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Amazon seeks to overturn union win, says vote was tainted

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By HALELUYA HADERO

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Amazon seeks to overturn union win, says vote was tainted

If anything seems "tainted" is the owner of the Washington Post trying to challenge election results that empower voters.

Sound eerily familiar and something they might have spoken out against in another context...Let me see...

10 ( +10 / -0 )

A rich company like Amazon should be an example of "progressive" capitalism giving back to society by bringing some democracy into the workplace and, with more profit-sharing, treating its employees fairly, but Bezos's brain has apparently been unable to resist the insidious temptations of wealth and power.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

Amazon isn't doing itself any favours here. It is wasting money on lawyers and court cases. If workers had a better deal in the first place, they may not have voted for the union. An opportunity missed there, and it will cost them dear. They need to now accept the inevitable: hike up prices to cover periodical union demands until sales drop off, then close down and pull out of the region/market. There will always be a new game in town to transition to.

Amazon is so big that unionising it will give an appreciable bump to already skyrocketing US inflation figures. Wages will never keep pace with prices due to the nature and scale of inflationary pressures. That's why getting into an inflationary spiral is so bad for workers, for the poor and for the regime in power. Globalisation's growth spiral is over - ended by the consensus of our governments. What comes next will be, economically and politically, brutal. No more affordable stuff for the masses. The good times are over. Unhappy people do not vote for the incumbent regime. Except in Japan, so the LDP will be OK. Biden less so.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

vote was “tainted”?

so that’s the word the media will allow to be used if someone “rigs” a vote and cheats on balloting?

stop the taint!

no wait, not so good.

-4 ( +1 / -5 )

It’s really too bad. “No one” has “standing” and it’s “moot” because the election is “over” already.

so can’t really do anything.

right?

-4 ( +1 / -5 )

Amazon on the backfoot, surprising!

I'm thinking there's more to their strategy than call for a revote.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

In the U.S.  "progressive capitalism" is an oxymoron.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

Free Pot or Free t-shirts it's all legal in New York... Looks like the Union will have to nix drug tests.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Lower wage people need to understand that overpaying people is never a good idea.

-12 ( +1 / -13 )

Lower wage people need to understand that overpaying people is never a good idea.

That's what the elites and extreme capitalists have brainwashed Americans to think.

The Social Democracies of the world have proven that wrong. Not that Americans have any clue of how well-run countries work.

3 ( +6 / -3 )

Distributing cannabis “is no different than distributing free t-shirts and it certainly did not act to interfere with the election," he said.

I don't have a problem with legalizing it, but seeing marijuana treated lighter than even cigarettes is a bit strange.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

I think Amazon is a vile company, but passing out marijuana to voters is also very dodgy. But I suppose corruption rolls downhill.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

What's dodgy about free cannabis?

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

Free cannabis? In my time, as a Christmas party treat, my anti-union company bribed its employees with free beer, tequila and hookers.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

@TeslaInvestor

Lower wage people need to understand that overpaying people is never a good idea.

Just the opposite. Around 70% of US's GDP comes from consumer spending. Henry Ford recognized that this, saying his workers had to be well paid, because they were also his and your customers.

GBR48

Wages will never keep pace with prices due to the nature and scale of inflationary pressures.

That's odd, since the last time the US had 8% inflation, its middle class was growing at its fastest pace on record.

And here in Japan, "DEFLATIONARY pressures" over recent years coincided perfectly with stagnating real wages.

Moral of the story: high wages = good for the economy. Low wages = bad for the economy. Kinda obvious if you ask me.

9 ( +9 / -0 )

Amazon is a truly vile company. I refuse to do any business with them.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Free Pot or Free t-shirts it's all legal in New York... Looks like the Union will have to nix drug tests.

The Union has no say in that matter. Federal law requires anyone involved in transportation to be drug tested. Warehouse workers don't have to be but the drivers and even the people driving the yard goats moving trailers around the yard have to pass a pre-employment drug test and later on be random sampled. And yes, it really is random.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Wages will never keep pace with prices due to the nature and scale of inflationary pressures.

Maybe in Japan but not in the US. The US is facing a significant labor shortage, and it is due primarily to the low level of immigration to the US the past few years. That combined with older workers retiring is creating a serious labor shortage that is driving wages up fast in some industries. I read yesterday that Wally World is going to pay their truck drivers $100,000 a year. I made a third of that when I was driving. That's more than my base pay now with a masters degree and a lot of advanced math. That is what a shortage of drivers do to wages.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Desert Tortoise

You are right. COVID has taken a lot of middle-aged and older people out of the labor market and has expanded the opportunities of younger people. I just hired someone with a starting salary of $120K with a 50% bonus target. The kid has a bachelor's in math with no professional certifications. Employers are now more lenient with remote work, so this guy is going to saving a fortune working from his parents' house all the way in Idaho.

When I started my job after college 6 years ago, my starting salary was only $85K with a 30% bonus target. I also had to stay in NYC and come into the office every day.

-4 ( +2 / -6 )

You're looking at one end of the spectrum, but you're not considering the other end - production. During Ford's time, wages were rising in conjunction with rising productivity, keeping the supply-demand relationship stable.

What poor people are protesting for is increased wages without increased productivity.

Wrong again.

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

But like trickle down economics it doesn't stop the lie being repeated to dupe workers into voting against their own interests and supporting the interests of billionaires.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Hope to see some mass boycotts soon. Amazon has destroyed small businesses and retail in general. They also treat their workers like garbage, hence the incentive to unionize.

Any loss for Amazon is a win for mankind.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

"Not accepting the result of an election that everyone else says was free and fair? Now where on Earth could Amazon have got that idea from?"

Amazon (Bezos) remembers the elections of GWBush and Trump and the cries of "Foul!" by the non-winners.

Surely the vote mustn't be questioned...

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Somehow can question THIS vote.

We come from a culture that takes 10 mins and multiple video reviews to see if a guy caught a ball or not.

most important election in our lifetime? Nope, can’t question or review that.

But Amazon when it affects Bezos? 25 objections and court will actually review it not just say too bad it’s over.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Dagon

your source states that the revenue from the extra productivity is mostly going to higher value employees. Just because overall productivity went up doesn’t mean that a lower wage person was responsible for that increase. A software engineer who created the front-end UI that a lower wage employee uses would receive a large compensation even though a lower wage employee would have improved productivity from the new software. There is no reason why the lower wage employee should be compensated more.

-6 ( +1 / -7 )

Dagon

In my workplace, we used to generate individual client reports with some messy SQL code. Anyone with some experience in programming would tell you that SQL is a terrible option for generating individual reports and data manipulation compared to VBA.

The process was overhauled and the procedure now uses a combination of SAS, SQL and VBA. The runtime improved 100000X. Productivity definitely improved, but only our team got raises.

why would the lower level employees who just run the tool be rewarded for this increase in productivity when they weren’t responsible for the increase?

-6 ( +1 / -7 )

NotSo HungOver

Without a Union, they have nowhere else to turn

This is the kind of mentality that causes people to remain poor forever.

Instead of looking for ways to improve your skillset and your marketability, you expect other people to solve all your problems.

-6 ( +0 / -6 )

Instead of looking for ways to improve your skillset and your marketability, you expect other people to solve all your problems.

How does "improving your skillset" overcome employer bigotry? How does it help you if your employer retaliates against you for legal political activities you engage in outside of your job? How does it help you when employers across an industry routinely cheat employees out of pay? How does improving your skillset help when your co-workers pull the corners of their eyes and say "hey chink" and the manager just laughs it off. Maybe you need to improve some of your own skillsets.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Amazon should accept defeat, agree to work with the union. Instead of acting like Trump saying the other side cheated, that's really pitiful.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Desert Tortoise

How does "improving your skillset" overcome employer bigotry?

Do you really think lower wage people are the only ones with terrible jobs? I had my fair of bad jobs when I was in college. I worked at a local department store with a horrible manager that had a short temper and probably a few screws loose.

Did I whine and complain about it? Maybe a bit, but ultimately, I took it upon myself to learn valuable skillsets so I can take myself out of that position. After graduating college, I applied to all the high-tech financial firms in NYC and landed a good gig making $85K + 30% bonus target. I kept putting in more effort to make myself valuable and 6 years post-graduation, I'm now making $295K with a 65% target bonus. I have a $950K house in Bergen County, NJ. I have over $10 million in assets. I'm still under 30-years-old.

What you're advocating for is society solving individual problems. It is not the responsibility of the government or society at large to make your life better. That is your own responsibility. If you're not even willing to put in the effort to better yourself, why should you expect anyone else to put in that effort?

Everyone else is putting in the effort to better themselves. Why should these low wage people who put in no effort demand that others sacrifice their effort and talents to help them?

-5 ( +0 / -5 )

Why should these low wage people who put in no effort demand that others sacrifice their effort and talents to help them?

A good argument for high Inheritance and wealth taxes.

Why should the innovative creators labor in the service of rentier trust fund holders who lucked into big capital?

Capital has to be taxed more and patent law amended to benefit the creators richly but in a shorter window to spur innovation.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

dagon

Inheritance and wealth are fine. Someone somewhere at some time had to have put in the labor and/or take the risk to acquire that wealth. That wealth was derived from increasing productivity. For example: I worked my job and took a risk investing in TSLA. I provided a valuable service to my employer and increased productivity at my workplace. I then used my earnings to provide Tesla financial banking when they were still losing money. Without people like me constantly buying TSLA when Tesla was diluting its shares to raise capital, Tesla would have gone bankrupt.

Increasing wages blindly isn't the same thing. No effort or risk was taken to increase productivity, so you have the bad kind of inflation.

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

dagon

Inheritance and wealth are fine. Someone somewhere at some time had to have put in the labor and/or take the risk to acquire that wealth.

Inheritance and wealth and capital as "fine" show what a weak metric that is if you believe in a meritocracy.

It is an argument for hereditary monarchy.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Inheritance and wealth and capital as "fine" show what a weak metric that is if you believe in a meritocracy.

James Madison and Thomas Jefferson argued vigorously for large inheritance taxes, outlawing primogeniture and forcing large estates to be broken up among as many heirs as possible? Their rationale? They wanted each generation to have to work for their wealth rather than inherit it. They felt that made for a more vigorous and productive nation. In an era where wealth meant land, they wanted land to as widely held as possible so political power was spread as widely and thinly as possible. These founders of the US greatly feared allowing too much wealth to accumulate in too few hands knowing that disproportionate wealth would also give them disproportionate political power. That was seen as pure poison to a nation that meant to govern themselves. They also feared the corrosive effects of idle wealth as the founders were well aware of the problems created by idle wealth in Europe.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Why should these low wage people who put in no effort demand that others sacrifice their effort and talents to help them?

Number one, what makes you think these people are not working their tails off already? Second, you don't have to be "low wage" to be living paycheck to paycheck in most urban areas of the US today. Last, I can say that every company I worked for except for two, a motorcycle dealership and a small defense contractor, was up to illegal things and fully expected their employees to break the law and keep their mouths shut. Every single one including FedEx. It drains your soul to work for crooks but the corporate world is full of them. "Improving my skilllset" only meant getting paid a bit more to work for higher paid crooks. The very second you told them, "no, I'm not breaking that law" you were condemned and out the door you went. Why should workers have to put up with that? At least years ago when I was in a union they could put a stop to it, and would.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Something else to chew on is when you are married, have kids and a mortgage you employer leverages that to take advantage of you at every turn. When I was much younger, single and debt free I could tell a crooked boss to take a hike. I always had some money on hand and could find another job. My married co-workers couldn't do that. Now I am older, married, have a kid and a fortunately paid off house (with expensive taxes and insurance ) and have to think twice before telling an employer to eff off. That is why unions can be valuable. These flippant chirps about "oh, just improve your skill set" speak volumes about a life no lived yet. These kids have much to learn about life.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

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