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Comment by giarc | Hacker News Reader

Is this a serious question or a Concern Troll? All of the data shows unionized working conditions and benefits are far better than the alternative in our neoliberal hellscape.

Please don’t accuse people of being trolls, it goes against the HN Guidelines:

>” Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken.”

HN desperately needs personal block lists.

[EDIT] OK, some explanation is in order: because it's very bad at curbing posters who are either trolling or just very bad posters but it's not clear which (which is, precisely, what a classic troll is, when this is achieved on purpose), and its anti-poster-recognition design makes that even worse. Just let me block the ones who I find consistently posting what are either super-ignorant takes or are trolling, because it doesn't really matter to me which is the truth.

A friend made a trivial extension like this https://www.overmod.org/

No promises that it still works since he abandoned it to go work on other things.

I wrote some of the code so I could probably port it if it's broken.

Not a troll, a serious question. As I understand, the starting wage for Amazon workers is $18/hr, way higher than minimum wage in the US. They also offer education credits and healthcare from day 1 (if I understand correctly). Could Amazon not roll back a bunch of these perks prior to unionization, therefore making working conditions worse? The physical demands will still be there, although the union could push for better training or sick time.

Nothing is preventing them from rolling them back now. A union would make it MORE DIFFICULT to roll back any benefits.

The bigger the union the more power they have to collectively bargain

It makes sense for as much factories as possible to join before the first contract is signed

What would hurt Amazon worse: 0.001% of their workforce on strike, or 10%

turnover at Amazon is so high that nobody* will still be there in 12 months, unionising is zero risk: either the job becomes tolerable or it remains intolerable and they quit as they would have anyway

* ok a few

It seems pretty unlikely that things would get worse! The potential upside (higher wages, better hours, bathroom breaks) is significant and people are struggling to survive. So waiting a year seems overly cautious to me.

it is possible, if wages dont increase to cover the dues theyll end up making less. whether this is good or bad for them will end up dependong on whether the union is focused on the success of the employees, whoch depends on the wuccess of the company or if yheyre just thete to fill their own coffers.

This is just something you’ve made up. There’s literally no reason to think wages won’t go up, nor that they will somehow make less than they do today. Why do you think this? What source are you looking at? I cannot fathom how you would come to these conclusions without you mostly ignoring evidence (I’d be happy to be wrong).

It's weird that you're getting so much pushback against the highly reasonable idea of waiting a bit to see how things shake out. This feels like a high school boyfriend trying to push you into doing more than you're comfortable doing.

It's fun for us to look down from our ivory towers and be pleased that unions are cruising along but it's less fun when you're in a factory that gets shut down because Amazon doesn't want to deal with unions. That's to say nothing of the myriad of other problems pro-union advocates like to pretend don't exist.

On average, unionized workplaces are much safer with higher-paid and happier workers. It is also illegal to close down a facility to prevent or in response to workers forming a union. Workers in labor unions have reported being happier than non-union counterparts for years now.

I occasionally get insight into what unions are and are not doing for some of my friends and their co-workers. A strong union seems to be great. For-sure various abusive or simply needlessly-shitty practices in their workplaces would carry on without the workers knowing the union has their back when they challenge them, to pick just one thing.

Weak unions seem to be pretty bad, but that's mostly because they don't/can't do anything. The active unions seem awesome.

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