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Two More Executives Are Leaving Uber, Drivers May Unionize (nytimes.com)
First the resignations. "The beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided my career are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber," the company's former president told Recode on Sunday, announcing his resignation. "The departures add to the executive exodus from Uber this year," writes The New York Times. An anonymous reader quotes their report.
Brian McClendon, vice president of maps and business platform at Uber, also plans to leave at the end of the month... Raffi Krikorian, a well-regarded director in Uber's self-driving division, left the company last week, while Gary Marcus, who joined Uber in December after Uber acquired his company, left this month. Uber also asked for the resignation of Amit Singhal, a top engineer who failed to disclose a sexual harassment claim against him at his previous employer, Google, before joining Uber. And Ed Baker, another senior executive, left this month as well.
Jones left Uber after less than six months, though McClendon's departure is said to be more amicable. "Mr. McClendon, in a statement, said he was returning to his hometown, Lawrence, Kansas, after 30 years away. 'This fall's election and the current fiscal crisis in Kansas is driving me to more fully participate in our democracy -- and I want to do that in the place I call home."
In other news, the Teamsters labor union plans to start organizing Uber's drivers into a union, after a Washington judge rejected Uber's attempt to overturn a right-to-unionize ordinance passed by the city of Seattle.
Jones left Uber after less than six months, though McClendon's departure is said to be more amicable. "Mr. McClendon, in a statement, said he was returning to his hometown, Lawrence, Kansas, after 30 years away. 'This fall's election and the current fiscal crisis in Kansas is driving me to more fully participate in our democracy -- and I want to do that in the place I call home."
In other news, the Teamsters labor union plans to start organizing Uber's drivers into a union, after a Washington judge rejected Uber's attempt to overturn a right-to-unionize ordinance passed by the city of Seattle.
Karma is a bitch, eh?
How shitty must this corporate culture be for all these people with great positions at an innovative, cutting edge, and super fast growing company to leave?
These departures apparently validate all the coverage about what a soul-less, morally bankrupt company it is.
It appears that the media has decided to dig up every little thing to kill them. So it only matters if consumers stop using it.
I think the people who are going to drop Uber already have. But I also don't think most people really care that much right now.
I for one am glad to see the wheels starting fall off this libertarian corporate experiment. It's heartening to see signs of failure in an institution whose core principals are deeply entrenched in base human behaviours such as bullying, hypocrisy and total indifference to adverse impacts to others (including it's own people).
Honestly it matters quite a lot if Uber was really actually profitable, or if it was only profitable because a certain class of employee (ie, the driver) was willing to be hoodwinked into basically not even making cab-driver wages while suffering wear and tear on their own personal vehicle, versus actually being profitable with its own model.
It seems that Uber's long-term goal was to do away with having drivers operating their own cars, but unfortunately for them, they've tried to define the self-driving car market as-implemented too long before it's really ready to be implemented. They've gotten caught with their hand in the cookie jar too, as it appears they stole self-driving technology developed at great expensive by someone else, and if they can't use any of those self-driving developments then they're probably doomed.
I can see the appeal, summon a self-driving car and it takes you where you want to go, then summon another one when you want to return. I can see trying to be the one to get out in front of it too, to ride the wave of success that might well come from it. You've got to get the timing right though, and the timing isn't right yet.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Alternatively, once a company is circling the drain, the most skilled employees who can get jobs easily elsewhere are the first to jump. The plodders go down with the ship.
Likely reason for the departures at high level, they believe the company will implode prior to the IPO cash in, so no reward for staying. They would be spitting chips, greed at the top, delayed the IPO too long and now it is too late. No matter how bad, the banksters still would have been able to scam a high price at IPO but executive departure would be indicative that they do not expect the company to get there and then can make more money by taking their skills and built up knowledge elsewhere.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The AFL-CIO should absolutely unionize the Uber workers. These Silicon Valley companies like to disrupt the lives of everyone else so I say let them have a taste of their own medicine. It couldn't happen to a nicer company.
There is a very low bar to entry when becoming an Uber driver, and so I would hazard to say that the vast majority of people who want to drive for Uber are already driving for Uber. So, if Uber were to suddenly drop all the current drivers, there would be no great rush of new drivers trying to fill the void. Just the opposite would happen, actually. The Uber drivers who had just been let go would switch to another service, and the folks who try to hail an Uber will be told there's a 2 hour wait for a car and so will simply take 10 seconds to close their Uber app and open their Lyft app instead. There's no possible way Uber could survive cleaning the slate like that.
the CEO is an a-hole.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
They're getting out now, before the unionization kills Uber dead.
A union can demand all the money it wants for its workers.
But if the company goes broke or simply can't generate the business required to support those figure.
Poof. Dead business.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Uber got through because the Taxi and Limo companies got greedy and so did their employees. Unions and bribery and tax revenue created an artificial market. Now capitalism created a solution that should have been fixed.
http://saveie6.com/
"It's hard to find much of a precedent for Uber's losses. Webvan and Kozmo.com—two now-defunct phantoms of the original dot-com boom—lost just over $1 billion combined in their short lifetimes. Amazon.com Inc. is famous for losing money while increasing its market value, but its biggest loss ever totaled $1.4 billion in 2000. Uber exceeded that number in 2015 and is on pace to do it again this year [2016]."
Bloomberg
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I doubt it. Billion dollar companies just don't fold , they burn down slowly, and there's a lot of things that need to go wrong before investors simply abandon the fortunes ploughed into the company.
Some companies constantly churn executives (think: yahoo) constantly and still survive. We are a long way off knowing if uber is that sort of company and if it is , are the fundamentals right to ride it out
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
The whole purpose of the Teamsters "union" is to skim workers' paychecks to buy hookers and blow for mobsters and politicians.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Once you're a top exec at a company, you don't do anything.
What's your next guess?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Uber drivers are merely picking up extra cash to offset car ownership costs by taking people who happen to be going the same way as they were. Uber is just a RIDE SHARING service after all, amirite, and not a means to be a full time job?
I think you're seriously overestimating the strategic thinking capabilities of the people behind Uber. They haven't, up until recently, had even an R&D interest in developing driverless cars, and there is little chance they can realistically compete with Tesla, Ford, Google, VW, etc, even if they could raise another couple of billion in cash to burn. The likelihood of them coming from behind and beating the others to a viable driverless car solution is zero.
Further, what exactly do they have that will maintain their market position? An app? How easy is it for Google to turn the 'book Uber' button in google maps into a 'book google car'? If anything, they have worse than nothing - they are beholden to the company that is well ahead of them in the technology they desperately need to have a viable business model.
What I think Uber has been for quite a while now (granted, I don't think this was the original plan) is a financial bubble milking machine. Unless the board is actually delusional, the only viable strategy behind them entering the driverless car development race was to keep the IPO price at stupid levels. And if it wasn't for the PR disasters coming out of Uber on an almost weekly basis now, they would have been obscenely successful in achieving this.
You know the kind of comment for which we have an 'insightful' mod ? Yeah, yours was the exact opposite of that.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Often with otherwise underserved promotions due to the vacuum above caused by the departures.
Like Enron?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Does that mean they'll be covalent?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What rock does AC live under? Other professional driving businesses collapsed because all of their drivers went to Uber.
I'm surprised they have not tried to offshore the driving to India. Just stick some sensors on the car similar to what a self-driving one has, but instead of AI you have a guy in India controlling it over cellular link. Throw in a bit of basic autopilot type stuff to handle when the link drops and prevent collisions...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Obligatory...
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Uber service when Netcraft confirmed that Uber is dying, now that Uber market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all ride hailing services. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Uber has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Uber is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent geek news reading test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict Uber's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Uber faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Uber because Uber is dying. Things are looking very bad for Uber. As many of us are already aware, Uber continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Uber is the most endangeredride-hailing service of them all, having lost 93% of its core users. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time ride-hailing users only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Uber is dying.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Lyft.
CEO of a midsized company here.
Seems legit.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
and? that doesnt change the concept. I know a number of people who pick up an extra 20-30 bucks a week and thats about it. dont know a single person who thinks uber is fulltime
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
First, if programmers had had enough guts to unionize, they wouldn't have been in the position of having to train their H1B or offshore replacements. But no, unions are for blue-collar workers (blue collar jobs) and pink collar jobs only - white collar workers are too good for that.
Second, how long will it take to pass a law banning drivers from forming a union? Probably about as quickly as Indiana passed a law banning cities from regulating airbnb rentals. Welcome to Trumpville, where money counts for more than people, and you are nothing if you're "just" a citizen.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Au contraire, billion-dollar businesses can disappear in a flash. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC is one such example - he owes $170 billion in restitution, based on a fraud of over $60 billion. At one point he was the largest trader of NYSE-listed stocks in the world, doing up to 15% of all trades. $740 million a day in trades isn't chicken feed.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Said this before, they should form a cooperative. Every driver and maybe rider pays small yearly fee like 20 dollars, and the cooperative builds app and maintains infustructure, drivers keep 100% of their income. This could probably be done on global scale with 10-20 people who were lazy, and 1 highly skilled person with no life.
Uber is just middle men.
I imagine dropping the term "cooperative" into a meeting of Uber and their investors would produce the same effect as running into the Vatican shouting "the Pope's the fucking Antichrist".
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It is Silicon Valley after all.. Shouldn't be too much longer.
Uber has never been profitable regardless, and it lost $3billion last year. It operates on venture capital. Profit is so 20th century.
This space intentionally left blank
I have taken around 180 Uber rides, in London, San Francisco, New York, Paris, Moscow, Munich and Boston. In London, every Uber driver appears to treat it as a full time job. I ask them and they tell me the long hours they work, often complaining if I let the conversation go that way, how Uber has reduced their remuneration to where they claim it is almost not worth it anymore. (note, they always say "almost":)
Addisson Lee had to re-scramble their business model, to account for all of their drivers leaving for Uber. They had bought up and consolidated mostly all the "mini-cab" i.e. limo driver companies. These were generally full time roles.
In Moscow, I got the same driver for every single trip, for the entire week. He was in a suit and tie with sunglasses... I think I must have been the only Uber customer in town so he just hung around my hotel and workplace.
In New York, one of my latest drivers talked of how he quit his trucking job for Uber - remarking how he is treated better by Uber customers than by his contacts in the shipping industry.
The only outlier I can think of that supports your observation is Boston, where I was picked up, at 4AM by a guy who claims his primary job is writing. I had to wonder, who gets out at 4AM to do side work? Well, for a creative person you never know.
None of my or your observations "change" the concept, but very very few of my observations support the concept that your observations are supporting. So, at a minimum I would have to say those Uber drivers you know, and I, are not driving and riding via Uber in the same localities, at the same time.
Take off every 'sig' !!
I would argue if these UBER drivers you are talking about are unhappy, as independent contractors they can simply find other work.
maybe the reason they complain about it is because they are trying to make fulltime pay doing a job that was never intended to be a fulltime thing???
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Companies and unions becoming greedy is not unusual. Uber succeeded because they offered an alternative that was cheaper for the end user. How? Because they had no regulatory burden (thanks to misrepresenting themselves as a tech company instead of a gypsy cab company) and foisting the costs off onto the contractor drivers. The conduct of the cab and limo companies is a separate issue and belongs in a separate discussion.
I'm a big proponent of unions simply because I can see what happens when business owners are allowed to do whatever they want to their employees. The number of ethical employers that treat their employees well is a tiny fraction of the workforce, and I wouldn't count Uber in this class.
People forget that taxi driver is one of those job of last resort for people who don't have the skills to be in the higher levels of the workforce. I live near NYC and some of the recent immigrant cab drivers I've met have crazy stories of coming here, some as refugees, working 14 hour days, 6 days a week while they're learning English and going to school. No one in IT believes me, but this is just a preview of what's coming for a huge swath of white collar workers who will be wiped out in the next automation wave. Those nice safe jobs new grads get shuffling paperwork at some big company are getting squeezed now, but could just disappear entirely very soon since companies seem to be in a massive optimization drive. The white collar workers of today are going to end up as the Uber drivers of tomorrow as no one wants to hire them for their skills anymore. I say we should try to make our Mad Max style future of fighting for scraps as comfortable as possible now while we still can.
The other thing I could see happening is a drivers' association forming a not for profit that makes their own Uber-style app and charges drivers a reasonable percentage of the fares. It's amazing how much better off everyone is when you take the profit motive out of the equation. Note that I'm not saying "non-profit," because people do need to be paid and it's not a charity -- but a not-for-profit removes the pressure to turn the screws on the employees to the maximum revenue-generating setting. It would be a kind of non-scummy, non-evil Uber and they could even use a similar business model.
I was under the impression that Uber drivers drove 'when they wanted too' and they were independent contractors?
Has that changed since the beginning of the company?
So what is the point of a union?
What good does striking do to the business model of a company that assumes that on any given day everybody or nobody may decide to work?
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
If you're competent and enjoy spending your personal time networking, on job interviews, and climbing the corporate latter maybe you're fine without a union. Some of us are competent and just want a job and not worry about the other external bullshit.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Unionize they go AI. If programmers unionize it encourages more outsourcing overseas and using software to write code with less people.
You can't beat the free market. If Uber is ruined over this Lyft will start to become the more preferred brand as it will cost less. If the prices are too low then drivers will drop out and do other part time jobs then the wages will go back up again perfect equilibrium. If they are low now it is because someoe is willing to do the job for cheaper as word got out on the amount of money you could make. Tough life happens. Remember how much we used to get paid back in the 1990s? Sigh ... we won't ever get paid that high again regardless of 2x the cost of living! Too many people know tech now and we just needed to readjust.
http://saveie6.com/
First, if programmers had had enough guts to unionize, they wouldn't have been in the position of having to train their H1B or offshore replacements. But no, unions are for blue-collar workers (blue collar jobs) and pink collar jobs only - white collar workers are too good for that.
What do you think you are getting out of unionizing software developing jobs? Do you think unionized plants are never closed and moved overseas?
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Mod up; I know you're thinking "Why?! He's a douche!" and of course you'd be right... but that was funny.
You can't beat the free market
But there is no free market. So you can absolutely beat the market if you're running the government. Microsoft demands cheap foreign labor because "free market!" but if I want to use the free market to bootleg copies of Microsoft Office they run to the government to "protect intellectual property."
It's all government control, so pick your poison. A reasonable* approach would balance the interests of capital (yes, we'll protect your intellectual property) with those of labor (but you can't fuck American workers to get cheap foreigners). Right now the rules are all for capital and shit for labor, but that's no "free market."
* By "reasonable" I mean for normal people, not for Slashdot free software ideologues.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
and run. I'm surprised they waited this long.
The concept of Uber is to extract corporate profit off the backs of drivers. No long term business model succeeds by exploiting those who provide the actual goods and services that is the foundation of the company. Their exit plan was automated vehicles and remove the driver from the equation- If it is proven in court that Uber stole the code from Google for self driving cars: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
Uber no longer has a business model at all.
was this: Uber is a payday loan where the interest is maintenance on your car.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I knew lots of them before low wages forced them out of the industry. They were all working class folks on the edge of middle class. I watch in the 2000s as one after the other they were replaced by immigrants willing to work for 1/2 minimum wage 70+ hours a week. I miss those guys...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Oh, they burned. Just not so slowly.
I don't need to sell anything if I already own everything. That's the end goal here of the 1%ers. You'll still do what they say because they decide who eats and who starves.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Libertarian corporate experiments are amazingly GOOD for society, and unfortunately, government regulation and taxation usually keeps them from popping up nearly as often as they should.
Uber actually raised the bar for traditional taxi cabs and their cartel they had going.... Whether Uber dies now for other reasons is irrelevant. Thanks to Uber, most city cabs I've run across will now accept major credit cards, and a growing number have apps to hail rides (no more 19th. century flailing of arms and whistling necessary!).
I'm seeing Lyft learning from Uber's mis-steps and predict they'll do well in their place, if Uber can't turn things around for their own business.
They did when the CEO was on Trump's economic council.
Sure, the law is "more complicated" than just stating a person is "not an employee". But I don't see how Uber drivers can be construed as employees/staff?
I know plenty of people who decided they'd do some driving for Uber, and among other things, there's no requirement you actually perform a specific job for Uber. You're free to accept or reject all opportunities that pop up on your phone. You can work as much or as little as you like.
That's your idea, that the job was never intended to be full-time.
What we are discussing is our observations of the Uber drivers and how they see it. You are not making sense, and writing like a shill.
Take off every 'sig' !!
What a twisted, absolutely incorrect way to summarize libertarian ideals!
I can't fathom why so many people think the superior way to handle things is living in a society where you've arbitrarily handed pretty much unlimited power to a group of "elites" in a central government -- who you agree to hand over a large percentage of your earnings to via taxation, and then get to "beg, plead and petition" them to spend the money in ways you agree with (which they may or may not do).
Wages as numbers are arbitrary. All that ultimately matters about a wage is how much buying power it gives a person in the economy they're surrounded by. That's why these pushes to demand a "$15 minimum wage" and so on are doomed to fail in the long-run. What happens is, you use the force of law to dictate that suddenly, everybody has to pay at least this certain amount of money, no matter WHAT you've hired a person to do. In at least SOME situations, the people being employed weren't doing labor worth that much money to the employer. So adjustments WILL be made to compensate. Either they'll make do with FEWER employees, or they'll raise prices of whatever they sell, or they'll cut back on some costly benefits they used to offer. What they WON'T do is just accept the fact that it's "good business" to overpay everyone they hired to do the most menial types of work they needed to get done. Initially, when you mandate a big bump in pay - it's an improvement for those receiving it. That's only because the market takes time to compensate for it. Give it a year or two though, and that $15/hr. will be buying everyone less than it used to. Essentially, you created enough inflation to make the $15/hr. worth about what the previous minimum wage was worth to them.
Your premise is fundamentally flawed. The market ALWAYS sets wages. Government simply interferes and breaks the functionality of the free marketplace whenever it tries to regulate them. If you have a skill that's difficult to find and in high demand, you WILL earn a lot of money with that skill if you match it up with an employer who needs it. Government's meddling in "minimum wage" enforcement has zero bearing on that fact.
I.T. people probably don't believe you because your scenario isn't that plausible.
There's going to be a big shake-up in the labor market thanks to advances in automation -- but that automation is going to be marketed, serviced and programmed/developed by people with I.T. skills.
A whole lot of automation is going to heavily rely on network connectivity, too. That means your Internet providers and people maintaining the wired or wireless networks are still going to be in high demand.
People need to be flexible enough to learn new skills and adapt, but that's always been true.
"Some of us are competent and just want a job and not worry about the other external bullshit."
You've presumably never worked in a unionized workplace. You'd just swap one kind of BS for another.
But if it has to be one or the other I pick unions. That's the point.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Wait until you're working with a disruptive dimwit and the union tells you they can't be fired because... union.
This is a very bad sign for Uber, its employees and contractors.
What has this done to the price of out of the money, medium term, puts on Uber? They can't have been cheap, even before this.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I know someone who had some anger issues and ran afoul for that reason, couldn't take it any more and pushed one of those dimwits against a wall hard. But anger issues are his problem, I'm a fairly patient person so I'll deal with it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
ive never even used uber before so no, not a shill by any means
the job was never intended to be full time, go look at the material written when the company started, it was always intended (or at least sold as) nothing more than ride sharing
if some people decide to make it full time, thats on them, no one else
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Thank you.
I think if I have had conversations with 175 Uber drivers, and you know a number of people who drive for Uber... then there is a big difference between the number of drivers we have each had contact with.
I don't care what Uber's marketing materials or business plan or IPO documents said. My claim is about what drivers consider to be their job. And I'm sure it differs by region and over time, but I think you cannot possibly claim to have a well qualified observation of what drivers think based on what you have written here.
Take off every 'sig' !!
Do you have to be an employee to unionize?
And if they are not employees, how much grounds does Uber have to stop people who THEY argue aren't their employees from forming some sort of a collective?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
so clearly we are discussing 2 separate things. You are talking about your experience in how uber drivers are acting, and im explaining how those drivers are not working as the company expected them to act.
I used an example of the few people i know, who are using it as it was intended and they are happy with it, the only people unhappy are those who expect to be fulltime drivers, and taxi companies
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I am generally very cool with disruption and specifically with Uber/Lyft etc disrupting taxi services.
One issue I lock onto with taxi services pretty much around the world is that many governments aggressively constrained issuing of taxi licences/medallians etc (name varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction) and essentially turned licences into rapidly appreciating ponzi currency. The Uber/Lyft model shows that this was unnecessary. This is a mess governments created because they saw easy money from it and now they should clean up.
But my problem specifically with Uber is that they are amoral arseholes and arseholes to pretty much anyone if it furthers their perceived interests. And hypocrites. Their attempt to use court system to regulate the formation of a drivers union is anti-libertarian. Like many libertarian endeavours they pay lip-service to core libertarian principals only when it suits them and then happily apply judicial/regulatory mechanisms when it suits. There is no real unifying principal at work other than do whatever it takes to get the things we want.
Further, what they want goes way beyond merely disrupting taxi services, their end game is to monopolise all private transportation and given their corporate culture no good can come from this end game.
You make your comment in-jest but you describe places like Somalia where there is no government and where you really do kill to get ahead.
Personally I don't want to live in a place like Somalia, I like the idea that there are actions that are prohibited and that there are consequences for those actions.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
And now the unions are poised to fuck up ride sharing...
Uber has not been ride-sharing in a long time. If people are paying a fare to a driver who isn't already headed in the same general direction, then I'm sorry but it's simply cab service with a different name.
Real ride-sharing is still an option on a number of different apps. But Uber is little more than a sub-contracted taxi company.
The death of Uber may actually help ride-sharing. Ride-sharing would be the affordable option (over personal cars or taxis) once Uber is dead.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
I have NEVER gotten my news from American media. Not Fox, not CNN, etc. 95% of the world are not Americans, and have seen first-hand just how full of sh*t and how eager to self-censor your media are.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I was a member of the Steelworkers at one job, and it wasn't that hard to put the gears to another union member who was being a bit of an asshole.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
What do you mean "if"? They're already outsourcing. Unionizing would slow the process down by making it easier for workers to refuse to train their replacements.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I live in the DC metro area, but both in DC and in "provincial backwaters" like Chicago, there have been problems for YEARS with cabbies not wanting to take credit cards. Sure, they technically CLAIM they can do so. But check out how often they lie and tell you the card reader is broken/down, in an attempt to get cash instead.
Oh, and BTW -- another big problem with cabs? They like to refuse to pick you up if they know your destination crosses a state line. Happens all the time with folks who live in Virginia but want to take a cab to DC and back. The cab will happily bring them to DC, because they know they can easily pick up another fare there. But they'll find every excuse to refuse to take you back home again afterwards if it means they're going to end up in some suburb of VA.
"Some of us are competent and just want a job and not worry about the other external bullshit."
You've presumably never worked in a unionized workplace. You'd just swap one kind of BS for another.
There's a lot of internal busllshit also. A friend of mine that helps organize unions says 'bad management is the cuse of unions'. What drove part of my workplace to unionize was bad management. People who don't like unions suddenly change when their long planned vacation is cancelled by the manager because somebody else was fired and then expect that person to pick up slack. This leads to constant arguments, combative workplace, and hostility. Union was brought in and now both sides have certain and strict rules. Now even the managers that were originally part of the problem admit they would never go back to a non-unionized environment because things work so much easier now. My own IT group tried to unionize when some people were told they had to come in early and stay late for no other reason than the boss thought that would be nice. The charge for us to unionize was led by two Rush Limbaugh listening, retired military guys. Everybody else joined in because he was an incompetent manager who had yelled at everybody for things that were mostly likely his own fault, had multiple harrassment, including sexual, issues brought up with HR, but HR has stated openly "we're here to help the managers solve their problems".
Yeah. Other examples:
Lehman Brothers. $680B in supposed assets (and $22B in actual capital), then bankrupt a month later.
Bear Stearns. In 2006, $350B in assets ($66B in capital), and the "Most Admired" securities firm in the US (Fortune magazine survey). In 2008, wiped out and bought by JP Morgan for a song.
WorldCom. $104B in assets when it filed for bankruptcy in 2002, after its huge accounting fraud was discovered. Though WC re-emerged from bankruptcy as MCI and was then bought by Verizon, so I suppose it's debatable whether it "folded" - it was a fairly orderly reorganization. Same can be said for e.g. Global Crossing.
Most of the other big bankruptcies in the US were similarly either bailed out, bought out, or reorganized. It's true that it's relatively rare for a company with that kind of capital to simply fall apart - someone will want to feast on that corpse.