It would sure be something if Amazon went from one of the worst places to work, to one of the best through the creation of unions. If they can do this, then I think it will be held up as an example for other people to unionize. I'm rooting for them
I think there's something to be said in favor of company-specific unions vs. industry-wide unions. The optimal situation would be one in which Amazon workers form an Amazon-wide union and end up with voting seats on the corporate board, to which they'd elect representatives. As I understand it, this is a bit how VW works in Germany.
The notion that a corporation's employees should have the same 'stakeholder' role as a corporation's shareholders might seem to be a radical notion. It would require re-imagining the corporate board's role: worker value and shareholder value would have to be balanced. This seems like a much fairer system of governance, and also has the benefit of partially democratizing corporations.
I think they're just analysing the effect of a company-focused union versus a wide-spectrum union. I don't think they're implying that there should be only a single union per company (it's probably not common in the US but that's common in other countries like Germany and pre-Thatcher UK).
Amazon Web Services won't have a union because support for unionization among Amazon's developers is low. Amazon will split itself in two before this happens.
My prediction - warehouses that unionize will get split off into separate companies and be contracted out to by Amazon.com, the store. But they rely on Amazon.com for so much of their tech that they'll be beholden to them and have no leverage in negotiations. Warehouse workers will be even worse off than they are today.
I sympathise with the employees, however unions have pratically zero chance of gaining concessions from Amazon.
Amazon can give more shifts to non striking workers, train new employees in a matter of hours, leverage labour hire companies, bus in workers from other facilities, lean on FBM and other 3PL providers, increase automation. They also have a massive network of fulfilment centers and can easily just ship in fulfilled orders from elsewhere using non union trucking and last mile.
Amazon also has deep pockets and a long time horizon, so worst case they'll just allow the facility to be shut down by strikes and let their customers know it'll take another day to deliver their order from elsewhere.
Strong unions can lobby for protections just like Amazon can. Municipalities could be persuaded to e.g. outlaw non-union (err, "non-licensed") logistics providers from delivering within the city limits; where "licensed" logistics companies are required to work with only "licensed" fulfillment centers, and so forth. Suddenly there'd be these centers of demand that could only be met by union shops.
Local municipalities typically do not have the jurisidiction to regulate last mile delivery, let alone the desire to do so, and Amazon can always use USPS / FedEx / UPS which local municipalities won't be able to restrict.
Why would the municipality do that to homeowners, the majority of whom are not logistics warehouse employees but do want products delivered to them quickly and inexpensively?
Like, just the game-theoretic analysis here suggests municipalities will want nothing to do with this.
What you are referring to is monopsony power, and Amazon isn't even close to having a monospony on warehouse labor.
Warehousing is massive industry and even at their size Amazon is less than 10% of it.
The most realistic solution is for workers to spend any spare time they have learning new skills to move into better industries. Trying to make pick pack roles not suck is not realistic.
If enough warehouses unionize they could have a shot at it. But yeah - it is pretty damn hard at a huge scale to take on a behemoth like Amazon. I can see it happening if there is really a will to do it.
I feel its a cycle ... the absence of unions creates problems, people unionize .... having unions creates problems .... unions are disbanded ... rinse and repeat.
On a general note ... life in general seems cyclical.
We could solve this by probably just having better federal protection and laws surrounding unions (the EU is better in this regard) but unfortunately those some corporations have huge lobbying arms that make it difficult to get the government to do so
There are many studies showing the workers at unionized employers report lower job satisfaction (there are also many studies showing the opposite conclusion) but it is far from a given that unionizing makes things betters for workers and this at a minimum seems to be a crap shoot based on the quality of the individual union.
> How toxic are your coworkers? If they’re toxic … unionizing won’t help. If they’re not toxic … unionizing still probably won’t help.
This isn't really true. Unions typically negotiate for baseline working conditions, which can include protection from abuse and such things. "Toxicity" could easily fall under that and does in many (if not most?) workplaces in Sweden.
If the person making your work life toxic is also a union member (and denies it), it puts the union in an awkward position.
In practice, the union can negotiate disciplinary rules. However they tend to focus on protecting workers from discipline.
There are some practices they can’t/won’t give much protection to, like misusing company funds.
Some unions have offered less protection when accusations of racism and sexism are involved, but employers have learned to abuse that.
Read about the firing of Donald McNeil by the New York Times to get an idea of how cowardly, social-justice focused unions can majorly screw up by not defending their members.
So if the person making your life miserable is a coworker who constantly denigrates you, unions might be more focused on helping them than you.
> If the person making your work life toxic is also a union member (and denies it), it puts the union in an awkward position.
No, it doesn't because the rules are agreed to before the events, just like the rule of law in society in general. They don't negotiate rules during a conflict...
In Sweden, everything you're saying is irrelevant because it's neither the company nor the union which evaluates the contract and the specific case in question. There are special courts and authorities to handle this which are independent of both parties. The only way that unions and companies are involved are negotiating the contracts that are evaluated.
Even if what you said applied, which it doesn't, my response would be "perfect is the enemy of good." That system would be better for most people than one of total subjugation.
