Interesting to see discussion on Reddit from r/AmazonFC are pretty negative , wonder if these are genuine employees comment for PR team hired by Amazon
as a union diesel engine mechanic i can guarantee most, if not all these comments are complete PR.
I went on strike about ten years ago to protest mandatory overtime and lack of chemical PPE. the minute we authorized the strike, we had news channels from three states covering us and a billboard up the road that demanded an end to the strike by "concerned" truckers was erected in hours. Every day I could count on at least four emails from various sources, everything from "your union is cancelled" to "union declared illegal" and everything in between including offers to work for more pay but no contract. weekends were nearly a dozen phone calls, mostly robo, threatening pay cuts and layoffs and asking to cancel your healthcare and benefits.
we stuck out 19 days and won, and the very same news crews showed up again with no interviews from us, only management praising their great negotiation effort.
Would union supported/enforced comments count as astroturfing as well? I think it’d be interesting to ban pay for picketing & comments, though I’m not sure it’s enforceable.
If the union pays you because you are not working, and you choose to use that time to talk about how much you value unions on the internet, that's not astroturfing. If the union pays you TO post about how good the union is on the internet, that IS astroturfing.
At one point, amazon had a literal program where warehouse workers could opt to sit at a desk and post propaganda comments instead of doing their normal manual labor job.
Strike pay (at least often) requires picketing to qualify. Unions also often pay people to post comments online and otherwise present the union’s perspective to media or the public. Sometimes these people are listed as unit leaders, or have other ‘union management’ positions.
This seems like something a disclosure would reasonably solve. The anti-union PR posts aren't going to disclaim that they were paid by Amazon to post the comment but the pro-union wouldn't give a shit.
Officially, but Reddit enforcement of rules went to shit about the same time as the rest of the internet. Now they allow whatever brings them money and disallow whatever doesn't.
It wakes a ton of people up rhat thought they could righton,righton with different decorations. Its going to be worse, the moment trump is revealed as a failure when it comes to system takedown ..
My Boomer Dad was a Teamster. I remember there was a several-weeks-long (might have even been months-long?) strike when I was a kid, probably around the late-70s. Shit was real. One day I saw him loading baseball bats and clubs into the trunk of his Buick before he left the house. I was just a kid; I had no idea what was going on. I asked him about it later in life and he just said, "That's how it was back then. We had to fight for what we wanted." And he was being literal. He talked about people who were even suspected of crossing the line or talking to management would get a severe beatdown. He even said people would harass management and their families. Dudes would sit outside their homes, just to intimidate them. And, he said they rarely got punished because the cops supported their union and would look the other way. Different times.
our local PD was union at the time. we never got any overt support but there were a few kind gestures. on a cold morning an officer dropped a box of chemical hand warmers by the dumpster and made it very clear he was disposing of them because they were "the wrong size" and he wouldnt be back today to check on them. about three days later his supervisor made a trip to the dumpster and left out a box of donuts and a big take-out coffee jug, warning us we absolutely shouldnt consume them after he left as the donuts were the made the wrong size and the coffee was too hot.
reddit is no longer a good place to try and get a pulse on general sentiment. comment section is filled with bots and the front page has the most random content i have ever seen, like occasional random creep shots of celebs that get like 3,000 upvotes that gain more transaction than current events.
I used to use search engines with the "site:reddit.com" keyword to get more genuine reviews about products and services. Now it more than not leads to posts where the top comment is some gpt'ed text with a clear referral link and far more up votes than an obscure subreddit on some niche object would warrant.
It's interesting, because I know a few warehouse workers, and they all sing the praises of the job (all in the Bay Area). But yet I can see what the conditions are. I feel like every warehouse is a semi-independently run fiefdom and some are run a lot better than others.
Two things can be true:
- A particular class of job may be very challenging, or worse
- The same class of job may be the best available option for some folks in some regions
And, of course, some folks may have a good experience even while others do not.
I went on strike about ten years ago to protest mandatory overtime and lack of chemical PPE. the minute we authorized the strike, we had news channels from three states covering us and a billboard up the road that demanded an end to the strike by "concerned" truckers was erected in hours. Every day I could count on at least four emails from various sources, everything from "your union is cancelled" to "union declared illegal" and everything in between including offers to work for more pay but no contract. weekends were nearly a dozen phone calls, mostly robo, threatening pay cuts and layoffs and asking to cancel your healthcare and benefits.
we stuck out 19 days and won, and the very same news crews showed up again with no interviews from us, only management praising their great negotiation effort.