Amazon Says It Doesn’t ‘Employ’ Drivers, But Records Show It Hired Firms to Prevent Them From Unionizing::Amazon spent $14.2 million total on anti-union consulting in 2022, filings with the Department of Labor show.
Then who or what is driving the delivery trucks that say Amazon on the side?
Independent contractors. They’re like employees in almost every way except the legal way.
I’ve had Amazon packages delivered by some dude wearing basketball shorts and a t-shirt driving a random Toyota Corolla. It’s like they use Uber for delivery.
Anything to keep the union out
Thats an amazon flex driver , its like a much more strict uber eats , they only hire so many flex drivers , but it works similar to uber , pick your hours , they normaly have a route between 1-3 hours , around 25-100 packages , used to be more , but they lowered it . Amazon has delivery service providers for the main vans , they are “self made companies” . Amazon provides the initial cash to start them , normaly charges them for the vans , and has nearly all controle over them . They live in a legal gray area , most have few enough “employees” to skirt large business laws .
They do. I have a friend that makes some side cash delivering for them in his personal vehicle.
Then it should be even easier to unionize
Can’t unionize a workplace when you’re the owner and only employee. That’s how the law treats “independent contractors”.
I kinda don’t like how unions are a regulated legal thing… Why are they not just a a private club, where people collectively agree to not take shit conditions anymore? Why can’t all independent contractors go on strike tomorrow?
I agree. I don’t want to take power from the existing unions, but they should be able to exist in some less official capacity as well. 1st amendment says freedom of association, right?
That’s what they are trying to do, and why Amazon is paying multiple firms to fuck with them over it.
Unions are part of a free labor market, and any attempt to bust them is an attempt to prevent a free economy. Funny how corporations have convinced so many that’s it’s a bad thing
Unions should exist, but they should be something that needs voting and shit to create. All it needs is a law that protects worker from being fired for joining a union, nothing more. Then workers can join, or not join, however they like.
Less official means less protection. Which means, you talk about organizing and, “you’re fired”. Just Google some of the history of unions and the reason the NLRB was created in the first place. Without government protection or mafioso strongmen, it’s hard to get companies to give in and keep scabs from taking jobs if you refuse to work.
Because employers have the power. Without the legally protected status as a union you have no legal right to protest the conditions of your job. You have no right to refuse to work under dangerous conditions. And employers are free to retaliate against workers for even talking about unions or talking about reporting the dangerous conditions. How are you going to get people together who are all desperate for money and get them all to agree to go on strike and then get other people to not come in and take the jobs. One way used to be to call them scabs, make everyone else hate them through propaganda campaigns, and hire the Mafia to beat them up until they quit and no one else would take the jobs. It wasn’t until the NLRA that unions were protected.
But conservatives have turned anti-worker now due to their reliance on corporate donations among other things. And they have spent decades making unions look bad, saying they’re just criminal organizations, and calling them communism. So not enough people are going to feel sorry for the striking worker or hate on the scabs enough to pressure the companies to give in to demands.
National Taxi Workers’ Alliance says hello
Taxi workers are no longer considered independent contractors.
Independent contractors aren’t covered by the NLRA. So they don’t have the right to have a union and a company is not required to deal with a union and can retaliate against independent contractors for even discussing being in a union.
Now what is considered to be an independent contractor has varied over time. Generally when conservatives are in office, the definition expands to exclude more people from protection. And more liberal presidents put in more liberal heads of the NLRB that are more likely to shrink the definition.
There were several factors that led to the taxi workers alliance creation and becoming recognized as a union. One of the biggest ones is that they used the medallion system and other similar laws to their advantage in that if enough of the medallion owners were refusing to work, then they couldn’t just hire new workers. There aren’t exclusivity laws like that in very many other industries, including delivery services, to use to put pressure on employers.
And it took like 20 years to be recognized as a union when the NLRB declared that taxi workers are employees and not independent contractors in 2015.
Counter their bullshit with your own. “We’re not a union, we’re a guild.”
Usually not independent contractors. Amazon has contracts with other regional companies to do local deliveries and drivers are employees of these smaller companies.
What’s crazy is I hear unionization is usually more expensive to fight against, but these CEO’s are essentially morally opposed to it. Every time I hear stories of these people their lives would have been so much easier and their businesses more profitable but they just cannot stand people unionizing.
Well basically it means they have to actually negotiate with their workers via unions. That’s almost like work. They prefer not to have to do anything to “earn” their billions.
They also have the option of not treating them like shit. Happy workers don’t usually want to unionize.
I’m a fairly happy employee and I want to unionize.
I remember working through the Great Recession and I never want to take a 7 year pay cut again.
Happy wasn’t the best word. Well taken care of employees who know their employers care don’t typically feel the need to unionize. In other words, it’s not going to be high on their priority list, nor is the risk of retaliation going to be worth it.
If you’re in an environment that would retaliate against you for unionizing, you’re not “well taken care of”.
Do you really know though? The point is, if you’re well compensated, have good work-life balance, treated well, have good people around and above you, the thought of unionizing isn’t likely to be that important to you.
Yeah I do, just on the principle that an environment that retaliates against worker solidarity is an oppressive environment.
It’s similar to someone saying “can slaves be well taken care of by their owners?” Many people would say yes, but I would say no on principle. No matter how short the work day, no matter the benefits, months off every year, etc. I would say on principle that being owned means you’re not well taken care of.
The principle here being that sometimes “one” negative can be enough to mean you’re not “well-taken care of”.
That’s not an appropriate comparison.
Yeah it’s because it flies in the face of their hierarchy
That’s weirdest part, at this point the hoops Amazon has jumped through vs how profitable of a company they are - it must be cheaper for them to just let people unionise and pay them more + give better conditions?
Do you want to pay people more because they’re better at their job or do you want to pay people more because they’ve been warming a chair longer than anyone else?
I really don’t care to play “who deserves a minimum quality of life”.
Reality doesn’t care whether you care to play or not.
There’s a limited amount of resources, you can’t hire everyone on Earth, you can’t give everyone an unlimited salary. Everything past that you’re making decisions as to who gets what.
And by the way, if you make enough poor decisions eventually everyone loses their jobs.
Agreed, there’s limited resources, that’s exactly why we can’t afford to waste any more on another CEO mega yacht or private plane. We’re capable of a post-scarcity society with just the setup we have today, were we to distribute resources on need rather than greed.
BuT tHeY EaRnEd It! JuSt Be A cEo ToO!
There are PLENTY of resources to go around, but a teeny teeny tiny percentage of people are hogging over half of them all for themselves.
Life’s not a video game or a book.
Or because people need more to make a living? The whole argument of “it’s a shitty job and shouldn’t be used to support you” doesn’t really work anymore.
That doesn’t have anything to do with what I said.
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Its a very true dichotomy.
Hey let’s hire Ashok for this position! He’s really good!
Oops, sorry. Bob Whiteman has been here for 30 years. He’s just good enough not to fire but he has seniority so he gets first dibs on the job.
Hey, let’s give Ashok a raise! He’s really good!
Oops, sorry. Bob Whiteman has been here for 30 years. He’s just good enough not to fire. It he’s been here the longest so he gets paid the most.
The false dichotomy is assuming your choices are a massive adversarial bureaucracy or not making a living wage.
“It’s a very true dichotomy!”
Proceeds to make up an imagined scenario with a ridiculous fake name to prove it’s reality.
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My partner did this for a few days, he was contracted by a regional “company” that supplied delivery vans to Amazon. He had to pay for his own gas plus a fee to “rent” the van, after those things were subtracted it wasn’t worth it for him to do it long term but was good in a pinch. He got paid per package delivered, and packages he was given were spread out over a couple different cities. Hourly it worked out to a lot less than minimum wage especially since we lived in a high traffic area.
It definitely made me think twice about ordering from Amazon and I boycott it as much as I can as those people are not being paid fairly AT ALL. They work hard and deserve a fair wage and more stability that would come from being an employee rather than an independent contractor
You’re right to boycott Amazon. But unfortunately, other delivery companies are not paying their employees any better, at least here in Germany…
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That’s the whole idea behind their logistics network. They didn’t hire hire logistics network, they “outsourced” it while paying for a lot of the capital costs of those companies.
I’ve always been a bit conflicted about unions. Those seem to be a good thing up to a point but I sometimes hear stories of them also taking it a bit too far and basically blackmailing employees to do what ever they want because otherwise they’re losing their entire work force. In the case of amazon though it seems like a union is exactly what they need. It’s a subject I need to research more. And I’m saying this as a member and beneficiary of extremely strong union.
You definitely need to research it more. Do you like overtime? Sick time? Weekends off? Vacations? Unions fought and won all of those things. You would be working like they did in the 19th century without unions and you wouldn’t have time to talk about it on Lemmy.
I don’t blame them, companies tend to push so much anti-union propaganda it gets to them eventually.
It’s always fun seeing the wins on the union calendar from a century ago. It’d be nice if they weren’t focused on just making money off us now.
What the hell are you on about? Unions are essential to a good and fair work environment. Without them, you are fighting for your rights against a company, by yourself. Those stories you’ve heard mean nothing if you don’t have any sources to back them up
Even bad unions are better than none.
Back in the day Australia had ultra stong workforce to the point of being absolute thugs. Dad said he literally got chased off a work site until he backpaid a year of union dues.
Now I’m not saying that was the right thing to do, but I do believe that every industry needs a union that is employee ran and to be able to freely talk to peers about pay and conditions.
