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Workers at Amazon's Main Italian Site To Hold First Strike on Black Friday (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Workers at Amazon's main distribution hub in Italy are planning their first ever strike for Friday, trade unions said, threatening to disrupt one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Like the rest of Europe, Italians in recent years have embraced the U.S. tradition of Black Friday, a day of heavy discounting by retailers on the day after Thanksgiving. Unions said in a statement more than 500 Amazon workers at the Piacenza site in northern Italy had agreed to strike following a failure to negotiate bonuses with the company. Workers have also decided not to do any overtime until Dec. 31, covering the peak season for the online retailer which hires temporary workers during this period.
What a wonderful group. Conspire to harm their employer when they are most needed.
As well they should, if their employer is a shitheel.
Why would you trust such a group with your business? Such children!
This is Amazon, it's not about trust, it's about control. And only children still believe the fairy tales about the business owners being benevolent keepers of society.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is capitalism, where everyone is supposed to be selfish, worry about his own interests, and screw the other. Their employer isn't some special snowflake who deserves protection from the government.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
In Germany they strike every year for Christmas, to get the union contract for retail workers instead of logistics ones.
Problem is, nobody notices it, because Amazon, being a Logistics company, just reroutes shipping to Austria, Belgium, France or Poland and not a single package comes an hour late.
You'd think that they'd learn from this, but no.
Move to Italy, I heard a lot of jobs are going to need replacements there!
By the quality of your writing, I'd say you might be qualified enough.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
While the naive believe that unions are really out to protect the workers, rather than enrich the union bosses.
I think some of them might be, but I'm not astoundingly pro-union. I am, however, in favor of the right to unionize. If you tell people they can't associate freely, you're violating a natural right. I'd rather have protections for all workers than any unions at all, but since governments don't seem to be able to see their way to protecting workers more than corporations, I see unions as a necessary evil. I do not consider this contradictory to the idea that we should eliminate them going forwards, since it is not acceptable to simply replace them with nothing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Even more than that US Thanksgiving is not a holiday anywhere but the US so this is no different than striking on any other random day of the year.
Reality check: the only way to get what you want is to force the issue.
Employers want to pay their employees as little as possible. Every dollar they pay an employee is a dollar they can't keep. They don't set wages based on what is morally right or benevolent; but based on what they have to pay according to law or labor market economics.
If you have a rare and valuable skill, employers will make all kinds of noble gestures towards you. But when you have a general skillset that most people have or can easily get, you are not getting a dime more than you can force them to pay you.
If workers don't keep striking, they won't keep getting a decent wage. The moment they stop raising a fuss is the moment their pay stagnates, their working conditions start to deteriorate, and their hours start going up.
It is *also* true that unions become self-serving predators as well. It is unfortunate, but inescapable, given that everyone involved in a union has the same "I want more for me" incentives that the greedy employers have.
It is not pretty, but it is human. You fight for what you want, or you don't get it.
The best protection for the workers is to have many (a half dozen or more) job options available to them.
I don't disagree, but the problem is, that's not the situation. It's not the situation in Italy, it's not the situation anywhere in the EU in fact, and it's not the situation in the USA either. It's not the situation anywhere in the world, as far as I can tell. And this is because the worker's share of the profit has declined, and when owners spend money they tend to give it to other owners, but when workers spend money they tend to spend more of it in ways that put the highest percentage into another worker's pocket (i.e. locally.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
when workers spend money they tend to spend more of it in ways that put the highest percentage into another worker's pocket (i.e. locally.)
[citation needed]
... not to reward the local hipster artisan selling repurposed trumpets as flower vases. Most of their groceries will be cheaper when purchased from a chain with a large delivery pipeline, and that means they're buying at least nationally if not globally. And when those workers need something else, they're doing what the rest of us do, more and more frequently, and shopping online for price and free delivery.
"Workers" are just like everyone else. They buy what they have to, and if they only have the skills for an entry level job, they're shopping based on price
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
We didn't elect Reagan?
Ayn Rand was considered laughing stock here (the few who knew she existed anyway)?
We didn't elect Trump?
I like the idea of unions however every union I've been in has been about protecting the jobs of the union organizers. Supposedly anyone could run for a union position. In reality the current board members control the agenda, the vote and the communication. 2 out of the 3 times I was in a union they acted specifically against my interests. One union had less respect for peoples lives the employer, this was a Canadian hospital so the bar was pretty low.
I think we need laws to protect union members from the unions, to make the unions more transparent and to better regulate how people are appointed to union positions. Until then unions will be useless or harmful to their members.
"Workers" are just like everyone else. They buy what they have to, and if they only have the skills for an entry level job, they're shopping based on price
My big-assed Channel Lock pliers (relatively, anyway... they're something like 4-5") were actually made by Channel Lock here in the USA, and they were really not that expensive. I could have ordered something cheaper, and waited for it, but I needed a tool right away. I could have driven around burning fuel trying to find something cheaper, but that would have been stupid.
A rich person doesn't buy a tool. They subscribe to a management service which contracts a major plumbing company to do that kind of work. That company pockets a large share of the profit and bones the worker. A rich person spends their money on high-dollar items with a lot of padding in the price, where most of the money goes to another rich person.
Now in absolute terms, the rich person might put just as many dollars into their local economy, hell they might put in ten times as much. But if you give them a hundred times as much money, and they put ten times as much into their local economy... you can see where this is going, right? I'm not railing about small business owners here, I'm talking about the curd of the turd, the cream of the crap. You give 'em all the money, they trade it mostly between themselves and avoid taxes wherever possible, and the system then has to prey upon the middle class (the only other people with any money) in order to function.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"