Amazon To Face US Union Push In Year Ahead (reuters.com) 99
In 2021, Amazon.com is poised to face a renewed challenge from groups it has long countered: unions. Reuters reports: Energized by protests at Amazon's U.S. warehouses and a more labor-friendly administration assuming office, unions are campaigning at the world's largest online retailer to see if its warehouse or grocery workers would like to join their ranks. A major test is expected early next year when workers at one warehouse decide whether to unionize. The company has not faced a union election in the United States since 2014, and a "yes" vote would be the first ever for a U.S. Amazon facility.
The upcoming vote is for associates in Amazon's fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama; they will weigh whether to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The organizing committee has launched a social media campaign, shared union authorization cards and collected enough to hold the election. This week and last, the RWDSU and Amazon negotiated the election terms. By Tuesday they agreed to have seasonal workers in the bargaining unit, as well as process assistants, whose inclusion the union had questioned for their supervisory authority, according to the election hearings presided by a government labor board. That board will set the election date. The larger the bargaining unit's size - now expected to be over 5,700 - the more votes the union needs to win.
In a statement, Amazon said, "We don't believe this group represents the majority of our employees' views. Our employees choose to work at Amazon because we offer some of the best jobs available everywhere we hire." Average pay at the Bessemer facility is $15.30 per hour, and jobs come with health and retirement benefits, it said. Precedent shows the RWDSU faces an uphill battle. Union membership has fallen to 10% of the eligible workforce in 2019 from 20% in 1983, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January.
The upcoming vote is for associates in Amazon's fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama; they will weigh whether to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The organizing committee has launched a social media campaign, shared union authorization cards and collected enough to hold the election. This week and last, the RWDSU and Amazon negotiated the election terms. By Tuesday they agreed to have seasonal workers in the bargaining unit, as well as process assistants, whose inclusion the union had questioned for their supervisory authority, according to the election hearings presided by a government labor board. That board will set the election date. The larger the bargaining unit's size - now expected to be over 5,700 - the more votes the union needs to win.
In a statement, Amazon said, "We don't believe this group represents the majority of our employees' views. Our employees choose to work at Amazon because we offer some of the best jobs available everywhere we hire." Average pay at the Bessemer facility is $15.30 per hour, and jobs come with health and retirement benefits, it said. Precedent shows the RWDSU faces an uphill battle. Union membership has fallen to 10% of the eligible workforce in 2019 from 20% in 1983, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January.
The current admin is pro labor. (Score:1)
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The net result of the next administration will be to bring in more visa workers. Amazon will bulk replace the local workers with foreigners.
tough medicine. But in metropolitan areas moreso
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The net result of the next administration will be to bring in more visa workers. Amazon will bulk replace the local workers with foreigners.
Not for nothing, but take a look at who the UA, IBEW, ILWU, USW, SIEU, IW and other strong unions endorsed for president. Hardly seems in their interests to support a president which will bulk replace local workers with "foreigners".
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Hardly seems in their interests to support a president which will bulk replace local workers with "foreigners".
Are we pretending these unions haven't been supporting the candidates and leaders behind worker replacement policies since forever? Because they have.
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Are we pretending these unions haven't been supporting the candidates and leaders behind worker replacement policies since forever? Because they have.
There is no major party which is strongly pro-union, so the unions have simply supported the more pro-union party. The battle front for unions is primarily about money. Democrats don't do much of anything for unions because of how anti-union the opposition party is. The Republicans continue with their attacks to weaken a strong funding source for Democratic politicians.
All Democrats have to do is defend unions enough to keep them from being decimated. The unions have no where else to turn, and know they wou
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the unions have simply supported the less anti-union party.
FTFY
Re: The current admin is pro labor. (Score:2)
I don't think that is very accurate. I'm not aware of Democrat policies which intentionally hurt unions. Democrats simply don't protect unions much. I guess you could call that anti-union, but I personally wouldn't.
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They've been doing it for years under the supposition that they'll receive government protection from bloated supplies of cheap labor.
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Same reason why foreign workers come to the US to work in construction, ag, hospitality, etc. If you would pay attention to HOW they mitigate the high costs of living in the United States, you'll learn something.
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Not all of them go home, and many of them "put up with bad conditions" yearly. Landlords knowingly rent out houses that are often in a poor state of repair and house far more people per square foot than is allowed by fire code at low prices. If you pay attention, you will see the neighborhoods/barrios that house immigrant laborers on a semi-permanent basis, and you will notice how they move around sometimes based on immigration enforcement actions (we had a large Latino neighborhood shrink rapidly when tw
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I have seen people work incredibly hard to earn a meager existence. Without the resources that are found in the USA. So these foreigners would not choke on a job at Amazon. While they may not have great pay, they will have greater resources -- schools for their children, better (and free) medical care, a hope for better employment, etc. Plus, they will have access to USA resources -- TV, media, public transportation, and Free Time.
If one see t
Re: The current admin is pro labor. (Score:2)
Walk me through the numbers - how will these workers come in? H1B visas? Minimum pay for those workers is $60K/yr, 4x what warehouse workers make now at Amazon, ignoring the 'can't find local workers' requirement fir millions of workers?
As seasonal workers, using the same visas places like Disney land and other resorts use to hire foreign workers on a temporary basis? The paperwork overhead seems immense.
Remember, once a workforce is unionized, you can't just 'bulk replace' Union labor with foreign workers
Both administrations are anti-labor (Score:2)
Biden is Mr. Nafta. Niether more visa workers or foreign Amazon workers are "pro-labor". Your argument is invalid times three.
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No, they're being replaced by robots, and they're very up-front about that. They tell Fulfillment Center workers that warehouse work is a dead end from the beginning, and one of the benefits that they offer is free training at the FC for a better career and placement assistance at the end of the training. Nursing is one of the more popular selections, but I've worked with people who were brought on as blue badges after working in the FC so they're not hesitant about keeping the most ambitious and hardwork
Administration (Score:5, Insightful)
Energized by protests at Amazon's U.S. warehouses and a more labor-friendly administration assuming office, unions are campaigning at the world's largest online retailer to see if its warehouse or grocery workers would like to join their ranks.
What on earth does the "administration" have to do with whether or not the workers would vote to join a union or not? Shouldn't that be up to the workers? Or, does the administration have some bearing on the vote if the workers vote "wrong?"
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Or, does the administration have some bearing on the vote if the workers vote "wrong?"
The reality is that the Federal government, no matter who is sitting in office, will have little to do with updating labor laws to make anything of any meaning in the year 2021 any different than what it was in 2020 in terms of these people at Amazon voting or not voting. The person writing the article is just stating some out of their arse idealism BS that have little to any bearing on reality. Labor laws change so slowly and face so many uphill battles, thinking that somehow they'll change come the 21st
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The laws won't change, but the people on the NLRB will.
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Amazing, though. how the government can sign off on telecom immunity that's unpopular across the entire political spectrum at the drop of a hat, though.
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>"What on earth does the "administration" have to do with whether or not the workers would vote to join a union or not? "
I was going to post that EXACT question. The answer- it doesn't. it is just another attempt to make it political, as usual.
And on that topic, Alabama is a right-to-work state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Nothing prevents unions from forming, or people from joining/supporting unions if they want. Unlike no-right-to-work states, where unions can essentially take over a company
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You mean where workers can enjoy the benefits won by a union without paying any dues? Why don't you walk into your local chamber of commerce and demand all the benefits of membership without paying for it.
There's a ton of laws on the books (Score:2)
Joe Biden is pretty famously pro-Union. Trump and his party much less so. It doesn't matter
In several ways (Score:5, Insightful)
The actual vote is run by the federal government to ensure an unbiased result. An administration hostile to unions and democracy can make it difficult by not properly enforcing laws regarding employer intimidation and interference with the vote. Note that there is rarely a symmetric fear, because trillion dollar companies (unlike comparatively poor warehouse workers) can use the courts to ensure rules are followed.
There are protection laws about retaliation against organizers or petitioners - each violation may or may not be enforced at the administrations discretion. It it believed that the Biden administration will be more aggressive in protecting organizers, so more people will be willing to be the first few to advocate for unionization.
An anti-union administration that wanted to could rule individual strikes illegal (there are laws about striking), forcing workers to have to sue to get their protections to use their unions. There are rules, but, as with all laws, there is discretion.
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The actual vote is run by the federal government to ensure an unbiased result. An administration hostile to unions and democracy can make it difficult by not properly enforcing laws regarding employer intimidation and interference with the vote.
And yet, when a union was pushing to enter a workforce I was in, they were the ones pulling out the interference and intimidation tactics. Harassing people at their homes. They sued the company for interference because the company was advertising to employees the voting date. Unions can be just as bad as companies when it comes to union drives.
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Did you get the raise you were hoping for after all that groveling, salad tossing and class betrayal that you were hoping for?
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Nope, but see, I liked being able to go in and talk to my managers if there was an issue. My job already had a pay scale based on seniority(aren't many jobs were people without college degrees could be making 75K a year without overtime while being able to go home to their families every night). And, even though it was a job in an inherently dangerous environment, there was already a strong safety culture and accidents were rare. Oh, and work hours were already adhered to with no pay or forced overtime i
Re: In several ways (Score:2)
If Amazon is such a great place to work at ... (Score:2)
then Amazon has nothing to fear from unions. So: why does management at Amazon oppose them ?
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Re:If Amazon is such a great place to work at ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon treats most of their employees like disposable robots. They badly need a union.
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The warehouse/fulfilment workers are nothing more than Carne Por la Machina. Best of luck to them.
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Disposable, yes. Robots no. Amazon wishes they were all robots. They have had some success in using automation to reduce the number of people required to operate distribution and fulfillment centers.
Maintaining a workforce of robots is something that any of these existing manual laborers would be able to accomplish given proper training. And they would likely even earn more, in the early days.
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The skills needed to pack a box and the skills needed to repair or program a robot are not at all the same.
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The skills needed to pack a box and the skills needed to repair or program a robot are not at all the same.
You are forgetting the fact that they COULD fill these positions.
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You are forgetting the fact that they COULD fill these positions.
People with the ability to service, repair, and program robots are not going to be working as box packers in the first place.
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Where do you think Amazon gets the guys who develop and maintain their robots now? Harvard? Stanford? MIT? No, they come out of the FCs and train to do a better and more interesting job (at company expense for the most part.) Willow Labs and Boston Robotics have amply demonstrated that they have no clue what is necessary to place robots in a warehouse setting, but the actual people who have done that job certainly do.
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Perhaps some of them. But the point is that Amazon would only need a fraction of the number of people to maintain the robots as they would need to handle a particular volume of actual picking and packing. Otherwise what would be the point? Any by maintain, I doubt we are talking about programming, or performing electrical or mechanical repairs. Some people would be needed for that, sure. But for these folks I believe we are talking about replacing worn rubber wheels or rubber grip pads, greasing joints and axles, etc.
exactly
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And Amazon trains FC workers to do exactly that. Some of the lead developers in their robotics division started in the Fulfillment Centers.
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And Amazon trains FC workers to do exactly that. Some of the lead developers in their robotics division started in the Fulfillment Centers.
Yeah my sister-in-law works in a fulfillment center, and she reports having been promoted several times so far.
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In countries that aren't capitalist shitholes, that means shorter work weeks with a pay raise, not fewer jobs.
https://www.irishtimes.com/bus... [irishtimes.com].
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Management opposes this because it will raise prices on everything and make them less competitive. Unions will make continuous demands until a business becomes unprofitable. The unions will go beyond what workers want. It will be whatever the union leader(s) will try to milk out of management prior to a strike.
Gonna be super rough if I have to pay 14 more cents for my next 85 inch tv. Imma be super bummed out if that happens
all prices are set to maximize revenue (Score:3, Insightful)
So your talking point is false corporatist bootlicking. If companies could raise prices without driving away too many customers - they would just fucking do it, you class traitor tool. They wouldn't wait for a union or an increase in the minimum wage to do so.
Re: all prices are set to maximize revenue (Score:1, Troll)
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You've apparently never worked in non-union shops then. Dangerous working conditions, unpaid overtime, sexual and other harassment by supervisors, arbitrary firings. At the iron foundry my dad worked in guys regularly lost fingers and eyes because the company wouldn't cough up for safety equipment and didn't pay enough for the guys to buy their own, and one guy died in a bath of molten iron, until he helped bring the union in.
Re: all prices are set to maximize revenue (Score:1)
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Yep, there are, and the ONE AND ONLY reason that OSHA exists is because of the unions. Prior to the unionization of the railroads brakemen regularly lost limbs and were summarily fired because they could no longer do their jobs, it was only after unionization that the railroads coughed up to install George Westinghouse's air brakes. Ford had positions on its assembly line that would leave a worker permanently disabled with repetitive motion injuries after a year, but it was cheaper to replace the workers
Re:If Amazon is such a great place to work at ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every company has a lot to fear from unions. Unions create a monopoly on the supply of labour, and like all monopolies they eventually abuse their power. They demand more and more from the company until it is no longer competitive and sinks. This is why unionisation rates have been declining. Workers aren't disbanding their unions, the unions are killing their host companies. Most of the unions that have endured have done so because they can't kill their host. Such as government unions or businesses that are too big to fail like the big automotive companies.
If unions gain a foothold at Amazon is a question of when not if they will drive it into the ground. And Amazon will likely try to spin off or isolate under a holding corporation that part of the company to limit the damage.
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Every company has a lot to fear from unions. Unions create a monopoly on the supply of labour.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Amazon is trying hard to become a monopoly supplier of all sorts of things, which will pretty much include jobs in some sectors.
If unions gain a foothold at Amazon is a question of when not if they will drive it into the ground.
You are bizarrely fearful of unions. Reality doesn't match your level of panic.,
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What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Amazon is trying hard to become a monopoly supplier of all sorts of things, which will pretty much include jobs in some sectors.
Most definitely not. The solution to a monopoly is to break it up, not create more monopolies. All that does is create a balance of terror, and a bigger boom when the whole thing goes bust.
You are bizarrely fearful of unions. Reality doesn't match your level of panic.
You say bizarre, I say it's perfectly inline with how the business world actually views unions. Just look at the huge efforts companies like Amazon and Walmart have gone to to keep the unions out. They don't go to such great lengths for the hell of it, they do it because the know what the consequences are.
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Most definitely not.
Most definitely so!
The solution to a monopoly is to break it up, not create more monopolies.
Let me know when that happens. In the mean time, the only remaining solution is unions.
You say bizarre, I say it's perfectly inline with how the business world actually views unions.
By "the business world", you mean "senior management of large, American corporations". Every single one of those workers looking to form a union is part of the business world.
Just look at the huge efforts companies li
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Remind me why I'm meant to sypmathise with that?
You're not supposed to sympathize with that. Your supposed to look back at the last half century of declining unionization rates and realize that your socialist fantasies will never come true. Communism doesn't work, socialism doesn't work, and unions don't work. You need to come up with a new plan, repeating the failures of last century won't help anyone.
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Unionization rates have been declining because idiots believe unfounded propaganda.
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But of course, it couldn't possibly be because it's yet another bungled attempt at government regulation. Must be all those stupid people voting against their own best interests. The masses are so fortunate to have revolutionary vanguards like you around to keep up the good fight on their behalf.
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Must be all those stupid people voting against their own best interests.
You mean like in the last 10 presidential elections? Yeah. People believe propaganda far too much, that's why Madison Avenue is a multi-billion dollar industry.
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Likely they're worried about the Board of Directors. Stupidly rich people live in terror of commoners being organized enough to take back some of what they've stolen over the past half century and returning us to the 1950s where they actually had to pay their share of the costs of society.
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Before we get too excited about unions, I'd just like to point out that union members voted for Trump.
Yeah how did that work out for them?
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Before we get too excited about unions, I'd just like to point out that union members voted for Trump.
Yeah how did that work out for them?
Well, technically the Lordstown plant did reopen. And I'm sure those coal jobs are coming back any day.
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No better than voting for Democrats, the party of NAFTA, H1B, and the TPP.
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No better than voting for Democrats, the party of NAFTA, H1B, and the TPP.
Hahaha, read a book. The North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act passed on Nov 17th 1993 with 132 Republican votes and 102 Democrat votes in the House and 34 Republican votes and 27 Democrat votes in the Senate. But since there was a Democrat president at the time, I wouldn't call it a Republican bill either. Pretty solidly bi-partisan.
The H1 program was originally vetoed by a Democratic president, but that was back in 1952 when the parties were very different than today. There has been effor
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You first. Reagan and Bush tried to pass this treaty and failed for years. It was Clinton who got it done, along with a bunch of other right wing policies they could have only dreamt of like ending welfare. So, yeah, the democrats own NAFTA, and to pretend otherwise is as silly as giving Bush a pass on the invasion of Iraq because Clinton had a formal policy goal of "regime change" for the country.
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Pretty well, actually! Stagnant wages for the lower sectors of the economy actually started going up. It wasn't in keeping with CEO pay, and it didn't make up for the devastating effects of inflation in the 1970s, but it was an improvement. Too bad it took a loudmouthed idiot like Trump to make it happen.
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Before we get too excited about unions, I'd just like to point out that union members voted for Trump.
Yeah how did that work out for them?
Pretty well until the pandemic, with the Trump recovery.
It's not like anybody else really cared about anything except their dues and their votes.
GrumpyCatGood.jpg (Score:2)
Any power that has no opposition is dangerous, and the power of big business in the US is so great that citizen interest groups have virtually no impact over public policy ( https://www.cambridge.org/core... [cambridge.org] ), a disconnect between the people and their government that doesn't bode well for a democratic country. Yeah, yeah, even a democracy named "constitutional republic".
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Why on earth would the form of the democracy change what it is? The US is a democratic republic, because a direct democracy never would and will not in the future work.
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You're free to show evidence that would be worse than what we have: a government set up by elitist pricks, for elitist pricks.
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Sure, look at California and its voter amendments/referendums.
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Sure, they've had some doozies - prop 13, prop 9, prop 23. But how are they in the same universe as the Iraq War, TARP, over a trillion each year on a military empire, or where our entire political establishment is fighting Medicare for All right now in a deadly pandemic where millions have lost their jobs....
Here's the problem with unions (Score:1)
Re:Here's the problem with unions (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like working for amazon is ultra-specialized work.
Which is exactly why they ought to be Unionized. That's the only way that the workers will ever be able to assert their rights and needs. Otherwise the employer can just fire them, and replace them with a more desperate sucker.
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Otherwise the employer can just fire them, and replace them with a more desperate sucker.
This only works if there is a surplus of labor. In the pre-Covid economy, that was not true. Companies struggled to find enough workers.
Labor is a market governed by supply and demand. Companies can't just dictate wages because employees can go work elsewhere, become self-employed, or even drop out of the labor pool.
Re:Here's the problem with unions (Score:5, Insightful)
There's always a surplus of labour for low level jobs, especially on a global scale.
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There's always a surplus of labour for low level jobs, especially on a global scale.
A warehouse in Alabama doesn't hire on a global scale.
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This is a false dichotomy. I'm on the side of fair companies and fair unions. If either party is unfair, the other party can still play fair, and seek recourse in the courts.
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Well golly, that's a nice false dilemma. Clearly, the reason Amazon is a 1.6 trillion dollar company is a dollar an hour to a million employees. Why, that would be almost 0.5% of the profit last year.
It's entirely possible to demand more money and still not bankrupt a company! Why, it's like how if you are a car manufacturer and you charge a dollar a house you go broke because everyone buys your cars and you make lose money on each one, but if you charge 500 billion than no one bu
Will close (Score:2)
Just like Walmart, Amazon will simply close this warehouse for "other reasons" and lay off everyone there.
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Not bloody likely. You apparently have no clue what it costs to build, equip and outfit a million square foot mostly-automated fulfillment center. Just the security system (which I've worked on) will have over 100 cameras @ $500-$800 each, 4-6 servers for recording them and almost that many switches, 100-200 card readers @ $500-$600 each, a dozen intelligent system controllers @ $1400 each, 100-200 other alarm points of various types @ $25-$200 each, several miles of various types of cable to support all
oh, great (Score:1)
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Don't forget our wonderful public schooling and policing.
Bezo and employees SHOULD back union (Score:4, Interesting)
One of the big differences between American unions and EUropean unions, is the the Europeans know how to work with businesses to keep things alive and well.
Here, many unions are corrupt as hell and do not care about the company.
Unions exist for Unions. (Score:1, Insightful)
Unions were much needed in the first half of the last century when workers had essentially no protections. Now that we have a litany of laws to protect workers, they exist only to maintain their own existence. A union will never be satisfied with what it negotiates, so it will continue to invent reasons to remain relevant. They will always demand more and more of the company to justify their union dues to employees. Any organization that values seniority over results will always have lower productivity and
Do Amazon warehouse workers get shares? (Score:2)
If so, then surely that wouldn't continue for unionized employees, since it would be a conflict of interest. You would, to a degree, be bargaining with yourself.
I'm pretty sure that's how Tesla holds off unionization; by stating the obvious, that you could then collective-bargain, but you could no longer receive shares/options.
unions are legitimize organized crime (Score:2)
Unions are legitimized monopoly on work force. It removes organic to free-market freedom of economic transactions of labor both for employer and employee.
Unions must die.
Unions do not exist in healthy industries like software development, where there is a healthy balance between supply and demand for highly educated, highly trained, highly specialized work force.
We see unions in old industries.
It's a shame that dockers have large salaries than software developers. Not because software developers deserve mor