
Apple Store employees trying to unionize - jfruh
http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/166763/some-apple-store-workers-are-talking-u-word-thats-union
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te_chris
Good on them. I think the demonising of unions has been one of the stupidest
things to come out of the neo-liberal era.

EDIT: Knew I'd get downvoted. Seriously though, why is it a bad thing for
employees to bargain collectively in order to get the best deal? To me it just
demonstrates the market working. i.e. people achieving "economies of scale"
(to bastardise the term) in negotiations with powerful employers.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
A large contingent (here and in general) are "supply-side", pro-management,
laissez faire, no/low/fair/flat tax supporting, anti-socialist types.

It comes with the territory that they'd also be almost certifiably
Libertarian, which as a system would work perfectly if it weren't for the
people.

~~~
omouse
The sad part is that the word "Libertarian" used to mean someone that was in
favour of equality and socialism. Someone who was actually liberal.

~~~
th
I've never heard about the change of meaning in this word. Could you provide a
source for that fact?

~~~
randallsquared
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism> says, in part,

 _The first person to describe himself as a libertarian was Joseph Déjacque,
an early French anarchist communist. The word stems from the French word
libertaire, and was used to evade the French ban on anarchist publications. In
this tradition, the term "libertarianism" in "libertarian socialism" is
generally used as a synonym for anarchism, which some say is the original
meaning of the term; hence "libertarian socialism" is equivalent to "socialist
anarchism" to these scholars. In the context of the European socialist
movement, libertarian has conventionally been used to describe those who
opposed state socialism, such as Mikhail Bakunin. In the United States, the
movement most commonly called libertarianism follows a capitalist philosophy;
the term libertarian socialism therefore strikes many Americans as a
contradiction in terms._

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wallflower
The standard tactic employed by McDonald's is that if employees ever manage to
actually get past the hurdles and get the official vote to unionize, the
location of the unionized McDonald's is instantly and permanently shut down.

~~~
Joakal
Source? This sounds like a potential exploit for other businesses.

~~~
wallflower
I read it originally in "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser

<http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/toronto_13feb98.html>

Starbucks employs other strategies:

[http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/are-starbucks-and-
wh...](http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/are-starbucks-and-whole-foods-
union-busting)

Other companies do less obscene variations like instead of a layoff of
unionized workers: move the factory just beyond the 2 hour commute so most
entrenched employees will be forced to make their own decision.

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byw
Not directly related to this, but I made my first ever visit to an Apple Store
last Sunday.

For some reason I was expecting a quiet boutique shop, but ended up wading
through a sea of people. The vast majority were waiting around to fidget with
demo units and kill time, while the few store employees were literally working
non-stop.

I'm not a crowd person, just walking around for a few minutes was stressful
enough for me - I can't even imagine what it's like to actually work there all
day while wearing a smile.

~~~
texel
It's... really stressful. I had coworkers who still have dreams about it,
years later.

~~~
mcritz
Are you talking about your experience during the Falluja campaign or working
at a retail store?

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scottmp10
Modern unions seem to be worried more about "fair wages" (where fair is
determined by the union) than preventing employee abuse. The fact of the
matter is that there is choice in employment, _especially_ if you are
employable enough to be hired by Apple Retail. What is happening here is
effectively the same as if Apple Retail, Best Buy, etc banded together to
demand "fair wages" (as determined by them). In free markets (i.e. _not_ what
unions were initially designed for), unions provide excess leverage to
employees that force companies into unfairly paying employees more than they
are worth (and I feel this is a large cause of the U.S. auto market crash).

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daimyoyo
This will never happen. Apple retail has one of the most selective hiring
processes of any company on the planet. Would you endure 4 interviews across 6
months to sell shirts? Neither would most people but thats SOP at Apple. Yes,
they probably aren't paid as well as others in their industry(especially given
the $7,000/ft^2 the stores average) but it would take a lot more abuse than
they put up with now before the Apple store is unionized.

~~~
brown9-2
Do you have a source on the interviewing process for the retail store? Sounds
interesting.

~~~
daimyoyo
I just wrote up my experience in trying to get a job with the Apple store:
[http://1every.blogspot.com/2011/05/employment-process-at-
app...](http://1every.blogspot.com/2011/05/employment-process-at-apple-store-
or.html)

------
codex
I've often wondered why, if corporations are subject to
antitrust/anticollusion regulations, why unions aren't too. In both cases an
entity or entities seek to gain sufficient clout such that the market no
longer functions efficiently. Why should, say, the Boeing Machinist's Union or
the UAE be allowed to monopolize the labor market of their respective
corporations? Is it because there's a subtle difference between these
instances?

~~~
omouse
Because unions protect the worker from being abused. The power balance is
heavily in favour of management who can fire workers on a whim.

Also, the market isn't efficient. If you look at any large corporation, the
amount of bureaucracy is crippling sometimes (of course some unions turn into
bureaucracies which also hurts).

~~~
smokeyj
If the large corporation is such a bureaucracy, a start-up somewhere will come
eat their lunch. The theory of natural market monopolies is a historical
fallacy. Only with the government's assistance does a monopoly exist (such as
a union, central bank, regulatory rights, etc).
<http://mises.org/daily/5266/The-Myth-of-Natural-Monopoly>

~~~
dhume
As the userbase here tends towards software-based startups, people often
forget that there are many markets where becoming a seller requires very large
initial capital.

~~~
smokeyj
If the competition is as slow and profitable as you say, I promise investors
will want a piece of that action -- and the entrepreneur will make it happen.
There's no reason a deal can't be structured.. unless, it's illegal of course
:)

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pnathan
As someone who's worked retail and fast food, I think those types of locations
are past-due for some serious labor effort. Those kinds of jobs have atrocious
pay and - from what I could tell - required working overtime to pay one's
bills (supposing you were living on under 12K/year) if you weren't a
supervisor.

Personally, I think if you work (around) 40 hours per week, you should be paid
a living wage. That's going to vary based on location, but you shouldn't have
to work more than 50 hours per week just to pay your (uber-frugal) bills.

Well, that's my opinion on the matter.

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Brett_Anderson
Speaking as a "convert"... Apple deserves a union.

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rospaya
> It's certainly not an optimum time for unionizing. The economy is stalling

So, the employees are un-American?

~~~
MaxGabriel
Given the context of the paragraph, I think its more likely the author is
coming from a PR standpoint. I think they probably meant: the public isn't
really behind unions because they've been demonized and are shrinking, and
that problem is exacerbated because the economy is stalling.

"It's certainly not an optimum time for unionizing. The economy is stalling,
and the percentage of private-industry, non-farm workers belonging to unions
was slightly less than 7 percent in 2010 (versus 34 percent in the late
1940s), according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor
Statistics. And, of course, unions have been demonized ever since the Reagan
Administration.

Still, I'm a big believer in the rights of workers to attempt to form unions,
so good luck to the folks behind the ARWU. They're going to need it."

~~~
brown9-2
It's a very odd point for the author to be making in the first place - the
Apple Store employees would have been better off attempting to unionize 30
years ago?

~~~
ericd
Apple would probably have faced more PR backlash from the public if they had
attempted to quash a union then. It's a reasonable point to say that
unionizing now is more difficult.

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iamdave
Angry members of generation Y acting like angry members of generation Y?

~~~
omouse
What does that even mean? Are you trying to say they're acting as if they're
privileged?

