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They also allow people to negotiate over working conditions in a manner other than simply changing jobs. I slung cardboard in a FedEx unload bay in college where I was reduced to an hourly total, and their entire staffing model was to pay one tick above minimum wage and then burn through employees at whatever rate occurred. The management style was, whenever understaffed and for however many months, to tell the grunts to work yet harder. It’s very common for FedEx sort facilities to have over 100% turnover in a year on average. And, we didn’t have it Amazon bad.
It wasn’t horrible for someone like me because I knew I was out of there and on to better things in a short time. But if you’re a HBD, heritable-intelligence type, then there are going to be some folks for whom that’s their lot in life. And I’ve met a few of them. If they’re, say, loading four delivery vans at 300-400 boxes a van, and arranging boxes based on the seven-to-eight digit code that organizes the boxes along the delivery route, that’s more than honest work for one shift. I one-hundred percent want people for whom that’s their level in life to have a union say, “No, you can’t put someone on more than a four-truck pull during the holiday-season peak. You can adequately staff your shifts, or you can have management come in and start loading trucks for failing to do their job.”
A significant part of what is driving unionization pushes at places like Starbucks, Amazon, etc. are working conditions.
In your specific case of cardboard wrangling, couldn't those who wanted a more stable union job doing the exact same thing have gone across the street to UPS instead of FedEx?
Well, not everyone, no. Maybe if UPS was opening a brand new sort facility in that area. But a few, sure.
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Work rules are, quite explicitly, something that does not improve business. It makes businesses less able to engage in process improvements, particularly since any process improvement becomes a new opportunity for employees to grab more without adding value.
Work rules are generally more harmful than just demands for more money due to this deadweight loss. As an example of this, consider port of LA workers opposing any kind of productivity increasing automation under the guise of work rules.
But there’s a place for sacrificing efficiency to prevent Amazon warehouse-like treatment. Yes, obviously the LA port workers behavior is bad and shouldn’t be encouraged. But employees should also get some way to push back against being asked to wear diapers at work.
They do. It's called McDonald's, Walmart, or any other non-Amazon job which - according to /u/limestheif - pay more than the competition in return for demanding more from workers. This isn't some kind of monopsony-ish situation where only one employer in the state needs their specialized skillset.
You seem to want to eliminate the opportunity to work harder and get more money for those that want it, I guess cause you know better than they do or something.
(I'm ignoring the fact that the diaper story is mostly FUD based on exaggerations/universalization about a problem that happens to many older adults.)
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Right. The efficiency engineers at Amazon didn’t have any business incentive to budget in time to allow people to walk the distance required to urinate in a bathroom when picking orders. The plan was, pay $15-18 an hour when that was above most other entry level jobs and the labor market was weaker, and replace anyone who places a higher price on their dignity. The end result is ultimately people on the line pissing in bottles. The union does not exist to make the business efficient. It exists to give current employees bargaining power, where they’d otherwise be on the short end of an imbalance.
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I completely agree that's what a union should be. But in practice why do they always spent so much of their negotiating power on protecting employees who should be fired?
Signaling to the rest of union members and the employer. Staking out a strong position for an incompetent worker indicates obstinate adherence to certain principles. Importantly, it makes observers think that genuinely predatory or abusive actions won't be tolerated, scaring the employer and giving assurances to members.
It has obvious costs, but it appears somewhat effective.
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Do they? Or is it that working conditions and wages are hammered out only every so-many years during contract negotiations, and that, by intent and structure, isn’t going to be something that can occur just whenever.
Unions are fiercely protective of brutal employees
This costs the employer a lot of money, and they would pay to remove this stipulation
"We'll let you fire some guys, but you have to pay the rest of us more" -no union leader ever
They also have to maintain solidarity. The union is an organization and the business is an organization.
When the MİT murders some mouthy Kurds in Turkey, the PKK doesn’t want the heat that a retaliatory killing is going to bring, but if they don’t offer one up every now and again they will lose support from their base.
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