djackson’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  sidewalks

  I wonder if the rubber sidewalks would be easier on the legs for walkers. I know concrete sidewalks are supposed to have some long-term ill effects on bones and tendons. On From Bacon to Bouncin' posted 2 years, 9 months ago 4 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  they're still evil

  I think it's a divide and conquer strategy honestly.

  Wal-mart knows various progressive forces in the country are starting to focus their attention on it, and that their image hinders them in expansion outside the US.

  So pick the folks whose values are easiest to integrate into their corporate strategy, mollify and impress them, and break them away from other opponents.

  Wal-mart may take on some green intiatives (which so far sound more like PR and market capture than anything really susbtantial) but certain things in their business model are not going to change.

  *They're going to keep destroying local business and wrecking local economies, leading to ever greater dependence on fuel-intensive global trade. That isn't actually green. If you slap a few solar cells on your roof but make an economy dependence on global transport of bulk cheap commodities, you're just putting on a mask, itisn't even a bandaid.

  *They're going to keep underpaying workers, smashing unions, and relying upon immoral and/or illegal management techniques to keep those profits high. In fact this year they're slated to adopt a new technique, a shift system that calls in employees when there are rushes and sends them home when there aren't. Meaning they're going to make it even harder for employees to earn enough to actually survive, while keeping them constantly on call.

  I know environmentalists often enough care little about labor conditions, but I honestly don't think you can separate the two. They're just different ways of externalizing market irregularity to guarantee greater and greater control of a market, and the top brass of Wal-mart will pick whichever works most effectively for them. If the firm parasites off of exploited labor it's similar in kind to parasitizing off exploited resources. This might be a personal philosophial position, but I think it holds in general.

  *Wal-mart is still going to rely upon global commodity chains rooted in countries like China whose governments artificially depress labor costs.

  We're so concerned now with CO2 and global warming, and we focus so much on automobiles that we forget the cause of most CO2 in the atmosphere since the beginning of industrialization was manufacturing. This is still a major issue, in terms of power generation tied to manufacturing.

  Think for a moment about those sources of cheap goods Wal-mart sells, those sweatshops and manufacturies in China. Think for a moment about how China is dramatically increasing its outut of greenhouse gases. Think about how Chinese power relies upon dirty coal burning, and how the total absence of worker rights in that country prevents environmental justice movements from dealing with air quality.

  Wal-mart might green up their image a little, they might offer (apparently fake) organic food to capture that market, they might but solar cells on their stores, they might sing and dance about rainbows and four-leaf clovers for all it matters.

  At the base of it, their entire business model is based in increasing global transportation of cheap commodities, and insuring that those commodities are produced in the least regulated and least responsible business climates possible on earth, business climates that will not worry about pollution any more than they worry about basic human rights and basic labor rights.On But Wait, There's More posted 2 years, 9 months ago 4 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  labor

  "In the absence of geniuses running the place, you need to tap the knowledge and creativity of almost everybody in the company."

  I've been thinking a lot about this lately, the division of knowledge that comes when participants in an organization are disempowered, when they don't literally own the thing. An organization of one leader and ten lackeys will necessarily perpetuate mediocrity; and all the management-speak about teams and goals mean nothing if workers and consumers tied to an organization have no reason to believe their opinions will matter when they go outside the box of their job requirements.

  Business in America rewards certain types of unorthodox thinking within firms, but only that in line with the basic priorities of management at the moment. It doesn't create a climate in which workers or customers feel empowered to act or work towards new goals independently.

  Recently in Argentina, when many factories were abandoned in the economic meltdown, workers from many factories sought to gain employee ownership. They succeeded in thousands of cases. I was watching a documentary about it, and a few workers being interviewed about their management explained  that they had introduced major productivity-enhancing and waste-reducing measures in the first month of employee ownership. They had always known they could be fixed or improved, but they never worked to make them happen because
  *they had no real incentive to, it wouldn't benefit them in any way
  *more importantly (to the workers interviewed) they knew their opinions didn't matter, and they wouldn't be taken seriously precisely because they weren't coming from the top-down.

  Now one question that arises for me from your post is this: given managements focused on short-term profits that enact major changes sloppily in moments of crisis, and given the growing disempowerment of American workers in many or most industries, how can all the observational, analytic and intuitive knowledge of all participants in a business be utilized for rapid yet stable change? If most managements close themselves off to real input from workers (by flat ignoring them, demeaning them, outsourcing them, or simply failing to provide real incentive or trust), and if such input is necessary to really change business culture in America, what do you do?

  My suggestion would honestly be to break out of the box that holds solutions will come from centralized managements.

  Instead, look to organization among employees. We could see the birth of a new form of labor union, based precisely around basic values of participants. For instance, we could see a variety of caucuses among existing unions networked with minority unions in unorganized shops, focused around ecological reconstruction, and using that as a theme of their organizing and action, tied to consumer organizations.

  Such organizations would focus on democratizing their workplaces as a means to the "end" of enacting a social value, i.e. ecological sustainability. This would mobilize all that stored up creativity and energy that goes to waste in most firms.

  It's interesting, unions have for so long focused on day-to-day material struggles that they have neglected the basic truth, power precedes prosperity, and shared power precedes shared prosperity. You have to be able to speak at the table before you can garner a fair slice of the pie.

  Anyway, might be a pipe dream, but as long as we're talking big I figure 21st century labor organizations should be brought into the picture.On It's all about inequality posted 2 years, 9 months ago 18 Responses