Posted on 04/16/2021 6:14:58 AM PDT by Kaslin
It wasn't even close. The final count was 1,798 against and 738 for, 71% to 29%.
The issue in question was whether the employees at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, wanted to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Not, as The Washington Post, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, put it: a contest of "Big Tech vs. its workers."
The workers weren't one of the adversaries; they were the judges, and 71% of them decided -- contrary to media coverage and despite nudges from President Joe Biden -- not to choose the union.
That has significance far beyond the individuals involved. Amazon is now America's second-largest employer, after Walmart, with more than 950,000 domestic employees. With the increased demand for delivered merchandise during COVID-19 restrictions, Amazon reports that it has hired some 427,300 workers over the past year.
It's no secret that organized labor unions would like to represent employees at firms like Walmart and Amazon. That would bring in millions in union dues and, in the opinion of union advocates, better wages, benefits and working conditions for workers.
It's more of a secret that Democratic politicians want unions to organize these firms. Perhaps they think it would help workers, but another reason is that unions channel large amounts in campaign contributions, almost every single dollar to Democrats. Unionization is -- though liberals don't like to hear this -- a form of public financing of campaigns for one political party.
The retail workers union and other unions haven't tried nationwide drives at Amazon or Walmart. That would require a hugely expensive national organizing campaign, with low chances of success. The Bessemer warehouse, with its majority-black workforce in a majority-black county, looked like a more feasible target. In partisan elections, they undoubtedly vote heavily Democratic.
That was also true of Nissan's auto assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi, whose majority-black workforce the United Auto Workers attempted to organize in 2016 and 2017. But in August 2017, 63% of the 3,500 workers voting rejected union representation. Like the Amazon workers in Bessemer, they were evidently satisfied with current wages and benefits and felt that union dues wouldn't be worth paying.
Since the Nissan vote, two national UAW presidents have been convicted of embezzling union funds. That's not going to make it easier for the UAW to snap its losing streak of never organizing non-U.S.-based auto plants. And it's a sad contrast with the austere integrity of longtime (1946-1968) UAW President Walter Reuther and his immediate successors.
Many liberal commentators look back to Reuther's time and the "midcentury moment" when private-sector unionism peaked in the United States, at 35% of the private sector workforce in 1954. The most recent figure is 6%. Public employees, almost none of them unionized in the 1950s, now make up about half of all union members.
The surge in private-sector union membership came in the late 1930s, when the UAW and other unions organized auto, steel, rubber and other heavy industries. Unions staged sit-down strikes -- illegally occupying huge factories -- and Michigan's Democratic governor refused to order troops to enforce court orders. The companies recognized the UAW, but the governor was defeated in 1938.
Why did the union win? Factory pay was good, and in a slack Depression economy, fired workers could easily be replaced. Workers' longstanding grievance was management's use of "Taylorism" time-and-motion studies that speeded up assembly lines and treated workers like unthinking machines, under threat of grueling and often-unsafe speed-ups.
Today, Taylorism has long since been replaced by Japanese-pioneered methods encouraging worker autonomy, and in the tight Donald Trump-era labor market, companies have had to offer good wages and benefits to attract workers and can't easily replace them. The argument that 1950s unions promoted the "family wage," allowing a man to support his wife and family, has little appeal to today's cultural liberals.
The Biden Democrats' major legislation is interlarded with provisions they hope will promote unionization. They want to sign up subsidized home care workers and preschool attendants into unions, as some Democratic states have, and to classify gig workers (like Uber drivers) as full-time employees, with minimum hours, weekly schedules and mandatory union dues, as California tried to. They want to repeal 27 states' right-to-work laws.
Some of these may work, at least temporarily, and channel millions of tax dollars to Democratic campaigns. But they're not likely to recreate the 1930s era of explosive union growth or midcentury moment of contented union membership.
Democrats love unions because unions extort huge sums from union members and donate a major portion to democrats. IOW, to democrats, unions are a source of campaign donations.
In my experience.
Workers trust the unions less than management.
Which isn’t good
You know what would help working class families?
Not having to pay the taxes the Left imposes at every level of human activity to fund their welfare state.
With lower government imposed costs folks might even be able to get by on a single income.
Maybe it equation is more they don’t trust the guy saying their organization wants to be paid by them to function as a middle man between them and the boss even less?
Yep.
Unions are foundational for Progressivism going right back to the beginning when progressivism was born around 1900.
They’ll never give it up because they don’t know how. It’s like breathing. On this one, they can’t stop.
Ah, but that reduces the power of government and its army of bureaucrats.
“because unions extort huge sums from union members and donate a major portion to democrats”
That may be the key reason why unions are having a hard time winning representation elections.
Republicans are not going to join a union that is going to use their dues money to fund despicable Democratic politicians.
Commies/progressives who run unions for the benefit of the democrat party don’t represent ‘workers’ they represent white liberal ‘elites’...
Fixed it for the author. The last thing in the world unions care about is the welfare of the membership. It is a means to an end.
“Not having to pay the taxes the Left imposes at every level of human activity to fund their welfare state.”
If I could afford health insurance, I would be paying more in cross subsidization for unhealthy lifestyles than I would be paying in taxes.
In NYC, some people pay $3,000/month in rent so some other people can pay $400/month in rent, instead of $1,700/month equally.
Bosses are corporate management, who at least have some concept of pay for performance. Unions are government management...that guarantees workers will never make more than a negotiated maximum salary.
The teachers’ unions in particular are nothing but trouble. Even if we succeed in recalling Newsom here in CA we will need someone with the balls or ovaries to stand up to that monster. This being the People’s Republic of California I’m not betting the farm on that one.
Don’t read too much into this. Amazon greased Dem palms big time last election.
Yes. The States used their regulatory powers to socialize the insurance pools, requiring people to pay for coverage they would not usually need or even want.
It is the abuse of insurance, people using it as assurance, that broke our system. Obamaharm only doubled down on that abuse.
As for rents, heh, rent controls actually figured into the story of a Transformers novel I wrote a while back.
A character named Whiteface is trying to explain something from Cybertron’s history to the young Magnus, to protagonist. One megacycle is roughly 8 of our years.
“Magnus, do you realize that a great many Autobots never wanted to give up Quintesson rule? Shameful to admit it, but it’s true. There’s an incident in history called the Rents Riot that happened about a hundred megacycles after the revolution had succeeded. You see, after their initial success in Iacon, Primus and Alpha Trion lost the region back to the Quintessons and loyal troops. Because the economy had been drastically disrupted, the Quintessons instituted rent and price controls so loyalist wouldn’t end up homeless and destitute amid wartime inflation. After the war the loyalist still dominated Iacon, they still do, and while price controls were released they weren’t willing to give up their cheap rents. So as the city was rebuilt, the residents of the new towers had to make up the difference with even more expensive rents. Which were immediately fixed. Then more outrageous rents for those who came later. Eventually things REALLY boiled over and there was a full blown riot that lasted for nearly a stellar year.... Didn’t help anything that it was at just that moment in history that one lazy Autobot managed to enrage his Combaticon superior which resulted in one of the most egregious injustices ever ... and, sadly, another riot.”
Rent controls in NYC were from WW2 for the same reasons ... but they will never go away unlit forced to.
In my story Magnus already knew, though Whiteface didn’t, that rent controls still existed in Cybertron but there were confidentiality clauses in the leases for the luxurious places with cheep rents.
AKA “people leeching off of the citizens”
Progressivism started in the 19th century, not the 20th, and its roots are in people wanting a central government possessing general power in all circumstances whatsoever ... more like the failed 1st French Republic had.
Bolshies only believe in the money Unions can deliver.
The idiot kept on smoking pot - and drinking lots of tea as he heard it masked the MJ use. It didn't, and he was busted again ("I didn't think they'd test me again." DOH!) He was canned for good - the union said "You had your chance and blew it. We can't help you any more."
Other son is an engineer and says every time there is a negotiation, the company is aggressive, demanding 30% pay cuts and lessened days off when the union just wanted to keep the existing contract, despite inflation.
They appear to be one of the good ones. I was in two - Ladies Garment Workers and International Typographers - both fit the description of commenters here.
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