And amazon has enough power to undermine the union’s power through legal, dubiously legal, and illegal means. Thus tilting the market in their favor. Does that seems ok with you?
Not to mention most of amazon’s workplaces are not unionized, so it’s amazon vs a single worker in the marketplace. Who’s gonna win in that pairing?
I'd say tough luck on this one because it's already adversarial - the power imbalance is too large at Amazon not to implement a union. That way the workers will have a more equal footing.
Maybe. They sure will threaten to. But fact is, Amazon has quite an investment in these warehouses and wages are really just one aspect of the calculus for whether or not to keep running the warehouse.
Plus, if unionization makes its way to every Amazon warehouse, then everyone will compete on equal footing vis-a-vis wages.
I’d be curious what odds people would venture that within 10 years, Amazon becomes a unionized workforce; and qualitatively, what the impact on their operations would be if so.
Consensus seems to be that the tech monopolies have become so powerful (and acquisitive when necessary) that anti-trust is the only existential threat to their continued monopolistic dominance, but perhaps in Amazon’s case a unionized workforce would be another.
Just for nuance - I mostly hope they don't. The track record of modern unions is spotty as far as I can tell and I'd rather that big gamble isn't taken with Amazon.
Still, I hope it ends up being a push in the right direction.
This would be bargained between management and the union and is not automatic. Maybe it's a threat but not necessarily an issue Amazon would face even with the formation of a union if this is something Amazon really wanted to keep out of a contract.
At the end of the day both the company and the workers/union have to agree on the terms and people may not be willing to strike over this single issue if the rest of the deal was good.
There are plenty of other reasons for Amazon to want to prevent a union from forming including increased pay, benefits and time off but a union's ability to prevent automation may not be huge issue as Amazon is still growing and hiring workers faster than the jobs are being automated.
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.
Amazon has incredibly crappy working conditions and extremely high turnover. Even if you don't like unions on average, I don't see what they have to lose in this case.
Amazon is anti-labor. Someone posted a leak of their union-suppression policies not long ago[0], and they're quite vocal about their anti-union stance being a part of their "ownership culture."
You're right that they're damned if they do, damned if they don't though, but let's not pretend they haven't earned that mistrust.
Given the multiple reports of deplorable working conditions in Amazon warehouses it seems like they would be ripe for unionization. Unions can be seen as the backpressure on corporations mistreating the workers, which Amazon has become notorious for.
It's one of those things businesses have to take into account when trying to compete. You can abuse your employees to gain competitive advantage over your rivals, but in the long term such tactics tend to result in the formation of a union which is a major competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace.
It's bad news for Amazon if they can no longer honor next day delivery for Prime members because of strikes at the warehouses. The workers have some leverage with strikes. It's not like coal miners where strikes were rather abstract because the lights never went out. This pain will be felt by the customers, and it's not like there aren't other businesses out there where you can mail order stuff. Maybe not all from the same shop and maybe you have to pay for shipping, but if Amazon doesn't know when it will be delivered because the product is in the warehouse and labor negotiations have stalled it's a reasonable tradeoff.
I think Amazon sees unionization activity as a critical risk for them. With a headcount of a million, any increase in cost for them is huge. I suspect they are extremely active in looking for ways to quash these efforts.
That will probably mostly involve legal corporate messaging, illegal corporate intimidation [0], and just shutting down any facility that unionizes.
But if the demands are cheap and easy, I could definitely see Amazon quietly (extremely quietly!) caving if that would weaken the union.
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