Like the unions didn't already destroy America's auto industry. Now they want to do the same to the tech industry. Supervisors can't talk directly with union workers, they have to go through unions first. Who on earth think this is a good idea? It kills productivity and I'm not even talking about the foreseeable protests down the road. Unions don't work in tech business where you need to break rules and move fast. It kills the big corporations in a few years and subsequently kills the entire job market that it was meant to protect. Ask the residents in Detroit. Now they have no jobs, or jobs with half of the pay before. Happy now?
Dude, we tried this. Now people in the US can't have reasonable arguments in public without wanting to kill one another. People somehow gets "cancelled" now, because some 20s-something wanted to "move fast" without thinking of the consequences.
Maybe it's time we try "slow and steady" and see if the world actually ends up more equal and diverse, instead of the opposite, which is the direction we're heading now.
And for the record, if unions hadn't existed, you'd still be slaving away 6 days a week (minimum), 10 hours a day, your children would be working instead of going to school and everything labor related would certainly have been worse. Worth considering since you seem to hold the opinion that "all unions are bad" just because the US is shitty at creating and maintaining unions.
> if unions hadn't existed, you'd still be slaving away 6 days a week (minimum), 10 hours a day, your children would be working instead of going to school and everything labor related would certainly have been worse.
This is not historically accurate.
For example, Henry Ford actually increased wages (without worrying about unions, and he had literal enforcers to bully people.)
He claimed to be doing it for altruistic reasons, and so that workers in his plants could afford a Ford, but the real reason was because he had to, because people could choose to work elsewhere, even if they had to move. Also, he attracted people from other cities and states to move to Dearborn.
This is the real antidote to union-busting and union-towns. Any job that basically needs a person can always be paid minimally, but multiple employers have to compete for that person; perhaps an alternative job is far away, but mobile people will always be worth more because their market is larger. It was a bit different 150 years ago during the Industrial Revolution, because of information asymmetry and the cost of relocation.
So why form a union? Just get a better job from an employer that literally values you more. It's not like these companies don't exist.
"This is not historically accurate." and then uses one story about Henry Ford as evidence, really?
Read up a bit on unions and their impact on the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union), and come back with more stories about how a business owner raised his employees salaries so therefore unions are not useful where salaries are not being raised...
For the kill each other, it's really a deep deep issue in education. Nothing to do with anything else really. You have to educate kids into a sort of national unity thinking.
I come from France, and we're not perfect, far from it. But I was raised, not so long ago, to tolerate very diverging opinions. I enjoy debating calmly with communists, nationalists, muslims or europeanists. As long as we agree France comes first, our little divergences second, I stay polite and agree to disagree. After all, they may be right, and I wrong, so I just discuss to gain perspective.
What I see in US debates is that everything seems so existential. Hearing someone disagree is so painful and deeply disturbing, on both sides (there seems to be only 2, another problem), that people I see debate seem to forget that end of the day, they and their descendants will have to live together forever. Better embrace the fact it's done and final, and start finding little ways to be nice about it.
A lot of this stems from the two-party system, which stems from the first-past-the-post voting system. While in France and elsewhere there is a lot of change in the political landscape (Macron's current party didn't exist 5 years ago), in the US parties are very deeply entrenched. This causes an "us vs them" situation, where people don't change sides ever, look at the other side with more than skepticism, and every issue quickly becomes partisan as half the population disagrees with the change merely because the other party brought it up.
While I'm sympathetic to the argument that the rise of social media has contributed to the absolute degeneration of public discourse, blaming social media as the cause rather than the means strikes me as particularly hollow when measured by previous historical periods of civil unrest. Whatever the actual causes--nascent technological catalysis, changing property relations or elite culture, or whatever the God's-eye picture of its real etiology--this phenomena is recurring throughout human history. Sometimes mobs (viz. mass-movements, factions, parties) form and mobs, like houses, cannot stand divided. Competing mobs become one mob or destroy each other.
Consider this letter from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Rutledge in 1797:
"The passions are too high at present to be cooled in our day. You and I have formerly seen warm debates and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other, and separate the business of the senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives cross the streets to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch their hat. This may do for young men, with whom passion is enjoiment. But it is afflicting to peaceable minds."^1
Or Jefferson's retrospective of the 1800 election:
"we suffered ourselves, as you so well expressed it, to be the passive subjects of public discussions. and these discussions, whether relating to men, measures, or opinions, were conducted by the parties with an animosity, a bitterness, and an indecency, which had never been exceeded. All the resources of reason, and of wrath, were exhausted by each party in support of its own, and to prostrate the adversary opinions. one was upbraided with recieving the Antifederalists, the other the old tories & refugees into their bosom. of this acrimony the public papers of the day exhibit ample testimony in the debates of Congress, of state legislatures, of stump-orators, in addresses, answers, and newspaper essays. and to these without question may be added, the private correspondence of individuals; and the less guarded in these, because not meant for the public eye, not restrained by the respect due to that; but poured forth from the overflowings of the heart into the bosom of a friend, as a momentary easement of our feelings. in this way, and in answers to addresses, you & I could indulge ourselves. we have probably done it, sometimes with warmth, often with prejudice, but always, as we believed, adhering to truth. I have not examined my letters of that day. I have no stomach to revive the memory of it’s feelings."^2
This is not unique to America or even to modernity. A broad reading of history shows that any human society, given enough time, will encounter periods when the stars align and there's a general degradation of civility, sometimes erupting in bloodshed, sometimes being remembered as a generally unpleasant time not to be spoken about.
The problems with American culture in particular being reduced to increasingly hostile and superficial tribal allegiances have antecedents dating back decades, well before AOL was even a thing.^4 The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1985 enabled one-sided echo chambers to emerge via all extant communications media (notable in particular is the emergence of conservative talk radio like Rush Limbaugh).^5
"The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been."^6
Thanks for your thoughtful reply! As I don't know much about the US, I thank you for linking those documents, will make good reading.
I agree that my first argument was hollow and I don't blame it all on social media. I guess the "social media" aspect of HN actually makes me sometimes rewrite my speech to make more impact than to be 100% expanded to explain my viewpoint, mostly to not bore people.
You seem to be confusing Amazon the dotcom, where smart people advance the state of the art of web infrastructure, and Amazon the parcel-sending concern, where the duration of restroom breaks of minimum-wage warehouse workers is aggressively monitored.
"Supervisors can't talk directly with union workers, they have to go through unions first."
Is this actually the case? Because this seems like a childish caricature of unions. Could you point me to examples where unions actually implemented this and why?
> Supervisors can't talk directly with union workers, they have to go through unions first.
I've never heard of this before. The idea that a supervisor cannot talk to a unionized employee at all is extreme, to say the least. Having the union there during disciplinary hearings? Sure. All meetings?
I know I shouldn't, but this is beautiful. You've taken every low-understanding drunk-uncle anti-union take and have written some true troll poetry.
This historical perspective is so shallow, and your understanding of the motivation of those involved is so one sided that it's hard to think of anything that might let some light in.
I'll try. Years ago Business owners so mistreated their workers that the workers decided to form unions. This was not easy, as nobody was really on the side of the workers. So it made it easy to bash their heads in. It took many years of many people risking and losing their lives and livelihoods until public support turned towards the strikers. Finally places like Ford had to negotiate rather than curbstomp[1].
This was a win. Rather than relying on the arbitrary benevolence of various ownerships, we codified the 40 hour workweek, overtime, vacation days and sick leave among other things.
Then WWII happened, and the US was the only industrialized nation that was left unscathed. That meant the world wanted to buy our products because for the most part, we were the only ones making products at all. This is the beginning and end of a lot of Americans understanding of our economy and our place in the world. It's why Reagan and Trump were successful with the "Let's / Make America Great Again" mantra.
Because we decided to kill ourselves to be anti-communist, we decided to have very favorable trade policies for places we were formerly at war with, like Japan. That meant we rolled out the red carpet for those cheap little imports. Unions had nothing to do with this.
US automakers did not take the foreign competition seriously. They were too busy trying to defend leaded gasoline and trying to destroy Ralph Nader's reputation because he suggested we have seatbelts. Unions had nothing to do with this either.
The 70's happened. The previously decimated world economies were rebuilt and ready to compete. Americans started to buy more stuff from overseas. Oil became scarce. Stupid self-owns by the US Auto manufacturers gave American cars a reputation for being shit. For one thing, they were so damn heavy that components would break faster. A heavy V8 has more stuff to fail than a little inline four. Again, Unions were not the ones designing the cars.
No one in Detroit blames the Unions. Except maybe historically illiterate managers and engineers. I know, I used carry their golf clubs and clean their boats. Everyone else typically blames NAFTA, consumers buying imports, and the management/ownership of the Big 3.
But here we are. Big companies can outsource. Private Equity can pillage. Agriculture and the meat industry can hire migrant workers with little impediment. But unions are bad because once in awhile a manager has to wait because of work-rules. Or every once in awhile a steward will get busted for corruption. Or "there's this guy who shows up drunk and they can't fire him." I know a drunk incompetent guy who can't get fired too. He makes $500k and is a nephew of a billionaire. Every charge in a unions-are-bad screed can usually be turned around right back at the management/ownership class.
...
This article was about the distribution side of Amazon. Not tech. That being said, I program for a living. I get paid pretty well because I don't move fast and I don't break things. Tech professionals need at least a professional guild. But, they think they are special so they will squander the era when they actually have organizing power.
There's no such thing as an auto company that doesn't depend on government subsidies. The auto industry is up there with agriculture as one of the most dependent on governments subsidizing them for them to even exist
If improving worker safety (in this case, literally saving hundreds of lives each year) and paying workers a living wage makes your already heavily subsidized company go bust, maybe the company shouldn't have existed in the first place?
Worker's health shouldn't be an economic externality
