zlacker

So what's your solution then, companies can just tell employees to stay home for no valid when they try to plan a strike or organize, and then fire them if they still try to do so?

>>sudosy+(OP)
It's unclear whether there was "no valid reason" or not in this case. But if they're paying the employee to stay home (like Amazon was in this case) it's hard for me to see a huge problem.

>>jaywal+t1
The issue is that this prevents him from organizing strikes effectively. That is very problematic.

>>sudosy+J5
To me, this seems like retaliation, but he offered Amazon plausible deniability by not complying with job instructions. If you're told to work from home but you refuse, it seems within reason that you might be let go.

>>root_a+ob
I don't know that he can work from home, as a fulfillment center employee. It seems to me that Amazon was just trying to find a way to keep him away from other workers in order to collapse strike efforts. And I don't know that it's reasonable for a company to bar you from the office if you're trying to get the company unionized.

>>sudosy+J5
How about not trying to organize a strike in the middle of a national emergency? Is that an option?

>>Camper+Tl
You realize why he wanted to organize a strike right? Amazon knew that one of his co-workers was infected, and said and did nothing.

>>throwa+fo
Hosing everybody -- your company, your coworkers, your customers, yourself -- with a strike isn't the way to address that issue.

We have these things called "courts" that are well-suited to addressing complaints like this one.

>>Camper+0s
You sound like you have it all figured out, perhaps you can point at which law amazon violated.

>>throwa+yt
Honestly, it's not a good look for them if they tried to order him into quarantine 18 days after his exposure. I can't defend that based on what I've read from the Amazon supporters here.

But a strike, right now, is not the answer. It's just pouring gasoline on the fire. Counterproductive at all levels. Labor organization is all about picking your battles, and this is the wrong fight in the wrong place at the wrong time. His beef with Amazon needs to be settled in a courtroom, not on a picket line.

The only worse thing he could have done would be to try to lead a strike during a world war.

>>Camper+Du
Its a shame they didn't seek your approval to make sure it was the appropriate time to strike, when the least amount of people would be upset, after all strikes are definitely not about inconveniencing people.

Perhaps the workers should just continue to allow amazon to get away with exposing them to covid-19 with no notification, for the greater good.

>>Camper+Du
> The only worse thing he could have done would be to try to lead a strike during a world war.

That’s how we came to have employer-provided healthcare:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/upshot/the-real-reason-th...

>>Apocry+gG
Did you read the article you linked to? Employer-provided insurance had nothing to do with strikes or unions. It became popular as a way to improve competition in the job market in the presence of wartime wage controls.

And it's arguably a terrible system that we're still stuck with today, with the effect of handcuffing productive people to their desks in dead-end jobs. We'd be far better off with universal coverage that's not tied to employment... and yes, that means better-off economically.

>>throwa+fo
> You realize why he wanted to organize a strike right? Amazon knew that one of his co-workers was infected, and said and did nothing.

If he took health and safety so seriously then he wouldn't be breaking his quarantine after he claimed he had direct contact with someone carrying the virus to drive up to work potentially exposing all his co-workers to the virus.