When I was a union rep there would be people that would bitch about the $70 bucks a month or whatever the dues were. I would explain that without the union their pay would be far, far less (not even bringing up the benefits of work hours, vacation days and whatnot). Like the "all taxes are theft" morons, the words often fell on deaf and willfully ignorant ears.
This person may be a higher up at Amazon, knowing that unions will diminish her bonuses (salary) because the workers underneath her are making more and no quotas are being met.
could have been real because of some "ambassador" scheme they had where they'd hook a select few warehouse workers with social media handles to spread the propaganda
That's such a laughably bad "unions bad" take. If there was such a thing as a kind of insurance where they fight to keep you employed, people would probably sign up and pay the fees.
I've always wondered, what prevents creating a corporation to hire every worker possible, makes them proportional owners, and then negotiates wages and benefits on their behalf?
One enormous corporation that has all of the benefits of a union.
that’s why education in the topic matters. So the roomtemp mf have the info before the business gets to feed them desinfo (or before they try to think for themselves and come to wrong conclusions)
Unless you live in a "Right to Work" state, then you get to benefit from the work of unions without contributing any money to their efforts, much like a leech benefits from the blood production of the animal it attaches itself to.
What bothers me most about unions is the increased bargaining power labour gets when they work together. As a manager, my employer expects me to use every trick possible to pay those actually making the company run as little as possible and unions make it much harder to get my bonuses.
But I use one neat trick and pay the employees the money that then gets directed to running the union as a deduction from their paycheck and many of them don't even notice that the difference in overall take-home because of that increased bargaining power is higher than the union dues. They focus on the nickels and dimes and don't even notice the dollars!
And the fact that I need to meet certain criteria before I can fire them due to the union contact doesn't even show up on the paycheck--they often don't even think about it until it's too late!
While I don't agree with her sentiment, I can absolutely believe some human union employees would say this. I don't know if this applies to Amazon jobs, but in the union I know (caregivers) one problem is workers with very few hours have to pay the same monthly dues. Still not really a valid point for most people, but for those few that get caught in it, definitely bittersweet and they will grumble.
Unions can be useful.... I have a friend who after 30 years would clearly be fired and replaced by three new employees with no experience because, to a director it looks like he or she saved money and so can be guaranteed a promotion.....
Where I disagree with Unions is that they have no accountability.
If they negociate a scrappy deal or employees get no salary increase, they should give back to the employee as a padding or a rainy day situation considering union members do continue to pay the ever increasing fee of union membership.
I see unions here in Quebec(Canada) becoming fabulously rich while their scrape by...
Just look at companies that have seamstresses, they will offer full suits for the higher strata of society and yet the working conditions are like sweat shops.... And they are unionized which makes you wonder how bad it could get....
It feels, from my perspective that unions are useful so long as people can opt out and vote anonymously which is not always the case....