> Until the union wins

I think that's hyperbole and could be left at the second half of your sentence:

> Until ... the employer stops breaking the rules.

However, I also think that simply having another election isn't sufficient. I honestly believe that interference like this is clearly unlawful and should be criminally punished as such.

Like in many other activities, a "do over" is benefits one side or the other. When used as a punishment for cheating, the do over is usually waived if the team who is being punished lost. See a lot of the objections in legal cases, which are not appealed by the winners but would be if they lost.

Unfortunately leaving it at just a "do over" does actual harm to employees; namely that their unjust compensation and work conditions aren't rectified through union action. As long as that's cheaper to Amazon then there's no incentive to change. And so I still believe that this a do over is good direction but not enough.

A good example of this is in American Football where a team can waive a flag (heh) that penalizes the other team and replays the down if they prefer the outcome of the play above the potential penalty. A common example, team A passes but the pass is intercepted by team B player, then a player on A does a "holding" foul on the player that did the interception. The punishment for holding usually means you redo the play, but that would give the ball back to team A, clearly team B prefers to keep possession due to interception over slightly punishing and redoing the play with the ball back in A's possession.

Point of order, that would likely be offensive pass interference.

A more common scenario is the defensive team commits an offsides penalty. This is essentially a free play for the offense since they can take the penalty if anything goes wrong, but if they're able to advance the ball a significant amount, they can decline the penalty.

Thank you that is a better example.

I understand what you are trying to get at, but the holding you described occurred after the interception (the turnover). So Team B can accept the penalty and would still have the ball.

A slight change of ordering makes your point. Team A drops back to pass and holds a Team B player going towards Team A QB. The QB then throws an interception. In that scenario, Team B would decline the holding penalty, upholding the interception.

You can't commit holding on the ball carrier. It would have to occur before the catch, and in that case, it's offensive pass interference.

Regardless, your second example, of the offense committing holding and the defense declining due to an interception is legit. That happens occasionally.

The actual infraction isn't that important (I just interpreted they meant some infraction), but what is important is that they stated the foul happened after the interception, so it could not be OPI, as that must occur after the QB throws and before the player intercepts.

Edit: I think we just took what was more important for the OPs point differently. I took the point as a penalty occurred, not a specific one. And you see it as "how could holding have happened". Which, if we are being pedantic, also wouldn't happen in the scenario you described. If it was called holding, it would have had to occur before the pass, making it not OPI. =).

> I honestly believe that interference like this is clearly unlawful and should be criminally punished as such.

It is clearly unlawful, but is it criminally unlawful?

As soon as somebody from the upper crust person seems likely to be guilty of breaking a law, they law stops being one that is criminal to break. Historically, most laws were to protect the aristocracy from unhappy and desperate commoners. Even the bail system is based on keeping the poor locked up but letting the affluent go home, since the poor are considered the dangerous ones

Steal a chocolate bar? Jail. Poaching in the kings forest? Death. Caught with drugs without a lawyer? Jail and possible death depending on the jail conditions

Manipulate an election via gerrymandering or lose a million peoples life savings in crooked finance deals? Dumping dangerous chemicals in the local river/lake? Editorial in that weeks paper about how that person should feel bad, plus a bonus

> It is clearly unlawful, but is it criminally unlawful?

Well I am not a lawyer. But some searching suggests interference violates Section 7 or Section 8 of the NLRB. The NLRB website [0] appears to be down for me at the moment so I can't look up exact info though.

[0]: https://www.nlrb.gov/

Edit: the site is still sorta spotty but sometimes works.

[1]: https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/nation...

interfere with creating a union? believe it or not, jail

You jest but I think if it's demonstrated that non-owning employees (eg, managers) are interfering then a fine totalling some significant percent of every manager's wage should be a minimum penalty to interference with creation of unions. If it's demonstrated that someone with ownership or stake in the company is interfering then indeed jail time should be on the table.

Companies should play fair or face the punishment. If employees truly don't want a union then don't interfere with their vote.

I think it's clear that the union wants a do-over and is looking for any technicality that might give them another chance.

Does anyone really believe that the Amazon employees voted against the union because Amazon removed some union material from the break room one day? Of course not. The employees knew what they were voting for and were fully capable of researching it themselves.

The real question is what does the union plan on doing differently to sway the employees to vote differently next time? Repeatedly trying to overrule the employees about their own voted decisions isn't likely to be popular among those who voted against the union, which is most of them. They'll need a better narrative on top of this if they want to get anywhere.

Or alternatively, maybe they don't care so much about this election as they do about making Amazon look bad. Maybe they know these workers don't want to unionize, but they're going to use this opportunity to try to convince the public that the workers were misled by Amazon. If they can't win the workers at this location, maybe they can try to win the public on a wave of anti-Amazon publicity for a do-over in another location.

> Does anyone really believe that the Amazon employees voted against the union because Amazon removed some union material from the break room one day? Of course not.

The truth is I don't think I know what it's like to live as an Amazon warehouse worker. When I grew up in California I didn't learn anything about unions until I was like 30 years old. Now to me unionization makes perfect rational sense, so I had assumed the union vote failed due to a lack of knowledge about unions amongst the workers. Like if you're a busy worker who needs their job and is afraid of company retaliation and you really don't have time to go to meetings and learn about the law and you can't really take a risk, then the "safe" thing is to vote no. Until I really learned about worker power, I probably would have done the same.

So actually yes I can see how Amazon removing literature could have impacted the vote. Looking at the original count:

"The result of the NLRB's initial vote count was 1,798 votes against the union and 738 in favor." [1]

The article also says are 6000 workers at the plant. So the question is, could the literature have helped 531 people change their mind, or brought more in from the non voting crowd? Seems perfectly plausible.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/the-amazon-union...

Both sides are following a standard script. Do you really believe that the only thing did Amazon did wrong was removing some literature? That's just like nailing Capone for not paying his taxes. The union found something that stuck and they went with it. Amazon will carry on intimidating employees to vote against and bringing in temporary external employees to boost the electorate with people who the union don't know exist.

If Amazon weren't an awful employer maybe they'd actually let their employees decide what they wanted instead of hiring union busting private security like Pinkertons.

Not that I think this union drive will succeed any time soon.

> I think it's clear that the union wants a do-over and is looking for any technicality that might give them another chance.

Well, what do you expect?

If Amazon was innocent here they could just let people vote whenever they want and people would most likely not vote for union (because they would not have reason).

Instead they chose to fight against the vote which is not exactly inspiring confidence in their innocence, especially when they bend and break the law in the process.

I've heard this line of reasoning before, but it feels weak & the absurdity is obvious if you apply it to any other scenario (replace "Amazon" and "union" with "Republican" and "Democrat" & then swap the positions around - it's not a valuable statement as it conveys very little information beyond virtue signalling & an appeal to emotion).

If you don't show up and present your case, the other side could win by default, not because they make the best case.

You're basically advocating for presenting a one-sided view to people and having them make a decision that way. This would imply that the union has a morally higher ground but I find that hard to believe as a union is just composed of people who are going to just employ the same tactics as Amazon if they could (albeit more limited at this time due to financial & structural reasons).

Is concept of union perfect? No it is not.

But the point is that in a sufficiently large corporation people mean shit and the company has disproportionate power over individual employees.

For example, in a small town with one large company there might just not be any other jobs.

The whole point of unions is to discriminate against the employer, to provide some leverage to employees to not be completely treated like shit.

If you are sufficiently large company you need to take correspondingly large responsibility and costs of maintaining that workforce.

In my view Amazon falls into both "sufficiently large" category as well as history of being shitty employer.

It is not a one-sided process, Amazon has already had great many chances to show they can do better but they chose to not use those chances to correct their behavior.

Maybe. On the other hand the Teamster’s links to organized crime (and general corruption) would seem to indicate unions can become just as malignant. Additionally there have been situations in the past where the union was responsible for the company going under.

Like I said, the weakness in this argument is it presumes that forming a union is strictly better. Maybe it is in this case. Maybe it’s not. Muzzling any speech to the contrary isn’t great though. Both sides should be able to be full throated advocates of their position as long as they do so fairly and within the limits of the law.

If it had no influence, then why remove the material and break the law?

should we presume this was strategically ordered by upper management and not just someone at the location just assumed outside material wasn't allowed?

> should we presume this was strategically ordered by upper management and not just someone at the location just assumed outside material wasn't allowed?

They don't even need to do that. It's far smarter to set a policy forbidding that, then set up the incentives so some lower level guy feels a lot of pressure to break it. If he does, he's your fall guy. That way you can have your cake and eat it too: unethical conduct to support your objectives, muddy enough waters to shield you from blame, and a nice little PR show about how ethical you are and how much you care.

We should presume everyone in management has perfect knowledge of all the rules in play, and that everyone voting on unionizing has no idea what is going on because of some pamphlets which have been removed.

part of executive responsibility is training your staff on how to perform job duties in compliance with the law.

if they weren't strategically ordered to break the law, they were perhaps strategically not ordered to not break the law.

erroneously or maliciously, the law has still been broken, and the organization bears responsibility.

yes

Rules are rules. If Amazon wants to keep the shop Union free, they have to do the hard work of persuading people rather than doing illegal shit.

I think they're betting that most people at Amazon were pro-Union but had a "I'm worried Amazon will find out my vote, so I'll let others do the voting for me" mentality. And now that it lost, they're hoping it's a wake-up call that votes matter.

I think the accusation that Amazon "gave workers the impression that their organizing activity was being surveilled" makes it clear the union believes people were afraid to vote.

> Does anyone really believe that the Amazon employees voted against the union because Amazon removed some union material from the break room one day?

Except that's not the only thing that happened, which is clear in the opening paragraph of the article. Their were multiple infractions, one of which (giving "workers the impression that their organizing activity was being surveilled") would definitely without a question would cause people to vote against a union and be fearful of getting involved or gathering more information. And regardless of how many times it happened, it was illegal.

The NLRB is the one making the recommendation for a new election, and, since they found that Amazon interfered with the election not just by removing this material, but in a number of other ways, why shouldn't they recommend holding a new election?

What's the alternative? When corporations violate labor law and interfere with union elections, do nothing about it? More broadly, if Amazon trusted the employees to research and vote of their own volition, why interfere (as determined by the NLRB) at all?

This infraction is about a different Amazon facility, it is unrelated to the vote to unionize.

Can we start with unionizing the tech industry. Pay rates are fixed. You cannot promote someone fast or fire someone based on performance. Let's try that out and see what happens. I'm not claiming Amazon is saint, but the fact is their pay is better than most other competitors for blue collar work and there was a reason why employees overwhelmingly rejected the unionizing plan.

Don't forget that in ubertechland if you complain about sexual harassment or racism, you get punished! And your only recourse is to complain about it in social media. Or hire a lawyer and go bankrupt. Much better than unions!

Also, unionised workplaces do allow for terminating underperforming employees. It's just that companies need to try to actually help the employee first, and have clearly defined polices that lay out the process and allow the employee to appeal. The tech method of software deciding you get fired and no human can override is soooooooo much better.

I moved from one of Australia's largest software firms into a union role and got a 40% pay rise, and it's set in contracts exactly what I get paid and what increases I get. Which I much prefer than my pay rise depending on whether management would prefer to reward their friends.

Tech unions do not generally have fixed pay rates / promo schedules.

Amazon warehouse pay is lower than prevailing warehouse pay used to be (amzn brought down the market rate as they're so prolific).

Tell me you’ve never interacted with a white collar union worker without telling me you’ve never interacted with a white collar union worker…

None of this happens at any of the recently unionized journalists I know or the long-unionized film industry members.

It’s also likely to increase union votes. People typically respond poorly to petty intimidation.