As Marx and Engels said the relationship between workers and owners will always be antagonistic. As long as that relationship exists it will be the same. It can't be fixed, it has to be done away with. People look at me like I am utterly inscrutable when I say I refuse to buy from Amazon, or shop at various corporate outlets. You can do it too, you do not need them. They are working day and night to make sure you will have no choice but to buy from them. Eliminating all competition is central to their system of belief. Buy what you need elsewhere as long as you possibly can. If no one bought from them, these corporations would not exist. I do my infinitesimally small part by never giving them my consent or money. Please join me. Maybe someday we humans can obtain our necessities from other humans who do not want to cheat and weaken us. It is possible, but organizations that have these goals need to be shut off first. We have the switch in our fingers.
Will never ever forget working in management for the biggest thrift store chain in the world (fuckin' Savers) and being expected to subject my employees to the most transparently asinine anti-unionization videos ever made. Did I do so? Yes. Did I mock the videos while the employees and I were watching them? Yes. Did I keep this job for very long? Hell no. I work for the state now helping citizens get social services and my conscience is clearer than it has ever been. Corporations are not your family. Corporations are not your friends. They are, to borrow some conspiracy language, reptilians.
Loved this article! I am an REI member that was duped by their "progressive" PR. I sent in my no vote to the board elections, but hadn't seen any results until reading your article. I was so thrilled to hear about the results. Congratulations to the employee organizers who put together and implemented this plan. That's people power grassroots organizing!
"Our approval? Our decision to grant companies the right to operate in our neighborhoods and cities and social and professional circles without being denounced? Companies don’t even pay for that advantage. We give them that one for free." It's long past time for that mindset to die. Every one of your excellent treatises on this subject confirms my conviction that meaningful change will not happen unless or until we as a society collectively decide to stop equating selfish consumerism with patriotism and naked corporate greed with valor.
I think the same as executives and their management teams perform mass layoffs and hire replacements overseas, fire people in order to "replace" them with AI, and give no raises and then perform stock buybacks, etc. We don't have to accept that as the natural consequence of business. It's a choice. And people that make those choices should not be accepted in society.
Basically capitalism and its many branches can not be sustained if workers refuse to be dumped on. This economic system is actually counterproductive and not only anti worker but anti regulation and anti competition and in its death throes. We are not at the breaking point yet but you can see it from here. When AI and robotics really eliminate WORK something will seek to fill the void . But what ?
I think people need to revisit The Corporation (2003). Over 20 years ago the filmmakers determined what kind of “people” corporations are — psychopaths. It certainly has not gotten better since.
Or, for instance, take the NYT coverage of the recent NJ Transit strike, which they characterized as "a dispute over pay," and then went on to spend pages and pages on the inconvenience to travelers without ever bothering to detail the years-long fight by engineers to get paid in an equitable fashion to LIRR and Metro North engineers.
And do not get me started on the people who believe their individual boycotts of Amazon are going to change the world--fine, buy your wares from twee local stores if you can find them, but don't act like that's going to do anything to get a warehouse worker a living wage or a decent bathroom break.
Re. your first comment, I do think that coverage of labor and union issues in general would be greatly improved just by starting with the expectation that companies SHOULD bargain in good faith and then putting the responsibility on their shoulders for failing to do so.
Coverage of labor and union issues would, of course, also be better if we still had any goddamn labor beat reporters left. But I think one of the difficulties of convincing people that unions are important is that they only hear about them framed as greedy people out to inconvenience the public and their supposedly benevolent employers.
Let’s say the big word. The most important word. The one that keeps this world of ours in the clutches of the evil people. FEAR. We are divided against each other by fear. Everything we have, everything we love, can be ripped away by fear. It’s so simple. The word labor has outlived any possibility to unite us. I have always thought calling everybody who works for a living the Paycheck Party might unite us. Our enemy? The bosses. Simple stuff, but if it spreads, could change everything.
As Marx and Engels said the relationship between workers and owners will always be antagonistic. As long as that relationship exists it will be the same. It can't be fixed, it has to be done away with. People look at me like I am utterly inscrutable when I say I refuse to buy from Amazon, or shop at various corporate outlets. You can do it too, you do not need them. They are working day and night to make sure you will have no choice but to buy from them. Eliminating all competition is central to their system of belief. Buy what you need elsewhere as long as you possibly can. If no one bought from them, these corporations would not exist. I do my infinitesimally small part by never giving them my consent or money. Please join me. Maybe someday we humans can obtain our necessities from other humans who do not want to cheat and weaken us. It is possible, but organizations that have these goals need to be shut off first. We have the switch in our fingers.
Will never ever forget working in management for the biggest thrift store chain in the world (fuckin' Savers) and being expected to subject my employees to the most transparently asinine anti-unionization videos ever made. Did I do so? Yes. Did I mock the videos while the employees and I were watching them? Yes. Did I keep this job for very long? Hell no. I work for the state now helping citizens get social services and my conscience is clearer than it has ever been. Corporations are not your family. Corporations are not your friends. They are, to borrow some conspiracy language, reptilians.
Loved this article! I am an REI member that was duped by their "progressive" PR. I sent in my no vote to the board elections, but hadn't seen any results until reading your article. I was so thrilled to hear about the results. Congratulations to the employee organizers who put together and implemented this plan. That's people power grassroots organizing!
I share a lot of your columns with my local Indivisible group. Always clear and engaging. Thank you for your work!
"Our approval? Our decision to grant companies the right to operate in our neighborhoods and cities and social and professional circles without being denounced? Companies don’t even pay for that advantage. We give them that one for free." It's long past time for that mindset to die. Every one of your excellent treatises on this subject confirms my conviction that meaningful change will not happen unless or until we as a society collectively decide to stop equating selfish consumerism with patriotism and naked corporate greed with valor.
I think the same as executives and their management teams perform mass layoffs and hire replacements overseas, fire people in order to "replace" them with AI, and give no raises and then perform stock buybacks, etc. We don't have to accept that as the natural consequence of business. It's a choice. And people that make those choices should not be accepted in society.
MoveToAmend.org
One phone call to your congressional rep to ask them to cosponsor HJR-54.
1) Corporations are not people
2) Money is not speech
Basically capitalism and its many branches can not be sustained if workers refuse to be dumped on. This economic system is actually counterproductive and not only anti worker but anti regulation and anti competition and in its death throes. We are not at the breaking point yet but you can see it from here. When AI and robotics really eliminate WORK something will seek to fill the void . But what ?
I think people need to revisit The Corporation (2003). Over 20 years ago the filmmakers determined what kind of “people” corporations are — psychopaths. It certainly has not gotten better since.
Or, for instance, take the NYT coverage of the recent NJ Transit strike, which they characterized as "a dispute over pay," and then went on to spend pages and pages on the inconvenience to travelers without ever bothering to detail the years-long fight by engineers to get paid in an equitable fashion to LIRR and Metro North engineers.
And do not get me started on the people who believe their individual boycotts of Amazon are going to change the world--fine, buy your wares from twee local stores if you can find them, but don't act like that's going to do anything to get a warehouse worker a living wage or a decent bathroom break.
Re. your first comment, I do think that coverage of labor and union issues in general would be greatly improved just by starting with the expectation that companies SHOULD bargain in good faith and then putting the responsibility on their shoulders for failing to do so.
Coverage of labor and union issues would, of course, also be better if we still had any goddamn labor beat reporters left. But I think one of the difficulties of convincing people that unions are important is that they only hear about them framed as greedy people out to inconvenience the public and their supposedly benevolent employers.
The fact that you could write a column this long and not include Starbucks is kind of insane.
Let’s say the big word. The most important word. The one that keeps this world of ours in the clutches of the evil people. FEAR. We are divided against each other by fear. Everything we have, everything we love, can be ripped away by fear. It’s so simple. The word labor has outlived any possibility to unite us. I have always thought calling everybody who works for a living the Paycheck Party might unite us. Our enemy? The bosses. Simple stuff, but if it spreads, could change everything.
Amen.
How are we going to get around the NLRB fiasco?