Madness
I wonder if they got told "If you join a union, we'll replace you". I understand they once had an issue with the mob controlling the unions but things are different. Having no union means Amazon can exploit you as they wish.
Amazon workers in New York voted against joining the Amazon Labor Union on Monday, a month after the trade union group won a separate election to create its first-ever unionized warehouse. Employees from LDJ5 warehouse in Staten Island voted against the ALU, with the majority 618 declining union representation versus 380 in …
Why should russians get to hear from independent news sources about Ukraine? The Kremlin is paying for their roads and hospitals, and everything else.
People should be free to make their own choices when it comes to Unions. If the company is turning around and saying "If you join you'll be fired" or " if a union is formed, we'll move elsewhere". Probably hedged in slightly more legal language but with the strong threat implied, then people are not being given a free choice, they're not being given the opportunity to hear what a union might bring to the table.
Living in Europe, the american hatred of unions is really not understandable. The union in my firm works with the firm to a) make sure its nice and profitable, and b) that people are paid an appropriate wage, and are safe and have good working conditions. There is no need for this to be massively confrontational. I guess in America it reflects American politics where compromise and mutual respect are considered weaknesses and failures. A sad state of affairs...
The world is not black-and-white. Unions can be both good and bad. Unions can protect a worker's rights, but they can also screw the worker too. These things need to be considered on a case-by-case basis and never a blanket "ALL UNIONS ARE GOOD!" or "ALL UNIONS ARE RUN BY THE MAFIA!"
Considering the appalling conditions Amazon puts their workers through, I support them unionizing.
But I also know unions can be bad. This is the true story behind the bakery company that invented Twinkies. The company was in financial ruin, so the company gave the union an ultimatum: take a pay cut or we will go out of business. The union voted against the pay cut. Finally, after negotiations continued to fail, the company went under. All the employees lost their job and the company sold off the rights to Twinkies to pay off their debts. This union screwed the employees.
But Amazon has enough cash that that will never happen. I'm sure Amazon could double the number of warehouse employees, double their pay, and still make a large profit. Things aren't black-and-white. We need to view each situation as unique.
In the best case, a union is like have a legal team and HR department on your side, not the company's. It is a small step to redressing the imbalance in power between the employer and employee.
In the worst case, industry-specific unions have union employees and a dysfunctional internal power/management structure that can reflect the worst of companies, and lead to the union member having little, if any representation of their individual case, and little to no choice over union policies.
Where a union is on the spectrum between best and worst case can vary considerably.
The worst American union practices are illustrated by believable stories of people not being allowed to change light-bulbs as that's a union electrician's job. It doesn't matter if it is true or not, the belief is enough to give (sensible) unions a bad name. (Much like the 'Spanish practices' of Fleet Street, as was).
Given Germany manages to have a successful economy, while having good worker conditions and involvement in company administration, I'd say there is room for improvement, both the the USA and the UK.
I did work at a company (which is no more) where it didn't matter how much the production line needed a part only a goods in person could move the package from goods in to goods in inspection. And yes, in that company only a duly authorised union electrician could change a light bulb, well a ceiling one anyway. I was allowed to change my desk light bulb.
I am confused by your response. You equate Amazon giving information to the Russians withholding it. Strange.
You then go on to equate Amazon saying "If you join you'll be fired" or " if a union is formed, we'll move elsewhere" to "people are not being given a free choice". Sorry, pointing out the consequences of a choice does not prevent them making a choice it just makes them aware of what might happen.
Finally, living in the UK the hatred of SOME unions is easy to understand. If you have a union that works with your firm that's brilliant. So many failed to do so.
The American dream died long ago
But the people with power still tout it as some thing you could achieve
But then so is the lottery
As communism forced people to do as they are told or else
American version of capitalism is slightly more subtle, “if you do as we ask you then you may not starve to death, but hey it’s your choice”
The problem is that the failure of capitalism to lift people means that Putin and China seem sort of OK
We should look to the Scandinavian countries to see how capitalism can be applied.
Lagom
"if you do as we ask you then you may not starve to death, but hey it’s your choice”
Your fallacy is in thinking there is only one employer in the United States, when there are literally millions of employers. No one with any motivation need worry about starving to death, as there's always another job somewhere else.
Jeff Bezos once believed that Amazon's low-skill worker churn was a good thing as a long-term workforce would mean a "march to mediocrity." He may have to eat his words if an internal memo is accurate.
First reported by Recode, the company's 2021 research rather bluntly says: "If we continue business as usual, Amazon will deplete the available labor supply in the US network by 2024."
Some locations will be hit much earlier, with the Phoenix metro area in Arizona expected to exhaust its available labor pool by the end of 2021. The Inland Empire region of California could reach breaking point by the close of this year, according to the research.
Amazon unveiled its first "fully autonomous mobile robot" and other machines designed to operate alongside human workers at its warehouses.
In 2012 the e-commerce giant acquired Kiva Systems, a robotics startup, for $775 million. Now, following on from that, Amazon has revealed multiple prototypes powered by AI and computer-vision algorithms, ranging from robotic grippers to moving storage systems, that it has developed over the past decade. The mega-corporation hopes to put them to use in warehouses one day, ostensibly to help staff lift, carry, and scan items more efficiently.
Its "autonomous mobile robot" is a disk-shaped device on wheels, and resembles a Roomba. Instead of hoovering crumbs, the machine, named Proteus, carefully slots itself underneath a cart full of packages and pushes it along the factory floor. Amazon said Proteus was designed to work directly with and alongside humans and doesn't have to be constrained to specific locations caged off for safety reasons.
In the latest episode of Black Mirror, a vast megacorp sells AI software that learns to mimic the voice of a deceased woman whose husband sits weeping over a smart speaker, listening to her dulcet tones.
Only joking – it's Amazon, and this is real life. The experimental feature of the company's virtual assistant, Alexa, was announced at an Amazon conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
Rohit Prasad, head scientist for Alexa AI, described the tech as a means to build trust between human and machine, enabling Alexa to "make the memories last" when "so many of us have lost someone we love" during the pandemic.
Updated Amazon has blasted a proposed antitrust law that aims to clamp down on anti-competitive practices by Big Tech.
The American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) led by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and House Representative David Cicilline (D-RI) is a bipartisan bill, with Democrat and Republican support in the Senate and House. It is still making its way through Congress.
The bill [PDF] prohibits certain "online platforms" from unfairly promoting their own products and services in a way that prevents or hampers third-party businesses in competing. Said platforms with 50 million-plus active monthly users in the US or 100,000-plus US business users, and either $550 billion-plus in annual sales or market cap or a billion-plus worldwide users, that act as a "critical trading partner" for suppliers would be affected.
Concern is growing that a World Trade Organization (WTO) moratorium on cross-border tariffs covering data may not be extended, which would hit e-commerce if countries decide to introduce such tariffs.
Representatives of the WTO's 164 members are meeting in Geneva as part of a multi-day ministerial conference. June 15 was to be the final day but the trade organization today confirmed it is being extended until June 16, to facilitate outcomes on the main issues under discussion.
The current moratorium covering e-commerce tariffs was introduced in 1998, and so far the WTO has extended it at such meetings, which typically take place every two years.
Alibaba Cloud offered a peek at its latest homegrown silicon at its annual summit this week, which it calls Cloud Infrastructure Processing Units (CIPU).
The data processing units (DPUs), which we're told have already been deployed in a “handful” of the Chinese giant’s datacenters, offload virtualization functions associated with storage, networking, and security from the host CPU cores onto dedicated hardware.
“The rapid increase in data volume and scale, together with higher demand for lower latency, call for the creation of new tech infrastructure,” Alibaba Cloud Intelligence President Jeff Zhang said in a release.
AWS is trying to help organizations migrate their mainframe-based workloads to the cloud and potentially transform them into modern cloud-native services.
The Mainframe Modernization initiative was unveiled at the cloud giant's Re:Invent conference at the end of last year, where CEO Adam Selipsky claimed that "customers are trying to get off their mainframes as fast as they can."
Whether this is based in reality or not, AWS concedes that such a migration will inevitably involve the customer going through a lengthy and complex process that requires multiple steps to discover, assess, test, and operate the new workload environments.
Updated The US House Oversight Committee has told Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to turn over documents pertaining to the collapse of an Amazon warehouse – and if he doesn't, the lawmakers say they will be forced to "consider alternative measures."
Penned by Oversight Committee members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Cori Bush (D-MO) and committee chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), the letter refers to the destruction of an Edwardsville, Illinois, Amazon fulfillment center in which six people were killed when a tornado hit. It was reported that the facility received two weather warnings about 20 minutes before the tornado struck at 8.27pm on December 10; most staff had headed to a shelter, some to an area where there were no windows but was hard hit by the storm.
In late March, the Oversight Committee sent a letter to Jassy with a mid-April deadline to hand over a variety of documents, including disaster policies and procedures, communication between managers, employees and contractors, and internal discussion of the tornado and its aftermath.
Amazon's attempt to dismiss a lawsuit, brought by one of its senior software engineers, asking it to reimburse workers for internet and electricity costs racked up while working from home in the pandemic, has been rejected by a California judge.
David George Williams sued his employer for refusing to foot his monthly home office expenses, claiming Amazon is violating California's labor laws. The state's Labor Code section 2802 states: "An employer shall indemnify his or her employee for all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties, or of his or her obedience to the directions of the employer."
Williams reckons Amazon should not only be paying for its techies' home internet and electricity, but also for any other expenses related to their ad-hoc home office space during the pandemic. Williams sued the cloud giant on behalf of himself and over 4,000 workers employed in California across 12 locations, arguing these costs will range from $50 to $100 per month during the time they were told to stay away from corporate campuses as the coronavirus spread.
Amazon.com has decided to end its Kindle digital book business in China.
A statement posted to the Kindle China WeChat account states that Amazon has already stopped sending new Kindle devices to resellers and will cease operations of the Kindle China e-bookstore on June 30, 2023. The Kindle app will last another year, allowing users to download previously purchased e-books. But after June 30, 2024, Kindle devices in China won’t be able to access content.
An accompanying FAQ doesn’t offer a reason for the decision, but an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters “We periodically evaluate our offerings and make adjustments, wherever we operate.”
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