John Oliver says goodbye to 2021 by exposing the most union-busting companies
So, hello, Delta, Starbucks, Dish Network, Target, Columbia Sportswear, and, of course, Amazon
TV News John Oliver
John Oliver might have finally left his pandemic void of late, but that doesn’t make it any easier to regularly expose the world’s crushing inequities, bigotries, authoritarian coups, and assorted venal and predatory horrors. But, you know, in a funny way. So Oliver and Last Week Tonight are shutting things down for the 2021 holiday season, presumably to return just in time for a big one year anniversary show about the time the Republican Party did the bidding of a sexual predator game show host and fraudulent mail-order meat merchant and attempted to destroy American democracy in favor of a fascist, white supremacist ethno-state. Man, it has been a long year.
But Oliver goes out swinging, as is his way, presenting a searingly funny broadside against those American companies that engage in multifarious tactics to discourage their workers to unionize. You know unions—those workers’ rights organizations that brought us the unprecedented gifts of weekends, vacation days, and the right to take a whiz without fear of retribution. Unless you work at Amazon, which, as Oliver reminded everyone, had to admit that, sure, its workers occasionally to have to urinate in bottles on the job so they don’t fall behind Amazon’s rigidly enforced quota system. But at least Jeff Bezos, “America’s least inspiring astronaut,” according to Oliver, got to fly almost into outer space that one time.
But, hold on, you might say in response to Oliver’s exposé on unions and the companies that hate them, Oliver admits that only some 10 percent of American workers are currently unionized. Clearly, workers don’t want unions, right? Oh, you silly Last Week Tonight virgin, you—Oliver resolutely shows how companies make use of your parents’ “My house, my rules” dictum regarding employees being on company time to inundate potentially union-curious employees with daily anti-union text propaganda, put up anti-union signage everywhere (including the bathroom stalls your manager thinks you’re spending to much time in), and at mandatory “captive audience meetings.” And, yes, that’s what these sometimes twice-weekly anti-union indoctrination sessions are actually called, in case un-unionized workers don’t know just where they stand.
As Oliver notes, union-busting is technically illegal, in the sense that companies caught, say, threatening to close newly unionized branches or retaliating against pro-union workers might be forced to pay back pay to workers it’s illegally forced out, or post a sternly worded bulletin board flyer promising to never, ever do it again. Producing his own version of the mass-produced anti-union “union training videos” companies purchase from union-busting specialists like the shamelessly named Labor Relations Institute, Oliver showed potential union members questioning companies’ shady, expensively consultant-crafted claims about lost jobs, lower wages, and ridiculous what-if scenarios. And then being escorted out by security in the background while the grinning (and unionized) actors portraying friendly, paternalistic corporate management pronounce, “We’re a family—and you workers are children.”
As for what to do, well, Oliver notes that the currently under debate Protecting The Right To Organize Act (H.R.842), which would prevent mandatory anti-union meetings and actually impose real financial penalties for companies engaging in this shady and exploitative behavior. So you can call your representatives, secure in your knowledge that their financial relationship with large corporate donors will in no way influence their votes. Other than that, it’s up to the public to vote with their wallets by withholding business from anti-union companies (Amazon, Starbucks, Target, Dish Network, Delta Airlines, far too many others), and for a cheeky Brit with an Emmy-winning late-night show to mock the hell out unfettered capitalist greed. See you next year.
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Another episode of Capitalism is Responsible For This Injustice But We Won’t Actually Say or Address That
There’s lots of capitalist countries (like Germany) where businesses accept unions are a thing that have a right to exist. And of course if you are old enough to remember the 1980s, there were plenty of non-capitalistic countries like Poland who tried to crush unions too.
Unions are a band-aid on a gaping wound.
I often think that employee-owned companies are a good (partial?) solution. Let the value of the labor accrue to those who are doing it; let the workers choose their leaders.
I grew up in a Baltimore suburb (which has since unsurprisingly become T***pistan) where the auto industry was the main source of employment (and has since been replaced by Amazon, ironically), and back in the 70’s and 80’s union workers had it made—of course there were horror stories about the privileges of being a union worker being “abused” but in general, it guaranteed a good, reasonably secure, middle-class life. Then the rumors grew worse (e.g. people doing drugs while working on the assembly line but not losing their jobs) and the anti-union animus grew stronger to the point that even friends of mine whose family members were union workers were happy to be rid of the unions because of allegedly incompetent leadership. In retrospect Amazon probably deliberately chose this place to relocate one of its biggest distribution centers because the locals are the proverbial “frogs in a pot of boiling water”—they’re just so happy to have work (esp. with many of them not having HS diplomas, or have criminal records, or are drug addicts) that they won’t resist as their basic freedoms are taken away, and they definitely won’t talk about unions and risk having their sugar daddies leave them. Jesus, American capitalism fucking sucks.
In retrospect Amazon probably deliberately chose this place to relocate one of its biggest distribution centers because the locals are … just so happy to have work … that they … definitely won’t talk about unions[Edited for compactness, not to change your point]For all the show of cities competing on their pitches to Amazon a few years back, this has got to have been one of the most decisive factors, right? And not something any half-competent datacrunchers with a rack of AWS servers behind them would have any difficulty with sussing out, either.
definitely yes, and this place in particular was probably found with a 5 minute Google search. The place has been foundering economically since the auto makers left ~20 years ago, the great majority of people are HS grads or less, and just don’t have a lot of options; they are basically crying out to be enslaved and abused. On a related note, when I drive past those distribution facilities I often wonder out loud, imagine if Bezos called an audible and decided to give everyone at Amazon a 50% raise. He’d have people with graduate degrees fighting for those shit jobs; the standard of living would rise in that area and probably extend into Baltimore city itself; job satisfaction would be dramatically higher; and Amazon’s reputation would be improved massively. But when you’re the richest guy in the world, who gives a fuck if the peons suffer? They should be grateful to be employed right?I hope a few of them watched John Oliver last night (because I’m sure that demographic LOVES John Oliver LOL) and were struck like I was by the fact that unionized workers earn 25% MORE than their non-unionized counterparts; why is that not more commonly known?
Not really. The cities were competing on Amazon’s “second HQ”, which would employ a very different set of workers than their warehouses — engineers, MBAs, and computer scientists making six figures. While there were a few impoverished locations supposedly in the running, unsurprisingly they ended up with a split HQ2 partly located in NYC and partly in suburban Washington, DC, both extremely well off places populated by the “coastal elite”.
Good points. I forgot the distinction of HQ2 or mixed up two news stories.
Eh…aren’t the majority populations in NYC and DC made-up of working-class ethnic minorities? Not everybody in DC is a Congresscritter, and not everybody living in NYC is a hedgefund manager.
I live on a very red part of Long Island and this is exactly the same here. What really amazes me is I have friends who are in unions (town and so forth) and yet go on about the evils of them while enjoying all the benefits.
it’s a group of people who are just so anxious to be told what to do that they’ll literally harm themselves and their families and act against their best self-interests when some loud talking Republican tells them to (and/or if they say a “liberal” might be proved right if they do so). I feel a little compassion for them and their situation but that compassion has definitely been blunted by the last few years of “FUCK YOUR FEELINGS LIBTARD LOL” and the sense of superiority (in the face of all evidence to the contrary) that T***p has revived in these dipshits.
Baffles me. There’s one boomer on our town facebook roundtable that always spouts off about handouts/not working hard/socialism, but on his personal page (which is all public), he talks about being mad at changes or whatever to his city pension. [he seemed to run the city maintenance department]. I’m not saying he didn’t work hard or deserves the pension he was promised, but it BLOWS MY MIND when people with these set-ups don’t get why others may want similar protections.
I was working in poultry-processing when the pandemic started; the majority of workers in my facility were somewhat liberal (shocking, I know!). They’d complain about the long hours, shitty pay (it was actually pretty decent), the inability to use the restroom, or the line-speed being too fast.If I so much as mentioned the fact that organizing could fix all those problems, they suddenly looked like they’d seen a ghost.“BUT…BUT…THEY’D SHUT THE PLANT DOWN!”Citing an incident when a plant got shutted in PA back in the 80’s after they formed a union; what the video didn’t mention, however, and was very clearly denoted literally EVERYWHERE around the factory (and had it’s own video and form to sign upon employment) was that the factory was actually shuttered because the processor was dumping biochemical waste into a local body of water…not because of unionizing. SMDH
fav’d for actually using the word “proverbial” correctly
I love my union benefits but I literally have to be caught doing drugs while having sex with a subordinate on company property to be fired. My union spends $$$$ of members dues fighting the termination of people who would have been shown the door anywhere else for their idiocy.
Good?
I mean, that sounds great.
LOL, are you under the impression that if you didn’t have a union that those employees would be removed and their salary would then in whole or part be given to you?
I mean, the whole “hard to fire” thing is pretty bad, depending on the union in question. Like police unions.
“I heard you lefties hate cops, and THEY have a union”do better
You have missed the point. Stay mad.
When people ask me how I feel about unions, I never can just say “Good or Bad.” It really depends on the industry, the area, and most importantly, the leadership.Do I think people in my industry, in my area, should unionize? Absolutely! But not at the price of leadership of people running it like the UAW or FOP. They really ruined the concept of organizing for the rest of us.
That’s irrelevant.
No, certain extremely problematic employees make it harder for the rest to do their jobs and even end up creating more work for the rest if not make the workplace environment toxic – their removal and replacement with someone who isn’t creating issues would make it better for the rest. That’s what they’d be referring to.
I highly encourage folks who can (and – justifications aside – you know full well whether you can) to stop fucking with Amazon.And, to head it off at the pass: if you’re the sort of edgelordy fuck who likes to “do a capitalism” to try to make online strangers mad, I don’t give a shit. ;-*
I only use Amazon for shit I have trouble finding at smaller stores, but something that blew my mind was when I was building my PC: check prices at traditional online stores…Amazon’s actually expensive as fuck. Shop around; you’re over-paying at Amazon, same as Wal*Mart.
Might be a shorter list of pro-union companies we can use?
for real, I assume anyone with an ad budget has a “keep the workers divided and conquered” budget that’s similar if not larger
As someone in a union job, and conscious of the fact that, as stated, very few people are in unions, I kind of feel like the focus on them in regards to workplace issues is ass-backwards—in that, rather than pushing for more unions, it’s far more important at this point to just push for labor reform at a state and federal level that helps everyone. (And, by all means, unionize instead of just waiting around hoping such labor reform will come.)
The fact is that the stereotypes are often true. Our union fought tooth and nail against even having annual reviews at my work, and has been fighting vaccine mandates just as vociferously. Unaccountable union management has absconded with funds and gotten away with actual crimes. There are absolutely shit workers being kept around that make the workplace terrible. Is it the same kind of terrible as bad working conditions being mandated from on high? No, but the end result is still a shitty working situation. And police and public sector unions definitely earn their less-than-sterling reputations.
On the other hand, the union made sure we kept health benefits while furloughed during the height of the pandemic, and maybe there is no middle ground between “can’t fire this worthless employee” and “can fire this person for no reason at all”, and on balance leaning towards the latter is better. It’d be nice if there was some real ability to push back on the kind of practices Oliver details.
having worked many gigs over the years under unions and not, including one job where a larger union literally pulled out because management was so unreasonable and awful that the union couldn’t keep putting its resources into policing that workplace, my finding is that the only thing worse than a corrupt or useless union is no union at all.
Frankly, pushing back against and blocking yearly reviews sounds wonderful. What a waste of time.
If you’re conflating police unions with teachers unions, you’re a fucking moron and you should glue your mouth shut
Unions certainly have their drawbacks as you pointed out and they aren’t right for every shop, but probably the best argument for unionizing is that companies aren’t paying consultants $340M/year for advice on how to prevent people from unionizing because they think that spending that money will make their employees lives better.
“fighting vaccine mandates”Are they actually fighting vaccine mandates or just negotiating compensation to meet them? e.g. PTO the day after you get a shot, etc.Thus far, the only unions I’ve seen take actual stances against vaccination have been some police unions and they have ineffectual.
Both my wife and I are union and have some of the last true middle class jobs. There is either sour grapes or delusion that the lone individual can somehow negotiate a better deal with a giant corporation than a union can.
I was in a union at my last job and miss it so much. They really fought for the folks that the higher ups tried to screw folks over. While they also repped some folks who deserved to lose their jobs it was more in a “we have to make sure the rules are followed for everyone” way rather than in a “we want to make it impossible for the incompetent to lose their jobs” kind of way. Bosses sometimes want to blame the union for making it hard to fire those who deserve it but it’s usually because they don’t want to follow the terms of the agreement than because it’s impossible.
my first tech job back 20 odd years ago I had to sit through one of these screeds during orientation at Cox Cable. Meanwhile my wife was over working at Pacific Bell making $6 and hour more to start and paying nothing for insurance because of the union.
As someone in retail I absolutely wish I could tell someone to fuck off when it’s not my department.
I’m not unionized, but, yeah…pretty nice feeling when I can just tell customers, “Sorry! We’ll be with you in just a moment.” and eventually get around to telling a subordinate to go deal with them. I’ve noticed that customers are a lot more patient and less combative now that I’ve started doing that. People don’t realize just how much shit you really have to do get done besides making them food; sorry lady, got BOH shit to deal with. We’ll get to you when we get to you.
If it’s worth that much time, effort, and money to your boss to prevent a union, imagine what it’s worth to you to have one…
I often wonder when a company like Amazon will just throw up their hands…And hire the Pinkertons to do their union busting.
Unions, as they work today, are thugs backed by the power of the state. There’s a good, valid place for them, but not how they are now.
Not in the mood for irrational idiocy today, so reposting here in the hopes that people of a mind (and with the capacity) can jaw about it. I mean, the whole “hard to fire” thing is pretty bad, depending on the union in question. Like police unions. NOTE (to reactive idiots): that isn’t a “slippery slope” argument. It IS an argument that in the larger push toward greater unionization (which is, in fact, a net benefit for society) should also focus on recalibrating the scales of power within that ecosystem.I.E.: Making it harder for solid workers/laborers to be summarily fired in a fit of pique? Good. Making it easier to fire shitty cops? Also good.
So now what? I’ve all but cut off Amazon, never shopped at Walmart anyway. We have typically used Target because they were supposed to be relatively decent. The local vegan organic co-op doesn’t don’t sell Playstation 5 controllers.
“presumably to return just in time for a big one year anniversary show about the time the Republican Party did the bidding of a sexual predator game show host and fraudulent mail-order meat merchant and attempted to destroy American democracy in favor of a fascist, white supremacist ethno-state.”Based on history, he won’t be back until February.