Boycott Walmart

[BlackShanglan]

If unions disappear, what will happen to the regulation that controls business now? Will lobby groups for various businesses disappear as well, evening out the power balance?

Quite a lot of the controls that unions used to fight for are now enshrined in law, like minimum wage, OSHA and EEOC regulations, etc.

That said, I do agree that it's important to have tension or resistance. One doesn't like to see either group running roughshod over the other.

My only point was that exploitation runs both ways. When you've got dockworkers in CA striking to maintain jobs that could be completely eliminated with computer paperwork, demanding that instead we stick to an inefficient system of entering paper forms by hand to preserve 100k dollar+ semi-skilled jobs that give three months of vacation a year, then I'd say that the balance is tilted too far to the other side. Similarly, when a CEO is awarding himself a ten million dollar salary, the situation is similarly ludicrous. Although he does make decisions affecting very large sums of money, I find it difficult to believe that anyone really does ten million dollars worth of actual work.

Tension. It's all good. But then we get the nasty extremes on both ends.

Shanglan

 

[rgraham666]

If the laws limiting unethical behaviour were like gravity I would have no objections to unions disappearing. In fact they would be unnecessary.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. If the unions go, so will those laws and it will be back to twelve hour days, seven days a week, 24 alternate Sundays when you switch shifts and 1/2 a day off at Christmas. Won't that be fun?

And in regards to the dock worker example, what happens to those workers. Some might not be able to come up with new jobs. What happens then?

Would we be saving money if they go on the dole? Maybe. And maybe the bureaucratic costs of supporting them will be more than if they had proper jobs.

Much of today reminds me of The Industrial Revolution. Work is changing immensely. And the changes aren't being very well understood.

The Industrial Revolution destroyed many peoples livelihoods. These livelihoods were replaced by dirty, dangerous and poorly paid jobs. Most of the wealth created went to a very small number of people. The turmoil caused by this roiled the West for over a century and resulted in the destruction of at least one major nation.

I wonder, why do we want to go through that again?

 

[Guest]

Isn't this the second or third thread you've started about Walmart?

That's a tad obsessive compulsive isn't it?

I think the discussions are less about Walmart and more about the sacrifice of long term economic viability for short term quarterly profits.

This is a topic that needs to be seriously considered.

The Horse and Richard are each making good points.

A related question to all of this : Do recent trends give ordinary people more, or less control over their working lives, and their lives as consumers?

 

[Colleen Thomas]

If unions are greedy, where did they learn it from? Have you seen the way upper management rewards themselves these days?

If unions disappear, what will happen to the regulation that controls business now? Will lobby groups for various businesses disappear as well, evening out the power balance?

And to paraphrase Peter Drucker, what does a degree certify except that the holder has sat for a long time?

I'm a high school dropout. Taught myself computer programming. Worked hard. It meant sweet fuck all! Better to be normal, dress right, speak right and never rock the boat.

Psychopathy and normalcy will always be rewarded before intelligence and drive.

I've advanced at every job I ever had, usually in a pretty meteoric fashion. Six promotions in an 8 month period for one company.

That all ceased when I got up north. Promotion and raises are based on senority. Productivity makes no difference and in fact, the union discouraged it. In a day on the job, with about three weeks field experince, I completed five jobs. The shop steward took me aside and told me to slow down or I would piss off the older guys. You see, they only got three jobs done in a regular day. By limiting their productivity that way, there was always overtime. My foreman loved me, I actually worked. I couldn't even make myself sit aroun doing nothing, the days just seemed to drag.

When we were mostly caught up, it wasn't unusual to open a cross box and find the "make work" crew had been there, intentionally cutting cross connects to create problems. Those problems of course neccissitated having guys fix them and thus, overtime had to be approved. I did one job, got it done all the way back to the Co. But I didn't have a key and it was after the tech left, so I called it in incomplete. the guy who drew it, bought me lunch. He took all morning to "fix" that line, when all he really did was run 3 feet of cross connect cable from one side of the frame to another. He was making almost 50$ an hour.

 

[LadyJeanne]

I've been reading this thread with interest. Both my parents have been union workers since coming to the US thirty years ago.

The union system does engender abuses in those who are so inclined - Colly's remarks about deliberate slowing of productivity is on the mark. BUT, without the unions, these people have very little power or knowlege to stand up for themselves.

Many of them don't speak English well enough to understand their rights or to make demands of their employers. Employers are forced to think twice before implementing new policies, and I think that saves people from unhealthy and dangerous workplaces.

Yeah, it's great to be able to buy cheap shampoo, but knowing that it's my 60 year old dad climbing giant vats full of dangerous chemicals, I'd rather pay more to make sure his employer provides a safety harness.

 

[sweetnpetite]

Ahem.

Who do you imagine is going to take that cart full of goods and place them all back on the shelves, then return the cart to the proper location?

Here's a hint. It's not likely to be the CEO.

Might we find a more targeted way to express our displeasure?

Shanglan

I was going to suggest pushing the empty cart to the back of the store and attaching a sticky (bought somewhere else!!!) that says "you've been boycotted"

 

[rgraham666]

Colleen, when I worked as a computer programmer, it was the same. And computer programming is a distinctly non-unionised field.

The quality of work was horrendous usually. And usually by people with the correct letters after their name. Unions have nothing to do with that type of behaviour.

Another thing I'm noticing. We're all coming up with specific instances of poor behaviour and using that to blame unions.

Would it be fair for me to bring up Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, the savings and loan debacle etc. ad infinitum and use them to illustrate what a complete failure business is and demand an end to them?

 

[BlackShanglan]

Equally fair, rgraham, and I wouldn't deny it. But that's my own position. I think that both management and union structures have interests and values to bring to the game; I just felt it fair to observe that abuses are not one-sided. Your examples show the other side equally clearly.

What bothers me the most is that, like Colleen, I and my folk have been in the position of having the union interfere with our own desires to work well and productively. It frustrates me when the union starts abusing the workers themselves, as in the case of the nonprofit where I worked. They're supposed to be the bulwark that defends them. It was sickening to see the management of that institution literally threatened and driven to surrendering up the rights of the workers to the union that was supposed to be protecting them. It was enough to sour your faith in humanity, that they could pretend to by helping people in a precarious economic situation, while all the while quietly knifing them to line their own pockets. It was depressing.

I, like you I think, really believe that a balance of powers is ideal. But sometimes it seems to turn into a balance of power between two wolves with a rabbit between them.

Shanglan

 

[rgraham666]

But that ain't the unions fault. Or at least the idea behind a union.

Ultimately, everything humans create is a tool. And tools have no intrinsic ethical value.

If a tool does harm rather than good, that's the operator's fault.

Curare is a deadly poison. It's also useful in medicine. It all depends on how it is used.

I don't think it matters. Too many people with power want the 19th Century back. And for some reason, a lot of people without power and who aren't going to like the 19th Century are supporting them. So we're going to be living in the 19th Century soon.

And then we'll have to climb out of that pit again.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Hmm. True. But one might equally say that theory of ownership and management isn't evil by nature - just distorted through bad usage and bad practice.

Damned humans. Can't let a good thing just work, can you?

 

[Goldie Munro]

Let's see... boycott Wal-Mart or save my money... boycott Wal-Mart or save my money... travel farther, use more gas, spend more on the things I purchase regularly OR save my money.

I think this is the hardest part of convincing the world to boycott the Wal-Mart.

...they do a good damn job for the consumer. Even the companies that have been bankrupted or screwed by Wal-Mart admit that. Wal-Mart does a good damn job for the consumer.

Yeah if you need to save the pennies I agree but I would rather spend my hard earned cash on products that are locally produced and don't include a slave labour workforce to achieve it - thats just me tho!!

 

[rgraham666]

That is just what I'm saying.

One of the biggest problems is that so many of our tools are abstract.

Property is one. Things exist. But whether they're 'ours' is something that only exists in our minds.

That would be one of the problems with management. The employees often aren't people but 'property' to be toyed with and manipulated, but ultimately not that valuable.

And the same with unions. The people they represent aren't real but just pawns in the power game they play with management.

I also blame the corruption of the idea of property for spousal abuse. They're 'my' spouse, like 'my' car. They do what I tell them and how dare they act in a manner that I didn't allow.

I once wrote an essay that we should change the name of our species from 'Homo Sapiens', Thinking Man, to 'Homo Instrumenta', Tool Using Man. I think that tool use is what differentiates us from the other animals rather than thought.

It might also allow us to start differentiating between the times we're thinking and the times we're simply using tools.

We might also lose some of the enormous hubris we possess.

 

[BlackShanglan]

With you on that, rgraham. All in Marx, too. The more I read of him, the more I respect the man's intellect. I think the only point where we disagree is his theory that there might be some immediate fix to these problems.

Personally, I think humans have a lot of growing up to do before they're ready for a more civilized and gentle approach to the distribution of goods and labor.

Shanglan

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

So, I believe we have it narrowed down to:

Unions are greedy.

Managers are greedy.

People are greedy.

So, Unions end up sucking.

Managers and Corporatins end up sucking.

People end up sucking.

Or licking, or nibbling, or biting...

 

[rgraham666]

By george, I think he's got it.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I like that last solution.

Yes, the problem seems to be, as it so often is, "fucking humans."

 

[Guest]

So, I believe we have it narrowed down to:

Unions are greedy.

Managers are greedy.

People are greedy.

So, Unions end up sucking.

Managers and Corporatins end up sucking.

People end up sucking.

Or licking, or nibbling, or biting...

practise this together, shall we?
my place, 8pm sharp.

 

[Lucifer_Carroll]

practise this together, shall we?
my place, 8pm sharp.

Yes 'm.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Colleen, when I worked as a computer programmer, it was the same. And computer programming is a distinctly non-unionised field.

The quality of work was horrendous usually. And usually by people with the correct letters after their name. Unions have nothing to do with that type of behaviour.

Another thing I'm noticing. We're all coming up with specific instances of poor behaviour and using that to blame unions.

Would it be fair for me to bring up Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, the savings and loan debacle etc. ad infinitum and use them to illustrate what a complete failure business is and demand an end to them?

I've worked in several fields. In both the south and up north. In every non union job I ever held, I had better pay, better working conditions and better benefits than I ever got in any union job I ever worked at. In right to work states, employers sought to make things good enough where workers didn't want to unionize. By and large it worked. I never saw intentional slowing of productivity. For the simle reason, you would get fired if you weren't doing your job right.

After taking out union dues and adjusting for the higher cost of living, I was actually making less in real value working for the company with the best union in the state. To be fair, if I had managed to stay in that job the ten years it took to reach top pay, I would have been making a mint compared to what I could have expected down south. But your raises were based solely on staying around, where I gained many raises in a right to work state because I am an extraordinairly good worker. I'm just ever concientious and would rather be doing something than goofing off.

In my opinion, unions were formed to meet a real and glaring need. The need for workers to fight an avaricious form of capitalism. Lazie-faire produced monumental achievements, but monumental abuses too. When the government steped in and began to regulate bussiness, the worst of those abuses, child labor, 16 hour days, job safety, retirement, pension, health insurance, etc. ceased to be an issue. To keep themselves from going extinct, unions had to invent a new reason to be around, thus you get all of the things that now tie up labor negotiations, extended vacation, sick leave, breaks, etc.

In essence, in my view, Unions slipped from the defenders of the workers who made up the unions, to agitators for more. They drive the cost of labor, especially unskilled labor, through the roof, and the consequence is they drive the prices of good up at the same rate. And like Cd's example, they drive bussiness to leave the country, because it's just too much to try and retain profitability when your labor costs are that artificially inflated.

I don't favor a return to lazie-dfaire capitalism, but I do think the unions are now just as responsibile for jobs going overseas as the employers are.

 

[BlackShanglan]

There's damage to morale, as well. It's hard to keep strong workers when you can't fire or even effectively discipline the ones who goof off and dump all of their work on them, and when you can't pay them more or otherwise reward them for being better workers. Working under those conditions can be very frustrating even if one is not burdened with a desire to actually be productive and do the job. Add in that last and it can be a nightmare.

Shanglan

 

[rgraham666]

Well Colleen, as I mentioned programming was not a unionised job and incompetency ran rampant there.

And one of the main reasons is that many programmers didn't want to be programmers, they wanted to be managers. and most of them made it too.

They generally tended to be much better courtiers than programmers. So after a year and a bit, they would get management jobs and never have to write another line of code again.

And they usually were just as good at managing as they were as programmers.

I will agree Colleen that unions have taken on a role they weren't meant for. And that many are corrupt.

But if they disappeared that laisse faire captialism you so rightly disdain will be back about the middle of next week. And we'll have to fight the same old battles again. Probably with a higher body count this time.

 

[BlackShanglan]

And we'll have to fight the same old battles again. Probably with a higher body count this time.

History of humanity in a nutshell.

 

[rgraham666]

Sigh. Too true.

 

[Kassiana]

A quibble...animals other than humans use tools. We pet owners know this.

 

[Boxlicker101]

A quibble...animals other than humans use tools. We pet owners know this.

She's right. All primates use tools. Sea otters use tools. Even some birds use tools.