Whole Foods is tracking and scoring stores it deems at risk of unionizing | Hacker News Reader

Whole Foods is tracking and scoring stores it deems at risk of unionizing

businessinsider.com

32 pointsnotRobot24 comments

Large discussion earlier:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22925359 (210 points/129 comments)

When will people realise that "progressive" companies like Whole Foods aren't really progressive?

They're just good at exploiting whilst distracting customers with flashy themes like organic, sustainable, environmental, community-minded.

In any business, there is someone or something that is getting squeezed; whether its the environment, producers, manufacturers, suppliers, distributors workers or the customers.

This isn't an argument against capitalism, it's just the reality.

In any business, there is someone or something that is getting squeezed; whether its the environment, producers, manufacturers, suppliers, distributors workers or the customers.

This is not a serious claim with strong evidence -- "someone must get shafted" ('squeezed' as you put it) sounds more like an ideological statement than a factual one.

I'm the first to agree with you that there can be big problems with how certain companies are run. But you can make the same claim about any organisation of people, whether it is governmental, for-profit, non-profit, or even your weekly men's drinking group.

"Squeeze" is too vague a word to criticize so carefully. If squeeze just implies "businesses act to reduce cost," then it is trivially true for all business. However the GP might mean "squeeze" to be limited to a coercive act to reduce cost. Which is illegal in theory, but probably happens quite often in practice.

Especially when said progressive company is owned by relentless.com

Is there a good reason why we allow capital to organise itself and not labour? Adam smith was already commenting on this asymmetry [can't find the quote].

In the end, labour can "capitalise itself" by having all employees resign, form a body-shop company and apply to service the original employer. In an efficient market these two arrangements should produce the same outcome.

> Is there a good reason why we allow capital to organise itself and not labour?

It is a matter of for whom is easier to organize. Capital can organize pretty easily, you may need only half a dozen companies to change a full labor market. But, you will need thousands or tens of thousands of individuals to achieve the same on the labor side.

So, you need laws to protect labor if they have to have any chance to organize themselves, or even to promote and finance such activities. Weak or non-existent labor laws creates a power imbalance in favor of capital. So, you only hear their side of the discussion.

e.g.: https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-jo...

> Is there a good reason why we allow capital to organise itself and not labour

Capital is liquid, labor is not. Labor is emotional, gets sick, wants days off, doesn't want to work under undesirable conditions, etc. Capital doesn't have opinions, doesn't need to have elections and votes.

Because there's always scabs willing to sell out our fellows to earn a buck when they deserve two.

I'd love to read further analysis on this (by Smith himself perhaps) if you can find it!

You know what would help against such tactics? A union!

Imagine union organizers having an app where workers can register anonymously (just wage and location) and help build heat-maps of places where workers are interested in unionizing. This can have increasing returns - see some plant having some interested workers? Send some picketers with download instructions to find the rest.

The app can also provide useful services like to reporting wage theft or other rights violations.

BTW, I'm not even sure trade unions are the right way to solve labor issues, but it is fun to ponder union organizing in the 21st century.

Just don't host it on AWS. Or any other cloud platform for that matter.

Ironically, the mid-century war on unions began with the state and the company owners acknowledging this very thing and proceeding to implement friendly unions. The result was working people gradually began distrusting their unions more and more, which brought us back to the drawing board.

Store-risk metrics include average store compensation, average total store sales, and a "diversity index" that represents the racial and ethnic diversity of every store. Stores at higher risk of unionizing have lower diversity and lower employee compensation, as well as higher total store sales and higher rates of workers' compensation claims, according to the documents.

Interesting. I would like to know what factors are behind this. This would be probably good area to do sociological research in.

So if you want to unionise Whole Foods, start in the areas of highest diversity and compensation.

Pretty sure this was lifted from an episode of “Superstore”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstore_(TV_series)

Heh, I initially conflated this with the Amazon warehouse drone heat sensor story from a few days ago and was wondering why union organizers had a different temperature than non-union folk.

“Dupe” flag makes me think of the article being a dupe or falsified rather than a duplicate. Maybe the moderators here should use a different word.

Broken link?

Link works for me, but apparently others are getting an error. You can try this: https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-tracks-unionizat...

Thanks. That worked. :)

Fixed link:

https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-tracks-unionizat...

Huh, the link I posted is working for me but apparently not for others. Thanks for this.

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