Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday May 02 2020, @09:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the virtual-water-cooler dept.

Amazon locks down internal employee communications amid organizing efforts:

Amazon is reportedly (and suddenly) enforcing rules limiting employees' internal communication as workers, critical of the company's behavior, become increasingly outspoken and organized.

Internal listservs with more than 500 participants are now required to move to a moderated model where a manager must approve any content before its distribution, according to emails obtained by Recode.

Amazon had almost 800,000 total employees worldwide as of the end of 2019, a number that does not include the recent addition of another 175,000 temporary warehouse and delivery workers the company just hired to handle increased demand due to COVID-19. Of those 800,000, more than 500,000 are in the United States, and at least 275,000 of those are full-time employees.

Those hundreds of thousands of employees use thousands of internal listservs to talk among themselves about basically anything. That "anything," of late, includes many criticisms of Amazon. The company has faced both internal and external reproof[*] for its management of warehouses, where some employees have called for better cleaning, more protective equipment, and more paid time off as COVID-19 has spread through at least 50 US facilities.

[*] Malformed link in original; corrected here.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 02 2020, @11:47PM (3 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 02 2020, @11:47PM (#989638) Journal

    Like, individually? Each public servant called their Congress Critter and said "If you give me a 1 cent raise I'll vote for you" and next thing you know their raking in a decent hourly wage? Or do you envision some kind of organization here, like maybe they worked together in order to gain a better bargaining position?

    What makes their bargaining position any better than a business corporation doing the same thing?

    What about theater technicians? They have a pretty good thing going on. Did they trade votes to politicians to force broadway shows to pay them better?

    Are they public servants?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2020, @02:42AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2020, @02:42AM (#989678)

    For what it's worth, I grew up in a Federal employee household and with that and the jobs I've had, I've been around the Fed Government for 40 years and I've never encountered any Federal union workers. The only ones I ever knew about were the Postal and air traffic controller unions, but only because of the high profile issues during the Reagan administration. I finally met a new colleague who came over from the Dept. of Commerce who told me that they had a union over there. Is that one of those drums that Fox News likes to beat? Because I have a brother-in-law who listens and watches all that crap and he was asking me questions and assuming that all the government was unionized.

    Only 30% of the Fed workforce [bls.gov] is represented by a union, which is about five times higher than it is in the private sector, but no where near a majority. And the vast majority of the members are in various law enforcement (prison guards, TSA, etc.) and the traditional trades. Your garden variety desk jockey civil servant is largely not in a union, and none of the "highly skilled" positions (researchers, scientists, engineers, etc.) are.

    But don't let that ruin a good story though.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 03 2020, @04:12AM (1 child)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 03 2020, @04:12AM (#989696) Journal

      Only 30% of the Fed workforce is represented by a union, which is about five times higher than it is in the private sector, but no where near a majority.

      A quarter [census.gov] of the Federal workforce is US military and can't legally [cornell.edu] be in a labor union.

      (b) It shall be unlawful for a member of the armed forces, knowing of the activities or objectives of a particular military labor organization—

      (1) to join or maintain membership in such organization; or

      (2) to attempt to enroll any other member of the armed forces as a member of such organization.

      Confirming a little over 30% [bls.gov] (see Table 3) of federal workforce is unionized. So roughly 40% of the portion of the US federal workforce that can be legally unionized actually is unionized. That's about the same as for local government (43% per the last link). Also good to know that there is precedent for prohibiting public unions at the federal level.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2020, @08:18PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2020, @08:18PM (#989887)

        The data on union membership are collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of about 60,000 eligible households that obtains information on employment and unemployment among the nation's civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and over

        I know the President does this, and it doesn't make it right, but just because you don't understand the data doesn't mean you get to just make shit up. Plus, those numbers include people who aren't in a union but their job is covered by a union.

        So what is your point anyway? What are these big evil unions doing? Federal pay lags pretty significantly behind the private sector, so that isn't it. According to those stats, private sector unions only make up about 6% of the workforce. What significant effect do they have on ruining society in your eyes, particularly to garner the hundreds of hours of air time devoted by Fox News? You don't think it has ANYTHING to do with diverting attention from a tax cut that cost $2T by the time the coronavirus hit, where almost all of that money went to the rich and corporations? You could quituple every union salary and it isn't even a drop in the piss bucket that is that tax cut, remember that one where there were ABSOLUTELY NO deliberations in Congress about? So the unions are a shackle on the corporations and society, huh? Man you people are some kind of special.