{"id":697,"date":"2013-12-18T23:30:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-18T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/12\/what-does-it-take-to-unionize.html"},"modified":"2013-12-18T23:30:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-18T23:30:00","slug":"what-does-it-take-to-unionize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/12\/what-does-it-take-to-unionize.html","title":{"rendered":"What does it take to unionize?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This is, in part, a bit of an elaboration on a prior post. <\/p>\n

Back in my day, we teenagers didn\u2019t volunteer or join a dozen clubs to pad our college applications; we worked at McDonald\u2019s and the like. And one of my jobs was at Meijer. (If you\u2019ve never been to Meijer, you\u2019re missing out \u2014 it\u2019s a local chain; originally just in Michigan, they\u2019ve now spread out to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. A full grocery store with pretty good prices and a Target-type discount store with a wide selection of merchandise, though not as trendy as Target, it\u2019s pretty practical to have a regular grocery shopping list but add onto it the toy for a birthday party or the bike helmet or whatever other miscellaneous item you need.) Lucky me \u2014 I had to pay union dues, on minimum wage (I think it was minimum wage \u2014 in any case, not much more), with no apparent benefit to being in the union. <\/p>\n

Now, to be sure, there were full-time employees; this meant not just working 40 hours a week but being hired with a \u201cfull time\u201d status (jobs were posted that way), and I imagine that they had benefits, and maybe the union contract provided better pay and benefits than otherwise. But you can bet that, if \u201cright to work\u201d had existed then and I had known about it, I sure would have opted-out of paying those union dues. <\/p>\n

Fast forward a decade or so. My mom started working at then-Hudson\u2019s, later Marshall Fields, now Macy\u2019s, after I started college, and \u2014 I don\u2019t remember when, sometime in the 1990s, I think \u2014 the U.A.W. had an organizing drive there. Employees wore buttons that were either pro- or anti-union; my mom had her \u201cno UAW\u201d button. As far as the practicalities, she didn\u2019t see any way that the UAW would bring any benefits \u2014 it was a retail job and paid accordingly. But in addition, this was the Detroit area; people have strong feelings about unions around there \u2014 either they deserve support more or less automatically for the benefits they brought to autoworkers, or they\u2019re automatically guilty of destroying the car industry. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anyone who has neutral feelings about the UAW. <\/p>\n

So Megan McArdle posts a piece on attempts to unionize Amazon, \u201cLabor takes the fight to Amazon<\/a>.\u201d Good or bad? As she points out, the large number of workers in its warehouses make it a better candidate than a McDonald\u2019s, with smaller numbers at multiple restaurants. In trying to dig out more information, I came across a statement that they hire warehouse workes through temp agencies, which would make things considerably more difficult. But imagine that there were a vote, and a campaign in advance. <\/p>\n

In the union\u2019s favor would be the promises of, maybe not pay increases, but of work rules to make the days more pleasant, since there are considerable complaints about unreasonable quotas, hot temperatures, lack of breaks, insufficient tolerance of sick days, and the like. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, there\u2019s union dues. And the fact that a contract requires negotiation, and the risk of a strike \u2014 or, more specifically, the risk that the union could vote for a strike when you\u2019d be just fine with taking the deal, and are stuck with striking when you don\u2019t want to \u2014 and there are plenty of instances in which strikes, basically, just fail because the company successfully hires replacement workers, and it\u2019s all for nothing. (Objectively, unions are also famous for ridiculous work rules and demands that set about to kill the goose that laid the golden egg \u2014 but I don\u2019t imagine this is necessarily a part of an individual voter\u2019s calculus.) <\/p>\n

In many workforces, unionization also strips away the ability to get bonuses and raises based on one\u2019s performance, rather than a schedule of seniority levels \u2014 but I don\u2019t imagine this is much of an issue for a generic warehouse worker. <\/p>\n

Above this, unionization requires long-term workers, who expect to be there for years, not months, and I would be surprised if this was the perspective of Amazon workers. <\/p>\n

Put yourself in the shoes of an Amazon worker. What do you choose? <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is, in part, a bit of an elaboration on a prior post. Back in my day, we teenagers didn\u2019t volunteer or join a dozen clubs to pad our college applications; we worked at McDonald\u2019s and the like. And one of my jobs was at Meijer. (If you\u2019ve never been to Meijer, you\u2019re missing out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat does it take to unionize?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This is, in part, a bit of an elaboration on a prior post. 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