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Amazon Fired Six Managers After Union Vote - but Large Shareholders Plan Confrontation with Board (salon.com) 75

Posted by EditorDavid from the performance-reviews dept.
"Amazon has reportedly fired over half a dozen senior managers who were involved in a New York warehouse union," reports the Guardian, noting that the firings happened shortly after the Staten Island warehouse successfully voted to union, and that they occurred "outside the company's employee review cycle."

And while an Amazon spokesman attributed the move to the company's culture of continual improvement, the Guardian also notes that "Most of the managers who were fired were responsible for carrying out Amazon's response to the unionization efforts, the New York Times reported."

This week Amazon did defeat a second warehouse's unionization vote. But Salon reports that "In a potentially far more significant development, a coalition of the nation's largest public pension funds, with billions of dollars in Amazon stock, is urging shareholders to take the battle to Amazon's corporate suite." [T]he coalition of large public pension funds is urging shareholders to confront Amazon's corporate leadership by voting out a pair of board directors who oversee Amazon's workplace and compensation policies at the upcoming May 25 shareholder meeting....

The national effort is being led by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, a pair of Democratic elected officials who preside over hundreds of billions in public pensions funds. The New York City Retirement System and New York State Common Retirement Fund hold 1.7 million shares of Amazon stock valued at approximately $5.3 billion. At an April 21 conference at the Harvard Club in Manhattan, several other elected state treasurers from around the country committed to joining in the effort....

According to the organizers of the Harvard Club pension fund event, the officials in attendance were collectively responsible for managing $2 trillion in investments.
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Amazon Fired Six Managers After Union Vote - but Large Shareholders Plan Confrontation with Board More

Amazon Fired Six Managers After Union Vote - but Large Shareholders Plan Confrontation with Board

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  • Why vote? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Sunday May 08, 2022 @11:40AM (#62514246) Homepage Journal

    Everyone should be free to join an union or create an union regardless of where they work.

    • Re:Why vote? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by splutty ( 43475 ) on Sunday May 08, 2022 @11:44AM (#62514252)

      This will probably get me marked Troll or Flamebait or something similar, but the simple explanation is that employee rights in the US are utterly fucked.

      The less simple explanation is that there are very few laws that actually benefit employees, and a huge amount of laws that (mostly/only) benefit employers.

      One of those is the one that forces a vote on unionization, which, ironically, is on the books because unions want it to be.

      Basically: Everyone unionizes or no one does, because if you're not in the union, but the union negotiates a better contract, you'd get something for nothing. Which is of course anathema...

      It also has the nice "completely unintentional" (sarcasm) side effect that it gives the union FAR more power, and the employers are (until now) happy with that law because it generally means there's no chance of a union forming.

      • Re:Why vote? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Sunday May 08, 2022 @11:58AM (#62514298) Homepage Journal

        That's not the way it works where I live (Sweden) - at my workplace there are actually two unions and there's always an option to not belong to an union if you think it's better for you.

        It all falls in under freedom of association [wikipedia.org].

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Archangel_Azazel ( 707030 )

          Do they have two separate pay / benefit scales as well? Otherwise, hey...why would you *ever* join a union? Just hang out and let everyone else pay for your benefits.
          Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% FOR anything that helps workers. The fat cats at the top seem to be forgetting who makes them money...again. Wouldn't it be neat if the world's largest CONSUMER PRODUCTS economy suddenly just stopped buying all the useless shit? You'd see it in the news inside of a week. "HUGE ECONOMIC DOWNTURN FOR MYSTERIOUS REASON

          • Re:Why vote? (Score:4, Informative)

            by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Sunday May 08, 2022 @12:34PM (#62514412) Homepage Journal

            Yes, different set of benefits and pay agreements.

          • There are other European countries like France where unions have much more power than in Germany, but in Germany, where things look similar as Z00L00K reported about Sweden, there may be more than one union in a company, too. If I remember correctly, usually only one union (the one with the most members) gets a mandate to negotiate wages, though.

            That said, in Germany, wages are usually negotiated in sector-level collective agreements for the whole country. Only in some companies unions have negotiated inhou

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Hodr ( 219920 )

            I love this argument. The employee generates all the value.

            Maybe. Kinda. But often not at all.

            If your employer is an agribusiness and the employees plant, harvest, and move the products by hand then it's a good argument that the employees generate most of the income.

            If instead your employer pays for a warehouse, pays for electricity, pays for heating/cooling, pays for production equipment, pays for materials, and the employee just moves boxes from one area to another, no. Those employees are not generating

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by splutty ( 43475 )

          It's not the way it works in any Western country except the US, basically :P

      • And some outside of it isn't that it's not fair that some benefit from the union without joining, the problem is it makes it very easy for employers to divide and conquer by separating the two groups and exploiting the human tendency to see the other side of something as an opponent.

        I'm not entirely certain how you solve with that, what unions and workers in general are so weak in America right now from our lack of organization that I don't think it really matters one way or another. Just getting people

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by splutty ( 43475 )

          In most countries it's really fairly simple.

          Do you think the union will improve your work benefits? Then join. If you think it doesn't or you don't think you need it, don't join, and take whatever the company offers non-union workers.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        > Basically: Everyone unionizes or no one does, because if you're not in the union, but the union negotiates a better contract, you'd get something for nothing. Which is of course anathema...

        Well this is the problem with unions because the converse is also true, if you're competent, capable, and hard working you can also be held back by unions, you end up in the absurd situation where you can be real good at your job, work really hard, but get the exact same payrise as someone who has fucked around, is g

      • Let's point out that this was s law put into place by labor friendly Congress.

        This was what the unions wanted.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by whitroth ( 9367 )

        True. Back in the early/mid teens, I went to the NLRB website, and poked around, Yep, if you're a computer professional, the caveats are such that for all practical purposes, you can't join/start a union. All the regulations, of course, written and paid for by the majority business Board.

    • I'm surprised that the pensions are going to pressure Amazon's board and hopefully make it easier for the union organizers to do their job.

      • They are shareholders. Big shareholders

        • Who are ultimately responsible for maximizing their rate of return and reducing risk for the people who have a pension. One could argue that their action is a dereliction of duty.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Halo1 ( 136547 )

            Because companies that are forced to treat their employees decently overall perform worse?

          • Even pension funds have agreed upon rules and bylaws. If the rules say that the fund should only invest in ethical companies for example, that means they aren't maximizing their ROI.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by rantrantrant ( 4753443 )
        Yeah, 'Murica hasn't really understood the whole union & collective bargaining thing. US unions, values & morality-wise, appear to have more in common with corporate executives than they do with the workers they represent. But despite their worst instincts, they seem to be having a positive effect; workplaces that are unionised tend to have better pay, health & safety, job stability, etc.. So the worst run unions are still better than no union at all.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Yep, that's the 'Murican way. Unions aren't the problem. They work for other developed countries. In fact, they work very well for workers, management & shareholders, e.g. look at Japan & the EU. The problem is corruption & organised crime.

            BTW, I see unions as a necessary stop-gap measure to limit the detrimental effects of capitalist economic policies on market economies. One possible, more stable & durable option is to democratise workplaces as we have done with the public sphere (i.e. g

        • Name me a large unionized car company that hasnâ(TM)t failed yet.

          • Most of the ones in Germany, Japan & South Korea? The US car industry has a management problem, not a union one.
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by guruevi ( 827432 )

              Ford was bailed out several times, Ford took a $6B government "loan" in 2009 and has been having issues paying it back, effectively tax subsidizing Ford.

              Foreign countries have a different model of unionization, which I am all for, in Europe most of the time, you can choose which union you belong to, regardless of the company you work for. Basically the unions in Europe are closely related to the political parties, so you pay for your political party to exert pressure according to your values.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by afgun ( 634001 )
      In the US, an employer can voluntarily recognize a union, but it's highly unlikely that they will do so. So, employees must organize and vote. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlr... [nlrb.gov] This is where employers start to use dirty tactics to discourage employees from voting to form a union by spreading disinformation and threatening (usually not overtly, but in the past before protection was legalized, employers used thugs to "discourage" unions) employees. Unions have made great strides for workers in the US, but

      • Thanking unions is a misnomer.

        Thank the power of collective bargaining, workers being involved and active in defending their rights, and understanding and fighting for fair wages.

        Neither unions nor workers have been focused on these objectives for quite a while, and it shows in the numbers.

      • In decent countries those are guaranteed by law, not unions.

      • Im generally pro-union, but the justification for their existence isn’t nearly as compelling nowadays? All those worker protections enshrined into law? Yup, they cam about dur to unions. Last century. The unions last century played a massively important role in shaping the modern US capitalist economy and they deserve credit for it. But nowadays, they mostly advocate for more pay and less work. Which is great, but only up to a point. That amazon union wants 30$/hr minimum wage. Sorry, that’s a p

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 )

        Like your 40 hour work-week? Health care? Vacation? Sick time? Safety protections on the job? Thank unions. Of course this comes with trade-offs, because unions are usually organized to lobby for increased salary and benefits, which can increase the cost of goods and services if it doesn't come with a commensurate increase in productivity.

        Unions served their purpose in the early days of the US industrialization era.

        But after that point, they became a detriment to industry and the worker...corrupt themsel

    • Everyone should be free to join an union or create an union regardless of where they work.

      I'll go one further: People shouldn't *need* to join a union to get some basic employee rights. Really shitty countries require unions to balance power. It's even worse when a country actively has legal barriers to forming a union. America, land of the "fuck you employee get your arse back to work before I fire you"

      • America, land of the "fuck you employee get your arse back to work before I fire you"

        And yet, people are falling all over themselves to get into the US, legally or illegally...hmm.

        • And? What makes that relevant? Just because the USA isn't perfect and has labour laws actively toxic to workers doesn't mean it doesn't have benefits over other countries.

          How fucking one dimensional are you? Wait... checks user name... cayenne8, never mind don't answer, we all know already.

          Consider yourself unlucky that the USA is big and doesn't border with many other countries, god knows many immigrants wouldn't go to the USA if they had freedom of choice of where in the world to go.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          The Hollywood propaganda is pretty good and some countries are pretty bad.

    • >"Everyone should be free to join an union or create an union regardless of where they work."

      Couldn't agree more. Unions can do a lot of good and also a lot of bad, for themselves (the employees), the company, and sometimes the whole industry. Unions have been able to greatly improve work conditions and force better pay/benefits. And they have also ruined many companies who couldn't afford more and could no longer compete or where the workforce simply wasn't worth what they demanded.

      Each person should

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by I75BJC ( 4590021 )
      They already are Free to do this. There are unionized employees every where I worked even though I haven't work in a union shop for decades and decades. What Amazon does not want is a union that they have to recognized and bargain with. BTW, I prefer to make my own bargain since I generally did better than any union could do when they bargain for me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hodr ( 219920 )

      I honestly don't think that's the part that is controversial to anyone. Nobody cares if you join a union. The part that causes strife is forcing the employer to deal with a union instead of the person they wish to employ. You should be free to join a union or not, the employer should (by some arguments) be free to deal with the union, or not.

    • Amazon corporate is headed down the same road as the Pinkerton's. There will be violence at some point, it has happened it will happen again, because that's what it takes to get a fair wage.

  • Scares them (Score:5, Insightful)

    by speedlaw ( 878924 ) on Sunday May 08, 2022 @11:51AM (#62514286) Homepage
    If business wasn't so scared of Unions, why do they fight them so hard ? Everyone points to the UAW as the "problem with unions" but for the majority, a union is the only way an employee has any control over the employer. In a land of no health care, pensions and "right to work" nonsense, using the "freedom" argument just means freedom for the employers to make us all 1099 if possible. Amazon specifically relies on turnover and intentional employee burnout. How else do you think he paid for that rocket ?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crow ( 16139 )

      I thought "that rocket" (New Shepard) was paid for using money from the United Launch Alliance for the development of the BE-4 rocket engine. There were reports of not having enough money at times to do the necessary building and testing, contributing to the delays. Apparently the first engines have been delivered, and apparently ULA is happy with them, but we'll see if they actually get a launch this year.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by splutty ( 43475 )

        Super off topic, but those engines really are very nice!

        Unlike the vibrator they tested them on...

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Unions have also been tied to the class system; the very top of the economic pyramid has quite cleverly convinced the average salaried office worker that they're "upper class" and not "working class" like the unionized factory folks.

      Unions, therefore, are for yucky blue collar people and not for us professional white collar folks! We are part of the elite just like the big boss!

      People hold to that as an article of faith quite a bit, right up until they learn that the tradesman is making 2x what they are

  • The indignity of it! (Score:3)

    by rantrantrant ( 4753443 ) on Sunday May 08, 2022 @12:21PM (#62514368)
    Those poor executives! Just imagine the indignity of having to negotiate with peons? [shudders]

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday May 08, 2022 @01:39PM (#62514556)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Terrible /. article summary,. as usual. The title of the referenced article is "Amazon reportedly fires at least six New York managers involved in labor union" with the body then saying that "Amazon has reportedly fired over half a dozen senior managers who were involved in a New York warehouse union." So not the greatest reporting either with regards to consistency, though it does point to more than 6.

  • This is Amazon sending a message to its building managers about what will happen to them if they don't manage to prevent their own sites from unionizing by fair means or foul.
  • I hope the lawsuits come fast and furious.
  • Under what circumstances is keeping unions out a legitimate reason to fire a manager? Unions are legal. Firing someone over the outcome of a free legal vote implies that part of their job responsibility is to force the outcome of the vote. Clearly not a sufficient reason.

    This is identical to firing employees for being pro-union. It's a blunt intimidation tactic. It has the sole purpose of sending a message to every manager in Amazon that their job is on the line if the union gets in.

    The fired managers wil

    • > Under what circumstances is keeping unions out a legitimate reason to fire a manager?

      Under the circumstances of Jeff Bezos not wanting workers to have collective bargaining power. Keep them pissing into bottles.

      > The fired managers will sue for wrongful termination and I think they have a good case.

      Bzzt! Wrong, but thanks for playing. New York is an "at-will" state without even the public policy exception ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ). You can get fired for whistling out of tune.

      The National

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