These things happen, from Uber to Amazon, most times, what you expect is NOT what typically happens. Yes, “Amazon has defeated a union drive that would have established the company’s first US union. The vote count against unionization totaled 1,798, surpassing the simple majority of 1,608 needed for either side to prevail, on Friday. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which is behind the Bessemer union drive, announced it plans to file objections and unfair labor practice charges with the labor board.”
So, the Labour union will make it look this way: the reason we failed was because Amazon became another yoyo political party that does not play fair.
From my small angle here, if markets are very efficient, with demand and supply of labour attaining fair equilibrium, the perturbations from union may not be necessary. So, to empower workers, markets need to be designed to be competitive.
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You can unionize all you want and if Amazon is the dominant player in a region, the unionization gain would be marginal. But if there are many Amazons, suddenly, wages and benefits will improve. Go and ask Starbucks which offers university scholarships to people making coffee. It began that move when it realized that it could not retain its workers.
I salute unions, but increasingly, the challenge of the 21st century labour market is not the one unions can fix. Even the workers understand that fact – and that is why unions are losing elections!
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And by the they finish forming unions, the union leaders will turn themselves into emperors, kingmakers and queens, then the corruption will blossom.
The things that are meant to be means end up becoming ends on themselves, because human nature has innumerable inadequacies.
The union thing should be restricted to government owned establishments, else they will end up tearing corporations down, rather than making them better.
Whatever, whatever…