Indeed, there have been some cases of workers voluntarily dissolving their unions when working conditions improve significantly.
Funny - treat your employees decently and there is generally a lot less screaming all around.
I’ve worked in non-union jobs all my life, but that hasn’t always been better. In fact, there are a couple threads on this forum started by me that illustrate just how bad things can get for the lone worker on their own.
^ This.
Unions can act to balance the power of mega-corporations.
Depends entirely on the employer.
I work retail at a glorified grocery store. I’ve gotten a pay raise, bonuses, hazard pay, full-salary leave for the three weeks I was out with covid. I get medical coverage, vision, dental, life insurance, and some other perks. I get a wage I can not only live on but build some savings and afford a few luxuries from time to time. It’s not perfect, but it’s not a bad gig, either.
It also helps that currently I work under good managers - that is a problem, I’ve had a couple bad ones at the company but I was able to move sideways to another area that worked out better for me.
Other retail… it can be a nightmare. My coworkers who came over from Walmart, for example, have some horrible stories. Including our current Store Director, who used to do that same job for Walmart and has nothing good to say about them.
Do the conditions Amazon workers have to put up with magically change if other warehouse workers either have it better, or worse? Of course they don’t. So why do we need to compare? Lets pretend they have better conditions than other warehouse workers. Do they stop fighting for even better and fairer conditions? And lets pretend they have worse conditions. Shouldn’t unions be allowed collectively negotiate on behalf of the workers?
If we make conditions at other warehouses a pre-requisite to action then you are condemning Amazon workers to the shit-show they have now.
…Jeff Bezos added 70 billion dollars to his net worth during the pandemic. Its now 185 billion. He more than doubled his net worth. During. A. Pandemic. In the magnitude of billions.
It is easy to see how they could have been invaluable during a pandemic. But wouldn’t you agree that Amazon has scope right now to give a bit back to the workers? Just a tad?
He is hoarding billions of dollars in wealth. Not millions. BILLIONS. And he’s doing that while forcing workers into megacycle shifts to “boost efficiency.”
This is Grade A super villain shit. As in Lex Luthor would do this and not-bat-an-eyelid shit. They are making billions of dollars. Money hand-over-fist. They literally don’t have to do this. Why would you defend this?
If you’re advocating that a single business be boycotted before any other, then it is important to establish how that business is worse than the others. That is why it matters.
…I’m not advocating a boycott, and the OP didn’t explicitly call for a boycott either. But even if we did, What_Exit isn’t calling to establish what businesses are worse, they’ve decided that there just probably are businesses that are worse and has left it at that.
But even if there was a call to find “worse businesses” than Amazon that really doesn’t matter. The existence of a “worse” business doesn’t mean we can’t also boycott the not-worse business. We can do multiple things. If you want to add more businesses to the (non-existent) call for a boycott) then you are welcome too.
I think it’s important for people to realize that businesses exist solely to make money for their owners. Not to provide safe, fulfilling and lucrative job opportunities to the workforce. Not to provide wholesome, high value products and services to customers. To make money for their owners. That’s it, full stop.
Expecting more from companies than highly focused efforts to increase shareholder value makes you the frog in the frog & scorpion tale. The scorpion in that tale isn’t evil or stupid or the villain, it’s just his nature.
This reality is why unions and government regulation are so damned important. Someone has to be out there demanding the decent things, because the companies won’t do it themselves.
So, you and all your friends are under the impression that Shop A, which charges the customer 2-3x Shop B, and compensates employees at a lower rate than Shop B, is that way because of unions? How does that work? Where does that extra 100-200% of gross revenue go, and how is the union responsible for it?
THere should be, of course. But until there are, doesn’t it seem like a good idea for workers to organize to protect themselves from that kind of thing?
They’re probably not, but because they are the among the biggest and most influential companies on the planet, they’re the ideal place to start fighting for fair wages, safe work places, and so forth. I think they’re the perfect villain to pick this fight with.
That’s just a lousy shift setup. There were (are?) companies that refuse to even confirm what shifts a person is working until the employee calls in in the morning to find out if they’re expected to work. Their employees literally do not know what days they’re working or how many hours they’ll get this week, if they’re working mornings or evenings, they just have to have their entire week “open”. I think it’s called Just in Time or On Call scheduling.
NY tried to implement a law to prevent this, but it isn’t a one size fits all problem, they likely would have caused problems for legitimate (non-villainous) scheduling in the effort.
I’m a mid-level IT person at a mega-law firm (well over 2,000 lawyers, offices around the world).
My firm tried a similar thing for a while. All the IT staffers involved in direct support (i.e., who had to have contact with the rest of the firm on a regular basis) were to be forced into shifts that aligned with business hours around the world, regardless of in which office that person worked.
The policy was called “follow the sun” or some bullshit like that.
It never really took off, mainly because the manager proposing it and trying to implement it left the firm for medical reasons, and nobody else was especially enthusiastic about it. He had a bad heart attack, for which I’m sorry, of course. But that policy would have been a disaster for anyone who, say, worked in the New York office, where he wanted to push everyone on to a workday starting at 2:00 pm, if I remember right (this was a few years ago).
It wasn’t a “megacycle.” The workday would still be eight hours long. But I think the only offices that would have been left on a regular 9:00 to 5:00 workday basis would have been the California offices (where his office was, of course).
Support staff in huge law firms would unfortunately be extremely difficult to organize, not least because those law firms have large labor and employment law departments (which don’t represent labor, of course – rather owners and managers) full of very smart (and very expensive) lawyers with extensive experience in fending off organization attempts. There are other obstacles to organization, including what I would expect to be significant resistance from some support staffers, so I don’t expect anything to happen any time soon.
Times are strange. I grew up in a household with an extremely liberal mother. She was a New York City schoolteacher, UFT member, and back then a UFT card might as well have been a CPUSA card. I remember her campaigning for Gene McCarthy, protesting the war in Vietnam, boycotting grapes (anyone remember Cesar Chavez and the UFW?), and so on, all my life.
Her father was a blue-collar worker. He was an immigrant whose education ended at the sixth grade. He was old enough to have fought (physically) for the right to organize. And because of the success of those organizing efforts, he was able to be a homeowner, send his four children to college, own a good car, retire with a pension, and live a secure, middle-class life.
His daughter, my mother, was a typical liberal of her time, as liberalism would have been defined then. The idea of being a liberal, or a progressive, and not being always on the side of labor, of always seeking to be allied with labor, would have been incomprehensible to her.
From what they’ve said it takes the union guys 2 - 3 times longer to do the work due to union rules. We pay a flat rate for the piece so the independent shop can pay their employees more since they do more work and charge their customers less since it doesn’t take as long.
