Capitalism is only sustainable through a system of violence and social control
I still have a copy of the t*rget team lead guide to dealing with union activity that I nicked from the office when I worked there, it’s mostly the same stuff but it also revealed just how much of their management tactics were intended to frustrate any unionizing activity. For instance, they said that cross-training in multiple departments was the best way to get reliable hours, and encouraged everyone to do it; according to the manual, however, it was their way of keeping departments mixed up and jumbled, making it impossible for any single department to unionize (and forcing anyone who wanted to unionize to get the entire store to do it).
And that’s just part what the store managers are taught. Throughout, it mentions holding off on action and consulting a labor relations officer in the company on how to proceed. Who knows what kind of shady shit the people a step above do?
If you’re in retail and wondering how to go about unionizing, contact an existing retail workers union.
They are all very familiar with the anti-union tactics of retail owners and managers, and will have some advice for you, some literature to distribute, and strategies to counter these tactics. It has historically been extremely hard for retail and fast food employees to unionize specifically because the owners and managers keep us scared, disorganized, and are happy to fire us for unionizing, labor laws be damned. Their entire business model hinges on us being overworked and underpaid. Contact a union for help organizing in your store.
This isn’t because Burger King is nicer in Denmark. It’s the law, and the US is actually the only so-called “developed” country that doesn’t mandate jobs provide a minimum amount of paid vacation, sick leave, or both.
kinda debunks that claim that they can’t afford to pay their workers those sort of wages and still make a profit
Its corporate greed, plain and simple.
It is the same in Sweden. It is so funny every time an american company opens up offices here and then tries to do it the american way and all the unions go “I don’t think so”.
They refused to sign on to the union deals that govern such things as pay/pension and vacation in Sweden. Most of our rights are not mandated by law (we don’t have a minimum wage for example) but are made in voluntary agreements between the unions and the companies.
But they refused, saying that they had never negotiated with any unions anywhere else in the world and weren’t planning to do it in Sweden either.
Of course a lot of people thought it was useless fighting against an international giant, but Handels (the store worker’s union) said that they could not budge, because that might mean that the whole Swedish model might crumble. So they went on strike in the three stores that the company had opened so far.
Cue a shitstorm from the press, and from right wing politicians. But the members were all for it, and other unions started doing sympathy actions. The teamsters refused to deliver goods to their stores, the financial unions blockaded all economical transactions regarding Toys ‘r Us and the strike got strong international support as well, especially in the US.
In the end, Toys ‘r Us caved in, signed the union deal, and thus their employees got the same treatment as Swedish store workers everywhere.
The right to be treated as bloody human beings and not disposable cogs in a machine.
and that story right there? is exactly why Republicans in the US work so hard to bust unions. it’s because unionizing WORKS and they’re terrified of workers actually having some power.
It makes me despair for Americans that so many of us are so fucking ignorant of how badly we’re treated. People are proud of the fact that they manage to work three jobs to get by, without any understanding of the fact that they shouldn’t have to. But they’ve been sold a bill of goods that anyone who can’t hack it is a lazy freeloader taking “good people’s” taxes like a thief.
It’s almost as if the country was born to abusive parents, and has never known any other life, so it can’t imagine not being abused….
WalMart is famously anti-Union. In the UK WalMart owns Asda. Now at first they tried to pull the same anti-union bullshit they do in the States but you can’t do that over here. Now not only do Asda employees get to join unions there is an entire union dedicated to them.
Loki is the Philosopher King 