7 ms·

Its funny to watch "progressive" mega corporations like Starbucks, Apple, Amazon + more skirt around unions. Essentially they use PR to say we are all for thes

Its funny to watch "progressive" mega corporations like Starbucks, Apple, Amazon + more skirt around unions. Essentially they use PR to say we are all for these corporate safe progressive topics... but any topics of worker rights, unions.. nope.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
MapsSlaps 4y ago
Starbucks and Amazon are hardly "progressive". Most folks I know would describe them as pretty much bog standard big capitalist companies. Sure, they slap a rainbow logo on their twitter during June, but so does Raytheon. I'm less sure about Apple, which might actually have more of a progressive streak in it (I'm simply not knowledgable), but the other two are pretty much standard exploitative mega corps.
- lapcat 4y ago
  Apple is absolutely ruthless toward employees. For example, they were the ringleader behind an illegal anti-poaching conspiracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
  - MapsSlaps 4y ago
    Oh totally, I was more remarking on whether they were progressive at all. That's the part I'm not sure about.
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    > they Well, Steve Jobs specifically. Maybe because I am in denial, but I like to sort of differentiate the two. However you feel about the twain a decade ago, to be blunt, Steve is no more and Apple continues on.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      Jobs recruited Tim Cook to Apple, make Cook the COO, and then made Cook his successor. Moreover, Cook was the main driver for putting all of Apple manufacturing in totalitarian China, which has caused many difficulties for Apple's "progressive" image, because the Chinese government has forced Apple into censoring the App Store and even into censoring the operating systems (removing references to Taiwan, for example). Not to mention the often terrible working conditions in iPhone factories.
      - bcrosby95 4y ago
        Yeah, all ideals any large company claims to have are shed for the sake of China's market. That should be evidence enough that it's just a method to maximize their profits.
- Eric_WVGG 4y ago
  Specifically in the case of Starbucks, they absolutely think they are. Does anyone besides me remember that CEO Howard Schultz thought he should be president back in 2016? This whole thing just makes me want to shout from the rooftops: We do not have a left-wing party in the United States! The Democrats are anti-union and pro-austerity. We have a center-right party and a far-right party, that's it!
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    In the context of discourse in American politics -- and increasingly Canadian ones as well -- "left wing" has been rewritten to be almost exclusively about cultural politics. This is the only way one can decode everyday conversations when people talk about "the left"; they clearly don't mean what it meant "classically": socialist politics / economic policy, working class politics. It's basically a marginal position at this point to be outright pro-union, even more so to be pro-nationalization / pro-interventionist. Apart from outliers like maybe Bernie Sanders, an explicit working class orientation has been taken over almost completely by the populist right, and much of the self-identified "left" speaks mostly to the concerns of the upper middle class. Not just the mainstream of the US Democrats, but even much of what is spoken about by "the squad", or the Canadian NDP party. In some areas, if you break down voting maps by demographic, parties lumped in as "left wing" now tend to dominate in areas with higher incomes. Strongly working class areas often swing populist right. This was not the case even 20 years ago. Regular working people are not the audience anymore.
    - ticviking 4y ago
      Every socially conservative pro-labor movement in the USA is rapidly labeled as "fascist" in America, usually because they promote economic protectionism by reducing immigration and raising barriers to cheap imports from countries that don't protect their workers to the degree the US does.
      - MapsSlaps 4y ago
        Part of the problem is that those organizations allow fascists to enter them. (Like many left wing movements allow authoritarian communists -- tankies -- to enter them.) If a part of your platform is "No immigration" it becomes very difficult to distinguish that from "No immigration (because I don't like brown people)".
dehrmann 4y ago
Around 2015 (still under Schultz), I got the impression Starbucks actually cares about its partners. They paid above-market wages to attract good people and provided good benefits.
- peanuty1 4y ago
  AFAIK, they still do pay high wages and provide excellent benefits compared to other fast food chains.
  - hezralig 4y ago
    This isn't necessarily true although it is parroted quite a bit due to SBs excellent PR and marketing. One of the complains perusing the SB subreddits discuss how pay doesn't keep up with cost of living and that the benefits are difficult to qualify for due to the company scheduling hours under qualifying threshold for them in a 6 month period. It is also interesting to hear that these locations are running skeleton crews while overhiring just to be able to schedule each worker fewer hours.
- relbeek2 4y ago
  I can assure you that anything done by Shultz is a decision based purely on money and shareholder interest, masked as a benefit for partners.
dontlaugh 4y ago
There's no such thing as a progressive company. They do it for marketing reasons, only after a movement made up of many people taking risks "normalised" a particular form of social progress.
- cwkoss 4y ago
  If corporations are people, every one is a psychopath willing to lie and cheat to get what they want.
  - dontlaugh 4y ago
    Willing to murder too.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  There are companies though with a progressive image that appeals to their progressive customers. Whether Corporate™ are progressive or not, they best beware when they offend their customer base. To that end they are forced to behave progressively — so I don't think there's much of a distinction with regard to whether the company truly is or is not "progressive".
  - zabzonk 4y ago
    "progressive customers" are not the same as "social media influenced dimwits with more money than sense". or may be they are! and what the heck do you mean by "progressive"?
    - ticviking 4y ago
      The term is well understood and has its origins in the contrasting positions and approaches of "Progressive" and "Revolutionary" Marxists. It has come to mean anyone who is generally left-liberal and favors achieving those policy goals through gradual reform rather than sudden reform, or direct action.
      - 4y ago
nemo44x 4y ago
[flagged]
- slackdog 4y ago
  > They'll continue to turn up the dial on all the race/gender/sex preference things as they have since Occupy. Exactly, they want the focus to be on divides within the working class and away from the labor/capital class divide. This is why corporate DEI messaging is frequently very accusatory and divisive; the point is to make workers feel uncomfortable among themselves, and therefore, less likely to organize. It's designed to make workers walk on eggshells around each other.
glonq 4y ago
Those are companies with a progressive facade thanks to good marketing and PR. It is not possible to be a progressive mega corp.
slackdog 4y ago
Those apparent progressive values are actually corporate values. Corporate values and progressive values can at times come to the same conclusion about a matter for completely different reasons. In these cases it may seem as though the corporation is championing progressive values, but that's not actually what's going on. For instance, a progressive value is having a diverse workforce because discrimination and prejudice are immoral. A corporate value is having a diverse workforce because it makes labor organization harder. The corporate messaging about diversity initiatives this will appear to be progressive political messaging, but really isn't. Progressives support workplace diversity to combat prejudice, while corporations support workplace diversity to exploit prejudice. https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21228324/amazon-whole-foods-unionization-heat-map-union https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21228324/amazon-whole-foo...
nemo44x 4y ago
It’s how we end up with the incoherent “progressive” marketing of a chocolate company that is currently being sued for using child slave labor to source the chocolate that the trans woman celebrating women’s month wants me to buy.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

MapsSlaps 4y ago

Starbucks and Amazon are hardly "progressive". Most folks I know would describe them as pretty much bog standard big capitalist companies. Sure, they slap a rainbow logo on their twitter during June, but so does Raytheon. I'm less sure about Apple, which might actually have more of a progressive streak in it (I'm simply not knowledgable), but the other two are pretty much standard exploitative mega corps.

lapcat 4y ago
Apple is absolutely ruthless toward employees. For example, they were the ringleader behind an illegal anti-poaching conspiracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
- MapsSlaps 4y ago
  Oh totally, I was more remarking on whether they were progressive at all. That's the part I'm not sure about.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  > they Well, Steve Jobs specifically. Maybe because I am in denial, but I like to sort of differentiate the two. However you feel about the twain a decade ago, to be blunt, Steve is no more and Apple continues on.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Jobs recruited Tim Cook to Apple, make Cook the COO, and then made Cook his successor. Moreover, Cook was the main driver for putting all of Apple manufacturing in totalitarian China, which has caused many difficulties for Apple's "progressive" image, because the Chinese government has forced Apple into censoring the App Store and even into censoring the operating systems (removing references to Taiwan, for example). Not to mention the often terrible working conditions in iPhone factories.
    - bcrosby95 4y ago
      Yeah, all ideals any large company claims to have are shed for the sake of China's market. That should be evidence enough that it's just a method to maximize their profits.
Eric_WVGG 4y ago
Specifically in the case of Starbucks, they absolutely think they are. Does anyone besides me remember that CEO Howard Schultz thought he should be president back in 2016? This whole thing just makes me want to shout from the rooftops: We do not have a left-wing party in the United States! The Democrats are anti-union and pro-austerity. We have a center-right party and a far-right party, that's it!
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  In the context of discourse in American politics -- and increasingly Canadian ones as well -- "left wing" has been rewritten to be almost exclusively about cultural politics. This is the only way one can decode everyday conversations when people talk about "the left"; they clearly don't mean what it meant "classically": socialist politics / economic policy, working class politics. It's basically a marginal position at this point to be outright pro-union, even more so to be pro-nationalization / pro-interventionist. Apart from outliers like maybe Bernie Sanders, an explicit working class orientation has been taken over almost completely by the populist right, and much of the self-identified "left" speaks mostly to the concerns of the upper middle class. Not just the mainstream of the US Democrats, but even much of what is spoken about by "the squad", or the Canadian NDP party. In some areas, if you break down voting maps by demographic, parties lumped in as "left wing" now tend to dominate in areas with higher incomes. Strongly working class areas often swing populist right. This was not the case even 20 years ago. Regular working people are not the audience anymore.
  - ticviking 4y ago
    Every socially conservative pro-labor movement in the USA is rapidly labeled as "fascist" in America, usually because they promote economic protectionism by reducing immigration and raising barriers to cheap imports from countries that don't protect their workers to the degree the US does.
    - MapsSlaps 4y ago
      Part of the problem is that those organizations allow fascists to enter them. (Like many left wing movements allow authoritarian communists -- tankies -- to enter them.) If a part of your platform is "No immigration" it becomes very difficult to distinguish that from "No immigration (because I don't like brown people)".

dehrmann 4y ago

Around 2015 (still under Schultz), I got the impression Starbucks actually cares about its partners. They paid above-market wages to attract good people and provided good benefits.

peanuty1 4y ago
AFAIK, they still do pay high wages and provide excellent benefits compared to other fast food chains.
- hezralig 4y ago
  This isn't necessarily true although it is parroted quite a bit due to SBs excellent PR and marketing. One of the complains perusing the SB subreddits discuss how pay doesn't keep up with cost of living and that the benefits are difficult to qualify for due to the company scheduling hours under qualifying threshold for them in a 6 month period. It is also interesting to hear that these locations are running skeleton crews while overhiring just to be able to schedule each worker fewer hours.
relbeek2 4y ago
I can assure you that anything done by Shultz is a decision based purely on money and shareholder interest, masked as a benefit for partners.

dontlaugh 4y ago

There's no such thing as a progressive company. They do it for marketing reasons, only after a movement made up of many people taking risks "normalised" a particular form of social progress.

cwkoss 4y ago
If corporations are people, every one is a psychopath willing to lie and cheat to get what they want.
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  Willing to murder too.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
There are companies though with a progressive image that appeals to their progressive customers. Whether Corporate™ are progressive or not, they best beware when they offend their customer base. To that end they are forced to behave progressively — so I don't think there's much of a distinction with regard to whether the company truly is or is not "progressive".
- zabzonk 4y ago
  "progressive customers" are not the same as "social media influenced dimwits with more money than sense". or may be they are! and what the heck do you mean by "progressive"?
  - ticviking 4y ago
    The term is well understood and has its origins in the contrasting positions and approaches of "Progressive" and "Revolutionary" Marxists. It has come to mean anyone who is generally left-liberal and favors achieving those policy goals through gradual reform rather than sudden reform, or direct action.
    - 4y ago

nemo44x 4y ago

[flagged]

slackdog 4y ago
> They'll continue to turn up the dial on all the race/gender/sex preference things as they have since Occupy. Exactly, they want the focus to be on divides within the working class and away from the labor/capital class divide. This is why corporate DEI messaging is frequently very accusatory and divisive; the point is to make workers feel uncomfortable among themselves, and therefore, less likely to organize. It's designed to make workers walk on eggshells around each other.

glonq 4y ago

Those are companies with a progressive facade thanks to good marketing and PR. It is not possible to be a progressive mega corp.

slackdog 4y ago

Those apparent progressive values are actually corporate values. Corporate values and progressive values can at times come to the same conclusion about a matter for completely different reasons. In these cases it may seem as though the corporation is championing progressive values, but that's not actually what's going on. For instance, a progressive value is having a diverse workforce because discrimination and prejudice are immoral. A corporate value is having a diverse workforce because it makes labor organization harder. The corporate messaging about diversity initiatives this will appear to be progressive political messaging, but really isn't. Progressives support workplace diversity to combat prejudice, while corporations support workplace diversity to exploit prejudice. https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21228324/amazon-whole-foods-unionization-heat-map-union https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21228324/amazon-whole-foo...

nemo44x 4y ago

It’s how we end up with the incoherent “progressive” marketing of a chocolate company that is currently being sued for using child slave labor to source the chocolate that the trans woman celebrating women’s month wants me to buy.