Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by toasterlovin 2238 days ago
> In fact bargaining power is the only way employees can have somewhat of a say in any sort of negotiation with their employers, without it it's a completely one sided relationship.

I truly don't understand this position. Unless we're talking about a company town, every single employee has the option of going to work somewhere else. That they don't means that they find value in the relationship with their employer.

> It's not just their warehouse workers they treat like garbage either, they steal successful products on their page and drop the original company from their listings and showing up in search. They charge a kickback just to rank in the search, etc, etc.

None of this is unethical. Not in the least. Nobody has a right to have their products sold on Amazon.com. Amazon is not the government. Other private parties have no inherent claim to be involved in anything Amazon does.
2 comments
amphibian87 2238 days ago
That's the classic conservative response, well you have a choice to go work somewhere else. That's not really the point.

You conveniently ignore that these workers have a right to organize, and it's illegal for Amazon to say they can't. Just like they have a choice to go work somewhere else, they should also have the ability to organize. Sounds like the free market at work to me, if they would have treated them better maybe they wouldn't have organized.

Also sounds like a cynical position to take given the company's strategy of opening warehouses in poorer southern cities like Memphis.

Also anti-trust law does deem what they do with search unethical.

link
CamperBob2 2238 days ago
Amazon is not the government.

Any sufficiently-dominant corporation is indistinguishable from a government. Amazon's not there yet, but it's certainly where they want to be. I buy stuff from them, but I don't hold any illusions about them.

Their practice of forcing warehouse workers to submit to searches without compensating them for their time spent in line does bother me, for example, but not quite enough to get me to shop somewhere else. (And yes, as a matter of fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that this does make me a bad person.)

link