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0 pointsbaron8163y ago0 comments

Yes, a big chunk of the labor shortages in hospitality, child care, etc. we’ve seen the last two years is a direct result of Amazon hiring lots and lots of people. And as shitty as the conditions of those jobs may be, they’re often still better than where they’re coming from. Sticking labels to boxes and moving them around a warehouse all day may still be better than dealing with handsy bar hounds or screaming children.

I’m not here to say that Amazon is doing a great job and we should all be singing Jeff Bezos’s good graces. But I will say that unionization does come with a cost that is borne not by Amazon’s executives or their shareholders, but on everyone who could want to work at Amazon but can’t because their jobs are more scarce, and by everyone who buys things from retailers (Amazon or not) in the form of higher prices.

Unionists like to talk about how the labor movement provided a lot of basic protections for workers and the 40 hour work week. What they like to talk less about is American unions’ frequent associations with organized crime, it’s history of racism and sexism, all of the environmental bills it has fought against. I could go on.

A union-free Amazon has driven up wages for workers throughout the economy. And it has helped keep prices low for everyone else so that even if you don’t earn as much as a Amazon warehouse worker nor shop at Amazon, you can still afford many basic necessities. So yes, I’m saying we should be singing the good graces of competition.

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Garlef3y ago

> But I will say that unionization does come with a cost that is borne not by Amazon’s executives or their shareholders, but ...

I like parts of the analysis (if a big player has to pay higher wages, this will affect many in different ways). But I think it's hard to discuss what exactly the implications would be without a deeper analysis including numbers.

Without numbers, I find that participants in a discussion are often tempted to put a high emphasis on a certain argument or on the impact of a mechanism just because they have come up with that argument or mechanism. But actual numbers might imply a different weighting.

An example would be: With longer fingernails you might be able to swim faster. But to what degree?

britch3y ago

wages are one thing, working conditions are another.

It doesn't matter how much you pay me if I can't see my kids and have to pee in a bottle.

chii3y ago

Easy to say on a forum, but the reality is that wages and working condition is related.

Obviously Amazon is giving good enough wages for their working condition as evidenced by people choosing to work there rather than leaving.

xhkkffbf3y ago

While I like the idea of unions, I can say that they've been a disappointment in my career. One of my colleagues desperately needed the protection of the union at work when he got caught up in office politics. Some of his rivals for a big promotion got him accused of something that had nothing to do with work. It was all cancel culture. The union, though, didn't back him up at all. They make a big show about somehow fighting management for the workers, but in this case they were happy to help the management screw the guy over and end his career. Sure they're a union, but they're humans and sometimes they'll be aligned against you.

flatline3y ago

I’m reading this as, he made racist or otherwise hateful statements in a semi-public forum and nobody was going to put their organization’s name behind that. It’s an interesting problem. On the one hand it’s a free country you can say what you please and your employee can fire you for it. On the other hand I think it’s inhumane for someone to lose their job - and most notably healthcare - because they are one of a large number of knob heads out there and were unwise enough to advertise it.

Larrikin3y ago

I think someone who is willing to speak out hatefully against large swathes of the population based on things like sex and race are exactly the kind of people that should be ostracized. In the case of the work environment, getting fired. If they aren't, they stick around, making coworkers uncomfortable, possibly getting promoted and then ensuring the group they hate doesn't get hired or promoted

But HR departments are not usually doing that as a first step. They talk to the employee and try to get an apology if needed. The stories in the news are always egregious examples or people with a long history and it was the last straw

pyuser5833y ago

Without a due process ensured by a union, it’s very hard to know what they did.

Even if someone does something truly horrific, unions still need to protect their rights to a proper hearing, evidence, etc.

A while ago a reporter was fired from the NYTimes for repeating racist language used by a third party.

The reporter had works at the NYTimes for decades with a clear record. A few years before the incident, they became part of unions negotiating team.

Once they joined the negotiating team, the paper suddenly began disciplining then for minor infractions.

Once the allegations about racist language came about, they had a dirty record.

Per the union agreement, had a right to see the evidence against them. The paper refused to do that.

If this person hadn’t been part of union negotiating team, they would have had a clean record, and likely would have survived.

They are now working as a reporter at the Economist.

pyuser5833y ago

> Some of his rivals for a big promotion got him accused of something that had nothing to do with work.

How does that translate into making racist or hateful statements?

A better translation is they were in a forum where racist or hateful statements were made, but did it participate in making them.

kqr3y ago

This is not a problem with unions as a concept, but rather with the huge, centralised, bureaucratic, political entities they have become in practise. That type of organisation has some benefits, but I believe federations of highly local unions would be more effective for helping individual people deal with specific pickles.

TimeBearingDown3y ago

It’s easily possible to argue that the concept or structure of unions, and their relationships to business, as generally implemented, tends towards those corruptions.

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