Amazon and Union-Busting

Hi, I’m 74westy. Now you know me. I’m an member of SGEU and I don’t hate my union.

I don’t know you but I do know there are a lot of pro union people on this message board.

What do you like about your union? Since you’re a government employee I assume there is no parallel job outside of the union you may have worked to compare to.

Amazon is boycott proof. And they might even be strike proof. The fight against Amazon can’t be just against Amazon. Support the fight for $15. Support your McDonald’s workers. Your Wal-Mart workers. Your Uber workers. If we can raise wages and improve conditions for others we can possibly improve conditions for Amazon workers, too.

And this is why people like Bernie Sanders - as much as I scoffed at the thought of him being president - are important. I don’t think activists necessarily make great presidents or legislative coalition leaders but they do have a purpose, which is to light a fire under people’s asses and push parties like the Dems into action.

I’m another pro-union person, as are a majority of Americans. Nearly half of people who aren’t unionized wish they were. (Which, combined with the number of people who are happy in their union, is pretty significant).

Lemme tell you about the times I worked in the for-profit world:

  • Worked at a bakery which claimed to be a co-op but which hired a business grad, who came in and overturned a lot of the policies set up to make work-life more pleasant. When called on it, he did a presentation for us (many of whom had master’s degrees), with graphs with unlabeled axes, to show why it was necessary for us to change. There was everything but a slide whistle. Most of us quit.
  • Worked at a different bakery with a boss who strongly urged Christianity on us and made lots of racist comments about immigrants.
  • Worked for a subcontractor for IBM writing Internet marketing courses in the late nineties, and had our IBM point-person erase most of my work from several weeks because it was too useful: she feared that someone in a different department could take my course notes and teach it to others in their department, and her department would lose out on charging that department for all those other people.
  • Worked for a food delivery service as a contractor, and made less than minimum wage most nights. After factoring in wear and tear on my car, it’s likely I lost money some nights.

Turns out the private sector isn’t all kittens and rainbows.

My union is in a state with no union protections. We can’t bargain collectively, and if we strike it’s a class 2 misdemeanor, one step below assault with a deadly weapon. But my union helps me raise my voice alongside fellow workers, and it’s the only way for us to do so.

Damn right I’m pro-union.

Facts aren’t going to matter here, friend.

I rarely buy from Amazon – I try and buy local, or go direct to the seller. Some things, though – phone cases and screen protectors, for example, are like 90% cheaper through Amazon.

It’s not just union workers that benefit from unions – lots of times, salaried workers at union shops have better benefits – hey, you can’t treat the manager worse than the laborer, right?

I think there’s no question that unions are, by and large, better for employees – first of all, you can look at the destruction of unions since the 80s and the wider and wider wealth gap in this country. Then, you can compare it to countries like Sweden? Denmark? Anyway, one of those has a much smaller wealth gap and a much stronger union presence.

Of that list of grievances with non union work which do you feel would have been stopped by a union? Hiring an MBA to run the shop differently then it had been in the past? Having a racist boss? People protecting the “value” of their work? Where a union might have value is you last one and just recently a friend of mine was fired for telling his boss that COVID really was a disease that killed people. I don’t think the ability to keep working for a jerk is worth $180/year. Hell, my friend is spending the money he saved on union fees to start a competing business and has already taken half of his idiot boss’s customers.

The private sector isn’t rainbows but unions don’t protect against most of the bad stuff they just make sure that people who are there longer get more stuff not people who are better at their jobs.

I’m speaking more broadly, of course. The MBA who changed working conditions would have had to contend with a labor contract, were we unionized. A racist boss could face a formal complaint via union channels.

I get you don’t like unions. But you’re in the minority as far as Americans are concerned.

Yeah, same. I’ve never known someone who was in a union who wasn’t hugely satisfied with it.

Do you realize that many of your “doing better without a union” examples are people who are now working for themselves? Namely, people who are now business owners?

The reality is that people hate every organized group that exercises power over their activity. Their employer, union, customer, coworkers, school district, government, post office, HOA, police department, bus line or insurance company, you name it, someone is pissed off that those “idiots” are screwing up.

The Amazon distribution center is closer to my house than most stores I go to. :slight_smile:

If the local stores don’t have what I want, or clothes in my size, I either go to Amazon or do without.

I wish we didn’t need unions. I say that as someone who once managed a staff that had just started the unionization process, and yes, dealing with their paranoia and grievances with the company sometimes gave me headaches. I somewhat agree with your take that unions sometimes protect mediocre employees.

However, my take in return is that few people sign up for a new place of employment looking forward to organizing a union shop six months from their date of hire. Unionization comes from the feeling that the company you depend on to pay rent and buy food treats you like you’re a disposable coffee cup.

Employees don’t generally try to unionize when they feel like they’re being treated like humans.

I can’t speak for 74westy but I liked the higher pay and more benefits that I mentioned.

…the demonization of unions in America is yet another example of how functionally dysfunctional America is.

In a perfect world you wouldn’t need unions. Employers would simply pay their staff a fair living wage, share profits, offer outstanding work conditions.

But we don’t live in that world.

We live in a world with a very distinct power balance. In nearly every case all around the world the employer has disproportionate power. And in the United States that power is all-out-of-whack.

What unions provide is a means to redress that power. A single employee can’t take on Amazon. But a union negotiating on behalf of Amazon employees? At least they have a fighting chance.

This isn’t a binary situation. There are bad unions out there. And there are “organized crime syndicates” masquerading as unions (I’m looking at you police unions).

But Amazon sucks as an employer. Poor working conditions. Missing wages. Lack of overtime. Privacy breaches. The stories are legion. The amount of money Bezos has made off the back of the pandemic without giving back to his employees is just obscene. Amazon aren’t going to become a benevolent employer overnight. And the government isn’t going to step in. And there are no replacements for unions on the horizon. So somebody has to step up. Your objections to unions, especially in regards to Amazon, just don’t make any sense.

I am a government employee and I work in IT. There are many parallel jobs in the private sector identical to my job, in fact I’ve done the exact same work in the private sector. And I’ve done this work non-union for other government organizations.

I get paid better, I get more benefits, and it’s really hard to fire me or lay me off. Not that the last bit should matter because they really like me where I’m at but it’s still nice to know.

My union is WSFE/AFSCME if you’re curious.

I’ve seen manufacturing go away thanks to unionizing so I don’t think it is 100% cut and dry.

I’ve seen state unions and teachers union all but bankrupt small towns. So not all rosy either. I also remember well the godawful mess when the unions had the power in the 70s.

To me we need a balance of power between the Unions and big corporations. So many stupid rules with the Communication Union at AT&T & Verizon that it is ridiculous.

Meanwhile, corporations have gotten completely out of control now and with little to no accountability. But I would hate to see Amazon get fucked up by unionization. It has a business model that is fantastic for the consumer at least.

So where is the happy medium?


I feel like I should add, I was a Programmer Analyst that overwhelmingly worked for small manufacturing places. I saw companies unionize and that was the straw that sent the manufacturing overseas or to Mexico.

Last time I had a Union Type job was as an HVAC mechanic a long time ago. If we had unionized, we would probably have been outsourced.

Yeah unions aren’t perfect. I’m not going to say that there is no downside to them. But for the most part they make things better for their members. They might make things worse for people outside of the unions, depending on the situation, often unfairly.

Sure. But it kind of sucks for their zillion employees. Or at least a significant percentage of them, probably a majority (obviously, we’re not talking about management here).

As for how wonderful Amazon is for the consumer, to each their own. They don’t offer me anything particularly compelling.

Selection, speed, easy returns when needed. Superfast delivery. Especially during the Pandemic they’ve been invaluable for reduce the need to go to stores. They’re also a pretty bargain more often than not.

Not sure if I completely buy how sucky it is for their employees than other warehouse and retail jobs.

…is that really the standard for comparison here?