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Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

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Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#21

Post by r00fus »

detaro wrote: post #19
r00fus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not PII [1]. That's an actual legal term. Workit apparently wants worker identifying information, and Walmart, like other employers are free to tell their workers not to provide it, but there's no ethical or legal reason they can give to workers not to use it. It's not unlike GlassDoor - lots of companies would prefer you didn't use it, but at the employee level, the advantage/disadvantage ratio is pretty in you…

Your own link lists some of the collected data as PII.

Employment data considered "linked" information, and not core PII.

Core PII is: "any information about an individual maintained by an agency, including (1) any information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual's identity, such as name, social security number, date and place of birth, mother's maiden name, or biometric records"

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#22

Post by psyc »

microcolonel wrote: post #18
Animats wrote: post #11

It's an illegal labor practice in the US for an employer to do that. It's interference with the right to bargain collectively. But WalMart probably doesn't have much to fear from the Labor Department. Even under the current administration, enforcement is weak, and it will probably be weaker under the next administration. It's really tough to organize a union today, even though the law as written is pro-union.

They're not interfering with the right to bargain collectively though. For all we know, they're genuinely warning their employees that they may be involved in a PII collection scam. They can't reprimand/dismiss you for using the app, but surely they can tell you it's unwise. I don't see why people are so quick to tie Wal-Mart to the pyre; for what they pay, their employees are satisfied to an outsized degree. Given t…

Former Walmart employee here. Before there was any such thing as smart phones, they still used to instruct us not to speak to union people, and to report being approached.

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#23

Post by vitus »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #17
0xmohit wrote: post #2

Another link: http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/11/15/wal-mart-tell... Interesting: Wal-Mart has instructed store managers to tell their employees that the app wasn't made by the company and described it as a scheme to gather workers' personal information, according to a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

That's totally unsurprising to hear. Wal-Mart apparently defaults to portraying unions as pure evil. I don't know what the current procedure is like, but they used to make new hires watch laughably biased "educational" videos about unions. I don't remember the contents in detail, just that they roughly reminded me of '80s anti-drug PSAs/specials, with union organizers essentially taking the place of the "drug pusher"…

I think the parent comment was pointing out that the foxbusiness article was pretty blatant plagiarism -- in fact, if you go through the two articles side-by-side, you can see that the foxbusiness article is pretty much taken verbatim, albeit some slight restructuring (that IMO harms the overall flow of the piece).

One point, though, although I'm not sure how to interpret this, is that the original author (Nassauer) is linked at the bottom of the foxbusiness piece.

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#24

Post by scarmig »

The most dangerous thing about this app is the certainty that, if it takes off, it'll be filled with union-busting labor "consultants" who'll focus on identifying rebellious workers so Walmart can retaliate against them for some other pretext. Note that Walmart already spends millions of dollars on these particular types of specialized attorneys who do pretty much exactly that except over other channels, so this isn't at all far fetched, despite how evil it sounds.

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#25

Post by randomdata »

duaneb wrote: post #20
microcolonel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not interfering with the right to bargain collectively though. For all we know, they're genuinely warning their employees that they may be involved in a PII collection scam. They can't reprimand/dismiss you for using the app, but surely they can tell you it's unwise. I don't see why people are so quick to tie Wal-Mart to the pyre; for what they pay, their employees are satisfied to an outsized degree. Given t…

It's certainly unwise to interpret their concern that charitably--it only has access to photos and it's a chat app. It has the same concerns any other chat app would have. They don't publish PSAs about texting.

But if we recognize that it is yet another chat app, like every other chat app, why are people even downloading it in the first place to prompt Wal-mart to feel the need to issue a statement?

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#26

Post by mythrwy »

Animats wrote: post #11

It's an illegal labor practice in the US for an employer to do that. It's interference with the right to bargain collectively. But WalMart probably doesn't have much to fear from the Labor Department. Even under the current administration, enforcement is weak, and it will probably be weaker under the next administration. It's really tough to organize a union today, even though the law as written is pro-union.

I don't know. The next administration might actually be tougher re: pro-worker laws against multi-national importers of Chinese made stuff. This might not apply to unions necessarily though.

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#27

Post by Frondo »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #17
0xmohit wrote: post #2

Another link: http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/11/15/wal-mart-tell... Interesting: Wal-Mart has instructed store managers to tell their employees that the app wasn't made by the company and described it as a scheme to gather workers' personal information, according to a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

That's totally unsurprising to hear. Wal-Mart apparently defaults to portraying unions as pure evil. I don't know what the current procedure is like, but they used to make new hires watch laughably biased "educational" videos about unions. I don't remember the contents in detail, just that they roughly reminded me of '80s anti-drug PSAs/specials, with union organizers essentially taking the place of the "drug pusher"…

It works, too. In the popular media, unions have been so thoroughly demonized for several decades.

Lots of middle-aged folks now will have grown up with their only idea of the union as being the lazy teamster who does nothing all day except file grievances, or the fabled electrician who won't plug in your power cord at a trade show because it's someone else's job.

And the kinds of people who're going in for these jobs at Walmart probably aren't the most educated to begin with, so watching a video that confirms the biases they've picked up from popular media, well, that's probably a pretty effective tactic on Walmart's part.

This is all not to say that unions in the US are blameless. They could surely learn a lot from the way unions operate throughout Europe.

There's been corruption, greed, and mismanagement in the big unions, just like every big organization (especially big American organizations; something in our cultural DNA seems to make us prone to graft), but us workers still absolutely need them or something like them to keep up the good fight.

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#28

Post by adamnemecek »

mythrwy wrote: post #26
Animats wrote: post #11

It's an illegal labor practice in the US for an employer to do that. It's interference with the right to bargain collectively. But WalMart probably doesn't have much to fear from the Labor Department. Even under the current administration, enforcement is weak, and it will probably be weaker under the next administration. It's really tough to organize a union today, even though the law as written is pro-union.

I don't know. The next administration might actually be tougher re: pro-worker laws against multi-national importers of Chinese made stuff. This might not apply to unions necessarily though.

> re: pro-worker laws against multi-national importers of Chinese made stuff.

The pro-worker stuff was just to attract that demographic, I'm pretty sure.

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#29

Post by cmdrfred »

douche wrote: post #15
searine wrote: post #8

1. Hello Streisand effect. 2. Does anyone else hope semi-anonymous apps like this will lead to a new age of unionization?

What a way for corporations to infiltrate budding labor organizations, though. Cynical-me expects a rash of fakes and knock-offs where any data input in the app goes straight to HR.

Sounds like a good business model. Email employers "One of your workers is attempting to unionize, pay us $300 and we will tell you who!"

Re: Wal-Mart Tells Workers: Don’t Download Labor Group’s Chat App

#30

Post by hyperturtle »

jimmywanger wrote: post #3

Just to play devil's advocate here, this is from the article: > The app, called WorkIt, invites users to register by providing a name, email, telephone number and ZIP Code. Users can also s hare (sic) their job title and Wal-Mart store number.... That is a bunch of personally identifying information. You can easily steal somebody's identity with those bits of information, or at least have a good idea of who they are.…

Not sure on how secure but this article says the app is "secure". This also goes into more detail on what they use the information for. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-14/group-enli...
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