Costco workers in Norfolk have unionised and Costco are seething.

  • ricecake
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    194
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    This doesn’t read like seething to me.

    Like, it’s great that people are unionizing, because even if there’s the best possible relationship between businesses and labor, the union still makes that relationship more equitable.
    But that doesn’t mean that the creation of the union has to be viewed as hostility between labor and business.

    I’ll be interested to see if their good reputation holds up to pressure,but as of right now I haven’t heard anything that makes me want disbelieve their statement.

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      27
      arrow-down
      31
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      But that doesn’t mean that the creation of the union has to be viewed as hostility between labor and business.

      Of course it does. The IWW isn’t a yellow union. It understands that this is a class war, not a class “collaboration.” The capitalists certainly think it’s a class war.

      • ricecake
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        32
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        My question would be “what’s the win condition”?

        A business that tangibly treats labor better is better than one that does not.
        A union lessens the power imbalance, but it’s still better to start from a place where cooperation is possible.

        So if the relationship must be hostile, what’s the win condition?

        • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          18
          arrow-down
          16
          ·
          1 year ago

          The win condition is the workers owning the means of production. In the meantime, it’s a struggle to take as much of our labor’s value from our employers as possible, because we’re entitled to all of it.

          • ricecake
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            23
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Sure, and that’s great. I’m in favor of that. But how does viewing cooperation as collaboration in a class war further those objectives?

            “Fuck you for trying to be better” isn’t a viable strategy for the midterm goal of “more fairness”.

            • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              6
              arrow-down
              5
              ·
              1 year ago

              If you’re in favor with what I’ve said, then we’re probably not in much disagreement. We’re probably misunderstanding each other on a point not worth quibbling over.

              • ricecake
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                10
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                It’s the viewing it as intrinsically hostile, and the (seeming) delight at the perception of “hurt” to the business almost over the benefits it brings to labor.

                I don’t view organization as an intrinsically hostile act. It can be defensive or hostile depending on the business, and often is, but it needn’t be if the business doesn’t make it so.

                Even in a situation with collective ownership, you still have a voluntary organization of that collective.
                That organization isn’t hostile.

                • zbyte64@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  6
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  This is a corporation we are talking about, and that sort of organization is intrinsically hostile to labor.

                • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  5
                  arrow-down
                  4
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  The capitalist-wage slave relationship structurally is an antagonistic one. A worker cooperative isn’t structurally antagonistic, nor is a democratic socialist state. Whether a form of organizing is hostile depends on the structure/power dynamics of its relationships.

                  • Serinus@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    7
                    arrow-down
                    2
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Costco has always been one of the better employers. They should get some credit for that.

                  • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    3
                    arrow-down
                    2
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    For tactical reasons, we don’t always act belligerently toward our employers, but the relationship is still always a belligerent one, structurally.

          • LowlandSavage@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            9
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Why would an employer ever employ someone if there is no net gain to the employer? You are not entitled to all the value of your labor unless you are self employed and that sounds like a lot more difficult than showing up to work for 40 hours of work that’s been organized by someone else.

            • frezik@midwest.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              8
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              You are only entitled to all the value of your labor

              That’s exactly the problem: workers are not getting the value of their labor.

            • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              6
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              It doesn’t sound like you’re a syndicalist, it sounds like you’re either a capitalist or a worker with Stockholm Syndrome.

              • LowlandSavage@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                5
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                I am both a unionist and a capitalist. I have spent 10 years of my career as an involved IBEW member; going to unit meetings, voting, and salting companies. I have spent the last three years as a business owner. I like to think of myself as an ethical capitalist. My employees get paid union wages, which is higher than most companies in my area. The only reason I haven’t unionized my company yet is because it doesn’t fiscally work as a small, young company. The burden of the cost of labor would destroy my company. I would not be able to compete in any tangible way with my competitors. To give you an idea: the burden per hour of a journeyman electricians union renumeration package is close to $70/hr. In order to support that burden as well as other overhead: building, vans, tools, insurance, bonds, software, phones, office supplies, I would have to bill well over $120/hr. Now the question is: as a business owner, why would I be taking any risk in employing someone if there is no net gain for all the work done in the background as well as getting stiffed on invoices? The other question is: is everyone cut out to be their own employer? What about the people that only have the ability to show up to work and not organize new clients and new work, what do they do? I’m all for living wages, good working conditions, fair treatment, and and and, but what’s the benefit to me as an employer for providing these things to an employee?

                • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  5
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  I’ve also been on both sides of the line, having been an employee, but also having started a couple of tech startups using my own capital and having dipped my toe in angel investing. I even used to be a landlord (I got better).

                  The questions you’re asking are basically, how can capitalism function if the workers take all the profits? And the answer is that it obviously can’t.

                  We don’t want capitalism to function, we want to end it. We want to abolish private ownership of the means of production. We’re socialists.

              • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                5
                ·
                1 year ago

                Nobody remembers why they have the weekend or the forty hour work week, because we’ve been memory-holed thanks to two red scares and a cold war 😔

            • FfaerieOxide@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Lemmy.ml coming through with that Marxism soapbox again

              Aren’t you in a Wobbly magazine? You’d as well complain you came across a soapbox in a soap factory.

              • hemmes@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                This is the IWW community

                Let me stop you there. Because that’s all this is, a community - within a decentralized social network. And that’s awesome. But don’t marginalize the IWW by pointing to this comm like it perfectly represents the IWW’s ideology.

                I honestly think that many of the Marxists and Communists I meet in the ActivityPub universe are some really great folks, but you bunch are way to serious.

      • zbyte64@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        16
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Hell, labor and business is already a hostile relationship even without a union, which is why unions exist. Any boss that doesn’t act as if it’s class war is a chump who won’t be able to get funding from traditional institutions (banks, shareholders, etc).