So, this Amazon union vote crap.

[Eacaraxe]

Just because I need a headline in this forum,

Amazon defeats historic Alabama union effort

The contest was test for the e-commerce giant, which has faced global criticism for worker treatment.

www.bbc.com

And as everyone predicted, the court battle begins:

AMAZON ILLEGALLY INTERFERED IN UNION VOTE – RWDSU TO FILE OBJECTIONS AND RELATED ULP CHARGES TO HOLD AMAZON ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS

www.rwdsu.info

I won't mince words, I used to work at Amazon as a tier 1 warehouse employee and was there for about five years. I'm not surprised the vote failed, because Amazon propagandizes and busts unions in many subtle and insidious ways good-faith actors within the media haven't noticed, let alone begun to explore yet. Let alone in a deep red state with some of the worst labor protections and union-busting laws in the country, which is where Amazon built most of its warehouse hubs for that precise reason.

As far as the ramifications of the vote and the implications of it moving forward, this is my honest-to-god opinion on the issue after some days putting some thought into it: Amazon's acting incredibly irrationally and this is going to be a fiscal and political pyrrhic victory for them. I feel this way specifically because in this regard I'm actually anti-union in this regard.

It would have been better and cheaper for Amazon to allow its workers to unionize, and simply capture the union. That's the bottom line with the state of labor unions in the service and logistics industry, and why public support for unions has dwindled considerably while political and economic elites' hasn't. Most of these unions are at this point extended HR departments for the corporations they're supposed to oppose, and exist to mollify workers, create and preserve unequal and management-friendly rules of engagement, and prevent wildcatting.

Case in point, look at the absolute nonsense that came out of Nevada last year with regards to the Democratic presidential primaries.

The rub is, it's going to cost Amazon more to repair its public image and respond to heightened scrutiny from the press and government, than it ever would have to provide a modicum of workplace concessions and token raise to warehouse employees. What this is really about, is pure and unfettered ego on the part of Amazon's upper management, and preserve the echo chamber built around them to preserve the collective delusion they're "the good guys" of the tech industry. They simply refuse to do the smart thing, and what is ultimately in the corporation's best interests, because to do so introduces the X-factor of admitting to themselves their privilege and entitlement isn't absolute, they just might actually be the baddies.

Hence the unleashing of absolute baby dick energy on the part of Amazon's upper echelons over the past few weeks on social media in what I can only describe as a "Trump soundalike contest".

To be honest, as a former Amazon employee, the minutiae of the case -- the issue with the mailboxes, the mandatory employee meetings, the workplace propaganda pamphlets, the increased surveillance -- that's just typical Amazon bullshit. Amazon's upper management just really is that deluded and stupid, they pull dumber on a near-daily basis. I'll happily elaborate.

So, feel free to flame each other about Amazon, feel free to ask me shit as a former Amazon employee.

 

[Agema]

It would have been better and cheaper for Amazon to allow its workers to unionize, and simply capture the union

No, I think the idea is to never give an opponent even a means to build an alternative power base.

If Amazon lets that union form, it's got a little tumour in its corporate body that might be benign now, but one day might metastasise and turn malign. A few weeks-months of chemo, vomiting and hair loss until the news cycle moves on is a much safer bet.

 

[tippy2k2]

See, I don't think it's ultimately going to matter to Amazon and their PR.

At this point, no one is unaware that Amazon treats their employees like shit. The only people who would be unaware of Amazon treating their employees like shit are people who do not have access to The Internet and therefore are not aware of Amazon existing anyway. You either care enough to stop shopping with them (assuming you even can given that Amazon has such a foothold in this country that they are almost always the cheapest price you can get) or you don't.

Although maybe someone here can answer this because I've yet to find a reason for it (Amazon did it so by default, I assume there was an evil reason behind it but I can't figure out the evil part here); Amazon sounds like they worked with USPS to get drop boxes installed at the warehouse for people to vote at. Why is that being seen/spun as a bad thing?

I would think you'd want more people to vote and installing a drop-box in front would make that easier for anyone wanting to make their vote, regardless of which direction they wanted to. While I would wish that everyone voted for unionizing, I don't see how it would be a bad thing to give everyone the easy chance to cast their votes, even if they ultimately choose to vote against what I think is in their best interest...

 

[tstorm823]

If Amazon lets that union form, it's got a little tumour in its corporate body that might be benign now, but one day might metastasise and turn malign. A few weeks-months of chemo, vomiting and hair loss until the news cycle moves on is a much safer bet.

I can speak to Eacaraxe's opinion of what a unionized Amazon might look like. I haven't worked for Amazon, but I worked for the next step in the chain at UPS. I would absolutely describe the union there as "extended HR department for the corporations they're supposed to oppose, and exist to mollify workers, create and preserve unequal and management-friendly rules of engagement, and prevent wildcatting". The single thing I saw done by the union in opposition to UPS was force UPS to retain bad workers until they'd received the union mandated number of warnings, but even that could be a protection mechanism for the corporation avoiding lawsuits for wrongful termination, basically getting the union to supervise the management's firing procedures like an HR department should.

And from my experience, you can't have a tumour metastasise in their system. Any individual with enough ambition to fight the company also has enough ambition to be promoted out of the union within their first 6 months. And anyone who causes issues in a management role is suddenly exceptionally easy to fire. It's a pretty fool-proof system.

 

[Eacaraxe]

No, I think the idea is to never give an opponent even a means to build an alternative power base.

It's rare I say this, but tstorm's right and in this occasion you should listen to him. Most of my friends during college worked at some point at Worldport, and he's spot-on about UPS's union. It's so bad there's been a years-long effort, by union members, to essentially unionize the union and oust its current leadership for being in bed with UPS. UPS pays the Teamsters and gives kickbacks to Teamster leadership, in exchange for negotiating and signing bad contracts on behalf of its workers using obscure and purpose-written clauses within the union's constitution and bylaws to do it.

Captured unions aren't tumors in your analogy, but rather antibodies. The RWDSU in this instance is pretty notorious for it. Even grassroots pro-union Amazon workers were urging a "no" vote, because they understood organizing within the umbrella of a captured union would do nothing to improve Amazon workers' conditions and pay, and that Amazon workers need to build an independent union in order to achieve these goals.

At this point, no one is unaware that Amazon treats their employees like shit...Although maybe someone here can answer this because I've yet to find a reason for it (Amazon did it so by default, I assume there was an evil reason behind it but I can't figure out the evil part here); Amazon sounds like they worked with USPS to get drop boxes installed at the warehouse for people to vote at. Why is that being seen/spun as a bad thing?

The second part of your post rather answers to the first, doesn't it.

For all the argle-bargle in the press about how Amazon treats its workers, they've barely scratched the surface of it. Workers pissing in bottles is worthy of a headline, but its nowhere near the level of insidiousness with which Amazon comports itself with regards to its own employees. To really get there, more reporters need to start focusing on things like Connections, PIP, and Amazon's employment of Six Sigma, to produce its uniquely toxic business culture that underlies every last issue that plays well to the sensationalist media. The ways in which Amazon personifies dystopia beggars belief at times, and yet year after year, it manages to outdo itself.

For example, this thing with the mailbox. Amazon requested a ballot drop box on FC property, and that request was explicitly denied by the NLRB. Then, Amazon went behind its back and pressured the USPS into installing a mailbox with some damned shady requests and questions alongside it as revealed by the FOIA'ed and leaked e-mails. Like for example, when Amazon reps showed particular interest in what sorts of locks would be on the mailboxes, their security levels, and what capacity these mailboxes would hold -- exactly the kinds of questions one would ask if they were interested in breaking into a mailbox and tampering with its contents.

Here's the issue with it, setting even that aside. Every part of an Amazon facility is under multiple layers of surveillance 24/7, and it's the full suite of surveillance available: high def digital cameras with facial and body recognition, motion detection, you name it and they have it. Hell, they track employees onsite via wifi triangulation through their scanners. And since COVID, thermal imaging cameras in high traffic areas and software integration so Amazon personnel know remotely who isn't socially distancing and where (not that Amazon enforces social distancing policy except where and when convenient to them).

That includes exteriors. Ergo, a ballot deposit location on Amazon property, is subject to Amazon surveillance and Amazon tracking. Employees who deposited their ballots on site were being tracked, and more importantly those who didn't were as well. To wit, worker testimony from Bessemer includes numerous employees who were approached by management, for not having put their ballots in the mailbox on Amazon property, and pressuring them to deposit their ballots in that mailbox; management knew who was and who wasn't voting there, because they were surveilling the mailbox.

Here's how all the working pieces fit together: somebody voted on-site as tracked by the cameras and facial/body recognition software, that's a flag in a database somewhere. That indicates they trusted Amazon enough to vote there, statistically indicating a "no" vote to unionize. People who didn't never get flagged, and you cross reference that with Connections answer history, and history of complaints or vocalized unhappiness with Amazon. Then by process of elimination, you end up with a list of people who more likely than not voted to unionize, and a list of people to place under stricter scrutiny to find excuses to discipline and fire.

This is a company that made its fortune thanks to predictive analytics. From an insider's perspective, the general public really isn't aware exactly how accurate Amazon's predictive analytics, especially the stuff they use internally for things like proactive transhipment, really are. The idea Amazon doesn't apply this to the behavioral patterns of their own employees is patently absurd.

Amazon employees know this. The party line is everything is anonymous, and these individual working pieces are never tracked nor put together, but it doesn't take long working there to figure out exactly how big that lie really is. Amazon management lies about it, but there's never attempt to disprove it nor hide it, and in fact most salaried employees will merrily prove it so long as they don't have to admit it.

Case in point, when I worked in my FC the party line was "our security cameras onsite don't have high def, facial recognition, or tracking software applied to them to track individual associates through the FC". Then there was a behavioral dust-up in the department I was in at the time, and our AM (quite stupidly) showed us the software suite that does exactly that to prove the associate(s) implicated in this dust-up had indeed done what was claimed they did.

 

[tippy2k2]

For example, this thing with the mailbox. Amazon requested a ballot drop box on FC property, and that request was explicitly denied by the NLRB.

Even if all the other stuff was just kind of Conspiracy Theory level things (With Amazon, it's almost certainly not but for fun we'll give them the benefit of the doubt), the fact that it was specifically brought up that they were not allowed to do this and then they did it anyway is reason enough that it's a bad thing. Maybe the articles I read didn't mention this part or maybe I just missed reading it but either way, that part makes a lot more sense why people were up in arms over USPS installing boxes at the facility like that.

Thank you for the explanation

 

[SilentPony]

I remember hearing that because the Union organizers were not allowed on Amazon property, they camped at the traffic lights leading out of the facility to hand out flyers and chat with people at the light. So Amazon, being the Government that it is, just had the city change the speed at which the lights turned green to disrupt the organizers.
and I know what I think something is useless and isn't going to change the worker's conditions I throw my weight around and change traffic conditions for an entire city to prevent it.

 

[Samtemdo8]

All I can say is I'm surprised that only now this happened.

How come there wasn't calls to Unionize against Amazon ages ago?

 

[Gergar12]

I know why they didn't want the union. Fear. If the union had succeeded Amazon could have just laid everyone off. Unions are not outsource-proof. Many factories with unions have been outsourced to Mexico, India, Vietnam, and China.

 

[Eacaraxe]

Even if all the other stuff was just kind of Conspiracy Theory level things (With Amazon, it's almost certainly not but for fun we'll give them the benefit of the doubt)...

That's one of the problems. What Amazon pulls sounds rather conspiratorial for how much it beggars belief a corporation could -- or in the case of one which spends so much money and effort framing itself as a progressive company, would -- do. But for Amazon workers, it's basically just everyday shit.

For example, I've referenced what's known as Connections internally multiple times. What that is, is an internal feedback mechanism that takes the form of a daily one- two two-question survey every waged employee must answer at the start of every shift. There used to be an annual survey, but Seattle realized it's better for productivity and more efficient to just have one or two questions daily, rather than an annual 100-150 question survey. On the surface, it seems perfectly legitimate.

And for the most part, it is, until one starts thinking about some of the questions and what Amazon does with the data, in contrast to the declared goals and general applicability of the data. Realistically, it serves as a running "temperature check" on the basis of shift, department, and facility to determine morale levels. If/when Connections questions start dipping too low, that's management's cue to throttle back enforcement and toss out some de minimis benefits to bring scores back up. In fact, Amazon has task forces dedicated to this, that identify problem areas and act to bring Connections scores back up in the most efficient way.

The task of raising Connections scores isn't tied to addressing specific employee grievances, even in instances where grievances are clearly stated and root causes easily identifiable. Why this is the case, is because of the phenomenon of survey bias: unhappy employees are going to answer survey questions more negatively than they might otherwise have, and happy employees will do the inverse. You isolate and identify that variation in the same questions over time, as checked by control and trick questions thrown into the loop to measure how many employees even read questions and answer truthfully, and you have a quantifiable measure of overall staff morale.

For example, the call "my bathrooms are open and easily accessible during break times and when I need them" is a Connections question that comes up once or twice a month, with your standard 1-5 scale interval response. Responses to that question can be all over the place, but nothing about bathrooms changes; not number of them, location, number of toilets or sinks, not even cleaning schedules. What does change is employees' perception of bathroom accessibility, which reflects morale, because a pissed off employee is going to answer that question with a more negative response than one who isn't pissed off.

So, you respond to that by handing out bags of chips or something equally cheap and vapid during breaks. With that little act of sleight-of-mind, employees' minds shift away from their ability to pee on the clock without getting TOT, towards those delicious Ruffles or what-the-fuck-ever, and buying chips wholesale for a department, shift, or facility is cheaper than installing new bathrooms. How that ties into union-busting should be pretty obvious at this point: employees don't start talking about organization unless they're pissed off, and happy employees are going to push back against the pissed off ones on their own. It's classic divide and conquer.

Which is why this Bessemer situation actually shocked me when it happened. Amazon's usually jimmy-on-the-spot with this, generally they've accomplished their goal of mollifying workers long before they figure out enough of them are pissed to even start talking about organizing. Site management must have really, really pooched it for it to have gotten to this point.

Maybe the articles I read didn't mention this part or maybe I just missed reading it but either way, that part makes a lot more sense why people were up in arms over USPS installing boxes at the facility like that.

As I say with the cases of the defense, insurance, financial, and health care industries, pay attention to which media outlets say what in regards to Amazon. But more importantly, pay attention to the ad bars, ad widgets, and commercial breaks on those outlets. Those upon which Amazon advertises frequently have a rather shocking attention deficit when it comes to reporting on details about stories that involves Amazon corporate malfeasance and malpractice.

 

[Eacaraxe]

How come there wasn't calls to Unionize against Amazon ages ago?

There have been, they're generally not big news items and they usually don't get this far due to how ridiculous Amazon's union-busting regime is. Like I said in my preceding post, Amazon's so good at union busting they basically do it proactively and at will without ever substantively changing policy or working conditions.

I know why they didn't want the union. Fear. If the union had succeeded Amazon could have just laid everyone off. Unions are not outsource-proof. Many factories with unions have been outsourced to Mexico, India, Vietnam, and China.

Can't outsource a warehouse that has to be close enough to a population center to guarantee same-day or next-day delivery, that's part of a nationwide logistics network. Rather, Amazon's bag up until the 2018 pay cut was importing labor via work visas, to suppress wage growth.

 

[Kwak]

So is this just capitalism working as intended?

 

[meiam]

Amazon is just trying to keep union away long enough that they can automate most of the warehouse and not have to deal with employee. Union might try to prevent that so they'll do eveything in their power to prevent that. I fully expect them to just close the location if the vote had been yes.

I don't know how accepted it is that amazon treat employee like crap, their turnover number are nothing special and they don't seem to have a hard time filling positions. This is pretty complex situation, amazon is a big company with multiple location and hundreads of thousands of worker. When you hear story about people peeing in bottle or something you have to wonder if that's representative of every warehouses or just one crappy warehouse. Furthermore if you have 100 000 employees you have to expect you're going to have a couple of shitty one in the mix, let say 1% are crapy, well that's 1000's of them, could them claiming they have to pee in bottle just be the results of their own inefficiency? Furthermore let say 1% of them get fired as a results of their poor performance and want to get revenge on amazon or possibly claim bad condition to sue them, well that's going to be dozen of report about crappy conditions. So until I see some really good investigation into amazon practice, interviewing thousands of current and post employee, rather than interviewing one or two, I'm not sure I believe that amazon is really overall such an awful place to work at (I don't not believe it either).

Ultimately I think the more important number though is that only around 50% of employee voted, which seem to say that a lot of people didn't really care one way or another. Will be interesting to see the results of the lawsuit.

 

[SilentPony]

So is this just capitalism working as intended?

Its more like an Oligarchy, where the rich tell the Government want to do.

 

[Trunkage]

So is this just capitalism working as intended?

No, Capitalism would require some sort of union-esque institution for it to function. But that's a fantasy land and the US never has had Capitalism

 

[Trunkage]

I can speak to Eacaraxe's opinion of what a unionized Amazon might look like. I haven't worked for Amazon, but I worked for the next step in the chain at UPS. I would absolutely describe the union there as "extended HR department for the corporations they're supposed to oppose, and exist to mollify workers, create and preserve unequal and management-friendly rules of engagement, and prevent wildcatting". The single thing I saw done by the union in opposition to UPS was force UPS to retain bad workers until they'd received the union mandated number of warnings, but even that could be a protection mechanism for the corporation avoiding lawsuits for wrongful termination, basically getting the union to supervise the management's firing procedures like an HR department should.

And from my experience, you can't have a tumour metastasise in their system. Any individual with enough ambition to fight the company also has enough ambition to be promoted out of the union within their first 6 months. And anyone who causes issues in a management role is suddenly exceptionally easy to fire. It's a pretty fool-proof system.

Yeah, so they're like a US police union. Covering up misdeeds, covering for management, forcing behaviours and uses the failing upwards method

 

[davidmc1158]

Ultimately I think the more important number though is that only around 50% of employee voted, which seem to say that a lot of people didn't really care one way or another. Will be interesting to see the results of the lawsuit.

That ultimately may say far more about how successful voter intimidation from corporate was rather than apathy.

 

[Baffle]

If you want Amazon workers to get a fair deal, you need to stop buying from Amazon until it happens. Nothing else will work. Like, why give a shit about bad PR and workers' rights when it doesn't make a difference in buying habits?

 

[Worgen]

So is this just capitalism working as intended?

Democracy.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I don't know how accepted it is that amazon treat employee like crap....

In the past year we've had people murder store workers for telling them to wear a mask. Too many people who haven't spent time "down in the trenches" see front-line workers of any stripe as automatons, tools to use up and discard.