I am thrilled that workers here are finally standing up for their rights and demanding respect, trust me.
What I am not so thrilled about is how people are overlooking some primary drivers that link all these issues.
Consumers drive business practices. Companies do what makes them money and it seems that society likes to keep it's ignorance in place regarding that when it comes to their buying decisions.
(This is a bit of a rant and discussion about cultural identity)
I am going to start with the concepts of Boycotting over CEO and companies (ie Papa Johns etc) being jackasses. These people have always been jackasses, they didn't just become right wing followers overnight. It seems that the complaint is not that they are jackasses but that they are showing their true colors. I read in a lot of diaries " So and so business was my favorite place to shop until the CEO tried to push his beliefs on me. " So are you saying by default that it is ok for them to have these beliefs as long as they don't push it on you?
The uproar seems to be caused by they fact that they are stating why they are raising prices to cover insurance, I even saw a few comments that "It is a smart business practice to raise rates to cover new expenses. However saying you are doing it because of Obamacare is wrong." So as long as these people are polite assholes we are ok with it?
I am sorry, I would rather these companies tell me straight up that they are all about screwing the workers, supporting the Republican platform and trying to pry every last dollar out of their bottom line so we CAN put them out of business. I want the whole Republican belief of becoming rich while destroying everyone else along the way to be UTTERLY DESTROYED!! The more cocky and forthcoming these people are the easier it will be to destroy them. Companies have been doing this for years but most people didn't care or know because it was done in the backroom, slowly implemented and introduced as a cost cutting measure, an efficiency improvement or some other corporate lingo bullshit line that sounded oh so harmless. So NO ONE FOUGHT IT because they didn't understand the reason behind it. Now that these people are being up front with their assholery, now it's all of sudden ok to fight it because their motives are obvious. Greed and hate those are their motives, but these are not new motives. They are just being shown in their true form. Glad everyone is paying attention now. Took society long enough.
Moving on to the slow destruction of Thanksgiving as a holiday. This is happening NOT because corporations are evil (so much) but because American consumers are trained to hyperventilate and go into kill mode at the idea of a deal. Black Friday is not some new thing you all, it's been around for as long as I have been in retail which was since I was 16, I am now 38 (not in retail for a few years thank god but I remember it well). People have been getting trampled to death for decades. I worked a toy store one year for Xmas, never again. Parents were fighting each other for toys. We shake our heads and call the businesses evil but they wouldn't do it if they didn't make money, hence the reason it's called Black Friday. Americans HOLD NOTHING MORE SACRED THAN BARGAIN HUNTING! I'm not sure if it is a Depression hold over thing or why we are still like this but at the core of every shopper there is a hunter willing to kill for the best deal. The only way to fix this issues is to retrain Americans that quality is more important than price and good luck with that.
Offshoring, same rules apply. Companies started making bargain versions of what had been quality items, people started buying them and the race to the bottom began. We have been trained to make everything disposable (yes this is in large part due to marketing get a new one of this item every year but people keep falling for it). Here's a test. Try showing two items of clothes to someone, one made here and costing more and one made overseas and costing less. I am willing to BET you that most of your average American will buy the cheaper one even AFTER you explain that by buying that one they are costing Americans jobs. For the most part, most people won't care because they just got a deal in their minds.
To solve a lot of our economic issues we have to completely alter a base American tradition which is "finding the best deal." That tradition has consumerized Thanksgiving, cost millions of jobs, turned just about everyone of our holidays into a massive shopping event. LABOR DAY SALE, VETERANS DAY SALE, EASTER SALE, HALLOWEEN SALE, FOURTH OF JULY SALE, CHRISTMAS SALE.
Our entire history is for sale, we don't respect our traditions anymore. As Eddie Izzard stated "You tear your history down man. " We do, if not in physical ways, in mental and spiritual ways.
This is why the Tea Partiers and right wingers can so distort the identity of what America should be, they take the twisted remnants of our history that people remember, the catch phrases that are used at our "events" and glorify the phrases, not the actual historical event itself. Our cultural identity is so devoid of any actual culture that people are willing to cling to a shadow of a thought of a culture to feel like they belong.
I am on a rant, not sure how much of this makes sense but it is something I have felt for years. America in a lot of ways has a gaping hole in the center of it's cultural heart and nationalistic identity and I think that it is why we are so divided. The South and Midwest cling to these images they see in the media that makes them feel important, the lone cowboy, the rugged individual, the Brave, Free and Strong White American that built a country from nothing. That concept is part of our history that has been overdone and made into cliched song lyrics and movie plots but since we devalue our actual history that is all people have to cling to. Where as the coastal states have created a completely different set of American ideals that they cling to. The coasts have always been about advancement and progress and change. New people coming and going, new ideas, new technologies which has also been a part of our culture of innovation and growth but that concept has been severed from our national culture as well. We really have two completely different historical and cultural concepts trying to exist in one nation and it's getting harder and harder to remedy this issue.
This is all my opinion of course, would love to hear some input from other Kossacks.
Happy Turkey Day all!!