Amazon Unlawfully Confiscated Union Literature, NLRB Finds

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvz3kv/amazon-unlawfully-confiscated-union-literature-nlrb-finds

by cf100clunk • 5 years ago

406 201 5 years ago

arberx2• 5 years ago

It's impossible for me to have a positive view of Amazon (the company) at this point. There's way too much evidence pointing to the contrary.

chad_strategic11• 5 years ago

Your comment is a broad generalization, yet provides no examples of evidence.

davidcbc• 5 years ago

The link they are commenting on is part of the evidence, which I assume is why they commented on it

ahoy• 5 years ago

This is the comments section on that very evidence.

paxys3• 5 years ago

Is it possible to have a positive view of any large company? They are all doing a lot of good things and a few bad things. Beyond that it depends on how good their PR department is.

Apocryphon• 5 years ago

Would like to know if there are any large companies that actually defy this general rule. Costco is a common counter-example, but even they’re imperfect:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/11/business/costco-5-dollar-chic...

arberx2• 5 years ago

Hmm maybe "positive view" is the wrong approach. I think "impossible to not have a negative view" is better wording.

Indiffernce is generally how I feel about a lot of companies.

My perspective on Amazon is negative.

Causality1• 5 years ago

Cox Cable fought for their customers. What did it get them? A billion dollar fine.

newsyyswen• 5 years ago

I wonder when the change happened. It seems like there's a fairly broad consensus now, but different people seem to cite different time periods for when things took a bad turn.

I had consistently great experiences ~3-8 years ago, but I remember needing to be careful about 3rd party sellers towards the end of that time period.

Thing is, I stopped ordering online about a year before the pandemic started. When I returned to Amazon 18 months ago, it felt like the balance had shifted towards the majority of listings being fraud/low quality/unexpectedly comingled/etc.

Personally, I blame a shift in perspective. It feels like their retail teams' views on who "The Customer" was shifted from the person placing the order, to the 3rd-party sellers.

When do y'all think that happened? 2015? 2017? 2019?

onli• 5 years ago

For me I can restore it in my blog. At the beginning of 2019 a first article about how Amazon might not be the best option to buy everything anymore, citing the bad quality of user reviews, the potential problem with fakes and the subpar experience with the website (specifically: The search evidently being skewed towards sponsored and not towards good offers, and missing filters to find products by their properties). Then summer 2019 a report on a disastrous support experience (in a case that included a received obvious fake) and the decision to not buy there anymore.

That was very fast, in retrospective. I liked Amazon quite a bit before that, the early 2019 articles even clearly reads like that. No criticism before that. Instead a few positive support experiences.

But that's just me, and not necessarily a US perspective. The fake problem for example I thought to be more prominent outside of Europe. On the other hand, that amazon seemed to fight against unions had been reported here before, to boycott the site because of that was a fairly common position.

Also, I wonder how it would have been if I had been more invested into the ecosystem - there is no Kindle in my home, no Echo, and I started to buy there relatively late. Though a site of mine used their affiliate marketing program even back in 2011...

ashtonkem7• 5 years ago

It’s not just views on Amazon as a company to do business with. Attitudes around these parts have soured on Amazon as a company to work for too.

vmception3• 5 years ago

Amazon can restore good will with me by fixing their shitty vesting schedule. But it’s probably shitty because even highly compensated engineers figure out that working there is too shitty to tolerate so they had to lock them in with backloaded vesting.

haberman2• 5 years ago

It seems like there's a fairly broad consensus now

Opinion polling shows Amazon has a 72% approval rating, higher than almost any other institution in America. https://reason.com/2021/07/06/poll-people-like-amazon-more-t...

handrous• 5 years ago

When'd they become a shady flea market putting laughably little effort into policing the wares sold thereon, while still showing "amazon" branding all over the page and generally not making it clear enough that they weren't taking direct responsibility for the listing, and then keeping that up year after year because it made them a whole fucking bunch of money and no-one made them stop, despite knowing that lots of their income was a result of fraud, borderline-scams, and unsafe or unfit-for-use-but-too-cheap-to-bother-returning products?

I'm pretty sure that was way before 2015. That's when they became indefensibly-bad actors, IMO.

gdulli• 5 years ago

In 2007 I was considering a move to the Bay Area and I focused my job research first on Amazon. You can find negative anecdotes about any large company. But still, without even remembering the details, I remember that research resulting in a strong takeaway that I wanted to have nothing to do with the company.

So then it was sometime around the early 2010s that the first wave of bad press came out about the way they treat workers, and I remember being unsurprised.

alfalfasprout• 5 years ago

Thing is, at this point Amazon has mastered the art of getting away with employee-hostile practices.

Take, as a separate example, their PIP culture. The bar to get into amazon is fairly low (compared to peer companies) and so they tend to use PIP to maintain a high turnover and filter out unproductive employees. There's no shortage of engineers wanting to apply to Amazon (increasingly from overseas) and this churn seems to be OK because they have very good systems in place to onboard employees fast. For an engineer early in their career having AMZN on their resume can be worth the pain. At least among my peers in senior and staff/principal levels there's very little desire to jump ship to amazon though.

Similarly, they can treat warehouse workers like crap because there are others willing to line up to take their place. Regardless of the conditions.

What it boils down to is that many of amazon's employees simply don't have a better choice. And I'm not sure what can really help with that.

cratermoon8• 5 years ago

I spent a year working at a very large company that's well known in my part of the country, not because I wanted to work there, but because it was nice to have on my resume. But at least their compensation wasn't back-loaded.

omegaworks• 5 years ago

I'm not sure what can really help with that.

A basic social safety net. If companies are forced to compete with minimum living standards that are guaranteed to all people, it prevents their worst excesses.

chad_strategic11• 5 years ago

This might be unpopular opinion but...

More robots and more automation comes on line everyday, soon there will be less and less employees at these facilities regardless of unions.

Unions or government regulation where not able to save the type writer or the typewriter union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Women_Clerks_an... dissolved in 1989

The market(capitalism) is going to do what the market(capitalism) does.

criddell• 5 years ago

There's nothing wrong with that opinion but you aren't considering all the other things unions do for their members.

A union can't make those jobs last forever but it can try to make working conditions better for as long as the job lasts.

_jal• 5 years ago

That's a fine opinion. I happen to agree that some what you imply is true.

But you can claim that about a lot of things that we choose to treat differently. Property crime is inevitable, and yet we devote significant resources to fighting that. Same with death.

If you don't want to devote resources to figuring out what to do with a lot of "surplus humanity", they'll help you make up your mind later.

ipaddr• 5 years ago

Why wouldn't robots be in unions in the future? It will be part of giving robots human rights and social progress. You won't be able to own robots like they are slaves. Robots will demand and get more.

hutzlibu• 5 years ago

"The market(capitalism) is going to do what the market(capitalism) does. "

And unions do, what unions do: try to negotiate better conditions for their members. Whether they provide a net benefit to society, is a different and I think very case specific question.

kazen44• 5 years ago

also, the market/capitalism doesn't do what capitalism does. Society functions in that construct because it is still beneficial for the majority of its population Revolutions rarely happen over pure ideological reasons. Usually, ideology is used as a means to an end for a given situation.

paxys3• 5 years ago

It's not an unpopular opinion but rather pretty obvious. That does not in any way change the fact that Amazon is beholden to the employees it has right now and still needs to follow labor laws. They are welcome to simultaneously build as many robots as they want.

ericol• 5 years ago

Whatever you think of union, take this into account: You shouldn't be basing your opinions on your biases. Replace "Union Literature" with:

- Soccer Literature

- LGBT+ Literature

- Harry Potter Literature

Do you agree with all this to also be confiscated would it be freely distributed at work?

chad_strategic11• 5 years ago

Yes, I don't like Harry Potter and I shouldn't have to hear about him if I don't want to.

All this can take place off site.

slumpt_3• 5 years ago

Fortunately the law disagrees with your regressive, anti-employee perspective.

valbaca• 5 years ago

What a beautiful example of false equivalence. Union literature has special protection because it's a certain type of literature. You cannot just "replace" with what you want. Certain things are protected by law. That's how laws work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Relations_Act_o...

nerpderp82• 5 years ago

The comments in this whole thread point on a severe lack of understanding around labor laws and ethics. At the same time it attracts the archetypal free-market laissez faire pseudo intellectual.

awsthro009454• 5 years ago

In this particular example, it's not a false equivalence at all. The NLRB specifically does not give special protection to union literature. As long as the employer treats all literature equally (such as soccer literature, harry potter literature, etc), they are allowed to ban non-work literature in work areas during work time. Union literature does not get any special treatment.

see: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/shop-talk-rules-unio...

maxfurman• 5 years ago

Increasingly, strong unions are equally as fictional as Harry Potter in America.

Miner49er• 5 years ago

There's laws like this on both sides of union laws in the US. Certain things that are protected activities, and then there's things that unions can't do, too. It's not like this is a one-sided thing. Unions have protections like this, but also limits in US law.

paxys3• 5 years ago

You can't replace union literature with any of those things because they are not even close to the same thing.

Animats• 5 years ago

This could work out. Each time the employer violates an NRLB rule during an organizing campaign, even if the employer wins, there's another election in 3 months. Until the union wins or the employer stops breaking the rules.

PragmaticPulp• 5 years ago

I think it's clear that the union wants a do-over and is looking for any technicality that might give them another chance.

Does anyone really believe that the Amazon employees voted against the union because Amazon removed some union material from the break room one day? Of course not. The employees knew what they were voting for and were fully capable of researching it themselves.

The real question is what does the union plan on doing differently to sway the employees to vote differently next time? Repeatedly trying to overrule the employees about their own voted decisions isn't likely to be popular among those who voted against the union, which is most of them. They'll need a better narrative on top of this if they want to get anywhere.

Or alternatively, maybe they don't care so much about this election as they do about making Amazon look bad. Maybe they know these workers don't want to unionize, but they're going to use this opportunity to try to convince the public that the workers were misled by Amazon. If they can't win the workers at this location, maybe they can try to win the public on a wave of anti-Amazon publicity for a do-over in another location.

dasudasu• 5 years ago

If it had no influence, then why remove the material and break the law?

lmilcin2• 5 years ago

I think it's clear that the union wants a do-over and is looking for any technicality that might give them another chance.

Well, what do you expect?

If Amazon was innocent here they could just let people vote whenever they want and people would most likely not vote for union (because they would not have reason).

Instead they chose to fight against the vote which is not exactly inspiring confidence in their innocence, especially when they bend and break the law in the process.

Frondo• 5 years ago

The NLRB is the one making the recommendation for a new election, and, since they found that Amazon interfered with the election not just by removing this material, but in a number of other ways, why shouldn't they recommend holding a new election?

What's the alternative? When corporations violate labor law and interfere with union elections, do nothing about it? More broadly, if Amazon trusted the employees to research and vote of their own volition, why interfere (as determined by the NLRB) at all?

jasonlotito• 5 years ago

Does anyone really believe that the Amazon employees voted against the union because Amazon removed some union material from the break room one day?

Except that's not the only thing that happened, which is clear in the opening paragraph of the article. Their were multiple infractions, one of which (giving "workers the impression that their organizing activity was being surveilled") would definitely without a question would cause people to vote against a union and be fearful of getting involved or gathering more information. And regardless of how many times it happened, it was illegal.

gkoberger• 5 years ago

I think they're betting that most people at Amazon were pro-Union but had a "I'm worried Amazon will find out my vote, so I'll let others do the voting for me" mentality. And now that it lost, they're hoping it's a wake-up call that votes matter.

I think the accusation that Amazon "gave workers the impression that their organizing activity was being surveilled" makes it clear the union believes people were afraid to vote.

ashtonkem7• 5 years ago

Rules are rules. If Amazon wants to keep the shop Union free, they have to do the hard work of persuading people rather than doing illegal shit.

TaylorAlexander• 5 years ago

Does anyone really believe that the Amazon employees voted against the union because Amazon removed some union material from the break room one day? Of course not.

The truth is I don't think I know what it's like to live as an Amazon warehouse worker. When I grew up in California I didn't learn anything about unions until I was like 30 years old. Now to me unionization makes perfect rational sense, so I had assumed the union vote failed due to a lack of knowledge about unions amongst the workers. Like if you're a busy worker who needs their job and is afraid of company retaliation and you really don't have time to go to meetings and learn about the law and you can't really take a risk, then the "safe" thing is to vote no. Until I really learned about worker power, I probably would have done the same.

So actually yes I can see how Amazon removing literature could have impacted the vote. Looking at the original count:

"The result of the NLRB's initial vote count was 1,798 votes against the union and 738 in favor." [1]

The article also says are 6000 workers at the plant. So the question is, could the literature have helped 531 people change their mind, or brought more in from the non voting crowd? Seems perfectly plausible.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/the-amazon-union...

caoilte2• 5 years ago

Both sides are following a standard script. Do you really believe that the only thing did Amazon did wrong was removing some literature? That's just like nailing Capone for not paying his taxes. The union found something that stuck and they went with it. Amazon will carry on intimidating employees to vote against and bringing in temporary external employees to boost the electorate with people who the union don't know exist.

If Amazon weren't an awful employer maybe they'd actually let their employees decide what they wanted instead of hiring union busting private security like Pinkertons.

Not that I think this union drive will succeed any time soon.

inetknght4• 5 years ago

Until the union wins

I think that's hyperbole and could be left at the second half of your sentence:

Until ... the employer stops breaking the rules.

However, I also think that simply having another election isn't sufficient. I honestly believe that interference like this is clearly unlawful and should be criminally punished as such.

dragonwriter• 5 years ago

I honestly believe that interference like this is clearly unlawful and should be criminally punished as such.

It is clearly unlawful, but is it criminally unlawful?

HWR_14• 5 years ago

Like in many other activities, a "do over" is benefits one side or the other. When used as a punishment for cheating, the do over is usually waived if the team who is being punished lost. See a lot of the objections in legal cases, which are not appealed by the winners but would be if they lost.

vmception3• 5 years ago

interfere with creating a union? believe it or not, jail

boomboomsubban2• 5 years ago

This infraction is about a different Amazon facility, it is unrelated to the vote to unionize.

ashtonkem7• 5 years ago

It’s also likely to increase union votes. People typically respond poorly to petty intimidation.

wanderingmind• 5 years ago

Can we start with unionizing the tech industry. Pay rates are fixed. You cannot promote someone fast or fire someone based on performance. Let's try that out and see what happens. I'm not claiming Amazon is saint, but the fact is their pay is better than most other competitors for blue collar work and there was a reason why employees overwhelmingly rejected the unionizing plan.

o5ira• 5 years ago

Tech unions do not generally have fixed pay rates / promo schedules.

Amazon warehouse pay is lower than prevailing warehouse pay used to be (amzn brought down the market rate as they're so prolific).

kwyjobojoe• 5 years ago

Don't forget that in ubertechland if you complain about sexual harassment or racism, you get punished! And your only recourse is to complain about it in social media. Or hire a lawyer and go bankrupt. Much better than unions!

Also, unionised workplaces do allow for terminating underperforming employees. It's just that companies need to try to actually help the employee first, and have clearly defined polices that lay out the process and allow the employee to appeal. The tech method of software deciding you get fired and no human can override is soooooooo much better.

I moved from one of Australia's largest software firms into a union role and got a 40% pay rise, and it's set in contracts exactly what I get paid and what increases I get. Which I much prefer than my pay rise depending on whether management would prefer to reward their friends.

ilikehurdles• 5 years ago

Tell me you’ve never interacted with a white collar union worker without telling me you’ve never interacted with a white collar union worker…

None of this happens at any of the recently unionized journalists I know or the long-unionized film industry members.

LatteLazy2• 5 years ago

The NLRB’s report on the Bessemer election found that Amazon illegally discouraged labor organizing, in part by pushing post office officials to install a mailbox outside the warehouse where workers were urged to drop their mail-in ballots, which an NLRB officer wrote “destroyed the laboratory conditions and justifies a second election.”

Stupid question: how does getting a new post box discourage organising? I feel like I'm missing some clever trick...

Mathnerd314• 5 years ago

Amazon had a ballot collection box installed in an employee parking lot “without authorization” from the NLRB’s regional director. The NLRB definitively denied Amazon’s request for a drop box on the warehouse property. Amazon installed one anyway. The box was placed under the view of Amazon security cameras, creating "an impression of surveillance." An employee testified to having seen company security guards open the mailbox.

In general, if you have a postbox tied to the company, then only people supporting the company will feel comfortable using it. Hence the votes will be biased anti-union.

plandis• 5 years ago

But why? The post box is presumably run by the USPS, not Amazon.

LatteLazy2• 5 years ago

Thanks, that makes more sense at least.

Y-bar• 5 years ago

After the box was installed, Amazon sent a text message to workers urging them to vote against the union and to use the mailbox outside of their facilities—where Amazon surveillance cameras were trained.

From an earlier article on the subject.

slownews452• 5 years ago

I do worry it's a bad sign for union organizing if these are the types of issues they are focused on. A USPS post office box outside the warehouse. I mean, this is the big deal justifying a second election? I don't get it. The ballots are in envelopes, the envelopers or in a PO box. Heck, some people mail things (where I am) but dropping it on office managers deck in a box for outgoing mail.

Because normal people are not filing complaints about the OPTION to use a mailbox run by USPS -> this just doesn't feel that compelling as a reason to run an entire election over.

caoilte2• 5 years ago

It's hard to prove that Amazon manipulated the USPS postbox (even though there is good evidence) but it's easy to prove that they violated the rules by setting up a postbox that was easy for them to manipulate and which they practically forced employees to use.

Reminds me of Sicily. Most local people used to go into the voting booth with a friend of the local mayor. They didn't have to. They could have gone alone. Hell, they could have complained that they were being intimidated. Strangely they didn't... You'd have fit in well.

toofy• 5 years ago

I do worry it's a bad sign for union organizing if these are the types of issues they are focused on.

I read an article a year or so ago which talked about how the south is one of the hardest areas to organize. I was super perplexed at first on why the union was so set on organizing this particular warehouse in a somewhat union hostile region rather than one in any of the states with populations that would by default be more open to the idea. It dawned on me that maybe the union expects to lose. They may have chosen one of the more difficult areas to organize as a practical experience exercise for knowledge gain to share with the workers who will be organizing in the areas with a higher union participation rates.

I really wish I could find the article again, it was long-form comparing the mean quality of life in states with higher union participation vs those with lower and it delved pretty deeply into the wider ripple effects of unions and the impacts on quality of life in wider society.

If anyone either remembers this article or if their googlefu is better than mine, please share, the content of it is incredibly relevant today and I suspect it will be even more so over the next few years.

boomboomsubban2• 5 years ago

The surveillance seems like the more troubling ruling. Having a security guard stand outside a union meeting and photograph the attendants seems like a thinly veiled threat, and if I were in that situation I would likely jump ship.

anigbrowl2• 5 years ago

Note how security guards are being employed to carry out the will of management, even though no safety/security situation obtains.

In general, security arrangements involve a transaction of unquestioning obedience to authority in exchange for preferential treatment, which can then be leveraged by the authority holder to pursue illegitimate ends, eg doing things that are outside the legal scope of managers (in the private sector) or elected officials (in the public). Because security personnel are delegated enforcement authority, instant challenges to them are treated as breaches of security; challenges can only be made administratively, even though the act of enforcement can change the fact situation sufficiently to render the administrative challenge impossible or moot (ie people give up because pursuing the administrative route is often not worth the trouble).

The security officer's dilemma is that doing their job requires them to not think very much about what they are asked to do. If they begin to have thoughts of their own about what is ethical or not and decline to assist an authority figure who asks them to do something unethical, then they risk loss of their security status and are suddenly treated as a security problem themselves. It's int he interest of authority figures to excuse and cover for minor lapses of security officer behavior so that when the authority figure wants something illegitimate, they have leverage over their security apparatus. Overly scrupulous security personnel don't get promoted.

It's worth considering that a high portion of our economy is based on the use of guard labor (not including regular law enforcement) and that this may have or perpetuate distorting economic effects: https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Faculty/Glenn_Lo...

ineedasername5• 5 years ago

Note how security guards are being employed to carry out the will of management

Yes, it falls under the concept of "Guard Labor", basically any workers who don't contribute even indirectly to planning and management or implementation of projects & initiatives. That can be actual guards, managers whose only purpose is to make sure people are doing their job, etc. Work required to keep the status quo as the status quo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_labor

cratermoon8• 5 years ago

I wonder if the security guards belong to a union.

OneLeggedCat• 5 years ago

He specifically mentions guard labor toward the end of his post.

woah• 5 years ago

Odd tangent, but the wikipedia page says this:

Guard labor is wage labor and other activities that are said to maintain (hence "guard") a capitalist system.

I'm confused by the emphasis on "a capitalist system" here. Wouldn't it be much more fruitful to study guard labor in the context of communist systems? Guard labor in communist systems is much more prevalent, reaching an immense scale. Think 2% of the East German population belonging to one agency of the secret service (the Stasi), the immense forced reeducation camps in Xinjiang, or the extensive censorship and monitoring that has taken place in all communist countries.

Isn't it kind of a waste of time for scholars who want to study guard labor to focus on capitalism?

chad_strategic11• 5 years ago

A key issue that is not clearly defined in article.

Was the security officer in question, did he/she work for Amazon? Or was he/she a contractor to Amazon? Most security officers are contract

Contractors (security officers) can be hung out to dry (terminated) and Amazon can say the security office was not following the Standard Operating Procedures of the contract.

cogman10• 5 years ago

Which is exactly why they used a security guard, to inject that deniability.

This is how corruption in corporations works. It's all about not putting things down in writing and setting unlawful expectations all while adding layers of obfuscation to avoid personal liability.

Amazon will fire the guard, the guy that hired the guard, the manager of the floor, etc. All the way up to middle management. And they'll do that HAPPILY because the cost of firing that group of people is a lot less than the cost of having a union in their warehouse.

whoknew1122• 5 years ago

While I don't work in an warehouse/fulfillment center, the security guards in my building at AWS are contractors. And the badge visible hanging from the guard's vest doesn't look like any Amazon badge I've personally seen.

It's quite unlikely that the guard was a direct Amazon employee.

blunte• 5 years ago

Can we just be honest and say that Amazon - it's leadership, especially Bezos - is greedy/sociopathic and frankly detrimental to long term human survival (based on the zero-sum approach to success), but that it's so convenient that we privileged people will still buy stuff off Amazon?

As with factory farming, if people could see the conditions which their "food" (living beings) were subjected to, they would make different decisions... we would probably make different buying decisions if we had friends or family who worked in the worst jobs for Amazon.

I used to love bacon...

cwkoss• 5 years ago

With Bezos abdicating CEO, will be interesting to see to what extent lack of his influence will change company culture.

I expect the rot is pervasive throughout the c-level, but hope to be surprised.

cratermoon8• 5 years ago

Anyone paying attention expected and suspected Amazon to play shady games. Good to see the results.

BugsJustFindMe• 5 years ago

If it's unlawful, will Amazon be punished? Doesn't breaking the law usually mean punishment?

Coriolis3• 5 years ago

People get punished. Corporations receive (at most) a small fine that usually amounts to far less than what their crimes netted them.

ggm3• 5 years ago

Because my engagement with unions has only been positive, I am interested in the amazing number of people who seem motivated to say how negatively they feel about unions. I get that in an oppositional sense, if you don't want what a union wants, then they tend to cast into the bad, but for the middle ground who are not VCs, owners, Managers, and are candidates for union membership, I find it really strange how much people cast them into a class of "money grabbers for no benefit"

Do people feel the same about life insurance, car insurance? Its not that you actually intend being harrassed or sacked (fall ill, have a car accident) It's that you don't want to find yourself on the wrong side of an employment dispute (accident claim) without some insurance.

Unions may be taking your hard earned money. They may be doing things which you don't like (do I love my car insurance company?) But, they have a neccessary role in risk management.

We talk about risk management in the ICT sector all the time. Why can't we talk about risk management for labour hire?

Amazon used "dirty tricks" to win this election. I am sure the Union bust some minor rules too, but overall I am reasonably confident that the vote was neither free, nor fair. I also do think there is no latent 100% pro-union vote out there, and that a large number of the polled workers don't want a union, or the cost of the union, or the risk of jobloss from Amazon if they join the union (which is illegal but still has a risk of happening) -So I don't for a minute believe a re-vote will magically reverse the signal with an overwhelming result.

What interests me, is the basis for opposition to the union in the first place. Do people really think the garment workers in New York were backing the wrong horse? Do people think the machineguns which Ford arranged to turn on a union march in Detroit didn't happen?

"oh, that would never happen now..."

nickff• 5 years ago

Well, many people have had issues with unions creating an environment where most employees 'soldier' (work slowly and uncreatively), by protecting the unproductive, and preventing the productive from being rewarded.

Another issue is that unions seem to 'strangle' marginal, unprotected (by tariff) industries; they drive up the employer's costs, which can kill a business if prices can not be adjusted to compensate (because of foreign competition). In cases where domestic companies are protected, the unions tend to try acting as a cartel and raising the whole industry's cost structure (e.g. auto manufacturing 1940-1970).

Lastly, unions have been known to use violence and intimidation, generally in one-on-one situations (against managers and anti-union employees) rather than the large scale that the Pinkertons (and the like) were known for.

ggm3• 5 years ago

"preventing the productive from being rewarded" plays strongly to the Amazon model of competitive warehouse labour. I get what you're saying but this also is a reflection of what piece rate, and "fire the bottom 10%" does to the nature of work.

The strangling of marginal industries: Yes, I also see this. The problem is that around 2 in 3 startups and small enterprises fail, and oftentimes, amongst the losers are unpaid workers. Small companies starting on unrealistic expectations need to balance asking workers to do "more" for "less" and meeting legal minimums. If the employer really only worked off their family labour, and had no basis to hire for pay, then has the union really been the reason for failure, or just the trigger? It could have been the public health board, the bank, or any of the other creditors: If the cost of labour was the sole reason, then there's something to talk about here but it goes to the VC funding, and where money flows in small enterprise.

The last one, Look I get get, I know these things happen. They happen in construction labour, wharfside labour, in the print unions in the UK (News Ltd 1970s)_and coal mining. They don't seem to happen in garment work, in office work, clerical, health, banking, ICT. It's not a charactersistic of unions per se, as of .. a generation of specific unions, in physically intense labour, or protecting a very small circuit of rights.

The wharfies basically lost. Intermodal carriers won. The miners lost. Construction labour unions usually lose in the longer run. Gang infestation of construction unions in Australia has been a huge problem, and mega-union mergers fed this to some extent.

I don't have "rebuttal" to what you say. Except to note, Those are not predominant features of what unionisation "is" worldwide. This isn't the experience of unions in most of Europe, or Asia.

dalbasal• 5 years ago

> the unions tend to try acting as a cartel

At least on this, the calculus may change if the company is a monopoly or cartel.

cycomanic3• 5 years ago

Well, many people have had issues with unions creating an environment where most employees 'soldier' (work slowly and uncreatively), by protecting the unproductive, and preventing the productive from being rewarded.
Another issue is that unions seem to 'strangle' marginal, unprotected (by tariff) industries; they drive up the employer's costs, which can kill a business if prices can not be adjusted to compensate (because of foreign competition). In cases where domestic companies are protected, the unions tend to try acting as a cartel and raising the whole industry's cost structure (e.g. auto manufacturing 1940-1970).

Regarding the question of raising the industries cost structure, isn't this the same as software engineers currently asking for very high salaries? Why should workers not use their bargening power to negotiate higher salaries?

Lastly, unions have been known to use violence and intimidation, generally in one-on-one situations (against managers and anti-union employees) rather than the large scale that the Pinkertons (and the like) were known for.

So what is your take on corporations?

bjourne• 5 years ago

Well, many people have had issues with unions creating an environment where most employees 'soldier' (work slowly and uncreatively), by protecting the unproductive, and preventing the productive from being rewarded.

What union has prevented an employer from raising an employees salary? I find it hard to believe that any union has ever done that.

In cases where domestic companies are protected, the unions tend to try acting as a cartel and raising the whole industry's cost structure (e.g. auto manufacturing 1940-1970).

Germany has much stronger unions than the US. Especially in the automotive industry and German car makers doesn't seem to be doing that badly.

kova122• 5 years ago

Union is fine as long it's voluntary. If I can keep doing my job and choose whether I join one or not, there's no problem as far as I'm concerned. But does that happen? Unions typically move to mandate that everyone has to be their member, typically making bullshit argument that everyone benefits from their presence, so everybody has to be their member.

Anything that's not voluntary is wrong. You don't force your friend to be your friend. You don't force your wife to be your wife. Why would you force people to join your club if they don't want it?

pseudalopex3• 5 years ago

US law says no one can be forced to join a union. Unions are forced to represent non members. Most states force unions to do it for free if a non member chooses. The others force non members to pay for the services the union is forced to provide.

tristor• 5 years ago

My only interaction with unions directly has been when I was an underpaid wage slave in high school, before I got into the professional workforce. The union steward at the store I worked at stole from the company and did drugs /at work/. I was forced to pay union dues even though I firmly rejected membership, as they were taken from my paycheck regardless of my membership and I was harassed by the steward and other union workers for not wanting to join the union. As far as I could tell the only benefit offered was a guaranteed $0.25/hr raise every year I stayed at a company where I was not intending to remain employed any longer than necessary, and the downside was they effectively took $0.17/hr off my wage to cover the union dues.

I'm sure if I'd planned to work at a grocery store until I was 40, the union would have been of great benefit, but since I had an intention to go into tech as soon as possible and leave the small town I grew up in, it wasn't of much benefit to me. Meanwhile, I was exposed to the grift, drug use, theft, corruption, and underhanded tactics that the union members used, sometimes in direct furtherance of stated union objectives. Based on the hearsay of family experiences with unions, this seems commonplace, at least in the US. Unions had mob ties back in the day, and they still exist primarily as racketeering organizations, but on more legal footing.

I don't consider them anything like an insurance company and my relationship to them as an employee would be nothing like my relationship to an insurance company as a customer.

Nothing I am saying here in any way defends Amazon's heinous actions. I believe that employees absolutely have a right to unionize and that unions can also provide necessary and essential functions to protect workers. But they are not perfect, and it's not hard for me to imagine the experiences others have had. You asked why so many people dislike unions... well there's why I dislike unions and would never join one myself.

bsanr• 5 years ago

I'm sure if I'd planned to work at a grocery store until I was 40, the union would have been of great benefit

This is an important point to consider, the malfeasance (which is a feature of poorly-run enterprises of all kinds, and not particular to nor characteristic of all unions) aside. Some people DO intend to continuously work jobs that are menial, but basic and necessary to the functioning of a community. The American economy has changed much in the past 50 years, 100 years, 150 years. Wrt your example, one thing has not: the necessity of human labor in the "last mile" of distributing food to consumers. That is to say, it has been possible for several generations to spend one's entire productive life in a such a role. Note here that we're not talking about protecting inefficient businesses or even specific jobs; we're talking about protecting the people who are happy to fill a necessary role without moving "up or out." We shouldn't have a problem with that in a country where we cut individuals - not their businesses - millions in tax credits. And in regards to change in the business environment as economies and technologies evolve: much as techies are loathe to admit it, successful and healthy change must happen on a human scale, without leaving people behind. Unions help to avoid the socialization of the costs of abrupt change.

komali24• 5 years ago

Based on your argument against unionizing yourself, which is that you won't benefit $0.25 yearly raise, I think you're actually arguing in favor of the insurance comparison. For example, if the only people who paid into national health insurance were the people needed it, and only then when they needed it, the national health insurance would be pointless.

Overton-Window• 5 years ago

Unions reward and protect unproductive employees at the cost of productive and prospective employees. For the employer, this results in subpar capital allocation and fragility to future market forces.

fallingknife2• 5 years ago

I would be skeptical of a union for 3 reasons:

1 - seniority hierarchy

2 - protection of incompetent employees

3 - having more rules to follow and 2 bosses to please

That said, I have never been in a union, but this is the reputation.

cool_dude85• 5 years ago

I work a white collar union job in the US where there is no seniority hierarchy. I assume in most professional type union environments this is the case aside from experience requirements for senior job titles (and, to be fair, these would tend to be more strict than in the nonunion world; if the job spec says 10 years experience, you need 10 years).

To chime in on number 2, again my personal experience is the opposite: incompetence needs to be documented and proven to an arbitrator in the worst case. You can't be "incompetent" because of stack ranking or your boss doesn't like you.

On 3, I can only laugh. Union leadership and my shop steward have no say in my day to day work whatsoever other than as a backstop if management isn't following the contract. Even in this case the expectation is typically do whatever the boss says and grieve it later. Exceptions for safety or serious ethical concerns and that's about it.

7sidedmarble• 5 years ago

Does every single one of these things not already apply to regular business scenarios? Dealing with people who get ahead by playing the people game is already a thing. As is seeing the sometimes incompetent get promoted. As to having a second boss, if you want to look at it like that, then I think you have a very strange concept about what collective bargaining is supposed to achieve, and what the actual dynamic between workers and company owners actually is.

vasco3• 5 years ago

I am interested in the amazing number of people who seem motivated to say how negatively they feel about unions

Unions turn a relationship that I want to be 1-1 into 1-many. I don't want that for myself and won't work where they have them but support the right for others to push for union adoption and don't have many other opinions on them in a general sense. I think people make it more than what it has to be, I just want things to be simple more than I want some fuzzy sense of fairness. If I think I'm treated unfairly I'll just ask them to change it and if they won't I quit, problem solved.

cycomanic3• 5 years ago

I'm interested why you say the relationship with your employer is a 1 to 1 relationship. In the vast majority of cases (i.e. if you don't work for a 2 person company) wouldn't that be a many to 1 relationship?

As a follow up, why do you not want your relationship be a "1 to many" relationship. To pick up the OP original question, why do you have an issue for with your employment being a 1 to many, but not the dealings after a car accident?

s1artibartfast• 5 years ago

I have never worked for a union but recently spoke with a friend who was very upset with with his union because they didn't feel like it represented their interests.

It represents all the workers at his firm, including desk engineers and field technicians. The desk workers wanted to work from home and management was on board but the union killed it. The union leadership wanted all workers to work from home 2 days a week or none at all. Management said that is crazy because the literal job of field workers requires to be in the field.

kej• 5 years ago

To follow on your point, it's interesting how much people take the results of unionization for granted.

Do people not enjoy two day weekends? 8 hour workdays? Workplace safety regulations? Prohibitions on child labor? It wasn't unbridled capitalism that gave us those things, it was organized labor. Union membership strongly correlates with a healthy middle class.

josephh• 5 years ago

Some people want to work for companies that foster competitive environment and reward employees who are motivated to go and/or perform above and beyond what is expected of them. Unions seldom help to create such environment.

raxxorrax• 5 years ago

Unions make only sense for companies like Amazon, even if you think your benefits are good.

What I dislike about those that tried to form in the US was their direction. Unions aren't to make your workplace welcoming or a safe space (only real safety) or about diversity and all that teenage advertising soft crap or rescuing the climate.

It is about plain benefits and compensation and about unifying the interests of workers towards a company that has much more leverage. If unions would focus on that, I think they would be much more successful.

otikik• 5 years ago

Plain old propaganda. Company owners have the loudest voices. Newspapers and TV stations will cater to their owners' needs.

pandaman• 5 years ago

I don't have a mandatory life insurance and my state mandates only liability car insurance, which is much less than my current coverage. Not only that, but I can choose among many different providers. If I don't like something in my insurance policy it takes a phone call to switch to another provider.

If unions had been like insurance then nobody cared what union you joined. The lack of choice, both in joining/staying out and in which union to join, is what makes me anti-union.

refurb• 5 years ago

Clearly this is what tipped the election from a union win to a 70/30 union loss.

TheJoeDonger• 5 years ago

I'm honestly not sure why anyone cares?

specialist2• 5 years ago

Union busters. There are professional union busting services for hire.

I mean, of course their are. But I just can't get over it. It breaks my brain.

Goons, piss bottles, wage theft... What's a little bit of petty larceny?

Amazon Unlawfully Confiscated Union Literature, NLRB Finds

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