Best of luck to the union. We're seeing time and time again companies willing to be absolutely ruthless with their employees while earning massive profits. Google and Microsoft laying off thousands while profits are rising. Buybacks instead of salaries. Stagnant wages.
Bout time workers started reminding companies that you need us.
It’s beyond needing us, it’s having the courage to create a lifecycle of improvement and healthfulness which allows you to never need lay off any employee because you already have a human being who is able to live sustainably, adapt and improve over time instead of being extracted from and discarded. This means hiring less people probably, but investing more into them.
It might take awhile for systems to disintegrate. And the executives might move on after collecting a tidy bonus. The incentives are too short term for anyone to be concerned about the finding out stage.
When the pilot steps away from the controls, the plane doesn't instantly crash, but you do still need a pilot. An exec thinks labor is a pilot, but only thinks about the 3 minutes after the pilot moves away, then declares, "see? No pilot needed!" Then the exec jumps out with their parachute, and receives no consequences.
This seems a pointless conversation. You're describing a stereotype in your head. That's fine, but it's not very useful outside of your head.
Do you think companies are all firing people all the time and being destroyed in 2, say, years in real life? How have companies lasted more than 2 years? Or do you think no company is more than 2 years old?
Median tenure of large cap companies is like 5 years. Those CEOs are financially incentivized to raise stock value. It's not hard to imagine that many, many executives are motivated to maximize profits even if it hurts the company in the long run. That's not even a matter of opinion. Of course half the CEOs are above the median, which means some do seem to care enough to invest for long term value.
In fact, short term gains is basically the reason private equity firms exist - extracting what value can be extracted from a company and then letting it die.
It’s amazing people keep buying into the delusion that any of the people at the helm of these companies have a vested interest in long-term health of the company. What incentive is there with this much money floating around as an executive? You’re already set for life.
Either it's happening and the consequences are obvious, or it's not happening because everyone's aware of the consequences. Either way, there's no need for any silly "Let's remind them why they need us."
Or the more realistic: it's happening, the long-term consequences are ignored due to short-term return on investment.
While I agree that "let's remind them why they need us" sounds a bit too pitchforky, I believe the background problem is that of mixing long-term considerations (a motivated workforce and a solid business plan) with short-term ones (quick ROI, appeasing shareholders). I believe that unions help focus on the employee side of the longer-term problem.
Correction: Strikes did these all of these things and more, but mere unions never have.
Strong unions (led by workers) leverage labor power for a better society. Weak unions (led by companies and bureaucrats) leverage hollow gestures and brew distrust.
- The American auto industry was quite a wonder in its heyday, and that was also when unions reigned. The decline was correlated with the 1970s oil supply shocks, not union organizing
- The best American states for education really are pretty union heavy ones like Massachussetts, New Jersey, etc. Same states with highest teacher pay and good union teacher job conditions are the ones with high student achievement. Funny that.
- I've been flying in America for decades and it's fine? Like, grow up? Airline peanuts come in funny little bags and sometimes flights are delayed, but all in all it's a pretty marvellous system that charges relatively little for teleporting you around the country.
Only tangentially related, but since this is about the retail stores.
The absolute worst part of the "Apple experience" is the Apple Store. When you enter, you see a crowd of people acting like zombies (you become one too as soon as you enter) and "Geniuses" scurrying around, pretending to be busy. I despise the experience of approaching a random teenager in a blue T-shirt, only to be told that they're too busy and that I need to find another "Genius."
I can't understand what was wrong with a counter and a queue. Why can't they add at least one?
It really feels like the whole process could be organized with half the staff and I hope that the whole union discussions at least create some pressure to introduce "self-checkout" machines there.
There is self-checkout with the Apple Store app, but they have recently made it harder than it needs to be. I think either location services has to be enabled for the app, or you have to find and scan a hidden round QR-like code at the hidden checkout station to bring up the hidden checkout screen.
(Come on Tim Cook, do you really not want my money anymore??)
Once the hidden checkout screen actually appears, the actual scan and purchase process works fine, and they seem to have fixed the issue where it was too easy to scan the same item twice.
The other thing you can do of course is preorder on store.apple.com and then check in when you arrive, either using the app or finding the person with an iPad, usually near the door, who checks people in.
Bout time workers started reminding companies that you need us.