Amazon fires worker who led strike over virus(bloomberg.com)
bloomberg.com
Amazon fires worker who led strike over virus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-30/amazon-worker-who-led-strike-over-virus-says-company-fired-him
360 comments
We should apply rigor to both sides. Each has incentive to cherry pick and mislead.
> key point Amazon claims he was exposed to the worker on March 11th
Did they claim that? I'm looking for a source on this. "According to the company’s previous statements, the infected co-worker in question last reported for work on 11 March", but when you look at their linked source[1] it says: "Amazon confirmed an associate, who reported for work on 11 March, has since been diagnosed with Covid-19".
> “No one else was put on quarantine,” he said
Is this confirmed? You can't just assume this to be true. Pretty damning if so, though.
> “You put me on quarantine for coming into contact with somebody, but I was around [that person] for less than five minutes,” he told Vice.
Viral transmission has no minimum timeline and often occurs at first point of contact (e.g., handshake) or cough/sneeze at any time. Kind of irresponsible to even print that quote without correcting the argument.
It may be that Amazon retaliated, but stuff like this doesn't prove it. We need the hard facts. At this point it's unclear and sounds fishy on both sides.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/30/amazon-wo...
> key point Amazon claims he was exposed to the worker on March 11th
Did they claim that? I'm looking for a source on this. "According to the company’s previous statements, the infected co-worker in question last reported for work on 11 March", but when you look at their linked source[1] it says: "Amazon confirmed an associate, who reported for work on 11 March, has since been diagnosed with Covid-19".
> “No one else was put on quarantine,” he said
Is this confirmed? You can't just assume this to be true. Pretty damning if so, though.
> “You put me on quarantine for coming into contact with somebody, but I was around [that person] for less than five minutes,” he told Vice.
Viral transmission has no minimum timeline and often occurs at first point of contact (e.g., handshake) or cough/sneeze at any time. Kind of irresponsible to even print that quote without correcting the argument.
It may be that Amazon retaliated, but stuff like this doesn't prove it. We need the hard facts. At this point it's unclear and sounds fishy on both sides.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/30/amazon-wo...
I really hate it when people use he said/she said type arguments to pretend that they are being objective and 'rigorous'.
There is a reason that the courts have something called 'burden of proof'.
When an individual worker does something a large company doesn't like and they fire him, the burden of proof in my mind is on the company. Because HR has professionals and if they can't tell a better story than what we are seeing, then retaliation is the reason 90% of the time.
It isn't unclear. It is perfectly normal for companies to get rid of the whistle blowers. That's why there are (weakly enforced) laws against it.
There is a reason that the courts have something called 'burden of proof'.
When an individual worker does something a large company doesn't like and they fire him, the burden of proof in my mind is on the company. Because HR has professionals and if they can't tell a better story than what we are seeing, then retaliation is the reason 90% of the time.
It isn't unclear. It is perfectly normal for companies to get rid of the whistle blowers. That's why there are (weakly enforced) laws against it.
It's weird that you mention courts and then in the next sentence say this:
>the burden of proof in my mind is on the company
Because that is not how the courts operate. It is up to the person making the accusation (which in this case is the employee accusing Amazon of an unjust firing) to provide proof.
If you want to start dismissing all "he said/she said" arguments, then we might as well shut down this entire thread. We are never going to get any further than "he said/she said" unless someone in this thread has insider knowledge of this situation and is willing to break privacy agreements.
>the burden of proof in my mind is on the company
Because that is not how the courts operate. It is up to the person making the accusation (which in this case is the employee accusing Amazon of an unjust firing) to provide proof.
If you want to start dismissing all "he said/she said" arguments, then we might as well shut down this entire thread. We are never going to get any further than "he said/she said" unless someone in this thread has insider knowledge of this situation and is willing to break privacy agreements.
> Because that is not how the courts operate. It is up to the person making the accusation (which in this case is the employee accusing Amazon of an unjust firing) to provide proof.
While sort of true, using the word "proof" there is too strong. In a civil context, the burden of proof for a retaliatory firing is a preponderance of the evidence. That means, the plaintiff has to demonstrate with evidence to the court (in a bench trial) or the jury that it is more-likely-than-not (e.g. 51%) that the firing was retaliatory.
If you start with the evidence that Amazon learned that the worker was organizing a strike, and then very shortly thereafter fired the worker that evidence _alone_ (which seems to be undisputed) probably gets you near that burden.
Amazon, then, might present the lack of quarantine defense as an alternative scenario, but then some of the burden will be on Amazon to effectively make this case.
While sort of true, using the word "proof" there is too strong. In a civil context, the burden of proof for a retaliatory firing is a preponderance of the evidence. That means, the plaintiff has to demonstrate with evidence to the court (in a bench trial) or the jury that it is more-likely-than-not (e.g. 51%) that the firing was retaliatory.
If you start with the evidence that Amazon learned that the worker was organizing a strike, and then very shortly thereafter fired the worker that evidence _alone_ (which seems to be undisputed) probably gets you near that burden.
Amazon, then, might present the lack of quarantine defense as an alternative scenario, but then some of the burden will be on Amazon to effectively make this case.
Isn't the firing an accusation in and of itself and as such the burden of proof is on the company?
Firing someone isn't asking a court to do something. Companies can fire you for all sorts of silly reasons and most of them aren't illegal. The employee is accusing the company of firing them for one of the illegal reasons.
Absolutely; it's Amazon that are making the accusations here.
Exactly. When taken to court the plaintiff would have an easy time acquiring records of quarantine counts. In that case the "burden of proof" could somewhat be seen as being on Amazon, but really it's the court allowing the accusor to get such proof. (that is, some guy doesn't have to go around and ask everyone he worked with if they were quarantined, Amazon has to give him the information).
> It is up to the person making the accusation (which in this case is the employee accusing Amazon of an unjust firing) to provide proof.
It's not necessarily either. It may very well simply be the preponderance of the evidence. Nevertheless, such a suit will be undertaken with the benefit of the discovery process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_%28law%29
It's not necessarily either. It may very well simply be the preponderance of the evidence. Nevertheless, such a suit will be undertaken with the benefit of the discovery process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_%28law%29
Preponderance of evidence is the bar that must be met. But the plaintiff must provide the evidence to the courts. The discovery process makes some of the defendant's records available to the plaintiff, in case there is relevant evidence.
But if the plaintiff produces no evidence, Amazon does not need to make a defense. Thus OP is correct.
But if the plaintiff produces no evidence, Amazon does not need to make a defense. Thus OP is correct.
> But the plaintiff must provide the evidence to the courts
Sure, but any evidence which makes an accusation more likely than in the absence of that evidence suffices to meet preponderance of the evidence in the absence of any contrary evidence. The fact of the labor organizing, the fact of the firing, and their temporal relationship are, together, evidence for retaliation.
Sure, but any evidence which makes an accusation more likely than in the absence of that evidence suffices to meet preponderance of the evidence in the absence of any contrary evidence. The fact of the labor organizing, the fact of the firing, and their temporal relationship are, together, evidence for retaliation.
Yes, exactly. If the only evidence presented demonstrates that the plaintiff was organizing, that Amazon learned that he was organizing, and after that point Amazon fired the plaintiff they would very likely have met a preponderance of evidence burden. It sounds like none of those facts are even in dispute.
So, Amazon will very likely need to make the case (and Amazon will need to present the evidence to support it), that he was actually fired for violating the company mandated quarantine.
The actual evidentiary fight will probably be over whether that quarantine was a bona fide quarantine, or a pretextual one. But who has the burden to present that evidence will very much depend on who feels like they're losing the case. Probably both of them will need to present evidence to support their position.
So, Amazon will very likely need to make the case (and Amazon will need to present the evidence to support it), that he was actually fired for violating the company mandated quarantine.
The actual evidentiary fight will probably be over whether that quarantine was a bona fide quarantine, or a pretextual one. But who has the burden to present that evidence will very much depend on who feels like they're losing the case. Probably both of them will need to present evidence to support their position.
Fallacious. A headache is evidence of a brain tumor, but there's not a 51% chance you have a brain tumor. You've satisfied some necessary conditions for retaliatory action, but haven't converted that into a probability.
You have a reasonable indication, but no preponderance of evidence. You probably have enough for discovery.
You have a reasonable indication, but no preponderance of evidence. You probably have enough for discovery.
Preponderance of the evidence is only used in arbitration, if he's suing then this is litigation. In reality, if he has a contract requiring arbitration or mediation instead of litigation then he has absolutely no power and no chance of winning because arbitratators/mediators are always hired by the company.
Even discounting all of that, the judge/jury/arbitrator/litigator would have to agree that sending him into quarantine and not others constitutes retaliation. To be completely honest, this kind of job is a huge joke. If you take too many bathroom breaks you won't hit your quota and they cN fire you for that.
The only way to win isn't to prove he was treated inconsistently, that can be ignored so long as the reason they stated for letting him go is true.
Even discounting all of that, the judge/jury/arbitrator/litigator would have to agree that sending him into quarantine and not others constitutes retaliation. To be completely honest, this kind of job is a huge joke. If you take too many bathroom breaks you won't hit your quota and they cN fire you for that.
The only way to win isn't to prove he was treated inconsistently, that can be ignored so long as the reason they stated for letting him go is true.
A quick google search says preponderance of the evidence is the standard of proof for most civil cases, so your assertion that it is only used in arbitration seems to be incorrect.
And arbitrators are always required to be agreed on by both parties.
And arbitrators are always required to be agreed on by both parties.
> Preponderance of the evidence is only used in arbitration, if he's suing then this is litigation
This sentence is simply false.
This sentence is simply false.
That's not what "mediation" is. Mediation is never binding.
> There is a reason that the courts have something called 'burden of proof'.
Definitely.
> When an individual worker does something a large company doesn't like and they fire him, the burden of proof in my mind is on the company. Because HR has professionals and if they can't tell a better story than what we are seeing, then retaliation is the reason 90% of the time.
You don't appear to understand why courts have "something called burden of proof". In court, the burden of proof is on the person who was fired. They must show that they were fired illegally. You can't just randomly assign "burden of proof" based on your ideological bias.
> I really hate it when people use he said/she said type arguments to pretend that they are being objective and 'rigorous'.
Sounds like you "really hate it" when people express a preference for finding out what really happened.
I have no strong opinion about this specific case.
Definitely.
> When an individual worker does something a large company doesn't like and they fire him, the burden of proof in my mind is on the company. Because HR has professionals and if they can't tell a better story than what we are seeing, then retaliation is the reason 90% of the time.
You don't appear to understand why courts have "something called burden of proof". In court, the burden of proof is on the person who was fired. They must show that they were fired illegally. You can't just randomly assign "burden of proof" based on your ideological bias.
> I really hate it when people use he said/she said type arguments to pretend that they are being objective and 'rigorous'.
Sounds like you "really hate it" when people express a preference for finding out what really happened.
I have no strong opinion about this specific case.
>You don't appear to understand why courts have "something called burden of proof". In court, the burden of proof is on the person who was fired. They must show that they were fired illegally. You can't just randomly assign "burden of proof" based on your ideological bias.
You don't appear to understand that there is clearly visible causality here. A random person claiming they were unjustly fired is different than someone who was fired after organizing a strike.
You don't appear to understand that there is clearly visible causality here. A random person claiming they were unjustly fired is different than someone who was fired after organizing a strike.
Isn’t that casualty just an assertion? Proving that sequence of events played a role in the firing is the whole point.
Yes, but it is a sliding scale. Firing someone after organizing a strike would suggest sufficient prima facie to pursue the case in court. A claim without the appearance of supporting evidence would be thrown out.
That doesn't really work. If it did then anyone who knows they're about to get fired could just start organizing a strike. Or start organizing a strike as cover before purposely causing mischief.
Which would be discovered in court...
I think your confused. OP isn't suggesting that Amazon is guilty, but that there is enough evidence to warrant investigating what happened.
I think your confused. OP isn't suggesting that Amazon is guilty, but that there is enough evidence to warrant investigating what happened.
This isn't a criminal proceeding. The people who "investigate" a civil case are the plaintiffs, who don't need to be motivated by evidence in order to start investigating.
The point of contention is to what extent someone starting to organize a strike should be evidence that they weren't fired for some other reason. But it's extraordinarily weak evidence because it's completely under the control of the party it's supposed to be evidence in favor of.
Anybody who knows they're about to get fired for some other reason, or who wants to be able to do something obnoxious without getting fired, could just start making noises about a strike and then claim that's why when it happens. But since anybody can do that, it doesn't prove anything.
It's like claiming your boss promised you a bonus, and using as evidence some fully-refundable travel tickets you claim to have bought expecting to have the money. You would do that if you really thought you had the money coming, but you would also do it if you're just trying to manufacture evidence. You have reason to do it either way, so you doing it proves nothing because it lacks any correlation with the result.
The point of contention is to what extent someone starting to organize a strike should be evidence that they weren't fired for some other reason. But it's extraordinarily weak evidence because it's completely under the control of the party it's supposed to be evidence in favor of.
Anybody who knows they're about to get fired for some other reason, or who wants to be able to do something obnoxious without getting fired, could just start making noises about a strike and then claim that's why when it happens. But since anybody can do that, it doesn't prove anything.
It's like claiming your boss promised you a bonus, and using as evidence some fully-refundable travel tickets you claim to have bought expecting to have the money. You would do that if you really thought you had the money coming, but you would also do it if you're just trying to manufacture evidence. You have reason to do it either way, so you doing it proves nothing because it lacks any correlation with the result.
> This isn't a criminal proceeding. The people who "investigate" a civil case are the plaintiffs, who don't need to be motivated by evidence in order to start investigating.
You're not really addressing the point. No one is saying anything about proof or guilt. To carry out any sort of effective investigation discovery is required. The act of firing someone after organizing is prima facie evidence for carrying out discovery. That's all they were saying.
You're not really addressing the point. No one is saying anything about proof or guilt. To carry out any sort of effective investigation discovery is required. The act of firing someone after organizing is prima facie evidence for carrying out discovery. That's all they were saying.
> No one is saying anything about proof or guilt.
Sure you are. Discovery is really expensive. The point of throwing out cases prior to it is to keep the court system from being used as a mechanism for harassment or extortion. Otherwise if you don't like somebody you could file a frivolous case against them and require them to spend thousands of dollars on discovery even though you'll never win, or use that expense to extract a settlement from them because it's cheaper to pay you off than win the case on the merits.
So the question is whether something the plaintiff does should be considered as evidence against the defendant. But the plaintiff could do it even if the defendant is totally innocent, and has an incentive to do it if it would allow them to bring their frivolous case, so it has no evidentiary value. It conveys zero bits of information because you could reasonably expect it to happen with equivalent probability regardless of the defendant's liability.
The reason this really messes people up is that it's one of those "this statement is false" things. If it can't be used as evidence and it still happens then it's much better evidence, because the plaintiff in that situation wouldn't have a motive to do it just to manufacture evidence. But as soon as you do allow it to be used as meaningful evidence, that motive reappears and destroys the evidentiary value.
Sure you are. Discovery is really expensive. The point of throwing out cases prior to it is to keep the court system from being used as a mechanism for harassment or extortion. Otherwise if you don't like somebody you could file a frivolous case against them and require them to spend thousands of dollars on discovery even though you'll never win, or use that expense to extract a settlement from them because it's cheaper to pay you off than win the case on the merits.
So the question is whether something the plaintiff does should be considered as evidence against the defendant. But the plaintiff could do it even if the defendant is totally innocent, and has an incentive to do it if it would allow them to bring their frivolous case, so it has no evidentiary value. It conveys zero bits of information because you could reasonably expect it to happen with equivalent probability regardless of the defendant's liability.
The reason this really messes people up is that it's one of those "this statement is false" things. If it can't be used as evidence and it still happens then it's much better evidence, because the plaintiff in that situation wouldn't have a motive to do it just to manufacture evidence. But as soon as you do allow it to be used as meaningful evidence, that motive reappears and destroys the evidentiary value.
> Because HR has professionals and if they can't tell a better story than what we are seeing, then retaliation is the reason 90% of the time.
There are regulatory / liability reasons which may prevent HR from telling their side of the story. The employee is not under the same rules and can say whatever they want without HR being able to refute it.
There are regulatory / liability reasons which may prevent HR from telling their side of the story. The employee is not under the same rules and can say whatever they want without HR being able to refute it.
And I really hate it when people distort well-defined ideas like "burden of proof" to mean whatever they want it to mean, especially whatever is most advantageous to their worldview.
Just to be clear, I think this probably was retaliation, and there seems to be almost enough to prove it. If it can be proven that Amazon put no one else in quarantine under similar circumstances (minus leading a strike) before this case, yes, most reasonable people would view this as retaliation.
Just to be clear, I think this probably was retaliation, and there seems to be almost enough to prove it. If it can be proven that Amazon put no one else in quarantine under similar circumstances (minus leading a strike) before this case, yes, most reasonable people would view this as retaliation.
The standard for evidence for a corporation is indeed higher in court. That does not apply to the court of public opinion and social media.
We should not expect that a corporation prove its case to US. ...we are not judges. We have no right to cast judgement or determine who's right, and have no rights to the evidence.
This will all be fleshed out IN COURT - where it belongs.
We should not expect that a corporation prove its case to US. ...we are not judges. We have no right to cast judgement or determine who's right, and have no rights to the evidence.
This will all be fleshed out IN COURT - where it belongs.
I wouldn't be surprised if the guy who posted it above is actually working for amazon to manipulate the situation. Introducing controversy is an actual technique used to discredit people.
Everybody is pretty clear about amazons reputation towards their employees, including software engineers.
Everybody is pretty clear about amazons reputation towards their employees, including software engineers.
> then retaliation is the reason 90% of the time.
Supposition does not mean "burden of proof".
> the burden of proof in my mind is on the company
Your presumption that the company is at fault is unjust.
Supposition does not mean "burden of proof".
> the burden of proof in my mind is on the company
Your presumption that the company is at fault is unjust.
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[deleted]
>Is this confirmed? You can't just assume this to be true.
From Vice
>Amazon did not immediately respond to an email Tuesday morning asking how many people at the site have been ordered into self-quarantine
Even if they did quarantine others, putting someone on a 14 day quarantine 17 days after contact is hard to explain.
From Vice
>Amazon did not immediately respond to an email Tuesday morning asking how many people at the site have been ordered into self-quarantine
Even if they did quarantine others, putting someone on a 14 day quarantine 17 days after contact is hard to explain.
> Even if they did quarantine others, putting someone on a 14 day quarantine 17 days after contact is hard to explain.
Not that hard. If everyone in the office had contact with someone infected then the best thing to do would have been to quarantine them all right away. Because without that, you now have the possibility that one of them had an asymptomatic case which they could have still had and given to any of the others less than a week ago, which means the others are still inside the window for being infected but not having either recovered or showed symptoms. Which means they still need to be quarantined.
Not that hard. If everyone in the office had contact with someone infected then the best thing to do would have been to quarantine them all right away. Because without that, you now have the possibility that one of them had an asymptomatic case which they could have still had and given to any of the others less than a week ago, which means the others are still inside the window for being infected but not having either recovered or showed symptoms. Which means they still need to be quarantined.
Why are they quarantining people because they may have been in contact with the virus but did not quarantine people they know were in contact with the virus?
Could be the usual bureaucratic reasons. Left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Or the left hand is correct and they should all be quarantined and the mistake wasn't sending this guy home, it was not sending the others home too.
If these reasons exist, the company put lives at risk for weeks and then fired someone for doing the same thing for one day. Many members of management should have been fired before Monday for this to seem legitimate.
Not necessarily. Choosing whether to quarantine people is a judgement call, but going into work after being ordered not to is insubordination and trespass.
>Choosing whether to quarantine people is a judgement call,
This judgment call changed. If bureaucratic ineptitude was to blame, those people ignored proper procedure, making them insubordinate, and risked lives. And if they found the issue confusing enough to take eighteen days to issue the quarantine notice, they should understand why this employee might think they are being targeted for their labor practices.
This judgment call changed. If bureaucratic ineptitude was to blame, those people ignored proper procedure, making them insubordinate, and risked lives. And if they found the issue confusing enough to take eighteen days to issue the quarantine notice, they should understand why this employee might think they are being targeted for their labor practices.
> This judgment call changed.
The available information changed. This very quickly went from something many people weren't sure wasn't going to be maybe a nasty flu to something that has half the world staying home from work and hospitals getting overrun. Changing your procedures in response to new information is what managers should be doing.
The available information changed. This very quickly went from something many people weren't sure wasn't going to be maybe a nasty flu to something that has half the world staying home from work and hospitals getting overrun. Changing your procedures in response to new information is what managers should be doing.
This is just wrong, this disease was not some mystery three weeks ago and implying that the Amazon managers just learned of the dangers last weekend is absurd.
Three weeks ago there were less than 5000 known cases in the US, now there are about a quarter of a million and the most in the world. The idea that what we know now is equivalent to what we knew then is absurd. Three weeks ago there was some hope it could be contained using ordinary measures.
They'd have been smarter to respond to it sooner, but better late than never.
They'd have been smarter to respond to it sooner, but better late than never.
> Even if they did quarantine others, putting someone on a 14 day quarantine 17 days after contact is hard to explain.
It would be harder to explain why Amazon didn't put on quarantine an employee who was vocal about his exposure to the virus.
At most it sounds like malevolent compliance.
It would be harder to explain why Amazon didn't put on quarantine an employee who was vocal about his exposure to the virus.
At most it sounds like malevolent compliance.
No, at most it sounds like retaliation.
They did not follow health guidelines until the person complained and then they still don't follow them but instead claim to follow them. Why just claim? After the 14 day phase the guidelines don't suggest any quarantines unless people show symptoms.
They did not follow health guidelines until the person complained and then they still don't follow them but instead claim to follow them. Why just claim? After the 14 day phase the guidelines don't suggest any quarantines unless people show symptoms.
> No, at most it sounds like retaliation.
Full paid leave is not what most people in the US would call retaliation, particularly in the case of a warehouse worker.
Full paid leave is not what most people in the US would call retaliation, particularly in the case of a warehouse worker.
The retaliation part is where they got fired.
He got fired for showing up to work when he was told to stay home.
And if we was told to stay home because to prevent unionizing, that's retaliation. Intent matters in law.
> And if we was told to stay home because to prevent unionizing,
But the worker was placed on a 15 day paid leave to self quarantine because he stated he had direct contact with someone infected with covid19.
And then he not only broke his quarantine but also made it his point to go to work, potentially risking his colleagues.
Even if you argue that he did't carried covid19, that action is not justifiable, neither safety-wise nor legaly-wise.
But the worker was placed on a 15 day paid leave to self quarantine because he stated he had direct contact with someone infected with covid19.
And then he not only broke his quarantine but also made it his point to go to work, potentially risking his colleagues.
Even if you argue that he did't carried covid19, that action is not justifiable, neither safety-wise nor legaly-wise.
over and over in this thread you have been repeatedly told that amazon waited well over 2 weeks to "quarantine" him (and only him, nobody else that was exposed) despite knowing he was exposed (and also did not tell him).
Yet in every post you make, you continue to misrepresent the situation.
You are being hugely dishonest
Yet in every post you make, you continue to misrepresent the situation.
You are being hugely dishonest
So what's your solution then, companies can just tell employees to stay home for no valid when they try to plan a strike or organize, and then fire them if they still try to do so?
It's unclear whether there was "no valid reason" or not in this case. But if they're paying the employee to stay home (like Amazon was in this case) it's hard for me to see a huge problem.
The issue is that this prevents him from organizing strikes effectively. That is very problematic.
To me, this seems like retaliation, but he offered Amazon plausible deniability by not complying with job instructions. If you're told to work from home but you refuse, it seems within reason that you might be let go.
How about not trying to organize a strike in the middle of a national emergency? Is that an option?
No, of course not. The employee complains about not being quarantined for 14 days after exposure. That makes sense. The only way to fix that was to have made a better decision. Quarantining him 18 days later is entirely pointless and adresses nothing.
Statements like this sound so reasonable but they ignore the massive power imbalance. Amazon is the largest company in the world whose owner has literally bought news papers. Given that power I’m way more likely to believe the workers...
I think we should lean toward the workers, take them seriously and investigate. But it's unwise to go beyond the facts. If claims turn out to be false it'll damage the believability of victims in the future. Being prudent is necessary to have believability tilted in their direction over the long term.
Completely agree, it's just a tough line sometimes.
By what measure is Amazon the largest company in the world? It’s not by market cap, employee count, revenue, earnings, or any other measure I can think of.
I'm guessing this was unintentional by GP, but it's probably true that amazon is the largest company in the world where the founder also owns a major newspaper.
Moreover, Amazon has a long history of unethical and often illegal repression against its workers, so there's that.
Yes, but in the case one side is well known for abusing the other side, the benefit of the doubt goes to the abused.
Amazon has an abusive culture. Let's not "both sides" that out of existence, shall we?
Amazon has an abusive culture. Let's not "both sides" that out of existence, shall we?
Ordering quarantine 3 weeks after exposure is the the big one.
When a strike leader gets fired over some bullshit like this you really have to be a sap to take the company's side this seriously.
One side has a long history of labour abuses however. It would be different if it was Patagonia or Columbia and they had a history of treating people great
Amazon has a really good reputation for treating its warehouse employees well so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. /s.
Obviously, I mean the opposite ; )
Obviously, I mean the opposite ; )
You aren’t being rigorous at all, you are just asking questions and have no idea about the answers.
asking questions when you know the answers is pretty pointless, innit
Well there's a difference between asking questions with the actual intent to find the answers, and asking just in order to 'both sides' a discussion without contributing any new information. The latter is more akin to sealioning, really.
It's the Socratic method and foundation is of our trial justice system.
These here are the important details about this and it looks pretty egregious on Amazon's behalf. Imagine the sort of leverage they could wield over their employees if they are able to get away with this kind of behavior?
If it took them that long to discover the exposure and notify the worker that really proves the workers' case that they're being subjected to an unsafe work environment. They're striking for protective gear and Amazon's response is to go 'oops, we didn't notice you were exposed weeks ago'? Ouch. Suddenly it's all Personal Responsibility when the worker's exposure happens even though Amazon could have prevented it.
I think you can be contagious 18 days after exposure, isn't the incubation period around 2 weeks? And we know there are asymptomatic cases so a lack of symptoms after that period doesn't mean he isn't contagious. However if he was indeed the only employee asked to quarantine that is highly suspicious.
The incubation period is 2 to 14 days, with 5 days being the median.
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> The incubation period is 2 to 14 days, with 5 days being the median.
However, there are reports of cases with an incubation period of up to 27 days.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-incuba...
However, there are reports of cases with an incubation period of up to 27 days.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-incuba...
And this would be a total reasonable defense if they quarantine any worker who has any contact with anyone who is infected for any amount of time for 27 days.
But that' isn't a policy the company follows. Also they let him work during the 2 weeks he was most likely to be contagious.
But that' isn't a policy the company follows. Also they let him work during the 2 weeks he was most likely to be contagious.
What do you think is more likely, that after more than 2 weeks of not giving a shit about quarantining an employee, suddenly Amazon was worried about a 0.01% outlier of 27 days before symptoms showed, or that this was a retaliatory action for the worker attempting to organize a strike.
I sure know what I'd be placing a large amount of money on if I was a betting man.
I sure know what I'd be placing a large amount of money on if I was a betting man.
Tangent: would you make a bet on a question of fact where there is no authority you and your betting partner mutually trust to decide?
>there are reports of cases with an incubation period of up to 27 days.
There is only one report based on one case of a 70 year old man in Hubei province, based on contact testing, and did not rule out that he contacted it later.
There is only one report based on one case of a 70 year old man in Hubei province, based on contact testing, and did not rule out that he contacted it later.
The incubation period averages 5 days or so.
The 2 weeks figure is because we're reasonably confident that if you haven't turned up with symptoms in 2 weeks, you aren't going to.
The 2 weeks figure is because we're reasonably confident that if you haven't turned up with symptoms in 2 weeks, you aren't going to.
> reasonably confident that if you haven't turned up with symptoms in 2 weeks, you aren't going to.
Visible symptoms aren't the only concern, you can be contagious without symptoms, and there are studies showing that 50% of all infections could be asymptomatic - https://eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.20...
Visible symptoms aren't the only concern, you can be contagious without symptoms, and there are studies showing that 50% of all infections could be asymptomatic - https://eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.20...
But if you've been asymptomatic for 2 weeks you are at very low risk for infecting anyone else.
Agreed.
I was precisely stating the reasoning behind the number we see everywhere. I was not offering an opinion on whether that reasoning is sufficient to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
That said, in an emergency it makes sense to focus on people with symptoms and tell everyone else to act like they might be exposed. In which case people who have been exposed and have symptoms should act like you want everyone else to act. Which means that if they are working in a warehouse, you want them to have protective gear to prevent them from giving it to people.
Which is exactly one of the things that this strike was about.
I was precisely stating the reasoning behind the number we see everywhere. I was not offering an opinion on whether that reasoning is sufficient to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
That said, in an emergency it makes sense to focus on people with symptoms and tell everyone else to act like they might be exposed. In which case people who have been exposed and have symptoms should act like you want everyone else to act. Which means that if they are working in a warehouse, you want them to have protective gear to prevent them from giving it to people.
Which is exactly one of the things that this strike was about.
While I personally am leaning towards retalation explanation, both statements could be true. Assuming Corona exposure was just happy coincidence that would allow company to fire employee and maybe even suggest that the fired employee was responsible for endangering others health.
Somewhat related, I have been receiving a lot unsolicited communications for signing various anti-amazon documents.
Somewhat related, I have been receiving a lot unsolicited communications for signing various anti-amazon documents.
IMO, the misuse of pandemic response procedures will not be limited to the private sector.
The 'ideological clarity' of the novel virus is quite fearful [& provocative] ..
The 'ideological clarity' of the novel virus is quite fearful [& provocative] ..
Tech companies in general and Amazon specifically seem scared to death of unionization. I think Amazon's actions in this matter are going to backfire tremendously.
...and anyone who's had to work with a union can understand why.
Having worked with unions, is it because they tend to have better benefits and support for their employees? Having a union rep in their disciplinary activities?
I assume your comment is that Amazon would lose money if a union happened?
I assume your comment is that Amazon would lose money if a union happened?
Having worked with unions, it is because they introduce and entirely new and superfluous bureaucratic hierarchy to a company.
I have had situations where it was not allowed to move a computer monitor from one cube to another - that had to be done by a union employee. Literally taking a unused spare monitor from one desk, and putting it on another employees desk where it was need. ...and there was a formal requisition process to get that done which took two weeks to get through approvals, assignment, and finally have it done.
I have had union workers walk off the job during a major system outage because their facility managers forced them to take their break time. The whole company was down - it was all-hands-on-deck outage due to Hurricane Sandy. The actual union workers wanted to help us get the systems back online for the company, but the union rep wouldn't let them work.
I have had great workers quit or refuse jobs with our company because they knew and loathed the union - not the company, but the UNION.
I don't have any problem with unions at companies that protect the SAFETY of workers, as they are needed in various industrial jobs. ...but at a TECH companies where workers are making six figures, have matched 401k plans, and safe and comfortable desk jobs? ...it just screams "ridiculous" to me.
I have had situations where it was not allowed to move a computer monitor from one cube to another - that had to be done by a union employee. Literally taking a unused spare monitor from one desk, and putting it on another employees desk where it was need. ...and there was a formal requisition process to get that done which took two weeks to get through approvals, assignment, and finally have it done.
I have had union workers walk off the job during a major system outage because their facility managers forced them to take their break time. The whole company was down - it was all-hands-on-deck outage due to Hurricane Sandy. The actual union workers wanted to help us get the systems back online for the company, but the union rep wouldn't let them work.
I have had great workers quit or refuse jobs with our company because they knew and loathed the union - not the company, but the UNION.
I don't have any problem with unions at companies that protect the SAFETY of workers, as they are needed in various industrial jobs. ...but at a TECH companies where workers are making six figures, have matched 401k plans, and safe and comfortable desk jobs? ...it just screams "ridiculous" to me.
I've seen the same thing. Most recently at a trade show.
That said unions help more than they hurt, in my opinion. It's also pointless to paint all unions with the same brush like that, you worked with a group of people that had bad management. That's can happen in any organization, not just unions.
Not they're not all great all the time but I think the Hollywood unions are something we as tech workers could model ourselves after. You still negotiate your own salary and such but certain benefits like pension/retirement/healthcare (which are great at scale but hurt employers and employees at smaller businesses) can be amalgamated across the membership.
Like for example just a couple years ago the writers unions got into a spat with their agents over double dipping with production companies and not representing the interests of their clients. That kind of bargaining power can be wielded to fix institutional problems across an industry, but it doesn't have to come at the cost of individual gains - the writers still negotiate their own compensation and sign their own deals.
Unions can be a great way for industries to self regulate imo.
That said unions help more than they hurt, in my opinion. It's also pointless to paint all unions with the same brush like that, you worked with a group of people that had bad management. That's can happen in any organization, not just unions.
Not they're not all great all the time but I think the Hollywood unions are something we as tech workers could model ourselves after. You still negotiate your own salary and such but certain benefits like pension/retirement/healthcare (which are great at scale but hurt employers and employees at smaller businesses) can be amalgamated across the membership.
Like for example just a couple years ago the writers unions got into a spat with their agents over double dipping with production companies and not representing the interests of their clients. That kind of bargaining power can be wielded to fix institutional problems across an industry, but it doesn't have to come at the cost of individual gains - the writers still negotiate their own compensation and sign their own deals.
Unions can be a great way for industries to self regulate imo.
They're also a great way to keep out competition - see hollywood union requirements for membership. They limit the competition.
>> Hollywood unions are something we as tech workers could model ourselves after
That's a guild, not a union. And sure, it's good. As long as you don't care about people that aren't in it right now. SAG does their very best to keep new entrants out.
That's a guild, not a union. And sure, it's good. As long as you don't care about people that aren't in it right now. SAG does their very best to keep new entrants out.
I'm sorry, but this is incorrect. SAG-AFTRA is a labor union and a member of the AFL-CIO.
And they don't work to keep new entrants out. Union workplaces do prefer to hire union members, but if they can't then they'll work to get someone enrolled in the union.
And they don't work to keep new entrants out. Union workplaces do prefer to hire union members, but if they can't then they'll work to get someone enrolled in the union.
> I have had situations where it was not allowed to move a computer monitor from one cube to another - that had to be done by a union employee
Can you explain to me where this is a union thing? Like I'd honestly like you to point out and explain your logic why this is specifically because of a union.
The reason why I bring this up is because I have encountered the same issues at my prior jobs which were non-union. Literally the exact same issue, where I was not allowed to move a computer monitor because it had to be done by another department after submitting a formal request.
I feel like people tend to blame unions for everything and yet I see the exact same shit people blame unions for at my non-union jobs. Is that because of an invisible union? Is there something I'm missing?
Can you explain to me where this is a union thing? Like I'd honestly like you to point out and explain your logic why this is specifically because of a union.
The reason why I bring this up is because I have encountered the same issues at my prior jobs which were non-union. Literally the exact same issue, where I was not allowed to move a computer monitor because it had to be done by another department after submitting a formal request.
I feel like people tend to blame unions for everything and yet I see the exact same shit people blame unions for at my non-union jobs. Is that because of an invisible union? Is there something I'm missing?
I experienced this "move a monitor" scenario myself whilst I was working at a DoD contractor company. I had to move cubicles and moved my stuff myself. My boss noticed and told me I couldn't move my monitor or docking station... but everything else I could. So I had to move my monitor and docking station back down to my old cubicle so that a few days later the "correct people" could move the items back up for me.
Why is this a union thing? No idea. Is it real? Yes.
Perhaps somebody is enjoying some popcorn watching an unending battle between "the invisible hand of the free market" and "an invisible union".
Why is this a union thing? No idea. Is it real? Yes.
Perhaps somebody is enjoying some popcorn watching an unending battle between "the invisible hand of the free market" and "an invisible union".
Absolutely. Had exactly this issue with wanting to move monitors just 3 weeks ago in a company where a previous union drive failed and had a lot of people spouting this sort of hoary, old cliche.
You can use asterisks around a word for emphasis, it reads less like you are yelling.
Some reasons to have unions at tech companies:
IP restrictions, unpaid oncall/overtime, crunch, getting a larger cut of the wealth they produce, better parental/health/timeoff benefits, having a representative in disciplinary hearings, requiring clear salary and performance processes, and about a half dozen other ideas.
You can disagree that these are real concerns at tech companies, but they are not ridiculous.
Some reasons to have unions at tech companies:
IP restrictions, unpaid oncall/overtime, crunch, getting a larger cut of the wealth they produce, better parental/health/timeoff benefits, having a representative in disciplinary hearings, requiring clear salary and performance processes, and about a half dozen other ideas.
You can disagree that these are real concerns at tech companies, but they are not ridiculous.
How does overtime / unpaid time work with salary workers? How much will the union take from my pay? Any amount is unacceptable given the current tax climate. Honestly it sounds like you just need a better company if you have these concerns. I work for the exact company in this article and we have all of these things you listed.
We could change our labor law to organize new unions on the Japanese or German models where nobody questions their legitimacy but instead we have this late 19th century model and the corporations act the part. Well I suppose they can’t call in mercenaries in a strike.
But how do you temper managements abuses for lower waged work though?
If only there was some sort of system to enforce laws. Oh wait, that only exists in a perfect world where a government actually cares about your rights...
Honestly I get it on both sides, but I really think the union has to be a jerk. It's annoying to most small independent types or middle management areas, but the people in the union need that type of power to influence the BS corporate hierarchy of exploitation to absurd degrees. It's fine to be exploited, it's annoying when the company will drop you in a heartbeat because some minor issue thats come up. If we had laws that at least made it easier for employees to exert their rights (through agencies that the government didn't short change like they love to do) we would have no need for unions. Culturally it'd be a precedent that management can't be dicks.
If only there was some sort of system to enforce laws. Oh wait, that only exists in a perfect world where a government actually cares about your rights...
Honestly I get it on both sides, but I really think the union has to be a jerk. It's annoying to most small independent types or middle management areas, but the people in the union need that type of power to influence the BS corporate hierarchy of exploitation to absurd degrees. It's fine to be exploited, it's annoying when the company will drop you in a heartbeat because some minor issue thats come up. If we had laws that at least made it easier for employees to exert their rights (through agencies that the government didn't short change like they love to do) we would have no need for unions. Culturally it'd be a precedent that management can't be dicks.
Superfluous might not be the right word.
The union is not superfluous to the employees- it is the only thing negotiating on their behalf in a power-imbalanced, often exploitative situation.
The union is not superfluous to the employer- it is actually a hostile counterparty in terms of wages and exploitation.
Thats not to say the added bureaucracy is always welcomed- it sucks.
The union is not superfluous to the employees- it is the only thing negotiating on their behalf in a power-imbalanced, often exploitative situation.
The union is not superfluous to the employer- it is actually a hostile counterparty in terms of wages and exploitation.
Thats not to say the added bureaucracy is always welcomed- it sucks.
I think we're talking about amazon warehouse workers. I absolutely agree and I would loathe having to work in such an environment but when your job is put the package on the truck as fast as you can a union is a very nice thing to have.
Please name one Amazon Warehouse stock picker or forklift operator who is making 6 figures please. Also, where are all these tech workers making 6 figures at? BLS OES Job wage data shows about 80% of tech workers don't make 6 figures. The ones that do are in cities where $90k is the poverty line ffs.
Management can choose to share profit fairly in a keep what you catch manner so everyone's interests are aligned, and report accounting fairly, to the whole company.
Or Management can choose to do what Bezos did and ruin the retail market by selling at a loss for 2 decades while playing guile and psyop games with the public; he owns washington post BTW. Amazon is terrified of unions because that means they can't be profitable. Agriculture, Warehousing and logistics are major employers of illegal alien labor; the way Bezos makes money is by undercutting brick and morter retailers' supply chain costs because he doesn't have to hire anyone to run a store.
The reason unions form is management gets abusive; this pandemic is one such instance.
Management can choose to share profit fairly in a keep what you catch manner so everyone's interests are aligned, and report accounting fairly, to the whole company.
Or Management can choose to do what Bezos did and ruin the retail market by selling at a loss for 2 decades while playing guile and psyop games with the public; he owns washington post BTW. Amazon is terrified of unions because that means they can't be profitable. Agriculture, Warehousing and logistics are major employers of illegal alien labor; the way Bezos makes money is by undercutting brick and morter retailers' supply chain costs because he doesn't have to hire anyone to run a store.
The reason unions form is management gets abusive; this pandemic is one such instance.
My girlfriend worked at Macys. She was paid $14hr to do white collar admin work and was in a "union". Each month we would walk a few blocks away downtown to a small office. This is where we paid "dues". We couldn't pay online or have it deduct from her check. The person we handed our check to would just roll their eyes and throw her check into a pile of checks. She couldn't afford these dues. The best part? You were required to be in the union.
The union helped Macys layoff thousands of workers including her with no severance in a nice streamlined fashion. I am wrong, but this is what I learned: Unions are basically fat cat organizations that leach hard working people.
The union helped Macys layoff thousands of workers including her with no severance in a nice streamlined fashion. I am wrong, but this is what I learned: Unions are basically fat cat organizations that leach hard working people.
Poorly run unions produce bad outcomes. There are also governments and corporations that leech off hard working people. It's a human dynamics problem, not a problem specifically with unions.
Like democracies, unions will exploit the people in them if the people in them do not organize and agitate actively for their own interests.
Like democracies, unions suck, but they are not as bad as the alternative -- unless you're the boss or the generalissimo.
Like democracies, unions suck, but they are not as bad as the alternative -- unless you're the boss or the generalissimo.
Are you saying that union members need to... unionize against their union?
It's all unions, all the way down.
It's all unions, all the way down.
Essentially yes. Unions have varying levels of active members which sometimes leads to a self-interested bureaucracy acting against the wishes of the membership. See for instance this recent well-known example:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhiprakash/bernie-san...
There is nothing magic about unions or democracy which means that they guarantee good outcomes. You have to work at it and be involved. In fact everyone has to.
There is nothing magic about unions or democracy which means that they guarantee good outcomes. You have to work at it and be involved. In fact everyone has to.
Non-ironically, yes, and many union members in the US agree. Even before COVID-19, there were high-profile wildcat strikes this year, and it's only accelerating now.
Having a union is literally worse than not having one at all.
...unless people are literally dying in the factory. Unions were made for worker safety and made sense THEN - not today.
...unless people are literally dying in the factory. Unions were made for worker safety and made sense THEN - not today.
People are dying due to lack of investment of corporate profits in health care. I cannot believe you need this pointed out to you right now.
In other shocking news today's capitalists don't wear top-hats and drive around in Rolls Royces: they wear hoodies and drive modest cars.
In other shocking news today's capitalists don't wear top-hats and drive around in Rolls Royces: they wear hoodies and drive modest cars.
If your girlfriend was in a union, why do you say "we paid"?
I'm going to assune good faith here, maybe it's a cultural thing, who knows?
Regardless, here in the US it is typical for couples to form a partnership in which both income and expenses are shared. Possibly the reason for the recent emergence of the term 'Partner' to describe one's Significant Other.
Regardless, here in the US it is typical for couples to form a partnership in which both income and expenses are shared. Possibly the reason for the recent emergence of the term 'Partner' to describe one's Significant Other.
I'm from Europe and it struck me as odd that the subject of the sentence switched from singular to plural for no good reason.
>My girlfriend worked at Macys
>She was paid
>(She) was in a "union"
>Each month we would walk
>we paid "dues"
>we couldn't pay online
>we handed our check
>throw her check
I was just wondering if there was some hidden twist behind the change of subject, so I asked bluntly.
>My girlfriend worked at Macys
>She was paid
>(She) was in a "union"
>Each month we would walk
>we paid "dues"
>we couldn't pay online
>we handed our check
>throw her check
I was just wondering if there was some hidden twist behind the change of subject, so I asked bluntly.
Why are you being such a dick, who cares?
Union members pay the union, supposedly to support costs like materials and salaries for union representatives.
You mean like, most of the companies in Europe?
Europe, which has a per-capita GDP ~1/3 lower than the US.
This didn't pass the smell test, and sure enough Monaco, Norway, Switzerland, Ireland, Iceland, all have higher per capita GDPs. Denmark, Sweden, Austria, and Finland are in the same ballpark or a little lower. Germany and Belgium are lower, but still above 1/3 lower.
UK and France are ~1/3 lower. Italy and Spain are ~50% lower.
UK and France are ~1/3 lower. Italy and Spain are ~50% lower.
US population 330m gdp/capita 59k
--Higher GDP European state--
Switzerland pop: 8.5m gdp/capita: 65k -- reputation as a tax haven
Ireland pop: 6.5m gdp/capita: 69k -- reputation as a tax haven
Norway pop: 5.3m gdp/capita: 85k -- petrostate
Iceland pop: 364,260 gpd/capita: 54,753
Monaco pop: 37,497 gdp/capita: 162k -- french riviera
--Most populous Western Europe nations--
Germany pop: 82m gdp/capita: 44k
France pop: 67m gdp/capita: 38k
UK pop: 66m gdp/capita: 39k
Italy pop: 60m gdp/capita: 32k
Look I'm all for a larger welfare state, and there are plenty of things our nation could learn from Europe. But to pretend that if we made our country more European our economy would grow to resemble a tiny nation/tax haven like Ireland more than the UK, France, or Germany is unrealistic.
--Higher GDP European state--
Switzerland pop: 8.5m gdp/capita: 65k -- reputation as a tax haven
Ireland pop: 6.5m gdp/capita: 69k -- reputation as a tax haven
Norway pop: 5.3m gdp/capita: 85k -- petrostate
Iceland pop: 364,260 gpd/capita: 54,753
Monaco pop: 37,497 gdp/capita: 162k -- french riviera
--Most populous Western Europe nations--
Germany pop: 82m gdp/capita: 44k
France pop: 67m gdp/capita: 38k
UK pop: 66m gdp/capita: 39k
Italy pop: 60m gdp/capita: 32k
Look I'm all for a larger welfare state, and there are plenty of things our nation could learn from Europe. But to pretend that if we made our country more European our economy would grow to resemble a tiny nation/tax haven like Ireland more than the UK, France, or Germany is unrealistic.
Thank you for pulling up the numbers. It seemed very suspicious when the comment above selected the smallest EU states.
> Ireland pop: 6.5 million
Reality: 4.8 million
Reality: 4.8 million
Oh yeah it looks like the number I found was for the island not the country.
Yeah, the problem is you double-counted the population there due to also including the UK. I didn't check the others.
2018 numbers I found[1] show the EU as having ~69% the per-capita GDP of US. That's pretty close to 1/3 less.
1: https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/gdp-per-capita
1: https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/gdp-per-capita
Right, and if the United States merged with a cross section of less developed countries our GDP per capita would look smaller, too.
If you drop Mississippi, Idaho, West Virginia, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Alabama from the US numbers, then the US GDP per capita number would look bigger. Anyone can get different numbers by cherry-picking higher performers and dropping lower performers, but OP wrote "Europe" not "this list of rich countries in Europe".
It's not cherry picking. One of these entities is a nation and the other is not. It's a bad comparison.
but it didn't, and this is moving the goalposts. the original claim was correct.
The original claim was also a bad and misleading comparison. It doesn't make sense to compare a single country to an entire continent of 44 different countries, which are quite different from each other in a large variety of salient ways.
why not? the US is a large country (with more land area than the "entire continent" it's being compared against) with fifty states that are also quite different from each other. the US states are less autonomous than EU, but the country is large and diverse enough that it makes more sense to compare it to the entire EU than a very wealthy subset of US state-sized countries.
It doesn't make sense to compare the EU to a federation with more than double its land area, composed of 50 different states, which are quite different from each other in a large variety of salient ways.
It assuredly does to citizens of the United States.
The hint is in the name.
The hint is in the name.
[deleted]
I think the merged-with-less-developed countries is a red-herring. Run the calculation against the Eurozone and it doesn't change much.
There's no single apples-to-apples measurement we can make; the US has more natural resources than the EU, suffered far less harm from all the major conflicts up through WW2, &c.
I don't know whether or not liberalizing the economy of the EU would raise per-capita GDP or not, but the post I was replying to was claiming that a very specific and easy-to-check fact was wrong, so I checked it.
There's no single apples-to-apples measurement we can make; the US has more natural resources than the EU, suffered far less harm from all the major conflicts up through WW2, &c.
I don't know whether or not liberalizing the economy of the EU would raise per-capita GDP or not, but the post I was replying to was claiming that a very specific and easy-to-check fact was wrong, so I checked it.
The US isn't homogenous either. DC, Massachusetts, New York, California, Alaska, and Washington have much higher GDPs per capita than other states / provinces.
The US is a nation state, the European Union is not. Comparing the two should only be done with a truckload of caveats to begin with. If anything, compare the Eurozone to the US.
With visa-free travel, common regulations, etc., the European Union is certainly starting to approach the United States (notice the plural in "States"?) in developing a similar federal structure.
Brexit shows that there's still a major difference: member states can elect to leave. Economic penalties etc follow, and political fallout, but here in the US we fought a major war to demonstrate that states are _not_ allowed to secede from the union. (As much as many blue states might wish they could ...)
There are only two states in USA that could secede and not feel crippling economic impact. Texas and California. One Blue, one Red
Using the OECD numbers[1]:
(USGDPPC - EurozoneGDPPC) / AVERAGE(USGDPPC, EurozoneGDPPC) = 0.283
Roughly speaking, you could write this as "The GDP per capita of the Eurozone is 28.3% lower than the US".
[1] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV
(USGDPPC - EurozoneGDPPC) / AVERAGE(USGDPPC, EurozoneGDPPC) = 0.283
Roughly speaking, you could write this as "The GDP per capita of the Eurozone is 28.3% lower than the US".
[1] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV
Yeah, we call it "the South" here in the United States.
The EU includes a lot of less developed countries from former dictatorships, former communist countries, and the former Yugoslavia. There's a lot of catching up which hasn't finished yet. Plus it's mostly missing the US's oil resources. Straight-up GDP comparisons don't tell you so much about quality of life for the average person in the street.
Not making any causal claims about unions, but using the OECD numbers[1]:
(USGDPPC - EU28GDPPC) / AVERAGE(USGDPPC, EU28GDPPC) = 0.338
So the comment you're replying to was correct, for at least one plausible definition of "1/3 lower than the US".
As for the countries you mentioned:
Monaco: < 1 square mile, not reproducible in a larger country
Norway: Giant oil reserves / tiny population, not reproducible without that
Switzerland: Valid
Ireland: GDP numbers shouldn't be taken at face value because tax laws[2] encourage corporations to attribute EU-wide revenues to Ireland. Reported GDP per capita is 135% of the US value, but 2016 median household income[3] was only 87% of the US value[4]. This cuts both ways, though - other EU countries should have their estimates nudged upwards.
Iceland: 92% of US GDP per capita[1]
Denmark: 91% of US GDP per capita[1]
Sweden: 86% of US GDP per capita[1]
Austria: 91% of US GDP per capita[1]
Finland: 79% of US GDP per capita[1]
UK: 75% of US GDP per capita[1]
France: 74% of US GDP per capita[1]
Italy: 68% of US GDP per capita[1]
Spain: 65% of US GDP per capita[1]
EU (all 28 countries): 71% of US GDP per capita[1]
[1] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
[3] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-gpii/geog...
[4] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
(USGDPPC - EU28GDPPC) / AVERAGE(USGDPPC, EU28GDPPC) = 0.338
So the comment you're replying to was correct, for at least one plausible definition of "1/3 lower than the US".
As for the countries you mentioned:
Monaco: < 1 square mile, not reproducible in a larger country
Norway: Giant oil reserves / tiny population, not reproducible without that
Switzerland: Valid
Ireland: GDP numbers shouldn't be taken at face value because tax laws[2] encourage corporations to attribute EU-wide revenues to Ireland. Reported GDP per capita is 135% of the US value, but 2016 median household income[3] was only 87% of the US value[4]. This cuts both ways, though - other EU countries should have their estimates nudged upwards.
Iceland: 92% of US GDP per capita[1]
Denmark: 91% of US GDP per capita[1]
Sweden: 86% of US GDP per capita[1]
Austria: 91% of US GDP per capita[1]
Finland: 79% of US GDP per capita[1]
UK: 75% of US GDP per capita[1]
France: 74% of US GDP per capita[1]
Italy: 68% of US GDP per capita[1]
Spain: 65% of US GDP per capita[1]
EU (all 28 countries): 71% of US GDP per capita[1]
[1] https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=PDB_LV
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
[3] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-gpii/geog...
[4] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
In fairness, Monaco, Norway, Switzerland, Ireland and Iceland are all tiny, distorted one-trick ponies.
Norway is all oil, Ireland is the tax haven of the Fortune 500, Ditto Switzerland, Monaco is the tax haven of the rich, and Iceland is pure tourism.
Pulling out Iceland or Monaco and comparing them to the entire US is like pulling out Palo Alto and Seattle and comparing them to all of the EU.
UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc are a much better representation of what larger, mores diverse European economies look like.
In fact, if you take the whole EU together (as you should, the US number also includes places like the South and the Midwest), the parent comment is correct.
Norway is all oil, Ireland is the tax haven of the Fortune 500, Ditto Switzerland, Monaco is the tax haven of the rich, and Iceland is pure tourism.
Pulling out Iceland or Monaco and comparing them to the entire US is like pulling out Palo Alto and Seattle and comparing them to all of the EU.
UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc are a much better representation of what larger, mores diverse European economies look like.
In fact, if you take the whole EU together (as you should, the US number also includes places like the South and the Midwest), the parent comment is correct.
some of those countries have smaller populations than some US municipalities, of which there are many wealthy ones to cherrypick data from.
Social support networks have a cost. It's great to make more money until you go bankrupt from healthcare costs. Also, Europe enjoys lower crime and higher life expectancy.
Not because of labor unions, it doesn't. In fact the developed nations of the EU tend to have the strongest unions. You're conflating lack of development due to the cold war with... worker unionization?
Why does the average person care about GDP?
For the sake of Economic Piety. It's an easy number to track, but it's not all there is.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/emphasize-...
I lived in Germany for a couple years and now live in one of the poor(er) states. A comment above this says to jettisoning Idaho will game GDP numbers for the US. I'm currently experiencing earthquake aftershocks AND low GDP.
I honestly think for most people, Germany had a high quality of living (if you ignore AC when it's 35 degrees in summer). But in the US, we've got Mammon and, for better or worse, GDP is how we track that.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/emphasize-...
I lived in Germany for a couple years and now live in one of the poor(er) states. A comment above this says to jettisoning Idaho will game GDP numbers for the US. I'm currently experiencing earthquake aftershocks AND low GDP.
I honestly think for most people, Germany had a high quality of living (if you ignore AC when it's 35 degrees in summer). But in the US, we've got Mammon and, for better or worse, GDP is how we track that.
Big number good.
All jokes aside, I'd make that trade any day for the relevant social safety nets.
All jokes aside, I'd make that trade any day for the relevant social safety nets.
It's fine, that extra 1/3 is just going to healthcare anyway
And still the place that most people would prefer over the US given health care costs and lack of social safety nets.
people say this, but I have yet to see anyone I know actually move to europe, even those with dual citizenship or an easy path to get it. I do however work with many eastern european expats.
GDP is obviously the only metric that ever matters.
Maybe with US unions.
It very much depends on the legal framework that organized workers and organized employers interact in.
It very much depends on the legal framework that organized workers and organized employers interact in.
_
GC was talking about people that need to work with unions (and those in them), not the people actually in the unions. Saying people in unions like unions and so they can't be bad is like saying that oligarchs like being part of an oligarchy so oligarchy can't be bad.
I think unions do good, but they can also be an enemy of progress. Here is a piece about unions that I found on google.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/unneces...
I think unions do good, but they can also be an enemy of progress. Here is a piece about unions that I found on google.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/unneces...
Corporate lawyers are terrible at Opsec. Watch them go on a hunt to find and fire the leaker causing even worse PR. Let this be a lesson. "When you sling mud, you lose ground"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/02/amazon-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/02/amazon-...
It's extremely easy to understand why.
They won't be able to treat the employees like trash anymore, and profits will go down as a result.
Think about it logically, if the outcome was the opposite (profits go up) Amazon, etc. would love unions.
So it's just a question of whether you want more corporate power and profits, or you want employees to be treated well.
They won't be able to treat the employees like trash anymore, and profits will go down as a result.
Think about it logically, if the outcome was the opposite (profits go up) Amazon, etc. would love unions.
So it's just a question of whether you want more corporate power and profits, or you want employees to be treated well.
Devils advocate: if you're sent home on full pay and told not to come in, and you come in, that's fireable (doubly so with coronavirus happening). If you do that, you need some strong evidence that it's retaliation. You have away the benefit of the doubt...
Except when the only reason you're being told not to come in is to prevent you from organizing a strike.
Except that the employee in this case admits that he was indeed exposed to someone with COVID-19.
The employee admits that he was exposed to someone on March 11th. That's already 17 days ago, so the quarantine would be up.
You are assuming he didn't get sick. If he caught covid-19, he could easily be contagious for more than 2 weeks.
Quarantined 18 days later, and no one else who came in contactvwas quarantined. Say it all.
no, that individual was exposed to someone confirmed positiv with covid-19. one of the workers he worked with. both public and private sources confirmed it to me.
if you ask me, that's a pretty dick move for someone. Can't you wait your strike protest after your 14 days of quarantine? just 14 days.
if you ask me, that's a pretty dick move for someone. Can't you wait your strike protest after your 14 days of quarantine? just 14 days.
Why is he the only one being quarantined then? And from what I'm seeing, the exposure was the 11th, so 14 days would already be up.
14 days had already passed, and then some, from exposure to the time he came in and was fired.
From March 11 to March 30 was considerably more than 14 days.
He was exposed 18 days ago though.
Also devil's advocate:
With everyone throwing a fit about pastors and churches gathering together during this, where's the outcry over this guy seemingly rounding up groups of employees to picket?
Is it ok to protest dangerous work conditions by actively creating dangerous protest conditions?
With everyone throwing a fit about pastors and churches gathering together during this, where's the outcry over this guy seemingly rounding up groups of employees to picket?
Is it ok to protest dangerous work conditions by actively creating dangerous protest conditions?
> With everyone throwing a fit about pastors and churches gathering together during this, where's the outcry over this guy seemingly rounding up groups of employees to picket?
Where did it say he was rounding up groups of employees and picketing?
> throwing a fit
Who is throwing a fit? I thought they were fining and/or arresting pastors that break the law and threaten the safety of entire communities?
Where did it say he was rounding up groups of employees and picketing?
> throwing a fit
Who is throwing a fit? I thought they were fining and/or arresting pastors that break the law and threaten the safety of entire communities?
What is the need for him to be on-site, if not for personal contact with other employees? He admits it's for organizing.
(Honest question, I'm not familiar with how organization/ unionization works, or if there's another legitimate reason.)
Have you seen people's reactions to the churches that are still meeting in person? Check out op/eds and letters to the editor in Tampa, Baltimore, and Baton Rouge, just to start. Twitter if you want to see the ugly that is expected from Twitter. But throwing a fit is an understatement.
(Honest question, I'm not familiar with how organization/ unionization works, or if there's another legitimate reason.)
Have you seen people's reactions to the churches that are still meeting in person? Check out op/eds and letters to the editor in Tampa, Baltimore, and Baton Rouge, just to start. Twitter if you want to see the ugly that is expected from Twitter. But throwing a fit is an understatement.
Is the newsworthy claim that this firing was illegally retaliatory?
In other words, is the claim that Chris Smalls was being vocal in reporting safety/health issues and was illegally fired as a result?
In other words, is the claim that Chris Smalls was being vocal in reporting safety/health issues and was illegally fired as a result?
It's the most likely explanation, despite Amazon's obfuscations.
Really? Because the employee admits that he went to work despite being exposed to a covid-19 person, and despite being ordered not to.
Those facts are not even in dispute.
Those facts are not even in dispute.
He was exposed 18 days before he was ordered to quarantine. Please do not try to say that there is some factual basis.
So? He did not get a covid-19 test, so for all Amazon knows, he's a carrier. There are plenty of lightly-symptomatic people who are ill and contagious for longer than 14 days.
Weird how no one else around him was quarantined. If he was contagious, then why didn't they quarantine everyone he was in contact with as well?
Maybe because it was bullshit and retribution on Amazon's part.
Maybe because it was bullshit and retribution on Amazon's part.
That is what he claims. If you only believe one side of the story - then obviously you'll side with that side.
No one else who was exposed to that person was ordered not to. This employee was singled-out.
You omitted some facts, like that he was quarantined 18 days after the contact, and no one else who also came in contact was quarantined
This is a union busting, anti-labor and retaliatory firing. It is illegal in the United States.
Multiple employees have spoken out about the working conditions at Amazon's warehouse facilities over the last couple of weeks. Common complaints include a lack of protective equipment, sanitization, health monitoring, and working "shoulder to shoulder". Workers are getting sick, and Amazon isn't properly reporting the actual cases of COVID-19 at their facilities.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/26/amazon-warehouse-employees-g...
Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/whole-foods-amazon...
Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/whole-foods-workers-to-strike-...
Mr. Smalls announced ahead of time that he was going to lead a general strike at his facility in solidarity with the instacart and wholefoods strike on the same day. This was reported in the media. Amazon knew this was being organized and waited to fire the worker until after the planned protest strike occurred.
Source: https://apnews.com/cf27e9bec86d846447aad7e632484bea
Here is Mr. Smalls talking about this in detail: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/03/30/staten-island-whole-fo... - All he was asking for was for the building to be sanitized after a confirmed case of COVID-19 occurred at his facility, at Staten Island near the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States in New York.
The attorney general of New York recognized this issue for what it is.
---
New York Attorney General Letitia James said late Monday evening that "it is disgraceful that Amazon would terminate an employee who bravely stood up to protect himself and his colleagues."
"At the height of a global pandemic, Chris Smalls and his colleagues publicly protested the lack of precautions that Amazon was taking to protect them from COVID-19," she said. "Today, Chris Smalls was fired. In New York, the right to organize is codified into law, and any retaliatory action by management related thereto is strictly prohibited."
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/tech/amazon-worker-fired-stat...
---
Here is another article discussing the actual conditions of Mr. Smalls Facility:
---
Despite Amazon’s efforts, Amazon employees at multiple facilities who spoke to CNBC argue that the measures aren’t enough to keep them safe. They say uneven safety precautions at facilities across the country have sown feelings of distrust between workers and their managers. Workers say they’ve become worried that managers aren’t being honest about whether employees are sick with the virus, so that they can keep the facilities open.
At some facilities, workers say essential supplies like hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes are rationed or there’s none available, putting them at risk of catching the virus. Warehouse workers say they’re forced to choose between going to work and risking their health or staying home and not being able to pay their bills.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/amazon-fires-staten-island-c...
---
Amazon is in the wrong here. They retaliated against Mr. Smalls. This was a labor movement action, and they illegally fired Mr. Smalls for organizing at this facility.
These workers aren't asking for more money. They are asking for safe and sanitary working conditions. Are they not entitled to a healthy working environment?
Edit: Formatting issues. This was a copy-paste from a comment I made on a /r/business thread on reddit. Formatting on HN is a bit different. :)
Multiple employees have spoken out about the working conditions at Amazon's warehouse facilities over the last couple of weeks. Common complaints include a lack of protective equipment, sanitization, health monitoring, and working "shoulder to shoulder". Workers are getting sick, and Amazon isn't properly reporting the actual cases of COVID-19 at their facilities.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/26/amazon-warehouse-employees-g...
Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/whole-foods-amazon...
Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/whole-foods-workers-to-strike-...
Mr. Smalls announced ahead of time that he was going to lead a general strike at his facility in solidarity with the instacart and wholefoods strike on the same day. This was reported in the media. Amazon knew this was being organized and waited to fire the worker until after the planned protest strike occurred.
Source: https://apnews.com/cf27e9bec86d846447aad7e632484bea
Here is Mr. Smalls talking about this in detail: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/03/30/staten-island-whole-fo... - All he was asking for was for the building to be sanitized after a confirmed case of COVID-19 occurred at his facility, at Staten Island near the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States in New York.
The attorney general of New York recognized this issue for what it is.
---
New York Attorney General Letitia James said late Monday evening that "it is disgraceful that Amazon would terminate an employee who bravely stood up to protect himself and his colleagues."
"At the height of a global pandemic, Chris Smalls and his colleagues publicly protested the lack of precautions that Amazon was taking to protect them from COVID-19," she said. "Today, Chris Smalls was fired. In New York, the right to organize is codified into law, and any retaliatory action by management related thereto is strictly prohibited."
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/tech/amazon-worker-fired-stat...
---
Here is another article discussing the actual conditions of Mr. Smalls Facility:
---
Despite Amazon’s efforts, Amazon employees at multiple facilities who spoke to CNBC argue that the measures aren’t enough to keep them safe. They say uneven safety precautions at facilities across the country have sown feelings of distrust between workers and their managers. Workers say they’ve become worried that managers aren’t being honest about whether employees are sick with the virus, so that they can keep the facilities open.
At some facilities, workers say essential supplies like hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes are rationed or there’s none available, putting them at risk of catching the virus. Warehouse workers say they’re forced to choose between going to work and risking their health or staying home and not being able to pay their bills.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/30/amazon-fires-staten-island-c...
---
Amazon is in the wrong here. They retaliated against Mr. Smalls. This was a labor movement action, and they illegally fired Mr. Smalls for organizing at this facility.
These workers aren't asking for more money. They are asking for safe and sanitary working conditions. Are they not entitled to a healthy working environment?
Edit: Formatting issues. This was a copy-paste from a comment I made on a /r/business thread on reddit. Formatting on HN is a bit different. :)
[deleted]
How does at-will employment work with union busting? I remember working at Amazon they were very adamant about everything being at-will. Furthermore, in their management training, they didn't even tiptoe around their hatred of unions. They basically have a formal system developed to rat out any union organizers. The only reason I can infer for the existence of such a system is so that they can bust unions. They seem willing to take the legal risks that come with retaliation.
>How does at-will employment work with union busting?
It's similar to the way at-will employment works with ADA protected classes - sure, they can fire you, but if you can show that them firing you was because of a protected action (union organizing), you can sue and will likely win.
Given the likely fact that Amazon only cared about quarantine for this individual, only after they organized a strike, and three weeks (!) after exposure, it's pretty clear that what Amazon did here was illegal.
It's similar to the way at-will employment works with ADA protected classes - sure, they can fire you, but if you can show that them firing you was because of a protected action (union organizing), you can sue and will likely win.
Given the likely fact that Amazon only cared about quarantine for this individual, only after they organized a strike, and three weeks (!) after exposure, it's pretty clear that what Amazon did here was illegal.
Amazon is simply betting that the employee either can't afford a lawyer or their lawyer isn't better than Amazon's legal team. They can spend a lot of money on making sure of that.
No, they don't care, they're simply betting that it'll cost them less to pay him off in a settlement than to deal with a union.
It is my understanding, that from a legal perspective firing an employee in retaliation for engaging in organized labor even if their employment agreement is "at-will" (which is the default), is illegal. But IANAL.
Source: https://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2014/10/can-you-be-fi...
Source: https://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2014/10/can-you-be-fi...
“Union busting” is a pretty vague term. There’s no legal issue with a company hating unions or trying to prevent a union from forming, as long as they don’t prevent employees from talking or retaliate against them for it.
That may be true, but in this instance there is clear evidence that Mr. Smalls was retaliated against for his labor organizing actions.
"Mr. Smalls was retaliated against for his labor organizing actions"
This is actually quite unclear
This is actually quite unclear
Allegedly.
Actually its has a particular meaning in US labour law
> How does at-will employment work with union busting?
No relation whatsoever.
No relation whatsoever.
Is there a company out there that does full time employment, with benefits, and pays their taxes (no dutch sandwhich/offshoring) in the same space as Amazon? That is, an online megastore, not worrying about AWS/cloud.
I think there's more than a few of us who are ready to vote with their dollars.
I think there's more than a few of us who are ready to vote with their dollars.
Costco delivers, and has a better corporate reputation than Amazon and Walmart.
But how much taxes does it pay? I very skeptical of any company that claims to pay its fair share.
Why is it a bad thing if a company has loss carryforwards and R&D credits?
I've been personally boycotting Amazon for years, and very happy with that decision. There are so many stories like this which are more or less egregious.
This is the part where everyone stops buying from Amazon as a show of solidarity right?
Now would be a great time to do this given the delays of the once-convenient fast shipping times. That said, what are the equal alternatives?
I think for most consumers, some things are absolutely required in order to switch away from Amazon: fast shipping, an inventory of hard-to-find items (e.g. car part or furnace element typically found on Amazon), a good refunds/returns system, and a massive crackdown on counterfeit products.
That last one is really important to me. Vendors are now filling legit containers of brand name items with fake product, then resealing them as new. This is becoming increasingly common now. I've noticed it with food (Pumpkin seeds, noticed a poor re-seal job), vitamins (a hole in the top seal beneath the cap despite being plastic wrapped), and Clorox bromine tablets for a spa (tablets didn't match store bought version). These products have all been obviously tampered with.
I think for most consumers, some things are absolutely required in order to switch away from Amazon: fast shipping, an inventory of hard-to-find items (e.g. car part or furnace element typically found on Amazon), a good refunds/returns system, and a massive crackdown on counterfeit products.
That last one is really important to me. Vendors are now filling legit containers of brand name items with fake product, then resealing them as new. This is becoming increasingly common now. I've noticed it with food (Pumpkin seeds, noticed a poor re-seal job), vitamins (a hole in the top seal beneath the cap despite being plastic wrapped), and Clorox bromine tablets for a spa (tablets didn't match store bought version). These products have all been obviously tampered with.
There's a fairly decent alternative to Amazon for most of the things you listed.
It's Wal-Mart and walmart.com. Oh. Not much better from a workers' rights standpoint than Amazon, I guess...
It's Wal-Mart and walmart.com. Oh. Not much better from a workers' rights standpoint than Amazon, I guess...
Not for show of solidarity but for practical reasons, India has realized the advantages of its vast network of neighbourhood mom-n-pop shops in these times. It is time that people take note of this and start supporting local businesses even if they can cost a bit more. Of course it is understandable to order online due to lack of local availability or very significant price differential on non-trivial purchases but if these small businesses close, then the impact would be great in times like this.
Who is "everyone" here? Some small but significant part of Hacker News?
Amazon being Amazon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQeGBHxIyHw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQeGBHxIyHw
If amazon is so shitty, and aws is so expensive compared to others... why on earth do people still pour all their cash in it
Where I work, we're basically donating money to the Bezos charity known as AWS at this point. We have so much waste in our multiple AWS accounts. We have people who double things up because they can't/don't/won't communicate (effectively). It's truly an unmanaged disaster. Bring it up to management, they don't seem to care. Even back on the napkin estimates are showing us wasting > 100k a year on unnecessary or outright unused AWS services. They still don't care. And I know we're not alone and that there are other places (even in my immediate geographical area) that have waste well in excess of what we're pissing away.
That sounds like really bad management. But not only from decision makers bur also from operators. If you’re not using a resource (like unused EC2 instances) why not just turn it off. It sounds like gross incompetence from all the parts.
Your company is operating inefficiently in some regard. You’ve done the leg work and determined this inefficiency costs about ~$100k annually. You take this to your leadership with a proposal: we can save this money through better communication among teams, a review of existing system for “unnecessary” or unused services, and “management”.
From an engineering perspective, this makes perfect sense!
But management reacts negatively, maybe even becoming skeptical of your value to the org. Why?
1. The savings you propose are too small to make a significant difference to profitability. $100k is equivalent to between .3 to 1 FTE engineers depending on geography.
2. Someone has to run this project, they will cost money. Engineers will have to be involved, they will cost money. Every project team is going to have to evaluate their usage and provide justification documents, so now the costs are cascading through the org.
3. Remember that the cost of a decision is the sum of the the cost of the thing done plus the cost of the things forgone. People working on this are not working on things customers will pay for—that is, things that get multiplied by many customers now and into the future and differentiates from the competition. This project has its own costs. The savings must be very, very high to compensate for both.
4. It’s hard to imagine how the savings can be sustained without significant new bureaucracy. Every resource allocation is going to have to go through an architecture, implementation, harmonization, and business necessity justification review. That is a lot of new gate keepers.
5. You indicated that teams already “can’t/won’t/don’t communicate.” This means the teams are going to have significant political battles over who owns/runs which resources. Ownership of a the architecture is a tool to bludgeon other departments into compliance—which will make inter-team conflicts worse because they can’t just agree to disagree. Suddenly, one team winning an argument means winning forever.
6. Solving the previous point with better communication is not viable—it would mean solving fundamental problems in organizational management and psychology.
So, what can you do? The fundamental issue here is that the scale of the problem does not match the scale of the organization. Cost saving projects that succeed—like google early on deciding to develop their own servers and racks instead of buying off the shelf—provide a sustaining competitive advantage. Google saves so much money from its infrastructure investments that it lets them build products that would be wildly expensive for others to replicate.
In business language this is referred to as cost leadership. Ferrari has a much lower need for cost leadership than Toyota. Ferrari still needs to contain costs to be profitable, but it primarily competes on differentiated products in a focused market. They might be interested in saving money on aerodynamic simulations so they could do even more of them. But Toyota would quickly go bankrupt if they didn’t make cost leadership part of everything they do—just a few years a failing to improve efficiency would lead to their cars costing many thousands of dollars more than competitors in a market sensitive to price.
Which kind of company do you work for: one that serves the broad market (AWS) or something more niche (IBM Mainframes)? One that competes on price (commercial airlines) or one that competes on differentiated features (private jets)? Craft your project proposals to the business and they may have a much higher probability to getting heard.
From an engineering perspective, this makes perfect sense!
But management reacts negatively, maybe even becoming skeptical of your value to the org. Why?
1. The savings you propose are too small to make a significant difference to profitability. $100k is equivalent to between .3 to 1 FTE engineers depending on geography.
2. Someone has to run this project, they will cost money. Engineers will have to be involved, they will cost money. Every project team is going to have to evaluate their usage and provide justification documents, so now the costs are cascading through the org.
3. Remember that the cost of a decision is the sum of the the cost of the thing done plus the cost of the things forgone. People working on this are not working on things customers will pay for—that is, things that get multiplied by many customers now and into the future and differentiates from the competition. This project has its own costs. The savings must be very, very high to compensate for both.
4. It’s hard to imagine how the savings can be sustained without significant new bureaucracy. Every resource allocation is going to have to go through an architecture, implementation, harmonization, and business necessity justification review. That is a lot of new gate keepers.
5. You indicated that teams already “can’t/won’t/don’t communicate.” This means the teams are going to have significant political battles over who owns/runs which resources. Ownership of a the architecture is a tool to bludgeon other departments into compliance—which will make inter-team conflicts worse because they can’t just agree to disagree. Suddenly, one team winning an argument means winning forever.
6. Solving the previous point with better communication is not viable—it would mean solving fundamental problems in organizational management and psychology.
So, what can you do? The fundamental issue here is that the scale of the problem does not match the scale of the organization. Cost saving projects that succeed—like google early on deciding to develop their own servers and racks instead of buying off the shelf—provide a sustaining competitive advantage. Google saves so much money from its infrastructure investments that it lets them build products that would be wildly expensive for others to replicate.
In business language this is referred to as cost leadership. Ferrari has a much lower need for cost leadership than Toyota. Ferrari still needs to contain costs to be profitable, but it primarily competes on differentiated products in a focused market. They might be interested in saving money on aerodynamic simulations so they could do even more of them. But Toyota would quickly go bankrupt if they didn’t make cost leadership part of everything they do—just a few years a failing to improve efficiency would lead to their cars costing many thousands of dollars more than competitors in a market sensitive to price.
Which kind of company do you work for: one that serves the broad market (AWS) or something more niche (IBM Mainframes)? One that competes on price (commercial airlines) or one that competes on differentiated features (private jets)? Craft your project proposals to the business and they may have a much higher probability to getting heard.
Fantastic reply.
It's the type of reply I want to write every time I see misguided comments from people who don't have the full picture of the business and don't even know that they don't have the full picture.
It's the type of reply I want to write every time I see misguided comments from people who don't have the full picture of the business and don't even know that they don't have the full picture.
My comment started with:
> Where I work, we're basically donating money to the Bezos charity known as AWS at this point.
And ended with:
> And I know we're not alone and that there are other places (even in my immediate geographical area) that have waste well in excess of what we're pissing away.
That was my point. I perfectly (okay, maybe not perfectly, but well enough to understand that it's not worth my time to pursue) understand why and how these things happen, it isn't my first rodeo. And, honestly, I think I'd probably applaud the guy for figuring out how to get _damn near every one in SV_ to open up their fat fucking VC wallets to the man if it weren't for his business practices, like what we see in TFA.
> Where I work, we're basically donating money to the Bezos charity known as AWS at this point.
And ended with:
> And I know we're not alone and that there are other places (even in my immediate geographical area) that have waste well in excess of what we're pissing away.
That was my point. I perfectly (okay, maybe not perfectly, but well enough to understand that it's not worth my time to pursue) understand why and how these things happen, it isn't my first rodeo. And, honestly, I think I'd probably applaud the guy for figuring out how to get _damn near every one in SV_ to open up their fat fucking VC wallets to the man if it weren't for his business practices, like what we see in TFA.
If this is an issue that really bugs you, perhaps consider working for a company that has similar values to you.
Working for tech in the valley is going to be extremely biased on focused differentiation, so cost containment has a lower priority.
On the other hand, the people I know in logistics and manufacturing are extremely concerned about cost containment. For them, charging more for the product/service is orders of magnitude more difficult than cutting costs—indeed, improving efficiency is often the primary method of growing the company (through lower prices or increased output). Such companies, even ones making hundreds of millions in revenue, would be very interested in proposals that save $100k/year.
Working for tech in the valley is going to be extremely biased on focused differentiation, so cost containment has a lower priority.
On the other hand, the people I know in logistics and manufacturing are extremely concerned about cost containment. For them, charging more for the product/service is orders of magnitude more difficult than cutting costs—indeed, improving efficiency is often the primary method of growing the company (through lower prices or increased output). Such companies, even ones making hundreds of millions in revenue, would be very interested in proposals that save $100k/year.
[deleted]
Customers are getting what they are paying for (and couldn't get the same service and yet pay less, since saving money would cost them money).
You do sound resentful, though. Is it because you think an aws customer has a moral obligation to divert money they would save in aws costs into salaries for their own employees as opposed to finding aws employees so that bezos doesn't get his cut?
You do sound resentful, though. Is it because you think an aws customer has a moral obligation to divert money they would save in aws costs into salaries for their own employees as opposed to finding aws employees so that bezos doesn't get his cut?
Is that so different from a local network?
Our LAN has probably quadruple the amount of needless redundancy.
Our LAN has probably quadruple the amount of needless redundancy.
Its an operational expense, so its a massive tax writeoff
Avoiding an expense is cheaper than any "tax writeoff" from spending that money instead. (unless we're talking about tax credits or incentive schemes or something like that)
I think it's built into our simian hindbrains to keep following the asshole who is winning instead of following the potential loser who we like.
On the other hand i have the suspicion that Amazon just offers the better deal. And on balance, most people would prefer to spend less and get more than perform what's essentially charity because they like the other CEO less.
I prefer to think of it as hedging, not charity. If you never eat at your third favorite restaurant, then soon you won't have a third favorite restaurant.
cheap and convenient
IANAL, but would be interested to know if it would've BENEFITED their case if they met with a lawyer BEFORE putting their plans into action. It seems this would've been a pretty legitimate way of confirming their intention, and would've put Amazon in a much more compromising position after the fact.
After this is all over, Amazon needs to be subjected to the full range of antitrust laws and regulations. And broken up.
Would it be illegal for Amazon’s competitors to extend job offers to those who are at risk of being fired for going on strike? (If the fear is being fired as retaliation)
The aim of the law is to prevent employers from blocking unionization. Your hypothetical might prevent harm to specific individuals who were fired, but it wouldn't achieve the overall goal of protecting the right to organize. Instead it would rid the employer of the organizers, which is what the employer wants.
[deleted]
SARS-cov-2 survives days on cardboard.
If you can’t give two fcks for the workers, do it for tour own consumers’ ass.
Amazon must enforce sanitary and safe working conditions during the COVID19 epidemic lest it becomes itself a source of contagion. More so now that home delivery is so important in the “stay home” strategy.
For fcks sake people, how big a stick do you need before you notice?!
If you can’t give two fcks for the workers, do it for tour own consumers’ ass.
Amazon must enforce sanitary and safe working conditions during the COVID19 epidemic lest it becomes itself a source of contagion. More so now that home delivery is so important in the “stay home” strategy.
For fcks sake people, how big a stick do you need before you notice?!
> SARS-cov-2 survives days on cardboard.
It doesn't.
It doesn't.
From https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/new-coronaviru...
> The scientists found that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was detectable in aerosols for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.
24 hours is within the time-frame of same-day deliveries at the least. I think OP's point still stands; it's a disease vector.
> The scientists found that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was detectable in aerosols for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.
24 hours is within the time-frame of same-day deliveries at the least. I think OP's point still stands; it's a disease vector.
'Detectable' isn't the same as 'infectious,' though. There is zero evidence of actual transmission from mail and packaging materials.
If transmission via packaging were happening, what evidence would you expect us to have at this point, and why?
(Absence of evidence can be evidence of absence, but only in proportion to how easy the evidence would be to find if it existed, and how hard we've looked.)
(Absence of evidence can be evidence of absence, but only in proportion to how easy the evidence would be to find if it existed, and how hard we've looked.)
Yes, it does. In low humidity, room temperature settings, the virus can last for days on a surface.
whatever you believe, all they want is for them to shutdown and clean, how hard is that?
apazzolini(1)
morelisp(1)
The worker was exposed to covid-19, was told to quarantine, and came back on site anyway.
This strikes me as an egregious safety violation and a truly excellent reason to fire the worker.
This strikes me as an egregious safety violation and a truly excellent reason to fire the worker.
He was exposed on March 11, and Amazon told him to self-quarantine only after he announced plans to strike, MORE than two weeks later.
If there's an egregious safety violation here, it's Amazon corporate who is guilty.
If there's an egregious safety violation here, it's Amazon corporate who is guilty.
>The worker was exposed to covid-19, was told to quarantine, and came back on site anyway.
worker was exposed to co-worker with covid-19; Amazon knowingly allowed exposed worker to continue working; when worker found out of the exposure and Amazon's failures worker organized a strike; only after organizing a strike did Amazon require worker to stay home in quarantine.
>This strikes me as an egregious safety violation
Not only a safety violation by Amazon but a Constitutional violation.
worker was exposed to co-worker with covid-19; Amazon knowingly allowed exposed worker to continue working; when worker found out of the exposure and Amazon's failures worker organized a strike; only after organizing a strike did Amazon require worker to stay home in quarantine.
>This strikes me as an egregious safety violation
Not only a safety violation by Amazon but a Constitutional violation.
I think the point is that more than just this worker was exposed to COVID-19...shouldn't the entire warehouse be shuttered?
Depends on the circumstances of his contact, what parts of the site he was in, who he came into contact...etc. I'm not sure one potential case warrants the entire warehouse being shuttered if appropriate disinfection and continued monitoring are in place. They seemed to catch his exposure via some string of events, so there is some effort in risk analysis happening.
It sounds like they quarantined everyone that was in close contact with someone that got COVID-19. We can argue about whether or not they quarantined the appropriate number of people / wide enough, but given the size of a warehouse, I don't agree that it is reasonable to shutter the entire warehouse based on 1 person.
Shuttering distribution facilities will send more people to grocery stores and supermarkets. It's not really better on-net to shut down the Amazon delivery chain, as long as you take reasonable measures to disinfect the facility.
They’ll settle out of court with this guy in 2 years for $10 million but it’s worth it to them to silence him at the present moment.
> Like all businesses grappling with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, we are working hard to keep employees safe while serving communities and the most vulnerable
Because people who can afford Amazon prime and prices are the most vulnerable
Because people who can afford Amazon prime and prices are the most vulnerable
I mean, so far yes. I think people with disposable income and those who travel a lot have been early adopters when it comes to getting the virus. Politicians, professional athletes, and rich people seem disproportionately likely to be infected, and I wouldn't be surprised if that imbalance still existed once you accounted for the differences in test availability. ofc that's my North America-centric perception which may change in the coming months
> the most vulnerable
Can be elderly. Family members could very well be buying on Amazon & having it shipped to those in their family +70. This is what I would be doing if my parents were older & nobody was able from the family to deliver to them.
> Because people who can afford Amazon prime
Not everyone has Amazon prime.
Can be elderly. Family members could very well be buying on Amazon & having it shipped to those in their family +70. This is what I would be doing if my parents were older & nobody was able from the family to deliver to them.
> Because people who can afford Amazon prime
Not everyone has Amazon prime.
> Despite that instruction to stay home with pay, he came on site today, March 30, further putting the teams at risk
The employee was exposed to another employee who tested positive for covid-19. They asked him to stay home with pay for 14 days and he came back to the building to protest, putting other employees at risk.
The employee was exposed to another employee who tested positive for covid-19. They asked him to stay home with pay for 14 days and he came back to the building to protest, putting other employees at risk.
With respect, Amazon publicly claims the employee violated quarantine. The employee publicly claims that Amazon fired them out of retaliation.
From this distance, while we may all have our respective sympathies, both stories are plausible and we don't really know. It is abundantly obvious that companies generally find reasons (legitimate or otherwise) to fire those advocating for a union, but it isn't exactly unheard of for an employee knowing they are facing termination or disciplinary action for legitimate reasons to cover that over with some socially-acceptable reason like various claims of discrimination or starting a union like this, etc. It's not a secret hack nobody's ever heard of.
Edit: See boiled cabbage's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739059 More data can bring more clarity.
From this distance, while we may all have our respective sympathies, both stories are plausible and we don't really know. It is abundantly obvious that companies generally find reasons (legitimate or otherwise) to fire those advocating for a union, but it isn't exactly unheard of for an employee knowing they are facing termination or disciplinary action for legitimate reasons to cover that over with some socially-acceptable reason like various claims of discrimination or starting a union like this, etc. It's not a secret hack nobody's ever heard of.
Edit: See boiled cabbage's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739059 More data can bring more clarity.
It's also clear that Amazon has the data. If they do not choose to share it, that itself would become a form of data.
- How many employees did they quarantine in that facility?
- Were all employees exposed to the original worker quarantined?
- How long after exposure--i.e. was Smalls later, or were others quarantined at (roughly) the same time?
- Who makes the call to quarantine workers, and what discretion do they have?
I don't necessarily expect Amazon to have all those facts available immediately. I do think that they must provide them if they wish to have any credibility.
- How many employees did they quarantine in that facility?
- Were all employees exposed to the original worker quarantined?
- How long after exposure--i.e. was Smalls later, or were others quarantined at (roughly) the same time?
- Who makes the call to quarantine workers, and what discretion do they have?
I don't necessarily expect Amazon to have all those facts available immediately. I do think that they must provide them if they wish to have any credibility.
It's possible that Amazon fired the employee both for violating quarantine and out of retaliation, as the former would have provided legal cover for the latter.
Does Amazon's instruction to him to stay home override his rights as an employee to organize and participate in collective action?
I don't actually know the answer. But in general, I'm guessing that you can't end a strike by ordering all employees to stay home and then firing them if they don't.
I don't actually know the answer. But in general, I'm guessing that you can't end a strike by ordering all employees to stay home and then firing them if they don't.
The coronavirus gives Amazon an excuse to use to order employees to stay home if they try to organize their coworkers. It's not a coincidence that Amazon only ordered this employee to stay home after seeing that he led a strike. If Amazon actually cared about their employees' wellbeing, they would have told Smalls to stay home after he had been exposed, not more than two weeks later.
I would like to add, if the quarantine order on March 30th is about the contact of March 11th, and it seems it is, and if he's the only one being quarantined, then I don't think there's any discussion about whether or not this should be in the right or in the wrong
That's what Amazon claims anyway. Best to take that with a pinch of salt, given their track record.
I'm going to guess Amazon has it well documented and dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's
Amazon has a version of it well documented, and they have a lot to gain by presenting their own interpretation of the events.
All they need is camera footage.
So does the employee.
Amazon was unable to appropriately document a man who was dead in a warehouse enough to get them medical help for a significant length of time.
I wouldn't be so sure. Probably well stitched up though.
Based on your username, have to laugh a bit when you tell us to take what the other guy says with a grain of salt.
Yeah, imagine taking the word of a multi-billion dollar company's PR people with a grain of salt. They don't have agendas unlike throwaway accounts. At least in this case we know what both sides' interests are here!
I think taking PR people's opinions with a grain of salt is par for the course.
Re: the OP - this isn't just a throwaway account. It's a pretty obvious agenda beyond just sharing the facts.
Re: the OP - this isn't just a throwaway account. It's a pretty obvious agenda beyond just sharing the facts.
Good ol throwaway. Make your case on a normal account.
It raises the question of how to protest in the age of quarantine.
I agree that breaking quarantine is bad, but let's look at his side of this. Amazon has the ability to shut down any protest or picket by alleging that an attendee was sick, or that a strike organizer was exposed.
I agree that breaking quarantine is bad, but let's look at his side of this. Amazon has the ability to shut down any protest or picket by alleging that an attendee was sick, or that a strike organizer was exposed.
Here’s a tip: all the WFH employees should strike in solidarity with the workers until the company agrees to meet their demands. It’s easy, coordinate with your peers and just don’t login and tell your boss you won’t until they fix the situation.
Corporate employees have never had more leverage than they do right now.
Corporate employees have never had more leverage than they do right now.
It’s really easy to stop labor action without at least very strong solidarity-sentiments and community, if not legal protection. Otherwise all you do is start firing a person or two a day and let everyone else know their name is in the hat for tomorrow unless they get back to work.
Sure, but this is what labor organizing has been threatened with since the beginning of wage labor and they’ve still won lots and lots of victories.
Google employees organized largely online, internally and did just this. And the situation at Amazon for low wage workers is arguably worse.
If workers at Amazon are legitimately motivated to do this, there’s not much that can stop them. Also, firing workers on top of workers for organizing tends to not play out very well in the courts and Amazon HQ people are well-paid enough to find good lawyers.
Google employees organized largely online, internally and did just this. And the situation at Amazon for low wage workers is arguably worse.
If workers at Amazon are legitimately motivated to do this, there’s not much that can stop them. Also, firing workers on top of workers for organizing tends to not play out very well in the courts and Amazon HQ people are well-paid enough to find good lawyers.
It also honestly becomes a matter of national security.
Amazon is crucial right now in maintaining social order. It's one thing to be quarantined at home, but to be quarantined without anything arriving to your house is a quick recipe for riots on the streets. Anyone or anything disrupting this is potentially as dangerous as a famine.
I 100% sympathize with the protestor's plight, but it's an interesting situation.
Amazon is crucial right now in maintaining social order. It's one thing to be quarantined at home, but to be quarantined without anything arriving to your house is a quick recipe for riots on the streets. Anyone or anything disrupting this is potentially as dangerous as a famine.
I 100% sympathize with the protestor's plight, but it's an interesting situation.
> to be quarantined without anything arriving to your house is a quick recipe for riots on the streets...
Target, Walmart, grocery stores, etc. all are able to do curbside pickup and in many cases deliveries via stuff like Instacart.
Amazon isn't the only option.
Target, Walmart, grocery stores, etc. all are able to do curbside pickup and in many cases deliveries via stuff like Instacart.
Amazon isn't the only option.
Instacart and Whole Foods employees were also striking at the same time.
Whole Foods is part of Amazon, and there are lots of competing grocery stores.
Instacart is not the only game in town, either.
Instacart is not the only game in town, either.
Maybe it's the perfect time to highlight how critical the job those people are doing is?
Amazon isn't exactly a champion of taking care of your employees, so yeah, you go guys.
Amazon isn't exactly a champion of taking care of your employees, so yeah, you go guys.
This may be a bad interpretation but-
If a company functioning is a matter of national security, it should be significantly more controlled by the nation.
If a company functioning is a matter of national security, it should be significantly more controlled by the nation.
This is a rather massive exaggeration. Amazon isn't the sole distributor of goods, it's certainly not too big to fail.
If the company is so essential that strikes by its employees are too dangerous, then it should be nationalized both in the interest of the nation and to prevent conflict of interest.
Having a private company and having it's employees banned from striking is really contradictory ideologically and dysfunctional. If a company is private, then the employees should be able to have their private right to strike.
Having a private company and having it's employees banned from striking is really contradictory ideologically and dysfunctional. If a company is private, then the employees should be able to have their private right to strike.
If anything like that occurred, I would expect Trump to quickly invoke the Taft-Hartley Act and order the workers back on the job, replacing them with the National Guard if they did not comply.
It's been done before, numerous times.
It's been done before, numerous times.
Ah, yes. "Make the inconvenient facts go away".
The Taft-Hartley Act has been around for a long, long time. Among other things, it gives the President power to order workers in an essential industry back on the job if they strike.
I wasn't able to quickly find the current total number of times it's been invoked, but here's a WaPo article about Jimmy Carter using it in 1978. Even at that date, it had been used 34 times.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/03/07/p...
I learned about this stuff in history class. Did you not? If not, perhaps you should ask yourself why that is.
And maybe you should ask yourself what exactly you're accomplishing by downmodding factual, noninflammatory comments just because you don't like the facts.
The Taft-Hartley Act has been around for a long, long time. Among other things, it gives the President power to order workers in an essential industry back on the job if they strike.
I wasn't able to quickly find the current total number of times it's been invoked, but here's a WaPo article about Jimmy Carter using it in 1978. Even at that date, it had been used 34 times.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/03/07/p...
I learned about this stuff in history class. Did you not? If not, perhaps you should ask yourself why that is.
And maybe you should ask yourself what exactly you're accomplishing by downmodding factual, noninflammatory comments just because you don't like the facts.
Do you work for Amazon?
If you do, aren't you required to disclose as such by Amazon, in addition to a disclaimer that this is your personal opinion and you are not representing Amazon's official view here, when publicly commenting on Amazon-related issues?
If you do, aren't you required to disclose as such by Amazon, in addition to a disclaimer that this is your personal opinion and you are not representing Amazon's official view here, when publicly commenting on Amazon-related issues?
If it was actually on-site, yes, Amazon did the right thing. If it was by the street--somewhere any member of the public has free speech--no, but assuming he was exposed to SARS-CoV-2, going out in public is pretty messed up, and pretty hypocritical.
It's generally legal to fire employees for "free speech" activities done outside the workplace.
More morally hazardous of course, but I don't think anyone would really even challenge the cause here (it's trivially easy to argue that this behavior shows they would endanger workers within the workplace as well).
More morally hazardous of course, but I don't think anyone would really even challenge the cause here (it's trivially easy to argue that this behavior shows they would endanger workers within the workplace as well).
Except if that free speech is an attempt to organize.
Even in the United States, it's typically illegal to retaliate against employees for organizing: https://www.workplacefairness.org/unions-retaliation
He didn't put anyone at risk. His last exposure was over 2 weeks ago. Amazon is just using the pandemic as an excuse for strike-breaking.
I hope you don’t believe you can’t infect people after 2 weeks. If so, you’re contributing to the pandemic and the spread of the virus through disinformation. If a patient ever develops symptoms it could be 2 weeks or longer. If they don’t develop symptoms after the incubation period then they are still infectious.
I think the key is to a) trigger emotional engagement by driving a narrative based confirmation bias in the headline, and b) still have all the facts in the story for those that will actually read it which I assume turns out to be not a large percentage of people that see the headline.
The tested employee was last in the office March 11, 18 days ago, so any talk of this being about legitimate risk is corporate BS.
Whenever there is anti-Amazon or pro-Union discussion, the first comment on HN will always be siding with management. Why is that?
This obviously an illegal retaliatory firing. Amazon is running domestic sweatshops where they don't even provide basic PPE during a global pandemic, and he was the leader trying to get that gear.
Seriously - what goes through the head of somebody who posts a comment siding with management in a situation like this? I literally can't understand why you'd think to post something like this, unless you're an Amazon executive or shareholder and only care about short term face/profit. Otherwise - why the reactionary take?
I just find this level of obedience to authority baffling. It's endemic in the United States, which otherwise prides itself on it's "maverick" status - except when it comes to shocking levels of obedience and servitude to the police and to market forces.
EDIT: I looked up this user and he is an Amazon employee, which explains this bizarre take. Given Amazon's policy of paying employees to say nice things about the company online, even when they work in unrelated departments, I think we should seriously consider warning/banning users who engage in astroturfing for their employers on HackerNews.
This obviously an illegal retaliatory firing. Amazon is running domestic sweatshops where they don't even provide basic PPE during a global pandemic, and he was the leader trying to get that gear.
Seriously - what goes through the head of somebody who posts a comment siding with management in a situation like this? I literally can't understand why you'd think to post something like this, unless you're an Amazon executive or shareholder and only care about short term face/profit. Otherwise - why the reactionary take?
I just find this level of obedience to authority baffling. It's endemic in the United States, which otherwise prides itself on it's "maverick" status - except when it comes to shocking levels of obedience and servitude to the police and to market forces.
EDIT: I looked up this user and he is an Amazon employee, which explains this bizarre take. Given Amazon's policy of paying employees to say nice things about the company online, even when they work in unrelated departments, I think we should seriously consider warning/banning users who engage in astroturfing for their employers on HackerNews.
I appreciate your concern for the integrity of the threads, but you've done two things here that we don't allow. You can't bring someone else's personal information and use it as ammunition in an argument like that. It's a form of personal attack, which is not ok. Also, you broke the site guidelines by making accusations of astroturfing without evidence. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here.
The abuses you're worried about are real in principle. The problem is, internet users are a thousand (nay, a million) times too quick to become aggressive about them, which ends up causing a lot more harm than the things they're fighting.
In particular, (1) most people are posting in good faith, even if they happen to be defending their employers; and (2) most internet comments about astroturfing have no foundation. On that last point: if you saw as much data on this as we do, you'd be shocked at how made up and imaginary they are; having studied this closely for years, I can tell you that it's nearly 100% projection. In both of these cases, the putative cures causes more harm than the putative diseases.
The point about not attacking people because of their employers is particularly important. HN has members working for lots of different employers, and one's work tends to be the thing one knows the most about. The last thing we want on this site is a climate of hostility to disincentivize people from posting to threads where they might know something. I'm not talking about this thread (which I haven't read), I'm saying that in general, it's a super bad tradeoff to tolerate this sort of soft-doxxing on HN, so we don't.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Oh and by the way: HN has reams of anti-Amazon discussion and pro-union discussion. Indeed the top comment on the current thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739059) is a counterexample to what you're saying, and meanwhile the comment you were complaining about was highly downvoted. Such perceptions of HN being biased against one's view are notoriously unreliable; the people who hold opposite views see the community as biased in just the opposite way, and are just as sure about it. You (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) can't trust your ad hoc observations about this, because your pre-existing opinions condition what you notice and how strongly you weight it. It is a well-known cognitive bias, a flaw that we all suffer from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
The abuses you're worried about are real in principle. The problem is, internet users are a thousand (nay, a million) times too quick to become aggressive about them, which ends up causing a lot more harm than the things they're fighting.
In particular, (1) most people are posting in good faith, even if they happen to be defending their employers; and (2) most internet comments about astroturfing have no foundation. On that last point: if you saw as much data on this as we do, you'd be shocked at how made up and imaginary they are; having studied this closely for years, I can tell you that it's nearly 100% projection. In both of these cases, the putative cures causes more harm than the putative diseases.
The point about not attacking people because of their employers is particularly important. HN has members working for lots of different employers, and one's work tends to be the thing one knows the most about. The last thing we want on this site is a climate of hostility to disincentivize people from posting to threads where they might know something. I'm not talking about this thread (which I haven't read), I'm saying that in general, it's a super bad tradeoff to tolerate this sort of soft-doxxing on HN, so we don't.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Oh and by the way: HN has reams of anti-Amazon discussion and pro-union discussion. Indeed the top comment on the current thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739059) is a counterexample to what you're saying, and meanwhile the comment you were complaining about was highly downvoted. Such perceptions of HN being biased against one's view are notoriously unreliable; the people who hold opposite views see the community as biased in just the opposite way, and are just as sure about it. You (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) can't trust your ad hoc observations about this, because your pre-existing opinions condition what you notice and how strongly you weight it. It is a well-known cognitive bias, a flaw that we all suffer from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
> Amazon is running domestic sweatshops where they don't even provide basic PPE during a global pandemic
It doesn't help your argument to frame it in hyperbolic terms. Amazon pays a minimum wage of $15/hour, every warehouse is air conditioned, they now offer paid time off to every worker who works >20 hours a week, they have substantial career advancement training and education benefits, they have health benefits and matching 401k program, 20 weeks paid parental leave.
I mean, come on. There might be some legitimate problems, but when you call it a sweatshop, you've already lost the argument.
It doesn't help your argument to frame it in hyperbolic terms. Amazon pays a minimum wage of $15/hour, every warehouse is air conditioned, they now offer paid time off to every worker who works >20 hours a week, they have substantial career advancement training and education benefits, they have health benefits and matching 401k program, 20 weeks paid parental leave.
I mean, come on. There might be some legitimate problems, but when you call it a sweatshop, you've already lost the argument.
and they have employees pissing into bottles because toilet breaks are limited/timed/monitored.
I mean, come on. What would take for you to piss into bottle at your work instead of going to toilet.
I mean, come on. What would take for you to piss into bottle at your work instead of going to toilet.
Amazon pays very well for an entry-level job. Yes, work conditions suck compared to white-collar work. Many blue-collar jobs do, especially now that the 6-figure blue collar factory jobs have all but disappeared.
But that's the price you pay for a job that has no requirements beyond being able to use your hands.
But that's the price you pay for a job that has no requirements beyond being able to use your hands.
Who decides whether blue collar workers deserve bathroom breaks? Why do you treat the free market as the sole authority on what working conditions people "deserve"?
You're arguing that shaving off a couple minutes a day is worth the loss of human dignity that these workers experience.
You're arguing that shaving off a couple minutes a day is worth the loss of human dignity that these workers experience.
That's the problem with economies at scale, a bathroom break for small store owner is not an issue.
When you have 1000's of stores its a massive saving area, where its much easier to justify pissing bottles. Any small trivial thing at scale can cost or save huge amounts money.
And when we talk huge sums of money, morality often is tossed out of the window first.
And when we talk huge sums of money, morality often is tossed out of the window first.
You're suggesting that for a small business, because the value of five minutes of a single employee's time is trifling, the small business does not care to regulate bathroom breaks.
I don't really see it that way. In my view, small businesses abuse their employees just dramatically more than large businesses.
For a small business, a single employee may be the only person working the till. The employee simply won't be allowed to go to the bathroom at all except during designated times.
I don't really see it that way. In my view, small businesses abuse their employees just dramatically more than large businesses.
For a small business, a single employee may be the only person working the till. The employee simply won't be allowed to go to the bathroom at all except during designated times.
"Sire! The peasants are revolting!"
"Yeah, they're really disgusting on ice, aren't they?"
Amazon will keep exploiting everyone they can until they are sued and independently monitored into compliance. Go ahead and pretend all those benefits are the result of Amazon management realizing on their own that they can be good to their people. Every one is either settlements, PR dusting, or mandatory after being caught at prior abuses.
No respect for anyone at Amazon who drinks or spouts the company kool-aid.
"Yeah, they're really disgusting on ice, aren't they?"
Amazon will keep exploiting everyone they can until they are sued and independently monitored into compliance. Go ahead and pretend all those benefits are the result of Amazon management realizing on their own that they can be good to their people. Every one is either settlements, PR dusting, or mandatory after being caught at prior abuses.
No respect for anyone at Amazon who drinks or spouts the company kool-aid.
No other job paying as well as the one I had for the skills I had, and a bottle.
Who cares what one person out of 500,000 did one time in 2018?
>20 weeks paid parental leave
20 weeks maternity leave, and that for mothers who were with Amazon for > 1 year (I believe it was 4 week pre-delivery and 16 weeks after). For fathers it was 12 weeks, at least until last December.
20 weeks maternity leave, and that for mothers who were with Amazon for > 1 year (I believe it was 4 week pre-delivery and 16 weeks after). For fathers it was 12 weeks, at least until last December.
There's a pandemic and they're not giving masks and gloves to their workers, which has already caused a number of them to be hospitalized. That's why they're organizing.
Instead of giving them safety gear, they've fired the lead organizer.
They only reason they have any of the rights and conditions you described in the first place is because of organization and agitation, not their generosity.
The end result of letting authoritarian capitalism into the global marketplace can be seen in the conditions of Amazon warehouses in the United States. I'm certainly not the only person to say this, their own employees do as well. Hint - that's why they're organizing.[1]
BUT - more to the point - why post this? Are you an Amazon employee as well? If not - why? I just can't fathom in a situation like this why you'd feel the need to list - from memory? - all of the employee benefits that Amazon provides to its warehouse workers.
[1] https://nypost.com/2019/11/30/amazon-warehouses-are-cult-lik...
Instead of giving them safety gear, they've fired the lead organizer.
They only reason they have any of the rights and conditions you described in the first place is because of organization and agitation, not their generosity.
The end result of letting authoritarian capitalism into the global marketplace can be seen in the conditions of Amazon warehouses in the United States. I'm certainly not the only person to say this, their own employees do as well. Hint - that's why they're organizing.[1]
BUT - more to the point - why post this? Are you an Amazon employee as well? If not - why? I just can't fathom in a situation like this why you'd feel the need to list - from memory? - all of the employee benefits that Amazon provides to its warehouse workers.
[1] https://nypost.com/2019/11/30/amazon-warehouses-are-cult-lik...
> "they're not giving masks and gloves to their workers"
There aren't any masks and gloves available to anyone.
> "Are you an Amazon employee as well?"
Just a reminder that that sort of question violates the HN guidelines.
There aren't any masks and gloves available to anyone.
> "Are you an Amazon employee as well?"
Just a reminder that that sort of question violates the HN guidelines.
> There aren't any masks and gloves available to anyone.
I mean, for N95, maybe. Surgical masks you can buy from China. On Amazon. They'll ship by air mail, but I'm sure Amazon could get them even quicker.
I mean, for N95, maybe. Surgical masks you can buy from China. On Amazon. They'll ship by air mail, but I'm sure Amazon could get them even quicker.
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>what goes through the head of somebody who posts a comment siding with management in a situation like this?
They identify with management, because they want to be there one day. They see themselves on "the side" of the managers and those in control, and try to view things from that perspective.
It's the same reason you have poor voters who support tax cuts for the rich, even if those tax cuts mean the government can materially do less for them. They don't perceive themselves as users of the welfare state, but as soon-to-be wealthy folks.
They identify with management, because they want to be there one day. They see themselves on "the side" of the managers and those in control, and try to view things from that perspective.
It's the same reason you have poor voters who support tax cuts for the rich, even if those tax cuts mean the government can materially do less for them. They don't perceive themselves as users of the welfare state, but as soon-to-be wealthy folks.
HN is full of owners, founders, board members, executives, and managers.
Their view is well represented here.
Their view is well represented here.
That must be the case. Because otherwise it would be sad and pathetic to have a whole forum full of wannabes sitting around playing pretend running companies and worrying about equity dilution and gossiping about minutia in the lives of wealthy venture capitalists. That would be just unbelievably tragic, right?
> It's the same reason you have poor voters who support tax cuts for the rich, even if those tax cuts mean the government can materially do less for them. They don't perceive themselves as users of the welfare state, but as soon-to-be wealthy folks.
FWIW, this is a really patronizing view of poor people. An alternative hypothesis is that some people vote based on principles, whether it personally benefits them or not.
FWIW, this is a really patronizing view of poor people. An alternative hypothesis is that some people vote based on principles, whether it personally benefits them or not.
I don't know that it's necessarily a patronizing view. I know a lot of people that do sincerely believe that they are temporarily embarrassed millionaires, despite all facts pointing to the idea that they are not.
So rich people in favor of higher taxes are voting against their own interests why?
There are many people that don't see the government as an ATM machine, and think that its role should be limited.
There are many people that don't see the government as an ATM machine, and think that its role should be limited.
I don't see how you can take any other view when we showed up to work after being put under quarantine. From the article it doesn't seem like he disputes the claim, he just implies that they wouldn't have fired him if he wasn't organizing a strike. If you're running a massive shipping operation with hundreds of thousands of employees and millions of customers you should be taking steps to guarantee their safety. Beyond Amazon, the US could not afford to have the company shut down because of a COVID-19 infection spreading through their fulfillment centers. It seems ridiculous to say that he could show up to work despite being put on quarantine. Maybe there are missing facts in the case, but with that information I think most people would defend Amazon's actions.
They ordered him under quarantine more than two weeks after he was exposed (outside of guidelines), and days after he stated he would be leading a strike.
It's not like the guy was violating a reasonable quarantine; he was violating a retaliatory silencing "quarantine" outside of guidelines.
It's not like the guy was violating a reasonable quarantine; he was violating a retaliatory silencing "quarantine" outside of guidelines.
It is a known fact that Amazon instructs its employees to manipulate on-line communities: https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/23/what-is-this-weird-twitter...
It's not so much obedience to authority as identification with it. "Temporarily embarrassed millionaires", etc. Why be surprised to see it so strongly expressed on a site explicitly meant for millionaires seeking to disembarrass themselves?
But it's a wider phenomenon than HN. North American (well, especially Americans... up here in Canada maybe less so) culture in general prides itself on its relative distrust and distaste for government, and talks big about opposition to authoritarianism -- but fails to recognize corporations as having said authority, and they often get carte blanche.
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Apologies for the apparent astroturfing. I do work for Amazon but everything I post on social media is 100% my personal opinion. Nobody from work has ever asked me to do anything on social media to make the company look better.
Having said that, my opinions are a little more pro-corporate than most of the commenters here due to my personal experience.
Having said that, my opinions are a little more pro-corporate than most of the commenters here due to my personal experience.
Key excerpts from a much clearer article. And yet again, why you never 100% believe a company's PR response when they're trying to cover themselves. They tell just enough truth, but use it to intentionally mislead.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/31/amazon-strik...
> According to the company’s previous statements, the infected co-worker in question last reported for work on 11 March. Had Smalls been exposed that day, a 14-day mandatory quarantine would have made him eligible to return as soon as 25 March.
> Smalls said Amazon did not send him home until 28 March, three weeks after the exposure.
> “No one else was put on quarantine,” he said, even as the infected person worked alongside “associates for 10-plus hours a week”.
> “You put me on quarantine for coming into contact with somebody, but I was around [that person] for less than five minutes,” he told Vice.
> According to Amazon, no one else was fired. Smalls said he was considering legal action, calling it “a no-brainer”.