I don't think we can rule out the possibility we don't actually know what the employees truly think because they're in the middle of an all out propaganda war.
And I certainly don't think Amazon would put so much effort into fighting this if their employee treatment, benefits and compensation and general employer track record made employees genuinely not even consider the Union option.
As an outsider, it just feels like watching media reporting a war. I don't trust it due to propaganda and clearly opposing biases at play between the interested parties.
This paternalism of low wage employees needs to stop. They can make up their own mind and actually have skin in the game as opposed to some tech worker making 10x as much telling them they're being brainwashed
And I think anyone should point that out - whether it's a union organizer in Alabama, a tech worker making 10x the salary (who, by the way, may also have an interest in improving cultural support for unions if they are a tech worker in favour of software engineer unions) or a historian on capital-labour relations. As far as I know, however, no tech worker has contacted anyone in Alabama and told them they're brainwashed.
'Paternalism' would be someone pushing the ballot for them 'for their own interests'. That does not preclude discussion of priorities, rationality, and the rational frameworks (epistemological/ideological/moral/practical/etc.) we have available to discuss how wise those decisions are.
Why do you assume only you can see that’s it’s propaganda and they can’t?
In the same way, I have no doubt that many citizens of the USSR or China or Nazi Germany or even the US can see through the propaganda targeted at them. But I don't think anyone would argue with the idea that propaganda was and continues to be effective for a significant (and important) portion of the population.
I would also think that, say, a historian who is an expert on propaganda, or an economist who is an expert on labour relations, a political campaign manager, or a company marketing manager would be able to more accurately and quickly identify propaganda when they see it. Some people can see through certain propaganda. That's not controversial.
I find Amazon worker susceptibility to propaganda to be a little silly. And I'm talking about "fake news" propaganda, not promotion of a true, but pro-Amazon viewpoint.
Most folks I worked with a lower-paying, manual labor jobs had zero illusions about their employer. They aren't getting the "bring your whole self to work" and "help us change the world" bullshit that the big companies feed their white collar workers. It was very clear that the employer looked out for themselves (e.g. profit) and workers were easily replaceable.
I think people who claim they were manipulated need to give the workers a little more credit.
You don't live in this neighborhood. You don't work at an amazon warehouse. You probably don't even know anyone who does. You can comment about power dynamics on a forum for software engineers.
They have the power to seek better employment. Youre the one that wants to strip them of the power for them to vote on matters concerning them directly.
Edit: Updated for clarity
To me the comment is pointing out that we as outsiders very likely don't know what is going on because reporting is probably biased.
You can say the same thing about any political campaign!
Do you think people must not really want Joe Biden as president because he had to spend $6 billion to persuade them through campaigning?
When you vote for an union, you absolutely do not vote for your employer to become an asshole, it's not "either the union make the employer improve employees work OR the employer does it on its own". The union and the employer could create an alliance to make life better for the employees. Look at what police unions and conservative towns have done, unionized policemen can literally get away with murder.
There is no exclusive choice as to who should plan bathrooms breaks for runners and drivers: either the employer, or the union, as long as people stop having to pee in a bottle, you could even have a coalition with a giant conspiracy to have employee go to the bathroom when they need to.
Unironically, yes. But that doesn't mean they would have wanted Trump.
Voting doesn't go the way I think it should = people were clearly swayed by propaganda and didn't vote in their best interest
Either we treat people like adults and trust their voting or we don't. One doesn't get to pick and choose which voting is "right".
Propaganda may or may not be dirty, but threats of firings, plant closure, etc if the Union passes is illegal. Very very different.
Not lots of propaganda and dark pattern etc etc = people rationally voted for their best interest, again regardless of my opinion on the result
Either we treat elections like they matter and dont unduly manipulate the outcome or we don't. One doesn't get to pick and choose which elections are "questionably carried out"
Yeap, I agreed with you. The media is untrustworthy and is a propaganda machine. Good thing is they are digging their own grave now.
Not saying this is the case with your neighbor, but if they’re just a neighbor, not a close friend, they might simply not feel okay talking about it with you.
More generally I agree this needs totally rethinking, but Democrats have been trying to do that for at least 20 years so it might be a list cause...
That doesn't seem to be the case. https://one.walmart.com/content/dam/themepage/pdfs/Associate...
This is why (despite technically providing healthcare) Walmart is number one for employees enrolled in Medicaid [0].
Amazon's insurance kicks in at 20h a week [1]
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-...
[1] https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/benefitsoverview-us
Additionally, if they are paid a low enough emount that they qualify for government subsidies on health insurance, they can't get those if they deny the Amazon supplied insurance. Edit: I checked, and Amazon warehouse workers are paid little enough that they get the subsidies, so without them, I'm skeptical they could afford insurance, especially if they have a family.
Finally, you can't switch any time, it can only be done during an open enrollment period or if you have a major life event like getting married, I think?
I know you can’t change the policy, but I’m not sure about providers (like going from being in your jobs policy to going with a private one)
What’s horrible is, imagine being let go or quitting your job, not being able to afford COBRA (or whatever it’s called now) and then not even being able to signup for private insurance due to open enrollment period not lining up.
.
I follow some people in social media from when I worked at Starbucks. I saw recently someone saying they feel something on one hand and not the other. Someone commented that it was time for some home surgery and they agreed.
I have no idea if they are serious or not, and that worries me. I would hope they’re joking, but with the state of things, who knows (and I honestly think if needed, they’d do it).
Like. It's your choice to...go bankrupt or die from a treatable illness? I don't know what they expect non-Americans to draw from that line of reasoning
However, insurance is an absolute scam in the US. You pay hundreds of dollars per month for the privilege of having to pay thousands of dollars before your insurance will start paying. For many families the monthly premiums could run over a thousand dollars, and the deductible could be $15,000.
…or you could get some cheap catastrophic insurance, and pay cash for everything else. The cash price is generally less than half of the insurance price.
Many people have done the math and concluded that they don’t need insurance.
You can never know that you're not going to need healthcare.
Not saying it’s not out there, but they both are high.
That gets you a $10k family deductible, and a $13,100 max out-of-pocket. https://www.nyhealthinsurer.com/insurance/pdfs/plans/1319
I pay $2,200 a month for a family Platinum plan, in order to get $0 deductible and $4k/year max OOP.
The true cost of healthcare is masked for most, via their employer coverage - quite a few people seem to genuinely believe theirs costs just $20/month because that's the portion they directly pay. It's quite the scam on the American public.
About ~10% have private insurance in addition to e.g. avoid queues etc. for non-critical care since NHS triages by clinical need. Typical price for private cover is usually ~$50-$200/month per person.
The true scam on the American public is that the way your healthcare is regulated means US taxpayers pay about the same UK taxpayers do towards public healthcare, but Medicare and Medicaid are unable to provide universal care for that money because they're artificially prevented from e.g. negotiating best possible prices for services and drugs, and the rest of the regulatory regime completes a system that is basically welfare for the healthcare and insurance industry.
So you pay roughly that per capita and then your private insurance on top.
Germany got it's first universal public healthcare insurance system in the 1880's under Bismarck because Bismarck was worried about outright revolution, because the notion of being without healthcare was one of the things driving rapidly rising resentment. Most of the rest of the developed world followed over the course of decades. That Americans are still putting up with this kind of massive wealth transfer to corporations by politicians today speaks to a disturbing level of subservience to corporate power.
To fix this system we would need a 10-15 year transition period, and it’s virtually impossible to make that happen. No single President could oversee the process from beginning to end, and Congress could change party control 6-8 times.
The reason we haven’t fixed this problem isn’t because we love corporations, but because no single political party is willing to commit suicide.
The Democrats talk a big game, but it’s pretty much all talk. Bernie Sanders home state of Vermont tried to implement a single payer system, and failed spectacularly. Vermont is a tiny state. Imagine the disaster it will be trying to pull the rug out from under the healthcare economy for the entire United States.
https://www.vox.com/2014/12/22/7427117/single-payer-vermont-...
My main issue, and why I commented, it’s because they put a high monthly premium and a high deductible and usually when one’s goes up, the other one goes down.
It’s framed as trying to explain it for someone outside of the US and I think it makes a poor job because it doesn’t explain that they picked máximums and didn’t explain how they usually relate and interact with each other.
> For many families the monthly premiums could run over a thousand dollars, and the deductible could be $15,000
> That’s also a VERY high premium AND deductible.
isn't true, at least in my area.
There was a mild penalty for not having a qualifying insurance plan, but now no such penalty exists.
Analysis showed this is what happened. Please don't mistake that to mean the status quo is good. There is an enormous power imbalance between Amazon and the laborers in Bessemer, Alabama.
This has happened many, many times throughout American history. Coal towns are a canonical example of holding all the cards against labor. The hallmarks of that relationship exist here.
Once it's determined whether this was a fair vote, we'll know for sure I guess.
> The RWDSU submitted nearly two dozen objections to Amazon's conduct during the election, which it said prevented employees from a "free and uncoerced exercise of choice" on whether to create the company's first U.S. union.
No. Amazon does not.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/economy/amazon-w...
>The most recent figure for the median wage in greater Birmingham, a metropolitan area of roughly one million people that includes Bessemer, was nearly $3 above Amazon’s pay there, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Unions are just bringing democracy into capitalism. How can any red blooded American oppose them?
Edit: not sure why I'm being down voted, did I say something offensive??
2. Unions are heavily involved in politics. As a worker, part of your paycheck is being seized to support politicians whom you may vehemently oppose.
3. American unions fixate on seniority and credentials as metrics of merit. This is a poor fit for professions like software engineering and educators, where those only loosely correlate to actual performance.
4. Unions foster adversarial relationships within companies, an us/them mentality against "management". Sometimes the environment is already toxic so nothing is lost, but it can also turn an otherwise reasonable workplace sour.
Feel free to name a profession where seniority and qualifications correlate well with performance.
>1. At their best unions protect members from managerial malfeasance, but unions also go out of their way to protect incompetents who should be fired. That is soul crushing as a coworker, bad for the company, and possibly harmful to customers.
As far as I'm aware there's not much our unions here in Belgium can do about that. If there's a legitimate reason they have no interest in spending their funds fighting a court case going nowhere. They do occasionally take action when it's harmfull to the company when there's legitimate reason for firing but this involves the company laying of lots of people when they are closing down a division or plant or so which generally doesn't stop it but makes the closing more fitting to the workers.
>2. Unions are heavily involved in politics. As a worker, part of your paycheck is being seized to support politicians whom you may vehemently oppose.
Our largest unions are very plainly politically aligned. We have a leftist union, christian democrat union, liberal union and then a neutral union or 2 , industry specific unions. Either way tho part of my paycheck does not go to politicians and if it did not to politicians i don't align with. In fact what i pay to the union is a tiny sum. They compete among eachother and these big unions operate at scale.
>4. Unions foster adversarial relationships within companies, an us/them mentality against "management". Sometimes the environment is already toxic so nothing is lost, but it can also turn an otherwise reasonable workplace sour.
I don't think we interact with our unions much on average. My experiences with them were limited to. 1) them blocking entry for trucks ( i could just walk in) when there was a big announced nationwide protest regarding things like wage indexation i believe. 2) Them checking the legality of the contract i was offered and given pointers. 3) Them paying me my unemployment at some point and handling the paperwork.
Well they had a democratic vote and decided they did not want to be represented by this union. That's democracy working.
It's against the site rules here to suggest people haven't read the article - please don't do this.
I was replying to a parent comment which said 'how can anyone oppose a union'. Some people legitimately don't want to have to deal with a union, for any of many reasons. For example because the union supports political goals they don't agree with, or because the union favours other employees over them, or they just don't want to have to deal with two overlords, neither of which may be working to their benefit.
If they're asked and they say 'no thanks' then the union should just say 'ok thanks for letting us know' and leave them alone.
There's a weird attitude amongst unions that there is no possible way anyone could not want to be represented by them. That leads them to accuse any vote against them of being illegitimate.
1. OP says: unions are good they bring democracy into things.
2. You say: They had a democratic vote
3. I say: The article is alleging that they didn't have a democratic vote.
Your comment is clearly stating that the vote was democratic, the unions lost, so we should move on. The entire article that this conversation is about is saying that the vote wasn't democratic and was coerced. My response stands, you can't just say "democratic vote, lets move on", because if the allegations are true then there wasn't a democratic vote.
My point is that some people legitimately do not want to be in a union, and there's nothing unfathomable about this, because they have many downsides. For example where I'm from if you were a Jewish supporter of the Green Party you may find it extremely offensive to have your union representatives promoting the Labour Party.
So you may get a legitimate, democratic, decision to not let the union represent them.
That's the point. Forget about tying it to this particular situation if you want to.
Yes, that's anecdotal, but I've been in two unions at two separate jobs and have literally never met anyone who wishes they weren't in it.
(Except that there's not even just one; there's a wide range of elections from the national level, to the local, or even maybe down to your city block in some places).
It means you don't truly consider the employees value. You just pay him 15 cents more than the guy down the street.
That said, I was deeply unsurprised by the result of the vote. I looked at the pay and benefits and thought "I wouldn't rock the boat if I were them".
It seems odd to me that people think a union would be popular here. Unions I've dealt with were a nightmare of politics and ineffectiveness. Partly that's their own problem, partly its a result of legal frameworks that they're stuck in.
I was also surprised how much of a fuss people made about Amazon when 101 other companies are worse and older and get a free pass (Walmart still has more employees than amazon in the US I think).
I think this and other issues around big tech (Google and competition, Apple and supply chains) are more about their failures to engage in PR than them actually being worse than average. I wonder if we will see a move from all/any of them to plug this gap in their moats
Maybe a majority of the workers there prefer the status quo?