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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

#101

Post by anigbrowl »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #79
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Walmart pays exactly what they and the employee agreed to at the onset of the employment agreement. // Seriously, do you think that's how it happens? Is that bluster, naivety, or what? "He sonny, do you want to eat dirt or accept our below healthy subsistence wages?" seems closer to how it goes. People don't work for low wages because they can't bargain, they work for low wages because the alternative is for them no…

Seriously, do you think that's how it happens? Is that bluster, naivety, or what? Why not assume they're genuinely curious to learn rather than attack them? It gives better conversation.

Because people who issue pedantic demands to be taken seriously while simultaneously leading with facile arguments rarely prove to be honest disputants.

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

#102

Post by mikeryan »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #93
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.

> It's an illegal labor practice in the US for an employer to do that. It's interference with the right to bargain collectively. Sounds like this particular organization is intentionally legally organized so as not to have those protections (or restrictions). From the OP: "OUR Walmart, which says it has thousands of paying members, isn’t a traditional union because members don’t have collective bargaining rights. It…

Thats not how it works. You don't have to be a union in order to get Labor protections. Protecting the act of organizing/unionizing is a large part of the legal labor protections which exist.

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

#103

Post by jahaja »

hammock wrote: post #76
toomanybeersies wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those who couldn't reach an agreement have do not provide work for Walmart at all This is completely untrue. There are a lot of people who need to work to eat and pay rent. Often they're backed into a corner where there's literally no other jobs available than Walmart, which means that Walmart can offer any wage they want and the potential employees have no options beyond accepting, or being on the street.

When you put it that way, it sounds like Walmart is doing them a great service. Keeping them off the street. And saving the taxpayers welfare dollars at the same time.

This is a particularly malicious rationalisation historically.

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

#104

Post by anigbrowl »

randomdata wrote: post #88
danharaj wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going over the same basic points over and over again might be a better conversation, but it's always the same comversation, which gets tiresome.

The funny part is that not a single reply to my comment (so far) touched on any of the points being made, which was entirely about definitions of terms, but rather continued with the same tired and emotionally fueled talking points every union discussion has. I have to wonder if anyone actually read my comment, or just saw the word union and started replying with their stock responses.

I did respond to you in kind, but I was disinclined to do so because insisting on defining terms is both an aggressive debating tactic and shows a lack of manners by failing to even address existing widely accepted definitions that many others may prefer to rely on, preferences which are just as valid as yours. At the very least, it suggests that you haven't done your homework and are arguing pompously from a position of ignorance.

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

#105

Post by BurningFrog »

state_less wrote: post #74
randomdata wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they could negotiate for fair compensation. What, exactly, is unfair about the current compensation? Walmart pays exactly what they and the employee agreed to at the onset of the employment agreement. Those who couldn't reach an agreement have do not provide work for Walmart at all. I really don't know how you can get any more fair than that? Everyone equally has the ability to decide what works for them and are fr…

Were I a slave and then given an opportunity to be a indentured servant, sure I'd agree. That doesn't mean I live in good conditions. Yea, I could terminate the agreement and move on to being a slave again, but why would I? It's an agreement made under duress, we can do better for these people. Don't you agree?

> That doesn't mean I live in good conditions

I think this is the core misunderstanding of the left in this area.

Choices are only thought to be voluntary if they are between "good" alternatives, where "good" is measured by the standards of US college educated middle class.

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

#106

Post by wpietri »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #79
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Walmart pays exactly what they and the employee agreed to at the onset of the employment agreement. // Seriously, do you think that's how it happens? Is that bluster, naivety, or what? "He sonny, do you want to eat dirt or accept our below healthy subsistence wages?" seems closer to how it goes. People don't work for low wages because they can't bargain, they work for low wages because the alternative is for them no…

Seriously, do you think that's how it happens? Is that bluster, naivety, or what? Why not assume they're genuinely curious to learn rather than attack them? It gives better conversation.

Only if they're genuinely curious. Otherwise, it's just a pointless exercise in explaining something that a) they could have learned already, and b) they actively don't want to understand. As Heinlein said, "Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig."

Like pbhjpbhj, I doubt that randomdata was as incredibly naive as he sounded. I took it as a rhetorical device. But using that device here amounts to either denying the malfeasance that can occur when people with wildly differing power levels negotiate or saying that the exploitation of workers is fine because market outcomes are always right.

The former is not a credible position; history provides too many counterexamples. The latter is a sort of reptilian free-market fundamentalism that often hides behind rhetorical devices because "might makes right" it not a moral standard most people will openly subscribe to.

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

#107

Post by mikeryan »

randomdata wrote: post #88
danharaj wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going over the same basic points over and over again might be a better conversation, but it's always the same comversation, which gets tiresome.

The funny part is that not a single reply to my comment (so far) touched on any of the points being made, which was entirely about definitions of terms, but rather continued with the same tired and emotionally fueled talking points every union discussion has. I have to wonder if anyone actually read my comment, or just saw the word union and started replying with their stock responses.

The funny part is that not a single reply to my comment (so far) touched on any of the points being made, which was entirely about definitions of terms, but rather continued with the same tired and emotionally fueled talking points every union discussion has.

Perhaps most here find your points tired and emotionally fueled which is why they choose instead not to engage?

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

#108

Post by anigbrowl »

randomdata wrote: post #86
state_less wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were I a slave and then given an opportunity to be a indentured servant, sure I'd agree. That doesn't mean I live in good conditions. Yea, I could terminate the agreement and move on to being a slave again, but why would I? It's an agreement made under duress, we can do better for these people. Don't you agree?

Yes, I agree that fairness and freedom is the problem here. That's literally what the whole comment was about. A union helps take away fairness and freedom so that the employees benefit.

You are assuming your premise as your conclusion.

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

#109

Post by bunderbunder »

mannykannot wrote: post #100
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.

> Even under the current administration, enforcement is weak, and it will probably be weaker under the next administration. One of the more interesting features of the American political environment, over at least the last three and a half decades, is the extent to which the demographic that is (or was) nominally represented by unions has voted for politicians who have made no bones about their intent to weaken the u…

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - Steinbeck

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

#110

Post by randomdata »

mikeryan wrote: post #107
randomdata wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny part is that not a single reply to my comment (so far) touched on any of the points being made, which was entirely about definitions of terms, but rather continued with the same tired and emotionally fueled talking points every union discussion has. I have to wonder if anyone actually read my comment, or just saw the word union and started replying with their stock responses.

The funny part is that not a single reply to my comment (so far) touched on any of the points being made, which was entirely about definitions of terms, but rather continued with the same tired and emotionally fueled talking points every union discussion has. Perhaps most here find your points tired and emotionally fueled which is why they choose instead not to engage?

Maybe. In which case, can you point to other discussion about this so I can move other there? I'd like to actually have a discussion about it instead of getting a bunch of off-topic replies that can never go anywhere.
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