Woke Union Busting?

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Okay, this one is too in my wheelhouse not to write up, as it involves a local to me chain of upscale outdoor gear retailers using hyperwoke language to try and convince their employees not to unionize, it's as if everything I've ever said about this ideology being a facade for guilty liberals to justify their lifestyles was condensed into a perfect parody, except it's real.

This is just the introduction:



Here is the hilarious page it came from:

https://our.rei.com/

Here is the full transcript of the "podcast" that REI made about why you shouldn't join a union:

https://our.rei.com/wp-content/uploads/ ... 220203.pdf

Try and tell me this whole thing isn't a scam, just try.

LateStateCapitalism was talking about this earlier.

I guess in the minds of neoliberals adding some window dressing while failing to improve anything systemic is how real progress is made.

Heh, was it one of those "I knew what it was before I even opened the thread" moments?

Serious no snark question: does the pandering bother you like it bothers me? I'm downright neurotic about it, a naive childhood left me with an almost pathological fear of being taken advantage of, and I'm instantly suspicious when someone tries to ingratiate themself to me, but my left/liberal friends dismiss my criticisms of woke capital by claiming that even if the companies aren't being sincere, at least they're saying the "right" things. My experience is very different, that someone telling me what I want to hear is likely angling to put one over on me down the line, especially if what they're telling me runs counter to what I know of their views and interests, and giant corporations spouting social justice slogans feels like an almost parodical version of this as it's so on the nose.

The pandering is frustrating and I think in the past I've expressed some of my feelings about how improvements for marginalized communities are often used as a smokescreen to distract from broader structural issues.

Even ignoring the pandering aspect, there's also a tendency by media to portray these issues as the highest priorities
for what they define as the left, which I suspect is intentional and done to use the social issues as a wedge to decrease solidarity between working people of different backgrounds.

I'm sure there's a degree of sincerity, in the sense that they'd like to earn dollars from people regardless of their background and that they hope their customers won't have to face discrimination yada-yada-yada. But, I'm sure that sincerity has limits and those limits almost certainly involve impacts to their bottom line.

It's frustrating because I don't believe social progress is a zero-sum game but by treating it as such they essentially force wedges into working people. While I don't believe working people would ever form a completely cohesive bloc I do believe that additional division is sewn by people who stand to benefit, either from nothing changing or more directly from getting eyeballs on their media.

I think part of the issue also stems from that two blocs get lumped together as the left and really aren't the same. The former is very socially liberal and embraces economic views that can range from libertarian to classical liberal to new liberal, they're pro-capitalist at heart so their first impulse is to steer causes towards social issues and away from anything that reeks of socialism.

The other bloc is made up of social democrats and all the different strains of socialism, not that they represent a coherent bloc. The older members of this bloc tend to be more cynical about engaging with electoral politics at all and the younger ones are likely to have had their social views formed by a mix of that liberal bloc and the most racial members of the older socialist bloc, which (just like their influences) puts them somewhat out of touch with many of the older ones when it comes to priorities.

Those splits seem to represent where wedge issues can be used.

I have bigger things to be offended about than pronouns.

Good thing this thread isn't about them then.

This has more to do with:



The woke capitalist is still a capitalist and wrapping it in a faux-decent covering while continuing to be terrible is still being terrible.

Stop, I can only get… wait that analogy is probably not family-friendly enough.

Looks to me like an example of the system co-opting the ideas of its antagonists.

Real woke Union busting would be pointing out that unions tend to entrench the interests of the employed over the unemployed, the old over the young, and the powerful over the powerless. Police unions make it hard to fire bad cops. Teachers unions make it hard to fire bad teachers. And just look at the way France grinds to a halt whenever they drive to sort out the pensions crisis.

Do unions have their place? Yes - they can tip the balance between employer and employee back towards the employee. Even without that, they arise as a natural result of freedom of association. But they’re fundamentally conservative organisations that should be treated with suspicion. Right to work laws in particular are essential to prevent some of the worst excesses of trade unionism.

Precisely.

Woke capital makes a point of focusing on virtue signaling and regurgitating the vocabulary of left social causes to deflect criticism or their treatment of their workers. The reason woke capital and the liberal MSM focus on social causes ad nauseum is because they want to co-opt these ideas to steer the conversation away from matters of workers' rights, wealth inequality, and economic precarity.

It's a smokescreen that undermines the very social causes to which it pays lip service.

I've heard next they start selling us some rope.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, that many red pills at once could be fatal.

I actually make a fairly hard distinction between public sector and private sector unions, in that I think public sector unions ought to be flat out illegal, a view I share with none other than noted right wing extremist FDR. They make perfect sense in the private sector, representing the workers in order to negotiate a larger share of the profits, but when applied to government where there is no profit to divide and the unions are able to run both sides of the table through political contributions and electoral work, they're basically legalized corruption. Cops and teachers are the most well known examples, but the worst one that I can think of is states like California that have incredibly powerful prison guard unions that lobby for harsh sentencing and against criminal justice reform to keep their members busy; they're literally locking people up for money, and they de facto run California politics.

Are they really antagonists though? Wokeism is its own thing, and it primarily comes from elite universities where the class of people that work at major corporations are educated, it's not a popular ideology at all.

Sooo close! Take it a step further: woke ideology allows wealthy liberals to justify their prosperity without threatening it, they don't have to change if they say the proper ablutions and throw up the occasional hashtag or blacked out profile pic. I don't know if I'd go so far as to claim that it was designed for that purpose, but it fulfills it so well that it may as well have been. I don't think it's coincidental that the big corporations have been able to so easily adapt it as a shield for bad behavior, that's what it's always been.

I'm way beyond liberal, but I really have to agree with you here. The letter is embarrassing, to say the least.