Or would it be better those people "choose" not to have any job just because they find their current one is shitty? If everyone had that attitude in 19th century, we would still work 16 hours a day, without fighting for change.

Let's take your example further... Yes, unions (especially in the auto industry) had a lot of success. This was alongside efforts by Henry Ford to increase pay. But where did it lead? The unions kept winning, and look at where Detroit is now. The unions won victory after victory, only to wind up with companies so hollowed out that they can't afford their hard won pensions.

Should be start decreasing working hours due to productivity increase, or just invent bullshit jobs just to keep people employed? Or to progress to Star Trek economy where people will be provided with all basic needs and work only on what they would like to? I know what I would like to happen, but I also fear what would happen. Talking only about unions, Detroit or any specific industry or place is not going to "fix" the global problem, and that is that the need for jobs is decreasing, and number of people is rising. We should tackle that problem instead.

Sorry for rambling, it might only be tangentially relevant to the article and discussion, but what I see in all this cases is just this problem. Ok, I might be overgeneralizing, since I'm software engineer, but not to much.

I would certainly like to work 30 hours a week too. :-) And I share a concern that the middle class is getting squeezed, so that it's not a bottom 25% that struggle, it's a bottom 50-75%.

That said, I still believe the solution is creating more opportunities for potential job providers, and encouraging them to compete for talent. I think this helps everyone. When there's collusion on the part of labor or capital, everyone suffers.

To personalize the situation, as individuals in technology, we have the most job opportunities when there are many firms competing for our talent. (Like 1998, or now) The best thing we can do is encourage this for ourselves. Similarly, a pro-job-creator agenda on a country-wide basis will help pull up everyone.

Threatening a firm at it's busiest point of the year may give you more of the pie, but it also shrinks the total size of the pie. In Detroit's case it destroyed the pie.

They're not crippled because they're unionized, they're non-union because highly skilled workers are in short supply.

When our "everyone should learn to code" and "if you're not a STEM major you don't deserve to exist" initiatives gain more traction and Google/Apple/Facebook are drowning in highly qualified candidates, that could easily turn around.

Plus, it's not like the Japanese auto-workers at the companies that are Detroit's lunch weren't unionized. Wasn't the fall of the American auto industry because of competition and market forces instead of big bad unions?

No, but the fact that there are no unionized companies in the U.S. that are world leaders in their market segment wiggles its eyes suggestively at the idea that the problem might have something to do with unionization.

I don't view Boeing and Airbus as shining examples of success. Both get large government subsidies. Both have had their share of problems over the years, perhaps more Airbus lately. And there are just 2 of them. It's not a competitive industry. When you're splitting oligopoly profits, there is more room for unions. This actually is also the instance where I do think unions have the most standing. If there's no place else to go work, you kind of need a union. In addition to "the only mine in town" I think this also applies to fire and police departments. I don't think it applies to schools - I'd much rather see more choices (charters, etc) - but that's a much longer post.

Furthermore, nobody here knows what qualifies as a world leading company to you. That's your opinion. General Electric, UPS, all of America's major professional sports teams, Safeway, Budweiser, Coors Brewing Company, Carhartt, are unionised. You don't consider Boeing a shining example of success because they take government subsidies. But that's really besides the point because they make great planes for countries all across the world where they do have to compete. They're a world leader. Non-unionised companies have to compete with companies that are unionised when it comes to a worker's pay and benefits to get the best workers.

But like I said before, the premise of your question is ridiculous.

In many European countries unions and employers have historically been able to work together and reach agreements that have been better for both parties, compared having a law impossed by the government. Amazon is ruining that, and I don't believe that the rules that will follow from the governments will be as good as an agreement reach between an employers and the people who work for him.

This might change with the current government.

The current government promised a 8,50EUR minumum wage.

Fun fact: The leftist German news paper TAZ who was fighting for minumum wage for quite some time, argued against the minumum wage for it's intern as "not possible".

[1] e.g. when you are below some wage, the government pays you some money for the "gap"

Sounds like corporate welfare - companies don't have to provide a decent wage if the government will make up the difference.

Currently someone has to pick stuff of the shelves for Amazon. Regardless of how highly educated a society is or how many new companies we start, there's still someone who has to do the manual picking in the warehouse. Someday that job may be automated away, but until then, we need to ensure that the people taking these jobs are treated decently and paid a wage that will sustain them.

Amazon can move their warehouse to Poland, and pay a little less and still provide a decent salary. The behavior however should be the same regardless of which country they operate in.

We often forget that there are bad/boring/hard/dirty jobs and that they actually need to be done. Education won't make these jobs go away. Just as often we forget that there are people who enjoy them and have no desire to educate themselves further. Regardless of our feeling towards the lack of education or dislike of the job fulfilled by the people "at the bottom of society", we should be respectful of their choices in life and help them should they feel exploited.

Just for the record I work for a online shop and are on occasion asked to help in the warehouse. It's physical hard work, boring and you're on a strict schedule to ensure that everything is ready then the delivery companies arrive to pick up orders. We pay a lot better than Amazon, almost double it seems and your not given a fixed time in which to complete the picking of an order, so there's hopefully less stress. So I have no reason to believe that Amazon couldn't a nice place to work as well, and still make a profit.

I don't believe that everyone needs a Phd, and not everyone needs to start their own business. My point is that if we create an environment where enough businesses are competing for our labor, all of us (even the non-entrepreneurs) benefit.

There may be a fairly short time horizon on "currently"- Amazon bought Kiva, a warehouse automation/robotics company, a few years ago, and it wasn't because they thought it looked cool.

The former assumes that the pie can be grown. The latter assume we're fighting over a limited pie, which actually winds up shrinking it.

So what's next?

[1] That said the common idea is in school and on television since around the 70s: The coolest guy is the one with the worst grades - every celebrity boosts how bad they were at school. And living on welfare has become a verb ("harzen") and is the live goal (perspective?) of many young people.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studiengeb%C3%BChren_in_Deutsc...

Not everybody is fortune enough to be born into such an environment where he/she is able to get a reasonable education so he/she can chose where he/she would like to work.

No education, no money, no connections and he spoke broken english throughout his life. He would have envied the opportunities even the bottom 5% of Americans and Germans today have. Hard work and willingness to learn leads to success and then the ability to choose work.

There is a spectrum that underlies this issue. On one side is the freedom of individuals to contract with other individuals and on one side is government setting contract policies. If freedom and respect for individuality are strong values (which I think they are post-enlightenment) policies and views should be closer to the former.

Also note that any change to labor laws affects small business far more than large business. Amazon can create robots to do the jobs of sorting where smaller firms cannot. The more regulation on labor in industries and companies the more important capital is and the more valuable size is. The financial industry in America (and in many other countries) is a key example of this.

For every story of your great grandfather, how many people spent all their money to get to America but it was actually a con and the boat trip they bought wasn't real? How many arrived in New Orleans and couldn't toil as a worker because they couldn't get a job? How many bought into a different idea and went to France to seek a new start and got killed in the War? Or Russia? Or Japan? How many arrived in New Orleans, toiled as a grocery store worker for years before being fired and left unemployed? How many toiled for years before injury left them helpless? How many tried to learn a foreign language but didn't have the mental ability to do it? How many tried to start a store in another town but picked a shitty town and went bankrupt? Or picked an industry with a ruthless competitor who put them out of business with illegal means?

How many of the German population tried to do something like the above? And how many of those hit on good things to try and good ways to go about them? And how many of those were successful?

That fraction of a percent is your model for how everyone should live?

If you only consider that "successful people worked hard" and conclude "hard work leads to success" then you are misunderstanding the nature of the world.

Hard work leads towards success but success, however it's normally defined, is a filter that excludes most people trying for it.

And most of the top 5% Americans and Germans back than lived in fear of militant strikes, riots and revolutionary workers in general. They would have envied the social peace of modern western societies.

And I don't know when your Great grandfather migrated but one hand you can't draw conclusions from a single persons experiences and on the other hand stories like this have a lot to do with the specific economic situation in his new homeland at that time

What can we draw conclusions based on? Right now in America every single person has access to the internet where they can access an incredible number of educational materials through libraries. Most college campuses are open and allow for sit ins and, at least in certain states, there are plenty of job opportunities. Not to mention almost all families in poverty today have air conditioning, refrigerators and access to more varieties of food than anyone did 50 years ago.

The economic environment today is incredibly favorable towards those who are willing to work hard and opportunities are boundless for anyone with intelligence willing to seek them. There are strong social factors holding groups and individuals back but social issues cannot be fixed with economic or political action.

As I said:

> Not everybody is fortune enough to be born into such an environment where he/she is able to get a reasonable education ...

And it is not even only about intelligence. If nobody showed you how to learn, you will not be able to just know how to do that on your own at the library or on your computer at home. You will not know where to start or who to ask for help. I also assume that this is why children of academics study at the university while working class children don't. Their parents don't know how to teach their children to learn.

And then there is this study too: "Study finds poverty reduces brain power" http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/29/us-poverty-brain-i...

[1] There are quite some people living on the street though - especially in larger cities - who for various reasons can't or won't claim their social welfare money.

Stating that people only live on the street (and freeze to death during winter) because they won't claim their welfare money is a gross simplification. Did you talk to all/any of them?

But the reality is, if Amazon is so bad, folks should just go work somewhere else.

> Folks should just go work somewhere else.

This is really tone deaf to the realities of the people who must accept jobs like these, though.

In terms of being tone deaf, isn't that more for politicians and corporate heads? Here we're arguing ideas, like should we support unions that strike during peak periods, and what should Amazon's response be?

While I have a general dislike for unions in some places, it is specifically their company-harming tactics that bother me the most. This can be striking during the holidays (which is the situation mentioned) and can also be protesting in front of hotels, scaring away customers. This is an attitude of, "If you don't see if my way, I'll destroy the company."

While unions have made some strides, some improvements have also been a result of unilateral action by employers. Take the Henry Ford example, of shortening days and raising wages. [1]

As a broader society, we can help those who "must accept jobs like these" by encouraging entrepreneurs to create companies that could hire people like them. Employees get better treatment when there are more people fighting to hire them.

[1] http://corporate.ford.com/news-center/press-releases-detail/...

Here's an illustrative passage from Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky:

> Recently the head of a corporation showed me the blueprint of a new plant and pointed to a large ground-floor area: “Boy, have we got an architect who is with it!” he chuckled. “See that big hall? That’s our sit-in room! When the sit-inners come they’ll be shown in and there will be coffee, T.V., and good toilet facilities — they can sit here until hell freezes over.[1][2]

Their goal was to eliminate the pain their business experienced so there was no pressure to change behavior.

As to your second example, Ford raised wages because he had a problem with high turnover, because working conditions were bad.[3]

[1] http://www.mlsite.net/blog/?p=1665

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals

[3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/04/the-story...

The medium is so devoid of expression that on any given post the reader is filling in much of the information they attribute to the sender.