Yesterday, Stephanie Harnett, a young staffer at Mercury Public Affairs in L.A. who was working on behalf of Wal-Mart, was fired after she was caught posing as a reporter in order to spy on a press conference of a pro-labor group. Did one young staffer go rogue? Or is this standard operating procedure?
Wal-Mart is trying to open a new store in LA's Chinatown area. Local labor groups, among others, are challenging the store's permitting. It's a fight with big stakes for Wal-Mart, as it goes right to the heart of the company's strategy of expanding in large cities. And now, one labor group says that an employee of a PR firm working for Wal-Mart actually posed as a reporter in order to infiltrate one of their meetings.
A Target store in Valley Stream, New York is once again in a battle over an attempt to unionize its workers. (The company was convicted of using illegal union-busting tactics when the union tried this last year.) Today is Target's shareholder meeting, in Chicago. What better time to hear from some beleaguered Target employees?
Last year, a Target store in Valley Stream, New York was the site of an long campaign by the UFCW to unionize the store's workers. Target has no unionized stores, and remains staunchly anti-union. The union lost the vote at Valley Stream, but last month a judge ordered a new election due to company misconduct. Let's take a look at just how brazen Target's anti-union culture of fear really is.
Last year, we spent a long time following the UFCW's battle to unionize a New York Target store—which would have been the first unionized store in the notorious anti-union company. That effort failed when employees voted against the union, but the UFCW alleged illegal intimidation on the part of the company. Now, a judge has agreed with them.
Now that the Great Recession has been over for a really long time *coughs up lung*, it's a great time to take a broad survey of the vibrant US economy and see how well all of it is doing, what with the recovery and all. How are massive corporations doing? How are common folks doing? Let's review.
Kids these days are sellouts. As you know. As soon as they set foot on a college campus, boom, they all want to become a "brand ambassador" for some energy drink company or casual clothing brand in order to bless the brand with the hot sexxxy "halo effect" that their young, nubile, innocent bodies offer. Sweet innocence of youth; thou shalt be the biggest generation of corporate sellouts ever, forsooth. Even worse: sellouts these days are nerds.
Advertising is the industry that people who were not lucky enough to get actual "creative" jobs end up in. These people—creative people whose artistic or literary dreams did not work out, often due to economic forces far beyond their control—find themselves in a position in which they are obliged to use their creative talents for purely commercial ends. Selling soap, so to speak. This causes quite a bit of cognitive dissonance. These people therefore expend quite a bit of time and effort justifying the position they find themselves in, in life. (As do we all!) Having justified their position to themselves, they seek to bolster their justification by attracting others like themselves into their same field. The more creative artists who do advertising for a living, the more of a real, justifiable, creative career it must be. They therefore use their considerable creative talents to sell the field of advertising itself, to their peers.
The Wall Street Journal today takes on a thorny question that's wracking the collective consciences of corporate boards from coast to coast: when does a CEO's private hobby become too dangerous? As natural leaders driven to excel and seek thrills in both their private lives and their careers, it's no wonder that many CEOs enjoy flying their own small planes, or even sky diving. Considering the responsibilities they have to their employees and shareholders, should CEOs of huge public corporation really be allowed to engage in risky behavior that holds a chance of serious injury or death?
When a blogger writes a blog post about something, that blogger will often put a "link" in the blog post that "links" to a related page on the internet. This is just part of blogging. Works pretty well. Until a massive corporation decides to actively get involved. Then, it becomes amusing.
Work. You can either conquer it, or let it conquer you. Amirite? Don't let it conquer you. Conquer it. Yes. Conquering it is preferable. Having survived four full years at Gawker Media—eight-time winner of Forbes Magazine's prestigious "Most Unstable Workplace" award—I have picked up some prudent methods of survival. Don't just work—flourish™.
How excited are we all about Starbucks™' new Blonde Roast™? Right? We don't even need to explicate that one. The real question is, how excited are the Starbucks™ team member associate partner barista family members, who have the privilege of handing over the bags of the new Blonde Roast™ to enthusiastic customers like us?
Borders, America's second biggest book store chain, died this summer, its red-trimmed outlets sinking inexorably into a savage sea of red ink. (Beat that lede, Wall Street Journal!) For Barnes & Noble, the most popular book chain, this could be interpreted as good news: its biggest competitor was gone. Or, bad news: book stores are a dying industry.
Glorious American capitalism has advanced so much in the past year that the traditional "Black Friday" day of shopping hell has now become "Black Midnight," in which major big box retailers open their doors on the first, dark minute of the day after Thanksgiving, so that your time in pre-Christmas retail torment may be prolonged as much as possible. Target's doing it. Best Buy's doing it. But... but what about Wal-Mart?
Here we are, two months into the Christmas shopping season. Have you finished? No, because you didn't start in September like you were supposed to. Well, not to worry; corporate America is doing everything in its power to make you feel guilty about your laziness and poverty of ideas as well as money for several more hours, this holiday season.
For at least several months now, convenient caffeinated masturbatorium Starbucks has been quietly waging war against the laptop hobos who fill its seats all day to "work on that screenplay" (browse Craigslist sex ads) while nursing a single drink. Now, the evidence is in: busting laptop hobo riff-raff= big buck$$$!
