a solution.

yieldcrv 3y ago

well I have a gripe with the existence of Administrative Law Judges but ouch, didn't see the NLRB coming being the one on the chopping block to cause this change hope congress, the people, or the states and their people will create a system that is more durable I’m all for accelerating this outcome, just always a shock to see what angle it comes from

exabrial 3y ago

I think the problem is the original purpose of unions has been a line bit distorted. Originally it was supposed to protect workers from getting injured and making human capital just expensive enough to make your employees valuable assets you retain. I have to be careful with my next comment, because reading it on the internet can sound like I personally look down another group of people, which I do not; my goal is to point out that it is not skilled labor. When we’ve gotten to the point of “package handler unions” and “barista unions”, I think the system is abused. I completely agree with thongs like fire sprinkler installer unions on the other hand. The other issue i have is forced union dues. Nobody should be forced into paying a private organization money. That is comically unconstitutional

benpacker 3y ago
Most of this is inaccurate. The history of unions is long and complex. Although there has been tension historically between craft unionism and industrial unionism (the original term for lower skilled work), that was mostly in the pre-war period and not really related to the purpose of unions. No one is forced into paying union dues now anymore than someone is forced to take any particular job. Workers negotiate a contract with their employer that includes a commitment to include all employees as part of the union. It's just a contract.

imglorp 3y ago

Regardless of this terrible concept, at-will workers will always have substantial power here. Any time they walk out as a unit, the company is dead until the rift is resolved. Undoing the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 would be a tragedy but even then, the workers were getting employers' ears.

macinjosh 3y ago

No one ITT mentions that the constitution can be ammeneded. Instead of arcane arguments we could try to make new compromises with each other.

Farfignoggen 3y ago

NLRB was set up by Congress to enforce the National Labor Relations ACT! So it's basically a court that's set up to adjudicate Labor Disputes and enforce Labor Laws/Regulations and promote negotiated solutions rather than Strikes and Walkouts. And in fact if there's a strike planned then the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service has to be notified in advance of any Strike Vote! Go on strike without notifying the FMCS and the strike is not legal and can result in a Union losing their case there in Labor Court(NLRB). So if one wants to go back to the old days of the Pinkerton Thugs and wildcat strikes and outright social conflict then just try and get rid of the NLRB and related Laws and Courts.

zmgsabst 3y ago
Right — but there’s a broad question of if Congress can establish special courts. This is being asked about more than labor, including taxes and regulations. The rise of special administrative courts is arguably denying people their rights to be heard in courts, which while you say benefits average people here, is also harming them when in disputes with the FDA/USDA. Should we save labor unions at the cost of Big Ag destroying small farmers? Unfortunately, there’s not a simple solution here. (Though, I’m generally against the rise of the administrative state — so I think special courts are inherently wrong.)
- nateglims 3y ago
  Big ag also has many advantages in the regular court system. Like simply having more capital.
  - zmgsabst 3y ago
    Of course — and even more advantages in special administrative courts, where even reaching a regular court to assert your rights is so expensive most small farmers can’t afford it and where Big Ag doesn’t have to expend any money at all since their paid-for pol does the fighting using taxpayer funds. Removing special courts doesn’t solve the disparity; but it does improve the situation for small farmers trying to provide their communities with wholesome foods. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of better.

arunabha 3y ago

I'm surprised there is so little interest in this story on HN. There are three different submissions for this which reached the front page, but then rapidly dropped to below page 3.