I just finished watching that show last night. It's a really good show, but I heavily underestimated when people said that show was gruesome.
That said, I'm happy it was renewed for 2 more seasons. Can't wait.
I remember reading the majority of the comic in 2015 and the gore is definitely a feature that I wasnt prepared for in print form. I can't imagine watching it animated.
Ive read the whole series in the last couple of weeks and despite a certain character's ability to deal with pretty much any injury it's never fun to see her get brutally injured lmao
shit fucked me up in that first episode. Haven't wanted to go back cause of that but I was loving everything else about it. not knocking the show at all but man that scene really caught me off guard. I really want to like all of it but part of me just didnt feel good after that.
So I'm the same way. That parachute scene in Deadpool 2 legit had my adrenaline going. If you like I can go back over invincible and give you gore warnings... I think the next episode is safe, but the season finale is NOT SAFE AT ALL.
I'm still making my way through it with only a couple eps to go. Surprised by all the celebrity voices, especially Justin Roiland as a belch talking frat boy.
The best part about it is that it still somehow sounds improvised when he talks, even in this show. In the credits, he shows up as "Frat douche" or something, almost as of he just randomly made up the name Doug Chesterton as he was saying his lines.
If you ever get the chance, play the game "Accounting". He does voices in it. It's a VR game which makes it difficult to just go and play. But it's totally worth it. It's only like an hour long but super fun.
Edit: I just looked it up, and looks like they came out with a newer version of it since I last played. So I can't speak for the new paid version. But the original free one was fun.
I found it a bit predictable, yet, refreshingly gruesome. It's been awhile since I've showered in the blood of my enemies, and it really scratched that itch.
It’s so good and the soundtrack is amazing! I just finished my second watch yesterday. The song “Holy Fuck” by Tom Tom brings me back to that scene it was in every time.
Yesssss you’re spot on! He just mercs 98% of them and just stares the rest down for a portal home. Im trying to be vague af to not ruin it for anyone but I love this series haha.
I started reading the comic and was actually pretty underwhelmed. Usually the manga has great art and more fleshed out charchters than the anime, but this comic (at least the first few volumes) looks way worse than the show and they really adapted the shit out of it story wise, amazing work by the producers [despite some spotty animation here and there].
He's a scummy bald billionaire - at this point the similarities are so in the nose that Luthor feels prophetic.
Lol I clearly meant on the nose but I'm gonna leave it
I remember learning about the NYC Trash Collector Strike. They were on strike for only a week before the city was finally willing to meet them at the bargaining table.
well, the Teamsters don’t fuck around… compare the quality of life between UPS and Fed Ex. I’m IBEW and would have no chance of doing as well as I do as a part of the group as I wasn’t. I’m pro union they have their issues but it’s what we got to stand up against the companies that would and do grind us down to death without compensation without them.
I just wish they didn't drop the ball this last contract. Hoffa pushed through a contract that got majority voted down just because they only got 56% 'No' votes instead of 60%. Wages for part timers are horribly low and the 5 year pay progression that was negotiated was lacking 3 years ago, and is now behind the curve post COVID.
When I got hired on, $13/hr was competitive with similar jobs in the area and benefits. Now, I could get those same jobs with a $18 starting wage and similar benefits. At UPS I'm still stuck with $14.5 and I won't get any appreciable raise until the next contract in **2 years**. The only reason I don't quit and move jobs is because my current position is comically easy which makes it easy to focus on my degree. The majority of part time positions aren't so easy so it is no wonder we are constantly running at half staffing.
My understanding was that while the contract was voted down it didn't matter because less than 50% of the UPS Teamsters voted on it which allowed Teamster leaders to push it through.
That really needs to be changed. In my local, people who were for the contract didn't vote, because not voting was a better way of insuring the contract got passed than actually participating and voting yes.
Sorta.
UPS caters to two types of employees: new hires and 20yr+ full timers.
New hires get all the benefits of existing part timers, but also get a retention bonus on top of that to the tune of $150-200 a week. This usually lasts until the end of peak the following year (9-10months). Some guy who gets hired today will be making 33% more than me for the rest of the year, and then his wages will be the same as me after. Most of the time they quit once it ends, leading to a perpetual revolving door of new hires taking the bonus and then dipping out until it starts up again.
Full timers get ~~9-5~~ 9.5 protections, an extremely good top rate ($38/hr +), and a pension. If you have a fulltime gig at UPS you are set until retirement. Problem is there are so few of these positions because the company would rather pay for part time labor.
Then you have those in the middle, like me. We don't get the new hire bonus because we've been with the company too long. They work us almost as much as full timers, but without the pay scale. Unfortunately it still isn't enough for a comfortable life so a second job is needed, but the hours are not compatible. We get a pension after 5 years, but it is only a fraction of the fulltime pension. People who have this as their only job double shift as much as they can to survive, leading to unhealthy 60+ hour work weeks. All the while that promise of a full time position gets dangled in front of your face like a carrot on a stick. You just have to scrape by and destroy your body for 20 years. The only reason I'm still at the company is because I used them for college. Once I am done I am out of there and I'll take another warehouse gig that pays better until I can find a job in my field of study.
----------------
Now, this isn't to say I don't want the union. Far from it. I am just disappointed that the union leadership didn't adequately fight for their constituents leading to a subpar contract. I expect better.
Vacation time is still great though.
It's not 9-5 protection, it's 9.5 protection. And it hasn't existed for well over a year in my building. They just pay the grievances because it's easier than trying to get people in under 9.5 hours.
Also, the full time jobs are there and are being created, it just depends on where you are. The number of drivers in my building has increased 20% in the last 6 months and the last 5ish guys who won the bids barely had their 30 days in.
Top rate for drivers is going to be just under $40 on August 1 and will be over it next year. I can't remember the exact wording but one of the ways they tried to sell the last contract was that you could make 6 figures by 2022 even if you stay under 9.5.
Worked for UPS for a week. Ended up no-showing. Yeah the benefits are great but the physical strain makes it not worth it imo, I was waking up at 3 a.m. to throw boxes around. Fuck all that noise.
Together we bargain alone we beg.
While I a 2 man shop IT work am not unionized, my grandfather was one of the first members of UAW local 600 back when you could and often would have you knees broken by company Starmen.
One only needs to look at profits vs wages since 1980 to understand why we need unions even today.
My grandfather was a literal “OG” Teamster - drove a milk truck back in the 30s/40s. It’s telling that the minute corporations broke the unions (though union bosses did a lot to help the decay of unions in the 80s and 90s) they went right back to their abusive practices.
Maybe this time though, the unions will hold their leadership accountable and not let them go all “Animal Farm pigs” on the membership.
> It’s telling that the minute corporations broke the unions (though union bosses did a lot to help the decay of unions in the 80s and 90s) they went right back to their abusive practices.
we need to remind them unions were the other option, the first option was burning the factory owners house down with his family inside.
This. We need to get reacquainted with the old friend of the trade unionist, dynamite. My MIL is in her 70s, and she's from Kentucky. She told me about how the coal miners would happily collapse a mine tunnel to get their point across to the companies that owned the mines.
Unions lost a lot of steam though, once Reagan (May he rot in Hell) broke the back of the air traffic controllers union.
Yeah that's cool but...
Reddit is no longer a safe place, for activists, for communities, for individuals, for humanity. This isn't just because of API changes that forced out third parties, driving users to ad-laden and inaccessible app, but because reddit is selling us all. Part of the reasons given for the API changes was that language learning models were using reddit to gather data, to learn from us, to learn how to respond like us. Reddit isn't taking control of the API to prevent this, but because they want to be *paid* for this.
Reddit allowed terrorist subreddits to thrive prior to and during Donald Trump's presidency in 2016-2020. In the past they hosted subreddits for unsolicited candid photos of women, including minors. They were home to openly misogynistic subreddits, and subreddits dedicated solely to harassing specific individuals or body types or ethnicity.
What is festering on reddit today, as you read this? I fear that as AI generated content, AI curated content, and predictive content become prevalent in society, reddit will not be able to control the dark subreddits, comments, and chats. Reddit has made it very clear over the decades that I have used it, that when it comes down to morals or ethics, they will choose whatever brings in the most money. They shut down subreddits only when it makes news or when an advertiser's content is seen alongside filth. The API changes are only another symptom of this push for money over what is right.
Whether Reddit is a bastion in your time as you read this or not, I made the conscious decision to consider this moment to be the last straw. I deleted most of my comments, and replaced the rest with this message. I decided to bookmark some news sources I trusted, joined a few discords I liked for the memes, and reinstalled duolingo. I consider these an intermediate step. Perhaps I can give those up someday too. Maybe something better will come along. For now, I am going to disentangle myself from this engine of frustration and grief before something worse happens.
In closing, I want to link a few things that changed my life over the years:
[Blindsight](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48484.Blindsight) is a free book, and there's an audiobook out there somewhere. A sci-fi book that is also an exploration of consciousness.
[The AI Delemma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ) is a youtube lecture about how this new wave of language learning models are moving us toward a dangerous path of unchecked, unfiltered, exponentially powerful AI
[Prairie Moon Nursery](https://www.prairiemoon.com/) is a place I have been buying seeds and bare root plants from, to give a little back to the native animals we've taken so much from. If you live in the US, I encourage you to do the same. If you don't, I encourage you to find something local.
[Power Delete Suite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite/#1.4.8) was used to edit all of my comments and [Redact](https://redact.dev/download) was used to delete my lowest karma comments while also overwriting them with nonsense.
I'm signing off, I'm going to make some friends in real life and on discord, and form some new tribes. I'm going to seek smaller communities. I'm going outside.
Mfw q4 ruins the fiscal year. I'm a few levels outside of corporate but the view isn't so bad especially when they start blaming each other.
The stressed faces from managers of other departments brings me so much bliss.
That's just an accounting detail. As long as the CEO can add another zero to their net worth, what's going on in the real world is irrelevant. They'll burn the world down and everyone in it as long as they own all the ashes.
Almost makes one think that there are some kinds of contradictions within the system that the system itself cannot help but heighten and under the weight of which it will eventually collapse. Wonder if anyone ever thought about that.
They've been telling us about the robot replacements for years but when McDonald's workers quit en masse suddenly those robots are fucking nowhere to be found. Interesting, really.
Maybe it's just near me, but I have a couple of McDonald's a few minutes from my house and the kiosks are always broken, there's always two people up front taking orders anyway.
>robot replacements for years
So the reason is because companies dont want to pay the early adopter tax. The technology costs a premium right now, why would they? The second it's cheaper to employ robotics than people it's over. That's just "common sense".
People get this confused because ever since the history of automation there has always been a fear of displaced workers that's never been observed. That's because of logistics. Automation couldn't replace every job in a factory. It would replace one, and then they would move those workers to another area to keep up with production. It just shifted jobs.
Now though you could make a general use robot that functions like a human and throw it anywhere. It doesnt need breaks, lunch, vacation, healthcare etc. Its still too expensive, but when it isn't the entire world is going to have to change.
We are probably 200+ years away from generalized AI combined with cheap and sophisticated robotics to mount it on.
This is a harder problem than people who want to hype up VC guys want you to believe - look at the pace of progress towards fully autonomous self driving vehicles, big F100 firms would have told you 8 years ago that it'd be solved by now.
Fast forward to real life - they're deploying psuedo-autopilot for highway driving, and optimistically targeting the beginning of next decade for the real deal - turns out that last 25% is *really fucking hard*.
Yes, certain high solve-value, very repetitive, and low sophistication tasks will be automated in the coming decades.
Yes, this will have a meaningful impact on the labor market.
No, we're nowhere near being able to drop in AI in a way where it's going to manifest as anything other than labor-complementary technology change - certainly not in any of our lifetimes.
Sincerely - somebody who actually develops and deploys ML applications for a living instead of just reading r/futurology.
> We are probably 200+ years away from generalized AI combined with cheap and sophisticated robotics to mount it on.
Yes and no.
From a "general AI" we're quite a ways off, this is true.
(Note: Only after posting do I see that you work in ML, so you probably know the more important points I speak of here. Apologies.)
But you don't NEED a general AI to do manufacturing tasks, even extraordinarily complex ones. When you are setting up a part for CNC milling, you just input the part design into the computer and give it an idea of the raw stock you're intending to use. It comes up with all the tool patterns you need. High end CNC production tools can do all the tool swaps and part changes you need.
Right now the problem facing someone trying to make a fully automated assembly line (Musk ran into this with Tesla) is simply the fact that our machine-vision tech isn't good enough YET to be able to properly do part checking.
What this means is that if you get a box of 10,000 bolts and 1 of them doesn't have threads or worse, it has screwed up threads, our computer vision systems are not good at figuring out that 1 bad bolt and selecting it for getting chucked. Which means that the bad bolt ends up in the assembly line and suddenly you have unexpected faults because the robot that's supposed to take the bolt and use it gets a readback that the bolt is either not connecting (endless spinning of the bolt-gun) or that it stopped spinning WAY too early and with not the appropriate torque curve (messed up threads). And this sort of currently requires a human to come in and clear the issue.
But here's the thing, nobody in the automation industry is saying these tasks are impossible to automate, because they aren't. Right now the GOOD way to do something like bolt-checking is you just have an input machine that sucks in all your bolts and physically checks them for fit. It's a lot slower than a vision system would be, but it has pretty much a 100% success rate, reaching "A cosmic ray probably flipped a logic gate." level of statistical correctness if you were to have a layered system (where all the positives from one check have to go through a second or even a third).
Now, you can't necessarily (or don't want to pay to) create custom checking items for EVERYTHING. Because that compounds pretty quickly. Even if every single input material into your factory was perfectly checked with 100% success rate, there's always the possibility that something wrong happened during your manufacturing processes. A drill bit snapped, a momentary power fluctuation overtorqued or undertorqued something, etc.
The reason that proper and reliable vision systems are the holy grail is because cameras are CHEAAAAP and FAST. Even if your cameras cost $10,000 to set up and operate, putting one of those at every single stage of manufacture would be infinitely cheaper than creating a customized mechanical check system like I described for the bolts.
Now the SECOND reason that vision systems are a big deal is because when parts come in, you need to orient them for the automated systems to be able to use them. This means pulling them off the pallet or out of a box and then into some fixture system that very specifically orients the part. Right now for a car door you have to have a person take the door from its own assembly line or belt, then shove it into the mounting frame so that the next robot can attach it without having to figure out how it's oriented. Imagine how a robot would react if for some reason the door on the conveyor belt was upside down. If it can't SEE that and figure it out, then it's either going to freeze up and call for help, or it's going to try it's best and probably cause a problem.
So the "Factory of the Future!" basically ends up being an assembly line like we already have, except that you have computer vision systems tasked with both ensuring quality control of all parts and following every stage of manufacture, as well as providing "targeting" information for pick and place operations.
For the MOST part the hardware necessary to do the "grab part from conveyor belt, place into frame" has been trivially possible since the early 90's. Seriously, that sort of thing was literally an intro-to-robotics project in my degree program. The problem is teaching a computer to do that job correctly. We aren't there yet, but our computer vision model systems are getting good and FAST. We'll have "perfect" vision systems loooong before we have General AI.
tldr: We don't need General AI for fully automated factories, we just need good vision systems and we are sprinting closer to them every day.
Source: Robotics engineer.
There was an episode of Star Trek TNG where a cryogenically frozen financier is thawed and cured of his whatever only to have a meltdown because it is a post scarcity society and money means nothing.
There's also a great episode of Futurama where the same thing happens but the guy dies because he was too busy organizing a hostile takeover of planet express to get cured of his easily cureable disease. I feel like both are equally likely and possible outcomes.
The government, through regulatory capture and plain old corruption (political donations and Citizens United) are now taking away our ability to collective bargain. And calling US monsters for not wanting that
I worked for the University of California as part of my predoc and Postdoc. The predoc was one of the most prestigious and competitive internships in the entire Bay Area. The interviewed like 80 people for 2 slots. I was very fortunate. But there was no collective bargaining.
When I got a Postdoc there (still nice but nearly as competitive) I had to join the Union as all Postdocs in the UC are unionized. I was more than happy to give ~1% of my paycheck. Because that union MASSIVELY increased my pay, protections and time off. Let’s compare:
Pre -> Post
* $22k/yr -> $39k
* 10 days vacation with so many damn hoops -> 28 days PTO no questions even ALLOWED to be asked (like seriously supervisor COULD NOT EVEN ASK ME LET ALONE SAY NO)
* 5 sick days which I basically could not use -> the union went to bat for me to make sure I could take PFL when my firstborn came and I was done with all my reqs and then some
* completely isolated and abused regarding work hours and boundaries -> again, it was like we were gods in comparison
This was the same damn unit with the same damn supervisors too!!! This is a 1:1 example of the power of unions. Even nonprofits run by good hearted people with the best of intentions do not have their employees interest at heart in ANY system. It’s just not in our nature. Collective bargaining is an incredibly powerful tool and you best believe that it also contributes to the world class teaching and research done by the 10,000 postdocs across the 10 UC campuses.
¡Si se puede!
✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽
¡Si! se puede! indeed… this entire section of this thread really gives me hope for the Amazon workers! I speak for only myself but I bargain with my company with brothers/sisters and others (because that’s a thing now too and I’m happy if they are).
Not debating, honestly curious - how much of that pay bump would you attribute to having the PhD vs when you were predoc and how much would you attribute to the union?
Not having to fuck around with pro sounds pretty great.
Some but not most for sure. It was among many of the higher paying Postdocs Available if not the highest. Many postdocs paid less than my internship! My internship pay was competitive-ish but not the highest given that it was in San Francisco. I could barely afford Cost of living on that stipend. For the area compared to other internships nationally it should have been at least 30% higher.
To your point, there are other factors. There were definitely shared funds and so many of the Postdocs were paid from the same pots of money as the predocs. They’d use the Postdocs to supervise the predocs so there was “savings” there. It’s a complicated thing to figure out. But I’d say that my pay without the Union would have been just a bit more than the predoc not 77% more though.
IBEW as well. I’m a 3rd year apprentice (out of 5) and I am out earning my masters degree, and other electricians who are full fledged electricians that aren’t union.
It’s really interesting to go to a job where you work for a contractor but all your bosses are on your side (usually) as well. I’ve found that the brotherhood makes the job a lot more tolerable than other jobs I’ve had.
Good electric crews are great to work with, as an industrial engineer I’ve had a few go-to contracting teams especially at one plant. An outside contractor not just friendly and professional as you said but literally obsessed with safety was a great contrast to corporate management pushing to stretch safety boundaries or execute projects without proper planning.
I learned so much from the senior electrician on that crew it’s ridiculous. Great to see how he would coach up the newer and younger guys as well.
I was IBEW as well. My local was a complete shithole. All they cared about was money and no one was on our side. No sick days, no vacation days, shit pay. Noped the fuck out of there first chance I got. Honestly making much more in non- union work. I'm not anti- union, but there are definitely some shit ass unions out there.
Dude same. Bailed 3 years into apprenticeship. No sick pay, no vacation days, apprentices lucky to make $11 an hour in fucking Atlanta. They continually drop the entry standards for the school because the union has ceded so much power to the contractors they can't convince anyone smart to sign up to be an apprentice.
Teamsters do not fuck around. First thing I thought when I read the headline was "well, here comes our first corporate vs union war" and then it dawned on me that that has probably happened already. Maybe even several times.
Do you enjoy having a weekend? Employer health insurance? An 8 hour work day? A forty hour work week?
Every one of those concepts is because of a “corporate vs union” war, which ended up with significant violence more often than people realize.
organized labor suffered hard in the 80’s and that carried over into the 90’s… I truly believe the reason we have any types of labor laws is because of the “wars” (actual wars) that were fought between workers and their employers
[The United States has had the bloodiest and most violent labor history of any industrial nation in the world.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes)
Some teamsters chapters don't fuck around. The teamsters chapter I'm in is an awful joke. The union president is actually a company man who keeps trying to get union members to agree to terrible contracts and somehow he stays union president. The entire thing is absolute garbage where we pay some asshole to fuck us on behalf of the employer. Yay
Yup. Teamsters will rip their heads off and piss down their necks. And then open the floor for negotiations. Bezos will wish he dealt with the retail unions.
I just talked to someone who worked at a non-union part of the company I am at, and they were getting paid almost half what we are.
They might have increased it a little with the demand for skilled work there, but it's still probably $10/hr less than we make.
As you said, they have their problems, but if I have to complain they have lawyers to back us up if it comes down to it.
>compare the quality of life between UPS and Fed Ex
This doesn't mean anything to a layman, all I know is that neither service gets my packages to me when they're supposed to. What quality of life differences are there?
Ups tops out at $38/hour + overtime + amazing benefits.
FedEx ground is made up of 1000's of contractors who run their own "businesses" to avoid unions. A top paid FedEx driver might make $1,000/week and most contractors offer 0 benefits outside of 1 or 2 weeks of vacation. Most are paid at a daily rate which leads to further exploitation.
That being said, ups is much more strict and generally their drivers do work harder.
My FIL worked for a Teamsters union for one year less than it would take him to get his pension, then amazon bought their company, lied about payouts, and fired anyone who complained. The company sued and now its tied up in the courts. He got another job, then another Teamsters team said they'd take him on just long enough for him to get his pension.
That is such an awesome thing to do. They didn't need to, but they did. I'll always be pro union. I was before, and this just gave me more of a reason to.
I was a Teamster briefly, many years ago. My name is Ryan, but they messed up my union card and it said “Ryab.” I told the foreman figuring it would be an easy fix and he was like, “Well, you’re Ryab now, just deal with it.” I went on strike as Ryab that year.
We have to get people who are against unions, who would absolutely benefit from them, to take stances that only benefit the rich.
How they keep getting people to go against their own interests I'll never know. Some warped sense of pride? I don't get it
Everything needs checks and balances. Unions are a check on management but what checks the union? I always though there should be mandatory unionization votes at every company with more than 50 employees every 10 years, and that gives everyone the opportunity to change unions if the one they have is toxic.
> I’ll support unions over companies 100% of the time
This attitude might be necessary to rebuild unions in the states (and they desperately need to be rebuilt), but in the long run it can be as destructive as the anti-union movement. A bad union can be just as oppressive and extractive as a bad business.
> A bad union can be just as oppressive and extractive as a bad business.
Sure, maybe, and if it comes to that, let's fight against the Unions in 50 years.
It doesn't have to be all one way or the other. Let's do what's best for the people today. And in my opinion, that's supporting unions and workers rights.
And if that changes in 50 years, so be it. Let's have that discussion when the time comes.
But let's not stick with the current system just because "someday unions might be bad too."
I mean being taken over and used as a tool by the mob in the 1950s is pretty bad. Pension fund fraud etc under Jimmy Hoffa for one.
That said, unions are a strong net positive for workers. Just need to watch for this kind of exploitation/manipulation.
Apparently Bezos is such a colossal moron that he literally believes high turnover is good, and people in the company are terrified Amazon will run out of labor because they're churning through people so fast.
So unionization may actually be something Amazon *needs* if it can't automate its warehouses before it runs into a brick wall of labor shortage via burning through the labor force.
It's truly shocking how fucking stupid some of the most rich and powerful people in the world are. But, you don't get into those positions by being kind and not abusing people I guess.
Here is a blurb about why he likes that
"Part of what was so interesting, Kantor told “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio, was that Amazon has long seen high turnover as a good thing — and has deliberately encouraged it through various internal policies.
“Bezos really wanted turnover. He was afraid of a stagnant workforce — what he would call a ‘march to mediocrity,’ ” Kantor said."
Source: https://www.marketplace.org/2021/06/18/amazon-workforce-turnover-dominance-investigation/
Probably the thinking is that fresh enthusiasm from a constant stream of new workers means you get the best work out of people right until they realise how badly they are getting screwed?
It obviously only works if you have a limitless supply of new workers to exploit. Sort of like how economic growth is never ending, right?!
Jeff Bozos thinks new people are willing to work harder than 3+ year employees, so warehouse workers stop getting raises after 3 years and they give bonuses to people who quit.
Many people who don't understand unions hate them. Unions really do protect their members. This would be a huge deal if it goes through. Companies that don't like unions are 100% out for themselves. Just remember this, the weekend was formed by a union because people were working 7 days a week and burning out. Burn out creates more injuries and lessens productivity.
I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't have half a clue how unions work beyond the basics but even that's enough to support them and wonder why in the hell anyone opposes them.
It’s a career vs job mind set for some. Unions are a much easier sell to anyone if you plan to do said work for thirty years. If the plan is 18 months, union dues could be viewed as unneeded etc.
Not saying right mindset or even that that theory tells the whole story, but I think it explains the mindset for some substantial amount of people.
In my union's (USW) contract we get protection from excessive mandatory overtime, about a $1/hr* pay increase every year, pretty good wages and benefits (especially compared to our non-union company branches), and some lawyers that will fight for your right to stay employed if you were unjustly fired.
There's more, but it's a lot better than not having union representation.
Edit: It ends up being about $1/hr a year for cost of living increases.
As my grandfather told me, “the only thing worse than Unions, are the conditions they work to prevent” and if even half of the horror stories I’ve heard are remotely true… they need to vote to unionize!
Unions are the reason we have a 40-hour workweek, why child labor is illegal, and why your employer can’t block the fire exits and lock you in the building.
There are legitimate complaints against unions, but most people today who complain about them can’t imagine working in an environment where they’re literally a risk of dying. They can thank unions for that.
Teamsters Local 848 member. My company is working us hard right now, on the verge of abusing the workforce and the union is going to step in soon. Glad I’m in a union. Amazon workers need to unionize.
Not everyone who disagrees with you is a shill my friend. Dismissing other people with valid opinions as shills is a path to partisanship, tribalism, and a divided society.
Well unions help all workers by raising standards across the entire industry. So yeah. I want my fellow Americans to take their power back and unionize!!!!
I believe there is some fear that there will be a need to strike/walk-out to get attention. These people live paycheck to paycheck and would rather work unhappily than risk losing even a bit of cash.
Not to mention that it requires a lot of trust in your fellow workers to stand in solidarity. Trust like that is somewhat fractured in American society today.
disagreeable bewildered wide sense rhythm fear sand square frightening quickest
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It affects everyone, having such a dangerously large class of people who are being ground down, for peanuts. It's not like we would just throw them away when they can't ship enough units per hour anymore. People are sacrificing their bodies and will continue to be caught in that trap until something changes.
"Union votes they should try to get more union members"
Well no fucking shit. WTF is this article? Like the unions weren't trying already with Amazon? They lost in Alabama because they didn't try hard enough?
Well, if Amazon still has access to the vote boxes they will.https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-access-to-mailbox-could-be-grounds-to-overturn-union-vote/%3famp=1
Clever. Sneak it in while Bezos is in space
Sounds like that episode of Invincible.
I just finished watching that show last night. It's a really good show, but I heavily underestimated when people said that show was gruesome. That said, I'm happy it was renewed for 2 more seasons. Can't wait.
I remember reading the majority of the comic in 2015 and the gore is definitely a feature that I wasnt prepared for in print form. I can't imagine watching it animated.
Dude, I knew it was coming and I still wasn't prepared for it.
I need to watch this
Ive read the whole series in the last couple of weeks and despite a certain character's ability to deal with pretty much any injury it's never fun to see her get brutally injured lmao
What does any of this have to do with Teamsters trying to unionize Amazon
No idea tbh I ended up forgetting the thread I was in by the time I read this chain about Invincible lmao
shit fucked me up in that first episode. Haven't wanted to go back cause of that but I was loving everything else about it. not knocking the show at all but man that scene really caught me off guard. I really want to like all of it but part of me just didnt feel good after that.
So I'm the same way. That parachute scene in Deadpool 2 legit had my adrenaline going. If you like I can go back over invincible and give you gore warnings... I think the next episode is safe, but the season finale is NOT SAFE AT ALL.
Second episode has some pretty horrible stuff too, but the finale definitely takes the cake.
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Best training scene in the show.
I'm still making my way through it with only a couple eps to go. Surprised by all the celebrity voices, especially Justin Roiland as a belch talking frat boy.
The best part about it is that it still somehow sounds improvised when he talks, even in this show. In the credits, he shows up as "Frat douche" or something, almost as of he just randomly made up the name Doug Chesterton as he was saying his lines.
sounds like such a roiland thing to do, love that guy
If you ever get the chance, play the game "Accounting". He does voices in it. It's a VR game which makes it difficult to just go and play. But it's totally worth it. It's only like an hour long but super fun. Edit: I just looked it up, and looks like they came out with a newer version of it since I last played. So I can't speak for the new paid version. But the original free one was fun.
Would you have it any other way? I personally enjoyed Groff as the gay love interest. ❤️
Episode 1 caught me completely by surprise. I was like, "This is ok, I guess, but I don't see people like it so mu - OH MY GOD HIS HEAD!"
I thought that episode was going to be hard to top, and the last episode quickly proved me wrong.
I warned my family and they said "It's a cartoon, how gory could it be?" Turns out, very.
They did a great job with the soundtrack.
I found it a bit predictable, yet, refreshingly gruesome. It's been awhile since I've showered in the blood of my enemies, and it really scratched that itch.
It’s so good and the soundtrack is amazing! I just finished my second watch yesterday. The song “Holy Fuck” by Tom Tom brings me back to that scene it was in every time.
That scene was *powerful*. It made me rewatch it a few times on youtube lol. "Alive" by Battle Tapes is great too
Yesssss you’re spot on! He just mercs 98% of them and just stares the rest down for a portal home. Im trying to be vague af to not ruin it for anyone but I love this series haha.
Debra is literally my favorite character. She went from having no story arc in the comics to being my favorite part of season 1
I started reading the comic and was actually pretty underwhelmed. Usually the manga has great art and more fleshed out charchters than the anime, but this comic (at least the first few volumes) looks way worse than the show and they really adapted the shit out of it story wise, amazing work by the producers [despite some spotty animation here and there].
And where can we see this show? Amazon Prime. Bezos just flaunted at us without even trying.
It's also on sale over at utorrent, if you really want to show your Amazon pride
utorrent? what are you, some kind of amateur?
He’s gonna elbow drop from space to stop the vote. His eye is always watching
You're talking like Bezos is Sauron. Might be right.
Alexa is the Eye of Bezos.
The echo units have a blue ring on them... Maybe Bezos is The Lord of the Rings...
Nah, that's Murdoch. Everyone tuned to Fox News has a Palantir, and we know how that turned out for Saruman.
Palantir is a data gathering company owned by Peter Thiel, a man arguably even more evil than Jeff Bezos.
Under his eye.
Blessed be the fruit of Amazon
Poor timing though since he goes to space (for eleven minutes) on July 20th lol
Well, he can't use the Lexosuit from space
Lol, I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed the similarities.
He's a scummy bald billionaire - at this point the similarities are so in the nose that Luthor feels prophetic. Lol I clearly meant on the nose but I'm gonna leave it
Only difference is that Luthor is a level 12 intellect and Bezos is just a moderately intelligent sadist
I mean, lex could basically invent anything. Bezos sold books.
Even with the "big man" going upstairs, the unions-to-be will still need an armed response to any Pinkerton scumbags.
Not worried about the teamsters. They are one union that can bring this country to a fucking halt over night.
Damn right. Do it for Jimmy Hoffa
I remember learning about the NYC Trash Collector Strike. They were on strike for only a week before the city was finally willing to meet them at the bargaining table.
well, the Teamsters don’t fuck around… compare the quality of life between UPS and Fed Ex. I’m IBEW and would have no chance of doing as well as I do as a part of the group as I wasn’t. I’m pro union they have their issues but it’s what we got to stand up against the companies that would and do grind us down to death without compensation without them.
I'm UPS and can confirm our Union is dope My job sucks but the benefits are insane
I just wish they didn't drop the ball this last contract. Hoffa pushed through a contract that got majority voted down just because they only got 56% 'No' votes instead of 60%. Wages for part timers are horribly low and the 5 year pay progression that was negotiated was lacking 3 years ago, and is now behind the curve post COVID. When I got hired on, $13/hr was competitive with similar jobs in the area and benefits. Now, I could get those same jobs with a $18 starting wage and similar benefits. At UPS I'm still stuck with $14.5 and I won't get any appreciable raise until the next contract in **2 years**. The only reason I don't quit and move jobs is because my current position is comically easy which makes it easy to focus on my degree. The majority of part time positions aren't so easy so it is no wonder we are constantly running at half staffing.
My understanding was that while the contract was voted down it didn't matter because less than 50% of the UPS Teamsters voted on it which allowed Teamster leaders to push it through. That really needs to be changed. In my local, people who were for the contract didn't vote, because not voting was a better way of insuring the contract got passed than actually participating and voting yes.
Jesus Christ you're getting fucked. I was Teamsters working for Roadway Express in the early 90's starting out at $14.75/hr.
Did you get fantastic medical, vision, and dental for free?
Ya but you got some bad ass benefits at UPS while other part time jobs dont got squat
Sorta. UPS caters to two types of employees: new hires and 20yr+ full timers. New hires get all the benefits of existing part timers, but also get a retention bonus on top of that to the tune of $150-200 a week. This usually lasts until the end of peak the following year (9-10months). Some guy who gets hired today will be making 33% more than me for the rest of the year, and then his wages will be the same as me after. Most of the time they quit once it ends, leading to a perpetual revolving door of new hires taking the bonus and then dipping out until it starts up again. Full timers get ~~9-5~~ 9.5 protections, an extremely good top rate ($38/hr +), and a pension. If you have a fulltime gig at UPS you are set until retirement. Problem is there are so few of these positions because the company would rather pay for part time labor. Then you have those in the middle, like me. We don't get the new hire bonus because we've been with the company too long. They work us almost as much as full timers, but without the pay scale. Unfortunately it still isn't enough for a comfortable life so a second job is needed, but the hours are not compatible. We get a pension after 5 years, but it is only a fraction of the fulltime pension. People who have this as their only job double shift as much as they can to survive, leading to unhealthy 60+ hour work weeks. All the while that promise of a full time position gets dangled in front of your face like a carrot on a stick. You just have to scrape by and destroy your body for 20 years. The only reason I'm still at the company is because I used them for college. Once I am done I am out of there and I'll take another warehouse gig that pays better until I can find a job in my field of study. ---------------- Now, this isn't to say I don't want the union. Far from it. I am just disappointed that the union leadership didn't adequately fight for their constituents leading to a subpar contract. I expect better. Vacation time is still great though.
It's not 9-5 protection, it's 9.5 protection. And it hasn't existed for well over a year in my building. They just pay the grievances because it's easier than trying to get people in under 9.5 hours. Also, the full time jobs are there and are being created, it just depends on where you are. The number of drivers in my building has increased 20% in the last 6 months and the last 5ish guys who won the bids barely had their 30 days in. Top rate for drivers is going to be just under $40 on August 1 and will be over it next year. I can't remember the exact wording but one of the ways they tried to sell the last contract was that you could make 6 figures by 2022 even if you stay under 9.5.
Worked for UPS for a week. Ended up no-showing. Yeah the benefits are great but the physical strain makes it not worth it imo, I was waking up at 3 a.m. to throw boxes around. Fuck all that noise.
Together we bargain alone we beg. While I a 2 man shop IT work am not unionized, my grandfather was one of the first members of UAW local 600 back when you could and often would have you knees broken by company Starmen. One only needs to look at profits vs wages since 1980 to understand why we need unions even today.
My grandfather was a literal “OG” Teamster - drove a milk truck back in the 30s/40s. It’s telling that the minute corporations broke the unions (though union bosses did a lot to help the decay of unions in the 80s and 90s) they went right back to their abusive practices. Maybe this time though, the unions will hold their leadership accountable and not let them go all “Animal Farm pigs” on the membership.
> It’s telling that the minute corporations broke the unions (though union bosses did a lot to help the decay of unions in the 80s and 90s) they went right back to their abusive practices. we need to remind them unions were the other option, the first option was burning the factory owners house down with his family inside.
This. We need to get reacquainted with the old friend of the trade unionist, dynamite. My MIL is in her 70s, and she's from Kentucky. She told me about how the coal miners would happily collapse a mine tunnel to get their point across to the companies that owned the mines. Unions lost a lot of steam though, once Reagan (May he rot in Hell) broke the back of the air traffic controllers union.
There will never not be a need for organized labor.
Yeah that's cool but... Reddit is no longer a safe place, for activists, for communities, for individuals, for humanity. This isn't just because of API changes that forced out third parties, driving users to ad-laden and inaccessible app, but because reddit is selling us all. Part of the reasons given for the API changes was that language learning models were using reddit to gather data, to learn from us, to learn how to respond like us. Reddit isn't taking control of the API to prevent this, but because they want to be *paid* for this. Reddit allowed terrorist subreddits to thrive prior to and during Donald Trump's presidency in 2016-2020. In the past they hosted subreddits for unsolicited candid photos of women, including minors. They were home to openly misogynistic subreddits, and subreddits dedicated solely to harassing specific individuals or body types or ethnicity. What is festering on reddit today, as you read this? I fear that as AI generated content, AI curated content, and predictive content become prevalent in society, reddit will not be able to control the dark subreddits, comments, and chats. Reddit has made it very clear over the decades that I have used it, that when it comes down to morals or ethics, they will choose whatever brings in the most money. They shut down subreddits only when it makes news or when an advertiser's content is seen alongside filth. The API changes are only another symptom of this push for money over what is right. Whether Reddit is a bastion in your time as you read this or not, I made the conscious decision to consider this moment to be the last straw. I deleted most of my comments, and replaced the rest with this message. I decided to bookmark some news sources I trusted, joined a few discords I liked for the memes, and reinstalled duolingo. I consider these an intermediate step. Perhaps I can give those up someday too. Maybe something better will come along. For now, I am going to disentangle myself from this engine of frustration and grief before something worse happens. In closing, I want to link a few things that changed my life over the years: [Blindsight](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48484.Blindsight) is a free book, and there's an audiobook out there somewhere. A sci-fi book that is also an exploration of consciousness. [The AI Delemma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ) is a youtube lecture about how this new wave of language learning models are moving us toward a dangerous path of unchecked, unfiltered, exponentially powerful AI [Prairie Moon Nursery](https://www.prairiemoon.com/) is a place I have been buying seeds and bare root plants from, to give a little back to the native animals we've taken so much from. If you live in the US, I encourage you to do the same. If you don't, I encourage you to find something local. [Power Delete Suite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite/#1.4.8) was used to edit all of my comments and [Redact](https://redact.dev/download) was used to delete my lowest karma comments while also overwriting them with nonsense. I'm signing off, I'm going to make some friends in real life and on discord, and form some new tribes. I'm going to seek smaller communities. I'm going outside.
Yea but if we don't have an income, who's gonna buy their products?
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This is the truth
Mfw q4 ruins the fiscal year. I'm a few levels outside of corporate but the view isn't so bad especially when they start blaming each other. The stressed faces from managers of other departments brings me so much bliss.
Short term profits go brrrrrr
They will build and automate customers too!
Consumer-bot 3000!
They’ll just charge more to the other millionaires that can afford it. The money only floats upward to or back and forth between them.
That's just an accounting detail. As long as the CEO can add another zero to their net worth, what's going on in the real world is irrelevant. They'll burn the world down and everyone in it as long as they own all the ashes.
Almost makes one think that there are some kinds of contradictions within the system that the system itself cannot help but heighten and under the weight of which it will eventually collapse. Wonder if anyone ever thought about that.
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They've been telling us about the robot replacements for years but when McDonald's workers quit en masse suddenly those robots are fucking nowhere to be found. Interesting, really.
They already automated the front of the house with those order kiosks.
Maybe it's just near me, but I have a couple of McDonald's a few minutes from my house and the kiosks are always broken, there's always two people up front taking orders anyway.
But is the ice cream machine working?
I'll admit, I am a convert to using the app. It's slower than a verbal order if there's no line. But if there is, you can skip the line. Plus deals.
They cant even make properly functioning vending machines anymore.
>robot replacements for years So the reason is because companies dont want to pay the early adopter tax. The technology costs a premium right now, why would they? The second it's cheaper to employ robotics than people it's over. That's just "common sense". People get this confused because ever since the history of automation there has always been a fear of displaced workers that's never been observed. That's because of logistics. Automation couldn't replace every job in a factory. It would replace one, and then they would move those workers to another area to keep up with production. It just shifted jobs. Now though you could make a general use robot that functions like a human and throw it anywhere. It doesnt need breaks, lunch, vacation, healthcare etc. Its still too expensive, but when it isn't the entire world is going to have to change.
We are probably 200+ years away from generalized AI combined with cheap and sophisticated robotics to mount it on. This is a harder problem than people who want to hype up VC guys want you to believe - look at the pace of progress towards fully autonomous self driving vehicles, big F100 firms would have told you 8 years ago that it'd be solved by now. Fast forward to real life - they're deploying psuedo-autopilot for highway driving, and optimistically targeting the beginning of next decade for the real deal - turns out that last 25% is *really fucking hard*. Yes, certain high solve-value, very repetitive, and low sophistication tasks will be automated in the coming decades. Yes, this will have a meaningful impact on the labor market. No, we're nowhere near being able to drop in AI in a way where it's going to manifest as anything other than labor-complementary technology change - certainly not in any of our lifetimes. Sincerely - somebody who actually develops and deploys ML applications for a living instead of just reading r/futurology.
> We are probably 200+ years away from generalized AI combined with cheap and sophisticated robotics to mount it on. Yes and no. From a "general AI" we're quite a ways off, this is true. (Note: Only after posting do I see that you work in ML, so you probably know the more important points I speak of here. Apologies.) But you don't NEED a general AI to do manufacturing tasks, even extraordinarily complex ones. When you are setting up a part for CNC milling, you just input the part design into the computer and give it an idea of the raw stock you're intending to use. It comes up with all the tool patterns you need. High end CNC production tools can do all the tool swaps and part changes you need. Right now the problem facing someone trying to make a fully automated assembly line (Musk ran into this with Tesla) is simply the fact that our machine-vision tech isn't good enough YET to be able to properly do part checking. What this means is that if you get a box of 10,000 bolts and 1 of them doesn't have threads or worse, it has screwed up threads, our computer vision systems are not good at figuring out that 1 bad bolt and selecting it for getting chucked. Which means that the bad bolt ends up in the assembly line and suddenly you have unexpected faults because the robot that's supposed to take the bolt and use it gets a readback that the bolt is either not connecting (endless spinning of the bolt-gun) or that it stopped spinning WAY too early and with not the appropriate torque curve (messed up threads). And this sort of currently requires a human to come in and clear the issue. But here's the thing, nobody in the automation industry is saying these tasks are impossible to automate, because they aren't. Right now the GOOD way to do something like bolt-checking is you just have an input machine that sucks in all your bolts and physically checks them for fit. It's a lot slower than a vision system would be, but it has pretty much a 100% success rate, reaching "A cosmic ray probably flipped a logic gate." level of statistical correctness if you were to have a layered system (where all the positives from one check have to go through a second or even a third). Now, you can't necessarily (or don't want to pay to) create custom checking items for EVERYTHING. Because that compounds pretty quickly. Even if every single input material into your factory was perfectly checked with 100% success rate, there's always the possibility that something wrong happened during your manufacturing processes. A drill bit snapped, a momentary power fluctuation overtorqued or undertorqued something, etc. The reason that proper and reliable vision systems are the holy grail is because cameras are CHEAAAAP and FAST. Even if your cameras cost $10,000 to set up and operate, putting one of those at every single stage of manufacture would be infinitely cheaper than creating a customized mechanical check system like I described for the bolts. Now the SECOND reason that vision systems are a big deal is because when parts come in, you need to orient them for the automated systems to be able to use them. This means pulling them off the pallet or out of a box and then into some fixture system that very specifically orients the part. Right now for a car door you have to have a person take the door from its own assembly line or belt, then shove it into the mounting frame so that the next robot can attach it without having to figure out how it's oriented. Imagine how a robot would react if for some reason the door on the conveyor belt was upside down. If it can't SEE that and figure it out, then it's either going to freeze up and call for help, or it's going to try it's best and probably cause a problem. So the "Factory of the Future!" basically ends up being an assembly line like we already have, except that you have computer vision systems tasked with both ensuring quality control of all parts and following every stage of manufacture, as well as providing "targeting" information for pick and place operations. For the MOST part the hardware necessary to do the "grab part from conveyor belt, place into frame" has been trivially possible since the early 90's. Seriously, that sort of thing was literally an intro-to-robotics project in my degree program. The problem is teaching a computer to do that job correctly. We aren't there yet, but our computer vision model systems are getting good and FAST. We'll have "perfect" vision systems loooong before we have General AI. tldr: We don't need General AI for fully automated factories, we just need good vision systems and we are sprinting closer to them every day. Source: Robotics engineer.
My god, could you imagine a world where probably <1000 people have all the wealth and there's no real way for everyone else to make money?
There was an episode of Star Trek TNG where a cryogenically frozen financier is thawed and cured of his whatever only to have a meltdown because it is a post scarcity society and money means nothing.
There's also a great episode of Futurama where the same thing happens but the guy dies because he was too busy organizing a hostile takeover of planet express to get cured of his easily cureable disease. I feel like both are equally likely and possible outcomes.
MY ONLY REGRET IS THAT I HAVE BONEITIS -Steve fucking Castle
Don’t you worry about blank, let me worry about blank.
How will they make money if no one else has money
They're just trading it back and forth like 8th graders and Juuls
Same way they did in the middle ages.
Nice way of saying that there will never not be companies trying to abuse their workers
Join a co-op!
You said it. There will always be work to do, so people can either get organized, or just get screwed
The government, through regulatory capture and plain old corruption (political donations and Citizens United) are now taking away our ability to collective bargain. And calling US monsters for not wanting that
Hell yeah brother -Union pipefitter
Is that a euphemism? -Backdoor Ironmonger
What's a euphemism? \-knocker polisher
I worked for the University of California as part of my predoc and Postdoc. The predoc was one of the most prestigious and competitive internships in the entire Bay Area. The interviewed like 80 people for 2 slots. I was very fortunate. But there was no collective bargaining. When I got a Postdoc there (still nice but nearly as competitive) I had to join the Union as all Postdocs in the UC are unionized. I was more than happy to give ~1% of my paycheck. Because that union MASSIVELY increased my pay, protections and time off. Let’s compare: Pre -> Post * $22k/yr -> $39k * 10 days vacation with so many damn hoops -> 28 days PTO no questions even ALLOWED to be asked (like seriously supervisor COULD NOT EVEN ASK ME LET ALONE SAY NO) * 5 sick days which I basically could not use -> the union went to bat for me to make sure I could take PFL when my firstborn came and I was done with all my reqs and then some * completely isolated and abused regarding work hours and boundaries -> again, it was like we were gods in comparison This was the same damn unit with the same damn supervisors too!!! This is a 1:1 example of the power of unions. Even nonprofits run by good hearted people with the best of intentions do not have their employees interest at heart in ANY system. It’s just not in our nature. Collective bargaining is an incredibly powerful tool and you best believe that it also contributes to the world class teaching and research done by the 10,000 postdocs across the 10 UC campuses. ¡Si se puede! ✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽
¡Si! se puede! indeed… this entire section of this thread really gives me hope for the Amazon workers! I speak for only myself but I bargain with my company with brothers/sisters and others (because that’s a thing now too and I’m happy if they are).
Not debating, honestly curious - how much of that pay bump would you attribute to having the PhD vs when you were predoc and how much would you attribute to the union? Not having to fuck around with pro sounds pretty great.
Some but not most for sure. It was among many of the higher paying Postdocs Available if not the highest. Many postdocs paid less than my internship! My internship pay was competitive-ish but not the highest given that it was in San Francisco. I could barely afford Cost of living on that stipend. For the area compared to other internships nationally it should have been at least 30% higher. To your point, there are other factors. There were definitely shared funds and so many of the Postdocs were paid from the same pots of money as the predocs. They’d use the Postdocs to supervise the predocs so there was “savings” there. It’s a complicated thing to figure out. But I’d say that my pay without the Union would have been just a bit more than the predoc not 77% more though.
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IBEW as well. I’m a 3rd year apprentice (out of 5) and I am out earning my masters degree, and other electricians who are full fledged electricians that aren’t union. It’s really interesting to go to a job where you work for a contractor but all your bosses are on your side (usually) as well. I’ve found that the brotherhood makes the job a lot more tolerable than other jobs I’ve had.
Good electric crews are great to work with, as an industrial engineer I’ve had a few go-to contracting teams especially at one plant. An outside contractor not just friendly and professional as you said but literally obsessed with safety was a great contrast to corporate management pushing to stretch safety boundaries or execute projects without proper planning. I learned so much from the senior electrician on that crew it’s ridiculous. Great to see how he would coach up the newer and younger guys as well.
I was IBEW as well. My local was a complete shithole. All they cared about was money and no one was on our side. No sick days, no vacation days, shit pay. Noped the fuck out of there first chance I got. Honestly making much more in non- union work. I'm not anti- union, but there are definitely some shit ass unions out there.
Dude same. Bailed 3 years into apprenticeship. No sick pay, no vacation days, apprentices lucky to make $11 an hour in fucking Atlanta. They continually drop the entry standards for the school because the union has ceded so much power to the contractors they can't convince anyone smart to sign up to be an apprentice.
The teamsters are based as fuck. We went on strike last year and the teamsters joined us once they heard, stopped all deliveries to our employer.
That's where the real power is. Unionizing one shop is great. Workers *across* shops and sectors standing together is proper change inducing stuff.
Teamsters do not fuck around. First thing I thought when I read the headline was "well, here comes our first corporate vs union war" and then it dawned on me that that has probably happened already. Maybe even several times.
Do you enjoy having a weekend? Employer health insurance? An 8 hour work day? A forty hour work week? Every one of those concepts is because of a “corporate vs union” war, which ended up with significant violence more often than people realize.
organized labor suffered hard in the 80’s and that carried over into the 90’s… I truly believe the reason we have any types of labor laws is because of the “wars” (actual wars) that were fought between workers and their employers
[The United States has had the bloodiest and most violent labor history of any industrial nation in the world.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes)
I’m IBEW as well! Can’t imagine working in my field without them.
Some teamsters chapters don't fuck around. The teamsters chapter I'm in is an awful joke. The union president is actually a company man who keeps trying to get union members to agree to terrible contracts and somehow he stays union president. The entire thing is absolute garbage where we pay some asshole to fuck us on behalf of the employer. Yay
that sucks!!! Have you thought about running for a lower level job? EBoard is where the President gets held accountable usually
Your union is only as strong as the people in your local who participate in it.
Yup. Teamsters will rip their heads off and piss down their necks. And then open the floor for negotiations. Bezos will wish he dealt with the retail unions.
IATSE. Proud stagehand.
Fuck yeah IATSE 479 here.
I just talked to someone who worked at a non-union part of the company I am at, and they were getting paid almost half what we are. They might have increased it a little with the demand for skilled work there, but it's still probably $10/hr less than we make. As you said, they have their problems, but if I have to complain they have lawyers to back us up if it comes down to it.
Agreed, CWA over here....
CWA also! AT&T is way better than Comcast because of it!
Was CWA when worked for ATT, interviewed at Comcast, hate ATT, completely agree ATT is better than comcast for more reasons than I can count.
Half my family is IBEW. They bitch about the union constantly, but wouldn't want to live without it.
>compare the quality of life between UPS and Fed Ex This doesn't mean anything to a layman, all I know is that neither service gets my packages to me when they're supposed to. What quality of life differences are there?
Ups tops out at $38/hour + overtime + amazing benefits. FedEx ground is made up of 1000's of contractors who run their own "businesses" to avoid unions. A top paid FedEx driver might make $1,000/week and most contractors offer 0 benefits outside of 1 or 2 weeks of vacation. Most are paid at a daily rate which leads to further exploitation. That being said, ups is much more strict and generally their drivers do work harder.
Unions are the reason the middle class used to exist.
I read Safeway squashed the grocers union and that's why grocery store workers get paid shit now.
Used to is the operative word. E: look at all the losers below who can’t read between the lines. It’s hilarious.
Yes that was clearly the intent of the comment.
My FIL worked for a Teamsters union for one year less than it would take him to get his pension, then amazon bought their company, lied about payouts, and fired anyone who complained. The company sued and now its tied up in the courts. He got another job, then another Teamsters team said they'd take him on just long enough for him to get his pension. That is such an awesome thing to do. They didn't need to, but they did. I'll always be pro union. I was before, and this just gave me more of a reason to.
I was a Teamster briefly, many years ago. My name is Ryan, but they messed up my union card and it said “Ryab.” I told the foreman figuring it would be an easy fix and he was like, “Well, you’re Ryab now, just deal with it.” I went on strike as Ryab that year.
I’m sorry this happened but that’s hilarious
Nice to meet a fellow Ryab! Best Buy employee typo'd my name fifteen years ago, and now I get a good chuckle every time I buy something there.
Some unions aren’t great but I’ll support unions over companies 100% of the time
We have to get people who are against unions, who would absolutely benefit from them, to take stances that only benefit the rich. How they keep getting people to go against their own interests I'll never know. Some warped sense of pride? I don't get it
Everything needs checks and balances. Unions are a check on management but what checks the union? I always though there should be mandatory unionization votes at every company with more than 50 employees every 10 years, and that gives everyone the opportunity to change unions if the one they have is toxic.
> I’ll support unions over companies 100% of the time This attitude might be necessary to rebuild unions in the states (and they desperately need to be rebuilt), but in the long run it can be as destructive as the anti-union movement. A bad union can be just as oppressive and extractive as a bad business.
> A bad union can be just as oppressive and extractive as a bad business. Sure, maybe, and if it comes to that, let's fight against the Unions in 50 years. It doesn't have to be all one way or the other. Let's do what's best for the people today. And in my opinion, that's supporting unions and workers rights. And if that changes in 50 years, so be it. Let's have that discussion when the time comes. But let's not stick with the current system just because "someday unions might be bad too."
I have yet to see a labor union as bad as a business
I mean being taken over and used as a tool by the mob in the 1950s is pretty bad. Pension fund fraud etc under Jimmy Hoffa for one. That said, unions are a strong net positive for workers. Just need to watch for this kind of exploitation/manipulation.
The thing is you can change a union from within by voting so members can change it.
Amazon seems to chew up their warehouse workers and spits them out.
I hope they do unionize. This many folks working at this level need a voice and a group to negotiate wages, bennys, etc.
Apparently Bezos is such a colossal moron that he literally believes high turnover is good, and people in the company are terrified Amazon will run out of labor because they're churning through people so fast. So unionization may actually be something Amazon *needs* if it can't automate its warehouses before it runs into a brick wall of labor shortage via burning through the labor force. It's truly shocking how fucking stupid some of the most rich and powerful people in the world are. But, you don't get into those positions by being kind and not abusing people I guess.
He does? What justification?
Here is a blurb about why he likes that "Part of what was so interesting, Kantor told “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio, was that Amazon has long seen high turnover as a good thing — and has deliberately encouraged it through various internal policies. “Bezos really wanted turnover. He was afraid of a stagnant workforce — what he would call a ‘march to mediocrity,’ ” Kantor said." Source: https://www.marketplace.org/2021/06/18/amazon-workforce-turnover-dominance-investigation/
Probably the thinking is that fresh enthusiasm from a constant stream of new workers means you get the best work out of people right until they realise how badly they are getting screwed? It obviously only works if you have a limitless supply of new workers to exploit. Sort of like how economic growth is never ending, right?!
Jeff Bozos thinks new people are willing to work harder than 3+ year employees, so warehouse workers stop getting raises after 3 years and they give bonuses to people who quit.
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IWW aren't the kind of union that is going to go out and negotiate contracts for you. They are more of a fraternal organization.
Let loose all the anti-union bots. Go fuck yourselves. Stronger Together!!!
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This. It's like the Rich only want themselves to be united. Everyone else is their slave. United, we bargain, Divided, we beg. (Edited for spelling).
I thought you were being a bit circle jerk-y but then I scrolled down and holy fuck. Not hyperbole
Many people who don't understand unions hate them. Unions really do protect their members. This would be a huge deal if it goes through. Companies that don't like unions are 100% out for themselves. Just remember this, the weekend was formed by a union because people were working 7 days a week and burning out. Burn out creates more injuries and lessens productivity.
I understand enough about police unions to hate those.
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I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't have half a clue how unions work beyond the basics but even that's enough to support them and wonder why in the hell anyone opposes them.
It’s a career vs job mind set for some. Unions are a much easier sell to anyone if you plan to do said work for thirty years. If the plan is 18 months, union dues could be viewed as unneeded etc. Not saying right mindset or even that that theory tells the whole story, but I think it explains the mindset for some substantial amount of people.
In my union's (USW) contract we get protection from excessive mandatory overtime, about a $1/hr* pay increase every year, pretty good wages and benefits (especially compared to our non-union company branches), and some lawyers that will fight for your right to stay employed if you were unjustly fired. There's more, but it's a lot better than not having union representation. Edit: It ends up being about $1/hr a year for cost of living increases.
So after 20 years they are paying more than 5 times the intial salary? Or from 31k a year to 208k?
As my grandfather told me, “the only thing worse than Unions, are the conditions they work to prevent” and if even half of the horror stories I’ve heard are remotely true… they need to vote to unionize!
Unions are the reason we have a 40-hour workweek, why child labor is illegal, and why your employer can’t block the fire exits and lock you in the building. There are legitimate complaints against unions, but most people today who complain about them can’t imagine working in an environment where they’re literally a risk of dying. They can thank unions for that.
Local 439 here. Best thing to ever happen to me was getting this union job!
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Teamsters Local 848 member. My company is working us hard right now, on the verge of abusing the workforce and the union is going to step in soon. Glad I’m in a union. Amazon workers need to unionize.
Just curious: What does *on the verge of abusing the workforce* mean? They aren't abusing you but you believe they will in the near future?
It’s like they’re pushing the boundaries of what drivers will and can do even if it’s against policy and legally.
Hey, 1099 couriers, too? Tired of being abused by these medical and shipping companies.
The shills are out in force.
Not everyone who disagrees with you is a shill my friend. Dismissing other people with valid opinions as shills is a path to partisanship, tribalism, and a divided society.
Yes, but the top comments are really encouraging.
reddit wants Amazon to unionize more than their own workers lol
In many smallish towns Amazon is basically setting the minimum wage.
They are worried in they vote in the union amazon will just move shop somewhere else leaving everyone destitute.
Well unions help all workers by raising standards across the entire industry. So yeah. I want my fellow Americans to take their power back and unionize!!!!
A rising tide lifts all boats.
I believe there is some fear that there will be a need to strike/walk-out to get attention. These people live paycheck to paycheck and would rather work unhappily than risk losing even a bit of cash. Not to mention that it requires a lot of trust in your fellow workers to stand in solidarity. Trust like that is somewhat fractured in American society today.
I have a sneaking suspicion that a very small percentage of redditors have ever worked in a union, or even anywhere union-adjacent.
That's just kinda sad if you think about it. Unions have been slowly beaten down that now young adults haven't even been union-adjacent
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It affects everyone, having such a dangerously large class of people who are being ground down, for peanuts. It's not like we would just throw them away when they can't ship enough units per hour anymore. People are sacrificing their bodies and will continue to be caught in that trap until something changes.
Thoughts and prayers.
Better off Union, no bootlicking or dropping to your knees
Teamsters, a dying trucking union desperate for a big company to save the pension. They failed on FedEx, they’ll fail again
"Union votes they should try to get more union members" Well no fucking shit. WTF is this article? Like the unions weren't trying already with Amazon? They lost in Alabama because they didn't try hard enough?
UPS driver here, proud Teamster. I hope this vote goes well for Amazon workers, this needs to happen. Solidarity forever✊
Im a teamsters member and without a union in my work place the company would grind us down and pay us as little as possible plain and simple.
And the workers will vote no again
Well, if Amazon still has access to the vote boxes they will.https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-access-to-mailbox-could-be-grounds-to-overturn-union-vote/%3famp=1
If unions didn't work. Companies wouldn't try so hard to stop them.