I kind of see the point that you're trying to make, but I'm sure you understand that not everyone is in the same position to pick and choose jobs that the majority of HN find themselves in. Often when someone takes a job, it's because they need a job in order to live.
It's pretty shitty of you to suggest that that individual should be barred from future employment because they had to take a job that was available, even if the reason it was available is disagreeable.
I don't believe that anyone taking these positions are doing it in order to advance their career.
> will probably leave them worse off
Worse than homeless, starving, and possibly dead?
We're currently living in one of those rare times where there are a lot of non-questionable jobs going unfilled, and employers are a little uncomfortable with the number of job vacancies. So, if you have to take a job, there are currently plenty out there that keep your hands clean of strike-busting.
Sure, but "ethically questionable jobs" is a pretty massive spectrum, and I'm not sure that I would agree that "making cereal during a labor dispute" meets the line of "to unethical for me" for the majority of people.
> So, if you have to take a job, there are currently plenty out there that keep your hands clean of strike-busting.
So is strike-busting the only place you draw the line? What about having to take a job at Hobby-Lobby? Or Chick-fil-a? Amazon has some some pretty sleezy stuff, so you don't want to support them. Walmart employees often depend on food stamps, and you should keep your hands clean of supporting a company that treats it's employees so poorly.
There are tons of jobs that you could take in order to keep food on your table that aren't Kellogg, or Hobby-Lobby, or Chick-fil-a, or Amazon, or Walmart.
If you keep digging, you'll quickly run out of "non-questionable" jobs. You are definitely welcome to blame the employer for their actions, policies, and decisions, but it's not fair to say "Well Jonny over there once worked at a company that I have an objection to, so he should never be allowed to have a job again!"
David Dick, of Old Forge PA, letter to the Scranton Tribune, 1902:
"A short time ago, my son, James Dick, had his home attacked at night by an angry mob. The windows were smashed and the house so damaged that he had to move his family out and come to my place for shelter. Now, why these depredations? Because my son and I try to earn a living for our families..."
JR Gorman, employee of Exeter Shaft, West Pittston: "They hung me in effigy and hooted me in the street. I had to go armed."
Of a miner named John Colson: "Five years before he had been in a mine explosion... Colson had been taken from the mine for dead, but he finally lived, blue-scarred, wholly blind in one eye and almost blind in the other... [W]ith the strike came hard times, and [his] sons, though willing to help their parents, had many mouths of their own to feed ... so that old John Colson was compelled to go back into the mine. He told me he was doing [an African-American's] job, turning a fan in a deep working, and he earned only 75 cents a day, but he was glad to be employed again."
Of the mob that attacked John Colson: "The police had warned him of his danger, and he had, indeed, already been stoned, and yet, naturally fearless, he was going back alone. Having a revolver, he thought he could defend himself. A trainload of soft coal was passing; a mob of men appeared, shouting at him threateningly. He reached to draw his revolver, and a man on one of the cars dropped a huge block of coal on his head. Colson fell in his tracks, and after further beating him, the mob robbed him of his revolver and a new pair of boots, and left him for dead. For three days he lay unconscious in the hospital..."
John Colson's mother: "He might better be dead, for he's brought disgrace on the name... He deserved all he got. He wasn't raised a scab."
— McClure's Magazine, XX, November 1902 http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/Right%20to%20work....
120 years later, the enemy of the Union is still systematically Otherized, and deserves to have his life destroyed.
Don't worry! All the abuses of capital, the Pinkerton stories you've heard of? Those, and worse, are all quite real too!
The suggestion isn't necessarily moralistic. It's just a way to bring about collective action. In a strike, workers are sacrificing their immediate benefit for greater benefit in the long term. Workers generally win concessions through collective action. It didn't work here because unions in the U.S. are weak. If workers were better organized, they would have stood a better chance. Well organized labor benefits society as a whole; just look at the Nordic countries.
This is literally in reply to the company firing all the workers who used collective bargaining.
The collective bargaining I was suggesting was to talk with your own companies which have a business relationship to Kellog.
Work in a hotel that has minicereal boxes? Get with purchasing to stock a different brand. Work in a grocery? Ask the owners to stock a different brand on a public forum.
See Kellogg flakes at a friend's or family's house? Ask them politely not to support union busting.
Daily call one local business until they agree not to stock Kelloggs.
Collective bargaining might help, but even Kellogg's union isn't capable of doing much -- only one factory is striking. Why would an unaffiliated union spend huge resources on helping Kellogg workers rather than its own members?
Because otherwise unions will target them, in turn, with worker's actions. That is how union power works in places that have real, functioning unions.
Unions protect workers against exploitations, and that is good for everyone.
Heh, reminds me of a song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww5l5BAJ39A
Also, both Kellogg's and Post make shredded wheat and Raisin Bran.