Some Unions, Legislators, and Communities Continue Pressuring Amazon Over Labor Practices (nytimes.com) 44
Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama might hold a second election to decide whether to join a union. But today the New York Times reports Amazon is also facing "a widening campaign to rein in the power it wields over its employees and their workplace conditions."
Those efforts include a campaign by the Teamsters that would generally circumvent traditional workplace elections and pressure the company through protests, boycotts and even fights against its expansion efforts at the local level. Legislation in California would force Amazon to reveal its productivity quotas, which unions contend are onerous and put workers at risk... The Teamsters argue that holding union votes at individual work sites is typically futile at a company like Amazon, because labor law allows employers to wage aggressive anti-union campaigns, and because high turnover means union supporters often leave the company before they have a chance to vote.
Instead, the Teamsters favor a combination of tactics like strikes, protests and boycotts that pressure the company to come to the bargaining table and negotiate a contract covering wages, benefits and working conditions. While the union hasn't laid out its tactics in detail, it recently organized walkouts involving drivers and dockworkers at a port in Southern California to protest the drivers' treatment there.
They hope to enlist the help of workers at other companies, sympathetic consumers and even local businesses threatened by a giant like Amazon, partly to mitigate the challenges presented by high employee turnover... The union believes that it can pull a variety of political levers to help put the company on the defensive. Mr. Korgan cited a recent vote by the City Council in Fort Wayne, Ind., denying Amazon a tax abatement after a local Teamsters official spoke out against it, and a vote by the City Council in Arvada, Colo., to reject a more than 100,000-square-foot Amazon delivery station. While the Arvada vote centered on traffic concerns, Teamsters played a role in drumming up opposition...
Other labor groups are pressing ahead with less orthodox efforts to increase the power of Amazon workers. Over the first six months of this year, a group called the Solidarity Fund, which raises money from individual tech workers, distributed over $100,000 in grants to workers seeking to organize their colleagues to push for workplace improvements. About half the money, in $2,500 increments, went to workers at Amazon. It funded a laptop to assist with organizing, as well as hiring a freelance graphic designer to help make pamphlets, among the varied efforts.
Instead, the Teamsters favor a combination of tactics like strikes, protests and boycotts that pressure the company to come to the bargaining table and negotiate a contract covering wages, benefits and working conditions. While the union hasn't laid out its tactics in detail, it recently organized walkouts involving drivers and dockworkers at a port in Southern California to protest the drivers' treatment there.
They hope to enlist the help of workers at other companies, sympathetic consumers and even local businesses threatened by a giant like Amazon, partly to mitigate the challenges presented by high employee turnover... The union believes that it can pull a variety of political levers to help put the company on the defensive. Mr. Korgan cited a recent vote by the City Council in Fort Wayne, Ind., denying Amazon a tax abatement after a local Teamsters official spoke out against it, and a vote by the City Council in Arvada, Colo., to reject a more than 100,000-square-foot Amazon delivery station. While the Arvada vote centered on traffic concerns, Teamsters played a role in drumming up opposition...
Other labor groups are pressing ahead with less orthodox efforts to increase the power of Amazon workers. Over the first six months of this year, a group called the Solidarity Fund, which raises money from individual tech workers, distributed over $100,000 in grants to workers seeking to organize their colleagues to push for workplace improvements. About half the money, in $2,500 increments, went to workers at Amazon. It funded a laptop to assist with organizing, as well as hiring a freelance graphic designer to help make pamphlets, among the varied efforts.
5 days (Score:3)
It has been 5 whole days since the last story about Amazon and unions [slashdot.org]. So time for another.
Re:Mafia Tactics (Score:5, Insightful)
Try to shill somewhere else for your corporate masters.
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Yes. And in my opinion, this is a shill.
You may have a different opinion, of course.
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At least that is what I see when I get a small glimpse of what is broadcasted here in Germany, where worker Unions are quite common.
I presume they do something similar on other places. Especially those places like the US, where Unions are widely perceived to be Evil Incarnate instead of the grassroots movements that they are in principle.
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here in Germany, where worker Unions are quite common.
Unions in Germany are nothing like unions in America. In Germany, unions represent the workers and cooperate with companies for mutual benefit. Trade unions in Germany [wikipedia.org]
In America, unions are adversarial, anti-democratic, and often fight against the interests of the workers they claim to represent.
Unions in America have gutted and destroyed sectors of the economy. Those same sectors are thriving in Germany.
the US, where Unions are widely perceived to be Evil Incarnate instead of the grassroots movements that they are in principle.
The Amazon workers in Alabama rejected the union by more than 2 to 1, yet the union is trying to ove
Re:Government to the rescue (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like every conservative grassroots movement is necessary like the KKK, right?
Stop with this collective judgement nonsense.
Everyone deserves to be judged on their own merits. If they form a Union that does illegal things, persecute them for those illegal things they did. If they form a Union that protects their interests while staying within the confines of the law, why the hell not?
The only reason I can think of is the old Divide and Rule, where you must keep people divided, because individually they're weak and easier to control.
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That's the past and hardly affects anyone today any more. Using it as an excuse for what people do to today is bullshit.
You should judge based on actions that can be verified to have an effect. Not based on some kind of vague association.
The KKK still exists today. And today they align more with conservative groups and do vote conservative. But just because they do it, doesn't mean that ot
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In America, unions are adversarial, anti-democratic, and often fight against the interests of the workers they claim to represent
A lot of assertions with no actual evidence adduced.
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A lot of assertions with no actual evidence adduced.
Try reading TFS: "... circumvent traditional workplace elections and pressure the company through protests, boycotts"
The Teamsters are ignoring their rejection by the workers. Protests and boycotts of a company do not help the employees of that company. The Teamsters are hurting the workers they claim to represent.
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That is what you leftists call "a lived experience".
You are a member of a union?
A claim with no actual evidence adduced. (Score:2)
In America, unions... often fight against the interests of the workers they claim to represent
A lot of assertions with no actual evidence adduced.
That is what you leftists call "a lived experience".
You are a member of a union?
God no! I had to deal with the unions.
In that case, your statement that unions "often fight against the interests of the workers they claim to represent" is not a lived experience.
It is a claim with no actual evidence adduced.
Re: "The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:1)
Unions seeking relevance (Score:4, Insightful)
Unions gotta union and with their membership in decline [truthaboutunions.org], they see Amazon, Uber, Lyft et al. as fresh territory to increase their ranks.
If you like to be paid the same as your co-workers and like seniority-based environments with no repercussions for bad co-worker behavior, then join a union; it's your right. Gov't employees who have committed criminal acts and violated the civil service codes always seem to somehow get their fat pensions. Why? because union!
Frankly, if you don't like working for Amazon, then don't work for them. Like with Uber and Lyft, if you don't feel you're being paid enough for what you're doing, seek employment elsewhere. There are lots of companies hiring so what do you have to lose?
If you don't like Amazon then don't buy from them, there are alternatives out there that can be better depending on your need. I always try to shop locally first but I've also found that Amazon's competitors like Target and Walmart have better pricing and better options for delivery on some things; I especially like not having a ton of cardboard to recycle every month vs. everything from Amazon which comes in a box 4 times it's required size with plastic bumper bags.
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For real (Score:2)
Using a site called truth about unions as a source is pretty funny.
Re:Credibility and Sources (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't speak for the truth of that site, or his US specific claims, but at the start of my career I was in a union in the UK, and what he's saying largely mirrors my experience.
I was largely bullied into it when I was young in my first job, a public sector job. I was told thing like if I don't join then if there are ever redundancies I'd be first to go, so I joined.
Then there were times where the union went on strike to get more money, the government offered a 3% rise for the lowest paid, and 2% for the highest paid workers in our sector. I joined the strikes because I believed what the union was telling me, that they'd get us bigger pay rises. The highest paid, even if union members didn't strike, "because they have to be responsible". What happened? The union got 3% across the board, they used us lowest paid plebs to strike to get the highest paid that didn't strike more money.
I had a bad manager, one who told me for no other reason than he liked to bully people that "I would never get a promotion under him", this along with a broader pattern of bullying, I took to the union, and despite having witness statements and ample evidence, the union refused to do anything, because it was too much like hard work. Guess what sort of person puts themselves forward for union duties that they were allowed to do during work time? lazy people looking for excuses not to do their day job, or any job.
Most people who seem to support unions are either those who are benefitting from unions; i.e. taking the power of being a union official to protect them from otherwise unacceptable attitude and behaviour at work, or people who have never been in a union, or needed a union, but like the theoretical idea of this altruistic entity that's there to make their lives better and protect them from the big evil corporations.
And, well, there's the rub. Unions are big evil corporations. They're big evil corporations that use the threat of strikes to further the agendas of those at the top, they don't care about their general membership, and they won't be there for them if they need anything, unless that thing just so happens to align with the goals of those at the top.
So I've been in a union, I've paid my dues, I've gone on strike as part of a union on multiple occasions, and I firmly believe they have no purpose anymore. Most of what they stand for is now enshrined in law - strict health and safety standards, minimum wage, employment rights against unfair dismissal and so forth. Given most of what they were created to achieve is now done, they've just become a tool, just like religion, and corporations, to give those at the top ways to disproportionately effect politics to their whims - not those of their members, but their whims, the individuals at the top of them.
You know what did more for me than any union? Learning that unions won't be there for you the hard way, and realising that if I hate a job, to work hard enough to be a good enough employee regardless that I can just move to a new job. I'm not some kind of right wing libertarian by any measure, on the contrary I'm centre left, I'm a firm believer in things like the UK's NHS, I'm firmly for employer rights, and many of the things unions profess to stand for, but I'm firmly against unions - you only have to look at how people like Len McCluskey in the UK had his competition pushed out when he was challenged, the way he pushes Corbynite policies which the majority of the population don't want and has led to the UK's current complete lack of any meaningful political opposition and so forth to see how terrible unions can actually be. They can literally abuse their weight to subvert an entire country's political process for the worse against the will of their membership all for the will of those dictatorial egos at the top, and it makes me sick that I ever paid for such nonsense, it makes me sad that people keep paying because they're spun this lie that if they're not in the union their jobs will be at risk. In many ways I was fortunate enough
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That's a weak argument. Either union membership is in decline or it's not. You don't win that argument by criticizing where the other person gets their information from. You win the argument by showing that their information is wrong.
But, you can't, because union membership really is in decline:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/0... [cnbc.com]
https://www.natlawreview.com/a... [natlawreview.com]
https://www.nber.org/system/fi... [nber.org]
https://usafacts.org/articles/... [usafacts.org]
https://www.npr.org/sections/m... [npr.org]
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Harder to find alternative work every day (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, if you don't like working for Amazon, then don't work for them. Like with Uber and Lyft, if you don't feel you're being paid enough for what you're doing, seek employment elsewhere. There are lots of companies hiring so what do you have to lose?
Amazon is dominating it's sector. Its even dominating mine. I have resigned to the fact that even though being a software engineer is a nice career, I may HAVE to work for Amazon someday (at least to get a reasonable job). So while it's fun to say, fuck you, if you don't want to be mistreated and exploited go somewhere else, there number of non-Amazon jobs are in decline. 10 years ago, my inbox was flooded with e-mails from recruiters from all sorts of companies I have never heard of. Now it's pretty much always a top 10 tech giant in my area. The problem with your attitude is for many communities, there are few jobs beyond Amazon and the trend worsens every year. It's not out of the question that Amazon employment may be in your future.
You can feel whatever you like about unions, but Amazon mistreating it's employees does matter, even if you don't work for them. If they can get by with it, any other employer can as well. The leaders often set the standards. The more they get by with, the more their competitors will adopt the same practices.
Also, if you know your history, you already know the golden age of middle class economic prosperity (at least for white folks) in the USA was an era with high union membership (the post-WW2 period). It turns out paying employees well is good for everyone. Amazon is a highly profitable company. They mistreat their employers because they can, not because they need to. If the employees were given reasonable working conditions, Amazon could easily maintain current prices and still be highly profitable. Also, remember, every employee injured at Amazon will be a problem for the taxpayer down the road. Every employee that gets a chronic injury because of their lax standards will likely end up on social security and out of the workforce at some point. I don't want to foot the bill for Amazon shareholders. Do you? I'm very much against corporate welfare.
I don't directly benefit from Amazon unionization, but I fully support it. It is very much in my interest to have a thriving middle class. I don't know about you, but I have a useful job. As such, my company needs customers...this current trend of increasing the gap between rich and poor will definitely bite me. We can only sell so many services to millionaires and billionaires. If you have a useful job, you probably are in the same boat. You'll get a lot more benefit from having Amazon profits spread amongst the workforce by paying them better or them hiring more people so they don't have to mistreat their workforce or not creating such a hostile and toxic environment that everyone ends up quitting because their bodies literally can't take the workload...than those profits being sent to the shareholders, who make up a tiny fraction compared to their Amazon workforce. Those profits being sent to billionaires and retirement accounts rarely gets spent as fully as being put into the pockets of Amazon workers...and even if you have a large retirement account and stock portfolio, like I do, you'll see great returns from the economy roaring, like it did in the post-war period.
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Frankly, if you don't like working for minimum wage, then die in prison. Isn't that more the reality behind your words.
Frankly we don't like greedy psychopathic arseholes and want to target and break up those corrupt organisations and have their executives arrested and prosecuted for crimes against humanity for all the deaths attributable to their decisions. Also universal health care and a living wage are good (living wage, afford to buy home, furnish it, eat sleep comfortably, clothing, have some fun ie b
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Outlawing Amazon will not solve the proble
Slay that straw man, king!!! (Score:3)
Outlawing Amazon will not solve the problem. Someone else will move into that space and do the same thing.
Yes, because people are seriously suggesting outlawing Amazon? Union doesn't mean outlaw Amazon. It means workers get more say in how they are treated...or, in most cases, having basic, existing laws enforced correctly. Sorry, working employees so hard they have to piss in bottles while their former CEO, had he not been divorced, would be the world's richest man, isn't in anyone's interest.
Fuck off with the anti-union FUD. No one wants to outlaw Amazon or capitalism or whatever right wing fantasy yo
Health & safety inspections (Score:2)
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What I don't get.... (Score:2)
If people want to go after
Profitability and sustainability are the answer (Score:3)
Amazon offers health bennies to all of its full time employees, and is usually paying more than any of the other warehouse jobs in the area (and often more than the other manual labor jobs in the area). I heard stories when the pandemic was raging worse than it is now, the restaurant workers went to work for Amazon and never went back: Full time benefits, better pay, better working conditions. Retail and Restaurants are realizing they have to compete with amazon on those points. If people want to go after and unionize warehouse work, why not go after Walmart, Target, FedEx or DHL. The reputations for those warehouses and dock conditions are considerably lower. I am not saying "don't unionize", but I am saying there are other targets that could use the pressure from unionization more than Amazon.
Jeff Bezos was very recently the world's richest man. Amazon's stock has been climbing quite steadily for a long time. They make a fuck ton of profit. They could afford to enact sustainable working conditions and still make a fuck ton of profit, but they choose not to. WalMart & Target are not angels, but they haven't grown like Amazon has. I am sure there are similar efforts in those companies to unionize. This is just one effort that got a lot of national attention. They also have grown and shu