Amazon and Union-Busting

The BBQ Pit
101

I hope you don’t believe you’re reading this from my posts. While I am anti-union, I have no problem with workers looking out for themselves. When Its been me I’ve quit jobs that sucks and found other work so have other people I know. I’m for workplace safety regulations and the government regulation of workers rights like California’s meal break requirements. Unions are not the best method to achieve those ends and their primary purpose is to enrich their leadership.

Vote Dem. Support workers’ rights. Do it in a way that improves everyone’s life and do it without funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into the pockets of union leadership.

102

I think you are reading a lot into what was in the OP with regard to prioritizing and focus. I disagree with your interpretation, which seems more a dodge than anything else.

103

How the fuck is a worker supposed to look out for him/herself without an organization to back him up?

Do you think that if a worker walks into the fulfillment center manager’s office in the Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama and says “hey, I can’t possibly pick 300 items an hour off the shelves, get them to the packing department, and still find time to take a leak once in a while – why don’t we cut that number by 25%,” or “a large, heavy box fell on my head and I’m dizzy and puking, but the facility nurse says I’m fine to go back to work, but I want to go to the ER and get checked out,” the response is going to be anything other than “hit the pavement”?

Seriously?

104

Possibly. There are lots of examples of skilled labor making large amounts of money. In general, the auto assemblers are skilled labor. Its not like there is a union in the oil field and yet their employees make a ton of money. It’s also less likely someone in Georgia is going to pack up and move to Michigan for a job so there is less direct competition. Wages and compensation are sticky it is entirely possible that wages wouldn’t fall if UAW disappeared tomorrow.

105

A recent Consumer Reports rated approx. 20 major automakers on reliability. Tesla came in 2nd to last, with dismal reliability ratings. This is somewhat tangential to the thread, but I think some would argue with your statement about “quality vehicles.” That may have nothing to do with union/non-union status, but they’ve definitely had quality problems and it undercuts your quote above.

106

Not really. I’m just not that good a writer. But Atamasama, at least in that post, has a pretty good handle on my thinking.

107

Because of a union I was paid very well and had excellent health care. I was also able to retire with a pension unlike most folks. You obviously have never had a union job.

108

I don’t know what state you’re in - but in mine, that 15 minute break and the lunch breaks are legal requirements (as they are in other states that I know about). So it sounds like the union shops are actually following the law while the non-union are ignoring it and who knows what other safety rules.

Your very anecdote says that regulations aren’t enough.

109

Thanks for the clarification.

110

Sure. It happens every day. Unless you think that workplace accidents are only reported and treated in union shops. I’ve had people injured on the job and we treated them and got them the help that they needed and had a job waiting for them then they came back. Even gave them light duty work while they were recovering so they could still get paid.

As for the I’m not capable of doing the job complaint, no I would expect the employee to be fired for not doing their job or to quite because they aren’t good at their job. That also happens every day. Only in a union would someone who couldn’t do their job expect to keep getting paid for doing it poorly. As for how I would expect the incapable employee to look out for themselves they would quit (or be fired) and find a job they were capable of doing rather than drawing a paycheck for doing shitty work.

111

And guess why those are written into law, where they are? It’s because unions advocated for them.

112

Yup, where was toyota on that list?

113

I disagree. The reason businesses put so much effort into telling people that unions are ineffective is because they know the exact opposite is true; unions are the most effective means for workers to get benefits. So businesses have a vested interest in steering workers away from unions.

114

Well, here in Colorado you’re only required 2 breaks for over 6 hours per day and up to 10 hours so its certainly not over every 2 hours and you only get 30 minutes for lunch. No one is breaking any laws so enforcement isn’t an issue.

115

Most auto assemblers are not that skilled, relative to other jobs. Any random person can do it with minimal training. Auto workers are typically hired out of high school and don’t need years of training to get up to snuff.

Part of the problem with being an auto worker is that it requires minimal training. So once you’ve worked at a given job for 15 years, the company can replace you with a new guy out of high school fairly easily but it’s very very hard for you to start all over in a new field. In general, as a person spends more and more time in a given field, it tends to give the upper hand to the employer, for this reason.

Oil workers get paid as much as they do in part because it’s a boom-and-bust cycle, so they get richly rewarded during the boom cycles and get laid off in the bust cycles.

116

Yep the 10% of the country that are in unions are why those are still laws. Totally not the other 41% of non-union people who had to vote for it too.

117

Fair enough. I had no idea that auto workers weren’t skilled positions. going back to the tesla problem @ShadowFacts brought up a lot of the articles I’ve seen have blamed it on their problems with a low skill workforce.

I’m very aware of the boom and bust of the oil field but that is only part of it. Even today as part of a fairly long bust You can get a job with no experience on a rig paying $22/hour with fairly easy promotions to $26/hr.

118

IIRC, they were close to the top, around 5-6. Mazda was #1. I’ll have to go dig up the magazine to check.

119

I was a National Union official working for a specific group of staff in UK prisons.

The only complaints I ever got from members was that the Union wasn’t radical enough, and was reluctant to take industrial action, and from non-members they would complain at the small cost of membership and also claim ‘unions don’t do nothing for me’

All of which misses out the entire point that the union is not some remote organisation that comes in and acts as an enforcer (usually) The union IS THE MEMBERS, if the union is weak its because the members want someone else to do it all for them - usually.

I found that when I went to a particualr site to deal with an issue it was always far more effective if the local branch was vocal and effective - as a National Official my real effectiveness always came from the members support.

I’ve had to deal with deaths in custody, assaults on staff, bereavements, serious personal injury, serious health issues, loads of sickness and disability cases, lots of discrimination bullying and favouritism

All that had to be done part time, in my union we are required to work 50% direct for the employer which means we have a real handle on the job itself.

It is fair to say that on personal cases, the union rep will lose out in ther representations more often than winning, maybe 2 or 3 to one - but this really speaks about inequality of power, and a certain number os cases that were frankly completely impossible to win.

The good official picks and chooses what battles to fight and when, and in a large organisation what you find is that errant managers get moved on every few years, so you polish up your past personal cases and resubmit them and you usually get a good return since incoming managers will often concede your points.

Although I used to lose more cases than I won, fact is that if you are not a union member, you will lose every single case, your managers will ride over you - its not hard to understand.

I’ve seen cases where I have worked directly with managers to impose contractual discpline on members, its about understanding what the managers need and how you can help them get there.

Union work ought not to be about conflict, it should be about common interests, often mangers try to make unsustainable changes without fully understanding the effects. Sometimes you let the manager fall flat on their face and then try to offer a solution, my particular union also has a lot of managers as members - and that helps a lot.

Amazon simply cannot deny union membership to its employees in UK or EU becuase it fallys under the EU declaration of Human Rights - The right to freedom of association.

I don’t understand that the US claims to be the land of freedom and yet allows employers to deny their employees the right to meet and associoate with whom they choose - as in non-criminal associations. Seems to me to be an assault on freedom itself if you are penalised just for the company you keep.

120

Your comment on offering injured workers support is as if your company being generous and giving it away - no it isn’t, that support is actually a legal requirement, and it would not be there at all but for campaigns run by workers representatives who lobbied their political representatives.

The stereotype of the union keeping people in post who are not capable of doing theiur job is a gross distortion.
Here is the reality, no worker wants to have a colleague with them who is incapable, no union rep wants incompetents in a facility, who wants to carry dead weight? Whilst managegers might not want the cost, its the colleague who has to try make up the shortfall - so no union should ever try to keep incompetents in place.

What does happen is that managers are often incompetent at operating their own HR policies, I have personally had to guide managers to getting rid of such useless liabilities - although I’ve had to do that in a discreet way. What you get are managers who do not maintain records, run around making idle threats, fail to monitor staff performance or hire the wrong people for the job in the first place.

A good union will always try to ensure that the recruitment process is open, fair and leads to the hiring of competent staff, after all its the shop floor person who is most likely to be injured by the actions/inactions of incompetent colleagues - all too often managers fail to see past the shiny facade of the seemingly attractive new recruit, and its the managers who hire the wrong people - it is never in the interests of union members to have useless colleagues.