Amazon union vote count begins this week for Alabama warehouse
npr.org
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> ...lengthy mandatory "information sessions"...
This practice really should be banned, IMO. The employer is taking advantage of the fact that the employee typically needs the job to survive. Recall the statistic where many Americans would have to borrow to cover an unexpected $400 expense. Do you think someone in that position is going to do anything to jeopardize their job? The employer is literally coercing the employee into attending these "information" sessions by threatening their survival, and it needs to stop. This is not a free association any more than you "choosing" to drive on the correct side of the road, when the alternative is to starve, or miss rent / mortgage.
I don't get it. The employer is paying you for your time. Why does it matter whether it's stacking boxes or sitting in front of a TV?
> This is not a free association any more than you "choosing" to drive on the correct side of the road, when the alternative is to starve, or miss rent / mortgage.
Are they threatening to fire the employees if they form a union?
Edit: Yep, predictable. Y'all want to upvote "fingers crossed for yes," but then downvote for suggesting employers shouldn't be able to propagandize against unions. Let's just make it go away rather than have a discussion, yeah?
Edit in response to your edit: no, but they're literally threatening to fire anyone who doesn't sit and listen to their propaganda. Amazon doesn't give a relative shit if they fire you, but you sure do if you don't have $400 to your name.
Not in an overt way that you could take to the NLRB...they aren't dumb. But the message is often clear enough. For example:
"At a mandatory meeting Thursday for workers, where the warehouse’s leadership pressed its case to vote against the union, the 51-year-old rebutted the company’s suggestions that the RWDSU’s goal was to raise money to pay for union leaders’ cars and meals. One Amazon manager took a picture of his employee badge, a tactic Richardson believed was intended to intimidate him."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/09/amazon-...
Should it be OK if the company shows an anti-LGBTQ video or religious propaganda? There should obviously be limits to what an employer can coerce their employees into watching, and I think the vast majority of employees would agree that they shouldn't have to watch anti-union or other politically-charged propaganda.
Just because I signed a contract that I'm willing to stack boxes for X amount of money doesn't mean they can tell me to clean toilets or manage a team.
Google tells me 3 hours a day, 120 days a year.
It is being argued by the property owner’s that this is a taking. Not even a regulatory taking, just a straight up taking.
Here we go: Cedar Point Nursery v Hassid ( https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/cedar-point-nurs... )
Oral arguments were heard last Monday. Advisory Opinions (a podcast) had a pretty good take on the oral arguments, but SCOTUS hasn’t put out an opinion yet.
That said I have no idea how this case is going to turn out. I’m not sure if they would have been better off arguing it was a regulatory taking because there was some indication they could have narrowly won that. SCOTUS may not issue an opinion, but punt this back down.
Arguing that it was a taking was a bold move. I can see it, but that is a tough argument to make and win on.
Certainly it would be fairer to the union organizers for Amazon to not spend work time on anti-union messages, but there isn’t a legal problem with it. Amazon’s house, Amazon’s choice. The union has to work with the time people are willing to give them outside of the time they sell to Amazon.
This is correct. The employer's ability to de facto force someone to sit and listen to a prescribed message, while the union doesn't have the same ability is precisely why either both sides should have that power, or neither.
> Certainly it would be fairer to the union organizers for Amazon to not spend work time on anti-union messages....
Are you against fairness?
> Amazon’s house, Amazon’s choice. The union has to work with the time people are willing to give them outside of the time they sell to Amazon.
Or are you somehow missing or overlooking the fact that I'm literally proposing a change to what the law is?
I’m against prescribed fairness written into statute.
One of the things my first boss told me at my interview was: if you want to just be a body, you can be a body and there is plenty of work out there for bodies. How well represented you are really depends on how much you step up for yourself. Unionizing is a legitimate option for private sector employees, but they don’t need to expend their employer’s resources to accomplish it.
If you view everyone else around you as just an easily programmed droid, then sure, fairness might matter. I don’t see people that way: they’re free agents and they can make their own choices. Not choosing to unionize is also a legitimate choice, and this vote could go either way.
Your M.O. just seems like it would have you bouncing from job to job forever, until you exhaust the labor market, because, if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that if there's a power imbalance in an economic relationship, it will eventually be exploited for profit. To not exploit it would be economically irrational.
And, to be clear, if the workers did freely choose not to unionize, after being presented with all the information on the same terms by both sides, good on them. That's a decision I respect.
But, back to the actual point, why would you support the employer's right to de facto coerce employees in any way?
I have not sighted these ballots, but it’s a yes/no choice isn’t it? Unionize or don’t unionize: that’s a fair choice. You don’t need equal time to have a legitimate election, time can buy you mindshare but you’re not buying an election overseen by the NLRB.
> Your M.O. just seems like it would have you bouncing from job to job forever
I do just fine.
> But, back to the actual point, why would you support the employer's right to de facto coerce employees in any way?
Because no one in an employer-employee relationship is entitled to that relationship: not the employer, not the employees. If Amazon really can fire everyone and replace them, then the employees made a bad call going ahead with this. If they can’t, then Amazon is stuck with the outcome and they’re going to have a rough few years, maybe they’ll sit there in the C suite trying to figure out how it was this happened and how they could have prevented it.
I also don’t see the government having a compelling interest here, and your proposal is toothless without government enforcement. One of the last things I want is for the government coming down on the side of unions, just as I don’t want them coming down on the side of corporations, therefore it doesn’t have any reason to transfer assets or their use from one private party to another. A union has to be earned on your own time, and your time at your workplace is your employer’s time.
Also there is a potential this could backfire on Amazon too. Think of it this way: if Amazon employees have legitimate complaints, I don’t know one way or the other where they do, but let’s say they do, and rather than seeing their complaints serviced, extra bathroom breaks, better health and safety standards and so on, Amazon corporate decided the best use of their time and resources was a load of anti-union propaganda, then why wouldn’t they unionize? In their position, I would do it just to defy my corporate overlords.
I don’t think these warehouse employees are lacking in either information or choices here. Amazon holds loads of advantages, that doesn’t mean they can’t lose this fight. If unionization fails here, that doesn’t necessarily mean it necessarily would have succeeded without an anti-union drive. How Amazon spends their money, possibly throws away their money, is ultimately their choice and I’m not looking to empower the government to take that away from them.
Yes, it's a binary yes / no. You're correct, you don't need equal time to have a legitimate election, but you do in order to have a fair election. Do you favor giving one side (Amazon) more power than the other to influence the vote?
> Because no one in an employer-employee relationship is entitled to that relationship: not the employer, not the employees.
This is irrelevant. There is a relationship. You want it to be an abusive one? I don't get it.
> I also don’t see the government having a compelling interest here, and your proposal is toothless without government enforcement.
Government has a legitimate interest in serving the people. If it does not do that, there may as well be no government. Notice I said "people," and not "unions." I am not proposing that government come down on the side of unions; rather that government come down on the side of the people, by making the employer / employee relationship as fair as possible in this context. Again, why would you oppose this? What's wrong with restoring fairness to an unbalanced relationship?
I truly don't even understand the point you're trying to make here, other than "Amazon should be able to abuse workers because workers don't deserve jobs." If that's literally your point, I'm afraid we're done here.
Alternatively, they don't have to pay for it. They can choose to just not have the "information" sessions.
So, do you want them to have all the information or not?
Are you in favor of coercing workers to watch anti-union propaganda without giving the union an equivalent opportunity to persuade them?
Here’s the million dollar question:
do we believe that a union is going to make it easier for a delivery driver in Idaho to find a bathroom?
I believe they would put in a grievance process that makes it painful for Amazon to set unrealistic quotas, etc, yes. Separate from whether there's a bathroom in a rural area, if that's what you mean.
In my country the special legal protections for unions are socialism (special worker rights in general are). And so is the claim that workers are being exploited and employers have all the power and so on. That's straight from the socialist propaganda booklets.
I assume Amazon is paying for the time these employees have to spend in the mandatory information sessions? I don't see the problem.
Amazon MUST get the opportunity to present its case even if anti-union is not a popular stance. If the deal offered by Amazon is so bad then what is the harm? We should not be shielding people from information because we don't believe they're smart enough to see through it... that reeks of elitist paternalistic thinking.
But no, Amazon isn't required to pay you for the time you spend talking to your union rep, no.
Why? They're not footing the bill. I'd agree with giving the union the option to do this, if they can compensate amazon equal to the hourly wage that the workers are paid, but I doubt labor unions have enough of a bankroll to make this viable.
Would you be in favor of the union being able to hold a mandatory information session, also under threat of dismissal? Why or why not?
I personally would want to fire anybody who wants to form a union, if I was in the situation. Why should anybody be forced to employ somebody who wants to make trouble in their organization?
Why should the union get compensated time to express their position. If the Union wants to comp Amazon access to their employees and lost productivity then sure maybe, but I don't see that being proposed. It's always Amazon who must "give" something.
Amazon must "give" something because Amazon "has" 99% of the cards.
Edit: I notice you've done this exact same thing in another comment subthread here. Are you deliberately overlooking the fact that I'm proposing a change to "how it works?" That means "that's not how it works, mate" is completely irrelevant.
I am a proponent of work/personal separation, and union efforts are a personal effort up until the point they succeed, if they succeed. That isn’t fair to the union but life is tough in the aluminum siding business.
Edit in response to your edit: we can go back and forth, I’m watching the other subthread too. Feel free to consolidate if you like.
Good enough. I think I'll hop over there and ditch this one if it's all the same. No need to spew things all over the place.
Still, I hope it ends up being a push in the right direction.
But against amazon, how do you fight? They probably are paying 50 people right now to do cost calculations on if it's more profitable to shut down the warehouse and move a few miles down the road, vs. accept the union.... and they have the capital to seriously consider it...
If the government wont do anything to protect workers, unions are basically like class action lawsuits... a terrible option, but the only one remaining (except for the groups that are legally forbidden from unionizing)
Of course for any of this to work, you need strong institutions, and ours in the US are very weak IMO. But that just means we need to keep building, not give up.
And the 400$ story really needs to be analysed some more. I don't think it means most of those people are broke, just that they don't keep that much cash around for immediate use. It might all go into saving accounts or other investments (including mortgage).
I just googled it, apparently the story is 40% of Americans don't have 400$ in cash for an emergency. On the other hand, the median income in the US is 65000$ - that is 50% of all Americans earn more than 65000$. I don't think any of those are in the situation to not be able to come up with 400$. And below the 50% there won't be such a steep fall of income.
However, it is such a nice story, so none of the leftist media seems to want to question it.
Read.
Regardless of it being the employer's "fault" that the employee depends on the job, they are still exploiting the fact that they can literally disrupt that employee's chance at survival.
And just because some person has financial issues, they are not being exploited. It is still not the employers fault if a person is in that situation.
While I sympathize with that problem, the solution in my opinion is not unions, but the creation of more jobs. Then workers who would be fired could simply find another job.
How exactly do you figure exploiting someone's precarious financial position isn't exploitation, anyway?
[1] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/29/technology/amazon-union-v...
also, you are trying to solve a 21st century problem with a 19th century tool. that's not going to work.
Which is entirely irrelevant to the fact that these people depend on their jobs.
> also, you are trying to solve a 21st century problem with a 19th century tool. that's not going to work.
The modern version of the flush toilet was invented over 400 years ago. I'd say it still works in the 21st century, yeah?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet#Pre-modern_flush_...
I used to be mildly in favor of unions, but the use of this kind of loaded language is why I'm starting to oppose them. It just give me the impression that the pro-labor side are a bunch of entitled whiners, even though I logically know that vast majority of the people voting pro-union are perfectly reasonable. At the end of the day, you're being paid to sit in a room. Nothing is stopping you from daydreaming or planning your next dinner.
Would you be in favor of the union having the same power? Why or why not?
> Hey, guys, we're going to have 2 mandatory information sessions, one put on by the company and one put on by the union. They'll be during work hours and you'll get paid your normal rate.
Or
> Hey, we're holding some optional information sessions outside of work. Here's the info. The union is holding their own session, too. Feel free to come to both, or neither. It won't affect your job at all.
Would you be in favor of either one of these?
100% unskilled labor can't successfully unionize anymore. In the old days they had the mob and strategic use of violence to force the Union into a position of power but that is no longer possible.
Is Amazon pulling out of the European market? Are the unions so onerous that it's unprofitable to do business there? Have there been massive waves of layoffs and replacing union workers in Europe with robots?
Yes, automation is coming, and yes society as a whole has to reckon with what it means to have an automated society with a drastically different labor market. But the fact that Amazon is energetically growing and pursuing business in Europe, proves what a strawman this whole idea is, that unions are somehow inherently ridiculous or could never possibly work.
Guess what, they're working, in production today, and have been for decades. The fact that entrenched powers don't want it to work in the US, doesn't mean it can't work.
Point being if you're going to make an aggressive claim of that type you'll have to back it up with evidence.
If you don’t Amazon treats you as expendable, if you do, you will only accelerate automation further resulting in fewer unskilled jobs.
It's a rather pathetic threat to make. Either it happens or it doesnt - unionization won't make automation technology intrinsically better.
Shouldn't it be the other way around? Businesses have to invest more in productivity to maintain their profitability, thereby increasing the capital's share of profits because they need to pay for the capital?
You are not making any sense. If it's all so great in AI robotics land, it would be here already.
To be fair, that could backfire as well. There seems to be some anti-big-tech sentiment floating around in the US Congress right now.
IMO, part of the reason why unions are so controversial is that, once formed, they're hard to dismantle when run poorly. Fixing union problems requires that employees engage in a form of politics that no one should be forced to do just to have a good blue-collar job.
The advantages of unionized labor should be so good that enough employees will opt-in to keep the union powerful.
> employees engage in a form of politics that no one should be forced to do just to have a good blue-collar job.
I agree that nobody should have to do politics to have a good blue-collar job. Unions arise out of the necessity to play politics with management in order to keep such jobs in existence.
That statement is illogical. It reeks of treating labor as a captive market to prop up an organization that no longer provides value.
That's why the union has to be voluntary. Either it provides value and employees continue to participate, or fades away like a bad restaurant.
Why shouldn't businesses be able to freely & voluntarily enter into any contract they want to? If the contract with the union stipulates that they will only hire union workers, workers are free to voluntarily pick a different job where the employer has freely not entered into such a contract. No captive markets here, unless an employer has a captive labor market over its employees.
> workers are free to voluntarily pick a different job where the employer
Then there's no point for a union. (Remember, unions aren't for employees who can negotiate directly with their employer, or who generally benefit from an open labor market.)
> an employer has a captive labor market over its employees
And that's where unions are critical. But, getting back to my original point, it creates a "who's watching the watchers" situation.
You don't have to look far to learn about the corruption in the Detroit UAW. The kickbacks made the national news. But, more importantly, after such a scandal do we really believe that the Detroit UAW was looking out for their members' best interests?
That's why I firmly believe those kinds of unions need to be optional. Ultimately, employees in a captive labor market need to be able to effortlessly walk away from their union. It needs to be as simple as canceling a newspaper. Otherwise, it becomes very hard to have a "check and balance" if the union becomes corrupt.
I guess money corrupts.
There are many things employers do that employees dislike. Not all all of them are abuse. A union will attempt to remove the dislikes, abusive or not. The removal of non-abusive dislikes will limit the employer's competitiveness. In the absence of genuine abuses, say after an effective union is instated and when all abuses have been removed, a non-union shop is therefore at a competitive advantage in the market place over a union shop. The union overhead becomes purely frictional and it never goes away.
Or you think they are trying to create/join an union because they are just mad at Amazon?
Unions have innate interests in having more union members.
https://www.eballot.com/blog/the-union-organizing-process-ex...
> Volkswagen did not oppose the U.A.W. partly because its officials were eager to create a German-style works council, a committee of managers and blue-collar and white-collar workers who develop factory policies, on issues like work schedules and vacations. Volkswagen, which has unions and works councils at virtually all of its 105 other plants worldwide, views such councils as crucial for improving morale and cooperation and increasing productivity.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/business/volkswagen-worke...
The campaign against unionization was largely driven by local politicians spreading F.U.D., which was relatively easy given widespread anti-union sentiments in the South and general union skepticism among the general U.S. population.
That doesn't diminish much if a few thousand of them unionise.
It depends and is too early to tell. Specifically, it depends on whether this is a random ad hoc labor curfuffle (sp?) or a catalyst for increasing union sympathy and adoption.
It's definitely not that, this is a big push from the national unions trying to try out new models.
https://www.wired.com/story/boston-dynamics-new-robot-has-a-...
On the other hand: The growth trajectory for AMZ (ie. being the sole "shop" in, say, 20 yrs) will make the accumulated expenses for GM-UAW-style shenanigans look like peanuts.
And there are plenty of airlines that were acquired or folded, but I don't think laying that at the union door makes sense.