Bid to unionize Amazon workers in New York nears milestone
I think it&#x27;s important for people to realize that even if your employer treats you well, a union is also still important so that workers can have a seat in the table where decisions are made. Blanket trust in your employer is a bizarre offshoot of corporate kool-aid.<p>It&#x27;s all very well to claim that unions are unnecessary for hyper-mobile, extremely well compensated and in high-demand, tech workers (however, that is at present; the future might be different), but the same is not so true for workers who rely on a single physical institution or location for their and their families livelihood. The threat of leaving, or simply moving offshore, enables employers of those workers to squeeze employees into longer hours or into poor working conditions because there is no collective means of pushing back against the employer, and because the employer doesn&#x27;t have to care about them: they aren&#x27;t at the decision making table at all.<p>It&#x27;s not that Amazon creates nice working conditions <i>now</i>; it&#x27;s that Amazon can change it arbitrarily without having to care about any of the employees.