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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.
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.
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/
Do you really believe that is easy? Getting a new job involves time searching for it. Also, not having a job even for a short period of time is not an attractive option for most people, which complicates the matter further. There's a lot of friction in the job market, which is why it doesn't work well at all without unions and regulation.
That's exactly what they're doing, only they're doing it as a group.
Reminds me that Americans are assholes when it comes to labor rights.
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 is it that Americans have against unions? Do you enjoy knowing that your employer has all the power and you're their bitch? At heart a union is an organisation that defends workers' rights and if a case blows up with their employer provides money and support to fight it in court. Or is a union in America more like a bunch of mobsters going around eating babies and raping people's cats? Because the American reaction to someone talking about a union seems at least as strong as if they were swearing fealty to Castro, wiping their ass with the constitution and swearing to bring the Revolution to America by blood and force and GOD FUCK EVERYONE. I mean seriously, we had a lot of trouble with unions before and they had got out of hand... but at heart, unions are a good thing and a line of defense against abuse from your employer that you simply don't have the means to provide for yourself.
Honest question, I just don't understand the attitude. Or maybe I've only heard from the ones that are opposed to unions, for whatever reason.
The story here is what is un-written. The most "communistic" company that is out there may be required, by law, to deal with this union.
If you do not understand what I mean by that, look at how they handle the products they sell, the restrictions set upon them, and the heavy handed approach they take to anything they do not control or can not make money from
Oh, and you can not legally fire someone for attempting to start a Union. At least here in the US.
True that. One should negotiate one's wages with a multinational corporation as equal individuals, not go brute force with collective bargaining.
In some fields, it's not so easy for specialized workers to find another job. It may even require the worker to move to another country.
How many companies hire aerospace engineers, for example? Or wheat geneticists?
But in this case, yeah, the guy shouldn't have trouble finding another job if he is minimally competent.
That's how unions start, dumbass. You ask around to feel out support. Than you start the campaign if you think you can win. Personally, I hope you're the first one with your AC back against the wall when the revolution comes before you criticize more "trouble".
Feel free to down-mod, my karma can take it. But parent comment is bullshit.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
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.
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if they weren't dragging me down to the pits of hell with them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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/
Oh, and you can not legally fire someone for attempting to start a Union. At least here in the US.
You can't really be that naive, can you? First of all, god knows how many states in US have "at will" employment laws. And even in those states that don't, do you really think it's hard to come up with an excuse to fire somebody?
I know some Apple Store employees. They are all happy with their wages and benefits. Medical benefits at an Apple Store start from day 1. They tend to start at above $16 an hour. What other goddamned salesman, tech, or other retail monkey gets paid that kind of money? Sorry, but this asshat doesn't seem to know that he's not in some high-demand job. There are people who would line up for a shot at an Apple Store job and be happy with it.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
why shouldn't employees (who are free to associate, right?) try to leverage the sunk costs of their training into higher salary? assuming (for sake of argument) that there is no government interference on their behalf and that the unionizers don't initiate "violence" against the non-unionizers, why is this not a rational approach compatible with Libertarianism(tm)?
note, a reply should either explain how unionizing under these assumptions is irrational or give a coherent argument along the lines that these assumptions are impossible to satisfy (i.e. convince me that government interference and/or violence is an absolutely inevitable effect of voluntary unionization).
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
True that. One should negotiate one's wages with a multinational corporation as equal individuals, not go brute force with collective bargaining.
I prefer Ken Thompson's philosophy: When in doubt, use brute force.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
THIS. The assclown calling for a union needs to take a long look at the rest of the retail industry, and then realize that his pay and benefits are FAR better than he'll find almost anywhere else. For a full-time Apple employee, medical benefits start at day 1. Geniuses start at $16/hr, usually higher. You think you'll find that anywhere else in this industry? I'd expect to see Best Buy monkeys unionize before Apple Store employees. Sorry, but there are FAR worse jobs than the Apple Store, pal.
Look into what Apple Store employees get paid. Look into their benefits. Then look at the rest of the retail industry and see what they get paid. Then shut the hell up because Apple actually treats their employees better than most.
> Honest question, I just don't understand the attitude
It's about justice, agreements being voluntary to both sides, and reality reflecting the true economic value of labor.
In addition, there is a long tradition here of unions protecting incompetent employees, "pay for seniority", and other unfair practices. While it's highly imperfect, non-union places at least *try* to pay for performance rather than merely how many years you sat on your ass.
I can't find the link now, I'm sorry, but there was an article several years ago comparing US unionized steel plants to non-union plants. The ONLY profitable plants were the non-union plants. Their working condition were no worse than the unionized plants, and they were succeeding against foreign competitors in a way the union plants were not. When workers are protected no matter how lax they get, they get lax.
Ultimately you don't get to have your cake and eat it too. If another competitor (say, China) is willing to have labor reflect its true economic value, and you are not, well, your jobs go to China. We're seeing that effect now, and it is killing the nation as our entire manufacturing base moves overseas.
My industry is non-union and it is one of the last remaining one where the US has a domestic presence. Coincidence? Well, I doubt it. Obviously other will disagree.
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
Dude, that's complete bullshit. The majority of Apple Store employees are part time and don't get any benefits (except for cheap benefits like commuter checks.) Part timers start at ~$12 an hour.
Apple Store has a reputation for firing people at the drop of a hat. There's simply no value for them in retaining employees in the long run simply BECAUSE their employees are easily replaceable and the cost of retention is higher than the cost of training.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Unions are a relic of the movements that won us the 8-hour day, workplace safety laws, OSHA, the Fair Labor Standards Act, whistle-blower protection laws, retirement benefits, employer-subsidized health insurance... and that's just off the top of my head.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
Last time I checked, the competition for jobs at Apple Stores was pretty fierce. If they're not getting a fair wage, then they should quit and get another retail job. And if they economy is bad and they can't find another job, then they should be happy about their current job and not complain. And if they don't like working retail then they should study for a new career that's higher paying. The people working in the retail store don't have anything to do with Apple making billions of dollars per year. (Yeah, sure, Apple needs retail staff, but like I said, if every single Apple Retail employee quit today, Apple could have the jobs all filled by tomorrow, and in two weeks the store's sales would be the same as they are today.)
They encourage their members to be lazy and corrupt, for one thing. They don't actually represent their members very well, for another. (Perhaps that isn't true in other countries, but it sure is true here!).
Before becoming a software developer, I worked as a machinist for a small, privately-owned, non-union machine shop. Everyone knew that their labor and their dedication was directly responsible for the success or failure of the company, and we all worked contentiously (not killing ourselves, but not goofing off either).
At one point, my foreman decided to take a job at a union shop, which was paying more than he could get at the small shop. He went there and worked just as he had worked at his old job. Within a week, the union steward told him that if he continued to work that way, he would have an unfortunate accident.
Eventually, he decided that he didn't want to intentionally slack off just to keep his union brothers from beating him up (or worse), so he quit that job and returned to the small shop.
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
Dude, that's complete bullshit. The majority of Apple Store employees are part time and don't get any benefits (except for cheap benefits like commuter checks.) Part timers start at ~$12 an hour.
Apple Store has a reputation for firing people at the drop of a hat. There's simply no value for them in retaining employees in the long run simply BECAUSE their employees are easily replaceable and the cost of retention is higher than the cost of training.
And who expects awesome pay and benefits at part time? I should've clarified that I was talking about full-time, granted, but the point still stands. What the hell do you expect as a part-time employee? Awesome pay and a benefits package? Gimme a break. Once again, look around the rest of the industry and you'll probably be able to count the number of retail business that do so one one, maybe two hands. And I've never heard of Apple Stores firing people at the drop of a hat. Ever. Either someone screwed up or, surprise surprise, the manager of the store did it, not Apple corporate.
But yes, Apple Store employees are expendable. They're not working a highly skilled job. There are people lined up around the damned block who want an Apple Store job. Considering that, I'd say Apple treats them better than most.
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
In the last several decades corporate profits have grown tremendously while wages have been relatively stagnant. I don't see many good answers to this. Most laws intended to alter market forces produce horrible side-effects that no one wants to admit. An easy example is the shortages caused by imposing price controls. Another example not typically understood in terms of market forces is drug prohibition -- market forces are really quite difficult to declare by fiat.
What I'd personally like to see is the rise of co-ops and employee owned companies. I'd like to eventually see them replace standard corporations. Someone will probably scream bloody murder since globalism is our new holy of holies, but a little protectionism is not a bad thing either. Specifically, I'd like to see just enough that manufacturing jobs start returning to the US. This would be even more effective if we finally admit that corporations do not pay taxes; they merely pass them onto their customers by charging more. If most of their customers are not wealthy, this is actually the same kind of regressive taxation that "progressives" (progress towards what?) normally foam at the mouth about. Currently, more than 20% of the price tag of any item you buy is directly caused by the (inclusive) corporate income tax. Who do you think is most harmed by this? Bill Gates?
Not having the world's second highest corporate tax rate would also attract manufacturing jobs back to the US. If anyone doesn't understand this, perhaps they can take a few minutes (preferably before replying) to look into why the company is called Daimler-Chrysler and is not called Chrysler-Daimler. Replacing income tax with a consumption tax would be the easiest way to do this, and has the nice side-effect of transferring a large amount of power away from Congress since the only "advantage" (for them) of an income tax is that you can use carrot-and-stick incentives to manipulate behavior. Otherwise it's one of the most burdensome, least efficient, most-prone-to-cheating methods of attaining government revenue.
In a probably futile effort to save time, if your knee-jerk reaction is to scream about how consumption taxes are so horribly regressive, do yourself a favor and actually research the Fair Tax Act. Don't be the kind of self-congratulatory jackass who pretends like such concerns have not been addressed. That would only prove that complete ignorance of a subject doesn't stop you from forming an opinion about it. They have been addressed. If you disagree with the methods by which they have been addressed, in that case I welcome your views.
A bit more national self-sufficiency, more jobs, and a wider variety of long-term viable jobs would alter the completely lopsided "buyer's market" that is now the job market. Employers may have to go back to competing with one another for the most desirable talent, something that ultimately benefits everyone. Few benefit from a situation where each applicant to McDonalds is competing with hundreds of others, let alone for higher-paying jobs and "real" careers.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Moll: Hi, welcome to your Apple Store. Would you like to join our union?
Customer: Huh? No thank you. I'm here for an iPhone 4.
Moll: If you belonged to a union you'd earn more money and would be able to afford the 64GB model. And some of our cool accessories. They're pricey but worth it.
Customer: I want an iPhone 4. With the WiFi's and the GB's.
Moll: Apple care is expensive, but you could afford it if you joined our union.
Customer: Is that an iPad? That's soooo cool. Maybe I'll get one of those too.
Moll: I'm sorry, I don't sell iPads. I'll have to get another associate to help you with that. Another associate who wants you to join our union.
Customer: I have to say your union evangelism is almost as convincing as Steve Job's enthusiasm for iThings.
Moll: Steve's not part of our union. He doesn't work in a store.
Customer: Is there a store he may be visiting? I'd be happy to go to that store to buy my iThings.
Moll: You customers are impossible to satisfy.
"Getting a new job involves time searching for it"
Just for shits and grins I have my second interview at a sex toy store tomorrow.
It isn't *THAT* hard. You just need to be SMART.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Something tells me you've never had to look for a job before.
You should probably move out of the basement before you comment further.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I agree, nobody should try to better their own situation as long as anyone else has it worse off
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The job market works really well without unions and regulation.
Utter rubbish! There may well be less unionisation in the workplace than there was, say, 30 years ago but the good working conditions and benefits that a lot us enjoy now were as a result of unions fighting for those back then.
The idea of a corporation is very simple - you make as much profit as possible by spending as little money as possible, and if you are the CEO or on the board of directors of a company, making money is your prime responsibility to the shareholders.
Statutory days off and free healthcare cost money and any CEO who gaves those out freely would be kicked out by the shareholders unless it had previously been shown that such benefits lead to a happier workforce and better productivity. CEOs did not discover that themselves, it was the unions that fought for those and got them in the first place - now they are standard benefits for many people because they create more profit than they cost to implement due to happier employees.
But those benefits did NOT come out of thin air - they were fought for by unions.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Not a Mac user, and agree their benefits seem pretty good, but wouldn't calling their technical support area the "Genius Bar" imply that Apple does want to hire people a little better than just "expendable?"
Anti-labour propaganda has been fed to Americans for so long, a lot of them have grown to accept it as truth.
Sure unions have flaws, but a balance of power between workers and corporate rulers is a positive.
Yes, ask those Chinese workers who are paid more than the workers sitting right beside them in the same factory but who happen to be making Xbox or PS3, or some other thing. The ones who make specifically Apple stuff *are* paid more, at Apple's demand of their supplier.
No, that's how unions might start. When and if it actually starts, that's when it's newsworthy.
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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.
Blogging because I can...
No matter who you are or where you work and how well you get paid, there's nothing wrong with having your buddy's back. Collective bargaining is basically what gave us the tribe, the nation, political parties and even unions. "Hang together or hang separately" as one of your finest put it.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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.
That's a good point. People who have chosen occupations in low demand should be given some guaranteed reward for their effort, with higher rewards based on the irrelevancy of their work. I propose we create a large department in the Federal Government dedicated to pursuits which have nothing to do with people living better lives. Providing solutions to problems which don't improve anyone's lives. They can take on enormous and almost impossible tasks, assign vendors that only charge the highest prices, and then offer a very special reward for not completing a project's stated goal. Nobody in this organization should ever have to fear being fired. They should never have to worry about contributing anything that people would voluntarily pay for. In fact, they should just be given a blank check to spend tax money on whatever they wish.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Thats so yesterday. Like Flash.
Employees don't need that.
But you're not considering the incredible skill set required to perform the tasks of an Apple store associate. You really think just anyone can do that job? Have you ever swiped a credit card? Asked someone to sign a receipt? Have you ever had to sell something to someone that already wanted to purchase what you are selling? Do you have any idea the kind of stress these people go through on a daily basis?
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
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.
True. And nothing is stopping you from negotiating with your boss for better pay/conditions. And nothing is stopping you from trying to organize your fellow workers into a group to negotiate with your boss for better pay/conditions.
SF min wage is $10 /h so $12 is not much.
Any ways apple store used to pay alot more.
I think this asshat needs to take a long, hard look at the rest of the industry. He's working a retail storefront job. He's getting paid $14/hr when hardly any other retail job is going to pay like that, and Apple happens to offer very good benefits.
That's exactly it; look at the rest of the industry. Apple retail is insanely profitable from every standpoint compared to any other retail chain in the country. Per square foot, per store, per employee, you name it. The reason Apple is rolling in tens of billions of dollars in cash right now is precisely because of their high-margin retail operation. Their own workers should be compensated appropriately.
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.
You just spelt out exactly what unions are for. No employee should be considered expendable, especially not simply because of the type of work they do. And your comment about it being 'not skilled labour'? I beg to differ; Apple is very, very selective in its hiring process.
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
I don't think that's the whole story, for two reasons. Firstly, although of course getting higher rates of compensation is an important part of the role of a union, and they're very successful at doing that, unions are not just there to get higher pay. There are numerous other ways that individual employees can find themselves on the wrong end of bad employment practices, unfair management, harassment or other types of discrimination that aren't picked up by a company's internal processes. A good recent example in the news was the housekeeper that was allegedly assaulted by Dominique Strauss Kahn at the hotel she worked at in New York. No fault on the part of the employer of course, and I'm sure Sofitel pay isn't bad either. But, in a situation where a high profile and important client has allegations made against him, many hotel managers would be tempted to sweep it under the carpet, or worse, quietly let the employee go if she caused too much trouble, for some "other" reason of course. But because the housekeeper in question was a member of a union, the allegations had to be taken seriously, and she would have had access support from someone with expertise if there were any difficulty. The lesson there is, if you're going to assault a maid, don't try it on in a unionised hotel. Of course it would be better if all workers had that kind of support to help them.
Secondly, Apple Stores can pay higher wages than others because they're a successful business with high margins, and the actual stores themselves form part of that. That's great! Unions always like to see businesses being successful and generating income. It's not true to say that unions want business to be less successful or damage their business. But, it could be possible to query how the profit is shared out. Seems to me that whenever a company is making some big margins, and if it possible more of that is going back to the capital owners than to the employees, then that isn't as fair as it could be. I think from what you're saying, that you believe somone lucky enough to be working for a company that's doing well, should mean they get paid better than a business that doesn't do so well. Well that seems only fair. But there are definitely cases where employees working for successful, profitable companies aren't getting compensated in proportion to the success of their business, especially lower ranked employees. So I believe there is always a role for proper representation, if only to put that case.
There are thousands of people that would love to have an Apple retail job. Good luck with your union.
Nah, it just implies that they want their customers to believe they're hiring people a little better than expendable.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
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.
It does comparatively. We're looking at what is relatively unskilled labor. When you can train almost anyone to do the job then the job usually doesn't pay well. That's the reality of it.
Your disdain for the common working man is remarkable. As is the attitude that people don't deserve better until they're up the ladder pissing down on little people. It takes everyone from the laborer to the CEO to make a successful company and ALL of these people deserve a fair deal and some dignity.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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.
Dude, that's complete bullshit. The majority of Apple Store employees are part time and don't get any benefits (except for cheap benefits like commuter checks.) Part timers start at ~$12 an hour.
That sounds pretty good. I've been working full-time for my current employer for over seven years and have only just now hit $12/hr. And that even being on a grandfathered pay scale. New employees are making federal minimum wage.
Come back when other massive corporations pay their unskilled labor what Apple does and offers them the same benefits. I'll tell them because Apple is pretty damned nice when compared to other jobs with the same sort of skillset.
Also, please point out where I said unions are a bad idea. They aren't necessarily, but when you unionize, it's probably best to do so in a job that isn't right around the top of your respective field in terms of pay and benefits. There are people making less and working crappier jobs doing much the same thing. You also have to realize that this is a retail storefront job. Potential employees are in abundant supply. The principles of supply and demand are applicable to labor as well as goods and services. When you can easily be replaced by someone else, don't complain too much that you're not getting paid a ton of money.
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.
I think that people shouldn't whine about how their situation should be better when they're at the top end of the pay/benefits scale compared to others working in the same field. This is retail sales and service, for crying out loud.
I looked, and they successfully unionized in 2006.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
I think this asshat needs to take a long, hard look at the rest of the industry. He's working a retail storefront job. He's getting paid $14/hr when hardly any other retail job is going to pay like that, and Apple happens to offer very good benefits. Medical starts from day 1 for full-time employees, at least. Want to go to school? Apple will help you do it! The employee discounts aren't bad at all, either, usually 25% off.
If the employees are happy with their renumeration and benefits then the union bid will fail. If they're unhappy, it's more likely to succeed.
In Ontario, Canada there's a good amount of car manufacturing that goes on with quite a few different companies. GM is fairly prevalent to the areas to the east of Toronto (e.g., Oshawa), and all of the plants are unionized (AFAIK). To the west of Toronto, Toyota has a manufacturing plant in Cambridge. The CAW (~UAW) has been trying to unionize it for over a decade, and every time a vote came up, the workers have rejected unionization.
If you have an enlightened employer you don't need a union. I've never worked there, but from what I've heard, Apple is generally a pretty good company to work for.
If this employee has grievances and/or problems with the job, I would hope Apple would look at them and hopefully address some of them. If they're egregious grievances, and Apple is brushing them off, then a union may be the only way to rectify things. While the labour code has certainly improved since the time of Charles Dickens, it still takes resources to fight a legal battle if you've been aggrieved, and a union has better resources than a regular schmoe—who may be forced to get a second-rate settlement because they can't the lawyer's fee for proper 'justice'.
You can certainly go too far in the power of unions, but so too can you go too far in the lack of them and the power of large companies. The trick is finding a balance between the rights & responsibilities of workers and the rights & responsibilities of companies. Demonizing one or the other completely is just silliness.
YOU ARE EXPENDABLE.
Perhaps. (I have always liked the line (supposedly) from Charles De Gaulle: The graveyards are full of indispensable men.)
However, treating your employees like cogs (or used tissues) is not a good way to run a company (IMHO), or to keep morale up. It's why unions were formed in the first place: so that employees couldn't be tossed aside while refuse, and that they were treated with some kind of respect.
Having good benefits is a reason not to get unionised!?!?!?
Unions are there not only to fight for something new, but to make sure that benefits aren't taken away without a good reason. Getting quarterly results up is not a good reason...
Granted, it might not succeed. But that's how it starts. The IWW Starbucks campaign started exactly the same way, and they've met with some success.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
Foxconn employees work for Apple? Really? That's news to me. Also, do you really think that Foxconn doesn't make components for tons of other companies around the world? Do you somehow think that US labor laws are applicable to Chinese citizens? Way to draw a completely bogus parallel.
You can start a union anonymously. A job I worked at did and it was a small company with around 15 people. I know who started it, but the employer never did.
The employees voted it down.
Gone!
That just means that your current employer is screwing you. Your response should be to try to get more money, not to demand that your peers make less.
Spoken like a true AC. Not arguing any points, just being a jagoff.
We wouldn't need unions if we had strong, enforced labor laws set by a central government. But the States Rights! free-tard free-market lobbyists will never let that happen.
Enforceable labor laws are far more efficient than the special interest of labor.
Yeah, I want to work for you.
Nobody would say that investors should not get a good return if their risk pays off. But employees should benefit too. They also take a risk going to work for any company. If you work for a company that doesn't do well, your promotion and general career prospects suffer. Plus businesses always dump employees at the first sign of trouble, even so called "permanent" employees where the business made a commitment to look after, can get laid off to keep returns high in some companies.
Senior managers often make this case well for themselves, and award themselves big bonus payments payouts when their labour produces results. Its just often the case that they don't extend the courtesy to mid or lower ranked employees when they are unrepresented.
A lot of Geniuses know virtually nothing about Macs when they're hired. They get sent to a two-week training seminar and then into the job they go.
Yeah, you didn't read a damned thing I wrote, did you? Better benefits and wages than darn near any other retail job! Oh, the slavery! What did you say about kneejerking again, assclown?
Nice. Blame one American company for the ills of Chinese civilization and governmental tyranny. Well played, troll.
Bullshit. The people at the top of the pyramid could easily be replaced for a fraction of whay they're being paid, salary, perks, stock options. It's more of the same old boy network that's been very well documented by anyone who hasn't imbibed in the right wing anti-worker kool-aid as you obviously have.
I've lost track of how many failed executives and managers I've suffered under. I'll take 50% of what they pull down and couldn't fuckup any worse than they did.
Life isn't easy. Or are you really implying that your employer should "carry" you, paying you more money for a job that can clearly be done by someone else for less?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Your .sig gives this post a whole world of new meanings...
[End Of Line]
Why would Apple pay anyone more than they're willing to work for? It makes 0 sense. You pay people according to the market for labor.
What's the next bit of nonsense, should Apple charge 20% less for their products so everyone can afford their products (out of fairness, natch).
No. He's right. I've been continually employed for the past 16 years, have changed jobs multiple times (i've been head-hunted twice - other companies have approached me whilst i was still employed), and if you make yourself worth money, people pay you money to do stuff.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
If anyone doesn't understand this, perhaps they can take a few minutes (preferably before replying) to look into why the company is called Daimler-Chrysler and is not called Chrysler-Daimler.
The only thing to understand here is that it is no longer Daimler-Chrysler, because Daimler could no longer shoulder the burdens of the crappy engineering and horrible business practices of Chrysler. As one of the world's foremost engineering and luxury car firms, Daimler could ill-afford the bad PR associated with their marriage with one of the worst car companies in the world.
Chrysler's culture of cookie-cutter, mass-produced garbage was incompatible with the Mercedes brand from day one.
In the U.S., a union is an organization that takes money from your paycheck in order to fund election campaigns for Democratic politicians and let union officials live high on the hog. I don't know about other countries, but in the U.S. the union is just another boss you have to kowtow to in order to work at certain places.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Why is anyone even bothering to report this story?
Because the socially challenged slashdot everyman loves to bitch about Apple's success. It's something they don't understand.
The actual disagreement was whether it was better for all the union teachers to take a small cut in benefits and all keep their jobs (supported by the Republicans) or whether low-seniority teachers should be fired to preserve the existing pay and benefits for the more senior teachers (supported by the Democrats and Union leadership).
The real fight is over whether the Unions can continue to collect their dues by force. The Union leaders know that if their members are given the option of quitting the Union, they will. Up til now, they have had friends in State government (the Democrats) who were willing to give them whatever they wanted to maintain their grip (and continue to donate money back to those Democrats).
Unfortunately for them, the people of Wisconsin kicked the Democrats out of their leadership positions throughout the state. Amazingly, the Democrats, the Union leadership and most of the "mainstream" media completely ignore this fact. They pretend that the 2010 election never took place and that they can just continue to act as though the People of Wisconsin really left them in power.
Minimum wage (an artifact of the early labor movement) is fair in this regard.
It's fair all the way up to the point where it's about half of a livable wage.
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.
Ah, gotta love the massive leap to conclusions and people kneejerking this shit. Retail employees are not highly skilled labor. They are not worth tons of money. There is a large pool of potential employees. You cannot expect awesome wages and awesome benefits in that situation, period. You can call it disdain. I call it fucking reality. You want to get paid a lot? Work a job where you're worth a lot to the employer. You can cry all you want about the big bad men at the top, but that's how it is. Supply and demand applies to labor. That's how it is. Furthermore, when these people are making better wages and getting better benefits than most in similar jobs, you can hardly say that they're getting pissed on. But go ahead, keep assigning your own meaning to what I write if that helps you continue your idiotic ranting.
No, unions are for banding together when the company starts treating them like shit. Unions aren't inherently bad or good. It depends on the situation, and there are times when unions are good and necessary because the corporate assclowns are fucking them, and times when they become even bigger and greedier assholes than the corporations they screw. This really isn't the former situation. How can you expect a ton of money when you're not a highly skilled worker and there are tons of people that could do your job? It's called supply and demand. It applies to labor as well as goods and services. If you're working a job that does not take a good degree of skill then you can't really expect high wages. Why should Apple pay them a bunch when there's a huge labor pool of people who would be happy to work for them? Yes, it would be nice if Apple did that. I'm not saying that they shouldn't. I'm saying that there's not a great deal of business incentive to do it. Apple is a business.
And Apple can be selective, but even then, they have a ton of resumes for qualified employees sitting around and more coming in every day.
I'm sure even Wegmans has the occasional disgruntled employee crying for unionization, but I don't think anybody takes those people seriously.
But for some reason, when it comes to Apple, suddenly it's newsworthy.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
A lot of them know *literally* nothing about Macs before the training, Apple actually stresses that in their interviews these days, they hire for enthusiasm and charm first on the assumption that knowledge can be trained (I know a lot of people who work/worked at Apple stores). It's why geniuses are usually so myopic about computers and tech, they often only know what Apple tells them - as a recent conversation with a friend's "genius" coworker about servers and clusters revealed ::shudder::
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Point out where I slammed unions, assclown. I didn't. You only assumed I did because that makes it so much easier for you to ignore what is said. I said this guy is a twit for trying to unionize when he's getting paid better than most in his field. Sometimes unions are necessary. Sometimes they aren't. This is the latter case. Furthermore, that is a good reason, because unskilled labor tends to be harder to unionize than skilled labor. When you're just one of thousands in the area that could easily do the job, you can't expect a ton of money. Supply and demand applies to labor too, you know. You can say it's awful and wrong, but that's how it is.
It's actually $9.92 an hour in SF. I have rarely seen a retail job pay $14+ for a part time worker. Apparently Apple isn't having a problem keeping the stores staffed with people who keep themselves clean. Full time employees at Apple Stores get medical benefits from day 1 and help with schooling, so that's covered. And what the hell are you smoking with that 75% number? Do you really think Apple's margins are friggin' 75%??? No, Apple's margins tend to be 25-30%, which is about what the employee discount is. This isn't a damned toy store. These are computers we're talking about.
As for people lining up, you tell me. Apple gets tons of people who want to work for them and has no problems filling interviews.
You're off by about 50%. Minimum wage in the US is $7.25.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
"Sorry, but in civilised society, if you work for a company that makes huge profits that you have worked towards creating, then you should have every right to ask for a better share in that profit and/or better conditions as a result."
Seriously? if you want to share in the profit of a publicly traded company then become a shareholder. Employees are due nothing more then their normal compensation. I would be insulted if my employees had the nerve to insinuate that their pay had any correlation to my profit margin.
Good-bye
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.
why shouldn't employees (who are free to associate, right?) try to leverage the sunk costs of their training into higher salary?
Because economic theory teaches us to ignore sunk costs when making future decisions?
And as others have pointed out, the increased costs from a unionized workforce are much higher than the cost of training new employees.
Unionizing isn't "irrational" so much as... stupid.
Even if the country was at full employement, the salary offered by Apple is more than enough for them to keep a no-union workforce.
/Since you're the only person talking about Libertarianism, I'm just going to ignore that part of your post.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It's not about whining, it's about knowing your value to the company. You're probably right, most of these Apple employees can't go find higher paying jobs for the same work. They are among the best paid in the industry.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
That's extreme, but what the parent is trying to say is that for the work that he does, he's well compensated in comparison to his peers. He can try to do better, but why would anyone want to pay this guy (or his union) $20, or $25 an hour to sell electronics? Keep in mind, there are plenty of people out there who would gladly do his job for less.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
They are making better than $14 an hour with benefits which is a very good wage for someone that does not need any education. This is a very fair deal and you have people lined up. It is not a career it is a retail job. They off to help pay for schooling as well. They are getting a very fair deal and dignity. But there is also a lot of other people that would love to have that job tomorrow. If he doesn't feel he is getting paid what he is worth then he should go and find a new job. So move on if you are under valued.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
That was a joke, right?
In case you're actually as clueless as that, we're talking about people who need to work at the Apple store to scrape by, not engineers making cushy 6-figure salaries. There's a huge chasm between having recruiters calling daily to poach you and not being able to take take off an hour in the middle of the workday because rent is due. You're one of the lucky few to be completely oblivious to how most Americans actually live. Work retail for a few months without using your current assets and credit- you'll get a real education. It ain't pretty.
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.
There's nothing irrational about unionizing. Likewise, there's nothing irrational about firing unionized employees (employers should have the right to free association, too). Nor is there any reason to believe that violence or coercion are inevitable consequences of attempts to unionize.
Unions aren't inherently bad. In many cases, unions were necessary to stop trends of abuse that were going unnoticed by the public and unregulated by the authorities (be they the businesses themselves or the various levels of government). But there is major a difference between a union that advocates for the lives and safety of its workers before an indifferent profiteer and a union that advocates for unreasonable compensation from a bankrupt company.
This situation is neither of those, however, and so it is difficult to judge. On the one hand, Apple is making money hand-over-fist, and there is no reason why the employees who make that possible shouldn't desire a greater share. On the other hand, the employees are already fairly well compensated relative to others in the retail industry, so there is no incentive for the management to provide them with anything more.
I hear this argument a lot. Can you provide a pointer to a union (or a group of unions) being a specific driver towards the 8-hour day, retirement benefits or employer-subsidized health insurance?
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
They are not worth tons of money. There is a large pool of potential employees. You cannot expect awesome wages and awesome benefits in that situation, period. You can call it disdain. I call it fucking reality.
Show me the stone tablets where this is inscribed. Why should all the money go to shareholders or in bonuses to people who are already very well off ? Why can't a company offer awesome wages and benefits to all its employees when it can afford it like Apple clearly can ? This reality is what you make it.
You want to get paid a lot? Work a job where you're worth a lot to the employer. You can cry all you want about the big bad men at the top, but that's how it is. Supply and demand applies to labor. That's how it is. Furthermore, when these people are making better wages and getting better benefits than most in similar jobs, you can hardly say that they're getting pissed on. But go ahead, keep assigning your own meaning to what I write if that helps you continue your idiotic ranting.
So why can't solidarity figure into it ? Why make it impossible for workers to say: "this is not how I want to be treated and all of us are willing to stand up for it together" ? This is freedom of association, a basic right in Europe.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
And that fairness is determined by the market place.
I agree, the question is wether you would allow people to associate and defend common interests as one so as to have a better bargaining position. This is a right in the EU human rights convention, I don't understand why it is so controversial in the US :
Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects the right to freedom of assembly and association, including the right to form trade unions, subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society".
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Just like nothing is stopping you from moving to another country.
Consequently, your obedience to every law of the US is a voluntary action on your part. If you don't like the social contract that the US offers, go find a better one.
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.
If everything is going so well, why are incomes falling?
It's called supply and demand. It's one of those unpleasant realities, like, say, gravity. That being said, Apple IS offering awesome wages and benefits to its employees. Compare Mr. Moll's $14/hour + health benefits + discounts + matched 401K vs. what a retail employee gets at another electronics retailer. Like, say, Frys. Or BestBuy. Or Target. He's already GOT a better deal.
And, to be honest, retail sales is not a high-skill job.
As to "this is not how I want to be treated, etc."... they are free to do so. But you're ignoring the other side of that "freedom of association" thing: the employer also has the freedom to NOT associate with them, to say "I think your demands are unreasonable, and I'm going to work with someone I think is more reasonable."
Or are you simply trying to use "freedom of association" as a smokescreen for "what's mine is mine, what's yours is mine, too."?
$14/hr is all the dignity any retail employee deserves. That's $28K/year, with no investment in education and training to be paid off.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
For one, to stop the steady erosion of these same rights. How many in here reading this, for example, are wearing a badge of courage for working a 60 hour "40 hour" work week while there are a ton of people still out on the street? Or how about "please stop giving me LESS money so I can continue to pay my bills?"
I would argue that even if they are paid well (it seems this is the case here, I can't judge) they should be allowed to associate to protect themselves from unfair treatment should the need arise. Like you need a constitution, even if you are governed fairly at the moment without one for example.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Jobs could be done for free, too, in slave times. Why isn't that better?
It's not the copyright industries that are going. The total sum of them combined is inconsequential. The steel industry has essentially shut
Learn to love Alaska
Or that you have little grasp on the value of unskilled labor.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Your comment is completely useless without your location.
Its obviously not the US and Ontario is the only place in Canada where its above 10$.
If you are talking about Europe, then you are comparing appels and watermelons. Local costs of living means allot, as well as local minimum wages.
14$ an hour + benifits (ANY BENIFITS) is pretty damn good for any retail job.
Save for a few exceptions, benifits do NOT come with retail floor jobs.
14$ is usually reserved for Ass. Managers or Managers depending on the chains.
There is a reason you find teenagers and young adults manning the stations at retail stores. Its a steeping stone, not a career.
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.
And this is why the US will fail. When a party is linked to one and only one issue as "this is why this happened" and there are only two parties, then the US must fail. What's the cost difference between the teachers old and new pay? A few million here or there in a multi-billion dollar budget? (I don't honestly know, it's not my state and I'm too lazy to look it up) It's like the fed level where arguing about a few multi-million dollar pork programs takes a massive amount of time and coverage, while the deficit is almost a million times as big as some of the explicit pork. One one-millionth of the deficit (not even the budget, but just the deficit) gets much more time in Congress than many of the much larger programs because the parties want to bicker and play off each other.
"Oh they voted us in, so they *must* want us to reduce the pay of the tenured teachers, rather than fire the new ones." That's just stupid. Based on the few number of choices for offices, it's insane to assume that any one issue caused a swing in the party in power, or that any one pet issue of yours was on anyone's mind when voting.
Learn to love Alaska
While my union is an agency fee union, people DO decide to become members when they could pay 85% dues instead, and I guarantee you we would still have a lot of members if you didn't have to pay anything to be a non-member. The opposing side, however, wants to go further than that. One of the components of the Wisconsin law was that unions would have to sign up all of their members every year and recertify their union. Does that sound fair?
I work as a non-union contractor in an otherwise largely-union environment. The general workers have one union and the managers have another union. Most of the people just want to get their work done and go home. I don't see too many differences between my contracting colleagues and the employees. The union is vocal, but has understood that not everyone can keep their jobs in the current environment. They accepted unpaid furloughs in lieu of actual pay rate cuts, and when the numbers clearly showed that wasn't working, they accepted that a lot of people had to be laid off. While I disagree with some of their stances, they're a reasonable union in my books.
OTOH, my dad worked in aerospace for the better part of two decades. Union actions were fairly common. He took part in them for a while until he saw union reps being driven up in towncars and limousines, wearing expensive clothes, and generally doing a lot better than he did. Eventually, he lost faith in them and started crossing the picket lines. He had an advantage that others did not, though. At more than six feet in height, looking every bit the biker that he was, and with most people knowing that he had plenty of other biker friends at the plant who had his back, no one messed with him or his truck or motorcycle. Other people who crossed the lines weren't so lucky.
Incidentally, his willingness to cross the lines and keep working got him transferred to working on military aircraft (tankers and cargo planes). He still says, many years after that company ceased to exist, that he was happier seeing through his work ethic and getting something done than being on the picket lines, losing money while union leaders haggled for weeks over a few cents an hour worth of pay or benefits.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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The thing that's funny to me is that people realize there are bad unions but don't seem to realize that there are any bad employers. Jon Stewart mentioned this in relationship to teachers... "there are shitty teachers? yeah, I don't know if you've noticed, but there's shitty everything."
I represent the technology department in my local. It is a difficult job in part for that reason. Most have never been in a union before, many think they shouldn't be either., or that kissing the boss' ass is good enough.
People don't seem to realize that high morale is profitable and that turnover is not. It's not all about money.
Getting a new job isn't going to solve the problem. As long as most employers are unwilling to pay employees what they're worth we're going to need unions. Organized labor is the counter to business lobbyists. It's because of them that you only have to work 40 hours a week, have week ends off and aren't required to work in unnecessarily dangerous conditions.
I realize that it's really popular around here to claim that if you're not being well treated that you can just quit. But it doesn't work that way. You have to be able to find another job because unemployment benefits rarely if ever are granted to employees that quit just because they're being abused by the company. It's a tough shit situation which most people can't afford to do.
But then again, I'm sure it's their fault for not having been born rich and that you're just such a hard worker that you've earned everything you've got. Including the good luck not to get seriously ill.
Indeed, I think that's something that people tend to forget about. Companies don't have to stand idly by while employees unionize. If they're that concerned they can always make sure that the employees are being paid more then their union counter parts. People don't typically want to unionize if they feel they're getting a good deal without the union. I mean, who would want to pay dues if they didn't have to?
OK - please explain why an apple store employee should be paid more when they have a queue of people lining up to do the job?
If the pay isn't good enough, get some skills and make yourself more valuable. Asking for more money "just because" when there is a surplus of people vying for the job is not going to work - especially in a recession.
In a supply/demand environment, resources (eg, people) are only worth more when there is a shortage of them. There is no shortage of them.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Why would I want a job for life with some advancement potential and a nest egg for when I retire and some calm and stability when I could be looking for a job every six months and wondering if I'm next on the cutting block? I agree, sounds archaic.
Let me Google that for you...
Both were talking about regional minimum wages. My area's is the same as federal, but it looks like the west coast does better...
Also, further - i started out on shitty money. I worked my arse off to get skills so that I can do a job that is worth more to an employer. Bitching and whining to be payed more when you are not going to provide any additional benefit to your employer is going to get you nowhere.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Unions are often formed when the workers realize they're all working for less than they're willing to work for but feel that they'd fare better advancing that point as a group.
In a probably futile effort to save time, if your knee-jerk reaction is to scream about how consumption taxes are so horribly regressive, do yourself a favor and actually research the Fair Tax Act.
I have. I discussed Fair Tax with people prior to the book that made if famous. Every single person associated with Fair Tax was a douche. I could elicit profanity from them with simple questions about how it worked and where certain numbers came from.
"They" want to set the rebate at poverty level. I have been hung up on for asking why poverty level and not half poverty level or twice poverty level, and what studies were done to show that to be the appropriate level. The only coherent answer I ever got was "Because the federal government sets the poverty level." Didn't seem like an answer to me, so when I press for "what would happen to the tax burden if the rebate was instead based on twice poverty level, and what sales tax level would that correspond with" I would be yelled at and insulted.
The Fair Tax people treat it like a religion. And questioning any of the numbers is like questioning God. When there is some debate on the presumption numbers, some charts on what happens with the rebate set at half and twice the proposed rate, some dialogue on it, then let me know. When it's a "this is what it is and if you don't like it then it must be because you don't understand it" issue, then I'll stay the hell away from the insane zealots pushing it down our throats. It may be better, but given the nutjobs that have been talking about it for the last 10 years, I'd never vote for it because it wasn't well thought out. It will be sending checks out to hundreds of millions of Americans. If we already have so many kinds of welfare, and they are based on income, will this be considered income if the people are below the poverty line, thus directly impacting their benefits? Oh no, that's never been discussed. And why not base it on twice poverty or some other level that would pay out similar to welfare for the poor, and then just eliminate welfare since they'll already be getting a monthly check? Oh no, that's never been discussed. And what happens when we try to discuss such things? Well, aside from the general Fair Tax supporter being so anti-welfare that they hope it breaks welfare and they'd never adjust it to help take the burden from welfare, the topics seem, as far as I can tell, unstudied, and completely ignored.
Fair Tax, as presented, is as poorly thought out as the health care bill. It's just a bad bill from the other side. But the two party system leads to horrible legislation from both sides being passed in alternate administrations, so I look forward to the US legislating itself into 3rd world status.
Learn to love Alaska
Slavery is different. You are free to leave and work somewhere else.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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
It's called supply and demand. It's one of those unpleasant realities, like, say, gravity.
Yes, but why is it assumed that workers have to play a totally passive role in this ? People are not lumps of coal, they can organize to get a better deal at their end.
That being said, Apple IS offering awesome wages and benefits to its employees. Compare Mr. Moll's $14/hour + health benefits + discounts + matched 401K vs. what a retail employee gets at another electronics retailer. Like, say, Frys. Or BestBuy. Or Target. He's already GOT a better deal.
Not disputing this.
And, to be honest, retail sales is not a high-skill job.
As to "this is not how I want to be treated, etc."... they are free to do so. But you're ignoring the other side of that "freedom of association" thing: the employer also has the freedom to NOT associate with them, to say "I think your demands are unreasonable, and I'm going to work with someone I think is more reasonable."
Or are you simply trying to use "freedom of association" as a smokescreen for "what's mine is mine, what's yours is mine, too."?
I agree with this, employers have rights too. I don't think it would be right to throw someone out for organizing his coworkers though. Somewhere in the middle there is a balance, as always. I just happen to think that unions can help reach that balance where neither side is all-powerful.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
They do it is called the law. We have minimum wage laws, laws on over time, workers comp laws, workplace safety laws. In fact every protection that the labor unions originally wanted. The rest is just crap. Let's start combative relationship between the employee and the employer that is already paying well above the legal requirement and provides benefits well above the legal requirement. That is just stupid. Hey if the laws set those two low why not work to change those laws we have?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Oh ho ho ho... good joke. You're spouting what unions SAY they're about (in an ideal world) but the reality is very different. And besides, pay increases = increased costs (across the economy as a whole) = no real net win any way.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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
Also, unionization = increased wage costs = less competitive manufacturing/service industry compared to say, china and india = jobs move offshore.
If you think the jobs market is bad at the moment, with more unionization, the limited competitiveness the US market currently has (vs china, etc) will be further eroded.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Oh, and I hate replying to myself, but I just looked on the Wikipedia page for Fair Tax Act and noticed that it indicates that taxes will go down for all married people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FairTax_married.png). So does that mean that taxes will go up for single people? They talk about "broadened tax base" but what does that mean? That single people making $20,000 will see a massive increase in taxes? The page is obviously pro-Fair Tax (the anti-Fair Tax people could never be as zealous as the nutters for it), so they don't ever show who this "broadened base" consists of that don't pay much now but would pay a lot more after to make up for the fact that apparently every married couple will see a decrease in taxes.
And I see such things as being the basics needed for simple operation. "They" apparently see such things as inconvenient things to be ignored and marginalized. And yet another reason why I can't support it. I want to be able to discuss it with someone. I want to see the other options considered. The rate needed is being pushed as a "23%" tax. When the studies go up to as high as needing a "54%" tax to remain revenue neutral. And the act allows for the rate to adjust based on receipts. However, what happens if the tax doubles? Are we going to be sold a 23% tax one year to see it double the next without Congress having to do a thing? It's a massive change. How would it be implemented? Why are the conservatives so pro-Fair Tax without mentioning the massive increase in costs to be able to collect and remit the money to the government? And there seems to be little worry about fraud. Why? What happens if Wal-Mart understates retail sales to pocket the tax difference or present a lower price to the consumer? Who will investigate, and how? And the checks that are being sent out, what about the security on them? Do they stop the moment someone dies, or go through the end of the year? If the stop, who is required to stop them, and if they get the notification a month late, are you going to make widows return the over-rebate?
They want to throw out millions of lines of IRS code (maybe not millions, but more than a person could read in their lifetimes) and replace it with a "simple" tax. But they can't answer many questions I have, and there is apparently no real structure or leadership to the organization that allows for asking questions. The best I've gotten is connected with "local leaders" who are all apparently morons with temper issues. If that's the only response I'm going to get, it should be voted down on principle alone.
Learn to love Alaska
Low demand does not equate to irrelevance. My brother is an engineer at pilot plant for a petrochemical company, trying to come up with a way of taking something from lab and theoretical work and getting it past that proof-of-concept level. Once that pilot plant is tweaked out and a production facility built he and his team will make that company many metric shit tons of cash per hour. There's probably at best two dozen job openings a year in the entire USA for someone with his specialized training (PhD in chemical engineering + 10 years experience). Before his current position he was un/under-employed for 13 months and at one point reduced to being a doorman at a bar to pay the bills. Now he makes well into the six-figure range. Not everything is pizza delivery or computer programming and the job market should not be interpreted in only those terms.
The dignity part was more about DurendalMac talking about retail workers like they are the scum of the earth, losers that stumbled into their lot in life though their own incompetence and just deserve whatever crumbs get thrown at them. That kind of attitude bothers me. Probably because I come from a long line of factory workers and day laborers.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
We're talking about "hours" vs. hours here, though. Slashing hours back to 40 is different than making everyone part time. And I'm really talking about purchasing power, not straight wages.
Unless you want to pay your bills and the depressed economy is keeping people unemployed.
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.
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So was I - that's what "_real_ total compensation" means.
DATABASE WOW WOW
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...
But hidden away in the the healthcare number is inflated prices for the same or crappier care too (middleman expansion, etc.).
Thank you! As a man who has taken work in a warehouse picking and packing food I appreciate that someone knows that we actually are proud of what we do. I can run servers, have owned my own business (Internet cafes are so the thing of the past) and have worked in a management position. REAL work, however, happens at the bottom. I'm in better shape than I have been since I was 23 years old, and management has me working on a morale boosting program to keep the workers as happy as possible while still getting the work done. This is a company I can work for, and respect. Hell, I'm bottom rung and they address me a Mr. {LastName}.
Wow. Good company. I'm betting Apple is close to if not in that same category. Are there any Apple guys out there that can give us insight into what it's _really_ like to work there, or would you get sued?
Show me the stone tablets where this is inscribed.
Reality isn't inscribed anywhere, it just is . If you don't like it then work to change your own situation. If you want to achieve goals or have things then you have to be willing to work for them. Few things worth having come easily or free of charge. That's the world we live in. Going around with a chip on your shoulder harms nobody but yourself. Didn't your parents teach you these things when you were small?
Why should all the money go to shareholders or in bonuses to people who are already very well off ?
It doesn't. The employees had to be paid, the capital acquired (i.e. inventory or equipment), the factors organized and a product produced; all with no guarantee that any of it would earn any money whatsoever. In other words, the owners took substantial risks that the employees did not. It's their right, by virtue of their ownership of the company, to be compensated for taking those risks and bringing new products and services to market. If you think it's easy to be an owner, get some of your friends together and try to start your own company (I hear that's popular in San Francisco anyway), then you will understand why a majority share of the profits go to those who shoulder a majority of the risks.
Why can't a company offer awesome wages and benefits to all its employees when it can afford it like Apple clearly can ?
Apple is free to offer whatever it wishes to its employees and its employees are free to take it or leave it. That is a private arrangement between Apple and its employees. If the employees don't like the terms they are free to quit at any time, it's a free country after all. If you don't like the pay then don't work there, simple isn't it?
So why can't solidarity figure into it ? Why make it impossible for workers to say: "this is not how I want to be treated and all of us are willing to stand up for it together" ?
There is nothing preventing the workers from attempting to do just that. However, Apple is free to refuse their demands or replace them with non-union labor. California is a right to work state, which means that nobody can be forced to join an association, a union for example, as a condition of employment. So, they can all stand up and Apple can terminate all of the employees at the store and hire new ones. There are lots of people in San Francisco right now who are both capable of working at the Apple store and need employment. Supply and demand, it's not just an exam item in Econ 101.
There should be room for both. The law in this case is a very broad instrument that should err on the conservative side, there is a middle ground there where there is room for a union to operate. It doesn't always have to be about pay BTW, a union at its core (when working well) is also a communication conduit between the employer and the body of employees where often very small grievences can be brought to the attention of the employer (and without fear of being labelled "trouble maker" or having your complaint disappearing into the machine) before they become festering resentment.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
No, a union is a cartel, like OPEC or de Beers. The only difference is that the Organization of Petroleum Extorting Countries are a cartel for oil; a union is a cartel for labor. (OK, that's not quite right; OPEC doesn't have the government to coerce people on their behalf, the way the unions have the NLRB or whatever might correspond to it in your country.) Both keep the price of their product artificially high. Unions also do their best to prevent competition. I recall when the bus drivers struck here in Des Moines, and the newspaper reported rocks being tossed off overpasses where buses passed.
Um. remember Archimedes's Principle. Not the one about what is displaced when you put something in the water, this one: give me a positive real number, and no matter how small it is, there's an integer that I can multiply it by to make the product of the two as big as you want. Or, Senator Dirksen's more famous version: "A billion here, and a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money."
Yes, if entitlements aren't killed, nothing else matters, and the US will continue its plummet into ruin. That doesn't mean that small programs should be immune. Read a book called Demosclerosis. Small programs accumulate because the parasites are highly motivated, while the hosts have to put out a lot of effort for what is admittedly a small amount per victim.
No shit. I walked into an Apple store today to buy a Father's Day gift - a 27" iMac. I walked in the door, met the greeter, and told him I was here to purchase - not to look, not to think, TO BUY. It took them over ten minutes to get someone over to me. Hello? I want to give you money. People who walk in the door and say "I'm ready to make a purchase, right now, no questions asked, please" are a retailer's dream. But it didn't seem to matter to them - they had almost a dozen people doing the soft sell routine on random people in the store, but nobody who could just walk up and process my purchase.
Employer-subsidized health insurance is a result of having to get arond WWII wage controls (see http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/is-employer-based-health-insurance-worth-saving/ for info). Unfortunately, it continued after the war, and the result is that people who lose their jobs lose their insurance (that being the majority of the "N milliion uninsured" figure that is bandied about).
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
In this "belt tightening economy" what makes you think a pay-rise for no change in work responsibilities is going to fly?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Show me yourself, paying more than you have to, for a good or service, because you want them to earn a living wage.
Then show me you doing that day in and day out. Neighborhood kid will mow your lawn for $20. Landscaping service will do the exact same job for $50. Who are you going to hire? Your buddy's daughter will watch your kids for $5 an hour and be happy about it. The local college girl wants $15 an hour. Both are sufficient for the job. Who are you going to hire?
Make sure you put your money where your mouth is, before you start demanding that other people put their money where your mouth is.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
You still have a choice. You may need to find a job doing something you don't want to do - but guess what? If the wages were too low, people wouldn't be queuing up for the job.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Reality isn't inscribed anywhere, it just is . If you don't like it then work to change your own situation. If you want to achieve goals or have things then you have to be willing to work for them. Few things worth having come easily or free of charge. That's the world we live in. Going around with a chip on your shoulder harms nobody but yourself. Didn't your parents teach you these things when you were small?
Here's what I've learned from reality: my father has been a dock worker all his life, they have a pretty strong union here and he has earned a decent pay and now enjoys a reasonable pension. Even though there's no great love between him and the unions, he has striked and demonstrated along with his colleagues. In the end I believe this has been beneficial for both parties: the workers get a fair salary, the employers don't get to lower wages to the point where workers become demotivated, unproductive, etc. My father liked his job very much though in my opinion (I'm biased) he was surely capable of doing other "better" (in the eyes of others) work but why should he have done that just to get a fair shake ? I don't think his situation would've been much improved if they hadn't asked for the salary and benefits they got because "that's reality" and "plenty of people would want your jobs."
It doesn't. The employees had to be paid, the capital acquired (i.e. inventory or equipment), the factors organized and a product produced; all with no guarantee that any of it would earn any money whatsoever. In other words, the owners took substantial risks that the employees did not. It's their right, by virtue of their ownership of the company, to be compensated for taking those risks and bringing new products and services to market. If you think it's easy to be an owner, get some of your friends together and try to start your own company (I hear that's popular in San Francisco anyway), then you will understand why a majority share of the profits go to those who shoulder a majority of the risks.
Yes, econ101. I've never bought that and I can't believe people are still pushing it after the bank bailouts, Detroit being bailed out, etc. There's a lot of risk at the start-up fase but what risk are Apple shareholders running now ? Understand that I don't mean people that start a business shouldn't be rightly compensated for the risk they take but when is enough enough ? It seems to me that at a certain point in a companies life shareholders become overcompensated and it becomes a means of extracting capital from the business by the already wealthy. It also leads to making decisions that hurt real people to keep stock prices up, like outsourcing or "down-sizing" (I guess the new euphemism is "right-sizing" these days) because "the market expects it."
Apple is free to offer whatever it wishes to its employees and its employees are free to take it or leave it. That is a private arrangement between Apple and its employees. If the employees don't like the terms they are free to quit at any time, it's a free country after all. If you don't like the pay then don't work there, simple isn't it?
I agree. Doesn't preclude employees from organizing.
There is nothing preventing the workers from attempting to do just that. However, Apple is free to refuse their demands or replace them with non-union labor. California is a right to work state, which means that nobody can be forced to join an association, a union for example, as a condition of employment. So, they can all stand up and Apple can terminate all of the employees at the store and hire new ones. There are lots of people in San Francisco right now who are both capable of working at the Apple store and need employment. Supply and demand, it's not just an exam item in Econ 101.
That's sad because it basically allows companies to bully people into not organizing. I also don't think it makes for a healthy relationship where one party has all of the power, balance is needed.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
ALL of these people deserve a fair deal and some dignity
And that's exactly what these retail workers have: better wages and benefits than the vast majority of their counterparts.
As is the attitude that people don't deserve better until they're up the ladder pissing down on little people
And YOU'RE lecturing about disdain? Do you really think that showing enough dedication and hustle to become a manager, or to work farther up the corporate structure involves nothing more than "pissing down" on people who aren't showing the same hard work and commitment? Retail store clerk jobs are supposed to be entry-level positions. You're not supposed to aspire to a career of doing something that's oriented around entry-level people with little experience. Disdain? You're the one showing disdain by assuming that's all people can or should be good for after a couple of years of doing it. Talk about pigeonholing people with your low expectations. It's people like you that shovel illiterate, useless kids out of school with the same diploma that's given to the ones who actually apply themselves.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I have always liked the line (supposedly) from Charles De Gaulle: The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
The world is littered with the corpses of companies and governments that died from the loss of visionary management. It's not really a counterargument to say that someone could, theoretically, be replaced; you have to demonstrate that you can easily acquire someone of equal skill in a short period of time.
Seriously, it's been a brutal 30, almost 40 years.
Blogging because I can...
As is the attitude that people don't deserve better until they're up the ladder pissing down on little people. It takes everyone from the laborer to the CEO to make a successful company and ALL of these people deserve a fair deal and some dignity.
You deserve what you're worth. If this guy is worth more, he should certainly go take a better offer.
Yes indeed - that's probably one of its finer points. Minimum wage is designed to prevent workers from being abused, not to allow them to live happy, comfortable lifestyles while doing unskilled menial tasks. Plenty of minimum wage jobs hardly even need human involvement (such as answering questions that would take three seconds on google to research)
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
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.
Blogging because I can...
Actually in Belgium there's a service that organizes babysitting (by independent sitters, mostly students) that makes sure there's a standard rate charged, the sitter is insured, established work conditions like tasks that will not be performed, etc. Not strictly a union I guess, though the name "gezinsbond" does translate roughly to "family union/association." My girlfriend used to do some work through them in fact, even though it was for people in her neighborhood. The country is pretty unionized, so I'm sure I've paid "extra" so to speak to give some people a decent wage.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Yeah I knew someone who worked in a union shop he was well paid to and didn't have to work more than the 'accepted' eight hours a day, got four weeks holiday a year and if he was ever injured, unfairly dismissed the union had access to legal representation and even make up pay to tide him over if things got tough.
Eventually he got tired of this treatment and went back to the non-union job he worked before with less pay, he had to put in ten to fourteen hours a day with one day off paid per year for holidays and the boss would fist him before he went home. He's so much happier now. I'm actually looking forward to institutionalised slavery so everyone gets fisted, fairly.
Won't it be great when all of America is a third world country and everyone will think how much better off America is without unions to protect their interests. You are important to the man, his fist would get real cold without you.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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.
Yeah, it's ridiculous that someone would hire a person that they've worked with in the past and know that they can depend on.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
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.
Or maybe his ability to organise people will. Funny thing is you are criticising him for something you don't have the courage to do yourself. Your mind is totally Pwded, just admit it, you rather like being fisted, don't you, slave.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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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You're not supposed to aspire to a career of doing something that's oriented around entry-level people with little experience.
This is belittling. It's what I was talking about: "doesn't that 30 year old know he's not supposed to aspire to this ?" Give the guy a break and some respect, maybe he likes his job and is good at it. Probably better than the manager with all his "hustle" would be and that's OK because they're all doing jobs that need to be done.
Disdain? You're the one showing disdain by assuming that's all people can or should be good for after a couple of years of doing it. Talk about pigeonholing people with your low expectations. It's people like you that shovel illiterate, useless kids out of school with the same diploma that's given to the ones who actually apply themselves.
No, I support everyone's right to pursue whatever career choices make them happiest and I treat people with respect wether they are my bin man or my manager, my expectations don't enter into it. Knew one guy that went from programming to being a mail carrier, says he's never been happier.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Let's take your point as a given. How would unionizing an unrelated industry provide better, cheaper health care? The fact of the matter is union and non-union shops are giving more to their employees, and unionizing a particular business will not magically fix the structural problems in our tax code or in our health care system.
DATABASE WOW WOW
So, let them rot in the gutters? No shortage of that "resource" anyway. I like your dehumanizing style, Stalin would be proud of you, son.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
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
This is just my opinion but economics isn't a hard science like physics but a social science and so I believe there should be room for fairness. Anyway I just wanted to say I hope everything works out for you and your luck changes for the better.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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
The best I've gotten is connected with "local leaders" who are all apparently morons with temper issues...
Hanging out at DropZone again?
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
As an American company, you always have the option of not trading with an overseas company that does not treat its workers fairly... troll.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Do not allow emotion to be your control.
Go back and read my post properly.
My first point was what you are repeating back to me above, namely that unions have less relevance now than they did at least 30 years ago,
I have no idea what those organisations are in the US but our (what I believe to be) equivalent organisations here in the UK rose out of the Labour and unions movement. Therefore the unions set the foundations of employee rights.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Oh, right.
So you mean you have never heard of things called "overtime freezes" for example - those usually happen when the less money is coming in and if you are used to doing overtime then it means you will take home less pay.
During the lowest points in the economic slump, about a year ago, many car manufacturers here in the UK temporarily reduced workers' working weeks to 3 days or less due to slump in profits and lack of car demand - another example where profit margin correlates to pay.
Do you feel insulted yet?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
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.
Are you seriously suggesting that people working in retail, shop-front jobs, like Apple Store staff, are going to get head hunted?
Not everyone is going to be a top-notch engineer or system specialist. Some people need to work the menial, boring, dull jobs (which make up the majority of jobs out there), otherwise there wouldn't even be jobs at the top.
It should also be pointed out that TFA is US-centric- nothing wrong with that, but it does rather inflate its newsworthyness. Apple Store workers in the UK, for example, are already more than capable of joining a union, such as the retail workers union (USDAW) or a general union like GMB. Apple will therefore already be more that familiar with dealing with "unionised" workers.
It's human nature, when working for a huge corporation making billions in profits, to expect a cut of that because you helped bring those profits in, irrespective of where you are in that organisation.
It's also important to note the direct social impact low salaries have.
Okay, not so relevant to electronics technology but go back 40 or so years when there was a prevalence of small local shops (or "Mom & Pop Dime Stores" as I believe you say in the US) as opposed to the huge hypermarkets today, and in those days around 40% of the money spent in local shops was recycled back into the local economy - for example, the grocer selling fruit and vegetables would get his van (or pickup truck) serviced by a local mechanic.
These days, with huge chain stores and megacorps, less than 10% of the money spent goes back into the local economy. And if people "feel" there is less money around but see billions going into corporate coffers, then they are going to want a piece of that.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Ah but isn't that the crux of why corps are afraid of unions in the first place. Let's unionize your scenario.. That neighborhood kids who spends hours mowing your lawn for $20 is now unionized with all the other lawn mowers, and since your big and rich let's assume you have dozens of lawns that need to be mowed. Now they are demanding $30 to mow each lawn. You can either get out there yourself and mow a dozen lawns or pay the kid the fair amount because all the other mowers are tired of being underpaid as well. The truth of the matter is unions equal consequences for corporations who underpay employees.. of COURSE they don't want you to unionize.. it makes you easy to replace, but it's a hell of a lot harder to replace and retrain hundreds if not thousands of people. Unions are good, to a degree, but there must be balance otherwise you end up with unions screwing over the corporations.. as a matter of fact, the real value of that a company has for it's employees only comes out IF there's unionization.
When Apple's profits are up, year-on-year, why would someone who works for them see that as "belt-tightening"?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Question is: Who will be the first to get patent rights to iUnion technology?
I assume "App Store" != "Apple Store" ?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
People who walk in the door and say "I'm ready to make a purchase, right now, no questions asked, please" are a retailer's dream
I suspect that such a person is also less likely to be "up-sold", or else take more employee time to make up "up-sale" - although perhaps that's just my personal experience, since I tend to do my research first, and simply pick the most convenient / efficient / economic place to make the purchase. If there's considerable money to be made on upselling, then perhaps someone who knows exactly what they want is not the dream, but rather someone who wants to spend money, but is not yet sure as to product(s) or price?
How many companies hire aerospace engineers, for example? Or wheat geneticists?
An aerospace engineer with a good security clearance can command a $200K/yr salary. This means that the labor market is hiring, and there are no applicants. Why? Because you need to actually be good at what you are doing, and that is pretty hard.
I'm not a specialist in genetics, but considering all the noise about genetically modified foods, I somehow believe it's not a dead end either. But if you are specializing in ancient history or in Mayan culture then your job prospects may be indeed somewhat limited.
Their logic is inverse: They know you are going to buy something and what you will buy, so they judge you can wait and you will wait, because you cannot buy it from anywhere else.
Employees focus their energy on undecided customers, to ensure they will buy something and that this something will be the most expensive option they can afford.
Why on earth would they rush to service you? After all, the more crowded the store appears to be, the better.
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
Unless you want to pay your bills and the depressed economy is keeping people unemployed.
You are still free to LOOK for a new job, even if you can't find one.
As a slave you cannot even do that much.
And if a situation is really intolerable, you can leave despite financial hardship. Again as a slave you cannot leave, no matter the hardship which you endure.
There is a vast gulf indeed between concepts you are attempting to equate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
because the stockmarket is eating it all in the giant casino called wallstreet
having to pay bills is what constitutes the slavery.
That is incorrect. Unions correct a distortion of the market: the asymmetry of having on one side an HR department with excellent lawyers and negotiators, and on the other hand fairly helpless individuals with little clout to achieve anything.
It is not the only key, and it sometimes must be overruled to satisfy more key keys. Your one-track-mind attitude reveals you really know little about economics.
Right. Fire that geezers, let those useless bastards starve. I am sure you have a better idea?
At least the competent and young workers are in the position to actually compete for other things.
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...
What a standard line. You've clearly never worked in a hostile workplace have you? The "If you don't like it, there's the door" attitude is nice in theory. The In practice all that happens is any self-respecting ambitious individual moves on to some other job, and you're left with the disrespectful unambitious drips that can't work anywhere else. Often the employer just uses the high staff turnover to have a workplace full of cheap expendable employees, some middle manager gets a wage raise himself, out of all this. Costs saved from paying your staff less, neglecting the work environment are quickly wiped out by abject business failure. You quickly end up with employees who don't give a damn, you know the kind. Customer service standards will degrade, sales will struggle, you'll have more employees acting up, management will struggle with discipline, will have to be harsh. Showing up drunk or not at all and some outright bilking the business. Eventually, something has to give. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
I've been a middle manager in a hostile work place, I moved real quick on rather than standing my ground and trying to fix things. Later the union did move into the work place - a rather easy target due to the catastrophically low moral and flagging sales.
But as you say, people could ask for raises and make demands, you can't get fired for asking nicely and stating your case, and if you do, in most countries you can dispute wrongful dismissal. It's disappointing that more employees don't put up more of a fight if they want their work place to be better. It's just a shame that unions have to be paid to do it for them.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
.. then you will understand why a majority share of the profits go to those who shoulder a majority of the risks
A soldier shoulders the majority of risk in war.. where does the profit go? A laborer without benefits risks the financial future of themselves and family, where does the profit go? If a poor man puts the future of his entire family on the line for a company, whereas a rich stockholder puts a small fraction of his investments into that company, how can you consider the distribution of profits to be fair?
We've become accustomed to the reality of the dollar in today's world, but acceptance doesn't make it justified. There are countless rules that construct the reality of today, and they can be changed to meet moral expectations of society. It is foolish to think the system is perfect today, and its obvious the OP's questions were made in this regard.
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?
why shouldn't employees (who are free to associate, right?) try to leverage the sunk costs of their training into higher salary? assuming (for sake of argument) that there is no government interference on their behalf and that the unionizers don't initiate "violence" against the non-unionizers, why is this not a rational approach compatible with Libertarianism(tm)?
Because the government does interfere. The company should have a right to fire them all and start over if that is what they want to do, but the law makes that impossible.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Do you really believe that is easy? Getting a new job involves time searching for it. Also, not having a job even for a short period of time is not an attractive option for most people, which complicates the matter further. There's a lot of friction in the job market, which is why it doesn't work well at all without unions and regulation.
Were talking about a part time sales job, not a white collar career. Changing part time jobs is as easy as changing underwear. You stop showing up for one, and go down to the mall and spend 3 hours wandering store to store asking if they are looking for help. Job found. Pretty soon they'll decide that the job at the apple store wasn't really so bad, the employee just wanted far more than their contribution to the company was worth...
-Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
That displays breathtaking ignorance on your part. Or is it cruelty? "Financial hardship" could mean anything from "kids starving" to "can't pay for medicine". For many people it is impossible to change job, so they basically are slaves.
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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>How many companies hire aerospace engineers, for example? Or wheat geneticists? ...
Right now? Plenty: MacDonalds, Burger King
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...
I was asking about one paying more than they have to for a particular good or service. I don't particularly care about Belgium's practice's, I care about what one does voluntarily with their money when one is lecturing other people what to do with theirs.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
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
Why would anyone pay more for labor than they had to? You, or anyone else? Adding a union to the mix doesn't make the labor of the lawn-mowing boy worth more- it simply extorts a higher price. And if the homeowner mows it himself, doesn't that deprive the neighborhood boys of any money at all?
How is that an improvement over some kid getting paid $20 ?
If the neighborhood kid is 'underpaid', as you claim, why does he do it in the first place? Why mow lawns at all if you're not happy with how you're getting paid? If he acts voluntarily, and is paid voluntarily, both the homeowner and the lawn-mowing boy must think they benefit from the transaction.
Who are you to judge otherwise?
Aside from that, if you don't want to be replaced by someone who can be up to the task in no time, doesn't it behoove you, as a person, to develop skills that are rarer, in demand, and hence worth more?
I'd pay just about anyone with a pulse to mow my lawn, because if he screws it up, you won't be able to tell in two weeks.
On the other hand, I want a competent plumber- and I'll pay for one- because leaky pipes have much higher consequences.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
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.
Wait. When did we start talking about working in Congress?
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
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.
What's wrong with "give me more money" - particularly when we're supposedly in a global recession, the workers on the ground are being asked to accept pay freezes or even cuts and yet the people at the top are awarding themselves the usual massive bonuses or taking golden parachutes to leave dying companies? I'd say fighting for a little more equality in society isn't automatically a worthless goal.
Well fortunately the people working at Apple stores are not only SMART, they're geniuses. Finding a better job should be child's play.
The way your question is framed makes it impossible to answer. More than I have to ? No I guess, I don't go around showering people with money (read my other posts I'm not advocating exorbitant salaries because in the end that will hurt companies and employees alike.) However I could get my house cleaned by an illegal immigrant on the cheap, I don't. I could pay a neighbor kid to babysit for less, but hiring through the service offers better protection for everyone involved for slightly higher rates. This isn't paying more than you have to, it's paying a fair price for people who are getting protection under labor laws here. I also shop in small local shops if I can, often at a slightly higher price (but for superior service.) So in answer to your accusation: yes, I like to think I do my part.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Here's a hint...try going full-time, you idiot.
In a supply/demand environment, resources (eg, people) are only worth more when there is a shortage of them. There is no shortage of them.
Correct.
What happens though to your 6-figure admin job when more people train for it and become qualified to take it? Oh, right, price paid for that particular resource goes down. You might want to be careful about what kind of advice you give.
Furthermore, there's a good reason to have lots of people with a living wage. That nice house of yours? It's only nice if every house around it is nice too. Otherwise, you'd move out. That nice community you live in? Only nice if people aren't rummaging through dumpsters for food. Otherwise, it'll get so tense that you'd move out.
It's easy to say "just study more, prole", when you are in a good position that took a good chunk of luck to attain and retain (never got t-boned by a drunk-driver? Count yourself lucky).
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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
Blogging because I can...
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.
Yes, they would. In a terrible economy where something is better than nothing, people will queue up and just be forced to get several jobs. That doesn't make it a desired way of running everything.
Again, if things are so bad, why should the company pay more? They're a business, not a charity.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Exactly. I learn something else.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
It won't, necessarily. My argument is simply that total compensation going up is not really any consolation to me as an employee because that is not money I can spend. It would, however, allow the employees to attempt to hold the line on salary, creating more pressure on the business to figure out how to contain healthcare costs. Trouble is, it does not appear as if they're willing to lobby for some sort of healthcare system that resolves these problems, instead opting to lobby to get themselves exempted or to be allowed to push costs to employees or what have you.
OK more detailed response: ARTIFICIALLY inflating wages (i'm not talking in spot cases, i'm talking throughout the economy - which is made up of spot cases like this) helps no one. It simply means that instead of scraping by on $x / week, due to more money being in the economy, and increased cost of labor due to the raised wages, the price of everything goes up so you're not in front in any case. Sure you get more $ in your pay packet, but everything costs more. Catch-22.
Also, because your country has artificially raised labor costs, you are less competitive with other nations and the work moves off-shore to china or elsewhere.
And then people lose their jobs anyway.
Unskilled labor will always pay poorly. Whether the bar is raised or not - it will still be "poor" in relation to everything else, and thus, lacking when it comes to you competing with everyone else for available goods and services.
The solution to being on the bones of your arse is not to arbitrarily raise wages for people. Its to up-skill. Either via government initiative, your own initiative or whatever.
Union action or minimum wage mandates help no-one in the long term - except the other countries you are competing with for unskilled labor (it makes their labor market more competitive).
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
That is a layer that isn't needed. It is nothing but a way inject let another layer into the system. Unions have not worked well in so long it just isn't funny. When they pushed for Unionization votes to be by public ballot instead of private they lost all creditability in my eyes. The only reason to want a public ballot is to intimidate the electorate. The Unions want to know who is voting the way they don't like so they can take care of the trouble makers.
Back in the late 70s when I was a child the Unions tried to Unionize Piper Aircraft. The Employees by and large didn't want that. Piper at the time offered high wages, great benefits, and even scholarship programs for the children of the employees. The Unions actually brought in thugs to threaten workers. The workers still voted them down. Oh the reason I know this is a good friend of mine's father was a welder on the line at the time. That is the opinion of a worker not the management. This case sounds almost identical. Apple is paying a very high wage with benefits. They only want people that want the best people and people that want to be there.
I am not a libertarian or a total free market nut case. We have laws to provide protections for employees these are great and I support them. I even think they can be improved but I see little reason for unions in this day and age. Hey if you want to join a Union that is fine but I should never be forced to be a member of a union to have a job at any company. This forced membership is what I am opposed to and feels violates my protected freedom of association. There are states where If I where to start a company I would be forced by law to make my employees join a union and take money from their pay checks and hand it over to Unions! Even if they didn't want that? In those states it is breaking the law for someone to say I am going to start a company and pay you very well and provide these benefits and good working conditions all without the hassle of you joining a union. Also I should never be forced to strike and should never have deal with threats of violence just because I am happy in my job. Unions use all the tools that people accuse big business of, intimidation, threats, and violence to get their goals. All the while lining the pockets of the Unions Bosses. I had all the respect in the world for the Unions in the 1800 to the 1940s. After that they went down hill fast. They did wonders getting laws past for the protection of workers but now they are nothing but violent government supported gangs. Most of the intellectuals that support them have never been a member and never had to deal with the politics of them. They love the theory and history while ignoring the practice.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
No, i'm suggesting that if you further your education and make yourself a more valuable employee (due to attaining some skills), you'll do a lot better than just bitching about pay and asking for a hand-out.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Give a man a fish...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Actually, comparing above minimum wage to SLAVERY demonstrates breathtaking ignorance on your part... you're not beaten, imprisoned, hunted down if you attempt to escape, etc. Its basically nothing like slavery at all.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
All the more reason to form a union then, no?
Would you prefer indentured servitude?
Exactly. So there are sometimes no reasons without the employees unionizing.
Speaking of, joining a union is actually BAD for people at or near the bottom of the pay scale because there are often (always?) minimum dues, and these may actually negatively impact your salary. When my brother worked for the press union as a filer, he got minimum wage and they garnished $1 of minimum union dues off of ever $4.25 he earned. I worked a non-union minimum wage job at the same time and I got bumped to $5.50 while he was still earning minimum wage minus union dues (he quit when he found another job, but those were the days when neither of us had marketable skills, so it was a bit of a search).
Or, get your fellow workers to rally together to use the power of collective bargaining to improve your working conditions.
You know, for someone who crows about "free association" and "free markets", you certainly don't like a group of people exercising those rights for themselves. Probably because they're not doing it to raise profits.
Not unless you want to pay bills, continue to have shelter and eat.
You still have a choice.
No you fucking don't. That is not a fucking choice, choosing between a shitty job and food.
Not very much. Seriously, if your choices are "Work this shitty job" or "Starve", that's not a fucking choice, and it is basically slavery, whether you'd like to admit it. Only rather than violence and chains keeping you at work, it's your ability to put food on the table.
There seems to be a great difference between unions in the US and Europe. I don't know of one union here that has mandatory membership and union reps in my experience are always chosen by secret ballot. If a union does engage in the kind of mafia practices you describe then it should be disbanded but discouraging people from organizing at all isn't the answer. Like everything it needs checks and balances, the way unions operate is very strictly regulated over here for example. I can see with your experience why you'd be against them though.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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.
How much do you want to bet this guy has cable tv? At that point he's choosing between a shitty job and shitty TV.
The problem is that people no longer are able to separate wants and needs.
Teach a man to fish... and he'll always pay you license fees to partake in the fishing rights you thoughtfully secured for yourself beforehand. Set a man on fire, though... and he surely will be warm for the rest of his life. Any more pointless sayings?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Mopping the floor and cleaning the bathrooms would be automated, no one would need to do those tasks. (hell that's even essentially possible with current technology)
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.
Getting quarterly results up is not a good reason...
What? Of course it's a good reason. If quarterly results are down that's an early sign the company is going under unless something is changed.
As far as I'm concerned, anything is better than going under. If that happens *everybody* at the company looses their job.
It's better to lay off 99.9% of your staff, than risk going under. At least then some of your staff will still have a job.
You're not a slave, you can always look elsewhere for a job. If I was ever tempted to join a union, I would hand in my resignation instead.
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.
Yes in the US in some states you are required to be a member of the union to work in that field. They are called Union shops. The Employer is required to take your Union dues out of your wages and pass them on to the Union. In yes during some strikes the Union members have actually attacked none union workers that cross their picket lines. To me they are an extra layer that just often does more harm than good today. And in Apples case we are talking about retail jobs. These are traditionally the lowest paid unskilled jobs in the US. The best companies often pay more or offer benefits or some other perk to get the best people. Apple already does this already. Other companies that do off the top of my head are Publix supermarkets, Chick-Fil-a, and In and Out Burger. Funny thing is you can so tell the difference when you shop at those places. At Publix if you ask any employee a question they smile and answer you. They will help you find anything anytime. The best story I can tell you about Publix involves the death of my mother. My mother had cancer and went into Hospice care. My Stepfather who is in his 70s and my Sister that has a special needs child where really in a bad way. I drove to their town as fast as I could. My stepfather called their local Publix and explained what happened and ask if they could put a few things in aside for me to pick. They said no, give us as big of a list as you want and we will get it for you, package it up, and have it ready to go. When I got their and gave them a check for the food they asked me if I had a check card. I did not but the manager said," Don't worry and tell you mother we wish her and the rest of your family the best. If you need anything call."
This is a huge chain with hundreds of stores. They pay their employees above what other stores do and offers benefits and they have no union.
You also can imagine that my family members will never shop anyplace else. The best companies need no unions. People just need to pick quality over the cheapest prices.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Most unions do not become abusive. Stop using Detroit as your baseline. As actor unions have shown, there is still plenty of money for everyone. Or try I.A.T.S.E. that includes themepark works and such. It's more then just a raise bigger the a dime every year. It's also about giving you a lawyer if they shaft you and lie about stuff to fuck you over. It's about giving you the power to enforce the labor laws as written instead of having to take out a loan to hire a lawyer if the company abuses you. You still get minimum wage when you start at a union theme park, but you get a little better after a year and some benefits and protection. For example. yeah yeah "go change jobs" or "get a better skill" sounds great, except it's not that hard. Most union workers don't actually ask to bankrupt the company they work for. The higher ups can take a .01% pay cut to give your 5 year faithful employees a living wage.
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
Small programs accumulate because the parasites are highly motivated,
The sum of all small programs is still well under that of any one of the entitlement programs. Cutting one entitlement program would have more effect than cutting all discretionary spending. And, despite the claims otherwise, most discretionary spending isn't pork. Cutting all pork won't do much in the scheme of things. Should it be done? Sure. But again, that's like painting the ship while it's sinking. Whether it needs to be done is irrelevant of whether we must fix the larger problems first.
Sadly, we'd greatly cut our medical expenses if we went with a socialized one-payer system (cover everyone, abandon medicare, payments coming from the government, not the insurance companies, malpractice limited and covered by the government, not the insurance companied) and would provide much better coverage for a lower total cost. The military is vastly over-funded and we could defend the US with a military expense somewhere around 1/10th of the pre-war budget (close all offshore bases, sell off all the closed US bases, bring the military home and task them with defense of the USA). Cause some inflation to reduce the debt as a percentage of GDP (making the debt repayments smaller as a percentage of tax receipts), and we'd have a balanced budget.
Social Security wasn't touched by this. Why? Because of AARP, it would be hard to touch, and every plan I've seen to "replace" SS doesn't actually replace it. They take an insurance program and replace it with a retirement plan, which isn't what it was created for and would cause it to fail in its primary function. As such, I don't think it can ever be fixed, and every replacement I've seen will allow for old people to die destitute without the ability to pay for food, and the "conservative" view is that if they didn't provide for themselves, they deserve to suffer and the "liberal" view is that we would need to step in anyway, and the current system would provide such assurance at a lower cost than removing the net and creating something new to try and catch those who are worse in the "new" program (whatever that is). The issue being that the reason it was created, and the single best benefit it gives (according to the supporters) would be completely abandoned by every replacement program I've seen. So the issue isn't a financial one, but a political one. And I can't fix a political issue, because I have no political power. Even if I designed something that did work, it could never be adopted, so I haven't bothered - so many more people smarter than me tried and failed.
Learn to love Alaska
Unions promote laziness.
That is a negative stereotype that I have never seen in my first hand experience with unions.
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 he is in contact with another retail union that is supporting him (he should be) they will take care of him
mod parent up
1. Yes, same store I applied to just last week. I just got back from the second interview.
2. Plenty of Benefits +401K
3. Very casual dress code (I walked in with a shirt that said "It ain't going to suck itself" with an arrow pointed down towards my crotch to this interview.)
4. Janitor/sales clerk. Short script? Store Monkey.
Yep, it's one for the bucket list! I needed the extra cash since R&D eats up almost 99% of profits.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
(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.
The U.S. has a VERY strong tradition of rugged individualism (going back to all that Manifest Destiny/"Go West Young Man" shit). Americans, as a consequence, are generally distrustful of any sort of collectivism. The American Dream (as generally understood) is that you work hard AS AN INDIVIDUAL and make your fortune.
Of course, real life never works out that way. In real life, standing alone is usually a great way to get run over.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
That's one of those fake Chinese unions that only exist because Chairman Mao once said that unions were good.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Dude, that's complete bullshit. The majority of Apple Store employees are part time and don't get any benefits (except for cheap benefits like commuter checks.) Part timers start at ~$12 an hour.
Apple Store has a reputation for firing people at the drop of a hat. There's simply no value for them in retaining employees in the long run simply BECAUSE their employees are easily replaceable and the cost of retention is higher than the cost of training.
And who expects awesome pay and benefits at part time? I should've clarified that I was talking about full-time, granted, but the point still stands. What the hell do you expect as a part-time employee? Awesome pay and a benefits package? Gimme a break.
You're missing the point. They don't expect awesome pay and benefits as a part timer. Most retail companies cap the number of full time employees and over-hire part time employees. Granted, this results in more jobs, but also limits the amount of good benefits.
Apple should be free to enact whatever compensation they choose and employees should be free to achieve whatever kind of collective bargaining they can convince their fellow employees to agree to. It's called the invisible hand and it works both ways.
postmodernsideshow.com
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.
maybe he likes his job
That's the whole point. He doesn't like his job. He wants to force the person who's providing that job to provide it for him on his terms, instead of on their terms. He doesn't want his current job, he wants an imaginary job that doesn't exist. And he wants to use twists and turns of politically loaded labor law and all of the law suits that surround it, along with the usual rhetoric of the you-owe-me-the-lifestyle-I-want camp to bend someone else to his will (rather than making himself more valuable to them, so that they'll gladly offer him more money, leave, and benefits because they don't want him to leave for some other retail job that does.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
True, local minimum wages can be significantly higher than Federal. Anyhow, Washington State seems to have the highest, at $8.67, still significantly off the $10.50 the parent quoted.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
Because I might decide to take my future purchases to the website, or to Best Buy or Wal-Mart or Target or any of the other places that sell Apple products. Your point, however, is well made.
I feel no need to insult you. You explain that you actually have looked into this and I believe you. It shows. That means we can have reasonable discussion about it, and that's really all I was asking. The only thing I was strongly against there was that a lot of people on this site want to form passionate positions concerning subjects they know little or nothing about, as revealed by questioning them. All that does is derail what could have been good conversation, and is generally an asshat thing to do anyway.
Personally, I have no problem admitting when I can't answer something. I have a good chance of learning something that way, which is much more important to me than trying to convince a bunch of strangers on the Internet that I always have all the answers (which I certainly don't). If I felt a need to insult someone who is civil and raises a legitimate objection or asks a decent question, that'd be a warning to myself that I have a character weakness I should do something about.
Back to your paragraph there. The Fair Tax Act is designed to be revenue-neutral when compared to the existing income tax code. I admit up front I have never seen anyone positively state "remaining revenue neutral is the purpose of setting the prebate at the poverty level". Having said that, it is logical that this would be the case. The Fair Tax Act is currently revenue-neutral by design. If the prebate were increased or decreased, that would change the net amount of tax collected by the federal government, causing it to no longer be revenue-neutral. I believe therefore that this is the simple answer that others have failed to give you.
It's shameful that they'd rather give you a hard time for no good reason instead of taking 3 minutes to use a little simple reasoning as I have just done. I deal with facts and reasoning and whether something withstands tests of truth, not credibility. Yet many people care a great deal about credibility even when they can verify the information themselves. Thus, the people you have dealt with are damaging the very Act they are trying to pass by being dicks about it. The unfortunate reality is that you might have the best law in the world that will feed all the hungry, bring about world peace, and make Santa Claus a real person; if the movement behind it is associated with a bunch of assholes, it will probably never get off the ground. You can witness the same thing when worst zealots attempt to perform Linux/Apple/Windows advocacy. Even when they have a solid point, no one wants to hear it.
I must disagree with you there (with that first sentence only!). The Fair Tax is claimed to be the single most well-researched piece of legislation in history. So far as I can tell, the claim is quite true.
Regarding the two-party system, you're absolutely right. It's a subject I have spoken against on many occasions, as you may have previously seen. I won't get into that here or else this is going to be a really long post, but for you I think that'd be redundant anyway. You seem well aware of the problems with it. The only part you might disagre
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I believe I can explain what that means.
The current income tax is based on US residency. All of the foreign tourists who visit this country (on vacation, business trips, etc.) pay no income tax because they are not US residents. The millions of illegal aliens in the US who work "under the table" also pay no income tax (only a few of them ever get a "tax ID", which is a placeholder Social Security number that starts with a '9' usable only for tax purposes). With a national sales tax, all of them would pay federal taxes because all of them are doing business here. They need not be listed as US residents.
The other plus of the Fair Tax Act is that it would be more difficult to cheat. If you go buy groceries at say, Wal-Mart, well, Wal-Mart is not going to help you cheat the federal sales tax for the same reasons they will not help you cheat the current state sales taxes. That's because they have to pay those taxes -- whether or not they pass them onto you. So they have every incentive to pass them onto you, in the form of an exclusive (i.e. separate line-item on your receipt) tax.
That figure was not pulled from thin air. Anything you buy right now, let's say a car for example ... about 23% of the sticker price of that car is the embedded income tax. That comes from the direct income tax applied to US corporations. As I mentioned earlier, corporations do not really pay taxes. They just pass them on in the form of higher costs. Currently, that higher cost is about 23% of the purchase price of items you buy.
The only real difference is that the Fair Tax would be an exclusive tax (separately stated on your receipt) and not an inclusive tax like the income tax (part of the purchase price but not separately accounted for). Remember that the Fair Tax is designed to be revenue-neutral, so it aims at a percentage that is the same as the income tax it is replacing.
Have you looked at the current compliance costs corporations and individuals pay right now for the income tax? That massive income tax code which is millions of lines of law not only requires specialists to understand it, but you can ask 10 specialists a specific question and receive 8 different answers (if you did not already know that, please research the topic -- your jaw will hit the floor when you read the studies). The annual compliance cost to business alone is measured in the tens of billions of dollars. Imagine removing all of that complexity.
The complaince costs businesses face for current state sales taxes are far smaller. A federal sales tax would be based on the same sales figures and would generally use the same infrastructure that is already in place. It would be far cheaper to comply with a much simpler tax code.
Again I think it's shameful that this is all you have en
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The millions of illegal aliens in the US who work "under the table" also pay no income tax (only a few of them ever get a "tax ID", which is a placeholder Social Security number that starts with a '9' usable only for tax purposes).
The numbers I've seen indicate that the illegals are likely to "steal" someone else's ID or just make up an SSN (it gets checked eventually, but nobody cares for the migrants because they are gone before anyone cares enough to do anything about it). So they pay federal taxes and SS and such and will never be able to claim benefits or a tax refund. So that the people "overpaying" (by paying in under a false ID so that they can't ever get the benefits of the Medicare and SS they are paying for and don't get tax refunds) are a significant number as well. However, both parties don't want to get to the bottom of it, so there are no reliable numbers either way (the Democrats want to pander to the Mexicans, and the Republicans want to pander to the business that get the cheap labor, so neither wants to fix the problem). As such, I will gladly accept that there are people evading taxes who will have some issue evading with the Fair Tax, if you can acknowledge that there are some people who are paying taxes now who will never see the benefit of them. Not to mention that if you are specifically talking about illegal immigrants from Mexico, a large number of them spend the majority of their earnings in Mexico (whether themselves or via the money they send home). As such, that money will never be taxed.
All of the foreign tourists who visit this country (on vacation, business trips, etc.) pay no income tax because they are not US residents.
Where's the graph on that? There are so many on everyone getting tax cuts, that I feel like I'm being lied to. Where are the ones reflecting those who will be paying more? Where's the study done that shows a 30% increase in prices in the US won't affect people taking trips here? What about the US citizens and residents who are spending more money outside the US? Not that I think it's fair, but a US citizen owes US tax for the rest of their lives regardless of location, such that an American abroad 40 years after having moved away still owes US income tax. How much income tax is collected from those people and what will the losses be? Just setting it to be revenue neutral and showing how all married families who are US citizens and never leave the country will see a decrease in taxes and not explaining the effect on anyone else, nor where the massive shortfall is being made up from makes me feel lied to. I don't care how good the product is, I'd never buy anything from Billy Mays. He seems like a pushy salesman selling me what I don't want for a price that's 10 times higher than it should be. Well, that and he's dead.
That figure was not pulled from thin air.
Yes, it was. It is an arbitrary number. You could put any number there (between about 15% and 100%, so there are some limits) and I could change other numbers in the equation to make it still revenue neutral. Not to mention the fact that the number is from studies and 23% is the lowest number anyone's ever come up for the other constants they chose to fix. Other studies have that number as needing to be about twice that to remain revenue neutral. So yes, the long-term number is arbitrary (in that you can change it within a reasonable range based on the arbitrary selection of other constants) and the initial number more so because it's not just arbitrary, but not empirically reached adding to the uncertainty.
Have you looked at the current compliance costs corporations and individuals pay right now for the income tax?
What would be the change for corporations in Alaska, Oregon, and New Hampshire? They don't have sales tax collection set up now (well, most don't, at least in Alaska I know a few towns have a local sales tax even if the state
Learn to love Alaska
Back to your paragraph there. The Fair Tax Act is designed to be revenue-neutral when compared to the existing income tax code. I admit up front I have never seen anyone positively state "remaining revenue neutral is the purpose of setting the prebate at the poverty level". Having said that, it is logical that this would be the case. The Fair Tax Act is currently revenue-neutral by design. If the prebate were increased or decreased, that would change the net amount of tax collected by the federal government, causing it to no longer be revenue-neutral. I believe therefore that this is the simple answer that others have failed to give you.
In the other reply you mentioned that the 23% wasn't arbitrary, and here that the poverty line wasn't arbitrary. They are both in the same equation, and if you set the level at 0, poverty, or 10 x poverty you could still make it revenue neutral. Sure, you might have to change the tax rate to 20%, 23% and 50% depending on the rebate level, but both the rebate level and the 23% level are arbitrary because you could change one and stay revenue neutral if you changed the other. My point has been that if you take the tax rate and rebate level to be two variables, you have the answer in the revenue neutral number, so you an change one of the two variables then calculate the other. So where's the study on what the tax rate needs to be with the rebate at 0, poverty, 2x poverty, and 10x poverty? Where's the study on what the economic effect is on spending, tourism, trade with the numbers set at those rates?
The Fair Tax is claimed to be the single most well-researched piece of legislation in history. So far as I can tell, the claim is quite true.
Cancer may be the most studied disease, but that doesn't mean that we know how to prevent or cure it. I did re-read the FAQ section of the fairtax.org site in relation to this and saw that they have added more detailed economic information (and its massive so I haven't yet read it in its entirety, and the bill itself is massively long as well and like all bills references other laws and codes not immediately provided). But I haven't seen why poverty was picked as the rebate level rather than 0.5x poverty or 1.5x poverty. And nobody in Fair Tax has ever explained it to me, despite the fact that I've asked more than one about it.
I've seen where they "fix" the rebate level and vary the tax level to get the tax to remain revenue neutral in years beyond the first (at least they admit through this that they can't know for sure what it should be, but that they are giving their best guess) but I can't see any reason why the magical 23% should be abandoned and the rebate level should be fixed (fixed at least relative to an external index). It would be possible to do the same but fix the 23% and vary the rebates to remain revenue neutral. Or set the 23% to increment by 1% per year to 30% with the rebates increasing to keep it revenue neutral. Or even on that, start the tax at 0% and ramp it up by 1% per year until 10%, at which time the rebates would start, continuing the tax increase until revenue neutral, reducing the income tax rates at the same time so that year 23 would have no more income tax. Something like that would allow for a more graceful change to a sales tax without the massive overnight change that would occur going from a large income tax and no federal sales tax to a large sales tax and no federal income tax. It wouldn't add much to the complexity of the bill to make it roll out progressively, and when the 23% level was reached, it would expire those clauses to the effect of the bill that's already been submitted.
For all the study done, I haven't seen much that makes me feel encouraged by the Fair Tax organization or the supporters of it. Though, looking at a number of the coauthors of the bill, I expect that the next time there is a Republican president overseeing two Republican houses, it will pass. And, based on what I can tell, it will
Learn to love Alaska
There are countless rules that construct the reality of today, and they can be changed to meet moral expectations of society.
The use of government to force equality, morality and "justice" has been the source of great miseries for the masses throughout human history. People are quick to cite the flaws of a free market system without stopping to consider the even bigger flaws with other systems that have seen rather more extensive trials in the grand scheme of things.
It is foolish to think the system is perfect today, and its obvious the OP's questions were made in this regard.
The system will never be perfect, because it necessarily involves humans and humans are imperfect beings. There is a tendency amongst those on the left to believe that there exists no problem which cannot be solved by a sufficient application of government. Then, when their experiment has clearly failed to produce the intended results, they respond with, "Well, we're sorry that it didn't work, but it really was/is a fine idea (in principle)." Meanwhile, the situation has been made worse than it otherwise would have been due to their misguided meddling.
Maybe so, but wherever people are gathered ideas are exchanged. Remember Poland got rid of the communists through the actions of a union.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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
Nope. For example, San Francisco's is $9.92. I'm not saying for sure that there are any that are $10.50, but you still haven't found the highest one.
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.
Good point, I forgot that some cities mandate higher than their state. A bit of reading yields that Santa Fe and San Francisco tend to bounce back and forth as to who is the highest, and the winner for 2011 is San Francisco at $9.92. Both are indexed to inflation and other cost of living, so it's likely we'll see $10.50 pretty soon.
However, getting back to the original point, the parent said that the minimum wage was $10.50, and I can't find anywhere where that is the case (within the US).
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
Uh, no. The problem isn't that there aren't enough resources in this country to support jobs and a decent standard of living, it's that top corporations are sitting on mountains and mountains of cash while paying little to nothing in taxes - like GE.
So why are you focusing your ire on workers again?
Well, sure. That's because you're either in the top 1% of fascists, or are gleefully grabbing your ankles so said fascists can fuck you just so they can make more in a paycheck than you do in your lifetime.
Because having enough money to by a Ferrari and a McMansion each and every year just isn't enough for some people.
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."
Nevermind that union workers make more than non-union workers - unless non-unionized companies are forced to compete with unions for employees and have to offer competitive benefits. Eliminate the union, and your brothers wages would go down on the spot - because there's five other people outside waiting to take his job if he doesn't like it.
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.
As opposed to community-owned businesses like Wal-Mart, of course.
As opposed to, say, health insurance companies and the consumer mandate, of course.
Businesses charge whatever the market will bear. If unionized companies could charge more for their products....they'd go right ahead and charge more for their products.
As opposed to businesses like Wal-Mart, of course.
Do you also "recall" who got dozens of mine workers killed in the Apalacaians, got a dozen workers killed on the Deep Horizon rig, and blew up more money than exists in the world?
I would be insulted if my employees had the nerve to insinuate that their pay had any correlation to my profit margin.
Wow, you know, you should really get that sentiment immortalised on some kind of motivational poster or something... Could be catchier though, like "Your pay has nothing whatever to do with My success". Maybe make it a company slogan, to be repeated every morning at the team huddle.
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.
OK so you would rather apple employ less people then?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Quarterly results and "going under" are not always correlated. You probably are new to financials and management. Running for quarterly results is the worst long term decision any CEO can make. When a company invests in something substantially new it will always have impact on quarterly results. That is why most big and public companies don't make huge leaps, unless the company is a substantially R&D oriented company. And that is why small companies get bought out.
Startup companies can burn money and have quarter results in the red and yet be valued in the billions of dollars in the end - that is strategy. Quarterly results is tactics. If startups were public companies, then with the very next red quarter people would divest and company would go down without reaching any high value goal.
Consider this: Seeking a strategic goal is like waiting for the cookie dough to bake before eating the cookie. Seeking quarterly results is like eating away the raw cookie dough every 5 minutes and ending up with one baked cookie. Needless to say, a baked cookie is much more valuable than raw cookie dough.
Wrong. Working people should be paid a proper wage for their efforts, not just the CEOs and the bankers.