This was similar to the Boeing situation in Charleston, SC.

Boeing came in and brought great jobs with them. Then the union reps came in and started acting like everybody was being wronged somehow.

Why can't it be both ?

Once the workers organize as a union, the company is forced to treat everything as a negotiation with the union instead of the employees. The union views their job as to always ask for more and push back on the employer, so the employer is incentivized to hold back raises, benefits, and concessions until it's time for negotiations. Giving away all of your bargaining chips before negotiations start is not a good strategy.

When you see headlines about unions negotiating certain benefits or raises from employers, it's often framed as a victory that wouldn't have happened without the union. The reality is more nuanced, as the union's existence forces the company to play hardball during negotiations so they have something to negotiate when it comes time to do the negotiations.

> the employer is incentivized to hold back raises, benefits, and concessions until it's time for negotiations

The employer is incentivized to hold these back in any case, absent some countervailing pressure (e.g. retention against competing offers, if they exist, etc.). This is why the largest raises (in tech, at least) typically come when jumping companies.

> The employer is incentivized to hold these back in any case, absent some countervailing pressure

The countervailing pressure is that non-unionized employees are more likely to leave.

Most unions in the US place a high value on seniority. The more seniority you have, the more benefits you get from a union. Good for people who have been there for 10 years, bad for new employees looking to get jobs. This makes unionized employees less incentivized to leave and more incentivized to stay and strike. Leaving (even if for higher pay) would sacrifice that union seniority that many members value.

It's a very different negotiating dynamic.

The problem with Boeing is that there are not many aerospace employers to got to. An aerospace engineer can probably only work for 2 or 3 aerospace companies in their career. Not to mention they may have to completely uproot their life on each change of employer.

this isn't really true. To change companies you might need to move cities, but there are a ton of different companies that require aerospace engineers:

SpaceX Blue Origin Space Systems Loral JPL Boeing Embraer Airbus Cessna Northrup Grumman Lockheed Martin General Electric Raytheon Boom Rolls Royce, Honeywell Eurocopter Bombardier

not to mention the adjacent fields of Green tech (wind turbines) Drones/UAVs

There are a lot of options out there

And all the vendors and suppliers that supply to these companies. The number of suppliers very well would exceed into thousands of small and midsized companies scattered around US.

> Once the workers organize as a union, the company is forced to treat everything as a negotiation with the union instead of the employees

That’s literally the point of unions. To turn the employees into a monolithic block for the purposes of negotiation.

Because crying victimhood over every perceived slight becomes the boy who cried wolf - sooner or later everyone realizes that the only way a union can justify itself is by creating problems where none existed. Otherwise, why waste money on union dues for something that isn't needed?

It CAN be both... but generally it isn't.

I have no knowledge of Boeing's internal state, so tried to get a proxy of their general attitude [0].

Every company big enough will have its share of shitty issues, but even taking it with a grain of salt it doesn't look to me like a company that needs no employee representation to counter-balance the management.

[0] https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?parent=b...

That Charleston plant has terrible quality control compared to the more mature, unionized group in Everett. Some airlines have refused shipments from south Carolina in preference to the Washington group.

https://leehamnews.com/2020/09/14/pontifications-boeing-sc-m...

For what it’s worth, I noticed a correlation between bad company news and union disputes that started about 10 years ago with Boeing. I remember visiting Seattle as you drive by the Boeing facility on the way in, my cab driver was telling me how Boeing was going to shut down the plant and move everything to South Carolina.

On that same trip, I was staying at a hotel with a view of city hall from my window (The Artic Club). I heard a bunch of horns blowing and looked out the window to see a line of cabs parked out front honking for about 1 minute before they drove off. News crews were there so I watched the local news that night.

That clip was there but the news made it sound like the drivers had been there all day blockading and honking. It was nothing more than enough time for a news clip (protesting Uber).

At that point, it became very clear to me how unions operate.

What does that have to do with Boeing?

Sorry. I noticed a significant uptick in negative Boeing press coverage the moment the union dispute started. It went from nonexistent to constant.

I'm not disagreeing with your assertion (though I do expect it's not as widespread as news articles make it seem), but...why didn't they vote to unionize then? Seems like if the unions said "we'll make sure you get bathroom breaks", then that'd be enough.

But I think this is a clear example of an issue where pro-union rhetoric has diverged from the reality of the situation. Are there any workers who actually prefer formal, timed bathroom breaks over the "go whenever you want as long as you're meeting your productivity goals" model?

What?? I don't mean "formal, timed bathroom breaks". I don't even think that exists in the real world. I mean they don't have enough leeway in their incentive system, to the point where workers have to pee in bottles out of fear of missing quotas and losing their job

You're universalizing something that's by all accounts a very rare occurrence, which I think is again part of the disconnect. If union organizers go around saying "we have to pee in bottles because they don't give us restroom breaks!", that's not going to be very persuasive to the vast majority of Amazon workers who take breaks to use the provided restrooms.

The peeing in bottles is just one of many symptoms of their terrible working conditions https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-wo...

Isn't that a bit misleading? I don't have official bathroom breaks either, and I do just fine.

What? I don't mean scheduled bathroom breaks, I mean they aren't given enough leeway during the day to even use the bathroom. There are many reports of them peeing in bottles and shitting in plastic bags.

I certainly agree with you that those stories are shocking and horrific, those reports were about delivery drivers, not warehouse workers, so it’s not really relevant to this particular discussion.

The warehouse workers have similar issues, according to stories I've heard they can get reprimanded for using bathroom outside of lunch or one 15 minute break per shift.

These are stories few and between. Literally hundreds of thousands of employees wouldn't remain quiet for not allowing bathroom breaks.

You're pursuaded by anecdotal evidence of certain incident that may have happened. It is difficult to believe hundreds of thousands of workers around the world working in Amazon warehouses have not enmasse complained they can't go to bathroom.

This is a media-driven narrative. Squeeky wheels make more noise.

The peeing in bottles is just one of many symptoms of their terrible working conditions https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-wo...

Collective bargaining lets the employees push back against issues that would otherwise risk their career. For example, an individual speaking up against horrible working conditions, metric-focused managers, and ignorance of unsafe practices would risk getting fired, so the issues would persist. A union would have the leverage required to push back against such issues.

While you're correct, Amazon is so large that this single center being nuked from their org chart would have been an inconvenience. I think it's very easy for us to say "this would help you" but the reality is, it might have drawn a line in the sand, at the cost of every single employee's job.

This is exactly why the vote was probably the most pragmatic decision. A vote for unionization would have been brave and symbolic. But why should blue collar people in Alabama have to sabotage their livelihoods to make a point?

They're already facing anticompetitive scrutiny. Retaliation would have tipped the political scales.

When is the last time busting a union brought any additional scrutiny from the US government, in a material sense?

While there are some stories lately about how much tax Amazon pays, the government is very much in the business of keeping Amazon (and all major US-based corporations and firms) happy... by contrast, the US government almost certainly cares very little for a warehouse worker in Alabama.

What's the cost, though? At $1/month a union membership would be a no-brainer, at $100/month people would probably think twice.

Unions are in the business of recurring subscriptions, and the pitch had to reflect that. Sounds like in case of this specific workplace, the cost-benefit analysis was either high on costs or low on benefits.

> provide a far better job, wage, and benefits than most

And now we're seeing the results of the race to the bottom play out.

Lowest level of global poverty ever? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extre...