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Apple Store Employee Attempts To Form Union
An anonymous reader writes "Cory Moll, a part-time employee at an Apple store in San Francisco, is attempting unionize Apple store employees. The Apple Retail Workers Union is an attempt to fight for better wages and benefits and to address what he says are unfair practices in the company's glass-and-steel retail showrooms. 'The core issues are definitely involve compensation, pay, benefits,' said Mr. Moll, who has received little public support from employees so far, though he said he has emails expressing support. An Apple representative confirmed Mr. Moll is an employee, but declined to comment on the union effort."
Yeah, go ahead and form your "union". You will quickly find out just how replaceable you are.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If you feel you're not being paid enough, ask for a raise. If you don't get it and you're still unhappy, then change workplace. It's not that hard. And this is even from a part-time employee...
Is how many of them that don't allow their own employees to unionize.
Since when do part timers even get to talk about unions in the first place? Furthermore, you can 'unionize' all you want but the company you work for doesn't have to listen to you, or continue your employment.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Judging by these mindless Apple puppet-droids is it not just a case of locating the big plastic button in the middle of their backs, releasing the small plastic panel and just popping out their batteries?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
From getting a new job!
This guys says he wants to unionize, but it seems he hasn't done anything more than ask a couple of other people if they supported it. That's it.
In short, he hasn't attempted anything yet. Its basically a thought that hasn't gotten off the ground. Personally I hope Apple just fires this guy before he starts to cause more trouble.
their middle class is bigger than the entire US population, you know?
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Seriously, never heard anything like this. Most union reps I know belong to the very same.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Well done Cory and best wishes for success. Unionisation is by far the most effective method of enhancing working conditions for all workers, regardless of industry sector. Too many in tech consider themselves "above all that" and allow themselves to be exploited by their employers. People should consider who really benefits from their labour before criticising a worthwhile venture.
Reminds me that Americans are assholes when it comes to labor rights.
This can't be a career move for most people. The folks I see working in an Apple Store are mostly young and likely are also going to school or university. And $14 a hour while earning a degree isn't too bad. Sure you could earn more somewhere else, but from what I've heard Apple doesn't treat their employees too poorly at all. Not to mention that from the conversations I've overheard in the store, what Apple really needs to do is train them a little better. It's not as bad as other electronics retailers I won't mention. Look if you feel you're worth more, then look around. If you really are you will get hired and earn more compensation. If you're not you'll earn a low hourly wage. Apple still has to pay what the market will bear. Unfortunately for Apple Store employees that appears to be $14/hour.
If you feel you're not being paid enough, ask for a raise. If you don't get it and you're still unhappy, then change workplace. It's not that hard. And this is even from a part-time employee...
I'm not fond of unions myself. I like the idea, but unions are like every other organization: they refuse to disband or become inactive when their goals are accomplished. For unions, once safe workplaces and decent wages are established, the next growth area for them is politics and that's the problem. But to play Devil's advocate here... I have a question for you.
If we do things your way it will turn into a race to the bottom. If you are not being paid enough (and actually have a legitimate reason to believe that), sure you can change jobs. That won't be easy in this job market but it can be done. The problem is, your replacement is going to make the same inadequate wage that you did and is likely to make less since they just joined and haven't been with the company any length of time. You have no guarantee you won't end up in the same situation at the new company you work for, especially in the form of added responsibilities with no matching increase in pay. When this keeps happening across an industry it serves to stagnate wages or even drive them down.
Just think about mobile phone providers in the US. There are several different companies. They compete with each other. You'd think this would have certain effects, such as at least one company that charges a realistic rate for text messaging that actually reflects the marginal cost of delivery. The first company to do that could seriously undercut the competition. Fact is, they all grossly overcharge for texting and they all make more money that way. None of them want to rock that boat. It's de facto collusion, of the sort that doesn't have to be deliberately pre-arranged. Why do you think that can't happen to the job market? If no employer will pay a wage that realistically reflects the value you provide for the company, you either suck it up or get a new skillset and find a different line of work.
A union can actually force an employer to pay a higher, or if you like more reasonable, wage. That can be the case whether the employee is you or someone else. They can increase the average "going rate" for a worker in your industry, something other companies do look at when deciding how to attract the talent they want. Unions are an answer to the fact that any single employee is going to be replacable and that employers generally have the advantage in the job market due to overwhelming resources and the effects of "organization vs. individual, let's bargain".
What irritates me, especially of US companies is that they make billions over the back of poor people that work for them and try to do anything to keep these people from getting at least fair payment.
I think Steve Jobs like many of his peers is a very pathetic human being.
they're also about organizing people into voting blocks. Think of what the AARP does. You can't touch Social Security & Medicare because old people are organized, they vote, and they've got the AARP telling them HOW to vote so they don't have to spend their time figuring out if candidate A can be trusted to leave SS & Medicare alone. The idea is works organize, form voting blocks, and if all else fails put laws in place (tariffs, min wages, socialized medicine) to protect themselves.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Why is anyone even bothering to report this story?
One part time employee doesn't like his job, but his first thought isn't to quit and go work elsewhere?
Unions are a relic of the "one job for life" generation. These days worker mobility does more to keep a check on pay and conditions than any of the unions, who care only about what power they can hold on to for the union leaders themselves.
Perhaps this chap might be about to discover a thing or two about the flexible job market himself - I doubt very much a part time retail drone generating headlines like this would go down well with any employer.
Philosopher (n) - a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity
if they weren't dragging me down to the pits of hell with them.
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you can't remove the battery yourself!
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If it's unfair for Apple to employ people in a particular way, then it's unfair for Company X to employ them in a particular way.
Minimum wage (an artifact of the early labor movement) is fair in this regard. It applies equally to all employers. It doesn't require dues. It doesn't require membership in an organization. It's a right conferred simply by being a worker.
If it's unfair to employ workers in a particular way at a retail computer store, then he shouldn't form a union. Instead, he should argue for a uniform pay and benefit scale for retail computer store workers, and get bills passed in relevant jurisdictions.
That would be an extension of minimum wage in some sense.
Please note, I'm not actually saying that this is a good idea. A regime of job classifications and compensations standards imposed by government could be undesireable regulation. I'm just saying that unions have fundamental problems because they end up applying rules based on what's essentially luck of the draw. They also require expensive ongoing maintenance (dues) for you to retain those rules, whereas you could maintain favorable labor laws more cheaply simply by voting.
I don't think that's iLlowed.
Historically, unions aimed at a single company fail pretty miserably, Unions live or die by numerical strength, and you can't get that if one company can scab the entire membership out. Now if they got Best Buy, Radio Shack, etc on board and called themselves the "electronics salesforce union", they might have a chance. Short of that, it'll just be a flash in the pan.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
Seriously, for a retail/tech grunt job, Apple treats their employees better than most. Just talk to anyone who has worked at Best Buy. I'd expect to see a lot more jobs unionizing before Apple Store employees do it. What the hell?
The 30-year-old employee...
Ah, there we go. 30 years old and working a retail job. Way to go, pal. You know what? YOU ARE EXPENDABLE. You're not skilled labor. There are people lined up to work at Apple Stores who could do your job. Supply and demand applies to labor as well as products, you know. Apple is treating you well as it is. It's not their fault you wound up in a retail storefront at the age of 30. I don't think anyone should expect to make a career there unless they move up the ladder (at least to management of some sort), at which point you'll get better pay and benefits anyway. What a fucking joke.
I mean, it pains me to even look in the window when I walk by! Employees have to be at work by 10am, spend all day in a well-air-conditioned (or well-heated, depending on the time of year) office, work with the latest technology, learn skills that will help them get ahead in life, get free iPhones, get discounts on any Apple products they or their family or friends want to buy ...
Dude, if you don't like your job, go find a different one. I dare you! My guess is you'll find that things aren't all so bad working for Apple.
Alternatively, you could stop wasting time trying to form a union and focus on being better at your job. Next thing you know, you'll get offered a full-time job, get promoted, and get paid more. And then you'll be happy that Apple can reward you for being better at your job than other employees instead of being shackled by union rules about how much someone in a given person should make.
Steve's real cool. You'll see.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Cory Moll was reported missing today by his family. They also expressed concern about a chrome statue placed in front of the local Apple store in Cory's exact image and dimensions. An Apple store representative said, "We wished to express our gratitude for Mr. Moll's concerns and have thus erected this statue, and will do so for any other employee who does the same."
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
He should go work at the Foxconn plant and try to unionize those employees.
I really love the union of camels, makes me laugh every time they prance across the landscape.
You people are so full of fear. Such cowards. You have no balls.
Don't worry. Apple will find a reason to fire this guy.
We need more union labor in the US. And it seems to me, Apple operates on a high margin anyway. Nothing wrong with that, mind you. They compete extremely well, offering holistically designed and well managed solutions. People will pay nicely for that added value.
It makes perfect sense for the employees to expect the same values in like kind, doesn't it? Sure it does! They will offer the highest value they can, and they know the company can afford that loyalty and excellent service, because it's a hall mark of how their CEO does things.
Perfect. I like unions, and believe that everybody should persue every opportunity to see themselves and their peers properly valued. That means value in their person, equality under the law, not discriminated against, nor criminalized against for who they are born to be
, and
that means value in their labor, such that their labor is a net gain for them.
In this ever increasing push to distribute cost and risk onto ordinary people, organizing to push some of it right back, or secure enough dollars from their labor to actually bear it, makes perfect sense. ...or, let's get started on some improvements to health care, public works projects to help the economy and boost wages, and bring back defined benefit plans so that people can retire comfortably on, say $10 per hour, which seems to be the target wage most of these asses want to pay anyway.
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I'm sure everyone is getting real sick of at least 1 person per thread posting a "How is this news" comment... but for fucks sake. 1 guy, working in an apple store, SAYS he is unionizing. That's the story? I worked with a guy at Best Buy who said "Hey, we should try to form a union!" once. He didn't make front page of Slashdot.
Why is this on Slashdot? I'm sorry, but having worked in retail for a few years in my early days, and then even more years now in IT, I'm sick and tired of hearing about how some poor schmoo thinks they are being mistreated. Sorry, people, but you work in a retail outlet. Deal with it. If you don't like it, then get the hell out.
Thank you Slashdot for giving this 'Union' some not-needed publicity.
Thats so yesterday. Like Flash.
Employees don't need that.
Since when do part timers even get to talk about unions in the first place?
There are plenty of unions around the country that include part-time employees. Grocery stores in particular come to mind as having part-time union employees.
Furthermore, you can 'unionize' all you want but the company you work for doesn't have to listen to you, or continue your employment.
True, but the employees, if they act collectively, can take action to bring more attention to their complaints. If one employee walks out and pickets in front of the store, they won't get much attention. But if every employee from every store in the area walks out simultaneously to picket about their low wages, lack of benefits, and general abuse as retail slaves, they will bring attention. Sure, Apple could fire them all and replace them in this economy but eventually the consumers would take note of it as well.
While unions have exceedingly little power now in comparison to decades past, they are not completely without relevance. And in some sectors there would likely be more union presence were it not for the fact that the employers take openly anti-union stances which makes it hard to gather momentum.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
SF min wage is $10 /h so $12 is not much.
Any ways apple store used to pay alot more.
They already have a cult, why not a union?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The union of a set with itself is itself, and since he seems to be the only one trying to unionize, mission accomplished?
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
There are thousands of people that would love to have an Apple retail job. Good luck with your union.
except an entire economy that's being engineered by a greedy ruling class to create a massive disenfranchised poor for their own benefit. The world's more complicated than either Adam Smith or Ayn Rand believed, and the super wealthy really are out to get you. It's what they do all day.
I have a hard time believing people are serious when they say schlock like this. Except that I realize that, yes, some people really are this stupid and paranoid.
Why, oh why, would "the rich" want to keep people from bettering themselves and making more money? More money for the general population means more money for... the rich. More people buying the products and services they make.
You're either making the very old, very silly mistake that there is a fixed amount of wealth, and that if one guy makes more, another must make less... or you're simply paranoid and think the world is truly one big conspiracy. Either way, you're to be pitied as much as you're to be mocked.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
We all know that retail in this country - especially the kind in brick and mortar locations (or glass cubes if you're Apple) - is dying a horrible death. The overlords of retail will undoubtedly use that as an excuse to dismiss any employees who are caught trying to organize. Retail is a no-win job opportunity, the only way for an employee to do better is to get out of the game.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The problem is these little morons spend so much time at the "Genius Bar" fixing minor issues with Apple products and helping Apple's customer's with these problems (most of which are clueless, especially if you see them in the store), they start believing that they are ACTUALLY geniuses who are indispensible and start this crap.
This is America, if you don't like your job, go elsewhere. If you're really THAT good at your job, other companies will pay you for it.
It's sickening how a union gets formed every time some employees don't get their asses wiped by an employer.
Why would advocates of Apple religion want to become Union Communists if religion is the opiate of the masses?
The core issues are definitely involve compensation, pay, benefits
While the linked article says:
The core issues definitely involve compensation, pay, benefits
I hope the typo was an accident, and not something inserted to try to make the person attempting to organize look like an undereducated person with poor grammar.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
every workplace pays roughly the same.
companies compare their wages with each other, and fix wages at the 'average', which they continually drive down to reduce costs and improve margins for investors.
in a high unemployment enviornment, there is no incentive for any employer to raise wages. their business model depends on processes that deliberately eliminate any opportunity for skill or individuality to make an improvement in efficiency. everything is diagrammed and programmed and planned down to when the worker shits and eats.
if you 'ask for a raise', you will be blacklisted and/or put on a list of 'problem workers'.
think about it. you are a manger. you have two people who do roughly the same job, which has been purposely micromanaged and controlled so that one person cannot do much better at it than another, since they have no opportunity for independent decision making.
one of these people never complains, works when sick, etc. the other one asks for a raise. which one are you going to lay off at layoff time?
some can 'start their own business' or 'get retrained' or this or that and the other. after working a couple of years, seeing people who have been 'retrained' 2-3 times, people with bachelors and masters degrees, its not that simple. the theory does not match reality.
in a scientific system, when your observations do not match the predictions of your theory, then your theory has flaws, and a new theory must be created to better match observational reality.
Guess what? The jobs market, like any other is ruled by supply and demand. If there are plenty of resources to do the job properly for $X, why should the company pay $Y? Artificially boosted wages with crap like minimum wage, unions, etc just causes INFLATION of wages, which means everything you buy goes up in price to match your new inflated income. You/we all take home more money, but everything costs more, and look - now you're in a new higher tax bracket.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
It sounds lke the union movement in the US has a lot of maturing to do. Unions in Australia look after the rights of their members and a big part of this is collective bargaining. Large employers have decent sized teams working out employment conditions, and the union (or group of unions) is a reasonable counter to this. Otherwise you have a team of 5-10 professional negotiators 'negotiating' with employees one-on-one.
When industrial action is called for by the more mature unions, participation is voluntary. I was a member of a union that represented clerical and technical people in the electricity and local government industries. I had the choice of not striking, and when I did I was able to record that as protected industrial action. It gave my supervisor's manager a bit of a panic as he had to record it, and it wasn't usual for a professional engineer to strike (just for the day). The blue collar union that represented the electricians had very high turnouts, and the 'association' representing managers and professional engineers didn't get too many people taking part.
Promotion is on the basis of merit in the power industry, and the 'last on, first off' rules are pretty much legislated out of existence. Some unions do make rediculous demands when they think they have management over a barrel, and sometimes that results in jobs going overseas. Heinz were put in that position, and rather cave in to Australian union demands they expanded a factory in New Zealand instead.
A union that cares about the welfare of its members is also happy for an unsafe or dangerous worker to be shown the door. If workers bypass safety devices on a machine then they will get little support from their union, and rightly so.
Perhaps the US is just a few years behind the rest in the maturity of unions?
That's what's wrong with people today. Everyone thinks they're entitled to something. What ever happened to being happy with what you have, and if that isn't enough, to find a replacement job or second job? Apple computers and iPads, etc. are expensive enough already.
I like the idea, but unions are like every other organization: they refuse to disband or become inactive when their goals are accomplished.
March of Dimes was founded to combat polio. However, it has done much good after polio was defeated. MADD was useful up until the late 80s or maybe early 90s, when it became more an organization of puritanical teetotalers looking to eliminate alcohol and uninterested in road safety. The number of drunk drivers who kill others because they are drunk is under 10% of fatalities now. Still not eliminated, but there are cheaper and easier targets that would save more lives that are being ignored because MADD won't just declare victory and disband.
However, unions still have a distinct goal that can't ever be accomplished. In the US, the ratio of the CEO pay to the lowest worker and average pay has increased greatly (CEOs are taking a larger and larger percentage of the payroll). The CEOs are paying themselves more compared to the average worker because they set their own salaries, and those of the people below them (whether directly or indirectly, the effect is the same). The unions need to gain power just to raise the average pay to rise with the CEO pay. That is adversarial and ongoing. If the working conditions were perfect, the CEO would still give himself a larger raise than everyone else. The board of directors won't complain because that CEO is on the board of a company that board member is a CEO of (or, to put it another way, the CEOs are members of the CEO union, they just pay dues in time spent on boards of other companies). So without collective bargaining, the employees will lose buying power year after year with that buying power transferred to the CEOs.
1 guy, working in an apple store, SAYS he is unionizing. That's the story? I worked with a guy at Best Buy who said "Hey, we should try to form a union!" once. He didn't make front page of Slashdot.
This is a story because it is Apple. At least 90% of people on slashdot have an opinion of Apple; either positive or negative. Maybe 1 in 10 here have no opinion of them and would just say "meh" when you just mention them as a company.
On the other hand, many people here would say "meh" when you say Best Buy. Sure, they are the most prevalent consumer electronics retailer in the US, but I don't have to tell you where else geeks can buy stuff. Hence someone doing something like this at Best Buy is no big deal here.
If it were at a Sony or Microsoft store, it would be news here. Best Buy or WalMart, no.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Who gives a shit about retail ? Those twats don't do shit and are the same cunts who work for Bestbuy or McDonalds. What about manufacturing ... where the real work is done ? Retail employees are a bunch of fat pampered American idiots who don't deserve shit (ok maybe a walmart job). What about the incredibly hard working SUICIDAL Foxconn employees who work for nothing in forced labor camps and are killed if any Apple hardware it leaked. Fuck you Apple store shit heads.
So... lurkers support him in email?
iQuit
I lived for a bit in an apartment complex owned by the Teamsters. (Gotta do something with that retirement fund rather than just let it sit there, so ...)
There was no talk of "prevailing wage" or unionizing the folks hired to manage and maintain that complex.
Apple -- Ori
M$ -- Jaffar (parasite included)
BSD -- Geni
Linux -- Asgard
Android -- Replicators
If this guy gets fired from or quits at Apple, it won't be easy for him to be hired by a different company, if the company knows this. I wouldn't hire him. With labor laws and a free market, we don't need useless unions. If you don't get paid what you think you are worth getting paid, you are free to find another job. Unions promote laziness.
it's bad enough apple fans always want their own section for website out there, they now want their own goddamn union when there's already one that represents them?:
http://rwdsu.info/
and they wonder why people see them as elitist pricks
Doesn't he realize that it's an honor to be shit on daily by Emperor Jobs and his taskmasters for near-minimum wage and no benefits? Only a select few are considered worthy of the privilege of being an iSlave.
Don't be surprised if Darth Jobs sends a SWAT team to your house or goes all Force death grip on you the next time you show up for work. Silly mortal, he clearly doesn't know who he's dealing with.
For unions, once safe workplaces and decent wages are established, the next growth area for them is politics and that's the problem.
I don't accept the premise that workplaces are as safe as they'll ever be (since we're continuously learning about things that cause humans various forms of harm). Even if that were the case it's still only the first part of the battle- the second part is maintaining those gains. As is abundantly clear today, corporations are more than happy to grow in politics in order to bust unions and go back to a time where unions didn't exist and child labor saved them money (e.g. in Maine they nearly got a minimum wage loophole, where they could pay kids just $5.25/hr by calling them "trainees").
One could argue that unionization should be cyclical, disbanding and reforming after corporations buy enough votes in congress to repeal union gains, but that would put them at such a huge disadvantage you'd sooner get union members to agree not to occasionally abuse their collective bargaining power. Considering their negotiating partners, I find it hard to blame them for playing hardball too.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Marginal, part-time employee not likely to keep his job, announces he's trying to form a union, and suddenly it becomes highly inconvenient to can him.
Umm... correct me if I'm wrong, but this is how management works, and why there's a manager in every store adapting to what works best for their particular store.
Again, this is a little thing called "empowerment" which means their store managers can actually make decisions on how to best run their particular store. I'm guessing the cost of living differs dramatically across all the locations where Apple has stores, and store mangers could use the discretion to retain particularly valuable staff who might have an extra hour's commute, for example?
Now this one seems to be the crux of the matter. personally I find it hard to believe that store managers are queuing up to get rid of their best performing employees. I could, however, understand if a store manager paid particular attention to someone who might be doing decent sales, but had an attitude problem that could cause issues.
From that interview, everything he says makes Apple look like a progressive employer who empowers their management to reward the staff who add value to the business. This sounds like sour grapes from someone who has worked "in multiple stores" and can't get past the shop floor for whatever reason. Could it be the big chip on his shoulder noticing that other people seem to be doing better than him?
Philosopher (n) - a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity
Haven't you ever heard of Virgin Mobile? Or Boost Mobile? Or MetroPCS? They all have unlimited texting (and minutes, and data) for cheaper than the cheapest plans from AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, or Sprint. The real problem with that industry is that most of the consumers have somehow been trained to ignore them and shell out big bucks for ridiculous contracts and shitty service!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
A unionization attempt from someone in San Francisco... no surprise there...
Someone at apple whining about justice? good luck. Apple is the Microsoft of the 2000 era. same tactics, prettier GUI. that's about it.
some elements are very high margin, others not so much, and those are either investments, or something to be leveraged in the future.
In either case, Apple can afford to comp it's workers well. Any company can, or it's simply not a viable company.
Blogging because I can...
Wages have been flat in the US for too many years. Labor in general needs to push back, and on that basis alone, I will support unions.
You should look around. The nations you speak of do have strong unions, and formal representation of labor in their politics. We could use more of that here, because people have been significantly devalued.
Blogging because I can...
If he is stuck in a part time position then he is probably does not show any initiative. Showing some initiative should be the first step and trying to pursue full time status. If you cannot move up to full-time then how do you expect anyone to give you a raise?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I'll take Germany instead.
As commented above, so long as our trade policy remains as it is, I am in full support of any and all labor movements that increase the overall labor value here. Wages have been flat far too long.
Blogging because I can...
All I'm thinking about is totalitarian dystopias.
Ok, his twitter account is here, and it says: "San Francisco" "My own ramblings about being trying to live on part-time retail at a Fortune 500 multi-national company, along with other random shit nobody cares about."... Trying to live on part-time retail?!? WTF.
Most people can't live on part-time ANYTHING. And he wants to live on part-time RETAIL.. In SanFran. A serious WTF.
Reading his posts, he seems like a good guy, and a real apple believer (and not just some agitator). But he needs to get a reality check.
No one asked you to work there. If you try to improve your qualifications and learn new skills you can find a better job. The guy is a lazy bum and looks at Apple making tons of money and wants more for himself. Apple will find unemployed Indian code monkeys with MS degree in CS from USA to replace him. Union's days are gone. Get a real double major education like statistics, HW, etc., and acquire skill set or you will be deported(without your will) to Middle east to work as a clerk.
I tried both cricket and metropcs. They both sucked horribly. I couldn't get service in my house and it was spotty at best when I was out side.At least I didn't have to get a contract to find out how horrible their service was in my area.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
Seriously, it's been a brutal 30, almost 40 years.
Blogging because I can...
Sorry man. You've been swallowing a lot of dogma whole, for a considerable length of time it seems.
Over the last 30 years, the average American has been exposed to more cost and risk than they have increases in buying power per hour worked, and it's escalating.
Health care, in particular, is a huge risk point, with a large cost. Did you know we pay more than any other nation for that? Did you know we pay twice as much per capita as the next most expensive nation, which is France? Our access / per out of pocket dollar, and outcomes are far worse than theirs are.
I lost my home and all I worked for because of our health care policy. Had I lived in a nation that actually does value it's people properly, that would not have happened. And no, I was not the sick one, sadly.
Risk and cost are on the rise, with multi-national companies doing what they do best, which is push cost and risk away from the enterprise. Where does it go? On the US citizen, that's where it goes.
Clearly, you've had little real union involvement. I've worked for myself, in small business with a union, and without, and everything in between.
Secondly, average wages are far down now, if you exclude the very high percentages. For average people, the waves of outsourcing have forced them into jobs that pay far less than their old one did. Happening all over the place, and that too is escalating. New job creation is not generally family wage jobs, meaning we are moving more of our work force to poverty wages, than we are employing them at family wages.
You go ahead though. Ignore the contributions of labor to our past, and also ignore the lessons of other nations like Germany, who actually do target the welfare of Germans with their trade policy, instead of here, where we make sure our big corporations get all they want, leaving scraps for the average laborer to fight over.
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Apple has done this to themselves. Unionizing is a waste of effort, to get a union together you need a bargaining chip and the company has proven that all employees are replaceable.
The problem is that Apple Retail pitches itself as being unlike other retail. Watch the video linked here and you'll see the obvious bait and switch many dont: http://www.apple.com/jobs/us/retail.html
They have credo card that states, as the first line no less, that: Our most important resource, our soul, is out people.
Imagine believing that and then being presented with the reality of any normal retailer. Add into it that they talk about employee development, then promote external hires from The Gap, Nike, and Best Buy into management before the people they claim to be developing. People that have been striving for years for a simple retail management job because it's the only path to corporate where things might be better (but they aren't.) I have seen people work for 3+ years toward a lead genius or manager job and get promoted over by external hires with no experience within the company and less of a track record than the internal hopefuls.
The slap in the face was when they hired a GameStop manager externally over a 6 year Apple internal candidate who had been working in a management capacity uncompensated for over three years.
There are worse places in retail, but few lie as outright as Apple.
-- Disgruntled Genie (posted anonymously to avoid the Apple gestapo)
FFS - Dude is a 30 year old part time employee THAT'S BEEN THERE FOR 4 YEARS. If you can't get the point after 4 years, jebus. Apple runs through people pretty quick, ON PURPOSE. They want motivated, active people, and retails sales....it eats your soul. So if you're on the floor for 4 years, and haven;t found a new role, well, buddy, you've done said that you have no desire to anything more tomorrow than you're doing today, so take your check and shut up. Or, you know, stop working part time. I enjoyed working for Apple, and then, I GOT A BETTER JOB. Try it, works wonders for you.
I'm sick of people posting "whoosh" all over the place. Half the time I think the person getting "whooshed" didn't even miss anything, there's no hidden joke, just somebody decided to be a condescending dickhole and post "whoosh", never mind that it's not a suitable occasion...
Bow-ties are cool.
Forming a union is a very good idea, at least in principle, and it never ceases to surprise me how people - especially Americans - seem to be against the very thought without even considering its merits. Have you guys really been indoctrinated that heavily?
Unions don't have to be huge, monolithic and authoritarian; and there are other things of value to employees apart from more money, such as influence and respect. I suspect most engineers know and loathe the situation where a bunch of mindless sales-types make uninformed decisions about things without consulting their experts. Uniting can make you loud enough to be heard.
Isn't that exactly what we have done again and again in open source? And don't fob it off with "Open-source would be nothing without corporate funding" - it simply isn't true, nor is it relevant. I don't think RMS or Linus had corporate funding when they started out, just ideas and followers.
I love how most of my American peers appear perfectly willing to blame "those other people". We have a long way to go, and a very hard road to follow, before things improve here.
Yes, I am clearly stating you are part of the problem.
The vast majority of the people, given the "do a good job" and "make a family wage" deal, to live a low cost, low risk life, would take it, just like those Germans do.
But you go ahead and keep thinking "those other people" are the source of the problem, when we are living under flat wages, and corporate profit is at record levels, while ordinary people see ever increasing costs and risks to fund those profits.
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In other words, as long as I get by, please, go ahead and reduce everyone else to serf or slave-status. Paying people a living wage would infringe on my god given right to maximize my personal profits. Remember, kids, minimal wages are SOCIALISM. Better avoid that hellish trap and make it perfectly legal to employ 10-year olds for a nickel a day.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Reminds me that Americans are assholes when it comes to labor rights.
Because over the years unions have (rightfully) earned a reputation for assholism (to outsiders AND members) that is simply met in kind.
Unions once had a place but now they demand things people outside unions simply cannot get, and that businesses (and government) cannot afford. Most unions refuse to share in sacrifice that businesses and private employees must make.
I'm sure you can come up with some anecdote that says otherwise but that's simply the exception to the all-to prevelent rule that is the reason why unions are shrinking so precipitously today.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If even a single job in the has reason for a labor union, then they all do.
Which is exactly why the position of reason must be that none of them do or else people like you bring them in where they do not belong.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here in Europe the right to join a collective organisation is a legal right so Apple or any other employees can engage in free collective bargaining with the man. Heck, here we even have tenants unions where our lawyers are smarter and cheaper than their lawyers. This freedom can often be a huge surprise to some American Companies. For eight years Walmart attempted to colonise the German retail industry. They were unaware of a) cultural differences and b) the power of the Workers Committee. Their Orwellian behaviour, spying on employees, banning staff romances and trying to coerce the staff into informing on each other was not surprisingly resisted by ver.di (the union), the staff and the general consensus of popular opinion. The experience proved so unmanageable for them they eventually disposed of their German assets to Metro and left the country.
Sadly Huey Helicopters were not involved but would have looked so good.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
The original "union" idea was indeed what this guy proposes, and good luck to him (personally, I suspect he isn't going to be working for Apple that much longer - he's publicly suggesting that all is not well at Apple which is not going to go down well with the PR guys unless they are smart enough to work *with* him instead).
The problems with unions is that they turn into a political tool as soon as they have some size, and become toys in the hands of political manipulators. At that point the primary goal is no longer to improve (or at least normalise) employee life, it becomes all about power itself.
I've seen all of this happen in the early 70s, and whereas technology may have changed, people have not..
Insert
It's really that simple. It's market: if people accept the job - they like the compensation, obviously. If they didn't like it - why did they take the job? If the pay didn't match the job - Apple would have had a hard time hiring people and would have to improve the job offers. Self-equalizing principle. Seeing as how many people work at Apple retail stores, one had to assume the pay is good enough.
you have the freedom to work somewhere else, or to make your own consumer electronics company.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Question is: Who will be the first to get patent rights to iUnion technology?
why shouldn't employees (who are free to associate, right?) try to leverage the sunk costs of their training into higher salary?
Because as rational beings they realize that any small gains they might make will be taken, and then overtaken, by union overhead - either through loss of hours they could have worked, or through paying union managers to do nothing except siphon off pay and demand Apple give the union people more money so dues can be raised.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I work with a guy who is part time because his wife died of cancer and he is raising two kids under ten. Rather than claiming benefits, he works part time, but makes sure he can get them ready for school, get them to school, and be at the school gates to pick them up at the end of their day. Gets them home, feeds them, gives them a loving home and does his hardest to make sure they have all they need.
He's one of our best workers and we let him do flexible hours to make sure he's there for his kids, there is no disgrace in him working part time, making sure his kids are well looked after and that they see their remaining parent rather than being shipped off to a commercial creche at the very time they need as much care and love as they can get. We do our best to be flexible for him and he's a fine asset to our company, comes up with all sorts of new ideas and initiatives. I don't see that part-time = no initiative.
Can't see where you're coming from Mr. aristotle-dude. I'd say you'd make a pretty short sighted boss and would overlook some of your most valuable assets... maybe though you're still a school kid yourself and haven't worked in the real world?
Funny, in my eyes the "Orwellian behaviour" comes from the unions, which in Germany have representatives in the board of directors, free real-estate inside the company premises, and the power of the government behind their neverending march on terrorizing their own employer.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
After a short evaluation period, in which the compliance with Apple rules will be thoroughly checked, it will be rejected from inclusion in the Apple Stores due to going against company policies ...
have a poor work ethic.
It's understandable you would be a bit touchy about that. :)
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Right now, large corporations have structured things so that many people are undervalued.
When we've got people working two and three part time, minimum wage jobs, that's not properly valuing them. Ideally, you work, and you get enough to live, eat, and enjoy some free time. Proper health care needs to be a part of that as well.
Now, I don't want employers doing that. Much better when we just make it a blanket policy, taking it off the backs of the employers.
Better still?
Tax the big corporations and very wealthy more to pay for all the wealth those undervalued laborers created for them.
And remember, there are no free markets anywhere in the world. We have a government to protect us from many things, over exploitation being one of them, and unions help with that considerably.
Blogging because I can...
If you don't pay the people enough to afford the products, the labor value is out of balance.
And you have it exactly right! People need to make more, because we've not compensated them properly for a very long time. Other nations demonstrate every day that it is entirely possible to run a corporation, turn a fine profit, and deliver enough money back to the laborer for a modest life.
That should be true for most laborers. It was true for most laborers, until we decided to go down the trickle down road, free market economically regressive wet dream.
Wages need to come up, benefits need to come up, and taxes on the wealthy and corporations need to come up. And that means big corporations and the wealthy will make less. They still will make plenty, make no mistake about that, but rather than over exploit people, they might reconsider that huge CEO compensation...
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Not sure why this was modded Troll - it's fairly clearly not a troll. You might disagree with the sentiment, or how it's expressed, but this isn't a troll.
For luxury goods, I prefer a fairly free market. We don't need those things, we want them.
And there are no free markets anywhere in the world. Here, in the US, the law is we the people form the government, and it exists to protect us so that we may prosper and better enjoy being the free people we are. That government grants the authority for business to operate, and again, business meets demand, in other words, it serves us, so that we may better enjoy being the free people we are.
Now, socializing some things make great sense! Fire, police, HEALTH CARE, etc...
Other things don't make a lot of sense, like say iPads.
Here's the interesting part. When we balance that properly, the dude making $10 at retail can actually afford the products! When we don't balance that well, like we are failing to do in the US right now, cost and risk consumes too much of that income, meaning the laborer cannot afford the product!
The average person in the US today sees huge cost and risk now, compared to what they saw 30 years ago, and wages have been flat over that time. Health care has gone up huge, mostly because we allow private insurers to segment risk, and keep nearly 30 percent just because they want to, delivering NO value for it. All they are is money changers, and guess what?
When uncle sam does it, the margin on that is a few percent. When a private insurer does it, their CEO makes a ton, and they build expensive buildings and so on, taking up to 30 percent. That's right out of our pockets, and we get nothing for it. No wonder so many other nations either socialize their health care access costs, or they very tightly regulate them, so they get a very high value for their dollar.
Just that one effort here would change the game considerably.
Joe blow making $15 / hour can barely afford to eat, pay rent, and maybe buy a thing or two. Now, the standard line is, "improve yourself and make more money!" Well, what if there just isn't a whole lot of opportunity to do that?
That is what outsourcing did to us. Family wage jobs were replaced with service class jobs, and frankly, there aren't enough good jobs to resolve the problem, meaning most of the people are not making enough money, most of the time, taking on costs and risks they should not have to.
Raising a family, saving a little for retirement, getting access to health care exceeds 30K / year in most places. What are most of the jobs paying?
Less than that, so we have a problem, and that problem is people are not valued properly, and that means demand isn't where it needs to be, and we are racing to the bottom, draining the wealth right out of the nation, leaving us poor.
Here's what will happen, if we don't change that, increasing our domestic production to a level where it pays for our consumption. Right now, we don't do that, with a lot of money flowing out of the nation every day.
1. We will be owned by those people who do that work
2. There will be a very significant reduction in the standard of living, which can already be seen in terms of significantly reduced job opportunity, rotting infrastructure, rapidly escalating costs and risks, etc...
3. We might choose to fight about it, taking wealth from some other nation to cover our ass, since we don't do enough to take care of our own proper right now.
4. People die sooner.
The buying power per hour worked needs to come up, and the average person needs to see less cost and risk, or those things will come to pass.
Unions can help with that, bringing wages up. National manufacturing policy can do some serious damage on the problem through tariffs and other means to make it worth it to make it here, and either consume it here (good), and export it over there(also good, both better)
Finally, we can invest in domestic works of all kinds, so that we generate a lot of demand for said domestic production, thus circulating more of the dollars domestically more of the time. What does that do? It red
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should be expected to work for a net loss, which a lot of minimum wage jobs are.
Blogging because I can...
Isn't there already a shopworkers union or something he can join?
IUIS = International Union of Ignorant Salespersons?
its not like it takes a special skill to sell Apple's overpriced dreck, (just know how to run a cash register)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
leftist Apple meets reality!!! This is like being 23 all over again!!
original comment: "If you feel you're not being paid enough, ask for a raise. "
my comment: "if you ask for a raise, management will become angry"
your comment: "[union workers are always asking for undeserved raises, and they are worthless]"
i believe that you have just proved my point.
the fact that a company would choose to move production to a slave labor factory in another country with no democratic protections, rather than put up with unions in a free country, only proves my point.
the workers in those other countries will not be promoted, nor will they be given raises, no matter how hard they work.
my post did not mention unions, nor did i imply anything about unions.
someone said 'if you dont like your wages, ask for a raise or get a new job. no problem'.
i pointed out that people who follow this advice often do, in fact, have problems, and that therefore the model of reality that the poster was using was flawed.
i do not understand why people chose to bring unions into this.
Reminds me that Americans are assholes when it comes to labor rights.
Sounds like collectivist drivel, "labour rights"; As if you have a right to be employed. This sense of entitlement is truly disheartening. You have no 'right' to be employed, you have the opportunity to apply for a position and attain employment via your efforts. Anything less is simply you expecting a handout.
What skills do you bring to the table to demand anything?
Just consuming oxygen is not a skill that demands higher wages.
Besides, an adult who is doing retail in a part-time job pretty much is either a loser, or a guy who lost his real job.
I suspect most people working at the Apple store do it because the job is sexy, they're unable to find better work, and thus they've risen to their level of competence.
You don't get it, do you? Nobody takes you seriously drinkypoo.
I took a peek at your post history.
There, it's shown that You ran away from simple questions asked of you here that show you're also nothing but a troll http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2225174&cid=36390518 which your evasion and running away from that simple question makes you out as a logically invalid off topic troll (because that's a fairly simple question asked of you, that you ran from, which shows you are nothing but an online trash troll).
You would think labor laws should be enough now a days to protect the workers so I am force to ask how bad is the employer that you are forced to form a union?
Here's a hint...try going full-time, you idiot.
The CEO can be done away with COMPLETELY, far more easily than the workforce. Yet, oddly enough, the CEO gets paid the most.
They have over $50 billion in cash and could easily double the salary of every single employee in the company, but they don't. There are engineers there fighting for raises I'm sure. What does the boss say? "Sorry, we don't have the money." lol...bullshit. You got $50 billion.
"Europe I can see us becoming like Star Trek where people work to make something of themselves and money is redundant."
Yes, because everyone wants to be "the guy in the red shirt" or mopping the floor or cleaning the bathrooms on the Enterprise in order to "make something of themselves." You may find some people who can only do the janitorial work, but if they don't want to d it they will come to the conclusion "why not let someone else support me?" They may choose to "make something of themselves" by living in the Holodeck.
Everything is great if you are Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Picard, Riker, Troi etc, but for everyone else, Star Trek may sound cool, but it is no different than anything else.
Call it iUnion, Steve will love it.
First, it should be called iUnion.
In the first year, only black employees are allowed to join. Then release the white version next year.
There are two general cases.
One is where there isn't a lot of competition. In that scenario, it's a pass through, though the margin difference isn't directly related to the increase in income.
So, if the laborer gets a coupla bucks more, that does not translate into $2 at the product.
In the second scenario, where there is competition, businesses can compete on innovation to take cost out of the product to continue to make it affordable.
Think about it. If we can't pay people enough to live on, the businesses that depend on those people have a problem. It's not a viable business plan to simply pay people something. That puts all the cost and risk onto the laborer, and in that scenario, how do we know the business owner actually is working for it?
We don't.
The reality is, Apple makes enough money to pay a solid wage. So they should pay it, period, because the people are worth it, period.
Why you ask?
It works like this. Life is broken into thirds. One third is basically sleeping, another third (or so) is being who we are, and the last third (or so) is labor. If the wage isn't enough to pay to be who we are, then we are living to work, working to live, and all our time is consumed, denying us the ability to go and do for ourselves. Say cooking food or building / fixing things, raising a family, instead of paying for others to do those things, like we see so often today.
We got unions early on because the buying power per hour worked, and the hours required were denying people the ability to prosper, simply existing to make profit.
That never changes. It always needs to be checked, and unions are one way we do that. minimum wage laws are another
In my state, minimum wage is ok. I think somebody could spend both their available thirds working it and make enough to live on, but that's about it.
So then, what are people to do, when we send the jobs that actually pay something overseas? There is a cost to that you know, and that cost happens to be the need for higher wages, or at least high enough wages that the labor makes sense.
Secondly, we suffer a overall national cost through that outsourcing, in the form of diminished national value. When we don't produce enough to pay for our consumption, we end up owned, or owing, or fighting with those that have done that work, which is the scenario right now.
When companies are making so much, it's entirely justified to expect a living wage working for them, or why bother?
There is always the desperate person right? How desperate are we, given we basically are gutting the opportunity to actually make a living, back filling with service jobs.
Tell you what. I'll back off on the need for unions and much better safety net kinds of things, when the free market people back off, realize there are no free markets, and advocate we return to a manufacturing policy in the US that makes some sense.
Until then, yes! Tax the fuck out of the wealthy, increase the wages, unionize, and do whatever it takes to keep people in a situation where they can actually labor a fair days work, and get paid a fair days wage.
One more thing to consider. We always need janitors, sales people, laundry, etc... Never goes away, so why can't we pay them? The only real reason is sheer greed, and a shitty policy. Compared to most of the world, we look like dumb asses, not making as much as we need to, then bitching about how massive compensation at the top, wars, and the sending of our jobs, along with foreign ownership of things is breaking the bank.
"bad working conditions" are were the labor is more costly than the reward given for the labor. It doesn't have to be physically bad, just enough of a time drain that somebody laboring that way does not have the time to do for themselves, which is the majority case on minimum wage jobs.
On top of all of that, we have these free market, corporate asses wanting to undo the few safety net, New Deal type programs we have running, s
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I thought Regan criminalized them in the 80's
For a country who is in debt and has sustained a high unemployment rate for several years, Mr. Moll and his followers should be grateful they even have jobs - doing something they like. Both of my parents are unemployed and have been submitting applications and resumes 10+ times a day and still can't get hired. I live in Wichita, KS which is the (or used to be) the air capital of the world because of our aircraft manufacturing. Boeing, Hakwer, and Cessna employees demanded more benefits and pay and instead of the companies giving into the demands - they just laid their workers off and outsourced to countries like Mexico.
They need to quit unionizing themselves out of jobs during a tough economic climate.
I'm sick of people posting "whoosh" all over the place. Half the time I think the person getting "whooshed" didn't even miss anything, there's no hidden joke, just somebody decided to be a condescending dickhole and post "whoosh", never mind that it's not a suitable occasion...
I think in this case, where the GP wrote this:
Not at Apple. The goal is to focus on a few features and do them really, really well. Maximizing profit is just a byproduct of that, not a means.
The 'woosh' was a bit of a self-defense mechanism. The alternative is to accept that there is someone out there who actually believes that statement, which means we live in very, very frightening world. I'm not sure, but I really HOPE that was sarcasm, and not an honest statement.
He is in an entry level position; as are the majority of retail sales positions.
Entry level jobs pay entry level wages.
Entry level jobs, generally, do not have great benefits.
Unions in private sector markets are/have priced themselves out of the market. They only sustain1-2 generations before they become financially unsustainable. That is exactly the reason why the percentage of private sector unions are shrinking. However, government union jobs are increasing; go figure. LOL They keep digging deeper and deeper into taxpayers to pay for excess union compensation and benefits while their own retirement benefits are largely self funded. It is almost a crime to force taxpayers to do that! Also, billions are being paid out to government union workers, and some private unions, to "help" them pay for their health care when they retire early. Yes, taxpayers are paying for that too. I could write books on this but I'll stop here.
He obviously believes in redistributing wealth which is a nice way of saying he is a marxist a$$h@le and thinks others should pay for him. It is no different than having tiered pricing on retail items dependng on your income. What a bunch of crap.
The government needs to encourage job growth, not demonize business. The dirty little secret about the dumb shit liberals is when they demonize business they are also ruining the 401k's for the people who are not going to be able to survive on social security alone. Oh, and by the way, these are also the same people who have to pay excess benefits to union lackeys to retire earlier! What a complete pile of crap. The sweetheart relationship between the dems and the unions has to stop. So called "collective bargaining" between the unions and the politicians they voted into office?!? Yeah right. I almost forgot this one...government unions paying for candidates with taxpayer dollars....this amounts to the tax payers force-ably contributing to a candidate they would normally not vote for.
This administration sounds more like a Ponzi scheme than a democratic representative republic.
One last thing...
This Apple store idiot reminds me a LOT of the Obama-XBox-college-kid that made a complete jackass of himself after Obama was elected. Obama staffers obviously didn't filter him out, LOL.
if Apple continues to force their lock-in strategies upon their users, there will be a day when customers will unionize against Apple.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Or the Apple top exes could cut thier mutli-million dollar salries 1 percent and give everyone raises. It's not a error in math that the rich vs poor gap is growing at a alarming right, and the rich and middle class gab. To the point that don't even know how to spend thier money anymore. They Corrupt governments, and none of their hairs will have to work for generations. Watch now, right now, a new ruling class is with created in front of your eyes with a disdain for the populace at a level you have never been familiar with in your life time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA
Basically, you have outlined the plot of this short video.
It is a parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income.
See also:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
That parable and video was directly inspired by this:
"Structural Unemployment: The Economists Just Don't Get It"
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/structural-unemployment-the-economists-just-dont-get-it/#comment-254
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm ..."
"Depending on how you want to think about it, it was funny or inevitable or symbolic that the robotic takeover did not start at MIT, NASA, Microsoft or Ford. It started at a Burger-G restaurant in Cary, NC on May 17, 2010. It seemed like such a simple thing at the time, but May 17 marked a pivotal moment in human history.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
By that logic you actully think the company execs are worth 10million. Ok, so the manager that works 9 hours a day and has to work all shopping holidays gets what, $20 at best an hour with no overtime? For 50 hour work weeks and shitty hours. So does the high ups work a magic 100,000 hours a week to yearn what you make in 10 years? I agree they ARE worth more. But they are not worth THAT much more, so either they need to make less, or the rest of us need to make more. Income inequality is going through the roof. They rich are growing away from the poor and middle class in the US at a superfast rate. while the real income of 50% of the population is actually shrinking.
Your ignorance of worker history is amazing. Without unions we would still not have a middle class. We would have the poor and the rich. Guess which one would be sent to shitty 'only teach what you need to stay in your station' schools with a boot in their ass from birth to early death. OR more likely, put to work at age 8.
Very interesting summary of the ethics surrounding dealing with artificial scarcity. Thanks.
I have a related site: http://artificialscarcity.com/
Still, even with 3D printers some things may remain scarce on Earth, like land area for solar panels. Though it is not clear how scarce land will be or if it matters relative to people's needs and wants. But there is also space, where one can set up big mirrors to collect energy.
Another natural scarcity might be a nice housing location with good views which might be "scarce" depending on how we set up our landscapes and housing. Still, one can set up an equitable system with a basic income (perhaps also with employment income for takss no one wants to volunteer to do) to somehow ration those things which remain naturally scarce.
I agree with you that issues of transition might be rough. See James P. Hogan's writings like "Voyage from Yesteryear".
Ass I see it now, there have always been a mix of five types of economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft). The balance shifts with technological and social changes.
http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
yeah ok fascist. There is a balance here. Why do the rich need to be growing their income at a rate of 30% in recent years while the middle class real income is flat and the poor real income is actually shrinking? Some unions are bad, a lot are good. And it's the companies that have priced themselves out of the market. This isn't those lumbering beasts of the Detroit unions or the teacher unions. Pretty soon you are going to be a third world country worker with no bathroom breaks and worker dorms where the beds are never cold.
No one said we don't want Foxconn unionized. The two are mutually exclusive.
except it's so hard to actually enforce the labor laws. You have to hire a lawyer you can't afford and are forced into arbitration and arbitration companies over 90% of the time rule in favor of the company that hires them, in this case the employer. The employer might deal with thousands of cases with the arbitration company a year, guess who the arbitration company in a free market knowing the employer has the choice to switch arbitrators is going to side with if they want more business? Or you can try to file with your states labor dept, if your lucky enough to be in a state with a working one (read: the states that get blasted in the media for being 'bad for businesses'), and deal with dmv employee like stubbornness and confusing process and years of delay while you look for a new job or work under illegal conditions. Having a union rep is the evident to being able to say 'talk to my lawyer' for the rest of us. Yeah, a few percent really abuse it and make managers hate unions but that is not the majority of union workers
mod parent up
(bawww we can't compete because Toyota can make cars cheaper.
NO NO, that is wrong! You can't compete because you can't make cars as GOOD as Toyota. And you had a fucking natural advantage because it's fucking expensive to ship cars overseas Vs say a crate of TVs. This was before Toyoda had stateside factories. But still spend all your management effort on lobbying congress for traiffs, or for more tax breaks, or for a bail out. instead of better cars. I'm still fucking pissed your shittasic management of the last (at least) 40 years retired with more money then your great-great-grand children will be able spend. Detroit has run a very successful FUD campaign vs their unions, and I actually think they drink their own kool-aid. It helps that their unions do actually suck and are too powerful, so it's a easy target, but the unions were NOT IN ANY WAY the reason for your 40 year collapse.
Which should have happened a lot fucking faster if the government hadn't protected you GM. So funny how with unions it';s all "let the free market work" But with tariffs and tax breaks and bailouts you are ALL ABOUT the government intervention. What's good(or bad) for the goose is good for the gander. Fuck GM and them bleeding the free market dry.
The reason why is because I took economics in college. Appeal to authority
Most college grads make $12/hr today in this economy.
no they don't
Steve jobs is not the one that is over payed. It's the officers under him, that are replaceable, that are over payed.
If the Law works so well, why didn't it work to stop jack booted union thugs? Or maybe having the law isn't enough, and it helps to have a GOOD union to support you.
yeah, no. In a good union, people still get fired all the time for laziness. It's not a protection vs firing, it's a protection vs unfair firing. And as you pointed out, you still still have other incentives to work hard; getting promoted. Furthermore, Unions don't outlaw bonuses or commission or other ways to get rewarded for hard work either. I think your knowledge of unions comes 4th hand from 70s news sources and factory floors.
Sorry but outside of a few exceptions I have yet to see a good Union. The Teachers union are pretty good over all but outside of that my experience has been corruption, threats, and stalemate.
Everything from the Football and Baseball unions where we get to see them fight over who is the most greedy the Millionaire players or the Billionaire owners. To the unions at the trade shows I have gone too where they charge us $80 for them to plug in a power strip or charge use to watch us put up our booth.
Your mythical good unions seem to be the exception and not the rule.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
My anecdote involves a fictional place called "the rest of the world", where unions for some reason work just fine.
If that were true people would welcome them, instead of fighting them.
If that were true union membership would be on the rise, instead of in a decades-long slump.
Since obviously what you say is false, what I said stands.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
yeah ok fascist.
You keep on using that word like you think you know what it means. Fascists sought state control of the economy for the benefit of the state and many of the "fascist" movements actually had their roots in the labour movements. The OP sounds more like a neo-liberal to me.
Why do the rich need to be growing their income at a rate of 30% in recent years while the middle class real income is flat and the poor real income is actually shrinking?
Citation needed. Are you just talking about the US? My pay has more than kept up with the inflation and I consider myself middle class or at least upper middle class.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Citation needed.
ask and you will receive. This is the best I could find in the 2 minutes I had: http://acivilamericandebate.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/the-30-year-growth-of-income-inequality/ it's about just past 1/3 way down the page. 1% a year before inflation growth sense 1979. (Site is sourcing http://www.cbpp.org/ feel free to crawl that site).
P.S. Oh, and yes, I was just talking about the US. Sense I was auguring indirectly for unions in the states.
No, they aren't slaves in the chained down sense, but they are 'forced' in the sense walmart has illegally lowered prices below cost when they go into new areas till every other business goes out of business then raises prices back to a profit level. So if people want to work at all to, say, earn money for college, they have very few choices. and not everyone has the means to move. They have been a large part of the reduction in living wages for entry lvl employees
here are some other snips: The 2004 report by U.S. Representative George Miller alleged that in ten percent of Wal-Mart's stores, nighttime employees were locked inside, holding them prisoner. There has been some concern that Wal-Mart's policy of locking its nighttime employees in the building has been implicated in a longer response time to dealing with various employee emergencies, or weather conditions such as hurricanes in Florida.[Wal-Mart said this policy was to protect the workers and the store's contents, in high-crime areas and acknowledges that some employees were inconvenienced in some instances for up to an hour as they had trouble locating a manager with the key.
Wal-Mart has also faced accusations involving poor working conditions of its employees. For example, a 2005 class action lawsuit in Missouri asserted approximately 160,000 to 200,000 people who were forced to work off-the-clock, were denied overtime pay, or were not allowed to take rest and lunch breaks
"Wal-Mart has also been accused of ethical problems. It is said that the Wal-Mart employees are gender discriminated when trying to be hired and treated in the work area. In Duke vs. Wal-Mart inc., which was a discrimination case on behalf of more than 1.5 million current and former female employees of Wal-Mart’s 3,400 stores across the United States. (9th circuit 2007) Dr. William Bliebly who evaluated Wal-Mart’s employment policies "against what social science research shows to be factors that create and sustain bias and those that minimize bias” (Bliebly) and he finished by saying, the men and women not being created equal in the workforce is what Wal-Mart is doing and what they should essentially not be doing."
Why should the CEO of Wal-Mart make more in one paycheck than the average Wal-Mart employee does in his or her lifetime? Does the average CEO really do 500 times the work of his average employee? Do high level banking executives really deserve millions in bonuses after crashing the world economy?
Your claptrap might make some sense where the VP of your division was fired from his $2 million a year salary and replaced with a couple of cheap MBA's from India who are payed $80k a piece.
But of course, we all know this dog-eat-dog-fight-for-scraps bullshit only applies in one direction.
I suppose that would make sense in a world where business is static, and Fiorina didn't drive HP into the ground and BP's greedy incompetence didn't get a dozen people killed on the Deep Horizon rig.
Unions will have a purpose as long as humans are subject to greed.
Yeah, basically. I mean nobody with a brain stem really believes that, right? Right?!
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
Oh great, it's what America needs more of! More associations that are tied to higher associations who's only purpose is to take more of a company's authority away. Unions serve no other purpose than to form a collective body of mindless zombies. I see it all the time in the states I do business in. Like in West Virginia, the typical response you get from people there is "OH DAMN THEM NON UNION MINES. THEY DON'T PAY ME NEARLY ENOUGH... They only pay me $30/hour instead of what the union promised me, $50/hour." They buy people's loyalty with money, then they control what they believe, who they should vote for in each election and shape them into the tools of the union.
And I'm not arguing on Apple's side. I hate Apple with a passion but I don't they need union representation.