2y ago

Amazon Says It Doesn't 'Employ' Drivers, But Records Show It Hired Firms to Prevent Them From Unionizing

www.vice.com

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.

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2y ago

Amazon Doesn't 'Employ' Drivers, but Hired Firms to Prevent Them from Unionizing

www.vice.com /en/article/qjv3yp/amazon-says-it-doesnt-employ-drivers-but-records-show-it-hired-firms-to-prevent-them-from-unionizing

54 comments

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.
  
  Then it should be even easier to unionize
  
  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.
- 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?

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..

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.

54 comments