
Amazon's Aggressive Anti-Union Tactics Revealed in Leaked Video - amaccuish
https://gizmodo.com/amazons-aggressive-anti-union-tactics-revealed-in-leake-1829305201
======
rekshaw
Say what you will about Amazon, but what I did not appreciate about that
Gizmodo article is they are misleading on purpose. They put a massive
screenshot of the video showing a "TIPS" acronym that apparently stands for
Threat, Investigate, Promise, Spy. Then in tiny grey text the caption states
its a screenshot of what the company does NOT advise Management doing.
Obviously very few will read that tiny caption. Sensationalism at its best.

~~~
xg15
And Amazon is so concerned that its managers could spontaneously forget not to
do any of those four specific things that they made this handy acronym to help
them remember. /s

But this image appears at about the middle of the article, after the fold - so
whatever the rationale, it wouldn't be particularly useful clickbait.

The rest of the article is pretty unambigous though. The expectation that
employees should focus more on "customer obsession" than their own wage is
rather funny. The "warning signs" and general language is less so.

I'm not sure how the legal situation in the US is - but the quotes seem like
they very carefully try to stay out of legal trouble, but go as far far as
they can in anti-union tactics otherwise.

------
tempaccount140
I'm glad I live in the country where these tactics would be completely
illegal, as workers have the lawful right to unionize in businesses that have
a certain number of employees. In fact there are agreements, per industrial
branch, large corporations have to follow regarding unions.

In US even workers who would benefit from unionizing think unions are a bad
thing. This behavior is definitely a vestige of puritan morals. I guess that's
why the richest men in the world are american as well.

~~~
saas_sam
If the best argument you can fathom for being anti-union is "puritan morals" I
highly recommend you spend 5 minutes researching the issue. This is a good
rule of thumb for ANY time you are unable to come up with a reasonable
argument against your position. I mean, have you EVER changed your mind about
an important issue? Were you being stupid or irrational EVERY time you did
that, or are some issues legitimately tough to think through and both sides
have positions grounded in a reasonable assessment of the available evidence,
just perhaps differing weights on that evidence?

Whenever someone expresses a strong opinion to me, this is a simple test:
"What's the best argument you've heard against your position?" If they can't
come up with anything, or resort to an exaggerated caricature of their
opponents, I know they are merely being emotional and cannot be trusted, at
least on that particular issue.

~~~
xg15
So what's the better arguments then?

~~~
dx87
Being forced to keep around dead weight because they can't be fired, the
potential for an entire company to be shutdown due to a union strike, being
forced to only hire individuals who are part of a union, regardless of whether
they're the most qualified. For workers, they may be fine with the pay and
benefits provided by the company, but get forced to pay union dues and deal
with strikes and walkouts because union leadership says so.

I'm generally in favor of unions, but there are enough downsides and examples
of corrupt unions that they can't be considered objectively good. Also, not
all companies treat non-union employees the same as walmart and amazon. My
father works for a large multi-national company that is mixed union and non-
union, and the non-union employees get paid more than the union employees, and
get equivalent raises whenever the union employees get one. Money and benefits
for employees aren't really a huge issue for the company, but the threat of a
union organized shutdown is, so they pay basically reward the non-union
employees for not having an implicit threat of shutting down if they don't get
their way.

~~~
garyfirestorm
i work in one of the big 3 car companies. i deal with union employees on a
regular basis. there's a reason why the american big 3's are not being able to
compete the japanese and koreans. it takes more than an hour to undo a screw
here, because the union employee is having a coffee/cigarette/....break, and i
am not allowed to undo that screw because of the 'law'. i am for unions, but
lack of accountability makes them do whatever they want and not do anything in
time. i think i will write a blog post soon.

edit - also these are the same guys who call themselves patriots and proudly
support trump.

~~~
KirinDave
So the JAW doesn't exist? Toyota encodes many union mechanisms directly into
the corporate structure. The government itself makes it very hard to fire
factory workers and backs pensions.

So if you're looking for a justification for this, it seems like Unions are
more of a scapegoat than a root cause. It seems as unfair to blame their union
affiliation as it does to suggest that it's because they're Trump voters.

Also worth noting that Tesla, an anti-union shop by all accounts, actually
straight up missed their Model 3 targets while union shops (notably Chevrolet,
but also Nissan) managed to get mass-market-priced full EVs on the road with
good marks for quality, safety and performance within their price category. So
maybe it's just America itself that has the issues?

~~~
garyfirestorm
I'm not blaming the existence of union for these issues. The lack of
accountability is my complaint. If you tell any employee that no matter what
they do, their job is protected, you'll find them laughing at you when you
assign them a task. If you look at Ford, they had to kill majority of their
sedans because of the development costs and profitability. I live in this
environment and I see daily tasks that take minutes take hours to get done.
Bigger projects which takes weeks or months get dragged all the time. People
still get paid and there are no consequences if objectives are not met.
Considering these points, the management is forced to drop projects, kill
certain cars or keep using old stuff (not fuel efficient). I do sincerely
accept that the union is not the only bottle neck and sometimes we see wastage
from upper management, but the magnitude of impact the union attitude has on
work environment and productivity is considerably high.

Tesla is altogether a different story. They just don't have the expertise to
make things happen. The processes that the big 3 car companies have in place,
developed over time, are not exact science. Putting a car together is a
complex task. I definitely am a big fan of Tesla and love the way they do
things, they have grossly underestimated the complexity of building a car.

~~~
KirinDave
> The lack of accountability is my complaint. If you tell any employee that no
> matter what they do, their job is protected, you'll find them laughing at
> you when you assign them a task.

Well, you attribute this directly to Unions... so maybe there is a different
kind of union that exists in a country with more social services that doesn't
cause this. And that might explain the JAL. But like I said, Unions often have
formal processes for people who aren't doing their work. Now, for folks who
simply aren't doing a good job, you have to have an opinion about what must be
done.

> I live in this environment and I see daily tasks that take minutes take
> hours to get done. Bigger projects which takes weeks or months get dragged
> all the time

I mean, I've worked at big non-union companies and I feel like I saw exactly
that phenomenon as well. Perhaps that's more a feature of ineffective
organizations?

> People still get paid and there are no consequences if objectives are not
> met. ... the magnitude of impact the union attitude has on work environment
> and productivity is considerably high.

Personally (perhaps I'm naive here?) I think if an organization that can't
align and inform performance incentives with its workforce, be they union or
not, is the result of a workplace and senior management problem. I know bad
apple employees do exist, and they can be painful to work with and around. But
I just have a hard time believing that it's a significant enough fraction to
actually tank the company with no recourse.

> I definitely am a big fan of Tesla and love the way they do things, they
> have grossly underestimated the complexity of building a car.

I agree, but I think it's more that they don't get how to make good processes
and align these over a large workforce, and a failure properly incentivize the
workforce. When they were at a more artistic scale and the roadster's first-
run bugs were worked out, they made fantastic cars for the most part.

------
mywittyname
This is not unique to Amazon. It's standard practice at most non-union places
for training materials to emphasize the dangers of unionization and to inform
management how to identify and deal with threats effectively.

If only companies were this diligent about preventing workplace harassment.

~~~
jimmy1
There are already laws surrounding workplace harassment.

~~~
mywittyname
My point is companies do the minimum required by law to prevent harassment and
will often systematically impede the victim in their attempts at recourse.

If that same person was being bullied into unionizing, the company would solve
the problem in an hour.

------
devoply
Someone needs to create a unionize Amazon website along with a social media
presence.

