Don’t tease me with anything remotely close to a general strike. That’s just mean.
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These two stories happening one day after the other really put the role of automation on the workforce into stark contrast.
Northwell is the largest health care provider in NY, and also the largest employer in NY. But it’s only in NY, as far as I know. That said, it has plenty of other large competitors in NY.
Kellog’s makes breakfast cereal that is stocked on shelves at just about every grocery and market in the entire country, and perhaps also internationally.
1400 anti-vaxxers who got fired represent only 2% of the staff required to provide health care from a single provider in a single state, albeit the largest provider.
1400 is also the number of laborers required to make breakfast cereal and other food products for an entire country, and perhaps more. At least in the manufacturing division.
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If even board game employees are unionizing, then I think I feel safe saying this.
It’s very likely we are seeing the next great labor movement of our society. The same way labor counter-attacked the industrial revolution, we are now seeing labor with a delayed counter-attack against the information revolution. I think this will be a largely positive thing.
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I’m trying really hard not to get my hopes up too far, but a friend of mine was ground level in the formation of the AWU, and there is a lot of energy for organization in Google.
But, also, quite a lot of opposition from techbros who bought the hype too much. Still, the energy is there, and it’s starting to feel like we might have momentum here.
The problem in unionizing in the tech space, especially at the larger places, is there is a not large, but large enough, group of libertarian types who might not be anti-vax conspiracy nuts. However, they are absolutely anti-union. They also believe we have a meritocratic capitalism, so they see feminism and anti-racism as against that. You know, the Elon Musk types of fanboys. And even if they are the minority, they are enough at a lot of places to make the union vote fail even without the union busting that will absolutely occur.
This is exactly, on the nose, what my friend has encountered - except that they’re also anti-vax.
It’s definitely a big hurdle, which is why I’m even more impressed that AWU has managed to organize at all.
As if it wasn’t confusing enough where the picket line not to cross is.
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So if I’m reading the article right, there is nothing confusing about the situation because everything is contractually accounted for. The only “confusion” is how much of the production pipeline will shut down.
Kinda feels like anti-union propaganda
I mean, this is sort of a semantic argument here. What does the word confusing mean?
The point is that it is not a clear cut case of IATSE members on strike, everyone else not. Some IATSE members will strike, some won’t, some can choose, there’s a lot going on there. Hence, confusing. I detect no anti-union propaganda in this article. It’s purely informational.
EDIT: Strike averted.
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I just mentioned this on the show tonight, and then it got resolved.
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Apparently
- The wirecutter has a union, and
- They’re threatening to strike on Black Friday.
I was recently thinking that whatever the wirecutter had 5-6 years ago, they sure lost it. Was the NYT acquisition the beginning of the end?
Many companies that are acquired go bad or fail in the long term.
Also many companies that aren’t acquired go bad or fail in the long run.
There may be different reasons for why it happens, but I don’t think an acquisition means a company is more likely to go bad or fail, just that there is a single point in time we can point at and complain about.
That Kaiser article should have done more to highlight how abhorrent management’s offers, and messaging to patients and employees to support their offer, has been till getting to this agreement.