7 ms·

I just finished Sam Walton's Book "Made in America". It's about Walmart, but I heard somewhere it's required reading for all Amazon managers. Anyway, it's a fan

I just finished Sam Walton's Book "Made in America". It's about Walmart, but I heard somewhere it's required reading for all Amazon managers. Anyway, it's a fantastic book, and there's something about their Anti-Union stance in it: "I have always believed strongly that we don’t need unions at Wal-Mart. Theoretically, I understand the argument that unions try to make, that the associates need someone to represent them and so on. But historically, as unions have developed in this country, they have mostly just been divisive. They have put management on one side of the fence, employees on the other, and themselves in the middle as almost a separate business, one that depends on division between the other two camps. And divisiveness, by breaking down direct communication, makes it harder to take care of customers, to be competitive, and to gain market share." I just post this because I the vibe in discussions on those union-related posts always seems so aggressive and stand-offish.. It's good to understand many perspectives before picking a side, if any. (Also this is just an excerpt, there's much more about employee compensation in the book.)

ceejayoz 5y ago
Are Walmart "associates" particularly well off as a result?
- knute 5y ago
  I think it's important to remember that Sam Walton died in 1992, and the Walmart of today has very little in common with the Wal-Mart of 1992.
- eventualhorizon 5y ago
  Walmart was a very different company under Sam Walton. Sam tried to visit every store once a year. When he got there he would throw the managers out and talk with the employees to find whether or not the managers were doing their jobs. He also believed in empowering the employees. Employees were responsible for particular sections of the store and had access to sales and inventory data and made decisions about how the section was run. In short Mr. Walton felt that the line employees were the most important people in the organization and treated them accordingly. This of course did not survive after he passed and Walmart employees are not well off today. The quote about Unions above does seem to fit his philosophy but rings hollow with the changes that occurred after his death.
  - pydry 5y ago
    Computerization of stock control and sales made trusting and empowering the employees much less necessary. I suspect his attitude would not have lasted even if he had survived.
    - Xylakant 5y ago
      One of the largest german drugstore chains still operates by that principle and they're successful with it. Computerized sales will not pick up on certain things - for example stuff that is not available in the store but people ask for.
      - derekp7 5y ago
        As a contrary to that, many stores have a phone app that lets you look up items in a given store location. I've been using that exclusively for the last few years instead of trying to find someone to help me. I'm sure that these apps can and do report on searches that turn up out of stock items or unknown items. Of course I do miss the service level I used to be able to get; for example I could walk into a box store and find an employee in the plumbing aisle, describe my problem, and they would not only show me where the item I needed is located, but would also give me tips on installation or even talk me out of the purchase if my problem didn't actually need a replacement part (but and adjustment instead).
      - dariusj18 5y ago
        When I go to Walmart and try to find the thing on the shelves that the website says is there but is not, I will wrangle an employee for help. Typically they just say that the website isn't always right and leave it at that. As far as I can tell they don't then do anything to correct the website.
      - calvano915 5y ago
        It's super anecdotal but my dad has done home improvement work for decades and has found Home Depot to be completely incompetent with stocking their stores these last few years. Many of the employees who have been around say its all due to centralized inventory management (computerized and non-local). The impression is that up until a few years ago, a store could order what they needed based on local demand and not be restricted to only what the algorithm decides.
- refurb 5y ago
  Better off than what? Than if they had a union? Maybe we can look at example like the US auto industry to get an answer there? The answer being "if you were an early member of the union, yeah, a later member, not so much".
pydry 5y ago
This is a perspective that will be broadcast by the financial media (usually uncritically) and rammed down the throats of employees in compulsory anti union seminars. It's pretty hard to miss. Even if it weren't broadcast at us relentlessly it's not like it's in any way surprising. It would be mildly interesting if he questioned why unions in Europe were vastly less confrontational and acted in a way he purports to prefer, but I imagine that's a topic that would get uncomfortable for him fairly quickly. Instead he simply declares his sworn enemy "too confrontational".
Latty 5y ago
"We don't need them because it has downsides for me." is an argument for Unions, not against them. The fact that he accepts the need/value for workers in a union, then completely ignores that to say they are not needed because it's bad for the business just shows not even the willingness to pretend to care about employees. We see, time and time again, that as businesses do better, they don't use that to help employees, they use that as a weapon to treat employees worse. As they get bigger they can drive out competitors who might compete for employees, and can more easily replace any employee, reducing their ability to negotiate more. "What is good for the business is good for the employee." clearly does not hold for most businesses like Walmart.
gameswithgo 5y ago
>And divisiveness, by breaking down direct communication, makes it harder to take care of customers, to be competitive, and to gain market share That is all true, it also makes it easier for employees to negotiate a better deal for themselves, which then encourages management to replace the people with foreign labor or robots. Such is life.
- teclordphrack2 5y ago
  but they do that without a union. So whats your point?
geofft 5y ago
It's always struck me as weird that unions in the US exclude management, even when "management" is defined as "someone getting paid $2 more per hour to train and schedule workers." The interests of a Wal-Mart bakery manager and other bakery workers are generally closely aligned, so Mr. Walton has something of a point there. And frankly the same is true of knowledge work - the interests of someone like me who's a senior engineer on the IC track are generally closely aligned with someone who took the manager track, which starts out at the same level, and has three or four junior engineers as direct reports. Now, the interests of the entire staff at any given Wal-Mart store are generally not aligned with those of Mr. Walton, nor are the interests of engineering staff and line managers aligned with the interests of the C-suite. Simply having supervisory authority doesn't really change the pressures on you, especially when there's an IC track (whether baker or engineer) very close to your role. Nor are the interests of the staff of any Starbucks store aligned with those of Starbucks corporate, nor those of almost everyone involved with physically shipping Amazon packages with those of Amazon corporate, nor those of the people racking Google datacenters and those of SVPs at Google, etc. So there is an entirely natural division that already exists. Our present form of union forces everyone with supervisory authority to take the side of the big bosses. I think if we had unions that could genuinely represent all laborers, they'd work a lot better.
- pc86 5y ago
  You have to draw the line somewhere though, and I don't think it's as clear-cut as you're making it sound. I'm sure I could find someone who is a director or even VP but is still very close to the "laborer" side of things, especially in tech. Likewise, there are plenty of low-level front line managers with dozens of reports who have no idea what they do day-to-day. It's easy to separate the Waltons from the person icing a cake in a bakery because they're dozens of reports apart. But it's much harder to actually put that line between two individual people at any level of the organization.
  - pydry 5y ago
    Usually the line is drawn at "do they have the power to hire and fire?" VP is unlikely to be unable to hire and fire but I suppose it's possible for "technical fellows" and the like.
TheNorthman 5y ago
Built into the very fabric of unionism is the acknowledgement that capital and labor have fundamentally different goals, i.e. class struggle. An acknowledgment for which the only logical conclusion is an independent workers movement. There is a term for unions that don't acknowledge this divide and favor a "collaboration" between capital and labor: Yellow unions. It is not an endearing term and they are (rightfully) outlawed in the US.
emptysongglass 5y ago
I want to go after the presumption that representation foments division. It's an American-made idea and it's not a good one. Take it out and throw it in the bin. Denmark has two thirds of its workforce under a union. I'm not hostile with my employers and I don't need my union representing me 99 percent of the time. If I have a problem I talk directly to my managers like a {woman, man, transperson}. It's only when my workplace is doing something illegal or trying to screw me that I first go to my union for advice and only after, if their advice hasn't worked, would I ever consider letting my union speak for me. That's how all Danes do it here. And it works out fine for everyone. So please reconsider this no-good, destructive idea that underlies this logical fallacy. The fact is that leadership by its nature as leadership, wields power. Workers under leaders need help to protect from gross abuses of power that arise from wielding power.
- damagednoob 5y ago
  > It's an American-made idea and it's not a good one. Take it out and throw it in the bin. Actually, I think your comment belongs in the bin. No one was making generalisations until you stepped in. Denmark may be this unionised Utopia that everyone can learn from (I doubt it) but unions in other countries (e.g. UK, South Africa) can exhibit these counter-productive behaviours as described.
- JoBrad 5y ago
  Maybe you mean for white collar workers? The separation between blue collar management and employees is very old: it’s in verses of “We wish you a Merry Christmas”, and is even discussed in the Bible.
  - KSteffensen 5y ago
    I'm also Danish. My dad is a blacksmith, about as blue-collar as it gets, and he would agree with the above representation. It wasn't so in the past, but for the past 100 years or so, co-operation between unions and employers has been mostly constructive. This is not a Utopia as some other commenters are saying. It's perfectly achievable if both sides acknowledge they need the other and are willing to discuss issues in good faith.
vidarh 5y ago
> It's good to understand many perspectives before picking a side, if any. With that in mind, I'd point out that the history of unionisation in America (and everywhere) is one of extensive bloodshed as employees have died both from unsafe labour practices [1], as well as from outright murder, intimidation and other attempts at shutting down organisation of labour. So, yeah, it's divisive. May 1st as the international day for labour demonstrations was put in place to commemorate the Chicago Haymarket Massacre [2], on the request of what is now the AFL-CIO, and to resume the fight for the 8 hour working day that costs many lives and caused far more injuries and people forced out of their jobs - a fight that took many decades. It's very easy to ask people to not be "divisive" when you're the one with the money and the power, and not the ones who have the rights they have now as a consequence of the deaths and sacrifices of people being "divisive" by daring to stand up for themselves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
- kodah 5y ago
  > It's very easy to ask people to not be "divisive" when you're the one with the money and the power, and not the ones who have the rights they have now as a consequence of the deaths and sacrifices of people being "divisive" by daring to stand up for themselves. The person you're replying to is talking about how people act in discussions about this topic. So, with that in mind, who can ask you (read: metaphorical you) to not be divisive, aggressive, or stand-offish when discussing unions with lay people?
  - vidarh 5y ago
    > The person you're replying to is talking about how people act in discussions about this topic. Yes, but posted an extremely self-serving (for Walton) quote of Walton, and argued different perspectives were important. So I offered a counter to Walton. My point being that it is deeply insulting to expect of someone to not be "divisive" when involving parties in a conflict with a century-long history of outright bloodshed, alongside a whole host of brutal practices. It's a classic tactic to put an opponent on the defensive to suggest they're being "divisive, aggressive, or stand-offish" and by extension implying their side is not that and more. You can't metaphorically punch people in the face and then complain afterwards that they're now "aggressive".
pizzaowl 5y ago
I'd love some German style unions but it's the companies that won't give them a shot.
eli_gottlieb 5y ago
>But historically, as unions have developed in this country, they have mostly just been divisive. They have put management on one side of the fence, employees on the other, and themselves in the middle as almost a separate business, one that depends on division between the other two camps. But workers and management really are on two different sides of the fence. We have intrinsically opposed material interests. Management are not our friends.
- refurb 5y ago
  But my understanding is that's not how unions work in Europe. Typically the unions see themselves as another party that benefits from a successful and profitable company. You are correct that they have different goals, but the difference is is that they want the same thing. At least in the US, you see much more antagonistic approach. Company is facing cheap imports that hurt sales? Some unions say "fuck you, not my problem, pay me".
  - vidarh 5y ago
    The more cooperative relationship in Europe was the result of the labour movement largely winning, in the sense of gaining sufficient political power that the balance of legal protections shifted to a point where the struggles even when heated are generally much less of an existential crisis. Keep in mind that for many decades, especially from the 1840's onwards, much of Europe was a total powder-key with countries facing revolutions left right and centre, and the political landscape changing rapidly to accommodate this. E.g. Bismarcks massive healthcare and pension reforms in the 1880's were inexorably linked to his fear of revolution. To take another example, in 1923 the Norwegian right wing were absolutely horrified when - after they failed to negotiate a coalition - the king appointed the Labour Party leader to the post of prime minister (at the time Labour was still a communist party); the government was voted down immediately (and the king would have known that would happen), but it still forced the other parties to realise they could not ignore the demands of the labour movement any more. In the post-war periods the social democratic and socialist parties across Western Europe either got into power or became a substantial threat to the right in most countries, and as a result you saw sweeping welfare reforms, healthcare reforms and others across large parts of the continent. Unions that had for decades in many cases been outright communists were moderated by the combination of starting to fear the Soviets coupled with major wins for labour rights that made them less inclined to rock the boat. It's a whole lot easier to win support for a more cooperative approach when people saw negotiation actually working for them, and employer increasingly being willing to sit down from the start rather than employ the kind of tactics Amazon has been accused of using (I'm not taking a stance on whether or not they've done the things they've been accused of, but these kinds of things are not new in terms of US employers fighting unionisation). US unions have remained far more militant because US employers have remained far more militant. Active use of actual violence on both sides remained prevalent much longer, for starters. You're not going to see those hostile fronts change unless workers rights are substantially strengthened to the point that not enough people find the hardline approach worthwhile any more.

ceejayoz 5y ago

Are Walmart "associates" particularly well off as a result?

knute 5y ago
I think it's important to remember that Sam Walton died in 1992, and the Walmart of today has very little in common with the Wal-Mart of 1992.
eventualhorizon 5y ago
Walmart was a very different company under Sam Walton. Sam tried to visit every store once a year. When he got there he would throw the managers out and talk with the employees to find whether or not the managers were doing their jobs. He also believed in empowering the employees. Employees were responsible for particular sections of the store and had access to sales and inventory data and made decisions about how the section was run. In short Mr. Walton felt that the line employees were the most important people in the organization and treated them accordingly. This of course did not survive after he passed and Walmart employees are not well off today. The quote about Unions above does seem to fit his philosophy but rings hollow with the changes that occurred after his death.
- pydry 5y ago
  Computerization of stock control and sales made trusting and empowering the employees much less necessary. I suspect his attitude would not have lasted even if he had survived.
  - Xylakant 5y ago
    One of the largest german drugstore chains still operates by that principle and they're successful with it. Computerized sales will not pick up on certain things - for example stuff that is not available in the store but people ask for.
    - derekp7 5y ago
      As a contrary to that, many stores have a phone app that lets you look up items in a given store location. I've been using that exclusively for the last few years instead of trying to find someone to help me. I'm sure that these apps can and do report on searches that turn up out of stock items or unknown items. Of course I do miss the service level I used to be able to get; for example I could walk into a box store and find an employee in the plumbing aisle, describe my problem, and they would not only show me where the item I needed is located, but would also give me tips on installation or even talk me out of the purchase if my problem didn't actually need a replacement part (but and adjustment instead).
    - dariusj18 5y ago
      When I go to Walmart and try to find the thing on the shelves that the website says is there but is not, I will wrangle an employee for help. Typically they just say that the website isn't always right and leave it at that. As far as I can tell they don't then do anything to correct the website.
    - calvano915 5y ago
      It's super anecdotal but my dad has done home improvement work for decades and has found Home Depot to be completely incompetent with stocking their stores these last few years. Many of the employees who have been around say its all due to centralized inventory management (computerized and non-local). The impression is that up until a few years ago, a store could order what they needed based on local demand and not be restricted to only what the algorithm decides.
refurb 5y ago
Better off than what? Than if they had a union? Maybe we can look at example like the US auto industry to get an answer there? The answer being "if you were an early member of the union, yeah, a later member, not so much".

pydry 5y ago

This is a perspective that will be broadcast by the financial media (usually uncritically) and rammed down the throats of employees in compulsory anti union seminars. It's pretty hard to miss. Even if it weren't broadcast at us relentlessly it's not like it's in any way surprising. It would be mildly interesting if he questioned why unions in Europe were vastly less confrontational and acted in a way he purports to prefer, but I imagine that's a topic that would get uncomfortable for him fairly quickly. Instead he simply declares his sworn enemy "too confrontational".

Latty 5y ago

"We don't need them because it has downsides for me." is an argument for Unions, not against them. The fact that he accepts the need/value for workers in a union, then completely ignores that to say they are not needed because it's bad for the business just shows not even the willingness to pretend to care about employees. We see, time and time again, that as businesses do better, they don't use that to help employees, they use that as a weapon to treat employees worse. As they get bigger they can drive out competitors who might compete for employees, and can more easily replace any employee, reducing their ability to negotiate more. "What is good for the business is good for the employee." clearly does not hold for most businesses like Walmart.

gameswithgo 5y ago

>And divisiveness, by breaking down direct communication, makes it harder to take care of customers, to be competitive, and to gain market share That is all true, it also makes it easier for employees to negotiate a better deal for themselves, which then encourages management to replace the people with foreign labor or robots. Such is life.

teclordphrack2 5y ago
but they do that without a union. So whats your point?

geofft 5y ago

It's always struck me as weird that unions in the US exclude management, even when "management" is defined as "someone getting paid $2 more per hour to train and schedule workers." The interests of a Wal-Mart bakery manager and other bakery workers are generally closely aligned, so Mr. Walton has something of a point there. And frankly the same is true of knowledge work - the interests of someone like me who's a senior engineer on the IC track are generally closely aligned with someone who took the manager track, which starts out at the same level, and has three or four junior engineers as direct reports. Now, the interests of the entire staff at any given Wal-Mart store are generally not aligned with those of Mr. Walton, nor are the interests of engineering staff and line managers aligned with the interests of the C-suite. Simply having supervisory authority doesn't really change the pressures on you, especially when there's an IC track (whether baker or engineer) very close to your role. Nor are the interests of the staff of any Starbucks store aligned with those of Starbucks corporate, nor those of almost everyone involved with physically shipping Amazon packages with those of Amazon corporate, nor those of the people racking Google datacenters and those of SVPs at Google, etc. So there is an entirely natural division that already exists. Our present form of union forces everyone with supervisory authority to take the side of the big bosses. I think if we had unions that could genuinely represent all laborers, they'd work a lot better.

pc86 5y ago
You have to draw the line somewhere though, and I don't think it's as clear-cut as you're making it sound. I'm sure I could find someone who is a director or even VP but is still very close to the "laborer" side of things, especially in tech. Likewise, there are plenty of low-level front line managers with dozens of reports who have no idea what they do day-to-day. It's easy to separate the Waltons from the person icing a cake in a bakery because they're dozens of reports apart. But it's much harder to actually put that line between two individual people at any level of the organization.
- pydry 5y ago
  Usually the line is drawn at "do they have the power to hire and fire?" VP is unlikely to be unable to hire and fire but I suppose it's possible for "technical fellows" and the like.

TheNorthman 5y ago

Built into the very fabric of unionism is the acknowledgement that capital and labor have fundamentally different goals, i.e. class struggle. An acknowledgment for which the only logical conclusion is an independent workers movement. There is a term for unions that don't acknowledge this divide and favor a "collaboration" between capital and labor: Yellow unions. It is not an endearing term and they are (rightfully) outlawed in the US.

emptysongglass 5y ago

I want to go after the presumption that representation foments division. It's an American-made idea and it's not a good one. Take it out and throw it in the bin. Denmark has two thirds of its workforce under a union. I'm not hostile with my employers and I don't need my union representing me 99 percent of the time. If I have a problem I talk directly to my managers like a {woman, man, transperson}. It's only when my workplace is doing something illegal or trying to screw me that I first go to my union for advice and only after, if their advice hasn't worked, would I ever consider letting my union speak for me. That's how all Danes do it here. And it works out fine for everyone. So please reconsider this no-good, destructive idea that underlies this logical fallacy. The fact is that leadership by its nature as leadership, wields power. Workers under leaders need help to protect from gross abuses of power that arise from wielding power.

damagednoob 5y ago
> It's an American-made idea and it's not a good one. Take it out and throw it in the bin. Actually, I think your comment belongs in the bin. No one was making generalisations until you stepped in. Denmark may be this unionised Utopia that everyone can learn from (I doubt it) but unions in other countries (e.g. UK, South Africa) can exhibit these counter-productive behaviours as described.
JoBrad 5y ago
Maybe you mean for white collar workers? The separation between blue collar management and employees is very old: it’s in verses of “We wish you a Merry Christmas”, and is even discussed in the Bible.
- KSteffensen 5y ago
  I'm also Danish. My dad is a blacksmith, about as blue-collar as it gets, and he would agree with the above representation. It wasn't so in the past, but for the past 100 years or so, co-operation between unions and employers has been mostly constructive. This is not a Utopia as some other commenters are saying. It's perfectly achievable if both sides acknowledge they need the other and are willing to discuss issues in good faith.

vidarh 5y ago

> It's good to understand many perspectives before picking a side, if any. With that in mind, I'd point out that the history of unionisation in America (and everywhere) is one of extensive bloodshed as employees have died both from unsafe labour practices [1], as well as from outright murder, intimidation and other attempts at shutting down organisation of labour. So, yeah, it's divisive. May 1st as the international day for labour demonstrations was put in place to commemorate the Chicago Haymarket Massacre [2], on the request of what is now the AFL-CIO, and to resume the fight for the 8 hour working day that costs many lives and caused far more injuries and people forced out of their jobs - a fight that took many decades. It's very easy to ask people to not be "divisive" when you're the one with the money and the power, and not the ones who have the rights they have now as a consequence of the deaths and sacrifices of people being "divisive" by daring to stand up for themselves. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

kodah 5y ago
> It's very easy to ask people to not be "divisive" when you're the one with the money and the power, and not the ones who have the rights they have now as a consequence of the deaths and sacrifices of people being "divisive" by daring to stand up for themselves. The person you're replying to is talking about how people act in discussions about this topic. So, with that in mind, who can ask you (read: metaphorical you) to not be divisive, aggressive, or stand-offish when discussing unions with lay people?
- vidarh 5y ago
  > The person you're replying to is talking about how people act in discussions about this topic. Yes, but posted an extremely self-serving (for Walton) quote of Walton, and argued different perspectives were important. So I offered a counter to Walton. My point being that it is deeply insulting to expect of someone to not be "divisive" when involving parties in a conflict with a century-long history of outright bloodshed, alongside a whole host of brutal practices. It's a classic tactic to put an opponent on the defensive to suggest they're being "divisive, aggressive, or stand-offish" and by extension implying their side is not that and more. You can't metaphorically punch people in the face and then complain afterwards that they're now "aggressive".

pizzaowl 5y ago

I'd love some German style unions but it's the companies that won't give them a shot.

eli_gottlieb 5y ago

>But historically, as unions have developed in this country, they have mostly just been divisive. They have put management on one side of the fence, employees on the other, and themselves in the middle as almost a separate business, one that depends on division between the other two camps. But workers and management really are on two different sides of the fence. We have intrinsically opposed material interests. Management are not our friends.

refurb 5y ago
But my understanding is that's not how unions work in Europe. Typically the unions see themselves as another party that benefits from a successful and profitable company. You are correct that they have different goals, but the difference is is that they want the same thing. At least in the US, you see much more antagonistic approach. Company is facing cheap imports that hurt sales? Some unions say "fuck you, not my problem, pay me".
- vidarh 5y ago
  The more cooperative relationship in Europe was the result of the labour movement largely winning, in the sense of gaining sufficient political power that the balance of legal protections shifted to a point where the struggles even when heated are generally much less of an existential crisis. Keep in mind that for many decades, especially from the 1840's onwards, much of Europe was a total powder-key with countries facing revolutions left right and centre, and the political landscape changing rapidly to accommodate this. E.g. Bismarcks massive healthcare and pension reforms in the 1880's were inexorably linked to his fear of revolution. To take another example, in 1923 the Norwegian right wing were absolutely horrified when - after they failed to negotiate a coalition - the king appointed the Labour Party leader to the post of prime minister (at the time Labour was still a communist party); the government was voted down immediately (and the king would have known that would happen), but it still forced the other parties to realise they could not ignore the demands of the labour movement any more. In the post-war periods the social democratic and socialist parties across Western Europe either got into power or became a substantial threat to the right in most countries, and as a result you saw sweeping welfare reforms, healthcare reforms and others across large parts of the continent. Unions that had for decades in many cases been outright communists were moderated by the combination of starting to fear the Soviets coupled with major wins for labour rights that made them less inclined to rock the boat. It's a whole lot easier to win support for a more cooperative approach when people saw negotiation actually working for them, and employer increasingly being willing to sit down from the start rather than employ the kind of tactics Amazon has been accused of using (I'm not taking a stance on whether or not they've done the things they've been accused of, but these kinds of things are not new in terms of US employers fighting unionisation). US unions have remained far more militant because US employers have remained far more militant. Active use of actual violence on both sides remained prevalent much longer, for starters. You're not going to see those hostile fronts change unless workers rights are substantially strengthened to the point that not enough people find the hardline approach worthwhile any more.