
Amazon fires employees who supported “yellow vest” blockades of Amazon sites - zoobab
https://www.francetvinfo.fr/economie/transports/gilets-jaunes/amazon-licencie-des-salaries-qui-ont-affiche-leur-soutien-aux-gilets-jaunes_3174425.html
======
entity345
Not because they supported the Yellow Vests, as anyone is entitled to support
an union or political party.

They got sacked because they supported (on social media) the blocking of
Amazon sites and warehouses. My understanding of French law is that such
actions are illegal to begin with and, obviously, a breach of your duties
towards your employer.

The title of the article (in French) is explicit.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
_My understanding of French law is that such actions are illegal to begin with
and, obviously, a breach of your duties towards your employer._

these people aren't part of being at the forefront of automation-innovation
but are victims of it. If Amazon wouldn't have killed the bookstore and retail
sector in large parts of rural France (and Europe), these employees wouldn't
be working for Amazon. They work there because companies like Amazon fail to
pay their taxes and are proprietary-algorithms which have drained all humanity
and social cohesion (Uber, AirBNB et al).

Although I don't blame Amazon alone in this (companies like this are a symptom
not the cause of our Capitalistic Technological Society, but I think whether
this is illegal or not is beside the point and we'd be better off listening to
their pain instead of siding with "the law". The Gilets Jaunes being called by
the French state "Illegal" are a good example of why this form of protests
works and drives home the message to these corporate overlords. Even an
article like this fuels some rage during the coming _" Act-XYZ"_ IMO the
language of money is the only language these people/companies understand.

A shame they didn't think of better opsec for organizing this. Use a burner
phone use signal and not some facebook account with your real name to spread
the message. This is exactly how they'll get busted by their nanny-state and
why the nanny-state is able to use language that otherwise is reserved for
"terrorists" or threats to "civil order". Macron, the minister of interior,
and their oligarch friends from Rothschild are the real crooks ... and unlike
the protestors that risk losing their jobs, or their eyes from the police
aggressive use of rubber bullets ("fireballs") and who have actual _" skin in
the game"_.

My point is that the law must change and these companies should be taxed
accordingly so that the Precariat is lifted out of their precarious position.
Unless this changes I fear that the only way forward is more protests (and
violence).

~~~
gtirloni
It's very simple to validate your hypothesis: if this was a small French shop
and its 2-3 employees were campaigning on social media for people to block
access to the shop, could the owner fire them for the same reason? Would it be
imoral as well?

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
your validation perhaps ignores that a small french shop, being campaigned
against by 2-3 people would never reach this scale?

~~~
gtirloni
Why does scale change the dynamics in this situation? I specifically used the
exact same situation that happened with Amazon against a smaller shop. Is it
or is it not imoral for the small shop owner to fire those employees?

~~~
PavlovsCat
> I specifically used the exact same situation that happened with Amazon
> against a smaller shop.

No, you left all the important details out. _Why_ are the 2-3 employees of
this hypothetical small shop campaigning to block it? That matters.

------
csunbird
If only everyone in the HN were able to read/speak french.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Seriously? Browsers will offer to translate it for you.

~~~
csunbird
It will not be a correct translation unfortunately, as discussed in the a
parent comment above, the even the title seems to be not translated correctly.

------
youdontknowtho
Amazon will lash out at labor where possible. If there is some legal basis for
it in France, they will claim that as cover. Pretending that this is some
principled legal stance is naive.

It's an exercise of power that all of you should hope is never directed at you
because, as this story illustrates, you will lose.

The thing I find amazing is how so many people who aren't, and will never be,
a part of the capitalist class actually see themselves as part of it. It's
interesting.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
_I find amazing is how so many people who aren 't, and will never be, a part
of the capitalist class actually see themselves as part of it._

it has puzzled me for years too. Jacques Ellul sheds some light on this in
"The Technological Society". If you consider reading it then it helps to have
read Charles Dickens "Hard Times" to get a feel of what he talks about when
speaking of the displacement of peasant communities in Victorian times. We see
the same thing in China (and every "emerging economy") and seem to accept it
(maybe due to our incredible ability to engage in "doublethink") as just being
the normal part of "progress".

------
patrickg_zill
The yellow vest movement has been tragically under-covered by the US media.
Perhaps they don't want the proles in the US to get any ideas...

~~~
rb666
Americans actually have something to protest about, French is comparatively
speaking a social mecca. I am missing out any sort of realism from these
yellow vests. Climate change is coming, organizing months of protests about
your car fuel costs is shortsighted to say the least.

~~~
fenga
Hello, I am french and I continuously have to repeat that he situation has
nothing to do with climate.

Long post warning, TL;DR at the bottom.

While it first started because of a tax on gas, it's not the tax per se that
lead to the protest, but the fact that this tax was put in place to compensate
the elimination of a tax on "fortune".

The whole protest is now kind of a clusterfuck of demands, but most of them
are around 2 themes : \- Fiscal injustice \- Our model of democracy

Fiscal injustice: Pretty much every french feels like the high level of taxes
we pay does not end up where we want nor where it is useful. It is not really
that we want less taxes, but that we want them used intelligently. Our
education system gets worse and worse every year because of budget cuts. Our
healthcare system gets worse and worse every year because of budget cuts. Our
justice system gets worse and worse every year because of budget cuts. Our
retirement and social protection in global get worse and worse because of
budget cuts.

Meanwhile, we get more taxes but nobody can really see where it goes.

On top of that, our government privatize what was once the best services that
could show to the world. We had world class train infrastructure at a low
price. That didn't go well because of budget cuts that lead to reduction of
maintenance, that lead to the classic late trains that we are now famous for.
Our small train lines are getting abandoned, leading to whole part of the
territory being cut out of the rest of France (in a railway point of view).
Our petrol foraging was state based and profitable, so was our electricity
infrastructure management and production, engineering and such. Everything is
getting sold for quick cash, when it was either profitable or at least a
public service that was in a natural monopoly that will never be correctly
managed under private ownership. The most famous example are our highways.
State funded, then the exploitation was privatized. It's now expensive as
hell, generates 60% of profit that ends up in the pocket of private companies
instead of the state.

On top of this kind of economical ultra-liberalism that we're all culturally
against pretty much in France, and empirically against if I can say, we have
an ideological problem with the decisions that he government takes since
decades. To make it short, it's always gifts to public companies or ultra-rich
people, while continuing piling up taxes on the poor. Macron, because it's
pretty recent, gave what was called the CICE to french companies, that cost
around 60 Billions to the economy, at the condition that they were going to
use it by job creation, and overall "trickling it down". The president of the
french corporate lobby was fiercely wearing "1 million jobs" badge during the
different discussions, because he promised 1 million new jobs at the end of
the CICE. The last studies showed that the actual result of the CICE was a
creation of between 0 and 250 000 jobs, and that's the generous margin.

While I could continue examples of stupid economic politics in favor of a few
loaded people, I'll stop this example here to go on another rant concerning
our democratic system.

French democratic system is representative. That means that people vote for
other people to represent them in the government. And don't really take parts
themselves in the democratic process. Experience has shown that this was
indeed an aristocracy, since all representatives don't come from the people,
because campaigning for a place in parliament is expensive, and you also need
a network and friends in high places, so most of them come from the same
class.

That leads to people taking decisions that are completely ignoring real life
of common people, not measuring any impact, while also generously serving
their own personal interests. A whole lot of corruption keeps getting revealed
day after day, since decades, and people can't really do anything about. Even
in good faith, these people didn't evolve in their life with "normal" people.
They stayed in their own social class, and can't relate to the life of people
living with minimal wage, or living in the countryside, or just having a
normal job having a median pay. They are part, for most of them, of the 1%,
and can't really realize what normal people go through because they're the
product of their environment.

We also have a president that has a strong role in the politic of our country.
The election system that we have is, in my opinion, one of the worse. It has 2
elections, a first one where you vote for the candidate you feel the closest
to, and a second one that plays between the 2 most voted of the first vote.
Let's be honest, while it's not as bad as the bipartisan system that the US
has, it's not that far off. You get spread votes in the first vote, usually
best you can get is 25% of votes in first turn, which is what happened in our
last elections. We had 4 to 5 candidates with really close results in term of
votes. Second elections, you get Macron vs Le Pen which is the far right
leader in french politics. People, in France, pretty much never vote "for" a
candidate in the second election, but "against" one. In this case, most people
voted against the extreme right, but not really because they liked Macron.

So now we get a president that something around 25% of voters wanted
(abstention because people don't really believe in our system is kind of high
also), and that is also applying a program that is far much on the right side
of the compromise he was publicly announcing that he was going to make.

People feel betrayed, feel that their opinion don't matter, and feel that the
people that can change that have a conflict of interest in changing these
matters. This is why it is the 12th week that people are in the street. This
is also why most protester are also converging towards a common cause: the RIC
(Citizen Initiative Referendum), that could make citizens able to propose
laws, abrogate laws, revoke politicians or modify our constitution. All
changes that people want could be proposed using this new tool, which is why a
change in our system is now the first thing that people request during the
protest.

I won't talk about he media propaganda around this event, or the repression of
the protests in this post becuase this is yet another sensitive subject, but I
wanted to provide at least a bit more context.

TL;DR : No, this is not about gas price. This is about fiscal injustice, and a
poor representation of the interest of the citizens in our current political
system and/or corruption. Also Macron keeps insulting the common people so
that doesn't help I guess.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Thank you for writing all that out. It gives an insight that's never made it
to the UK media, despite them explaining it wasn't just about fuel, and giving
hints of the deeper issues.

It's surprisingly good match with the things we in the UK are pissed at with
regard to politics, politicians, neoliberalism, fairness etc. Even partially
explained Brexit (people in the regions that didn't benefit from London's
constant rise felt betrayed, neglected and their opinion didn't matter). I'm
disappointed we don't protest as well as our neighbours. ;)

~~~
fenga
First, I want to say that I'm trying really hard to stay factual and not
inject my own opinion in these posts as I think it's not serving the right
goal, as far as informing goes. Some of this can still be opinionated, because
I'm only human, so keep that in mind.

My post is just a small part of the issues that are arising here, but yes, it
is what we see pretty much everywhere.

UK first with Brexit, which followed the same schema from what I could gather,
where everyone and especially the media were focusing on the immigration issue
when it was barely part of the demands, and the real problem was people
feeling like spectators of a game that corrupt politics are playing with the
industries and lobbies to serve their own interests, while the price is paid
by the common people.

We see that these kind of protests are arising everywhere in Europe, for
example in UK, France, Hungary, Romania, Italy, Spain and it seems that
Portugal too (?).

That's a reaction to a global reject of the neo/ultraliberalism and
globalization in my opinion. There is also a more and more common reject of
"Europe" as its current state, feeling that it is far too intruding into the
legislative aspect of member countries, and pushing an agenda that more people
don't adhere to.

This is why I think that we're seeing more and more eurosceptic movements
rising, and why they become more popular with time. We're already not happy
with our governments, and on top of that we have to apply laws and directives
that are coming from people we didn't even vote for and that are superseding
our own laws. I understand that it can be seen as a direct affront on
democracy.

In my opinion (this time), this is nothing more than another class fight,
where the common people are rebelling against people that own most of the
money, most of the companies, and most of the power. This time, because of
globalization, it tends to get a bit more international, so we'll see how it
goes.

------
arcaster
This is why keeping your political and professional life separate is
important. Speaking out against your employer is juvenile, although if they
hadn't spoken out against their employer it's more of a grey area - but having
a high paying tech job is not a right it's a privilege.

~~~
ionised
> Speaking out against your employer is juvenile

Why?

~~~
arcaster
Doing this and not expecting to get fired is idiotic... Seems rhetorical to
me...

A tech job isn't a right it's a privilege. Plenty of other people would love
to have a tech job at <insert big tech co. here> and have enough sense to not
tweet "fuck <insert big tech co. here> on twitter...

~~~
ionised
I asked why speaking out against your employer was juvenile.

I didn't ask why expecting not to get fired for it was not juvenile (though it
is and the law protects me from stupid reactionary shit like that in my
country).

------
etaerc
In my country you are by law required to be loyal to your company even if its
doing illegal or unfair things, even after you quit. So if you just get fired
and not get sued for damages that would be considered a good result here. And
I live in a country with relatively good employee laws.

~~~
sgift
> by law required to be loyal to your company even if its doing illegal or
> unfair things > And I live in a country with relatively good employee laws.

No, you don't. These two quotes cannot be true at the same time, especially
for the illegal part.

~~~
etaerc
welcome to the real world, bro.

