Work Reform

The response they quote from Marianne Williamson is spot on. The response from Costco is pure PR. A really different and admirable response would be “we encourage unions so we can better understand our workers’ needs.”

I mean...you said a bunch of pro WORKER things.

The company wishes the workers were happy without ANY additional pro worker things.

Like, it's not malice, it's the nature of capitalism. The company wants to pay the absolute minimum for labor. And that goes for coverage, benefits, talking, thinking whatever.

Conversely the employee wants the very most they can get for their labor.

This is the only logical statement a company can make, wrapped in a nice package.

Well said. Makes me wanna shake em and say “it’s not about you it’s not about you it’s not about you”.

One thing I have always noticed about Costco employees is that they pretty much are always smiling. As best I can tell, it's one of the best companies you can work for. It's only going to get better now.

They already have union employees. I didn’t know till this came out a few weeks ago. From what I can tell, Costco doesn’t try to union bust. I’m impressed with their response to the situation

Correct, maintaining their image as a “good company” is extremely important to Costco and their success as a business. They don’t even give out a 3.7% cost of living raise to employees that received “excellent” annual reviews, the max is 3% unless you change positions

While that's true, it is good to see ~~a~~ one 'behave'.

Yeah also, when you’re in a union you can talk to your manager and have your rep on the side as referee. Also sometimes union reps are there to be the second sane person in a conversation, often that’s because the manager is a lunatic, but other times it’s to translate a screamed string of profanity into actual actionable complaints for the manager.

I think they do understand, and that is the point. They want that power imbalance even while being truthful about wanting to provide a good working environment. I would also suggest that you dont need a union to balance the power of management, rather you need the collective power of the majority, in this time and age we call that a Union but the formality is not required.

That is situational, I have had more managers that I feel comfortable going to whenever I had a problem then I have had the other way around.

I don't agree. We've seen many times companies close locations outright after they unionize. At times governing bodies like the NLRB will fine them, and they'll gladly eat those fines and keep them closed.

Tell that to Amazon.

Ah yes, as famously evidenced by Elon Musk backtracking on his Tesla unionization opposition

Unions are what HR says it is. They collectively argue on behalf of all employees to protect the employees interests.

no, it did not but her response pointed out that the PR response did not include any enthusiasm for working with the union, or indicating any support of other Costco employees joining.

Which makes it clear, they still see unions as threats and would prefer to quash them, even if that means treating people with basic decency which they should be doing anyway.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who remembers him saying that kinda shit.