Hey, remember that Canadian Wal-Mart that was trying to unionize? Well, guess what...

I think if they were ever backed into a real corner (as unlikely as that is) and forced to accept union workers by the US government or something, the entire executive board would commit ritual suicide just on principle.

Someone burn down all Wal-marts, plz.

See, I don't think this is entirely bullshit. They probably can't make an acceptable amount of money if they do business fairly, because their entire business model is based on being unfair.

I thought EA were bad.

Isn't that illegal? My friend won a $10,000 judgement from the labor dept. when his company shut down and set up shop in another city to fuck over a union.

Fast food does this shit too. "Fast Food Nation" had a chapter about a unionized burger king where they brought in something like 3 lawyers for every employee when they tried to unionize.

(And here's an article from today's New York Times about Wal-Mart's plans for NYC - and its opponent's plans for it.)

The idea of unionization in general has become so corrupt and deformed that the unions are almost worse than companies, especially the UFCW.

yeah, so, these sentiments are really scary, and totally incorrect. do you two mind elaborating? i'd love to know what you're basing these assumptions on.

The sad thing about either disallowing or simply not having unions (the IT industry even in Australia, a fairly union-supporting country, has no kind of union) is it forces people to launch class action suits and such instead. WHich feeds the same kind of bastards getting away with this shit to begin with. Scary.

Funnily I was sorta anti-union in my civil service days. In a govt job I just didnt see the point (and still dont, compared to corporate life)

I hear these kind of statements a lot, as if there were some golden age of unions when they were run by golden angels strumming harps. Unions have always been about power and money -- that's the whole point of unions: power and money and the relative distribution thereof. Of course the kind of people who end up running unions are often the same kind of power-hungry conniving schmucks who end up running corporations and Congress and pretty much everything else. Power and money attract those people like flies to shit. The point is that without a union, the money and power are much more closely controlled by a much smaller group of people, and the majority of the people whose work actually produces the money and power are disproportionately shut out from enjoying its benefits.

I've worked at 5 newspapers. Two had unions (including where I work now). I haven't been overly impressed with the union leadership either place. But then, I've rarely been impressed with the corporate leadership any place I've worked either. And guess which two newspapers have -- by far -- the best salaries and benefits? And somehow neither of them has come anywhere close to bankruptcy.

Which leads to the obvious point: Wal-Mart has to close that store, because as soon as it shows a quarterly profit (which it would), then their whole oh-god-unions-would-kill-us whine is exposed for the naked greed it is. Unions wouldn't kill Wal-Mart, they would just mean a little less cash for the Waltons and their biggest shareholders. I'm not unsympathetic to either the Waltons or the shareholders, but I'm more sympathetic to the people who actually show up at the stores day after day and make all that money in the first place.

The ting is you can actually vote for which money grubber is running the union, and they are supposed to be earning your vote. Not so for your boss.

That's just a different way of saying the same thing. "Right to choose" and "be treated fairly" have to do with both money and power. I hate that unions are held to some theoretical idealistic standard, like they're supposed to be all about love and peace and brotherhood, while corporate bosses are allowed to be as pigfuck greedy as they want because, hey, they're just doing business.

I have mixed feelings about closed-shop rules, but I understand how and why they evolved. And the bottom line is that the period of peak union membership and activism in the U.S. was also the period of peak expansion of the middle class, growth in college enrollment and real average wage growth. That wasn't only due to unions, but they played a significant role. And if a company like Wal-Mart was unionized, they would never get away with the compulsory unpaid overtime, overnight lock-ins and assorted other things that are apparently part of the business model.

Perhaps if you can't see the point of a union, then it's doing its job well.

And a union would make it fair? larf.

Walmart deserves a union so we can have another hockey strike situtation over there too.

The comparison was more for Walmart and NHL owners.

Yes thats a good point, I agree.

No, really, I agree with most of what's been said on this thread. I'm not against the idea of unions, and I'm not one of those "corporations will all take care of us" nuts, but unions are dicks sometimes.

unions don't, and shouldn't, exist for power and money. that's a nasty form of business unionism that has sadly taken root in the USA, and gives the movement a bad name. social unionism is the competing principle, and one that supercedes in canada, thankfully, whereby the union works on behalf of society as a whole, rather than their narrow membership. it's progressive, class-analysis-based unionism, rather than small-l liberal unionism. the business unionism that's being bashed here developed in the states as a reaction to 'red panic' fears, etc. and solidified in the glory days of HUAC. i understand that john sweeney and the SEIU, with the 'america needs a raise' campaign etc., have begun to move the AFL-CIO in a more progressive, broad-based social direction.

I'm all in favor of progressive union leadership, just like I'm in favor of progressive corporate leadership. But I don't think that progressivism, per se, or working for the betterment of society should be a standard by which unions are judged -- at least no more than corporate leadership is judged by those standards. And sure, I'd like to see everybody judged by those standards to some degree. But unions have a more pragmatic central purpose, which is to advocate for their members -- which is a matter of money and power, and there's no shame in that.

the central purpose of the labour movement is a better world; it's a utopian project, in it's origin and at it's heart. look at the earliest industrial unions, the OBU, the IWW: it was about advocating for everyone who was at the bottom of the pile.

the parallel between union leadership and corporate leadership is strange. union leaders are elected by and accountable to their membership. corporate 'leaders'/bosses are neither.

On the other hand, there's no reason unions can't be both effective advocates for their members and forces for general social good. For example, two of the U.S.'s largest unions (to one of which I pay dues, and gladly) are pushing for broad health care reform.

to rebut, nevertheless: i admit it is a very simplistic analysis, but i'll submit canada, with a stronger social unionism tradition and a 30-35% unionization rate to comparison with the US, with a stronger business unionism tradition and a 12% unionization rate. there are other contrasts, of course, such as the existence of a relatively strong social democratic party in canada, and radically different national gestation periods, not to mention quebec*, etc. but i do think that the current dispartity in unionization can be related to social v. business unions.

*i am not as knowledgeable as i'd like to be on quebecois vs. canadian labour movements, but it is notable that though the UFCW has been after walmat for ages, their first success is quebec.

But I don't believe the kind of union you approve of most is possible in the US right now. Which leaves my argument... where, I'm not sure.

Why is it not possible right now fishy-fingers? Do you think global outsourcing is too undermining? That's what I would think. I hear that right now, lots of weak, business dominated mainstream unions actually actively work against international labor organizing. That should be the first thing to work on.

Which others? The business owners? So once again, it's OK for the owners to organize (i.e. incorporate) but not for workers to do the same?

The American people hold a "monopoly" in that their government isn't supposed to hire illegal aliens?

This is turning into one of those ridiculous discussions on the internets. I don't see how you can compare a union's ability to respresent every person in a company's available labor pool with a company, say, making all the radios in the country. And I don't see what the point would be if that even made sense. Do you want to see competition between unions or something?

-- MindInRewind (brune...) (webmail), February 14th, 2005 1:51 PM. (Barry Bruner) (link)

fuck!!!!!!!!!

Student employees are capped at $10 an hour here

I got relatively the same amount as you Barry (remember, east coast living is cheap) without having to fork over dues, and the pay scale was adjusted over the 4 years I terrorized lab students. So the Chem instructors got paid a little bit more which helped.
Then again we were also void of any fraternities and weathered four strikes in six years from the three unions that used us poor students like pawns. The janitor strike was the harshest.

There was a strike at U of T in 2000, the York strike (2001?) was quite different because their faculty are also unionized, so ALL teaching on campus was completely shut down in that case.

xpost

So is education an essential service or not?

xposts

of course, it's a great idea to treat employment like shopping at a mall, comparing prices, weighing options. it's not like you ever need to take a crappy job to pay rent, eh? your lone holdout will prompt them to change their ways. never mind the ballot, just vote with your dollars, folks! collective economic action is for fools; do it alone!

at the moment, i'm studying the consistent framing of labour issues as consumer, rather than social issues. i.e. the only info provided in, say, the american airlines fight attendant's strike is consumer info, flight avaliability etc, rather than why there's a dispute at all, the relative wages of a flight attendant vs. the ceo, and the grotesque disparity between the full time and part time wage scales. in effect, by watching the news, you'd think that a strike = a blizzard, for all the control we have over it.

Arthur Miller, from Timebends (quoted in Bob Herbert, "The Public Thinker," NY Times, Feb 14, 2005)

No, I took 2 crappy jobs (or more) to pay the rent and school, but nice try. I applaud the effort.

i'm just suggesting that turning down a job because it's lousy is rarely an option, as you make clear here yourself. saying 'you didn't have to take the job if the money was bad', as you did earlier, is really disingenuous.

"abilities" hahahaha. Yeah, right.

It depends on the Wal-Mart in question. For this one, probably not.

And performance had nothing to do with it? That seems weird. Most unions have provisions at the very least for write ups and things of that nature.

Were you a teacher perchance? Sounds like the way teachers' pay is generally calculated. I don't know, I don't have a problem with some amount of merit pay on top of a base salary -- but I do think any such system ought to be negotiated with labor representatives. Otherwise anything like that lends itself to blatant abuse and favoritism by management.

Also, it's worth keeping in mind that unionized teachers at public schools get paid on average more than non-union teachers at private schools.

I meant the company as a whole, don. The episode mentioned in the question at the top is a pretty good case study on why enforceable labor standards shouldn't be optional - because then the company can just pack up and open somewhere else.

I think unionization at Wal-Mart would be bad for the company as a whole.

The WalMart referenced in this thread was never profitable from its opening. There's no evidence to suggest that unionization would increase the possibility of profitability and really, there's no reason to even assume it. To the contrary, there's ample evidence that unionization raises employment costs and would thus make profitability more difficult.

Well yeah, but that's only because wages count as liabilities rather than assets on corporate balance sheets. What we're really talking about is profit-sharing -- taking some greater percentage of the revenue and sharing it with the people who help generate it. Which basically gets into the old argument about who deserves to benefit from the fruits of labor.

According to WalMart, mind you, who have ahem been less than scrupulous in their dealings on matters like this.

Yes (with the exception of "well-paid", which is a bit of a red herring here.) Are you saying that this is the absolute result of unionization? What are the negative effects of unionization and if there are any, should they be considered in the corporate strategy?

If not, shouldn't corporate America be forced to take a long look in the mirror?

There's not one corporation that I can think of that wants a workforce lacking in health, motivation, experience, or lacking morale in compensation issues. Not one. It's not an either/or proposition with regards to unionization. In fact, a key element to WalMart's incredible growth has been the morale of its employees and its corporate culture.

According to WalMart, mind you, who have ahem been less than scrupulous in their dealings on matters like this.

Like unions are the shining beacon of integrity in matters such as this.

Well yeah, but that's only because wages count as liabilities rather than assets on corporate balance sheet

Yeah, pesky accounting rules that were made up to punish The Working Man. The profitability issue with regards to unions goes beyond one line on the balance sheet.

(x-post)

I didn't realize that Unions had the opportunity to bake corporate books. Who knew?!

Why would they bother with those when they're busy cooking their own?

You're kidding, right? This is like the bread and butter of the fast food industry!

Digress, digress, digress. Yawn.

It is definitely in many corporations interest to have an underpaid, unhealthy, un-motivated, (and let's not forget uneducated) workforce.

Name one corporation who has that interest.

Awesome response Alex. You're so intellectually intimidating that I am afraid to take your challenge. Oh, and I have to go take a shit, which is more appealing than going back and forth with the likes of you at this juncture.

don, you're way off base. sweatshops, for one, are the living antithesis of what you're trying to suggest. how does sweatshop labour figure into your analysis?

x-post again, don, that's weak.

No, it's just that complaining about "profitability" is disingenuous -- any wage increase harms "profitability." Setting profitability as some kind of objective measure of whether something is good or bad for a company automatically takes the side of owners/management against workers. Granted, if there are no profits, nobody can get paid. But as long as there are profits, the question is how to divide them up. The union position is that more of them should stay with the workers. That's at least as defensible morally and otherwise as taking the opposite line.

Profitability is one of the key measurements of a corporation, so I'm not sure why it should be easily dismissed. It's you who disingenuously set it aside as a mere line item in a ledger.

Profitability does not assume an opposition between ownership/management and "workers." Profitability is a vital measurement of viability, and the question of dividing them up is much more related to ownership than simply increasing wages in accordance with profit margins. Ownership implies long term investment, whereas non-ownership does not. Ownership (and the management it hires to represent its interest) is going to make decisions (allegedly) that will increase the return on investment. A union does not have the same stake in the operation of the company; they do not put assets at risk. That is why the question of "dividing up" profits is at the discretion of the owners. That said, the agency problem is a real one, which is why so many corporations struggle with issues like this.

It is absolutely morally defensible to try to get the most compensation or job security as possible. I'm not arguing that it's not, and I encourage everyone to absolutely be treated fairly in all aspects of employment. But the union position is rarely solely concerned with mere profit sharing--the conflict usually arises more with management issues.

FWIW, I've been a union member, and I've worked the management and ownership side as well.

It's not that profitability isn't possible with unions--witness Southwest Airlines, whose relationship with unions is one of the key elements of its success, especially in an industry that has enormous union problems (Eastern's problems destroyed it, for example.) But Southwest entered the industry knowing that the unions were key to their success and they managed it well.

WalMart's different. They've never had to deal with the unions, it's not at all part of their corporate culture--they've gone to great lengths to create an environment that would make unionization less attractive. The transition cost would be enormous to WalMart, and the uncertainty would be costly to shareholders. So if you're the corporation, you're almost certainly going be against it unless you have credible studies that unionization will be good for the expected returns. Those studies have yet to appear anywhere.

This doesn't absolve WalMart for their negligent employment practices or boorish behavior on property rights or anything else. But it doesn't mean that unionization will be better in the long term either.

Of course, any company can be more profitable by keeping their costs down. You can do the fuzzy math and claim "well, we WOULD be a lot more profitable if we only didn't have those pesky employees cutting into the profit margin", or look at at fair treatment of employees as a necessary expense.

What exactly are you asking me?

Employees are a key expense. A company like Wal-Mart is more profitable BECAUSE they treat their employees like crap.

They don't uniformly treat their employees like crap. If you study the history of the company, they built it doing the exact opposite. The company's tremendous growth is directly related to the corporate culture and the relations with the employees. However, management has changed--some people point to Sam Walton's death as the beginning of change in corporate culture, others see it as a more recent phenomenon.

Of course, any company can be more profitable by keeping their costs down, and if you want to do the fuzzy math and claim "well, we WOULD be a lot more profitable if we only didn't have those pesky employees cutting into the profit margin".

WalMart's obsessed with costs, and I'd argue that it manifests itself much, much more in the areas of logistics and vendor relations than employees.

But of course a company wants to keep labor costs as low as possible, but that doesn't mean that they want to maliciously exploit. Who gets to decide what's fair and isn't? Is it the unions or the owners? If unions think it's unfair, are they right or are the owners? How do we decide?

Of course it has to be measured. But any company with a profit -- i.e. a company that makes more money than it spends -- can decide how to divvy up those profits. If you put them into higher wages, you'll have a lower profit margin. But that doesn't mean you're hurting the company; you're taking care of the people who actually make up the company and make it work (as opposed to the people who theoretically own it on paper).

One thing that is fundamentally unhealthy about the corporate model is that the expectations of investors for constant year-over-year, quarter-over-quarter growth in profits is that it becomes no longer enough to simply run a business profitably -- you constantly have to run it 10 percent more profitably than this time last year. Sometimes that's possible with actual growth; a lot of times it requires squeezing the workforce (that "higher productivity" we hear so much about, which often just means the same people working longer hours for the same pay), deferring needed infrastructure improvements, or outright jiggery-pokery (hello HealthSouth, WorldCom, etc.). Companies run for the benefit of shareholders tend to end up shortchanging both workers and customers. In that environment especially, organized labor is at least a partial counterweight.

Several of us on this thread have pointed to sweatshops, the fastfood industry, garment industry, etc. as being examples of corporations with a clear and definite interest in a workforce that is "lacking in health, motivation, experience, or morale in compensation issues". You said no corporations are interested in such a workforce - yet these industries are perfect examples of corporations deliberately investing in and developing just these kinds of workforces. Explain.

This is often true, as the pressure of shareholders often leads to poor judgement on behalf of the officers. This is commonly referred to as "the agency problem." And as I noted earlier, it's a rather large problem with no obivious solution. And yes, organized labor can be a partial counterweight to this issue. But it's far from a) a panacea or b) an obvious solution at WalMart. There seems to be an assumption on this thread that WalMart, as a corporation, can profitability weather a transition to unionization. Unfortunately, I do not buy that assumption outright and have seen no evidence to support it--I'm open to the idea of unionization but I would prefer to see compelling evidence that it would not destroy the company or punatively hurt longterm operations. I do not see unionization as the only solution to employment problems at WalMart.

So your point is valid gypsy. Also, as I posted before, productivity increases have largely come with technology, especially at WalMart. Wide scale mechanization, logistics improvements, and pinching vendors has fortified the company much more than keeping labor costs down. Not that labor costs are irrelevant--they are, especially with WalMart's margins--they're just less influential than that other stuff when it comes to productivity.

I don't find it reasonable to explain something with the kind of scope you are asking--it's bad enough that I've bothered to wade into WalMart and the current state of labor relations.

But I will say this: saying that a corporation would prefer to degrade and destroy and demoralize its workforce for simplistic, short term gain is not believable. You're setting up a philosophical trap that cannot possibly be explained in the time we have to discuss it. You paint entire industries with a wide brush and then expect me to defend them? It's a loaded exercise. Tell ya what, if you can show me one company who openly states that it is their objective to treat employees the way you say they do, then let's start with that and I'll address it.

But again, profitability depends on several other factors. It is not an independently measurable quantity.

In the case of WalMart, if their workers were unionized, then they couldn't sell deck chairs for $9.77, they'd have to sell them for $10.91, which would undoubtedly cut into profits. And maybe that's not a workable business model for them, because they rely so much on their ability to keep sale prices low in order to bring in more business.

However, the other side of the fuzzy math coin is this: if their employees were unionized, then they might have never grown to be such a big company, because they would have had to sell their chairs for $10.91 and therefore wouldn't have had such a sales price advantage over other retailers.

Stop with the theorizing for a moment and reread the first post on this thread.

"We were hoping it wouldn't come to this," said Andrew Pelletier, a spokesman for Wal-Mart Canada. "Despite nine days of meetings over three months, we've been unable to reach an agreement with the union that in our view will allow the store to operate efficiently and profitably."

If that's not an attempt to demoralize and degrade a workforce for simplistic, short term gain, then I don't know what is.

Do you know the details of the negotiations? What exactly did each side offer? You have no idea. So to assume that it was WalMart who was unreasonable is an assumption I'm not prepared to grant you. There's a good reason that both sides aren't showing their hand of cards in this issue in great detail.

If they can't make money and show some respect for their workers (and the employees of their vendors who -- you're right -- bear the real brunt of the Wal-Mart cudgel), then I'm not sure their business model deserves to survive.

As someone whose worked with WalMart directly as a vendor in the past, I can assure you that it can be very, very unpleasant. They like to beat you up on price and service and then expect you to "do better" the next time you negotiate. It's brutal.

Again, WalMart built their business on developing powerful relationships with their employees. Their company culture (like Southwest's) has been widely studied, copied, and appropriated because of its success. But things have changed, and many think that WalMart's size is an impediment to growth. They are a huge target for litigation, and deservedly so in many cases. Unionization may be the best option for some WalMart location, but companywide it would likely be pretty devasting.

i honestly believe that if a company can't handle the financial implications of giving it's employees a fair deal, then the resulting 'devastation' is just desserts. a business model that depends on exploitation is plainly immoral, and i question a society whose laws don't concur.

The floor is set by fights. I can see what don's saying here, and it reminds me a little of what somebody told me a year or two after I finished college. She was a project manager at a web design company. She told me how revolting she found her company's new attitude of "team work" and "synergy" and how the designers and coders needed to compromise more with production deadlines, and that in turn producers also needed to listen to their creative types and push back at the clients on their behalf. She said she agreed up to a point, but that each department had a role to play and should be playing it to the hilt. Left to themselves, designers would design for six months. Left to themselves, producers would just follow the letter of the brief. But rather than try to understand each other's point of view, she said, the two sides should argue it out. "We shouldn't try to be a big happy family. We wouldn't make great stuff if we were." Isn't it this attitude that underlies the CEO's legal - written in stone - obligation to undertake no action that would imperil his company's profits? In any case, profit at the expense of all else - if necessary - is an incredibly bold, simple, and elegant mandate to tether someone to. But there should be other tethers, other mandates - a living wage, fair trade, etc (which are all political issues; somehow "profit" escapes this taint) and the people charged to keep them ought to have the same amount of power and leverage to throw around as CEOs do. But I think I agree that there's no other way to do it but arguing, and fighting, and sticking to your guns. If CEOs needs to think about profit and naught else, fine - but they shouldn't be surprised to run into people, or groups of people, with very different - but just as single-minded - priorities. It's how "great work" gets done. (The power imbalance between management and workers in the US reminds me of the power imbalance between Labour and the Tories in the UK. Only Labour people at least have the - somewhat sneering - grace to insist on a robust opposition.)

Right. And even more than that, Wal-Mart top managment knows very well how their business model affects their managers, their employees, their contractors and their vendors. Every time it turns out some regional manager is forcing employees to do unpaid overtime, or locking in the night shift, or some Wal-Mart supplier is running a sweatshop, the top management piously pronounces itself shocked and points to the relevant passages in the Wal-Mart handbook to demonstrate their good intent ("3. We do not condone unpaid overtime. 4. We do not condone sweatshop labor. 5. Employees who are vomiting blood should be permitted to leave early without risk of termination"). Then they fire whatever manager or contractor got caught cutting corners. But they do nothing about the insane demands for ever higher productivity and lower costs that produce all those things in the first place. So the real message to managers isn't "Don't require unpaid overtime," it's "Don't get caught."

fuck a jack welch too. i'm a capitalist who IS FUCKING TIRED of corporate america shill/apologists who 1) don't know how to run a business (duh LONG TERM PROFITS and ORGANIC GROWTH are more important than who you can buy next week) (M&A's up big for January 2005 way to go team!) (oh fuck no one's hiring still) 2) won't fucking admit it! grow the fuck up. the "new economy" (20+ years of reaganism-slash-clintonism isn't new) doesn't fucking work.

right, which is why it wouldn't matter if they unionized! they already have their suppliers by the balls re: cost and that alone has given them better margins than their competitors for years.

or maybe you think k-mart and target (pre-rebranding) treated their employees well too?

Wide scale mechanization, logistics improvements, and pinching vendors has fortified the company much more than keeping labor costs down.

so amazing. you're contradicting yourself!

Tell ya what, if you can show me one general who openly states that is is fun to shoot afghanis...

oh wait, bad example, that guy DID get in trouble.

"I ain't giving nobody a fucking r."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050413/bs_nm/retail_walmart_dc

here goes nothing...