Lowe's Anti-Union Training Video Walks a Fine Line (it didn't take Lowe's long to get it off Youtube

[Omaha Steve]

Video removed as copyright violation on complaint from Lowe's.

http://gawker.com/lowes-anti-union-training-video-walks-a-fine-line-1691295289


Hamilton Nolan Today 1:25pm

"Now, to put it in basic terms: Lowe's strongly opposes unions in our company." This is true!

Like most major retail chains, $71 billion home improvement monster Lowe's is firmly committed to doing whatever it takes to prevent its employees from organizing in order to seek better wages and working conditions. Like most major retail chains, unions have long been interested in organizing Lowe's employees, but have never found a very welcoming atmosphere. Government investigators have found evidence of Lowe's managers intimidating employees who tried to unionize in the past.

(Also at link: Why We Need Unions
Wisconsin governor Scott Walker made his name with a coldblooded campaign to destroy public sector… Read more)

At the top of this post you will find an in-house Lowe's video, nearly an hour and a half long, which is used to train managers how to deal with unions and their attempts to unionize employees (or employees' attempts to join unions). Managers are instructed to immediately contact the company's "labor hotline" at the merest hint of union activity.

The video displays the sort of incongruous schizophrenia about unions that is the hallmark of many such corporate videos. First, they denigrate unions as useless and unwanted, as evidenced by declining membership; immediately after that, they portray unions as fearsome and sophisticated machines for brainwashing the average workers. "They have huge staffs of paid professional organizers and business agents whose only task in life is to get your employees to sign up with them," the video warns. "Unions today even offer summer internships to college students to teach them the inside aspects of labor in the workplace."

FULL story at link.

[johnnyreb]

1. k&r

[Tsiyu]

2. Oh, those ebbul unions!

Lowe's sucks as an employer. Irregular hours, crap wages. dumbass rules and wasteful corporate culture.

But they have lobbyists, they've organized to keep wages low, to keep from having to pay in lawsuits, to do whatever the f they want.

Corporations are free to associate and lobby and make rules that benefit themselves. The worker is not allowed to associate and make rules for themselves.

But American workers - at least where I live - like sucking the cocks of corporations for their meager wages, so there is that. They're gonna rise up down here any day now, as soon as they screw up enough courage to ask for a raise.