Makes you wonder if THIS is what's behind all the pushes for diversity
What we've seen from Amazon's anti-union efforts this round is that they are not sophisticated enough to be pulling some kind of machiavellian plot.
If unions are going to work in America, they have be able to navigate a diverse group of people. The American working class is incredibly diverse, more than the country itself. It's a challenge but it's not insurmountable. But the left/union approach to diversity and the corporate approach are completely different from each other and have different material motivations.
For instance, diversity programs are invariably justified by reference to needing a diversity of perspectives or ideas. But the resulting personnel policies are never about ideas, they're always about gender and skin colour. In fact the typical diversity program often results in hiring lots of ideologically homogenous people.
That disparity between claimed goals and actual goals invariably makes it appear like there's some sort of hidden agenda at work.
Study the working class movements from the mid 19th century to the 1970s. Look at their coalitions and demands.
Study the woke movement of the 2015-2021. One was pushing for collective unity and demanding concrete rights, including healthcare, working hour limits and unionization rights. The other wants to fire racists and change language. Which would you prefer if you were a corporate board member with the interests of your company at heart?
Which is more of a threat, a movement that demands corporate tax pay for a single payer healthcare model, or a movement which demands we make it easier to fire people accused of racism?
"Concrete" things like healthcare reform, voting reform, policing reform, tax reform, immigration reform, and women's rights have been front and center. You'd have to be looking through a very distorted lens to not see it.
I don't know why I am responding, but I'll continue with another one, Nike. Nike has for decades been the subject of human rights criticisms of their factories abroad. That's bad PR. So they went woke by taking public stands on racial stuff within the U.S. That's good PR.
You can say I know what I'm doing (which is arguably a personal attack implying nefarious motives). But you don't seem to understand the point, not at all!
Please, please do a little reading on the labor movement and don't put woke in scare quotes like it is not a thing. A local politician here has a pin, Stay Woke. It's a real term.
And once it does, one of the most major lines exploited against economic and social progress becomes much more difficult to exploit.
It's rare in the economic left to reject identity politics entirely (outside of some wretched nazbol twitter types), because people like CTH, Adolph Reed, Mark Fisher, Barbara Smith, Bernie Sanders, etc. all recognize the need for navigating identity in left movements. Where they reject neoliberal identity politics is in accepting a need for a greater collective goal.