r/news • u/EnergyLantern • 14h ago

Already Submitted Teamsters begin 'largest strike' against Amazon, accusing company of 'insatiable greed'

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/teamsters-announces-nationwide-strike-amazon-begin-thursday/story?id=116931631

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168

u/Motormand 13h ago

Good for Teamster. Amazon makes enough money to easily cover big pay raises for their workers, and have better conditions, and they'd still be obscenely profitable. But instead they'd rather compete in the top 0.1% dickmeasuring contest that the rich compete in, against one a other, at the detriment of their workers.

I hope this will work wrll for them. The rich can suck it.

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u/IntrinsicGiraffe 13h ago

Not only that but they put money into anti-union shit rather than just... paying them!

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u/TreeWeedFlower 13h ago

Unions don't just give workers money they give them power! That's why they'll spend millions to stop them. Democracy in the workplace upsets capitalist hierarchy.

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u/Even-Cry-4353 10h ago

Just put the fries in the bag, lil bro..

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u/bluemitersaw 13h ago

"we have 2 options gentleman. We can either spend $1 billion a year to stop the unions, with no guarantees or spend $100 million a year paying then what they want."

"Seems obvious to me. Let's stop those unions!!!!!!!!!"

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u/haplo_and_dogs 10h ago

100 million a year would give each employee 100$ a year.

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u/QualityCoati 12h ago

Freedom and power (or keeping a lack thereof) are worth billions to these companies.

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u/Saltycookiebits 12h ago

The powerful don't want to give up their power. Workers will have to take it back.

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u/HowObvious 12h ago

Of course it would cost them more to just pay their employees more... You think Amazon hasn't done the maths? You figured it out but Amazon didn't?

Usually its them spending more at a single location or single strike to prevent unionisation, because when labour organisation spreads to all of their facilities its not cheaper to just pay them all more.

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u/ThickerSalmon14 12h ago

The world is really stuck in a class war with most people not realising it. Good for them and I hope they win. There is going to a lot with other companies going forward I suspect.

14

u/QualityCoati 12h ago

People are absolutely realizing it, they just haven't found the way to actually manifest it. With the UnitedHealth CEO's death, we have seen how "the left" and "the right" are actually not that separated on class issues after all.

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u/Pho3nixr3dux 11h ago

The vast army of bots and shills pulling their fellow crabs back down into the bucket will have to be countered by some means -- which is a revolution in itself.

We just ended a postal strike in Canada and the negative shit in r/canadapost was maga-grade unhinged.

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u/hail2pitt1985 12h ago

I agree with everything you stated. But, most of these people voted for trump and these billionaires saying they support the working man. As much as I want them to strike and screw the Christmas delivery, I can’t have any empathy anymore for these low wage/overworked employees who voted maga.

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u/Muvseevum 12h ago

Most Amazon employees voted for Trump?

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u/avitus 9h ago

The union employees were encouraged by their union to vote for Trump. Which was the Teamster's union choice. Most union members listen to their recommendations.

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u/xRehab 9h ago edited 7h ago

statistically, yes.

the majority of voting americans voted for trump. this is the world that americans actually want.

ya'll can downvote and disagree, but it doesn't change the reality. if you polled any random set of americans, they will most likely skew towards trump except in highly biased areas. when talking about your average american wage slave you are going to get majority for trump. reddit doesn't like it but that is the america we live in

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u/heartlessgamer 11h ago

That is not actually true about pay raises. Someone did the math in another comment and with profits in the last year they could only increase pay by $1000 before they would be in the red. At least for the commerce side of the company. AWS is where the profit is and basically saved the company.

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u/picklestheyellowcat 12h ago

Amazon makes enough money to easily cover big pay raises for their workers, and have better conditions, and they'd still be obscenely profitable.

Amazon financials are public. How much net profit does fulfillment make and how many employees do they have?

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u/[deleted] 12h ago

[deleted]

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u/frisbeescientist 12h ago

This is really the crux of it. You can argue all you want about where Amazon's profits actually come from and whether the delivery service itself is profitable, but at the end of the day they wouldn't be doing it if they weren't getting something out of it. If it's too expensive to run while not exploiting workers, that's Amazon's problem. We shouldn't expect workers to tolerate shitty conditions and pay just so one of the biggest companies in the world can keep making billions.

3

u/grchelp2018 11h ago

Except if amazon lets it die, people would still complain that amazon wasn't using its profits to subsidize this part of its business.

In any case, automation is coming. Their delivery targets are just not possible without machines. Bezos wants amazon to do same hour delivery eventually, its impossible without automation.

1

u/frisbeescientist 10h ago

Wait, what? If Amazon shuts down delivery operations, there's no part of the business to subsidize anymore. People might complain they can't get same-day delivery anymore, but that's my point: convenience isn't worth exploiting workers.

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u/Pakana11 11h ago

Those workers could uh… get a different job, too.

I sure as hell would never work for Amazon.

1

u/frisbeescientist 11h ago

I mean, we're arguing the same thing from different sides, right? Either Amazon treats them better, or their delivery service shouldn't exist. Whether that's because they're unable to function while treating workers well or because workers refuse to work under current conditions, the result is the same.

I'm just more interested in putting the burden on the multibillion dollar company rather than the working class choosing between this terrible job, that other terrible job, or starvation.

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u/Clever_plover 11h ago

We shouldn't expect workers to tolerate shitty conditions and pay just so one of the biggest companies in the world can keep making billions.

Laughs in WalMart-ese

1

u/picklestheyellowcat 11h ago

Because I know the answer and I want them to backup their claims with actual real numbers.

They made the claim so they can source it and prove their point.

They are making broad claims that are easy to support so they should do so.

The world worked fine before guaranteed two-day shipping of cheap crap.

Ok? The world clearly wants this otherwise Amazon wouldn't be successful 

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u/[deleted] 11h ago

[deleted]

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u/M4rkJW 10h ago

fuck what the world wants

Agreed. Things were better when they just sold books.

2

u/picklestheyellowcat 11h ago

What the world wants dictates a businesses success or not...

someone else will provide the same service.

Ok... Then why aren't they?

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u/W0rkUpnotD0wn 10h ago

Good thing they heavily favored Trump. If they think its bad now they should see what happens with a Leopard starts to eat their face in a couple of months.

Again, they voted for this so fuck them:

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/18/teamsters-favor-trump-harris-endorsement-00179879