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?
It doesn't matter how much you pay me if I can't see my kids and have to pee in a bottle.
Obviously Amazon is giving good enough wages for their working condition as evidenced by people choosing to work there rather than leaving.
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
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.
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.
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.