Treating people with dignity is “business hostile”… welcome to Hacker News comment section.

It's more like "welcome to US mindset" IMHO

This mindset is what moves us forward. Union of soft nations don’t add much these days.

Define "forward".

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Plans change, and so they should be communicated and negotiated with the employees going to be affected by the change. It's the dignified way of doing it, people are people, not fungible commodities, treat them as people and unions won't be an issue at all.

> unions are just corporate blackmailing.

This is such an absurdly ignorant take that is hard to start educating you, it also depends a lot on what society you live in since your view on unions will be tainted by what you see in it.

In places like the Nordics, unions are one of the cornerstones of a free labour market, look up how Sweden has a freer labour market than the USA to learn something at least :)

I don't even disagree with you, but your way of argumenting is terrible and actively deterring people from your point that union are a core component of a healthy free market.

If your point is to score virtue point, keep at it, but if you actually want to change anyone mind, avoid terms like "is hard to start educating you", it just makes you sound like a douche

I was being very honest, it is hard to start educating someone coming from that position since there is so much bullshit wrapped around a statement like "unions are just corporate blackmailing" which is hard to pull apart without knowing how the person came to that conclusion.

I don't even think it's possible to change someone's mind who already think that way, since it's purely from a point of absolute ignorance and I'm not willing to put enough effort to cite literature that could give them good starting points to understand something they are very likely not even willing to start understanding. They have a lazy position, I reply lazily.

They have an ideological position, based on ignorance, and from a single statement it's pretty clear they aren't curious and willing to change their mind.

Hence why I cite to look into how unions work in the Nordics, at least that is a starting point if they want to learn more about labour movements. It takes someone being curious though.

In the end, it was absolutely honest: it is hard to start educating someone who holds that position a priori and based on pure ignorance, and if not ignorance it's maliciousness, there's not much of a spectrum in this case.

I work for a paycheck. I can’t exchange “dignity” for goods and services. The guy got paid nice compensation for his labor.

Therefore, let's throw everything non-monetary under the bus because work should be purely transactional?

What else should it be? Do you believe that your company is like “your family”? Your coworkers or especially your manager are “your friends”?

Why else do you go to work?

I don't believe my office is my family, but I expect to at least be treated with a baseline level of decency, civility, dignity, respect, and kindness, which are non-monetary and (by my reading of your post) unnecessary in your office full of Vulcans.

The fact that these things are seen as optional and unimportant explains a lot of what's happened to public discourse.

Was it indecent for Google to lay someone off, remove all access and give him 16 weeks of severance + two additional weeks for each year of service?

I didn't say anything about Google.

The submitted article was about Google…

You're taking "Human resources" a bit too literally.

We are resources. The one Big Tech company I have worked for has 1.556 million employees. What else was I besides a “resource”?

It's not a binary between "we are family" and "we are resources", it's a spectrum.

In your case, yes, you were absolutely a resource. This is exactly why companies of that size simply shouldn't exist - because they cannot not treat their employees as resources, with all the inhumanity this implies.

Yes because a small company could deliver a national same day shipping infrastructure and worldwide network of cloud servers including its own undersead cables.

And again, work is a transaction. I’m perfectly fine with being treated as a resource when I was getting a quarter million a year and working remotely…

I'm okay with not having same day shipping if this means that companies don't have to treat their employees like dirt.

But, more importantly, a company that large is simply too much concentrated economic power (which then translates to political power). Even if it was all just robots, I'd still say no. Our political system is in shambles in large part because of these kinds of entities.

So exactly what “power” does Amazon have over your life?

Our politics is in shambles because of religious nutcases, anti science, anti intellectuals, who are afraid of the country becoming majority-minority and straight out racism and bitterness.

Amazon has nothing to do with that.

You can literally just punch "Amazon lobbying" into Google and get pages of results.

Okay? Name one policy that the current administration has done that helps Amazon?

I didn't say anything about "current administration", so I don't know why you think that is relevant.

Okay, name one law that was passed during the pass 20 years as a result of Amazon’s lobbying that was favorable to Amazon?

It's older than 20 years, but not needing to collect sales tax was definitely a big benefit for Amazon (and other ecommerce providers) and presumably involved lobbying to keep it for as long as possible.

That wasn’t based on lobbying, it was the law at first and Amazon took advantage of it.

Amazon didn’t have any significant lobbying 20 years ago and it definitely was the behemoth it is today. That being said, even today it isn’t as large as Walmart and was definitely not a large retailer back then.

It was seriously in doubt 20 years ago whether Amazon would ever survive and definitely wasn’t consistently profitable.

Totally, I completely agree that they didn't lobby for the original exemption.

However, I would be very surprised if they weren't lobbying heavily to keep said exemption for as long as possible.