7 ms·

Average people get all upset about unions when they see them applied to jobs that don't seem too too demanding. But places like Walmart and Amazon are exactly

by ck2 13y ago

Average people get all upset about unions when they see them applied to jobs that don't seem too too demanding. But places like Walmart and Amazon are exactly why unions should exist, to counterbalance the inhumane over-optimization and maltreatment of people. Amazon could probably make work less toxic by hiring 10% more people, but that would make things cost a few cents more.

csmuk 13y ago
Yes and no. This subject somewhat angers me. Yes people like Walmart and Amazon workers need protection form maltreatment. Definitely. This should be built into the law though, not into unions. And no because the existing unions don't really protect people. If you look at RMT, Unison and NUT they regularly pop up just to cause trouble. From a perspective of people having to consume services offered by their staff regularly, they want masses of additional pay and do not improve standards along the way at all. They are simply allowing the incompetent to be propped up by the good staff. Also, the professional minority who agree that this is the case are forced to be dragged into union ballots and vote with other staff in favour of strike action regularly in fear of retaliation from their colleagues. Also let us not forget a much greater threat of exploitation: being forced to work with no pay under the guise of "training". This is happening a lot in the UK a the moment as the Job Centre has been pushing for people to do this by threatening to cut their benefits if they don't do it. The result is people being forced to work for no compensation and having to pay for travel expenses out of their own (literally destitute) pocket. The employers don't have to pay the staff either. The result of this is a dangled carrot of "if you do this, after 6-12 months we'll give you a permanent paid position". This inevitably results in being laid off as not needed immediately when they agreed to take you on. There are even posters going up in Job Centres telling people "try staff for free": http://imgur.com/SdWpgvx http://imgur.com/SdWpgvx Edit: Also I've spoken to some business associates (the sort who worship the fully paid up Lord Fuckwit Sugar himself) and are applauding this as a great way of building their businesses. This is simply unethical. I've been pretty much excluded for mentioning the inevitable "abhorrent slavery" point, not that I care.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  This is happening a lot in the UK a the moment as the Job Centre has been pushing for people to do this by threatening to cut their benefits if they don't do it. The result is people being forced to work for no compensation and having to pay for travel expenses out of their own (literally destitute) pocket. From the perspective of the employee/trainee, the only difference I see between this situation and actual employment is that the name on the check is different from the name of the employer. So what's the big deal?
  - Nursie 13y ago
    They have to pay their own travel expenses, if you do the calculations then they get less than minimum wage and they are threatened with having even that withdrawn. And the taxpayer foots the bill instead of the business, which as a societal meme can just go f*ck itself.
  - arethuza 13y ago
    Exactly, far better off to have the unemployed doing something rather than sitting round watching daytime TV. [Note that I say that as someone who actually has signed on for a bit when I was a daft kid and done some pretty ghastly manual laboring jobs in agriculture and fishing]. Mind you I think having to pay their own travelling expenses is a bit harsh (mind you the first employment I had was for 12-15 hour shifts and I had to cycle 45 minutes to get there and back.)
    - csmuk 13y ago
      Disagree: 1. The business should foot the wage. 2. The wage should be fair. Doing something isn't actually necessarily possible. We've automated a big chunk of people's jobs away. There isn't necessarily a place for everyone to work now. Not only that, we're living longer. Provisions need to be made for these facts.
      - arethuza 13y ago
        You could argue as the loaded cost of employing anyone is a good bit more than their salary that any employer is making a contribution. (Usual rule of thumb is ~50% of salary for fully loaded costs - and that's without any thing fancy).
Houshalter 13y ago
Hopefully this becomes more and more automated over time and eventually people won't have to do it at all.
- csmuk 13y ago
  See my point in a sibling post. The government want to keep unemployment statistics down so they will end up forcing people into training placements and unpaid internships without a job at the end instead. This is already happening.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  Of course, "people won't have to do it all" also implies "the future doesn't need us". Currently those poor workers are cheaper than the machines that could do the same job. Once the machines become cheaper than a sustenance-wage for a human, there will be literally no jobs for those people, ever. And than means that either by that time we drastically change our distribution of resources - where 'having a job' is not needed for living; or expect literal class warfare.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    >And than means that either by that time we drastically change our distribution of resources - where 'having a job' is not needed for living; or expect literal class warfare. So? We've been due for class warfare for decades now. The sooner the better. I'm tired of seeing the entire planet's worth of societies optimized for hoarding capital. Enough!
    - PeterisP 13y ago
      I'm not sure if anyone should be happy about the prospects of literal class warfare, i.e., a large portion of society being so disenfranchised that they need to resort to mass violence in order to survive. There are 3 possible outcomes to that: (a) the warfare is limited and we're back to the same decision point (how do we change society?) but lots people have suffered for no good reason; (b) the fighting ends with 'permanently jobless' getting physically eliminated in large numbers - increasingly sophisticated military/police forces + growing drone warfare may make it a possible outcome; (c) the fighting ends with them winning, and implementing, as I said, "drastically change our distribution of resources - where 'having a job' is not needed for living;". Why don't we just agree on (c) and implement it without need for bloodshed? There will be in my lifetime billions of people without a possibility for any economically viable "job", i.e., the rest of society doesn't need anything at all from them, not their labor, not their services, not their flesh. They still need resources to live. So either they'll (a) not get those resources and not live; (b) we'll simply give them those resources; or (c) they'll try to take those resources - but in the end it results in (a) or (b) anyways.

by ck2 13y ago

csmuk 13y ago

Yes and no. This subject somewhat angers me. Yes people like Walmart and Amazon workers need protection form maltreatment. Definitely. This should be built into the law though, not into unions. And no because the existing unions don't really protect people. If you look at RMT, Unison and NUT they regularly pop up just to cause trouble. From a perspective of people having to consume services offered by their staff regularly, they want masses of additional pay and do not improve standards along the way at all. They are simply allowing the incompetent to be propped up by the good staff. Also, the professional minority who agree that this is the case are forced to be dragged into union ballots and vote with other staff in favour of strike action regularly in fear of retaliation from their colleagues. Also let us not forget a much greater threat of exploitation: being forced to work with no pay under the guise of "training". This is happening a lot in the UK a the moment as the Job Centre has been pushing for people to do this by threatening to cut their benefits if they don't do it. The result is people being forced to work for no compensation and having to pay for travel expenses out of their own (literally destitute) pocket. The employers don't have to pay the staff either. The result of this is a dangled carrot of "if you do this, after 6-12 months we'll give you a permanent paid position". This inevitably results in being laid off as not needed immediately when they agreed to take you on. There are even posters going up in Job Centres telling people "try staff for free": http://imgur.com/SdWpgvx http://imgur.com/SdWpgvx Edit: Also I've spoken to some business associates (the sort who worship the fully paid up Lord Fuckwit Sugar himself) and are applauding this as a great way of building their businesses. This is simply unethical. I've been pretty much excluded for mentioning the inevitable "abhorrent slavery" point, not that I care.

yummyfajitas 13y ago
This is happening a lot in the UK a the moment as the Job Centre has been pushing for people to do this by threatening to cut their benefits if they don't do it. The result is people being forced to work for no compensation and having to pay for travel expenses out of their own (literally destitute) pocket. From the perspective of the employee/trainee, the only difference I see between this situation and actual employment is that the name on the check is different from the name of the employer. So what's the big deal?
- Nursie 13y ago
  They have to pay their own travel expenses, if you do the calculations then they get less than minimum wage and they are threatened with having even that withdrawn. And the taxpayer foots the bill instead of the business, which as a societal meme can just go f*ck itself.
- arethuza 13y ago
  Exactly, far better off to have the unemployed doing something rather than sitting round watching daytime TV. [Note that I say that as someone who actually has signed on for a bit when I was a daft kid and done some pretty ghastly manual laboring jobs in agriculture and fishing]. Mind you I think having to pay their own travelling expenses is a bit harsh (mind you the first employment I had was for 12-15 hour shifts and I had to cycle 45 minutes to get there and back.)
  - csmuk 13y ago
    Disagree: 1. The business should foot the wage. 2. The wage should be fair. Doing something isn't actually necessarily possible. We've automated a big chunk of people's jobs away. There isn't necessarily a place for everyone to work now. Not only that, we're living longer. Provisions need to be made for these facts.
    - arethuza 13y ago
      You could argue as the loaded cost of employing anyone is a good bit more than their salary that any employer is making a contribution. (Usual rule of thumb is ~50% of salary for fully loaded costs - and that's without any thing fancy).

Houshalter 13y ago

Hopefully this becomes more and more automated over time and eventually people won't have to do it at all.

csmuk 13y ago
See my point in a sibling post. The government want to keep unemployment statistics down so they will end up forcing people into training placements and unpaid internships without a job at the end instead. This is already happening.
PeterisP 13y ago
Of course, "people won't have to do it all" also implies "the future doesn't need us". Currently those poor workers are cheaper than the machines that could do the same job. Once the machines become cheaper than a sustenance-wage for a human, there will be literally no jobs for those people, ever. And than means that either by that time we drastically change our distribution of resources - where 'having a job' is not needed for living; or expect literal class warfare.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  >And than means that either by that time we drastically change our distribution of resources - where 'having a job' is not needed for living; or expect literal class warfare. So? We've been due for class warfare for decades now. The sooner the better. I'm tired of seeing the entire planet's worth of societies optimized for hoarding capital. Enough!
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    I'm not sure if anyone should be happy about the prospects of literal class warfare, i.e., a large portion of society being so disenfranchised that they need to resort to mass violence in order to survive. There are 3 possible outcomes to that: (a) the warfare is limited and we're back to the same decision point (how do we change society?) but lots people have suffered for no good reason; (b) the fighting ends with 'permanently jobless' getting physically eliminated in large numbers - increasingly sophisticated military/police forces + growing drone warfare may make it a possible outcome; (c) the fighting ends with them winning, and implementing, as I said, "drastically change our distribution of resources - where 'having a job' is not needed for living;". Why don't we just agree on (c) and implement it without need for bloodshed? There will be in my lifetime billions of people without a possibility for any economically viable "job", i.e., the rest of society doesn't need anything at all from them, not their labor, not their services, not their flesh. They still need resources to live. So either they'll (a) not get those resources and not live; (b) we'll simply give them those resources; or (c) they'll try to take those resources - but in the end it results in (a) or (b) anyways.