What a horrible viewpoint to have. Unionization is one of the best things happening (albeit slowly) in these sorts of industries right now. How can you not be for it? Amazon working conditions are terrible and turnover is so bad that Amazon is rapidly running out of people who haven't already tried working at Amazon and decided it's horrible. If working conditions and pay improves, we will all reap the economic benefits -- more capital in the hands of consumers, probably less broken or mismatched packages because workers will have a more reasonable workload and more incentive to do a good job, better outcomes for the majority of the population, etc, etc,. Bear in mind more than one in 10 people works in some capacity for Amazon in the U.S.. That's a huge economic sector if their pay and working conditions improve.

Your argument that AliBaba can somehow come into the U.S. and not be subjected to the same economic and cultural effects mystifies me. If AliBaba came here they would experience unionization, and it would be a good thing. Also given the extent of Amazon's monopoly in the U.S., and anti-china AND anti-middle-east sentiment in the U.S. being as high as it is (AliBaba cannotes "arab" for a lot of americans), there is just no way AliBaba could ever enter this market successfully unless Amazon was broken up into multiple companies and AliBaba rebranded to something appropriate for the U.S. market. So yeah, your comment is really bizzare.

>"How can you not be for it?"

I'm wary because unions in the US start out strong by addressing very real grievances and putting the greedier aspects of management in-check. But it seems inevitable that they become entrenched, bloated, and protectionist to the point of hurting the company's ability to adapt to market pressure and disruptions from non-unionized competitors. I'm not anti-union per se, and I would rather see them structured the way they are in Europe, and particularly, those in Germany.

Unions/Governments/Companies/Families/HOA's/Schools/Restaurants/Colleges/etc.. are great at first.

Eventually they crumble under their own apathy, bureaucracy, mismanagement, entropy and waste and a more lean competitor takes their place.

Thankfully

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy

It's quite simple. Either you believe the workers deserve representation or you don't. Business is the intersection of workers and corporations. You need both sitting at the bargaining table to get anything real done.

How are unions structured in Europe?

There’s not much structurally different about unions in Europe, but they exist in very different legal circumstances. Unions in the US are micromanaged by the NLRB and many complex laws enacted during the cold war.

Unions aside, Germany requires by law that corporate boards have a minimum percentage of representation from bottom-level employees, meaning employees who are nobody’s boss. This law seems to have been invaluable to working conditions in Germany. The catch is that the American ruling class would simply never allow such a law to be passed. Germany has the law as a result of history. Remember the Soviets defeated the Nazis, “first they came for the communists” and so on.

this law is also in effect in a lot of other european countries.

Remember that after World War One and during the interbellum, most european countries had massive social unrest. Giving workers representation inside the company was usually meant as a way to appease to communist/socialist voters during those times.

Mind you, this all happened before world war 2 and the iron curtain.

I’m weary…

You’re tired?

I think you mean wary. Or leery. Not weary.

Interesting, I did not know this. Fixed.

>Unionization is one of the best things happening

Some unionization works out well, especially when the union actually has the best interest of both the workers and company in mind. There are many times that self serving unions bleed workers through dues and protect non-productive workers to the benefit of no one, and in some cases, driving companies into bankruptcy.

I am pro-union and acknowledge that some unions will protect workers that don't actually contribute to the business, but I think we need a source on unions that drove companies into bankruptcy. That's a pretty extreme case that needs concrete examples.

>How can you not be for it?

Mostly too many stories from family of ridiculous interactions with unions (e.g. "you can't carry your own stuff to your booth. If you don't have us carry your briefcase, your truck's windows are all going to be smashed.")

Also, teacher's unions.

You genuinely believe that this is a make-or-break line for a multinational with extensive horizontal and vertical integration across multiple industries and it will fold because their warehouse workers demand marginally higher wages and some guaranteed bathroom breaks?

It’s in their interest to fight unionization, but the catastrophizing is just part of that negotiating game. You’re just buying a PR line that they don’t even believe themselves.

As soon as unionization gains a foothold, that same PR will talk up how they have strong relations with workers and that it gives them a competitive advantage in hiring, quality, tenure, and loyalty.

It’s spin today, and spin tomorrow. Don’t take it so seriously, maybe.

Can't we just short circuit to the last part? If it's going to get there eventually, it makes sense to cut to the chase. Doing the song and dance before hand feels so tedious, boring, and pointless.

The thing is, it's not a foregone conclusion that we'll get to there. Amazon believes it's in their interests to fight tooth and nail to prevent unions from forming, and historically, it has been able to do so.

Of course, there's some pretty good evidence that companies that treat and pay their workers well are more successful than those that try to scrape by treating them like disposable machine parts. But it's not, and has never been, all about the money: a lot of it is about power, and classism, and giving mediocre managers someone they can treat like garbage.

Is it really that difficult to imagine a company that treats its workers fairly succeeding?

Yes.

The unionized professional baseball (and basketball, hockey, football, etc…) players seem to be doing okay.

The NFLPA and NBAPA are wildly ineffective and are unable to adequately advocate for their players’ needs.

However, I would chalk that up to immature and young guys not voting for their best interests. When you’re up against the best leaders and lawyers money can buy, your union is bound to seem ineffective.

It's also an unsympathetic postion from the outsider. These are multi-million dollar salaries that are making complaints about locker room amenities and what not. Complaining about having to play 3 days out of 7 also falls on deaf ears a bit. You're being paid to play a game at the most elite levels purely for entertainment purposes. Rather than complaining about playing time, how about asking "are you not entertained?" If you're too tired, sit on the bench and let someone else play.

Yep, funny how that works.

So how does COSTCO thrive?

COSTCO is 1/5th the size of Amazon, even though the company has been around about 20 years longer.

This is like saying your restaurant chain is unsuccessful because it only has 1/5 the locations as McDonalds.

That's still a _lot_ of freakin' restaurants my guy. Costco is the only counterexample that I know of to "all workplaces need unions in order to guarantee workers' quality of life", but I think they might be the exception that proves the rule. That they've grown to be that big and treated their employees that well is a testament to how good economically, long term, it is to treat your employees as the valuable assets they are.

They also only sell goods to members, and don't offer have a cloud service.

I also trust Costco a lot more than Amazon, even though Costco is not as convenient to use due to their smaller number of SKUs.

smaller number of SKUs and not consistent. you can find something on a visit, and then it is not available on a subsequent visit. but i now know this going in, and still benefit from the items that are available

It's intentional. See https://customerservice.costco.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/7...

The idea is that if you see something that interests you, you buy it now, and there's always something new on each visit. It's annoying for certain things, but at the same time it allows them to avoid having the same stock on the floor because people are on the fence about a purchase.

> 1/5th the size of Amazon

So pretty freaking big?

Depends on how you look at it. Costco had a 20 year head start, and with the way returns compound they should really be MUCH bigger than Amazon if capitalism worked well for the working class.

Personally I spend most of my money at Costco when I can because I prefer giving money to companies that treat their workers better (or at least better than Amazon).

I'm saying that capitalism is designed to enrich the owning class at the expense of the working class. It's just a system to transfer wealth toward those who already have it.

The "rising tide lifts all boats" reaganomics argument is not wrong, but if it reaches the point (where it has now) where the working class is not seeing an inflation-adjusted increase in wealth, then they are (by definition) becoming poorer over time.

Not sure how this squares with your assertion upthread that it's hard to imagine a company that treats its workers well succeeding...

which system other than capitalism has worked better, historically? Because the alternatives seem to be worse.

The issue isn't capitalism its the political leadership who aren't interested in creating an environment where workers are rewarded in line with their productivity.

Socialism seems to be working out far better for pretty much the entire EU.

Not a single country in the EU uses socialism, so you'd be mistaken. They are all capitalist countries.

and yet when anyone in the US suggests single player healthcare, higher income taxes, or more restraints on corporations, they get accused of being socialist.

so because random people in the US are wrong, you'd like to be as well?

Would anyone even notice? Amazon retail is basically an Aliexpress storefront.

Ah, yes. Just like how Ford, famously heavily unionized, folded and disappeared as Kia took over.

US automakers absolutely struggled in the 70s when foreign car companies showed up and started competing. It wasn't Kia that gave them fits, it was Honda and Toyota. It was 100% an existential crisis, and unions made the situation worse. Which isn't to say that unions are necessarily bad and didn't produce good things for their workers, but they made it very difficult for the US auto industry to adapt.

A link to a long series about the interaction between US automakers and the unions is below. Of note is the story about how automakers' market share declined precipitously in the early eighties when Japanese automakers figured out the US market.

The US auto industry is not a great example of how a union can work with an employer in the face of existential threats.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/08/business/uaw-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1981/10/11/f...

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/chrysler-bai... (Heavy International Competition)

The US automakers did not struggle because of unions. The US automakers struggled because they were led by incredibly pathetic people and genuinely did not know how to make good cars or run a business.

Unions were not who was responsible for their atrocious offerings during the 70s to 2000s.

US automakers' products were terrible, and there is plenty of blame to go around. But I have yet to read any analysis of that crisis (such as those linked above) that did not include unions as one contributing factor.

Feel free to provide an alternate source. I would love to read it. Please ensure that it is as free from propaganda that it would pass your own level of scrutiny by someone on the other side.

Don't look at the survival of a multinational as a metric, look at its places here. What happened to Detroit and those unionized jobs? Some remain, but much of Ford has been moved to Mexico. So yes, there was some folding and disappearing.

I was mocking the idea that unionization would cause a company to "disappear", not that unionization wouldn't impact the structure of a company or have other side effects.

I mean, Ford is in a pretty tough spot for the future. They couldn't compete in the ICE sedan market. Their cash cow ICE truck market is gone in 10 years. They have a LOT of debt that will cost a lot more to service now interest rates are up. So their only saving grace is a successful pivot to the EV market, but their software and software culture is bad, and they are not procuring very many batteries.

I think describing the US market of a global company isn't as compelling an argument as you think it is.

The parent comment topic is the benefits to US workers working on US market products. If Ford's US market footprint and manufacturing workforce has relatively shrunk over the decades, then that is absolutely relevant to the concern of long-term benefit to US workers.

Exactly. When we're talking about US auto unions, the market for those vehicles pretty much is the US market. The rest of the global sales are made with global (typically non-unionized) workers. If Ford can't make competitive cars for the US market, it doesn't speak well to the union vs. non-union competitiveness.

US gov will just ban Alibaba for nationalistic reasons before that happens. Besides, all the crap you buy from Amazon is coming from China already, and a good chunk of it is just straight off Alibaba.