As Apple stores celebrate 10 years, some employees look to unionize - Page 5

If this thread teaches us anything, it's that the Big Red Propaganda Machine has been pretty effective over the years at shaping public opinion contrary to reality. It never ceases to astound me that people can come to believe things utterly contradicted by the facts.

If you've internalized this propaganda, as many here seem to, you believe that the two greatest evils in America are unions and taxes, that leaving corporations as free as possible to do what they want is the road to utopia, and that we are on the verge of the perfect society if we could just eliminate the evils that interfere with this earthly paradise.

Never mind that the decline of America, in terms of prestige, manufacturing prowess, and quality of life for the modal citizen has marched in lockstep with the right wing attacks on, and concerted efforts to diminish and eliminate, unions, taxes and government regulation. Ever since we started this nonsense under Reagan in the '80s, it's been a downhill slide in all metrics except for the disparity in wealth between the upper and middle classes.

Never mind that America experienced it's greatest advances in days when taxes on the rich were high, unions were strong, and government acted with a purpose for the people, rather than for the corporations. History is just an inconvenient fact, and, according to the right, the solution for our current problems is to move further along the road that led us into the morass.

So you'd rather go back to working 16 hour days, 7 days a week in a unsafe environment, call out sick and you're fired, take a vacation and you're fired, where the company owns your house and pays you in money you can only use in there stores? I don't know about you but I'd rather have my commie worker's rights than work in conditions like that. Its ok for you if the company bleeds it's workers dry but God forbid it's the opposite.

Great point. In the 50s the rich were taxed at 90% and were still able to lead lavish lifestyles. This country had exponential grow and people bought houses, cars, went out to eat, went to the movies, etc....Want to see a strong economy? Give the middle class some money and they'll spend it like nobody's business in then creating jobs. The rich keeping the money just don't not work.

Only union job I ever had was when I worked for United Natural Foods in Iowa. The union there actually helped its workers and I always worked my ass off. Were there lazy people there just skimming by? Sure. Did the company try and do illegal things during the period shortly before a new contract and think they had things in the bag, but turned out to shoot themselves in the foot spectacularly? Oh yeah. It was very interesting. I've been getting screwed hard at my current job and kind of wish they had a union. I've been looking for other work w/no luck so far, but I'm keeping my eyes peeled.

Yeah, the frequent train stoppages never cause problems.

Blame the worker. It's the (North (sadly it's creeping into Canada too)) American way.

People love to talk about how auto-workers brought down the Big 3. Nobody talks about how those companies made horrible business decisions like continuing to mass produce SUVs when gas prices skyrocketed, or completely missing the rise of the hybrid car. Oh no. It's all the fault of some guy that wanted better health benefits.


Those of us who don't live in the US find it quite comical actually. Stats show that so-called leftist Europe has lower social disparity and higher social mobility than the USA these days, but Americans still believe in that ridiculous fantasy of the American Dream (which actually more true in Europe or Canada today). It's astonishing how many Americans will support lower taxes (when there's already a deficit), lower social spending (when the country's social services are already terrible), etc. Watching CNN, one might think that all Americans are sadomasochists.

As a Canadian, I am a tad worried, because our economy is so linked to yours. But then I think of the big picture and part of me hopes you guys keep it up. No national health care will make your industries uncompetitive over the long run as companies won't have a healthy population to field productive workers from, or they just won't be able to take care of the workers they do have. We're already seeing it in the automotive sector as some jobs migrate to Canada. Low end manufacturing jobs will go to China. High end ones will move to Canada and Europe (where the state foots the bill for things like health care and pensions). Why stop with health care? Cut spending in education. Come up with shady schemes like vouchers (which middle class parents can't afford to top-up with). Nothing would be better for America than 10% with a good education and 90% not having basic math skills. After all, how much education do you need to be a Starbucks barista? The rest of us are waiting for companies like Apple to relocate to countries with better talent. Want to outlaw unions? Stick to that too. Keep that wage disparity up till your middle class consumers have no disposable income. Then the rich can come and spend all that money they have in the 'socialist' paradises they love to condemn in the USA! What? You really thought that Donald Trump would vacation in Topeka, KS instead of Nice, France? That trickle-down thing not working out for you?


.....my tongue and cheek aside, retail is one of the worst sectors to work in. It's minimum wage and they treat you like crap. The only reason companies get away with it, is because the workers tend to be quite young. I am actually not that much of a leftist (despite my rant above), but I do find it ridiculous that people would suggest that employees should not empower themselves and fight for better wages and better treatment. Can unions over-reach? Most certainly. And if they do they'll find themselves without an employer. In this economy, you'll actually find most unions quite co-operative. But these arguments are even more flimsy when applied to the retail sector. How many cases do you have where unionized retail employees bankrupted a company by their demands?

And just remember....Henry Ford paid his employees enough to buy his cars. I wonder how many Apple Retail employees can afford all the products they sell every day.

At least they have a viable passenger rail network....oh those socialists....

I certainly hope they don't hire anyone with your terrible attitude. Sorry to say this, but it's not surprising you're not working now.

BTW my experiences at the Apple store are quite positive and I'm definitely not a tech dummy, probably having been in the tech business longer than you've been breathing,

I love how people that have never worked in retail can talk like that. You obviously look down upon people based on their jobs which is a problem in America. They are not trying to be lazy for more money. They just want more money for working their asses off and having to multitask almost as much as a Quad core i7! Apple retail is one of the most demanding retail jobs, period! Try dealing with dozens of whining customers that need help or being coahed to give a "Steve Jobs" like presentation when helping someone pick out a computer. And NO, the computers dont completely sell themselves, 50% of people buying a mac are NEW to the Mac so they need assistance picking whats right for them and told why. All the retail employees here know about daily pinheads calling the hard drive "memory". Thats just one of the stupid things they hear every day.

While it may not be hard to pick up a computer and ring it up. The presentation and question answering is mind numbing at times. The retail employees have to put very technical terms into everyday language. And they do it for 8 hours a day! Mentally stressful.

Once again, when you watch a company making billions upon billions in record profits EVERY QUARTER, you have to at least sympathize that Apple is basically a cash cow that doesn't pay well.

We are not talking about selling a T-shirt here. We are talking about customers spending over $1000 on average.

It is just crummy in retrospect. Most of you dont know what it was like before. As dsmos put it in an earlier post, Apple was paying very good salaries and bonuses and the more money they made, the more pay went down. So please dont give me the crap about them wanting to save for investment or infrastructure. They already did that AND THEY STILL have 60+ billion in the bank.


CONSIDER THIS: Every retail employee (roughly 25,000) gets $1/hr raise

$25,000 x 40hr work week= $1,000,000

$1,000,000 x 52 weeks/yr = $52,000,000

So that means Apple would pay out roughly $52 million more per year with that raise.

What percentage is that of $60 BILLION? 0.086%

Thats less then 1%! I think Apple could afford it.

CONSIDER THIS: Apple made $3.07 billion in net profit last quarter, a non-holiday quarter. If we multiple by 4 we get $12.28 billion for the year.

$12.28 billion ÷ 52 weeks/yr = $236,153,846.15
$236.15 million ÷ 40hr work week = $5,903,846.15
$5.90 million ÷ 25,000 employees = $236.15 per hour raise per employee, or an additional $491,200 per year per employee.

As you stated: Apple could afford it.

Your argument is absurd, but it's not a successful reductio argument against his point, it merely employs an absurd counter-argument, and fails as a result.

The point of reductio ad absurdum is point out the absurdity which I clearly did. The argument that “Apple can afford it so Apple should do it” is absurd. The argument that “Apple makes more profit than other vendors so that proves they are overcharging” is absurd. The argument that “Apple should’t charge as much because they are so successful” is absurd.

What both of you need to do is come up with a valid argument as to why every single employee at Apple deserves a $1 per hour raise and not some foolish premise based on what they can afford.

All you did was use different numbers to try and argue. I am arguing for a 1 dollar raise not 236. Of course that is rediculous. And to put things in further perspective that's only $1,920 more per year gross income.

To prevert my argument into employees making half a million a year is a little over the edge.
But then again, that employee would still do more than some of the corporate fat cats who golf and buy $20,000 carpets for their office.

Also, if you read my 3 other posts I prove why they deserve at least a measly $1 raise.

Well, first of all, I never argued that, and, since I have no idea what they are paid, I'm not going to say whether they should or not.

However, the point of a reductio argument is to show that the actual argument, not some argument that could have been made but wasn't, is absurd. As such, your attempt at a reductio is more of a strawman attack.

You're missing the point. They refused to give certain raises and promotions stating corporate rules and then they would turn around and give them to their friends whom have been there for not even half the time of other employees. I can show you review printouts if you would like. The way they would fudge the numbers they controlled to counteract the automated numbers that were out of there control was borderline harassment at times. I have a big problem when you have, lets say, three people up for review. They all automatically get the same team ranking, but there personal numbers are also almost identical. One person will get a 2% raise, one 3%, and the other 10%. Explain to me how that is possible in a process that is designed to be a controlled situation to prevent that from happening? It happens because no one checks the management. If you try to talk with them about it then you are being ungrateful. If you bring it up with HR and bypass you store manager you can be instantly terminated. These are situations that I have personally had to deal with and I have seen others terminated for.

I'm not trying to say that this doesn't exists throughout all retail companies, but Apple tries to pretend that it doesn't exists with them. They will cover this side of Apple retail at all costs.

They are 100% customer focused, but they are losing focus big time on their employees which at one time were their biggest assets. Back when I started it was hard to get a job at Apple. You had to be smart and willing to learn a crazy system of retail. It was great, you had smart people that were properly promoting and representing the company. Now they hire just about anyone as long as they have a clean background. The new employees are mostly kids right out of high school that think they are there to worship every last word that trickles down from Ron & Steve. They drink the koolaide and they get treated as such. The employees started becoming more like little children in the eyes of management and they started talking to us as such. The bigger problem was that this kind of attitude started working it's way back to old employees and we were being treated like children too. Some of the older assistant management started catching on and didn't like this either, but they were all terminated within months of voicing their concerns. Terminated. The records of this are there. If you're an assistant manager at Apple, you don't dare try to make a stand for your employees. That's not the controlled ecosystem that they're trying to create.

That is not life. That is a company that will eventually crumble on the quality end of the retail level. It is already happening. The newer people are idiots that don't know about computers or software or anything. They don't really listen to the customers needs either. They own iPhones and Macbooks, but basic things like how to customize the dock or "what size of firewire does this machine have" or "what display connector do the new machines use" is completely beyond them. The training has gone from a 3-4 week period to maybe a week and they're on the floor hawking AppleCare to broke college students whom have just told them that they only have enough money for the machine. This happened all the time at my store and the employees would walk away PISSED that they ONLY sold a Mac. That to me is an extremely awful thing and it says to me that Apple needs to rethink, restart, and rebuild the hiring & training process for their sales people before it really starts to become a problem.

Why don't you experiment with avoiding gross generalizations?

Funny that folks who think unions are communist don't realize they don't exist in communist countries except for the state run workers unions. Hint: these aren't unions.

China and North Korea are the ultimate in Right To Work States. I somehow don't think you wanna work there. Well maybe you might if you work in Houston.

From a Gawker Comment:


http://gawker.com/5799781/why-do-peo...during-flights



I did some work in Houston and that's hilariously funny because of more than a little grain of truth involved.

If you'd read the news over the past few years, you'd see many, many reports of unions agreeing to wage freezes and benefit caps because they recognize that these are tough economic times. Will they resist outright cuts? Sure they will - why should Joe Six Pack bear the brunt of mistakes made by Wall Street? In Wisconsin, the public employee unions there had agreed to contribute to health insurance premiums and pension plans. But that wasn't enough for the corporate-backed politicians. They wanted to take away the right to negotiate much of anything.

Why would a union want to put its members' employer out of business? It doesn't make any sense.

Also, why are you so angry? Did a union worker kick your puppy?

This boils down to how well a company treats their employees and how much the employees believe in their employer.