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

Post by listerOfSmeg » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 7:54 AM UTC

darpa_escapee wrote: post #46

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…

This is the same company that shows employees videos that are equivalent to "Unions = bad, yuck, gross, not even once" during training. They have every incentive to prevent unionization. If workers have room to negotiate, that means they could negotiate for fair compensation. Reminder that our country's labor history is rife with straight up mass murder of workers because they demanded fair pay, safe working conditio…

Post by jackpirate » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 8:10 AM UTC

santaclaus wrote: post #174

chrisbennet wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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. " Or have had the actual experience of not being allowed to plug in your own electrical cord at a trade show and blaming in on the union - which is pro…

> Or have had the actual experience of not being allowed to plug in your own electrical cord at a trade show and blaming in on the union - which is probably right. I'm not saying unions are all bad but in the US ones don't have a good track record. While in grad school, the heater in our lab was out during a cold-ass New York winter. We put in work requests for weeks, and no repairs were ever made. A fellow grad stud…

Post by ENGNR » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 9:09 AM UTC

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…

Post by morsch » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 10:15 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #214

bunderbunder wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That quote infers the opposite is preferable. I'd rather have a population that strives for their dreams rather than sits back and blames the bourgeois for all their troubles.

Post by ethbro » Mon, Nov 21, 2016, 10:27 AM UTC

zeroer wrote: post #220

ethbro wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major problem seems to have been that neither party had or has an effective answer to the systemic de-employment (i.e. substituting lower paying jobs) which affects manufacturing hubs post-free trade agreements. The economist argument has always been (a) sign free trade deal, (b) some jobs lost as labor reallocates to cheaper locations, (c) prices for goods decrease enough that everyone is better off. Based on th…

> everyone is better off That's definitely not the argument. It's that on average most people are better off, or some sort of weighted average of people's well-being.