[reading-at-work]

Not surprised. Tech companies (Facebook and Google in this case, and probably others) have been known to retain Pinkerton agents to monitor employees. Yes, those Pinkertons.

“Among other services, Pinkerton offers to send investigators to coffee shops or restaurants near a company’s campus to eavesdrop on employees’ conversations.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/147619/pinkertons-still-neve...

[dhosek]

For those who aren't aware of Pinkerton's history, from wikipedia:

>One of the first union busting agencies was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which came to public attention as the result of a shooting war that broke out between strikers and three hundred Pinkerton agents during the Homestead Strike of 1892. When the Pinkerton agents were withdrawn, state militia forces were deployed. The militia repulsed attacks on the steel plant, and prevented violence against strikebreakers crossing picket lines, causing a decisive defeat of the strike, and ended the power of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers at the Homestead plant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...

[rmrfstar]

"My team and I routinely pried into workers' police records, personnel files, credit histories, medical records, and family lives in search of a weakness that we could use to discredit union activists... Once in a while, a worker is impeccable. So some consultants resort to lies. To fell the sturdiest union supporters in the 1970s, I frequently launched rumors that the targeted worker was gay or was cheating on his wife. It was a very effective technique." [1, 2]

Read the Ebay stalking indictment. They were the B team with extremely limited operational capability. Now imagine they had any of the following, which are all for sale:

* Real-time location from your cell provider

* Real-time AirBnB booking

* Real-time purchases from credit card companies

* Real-time browsing records from your mobile ISP, home ISP, and behavioral advertising networks

* Your complete prescription history from your pharmacy

[1] https://aflcionc.org/confessions-of-a-union-buster/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_spies

[djsumdog]

Decades ago in University, I remember an Accounting professor talked about how Wal-Mart used their parking lot cameras to monitor where employees would congregate after work and would have special "employees" who would befriend these groups and make sure they weren't trying to organize unions, or discourage organization if they were.

[dreamcompiler]

"Who are those guys?"

"Pinkerton men"

-Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969

https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/pers...

[tehjoker]

Everyone that likes the New Deal should thank the union organizers and socialists that literally had to fight police in the streets to force the hand of the state. A large enough faction of the capitalists back then agreed to reforms because they feared things were going the way of revolution. In the 1930s, the 1917 revolution in Russia was a recent memory that scared the piss out of them.

Bezos would like to continue accumulating wealth from the labor of his workers without having to face real negotiations. A really great idea for anyone out of work that has any free time not applying for jobs right now would be to join labor discussion groups about the state of the economy and read some Marx. A great deal of those writings feels like hearing from Hari Seldon from Asimov's Foundation series given that we can look back 150 years and see that so many predictions and ways of thinking about the world were broadly true. Socialism or Barbarism as they say.

[badRNG]

While I don't think getting bogged down in a political discussion here is a good idea (and I don't necessarily disagree,) I do think it is interesting how ignorant Americans often are of the many literal battles in the war for humane working conditions.

It might be worth reading about how workers were bombed and gunned down during the labor movement (late 19th, early 20th centuries) in the US, notably the Battle of Blair Mountain [1]. Here is a good history of the different full battles waged in the late 19th and early 20th century by bosses and the police [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence_in_the_Uni...

[supercollision]

+1 to your post and links. I'm also surprised by how much anti-union sentiment exists in the US; things like the 40-hour workweek and concept of overtime were paid for in blood.

[hannasanarion]

The US works hard to surpress labor history education. We even celebrate Labor Day in September, and as a result most Americans have never heard of the Haymarket Massacre, which is the whole reason it exists everywhere else in the world.

[burfog]

Now the work week is less than 30 hours. Yay! All it took was requiring health insurance for employees with 30 hours.

By that strategy, we could have a 10-hour work week if we wanted it.

[supercollision]

I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding your point, but might a union actually help in this case?

The 30 hour mandate is from the federal government as part of the Affordable Care Act. If someone was moved from 40 hours to 29 hours because of this, that's bad, but they were likely not a union member, right? Unions would have a negotiated contract for however many hours they wanted (either more or less than the norm), and would have also already negotiated benefits on the side so the incentive for the employer to cut to 30 hours would be gone.

Regarding the fewer hours points - I wasn't advocating that shorter weeks are always better, but rather that unions are responsible for, or at least contributed to, many of the gains that workers got over the last 150 years, and that IMO have been eroding.

Pretending we lived in the early 20th century, isn't the benefit of 40 hours a week in a factory over >60 hours a week in a factory clear? In terms of health and safety, unions have also made sure that e.g. you were less likely to become trapped and burn alive during the workday [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...

[droptablemain]

The burden of health insurance shouldn't fall to the business anyway. It is the responsibility of the federal government.

[lvs]

This is an important argument that people miss. Cost increases in health care for government systems are managed at the government level, not at the level of individual companies. That's a pretty desirable situation for companies. Not only do companies make targets of themselves when they downgrade coverage, but the overall compensation is also less transparent to the worker when insurance is tied to the workplace. You get rid of all that stuff in a single payer system.

[Clubber]

That's one of the origins of the term "red neck."

[valas]

"read some Marx"... do you have some book in mind? Perhaps some good summary? I hear Capital is hard to parse.

So far my experience in trying to distill Marx is that he did reasonable assessment of the state of affairs at the time (i.e. identifying main classes in society of 1800s), but then his prescriptions of what to do (socialize means of production) did not work out anywhere. Maybe I'm reading wrong books.

[claudiawerner]

Whatever you do, do not only read the Manifesto. It was designed as an agitation pamphlet rather than an as a complete exposition of his thinking, and it is almost entirely devoid of his economic thought. As other commenters here have said, Wage Labour and Capital is a good read. You may also benefit from a companion guide if you want the full picture. Capitalism: A Companion to Marx's Economy Critique by Johan Fornas is a very high quality book, and relatively new; published by Routledge.

You will not come away with a good overview (whether you are sympathetic or not) just from the Manifesto. This is not enough to learn about Marx's thought. WLaC is better, but it too does not do a deep enough dive into the peak of his thought, nor his method of exposition. Capital, with a companion guide, is your best bet.

As another commenter here said, the first chapters (even as admitted by Marx himself) are difficult to get through, mainly due to the fact that Marx uses a dialectical presentation in his work, in which the most 'core' and highly abstract concept is dealt with first, before progressing to more concrete concepts. As such, the book gets easier as it goes on.

[tehjoker]

Like others have said, "The Communist Manifesto" is the easiest entry point. My copy also has "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" which some say is the work most descriptive of the US today. "The State and Revolution" by Lenin is a relatively easy and enlightening read as he talks about the nature of the capitalist state, the police, and other topics. "Reform or Revolution" by Rosa Luxemburg is also clarifying as it talks about why reformists have lost the thread. However, there are also many many many leftist podcasts you can listen to that can be easier to digest and will get you the basics, so that way when you read the original works later you have a baseline of understanding.

Capital is a doorstop, but I have heard that past chapter one which talks about the labor theory of value, the reading is much more breezy.

However, while some of these books are dense, even rural peasants have been able to read and metabolize these books, so don't despair!

[patrec]

Not, OP, and not well read in Marxist literature either (life is too short), but I can recommend The Communist Manifesto, it's short, quite lucid and of enormous historical influence (and would be worth reading for that reason alone). As you say, the interesting part is the analysis, the proposed remedies do not just look bad in hindsight, after tens of millions of dead bodies.

[GFischer]

Yep, I see that I tend to agree with the diagnosis of many such books.

The solutions, not so much.

But they're definitely worth reading.

[terr-dav]

Wage Labour and Captital

I haven't read through it yet, but it's relatively short, and it was recommended to me as a good starter.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/wag...

[edoceo]

Capital is not a hard read. Marx prescriptions were not perfect but the problem description from back then is surprisingly accurate for todays workers

[raxxorrax]

I think anything before the communist manifest is worth it. But it should always be read in context of the time of the industrial revolution and before.

[javert]

Marxism rewards the vicious and punishes the virtuous.

It's not in the interest of virtuous people to have Marxism. It's in their interest to have freedom, which implies capitalism.

[raxxorrax]

I don't think Marx always intended revolution and the term changed context later in his life, when reformation and revolution were distilled as two separate approaches. In my opinion this is still a fault line in modern leftist movements.

[JetSpiegel]

Capitalism rewards the vicious rentseeker and punishes the virtuous worker.

Any transfer of wealth towards weaker member of society is forbidden? Should we let babies starve, after all they don't literally pull their own weigth? What about disabled people?

[javert]

Capitalism rewards workers according to the utility of their contribution. Consider Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc.

Rentseekers in the literal sense (landlords) are not that big of a function of the economy. Rentseekers in the figurative sense (companies that use regulatory capture to extract wealth from others) are not a feature of capitalism, they are a feature of a mixed economy.

[tehjoker]

This is completely wrong. Marxism is presented as "scientific socialism" compared with former idealist versions that proliferated in the 1800s. While you can disagree with his conclusions, Marx presents a theory of class society, of the development of productive forces, and how these interact to advance the political forms of society which ends in revolution when the old structures and the new engines of society clash. He doesn't really go deeply into what "socialism" would look like, only that the clash between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, where the proletariat both massively outnumber the bourgeoisie and do all the work for survival wages presents a contradiction that will be resolved.

[javert]

Your post side-steps the issue I raised.

[adamsea]

I think their point was that when you said “Marxism rewards the vicious and punishes the virtuous“, what you said could make sense when talking about Marx-inspired ideologies / movements (the USSR, etc), but not so much about the actual writings and thought of Karl Marx himself.

I.e. that Marxist scholarship / thought does not have a one to one correspondence with Marxist-inspired social or political movements, of which there are many different kinds.

But the real question is why am I wasting my time on the internet writing this when the odds of you yourself wishing to step back and hear with open ears what I’m suggesting is quite low?

Which isn’t so much a statement about you, dear debate-opponent, as it is about the internet itself.

Getting people to waste time online - the capitalists greatest tool in the repression of the masses! LOL ;)

Maybe we’ll get immortalized in the Internet Archive ;););)

[javert]

I think my statement applies, or at least is likely to apply, under any implementation of Marx's ideas, and also has applied under every implementation that has been tried. If someone has a real counterpoint to that I'd be happy to hear it and engage with it.

I'm still kind of talking past the other person, and vice versa, but it's hard to have a good conversation about this, and I think it's important to say something to express my opposition to Marxism (though that's debatable---if nothing good/useful can be said, it's very debatable).

I would not have said anything on most discussion forums, but if there ever was a place where it's appropriate to speak up against Marxism when it rears its head, YC News is it. I think I can voice my pro-capitalist position politely and it's OK here, even if there is no traction in the conversation. I wouldn't do that on, say, reddit; I think it would be rude in that context, unless I can actually foster a meaningful conversation.

> the odds of you yourself wishing to step back and hear with open ears what I’m suggesting is quite low

Valid statement about the Internet in general, but culture can change, and we should strive to be better than that. In my own commenting history there are certainly bright and dark spots. I try to do the best I can.

[rxhernandez]

In general, it's not a good idea to talk poorly about your employer in public if you want to keep your job; I've heard of at least a couple cases where someone was fired for "mouthing-off" to their spouse in a public place like a grocery store.

[tmpz22]

Pre-COVID it was very interesting sitting in a bar in downtown SF and listening to all the drunk tech workers mouthing off. You could hear a lot of illegal activites, particularly racist or poor hiring practices, boasted of or complained about very regularly.

[elipsey]

Which bar was your favorite?

I liked Mikkeller for this, but it got too loud. Irish Bank was also good, slower but quieter. I used to nag my friends about opsec... back when you could go places with friends :*(

[pklausler]

It's not the smartest idea to talk poorly about your employer in private, either. Especially in "confidential" employee surveys.

[Consultant32452]

I keep trying to get the message out. When your employer sends out these surveys, rate everything at the highest level possible. Nothing good can possibly come from giving bad ratings. If your boss/employer can't figure out how to improve things outside of those surveys, they won't figure it out from the survey. All you are doing is creating a bureaucratic headache for your boss which is going to trickle down to you.

[dylan604]

This is awesome in a very very sad way.

Several years ago, I started working for a company that was in the build up to a Yea/Nay vote for joining the union. During that time, 2 "goons" showed up at my apartment to discuss the benefits of joining the union and why not joining would be bad. However, these very "intelligent" goons showed up during the day, you know, working hours where I had a very low chance of being home. I don't know if they were just that dumb, or if they were trying to influence what they thought were family members. Instead, it was my flatmate from England. She told me just laughed at the thought of me joining a union, and not so politely told them to bugger off and closed the door on them. Ultimately, the vote failed miserably.

All of that to say, that I'm not surprised that anti-union shenanigans are at the same level as the pro-union shenanigans.

[smnrchrds]

What makes you call them goons? Politicians, activists, all sorts of people go door knocking around the time of elections and referendums. What made this interaction so different that you call them goons sent there to intimidate you, not activists trying to attract your vote?

[chrisseaton]

Union activists in the UK have a reputation of being bullies, and in some cases in the past they've used physical violence to try to get people to do things their way.

At the height of union fever back in the 80s it got so bad at one point that union activists dropped a concrete block on someone's head from a bridge because he was trying to get into work and they thought he should be striking (David Wilkie.)

I would not appreciate union goons showing up at my door and I'd have a similar reaction.

[pydry]

>At the height of union fever back in the 80s it got so bad at one point that union activists

Were subjected to police brutality while largely peacefully picketing. Meanwhile the army was called in to do their jobs...

Apparently there was evidence of "excessive violence by police officers, a false narrative from police exaggerating violence by miners, perjury by officers giving evidence to prosecute the arrested men, and an apparent cover-up of that perjury by senior officers."

According to the independent police complaints commission, anyway.

Note the similarities to current protests in the US and similar attempts to depict police as simply reacting to "violent blacks".

If you want to see the full gamut of vicious state inflicted violence you can either be the wrong race, or you can form a powerful enough union and go on strike.

[chrisseaton]

I don't know of anyone who disputes the killing of Wilkie happened or claims that it was somehow exaggerated.

As a taxi driver he was also not a police officer or an agent of the state. He was not armed or causing violence to anyone.

He was just driving someone who didn't agree with the union to work.

So they killed him.

[celticninja]

And they offenders were arrested, tried and punished. The difference here is the police are never subject to the same justice.

[kiliantics]

So you have a single example of an (accidental) killing by unions. Now look up how many people have been killed by corporations for striking.

[pydry]

They dropped a concrete block on his car. It wasn't attempted murder it was attempted property damage.

So, yes, they killed him and were rightly imprisoned for manslaughter.

[caoilte]

Love the way you've got to reach back literally 36 years to find one example of union violence. The reputation that British unions actually have is for getting shat on by bullying employers.

[chrisseaton]

I think it was a pretty watershed moment in union relations in the UK. It's what a lot of people think of when they think of unions in the UK. They're pretty unpopular here. I was explaining why a British person might call them goons.

[calcifer]

> They're pretty unpopular here. I was explaining why a British person might call them goons.

Yeah, no. We must be living in different countries. There are lots of large, powerful, popular British unions in a wide variety of industries.

[andybak]

Brit here. Don't listen to this person.

I'm mostly centrist/moderate left. None of this rings true.

Typing on phone so excuse the brevity.

[missedthecue]

Pro union people reach back 136 years to find their evidence of violence so i don't see the issue

[adamsea]

Yeah but those examples are like, large state-sponsored massacres. And there are lots of them.

In the US, for example:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

I mean it was actually part of a war (at least it’s called such) between companies / government and organized labor!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Coalfield_War

[sitkack]

> union fever back in the 80s

I think you meant to say Margaret Thatcher's war on labor? Her boyfriend in America was doing the same thing at the same time.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/reagan-fires-113...

[hyko]

Nobody gets nastier than the self-proclaimed good guys.

If you’re a righteous person, then by extension everything you do is by definition clothed in righteousness.

[manicdee]

Condemning all unions because some stupid idiots dropped a concrete block one someone? Are you a Pinkerton?

As for the union "goons" well it's safe to assume that the people doorknocking are going to be the ones who haven't been driven away by random verbal and physical attacks.

[andybak]

This is a fairly slanted take on things.

[dcolkitt]

Also at the time that the leader of the NUM, the striking union, was a self-avowed Stalinist.[1]

It's hard to overstate the extreme militancy of trade union leadership in the UK during the late 1970s. While Thatcher gets the blame for the disintegration of the labor movement, just as big an issue was that the union leadership no longer represented the opinions of its rank-and-file members.

The 1984 miners strike largely failed, because most of the local unions decided not to join. Scargill never put the strike to a membership wide ballot, because he knew it probably wouldn't have passed. Union leadership became more focused on pushing communist ideology than it was on representing its members.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Scargill#Socialist_Labo...

[kmlx]

don't know why you're getting downvoted.

this is part of history and one of the many reasons unions have failed in the UK. and they're still failing having lower number of members every single year.

[winphone1974]

Probably because of the same sentiment towards rewriting history that's going around now. Rather then learn and move forward lots of people seem to prefer going back in time and judging history through today's lens.

[edent]

"The number of employees in the UK who were trade union members rose by 91,000 on the year to 6.44 million in 2019." https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/trade-union-statist...

[dylan604]

I used quotes because I was quoting my flatmate. She said their demeanor was not welcoming at all, and it felt very aggressive. I kind of wish I was there just so I could have told them what I thought, but spilled milk and what not.

[RobertoG]

Not saying this is the case, but it occurs to me... that would be a good way to sabotage the start of an union. Just send some aggressive people posing like members of the union.

[_jal]

It is, and there's evidence that has happened in the US.

The Pinkertons have been busting unions for over a century - they have pretty much explored the full range of options for worker suppression available to capital.

False flags can be a powerful tool (but becoming less so, as surveillance makes deniability harder).

[refurb]

Ahh... of course. Employers use dirty tactics and if unions do, it’s because it’s employers trying to sabotage them.

No way a union could ever use dirty tricks too. But of course they might because they were forced to by their employers?

[kergonath]

How many documented instances of unionised militants trying to bully workers into joining?

History is full of private interests using the full might of the state and any trick they can think of to prevent unions.

So yeah, one is more likely than the other.

[MrStonedOne]

corpitized unions (anything union organisation bigger then 1 location of 1 employer) are goons.

[AlexandrB]

So what does that make corporations with more than 1 location?

[a1369209993]

I believe "cartel" would be the closest technical term.

[MrStonedOne]

Each location should have its own union, grouping them all up allows the needs of the few to get drowned out by the wants of the many, and elevates union leadership to a position of power over the workers as union reps have easier access to spread their messaging to employees across locations while normal employees can only organize within their location.

[scarmig]

It also significantly decreases negotiating power. The point of unions is that someone small (an individual) has a hard time fairly negotiating with an organization (a company). Multiple small single-site unions would be just as ineffective negotiating with one large multi-site company.

[ardy42]

>>> corpitized unions (anything union organisation bigger then 1 location of 1 employer) are goons.

> Each location should have its own union

You might as well go all the way, and condemn any union with more than one member.

The whole point of a union is to have an organization representing the workers that has enough power to negotiate with the employer as a relative equal. Your "single site" unions would be pointless in many cases. They'd have no power, because the employer's power to close and transfer work between sites would completely undermine the union with little disruption to the employer. Just look at how Walmart handled it's only successful unionization effort:

https://apnews.com/3d709955866a71cc82d641b848714fd0

> The United Food and Commercial Workers is seeking an injunction against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to prevent the giant retailer from eliminating meat cutting departments at 180 stores with prepackaged meat....

> The decision to eliminate the meat cutters came just weeks after the butchers at the Jacksonville, Texas, Wal-Mart voted 7-3 to join the UFCW, the first successful union vote in the country at a Wal-Mart, a company well known for its opposition to organized labor.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/union-walmart-shut-5-stores-ove...:

> The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union has filed a claim with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that Walmart's (WMT) recent closing of five stores was done in retaliation for a history of labor activism at one of the locations, rather than because of the plumbing problems the retailer cited, The New York Times reports. The union is asking the government agency for an injunction that would require Walmart to rehire the 2,200 workers who were temporarily laid off or affected by the closings.

Your "single site" unions would be anything less than a sham to neuter unions was that if businesses were also forbidden from expanding beyond a single site, so each location would have to be a totally independent business. So instead of the Walmart corporation, you'd have 11,496 independent retail businesses with no common ownership or management structure.

[rumanator]

> (...) and elevates union leadership to a position of power over the workers as union reps

I don't understand your point. Do you believe that this so called risk of an elected representative getting more power than the people that elected him is overall worse than the people having absolutely no power or representation?

I mean, can you explain why in your view leaving an employee SOL is more desirable than ensuring he has some say?

[drspacemonkey]

I wouldn't be so quick to jump to the conclusion that they were _actually_ union. They may very well have been. But companies have a long, proud history of playing VERY dirty tricks in response to unionization.

A former boss of mine once bragged about how he killed a union effort at a previous job. He worked a corporate job for a chain of restaurants that was threatening to unionize. He was given the task of showing up pretending to be a union-affiliated, bafflingly incompetent asshole. He went to individual employees to discuss the "benefits" of joining the union, because in a group he was more likely to be called out by somebody actually union-affiliated.

[sitkack]

Pretty sure his actions were actually illegal.

https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...

> Supervisors and managers cannot spy on you (or make it appear that they are doing so), coercively question you, threaten you or bribe you regarding your union activity or the union activities of your co-workers. You can't be fired, disciplined, demoted, or penalized in any way for engaging in these activities.

[drspacemonkey]

<sarcasm>Well, then that would be the first and only time that jackass did something skeezy and illegal</sarcasm>

Seriously though, that man's sense of ethics were... well, when he first found out about the GDPR, his first and only question was "how do we circumvent this?" There's a bunch of reasons why he's a FORMER boss.

[minimuffins]

What union did this?

[dylan604]

In my mind they are all the same. I honestly paid so little attention, I didn't even do the research. Everyone just kept referring to the local, but I don't remember what number. This was 2010 time frame. I've slept (a lot) since then.

Edit: Turns out it was IATSE