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Whole Foods is tracking and scoring stores it deems at risk of unionizing
- BubRoss 7y agoThe article directly contradicts its title. They aren't "heat mapping employees" they came up with a scoring system to estimate the most likely stores to unionize. "The scores are based on more than two dozen metrics, including racial diversity, employee loyalty, "tipline" calls, and violations recorded by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration." Whatever they are doing to avoid employees unionizing, it isn't "heat mapping" them. It isn't even heat mapping stores. That would imply some sort of density+value combination. This is a ranking based on weighting various data points into a single score.
- happytoexplain 7y agoPersonally, I consider this heat-mapping, since I think of heat-mapping as any value over area, regardless of how the value is derived. What specifically makes you feel this case doesn't qualify? Also, do you think there is something nefarious about the term "heat-mapping"?
- black_puppydog 7y agoI tend to agree with GP about the terminology. I opened the article with the expectation of reading about GPS or WiFi/Bluetooth beacons or some such. I find it outrageous but unsurprising (and thus even more outrageous) that this is happening, but the "map" here doesn't seem warranted.
- IMTDb 7y agoThey are - at best - heat mapping stores, not employees. And heat map have a sense of density over a region, it is by definition continuous values where the area has a major impact on the final value. Here they just rate each store. If this is considering "heat mapping". Then basically anything that gives score to stuff that can be placed on a map is also "heat mapping". This includes : - Your company "heat mapping" their clients according to the revenue they generate - The US department of education "heat mapping" the students based on the SAT scores - My mom "heat mapping" her next holiday destination based on price When we think about heat-mapping a person, we immediately imagine tracking where that person spends time. Until I read the article, I was imagining whole food setting up cameras in their store to see if employees spend time congregating. And that would be a horrible thing to do. But giving points to stores based on - among other signals - how many sales they generate. Well... that is the least worrying thing I read all day. So the whole point of the article is to instill fear into the reader by - willingly - using the wrong terminology to give a bad image to a known company - even going as far as adding "Amazon-owned", just for the sake of it - until the astute reader notice of deceiving the article really is. And if you did not take the time to fully read their "article" (I have other words that are far less nice to describe that kind of writing) well your judgment of a company just got biased without any ground.
- filoleg 7y agoWhile I agree that "heatmapping" can be interpreted the way the article used it, I don't think that this is what comes to people's minds when they hear that phrase, so I would call it misleading at best. But saying that they are "heatmapping employees" is blatantly wrong. They aren't heatmapping individual employees, they are scoring/heatmapping stores.
- jonathankoren 7y agoyeah, but what are they measuring? The building? The profit-loss statements? No. They're measuring the attitudes of the employees in the store. If you're measuring the employees in a store, it is perfectly reasonable to say you're measuring the employees. Sure you could change policies and affect P(union), but you'd still be measuring the effect on employee attitudes.
- filoleg 7y ago>but what are they measuring? >They're measuring the attitudes of the employees in the store. You answered your own question here. This is the exact same thing all corporate surveys and evaluations are measuring. When a company does performance reviews, annual surveys to get employees feedback on things, re-evaluates what kind of candidates they need to attract and how to adjust their recruiting efforts appropriately (e.g., "we hire too many people from target schools, we need to start reaching out more to the talent pool outside of those"), etc. It is all the same thing, and every single company over a certain size does it. You don't think McDonalds or Home Depot or Kroger do a similar kind of "heatmapping" to evaluate the state of their branches and the employee feedback? Even at tech companies, it is a thing. My employer does an annual company-wide (anonymized) survey, asking all employees for their opinions on their work engagement, fairness of compensation, etc. And from what I heard from my friends working at other tech companies, they all have something similar.
- jonathankoren 7y agoI’m really confused now. Is it “blatantly wrong” to say they’re measuring employees or not? Because it sounds like you’re trying to split a hair, but there’s no hair to split.
- IMTDb 7y agoYeah, but it's business insider we are talking about. A title like "Retailer give points to each of their store" (which is exactly what the article explains) does not sound nearly as scary as anything containing the words "heat mapping employees" (which the article explicitly contradicts). You can't really expect "chief correspondent" specializing in "breaking news, analysis, and in-depth investigations on large public and private companies" to resist the temptation to drive clicks by writing the most sensationally wrong title they could find.
- KirinDave 7y agoI'm pretty sure that producing a single score tracking the liklihood of a unionization movement at every store is "heat mapping" up to isomorphism. Your density values are provided by physical location.
- SN76477 7y agoStrange that companies would rather invest in fighting unionization than actually raise the work standards, and treatment of their employees.
- ConsiderCrying 7y agoBecause it's likely cheaper to bust unions once in a while than to raise standards overall and forever. Or, at least, that's what the executives think or what their right-hand people tell them. Ultimately, you could probably gather some data and prove that increasing pay, providing good vacation time, and other benefits would improve the quality of people's work and morale... But you'd have to get through to the billionaires at the top first.
- grumple 7y agoNot strange. It's cheaper to bust the union and fire those involved, and pay out for the ensuing lawsuits (whether just to lawyers or lawyers + settlement) than to pay higher wages and provide better benefits. Or at least, that's what they think, and I'm sure someone has done some sort of math to validate this course of action (whether or not it's correct). And companies rarely care about their employees or anything other than profit / bonuses they get from that profit.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThe big advantage of not having to deal with unions is being able to quickly make changes in reaction to changing market conditions.
- ardy42 7y ago> The big advantage of not having to deal with unions is being able to quickly make changes in reaction to changing market conditions. You could say similar things about authoritarian governmental forms. Like democracy, unions give a bigger seat at the decision-making table to stakeholders outside of privileged leadership classes.
- rb808 7y agoI had a friend who worked for a union supermarket chain. It went bankrupt as it had trouble competing with non-union chains like Whole Foods who pay their staff half of the old chains but somehow get a reputation for treating employees well. It would be good to know which stores are union and which ones aren't because it isn't obvious.
- bobthepanda 7y agoUnion certification? I know that I've seen union badges on employee uniforms in the public sector. Maybe not at the uniform level, but even a plaque or playing it up in advertising now that buy local is a massive thing. (Of course, half the US population seems to reflexively shudder at the word "union" these days, so how successful this would be is... debatable.)
- vangelis 7y agoHey, as long as it's cheap, just throw more workers at the meat grinder.
- easytiger 7y ago> pay their staff half Half?
- justjash 7y agoThis also seems off to me... Sounds like some well paid grocery store workers.
- taurath 7y agoMeanwhile Safeway and Kroger are both unionized and seem to be doing just fine. Unions alone aren't the issue, though it can definitely be a cost. I wish everything in the US wasn't a race to the bottom.
- smooth_remmy 7y agoKeep in mind that Amazon pays their blue collar workers far more than Kroger/Safeway
- OrangeMango 7y agoSometimes I wonder if we will ever reach the point at which the people that Amazon would never employ combined with the people who would never agree to be employed by Amazon leaves them with fewer people than they need.
- chipperyman573 7y agoHunger makes people do a lot of things they don't want to
- john-radio 7y agoThey don't want that to happen, of course, which means that their business objectives for our economy are very different than a working person's.
- paxys 7y agoAmazon makes the front page because of a variety of reasons, but there are thousands of large employers that are worse in every way. We have a loooong way to go before Amazon's policies are an actual disqualifier for people who work these jobs. Walmart is still training employees on how to file for public assistance. Many large chains still won't employ you based on your sexual orientation. So many small and large employers steal wages, deny benefits, pay under the table and more. All of that and unemployment is hitting record numbers right now.
- ummonk 7y ago> Walmart is still training employees on how to file for public assistance. Out of curiosity what is wrong with this? It seems akin to e.g. my employer providing Deloitte tax consultation as a benefit.
- bashinator 7y agoDoes your employer provide Deloitte tax consultation because otherwise your wage is insufficient to pay for basic food and housing?
- fedups 7y ago"If you put Amazon in the headline, they will come." Interesting call that the story isn't compelling enough if it "just" involves Whole Foods.
- strictnein 7y agoBusiness Insider is a site whose main output is clickbait headlines. It's the Buzzfeed model applied to corporate news.
- kevincrane 7y agoAmazon has a recent history of union-busting, it's very relevant if their subsidiaries are also union-busting.
- morelisp 7y agoWhole Foods had a history of union busting even before Amazon, too. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/whole-foods-market-john-mackey-interview-conscious-capitalism/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/whole-foods-... I can't imagine how much worse it's gotten since an even less "conscious capitalist" took over.
- the-dude 7y agoI think it is completely fair to include the Amazon ownership in the headline. Their ownership is relatively new and Amazon itself has had its fair share of questionable employee policies in the recent past.
- sarah180 7y agoI wonder why they suggest that racial diversity has an inverse relationship with union formation. Is this because of a broader range of employee perspectives on work? Are employees in diverse environments less comfortable talking to one another? Both? Something else?
- dpeck 7y agoAll other things being equal (and of course they never are), it seems like organizing in a homogenous cultural environment would be much easier than otherwise.
- StrangeDoctor 7y agoYou could also have some economic pressure (low wages from whole foods) causing fewer ethnicities to self select into the job because they have better options elsewhere [1]. Then the workers realize things aren't so great and try to improve their situation through unionizing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_United_States_by_household_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...
- bcoates 7y agoCould just be an artifact of unrelated(?) less unionization in the south and more in the midwest
- munificent 7y agoIf I've learned anything from growing up in the South, it's that having both poor white people and poor black people makes it much easier for those in power to convince both groups that the other is the source of all of their problems instead of it being the rich and powerful. Classic divide and conquer.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” — Lyndon B. Johnson
- anticristi 7y agoMe living in Sweden, reading this article: W.T.F.?!?!?
- chrisseaton 7y agoUnions don't have the same reputation in all countries. They're viewed very differently by much of the general population in the UK and US than they are in continental Europe.
- BurningFrog 7y agoUnions are very different in Sweden and US.
- padraic7a 7y agoThere is an Anglo-American consensual on a lot of things but I don't think Trade Unions are one of them.
- chrisseaton 7y agoI didn't say the US and UK viewed them in the same way - I said that both the US and the UK viewed them differently to continental Europe.
- jdkee 7y agoAmazon is getting to the point that anti-trust scrutiny should be invoked.
- ummonk 7y agoClickbait title. They aren’t tracking employees, just stores. As to what they’re actually doing, it seems like a good thing if they proactively find stores with potentially larger employee resentment and find ways to make conditions there better, but it’s rather unseemly that they would only do that with the purpose of preventing unionization efforts.
- dang 7y agoOk, we've replaced the title with the heading below it. Thanks.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hirundo 7y agoIf unionization is a significant risk to a business's share price, it is malpractice to fail to assess it and plan accordingly. This sophisticated approach seems like a positive signal to investors. It's like tax avoidance, financially and ethically.
- grecy 7y agoYou comment makes it clear WholeFoods is looking after their shareholders very well. Excellent. Are they looking after their employees as well? Do you want to live in a world where shareholders are the priority, or employees? Keep in mind, you and everyone you love are employees. So are the people down the street struggling to pay rent, and the guys across town with little food and nothing to lose.
- Eric_WVGG 7y ago"you and everyone you love are employees" This is a weird forum to make a blanket statement like that. (I generally agree with your sentiments, incidentally, I would just expect that the ratio of independent freelancers, corporate founders, and outsider oddballs here is extremely high)
- hirundo 7y agoI've worked in growing, static and shrinking companies, and don't think it's coincidence that I've been much better treated and compensated all around in the growing ones. To the extent that correlation is causal, employer and employee incentives align.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- elicash 7y agoI'd have more patience for "hey these are the laws, corporations just live by them" if corporations stayed out of lobbying for anti-worker laws. So yeah, I agree it's like tax avoidance. Legal, but still a sign of a corrupt system.
- rdiddly 7y ago"We agree with the overwhelming majority of our Team Members that a direct relationship" [lengthy justification] "is best." OK so if it's not the employees, I'd like to know, in the universe of this quote, what people or entities are promoting a union and creating this "risk" of uninionization? Out of this whole story this is the most disingenuous bit that annoys me the most. If the majority of employees were against the union, they would stop it themselves without company help, wouldn't they? Still, it's very generous of them to look out for employee interests like that, large eyeroll.
- ngold 7y agoThat seems to be the crux of the issue. If management was great, and everyone loved their wages a union wouldn't be alluring. Since corporate management is the default union.
- thulecitizen 7y ago> corporate management is the default union Such a great way of saying it. Also the quote from the original comment: > "We agree with the overwhelming majority of our Team Members that a direct relationship" [lengthy justification] "is best." With 'direct relationship', they mean: unmoderated control over employees through corporate management