[huetius]

I totally agree with you about our society’s mistreatment of people who have paid their debts, but I’m not sure I like what Amazon is doing here. It smacks of using people: treating them like props in order to secure private gain.

[civilized]

> It smacks of using people

Work is fundamentally transactional. Those for whom it is more than that are lucky.

> treating them like props in order to secure private gain

I worry about moralizing on behalf of the marginalized. They should be asked whether they'd prefer the option to have the work.

[slt2021]

>> I worry about moralizing on behalf of the marginalized. They should be asked whether they'd prefer the option to have the work.

perfect quote! Nothing else really needs to be said.

People who oppose Amazon - I want to see you guys giving thousands jobs to convicts, before criticizing Amazon. Thank you. Talk is cheap

[huetius]

Respectfully, I disagree with the postulate that there is no possibility of solidarity with “the marginalized”, and think this is a good example of why. When you say ask “them,” who do you mean? Ex-convicts, Amazon workers, teamsters, some combination of these, or what? And who are you going to listen to when people (inevitably, even within the same faction) disagree? I think that what this approach does is renders ethical discussions impossible. By denying the possibility of a common rationality in which moral questions can be weighed, ethics is reduced into a collision of interests, and the unsurprising result is that nothing can happen without the approval of the strongest party in the conflict. See Occupy Wall Street for another example of this principle in action.

[civilized]

I see what you're saying. I think the moral thing here is to beat them at their own game. Presumably any ex-cons hired by Amazon can be brought on board as union members just as well as anyone else.

[Cyberdog]

Yes, well, such is the case with the Dave Thomas Foundation, Ronald McDonald House, Product RED… Any good they do is all with the bottom line in mind.

Meanwhile, the felon who gets a $15+/hour gig in an Amazon warehouse during the hardest time in their life, when no other employer in town will give them the time of day and the urges to fall back into those bad habits are creeping in, is probably not going to care much about being "used."

[huetius]

We’re talking about plan to subvert unions. It is one thing to do something that is both good for me and also good for others. It is quite another to do something ostensibly good, but with the ulterior intention of preventing the good of another.

[Cyberdog]

Giving a job to an ex-con is both good for the ex-con and good for others, as giving the ex-con something to live for greatly reduces the chance that they will return to antisocial behavior.

As a non-Teamster, I'm not really sure what good is done for me if a Teamster gets a job, or what harm is done to me if they don't.

Frankly, the more this idea is being discussed here, the more I'm hoping Amazon hires as many ex-cons as possible and if that means completely busting any union activity in their company in perpetuity, so be it.

[huetius]

My neighbor, who is my rival, wants to get a Red Rider BB Gun. I do not want this to happen, because this threatens my status as the cool kid on the block. If I just buy myself a Red Rider BB Gun, he will call me a copycat and make me look bad. So instead, I buy a Red Rider BB Gun for the dorky kid down the corner, who is not a threat to me. I get to look magnanimous, my rival is thwarted, the dorky kid has a cool toy. It seems that what I have done is certainly good for me, and the dorky kid has for sure gained something, but have I really done a good thing? Or have I done a selfish thing — using the dorky kid as a means to achieve a selfish end (thwarting my rival)? And if we are to say that my intent does not matter, we have to also accept that this has tremendous knock-on implications, especially problematic for concepts upon which we regularly depend, like merit and guilt.

As for whether Unions are good or not, my answer would be that they are good. They represent a tried, effectual response to the “social question” which emerged in the late 19th Century, avoiding the destructive poles of unconstrained capitalism and revolutionary socialism. It is also noteworthy that independent trade unions have historically acted as a bulwark against various totalitarianisms of both left and right. It is also true that some unions have been guilty of violence, corruption, ideological craziness, and narrow selfishness, but I would suggest that this is not a unique problem for unions.

[JamesBarney]

Why is hiring felons and underprivileged youth ostensibly good and not just good?

[t-3]

The felons and underprivileged youths don't pay the salaries of union bureaucrats or provide leverage for those bureaucrats to get kickbacks from management. Obviously, that's just not right!

[ipaddr]

Have you ever worked for a large corporation? Everyone is a prop and replaceable.

[huetius]

So one should stay quiet? And yes. Both at the very bottom and close to the top.