I have to admit I am impressed that they produced an entire original song specifically for this video. (though listening to the lyrics I have to wonder if its some sort of elaborate in joke).
Yes, the obvious question is if this were remotely accurate, shouldn't they have welcomed the opportunity to negotiate with the union for those supposedly less generous terms?
Cut to today and all the things they're saying teamsters are guilty of doing, nearly all big corporations are guilty of doing the same thing. Hypocritical?
I remember taking a job at Wal-Mart in 2001. The first 2 hours of our orientation was them telling us unions were evil and all they wanted was our union dues. I was making $6/hour and I didn't have benefits. After a year of service you could qualify for health insurance, the only problem was that for me, a single male with no dependants, the health insurance would take over half my pay check. Working full time in 2001 at Wal-Mart I wasn't even bring home $250 a week without the cost of insurance. I wouldn't have even made $500/month take home working full time if I would've singed up for insurance. I didn't stay at Wal-Mart very long.
Wal-Mart today starts you off at $11 per hour, that's still crap though. That said most Retail offers a chance for a career if you stick with it, mostly because if you stay you have senior status based on the HIGH TURNOVER RATE retail has. I worked with Ross for 15 months and became an Assistant Manager. I have since moved on to Dirt Cheap, Assistant Manager, better pay, 40 hours per week, bonus money if we surpass our monthly sales goals and benefits that are great. Its just a matter of sticking things out most times.
@@4lifeReagan Walmart and retail stores arent meant for adults to work there forever if your complaining about low wages that's on you learn a skill a trade and better yourself even if walmart paid $30 an hour it wouldn't be enough as people arent money smart. If your not money smart more pay = more debt
I’ve noticed no one is giving props to the narrator of the video. He’s damn good. Notice how his tone is cheery and bright when talking about how awesome K-Mart is and then becomes dark and stern when the teamsters are brought up. I could definitely see how a simple package handler, likely unable to educate himself about anything mentioned in this video, would be swayed by it.
Kmart was a horrible place to work,the pay was a pittance and the management were morons. I recently watched the store I used to work at get leveled and it was great.Goor riddance to a terrible company that took advantage of its employees for far too mnay years.
I know it is old. But liking and commenting for the algorithm. Unions are how workers get back their power. The fact that corporations work so hard to fight them tells you they are afraid of workers knowing what their rights are. If we stand together, we can make all of our lives better. Workers should benefit from record profits.
These videos may seem biased but they are 100% true, being in a Union hurts your chances for Promotion, better wages going forward, open door status, ie you and your supervisor discussing things face to face, and so on.
@@roachtoasties in a way, yes and no. They're both owned by a company called Transformco. Sears still has at least one store in all 50 states, whereas KMart has only 40 stores in less than 11 states. Sad outcome to one of my favorite stores!
Sears has a strong chance to survive. What really hurt them is the Sears pension. Now that the pension issue has been resolved, Sears has a fighting chance.
Thank you, Kmart!! This song allowed me and my friend Bobo to win our hometown Karaoke award just last week! We were voted best Karaoke Duo champions!!
thank you for posting this steaming heaps of garbage to expose how hard they try to alienate and bully workers into accepting their "generosity" (oppressive policies/crap pay in spite of large profit)
Kmart abandoned the facility in Dec of 2015 they just got a new tenant in the warehouse in dec 2017. I assume that facility originally unionized since it went so far as to have a vote. The video appears to be 1995 ish. Also when you look at these union vidoes whether they be lowes,walmart, or kmart they have the same actors in it. I assume its a anti union consulting firm.
As a former Kmart employee, I tried to keep out of the union fight. As a dept mgr,I was looked up to by a dozen employees. I do not want to say go and say no and I do not want to say yes. What this video did not tell you is that Kmart Always was below national standard in pay and benefits. Georgia is a right to work state. Meaning all employees are employees at will. They could be fired at any time. I was in a store in the north .a big difference. Stores had a turn over of over 25% ,this was common knowlage even know the management denied this. Here is what they are not talking you. Forced overtime, forced holiday work, forced benefits pay increases. Most of the shit in this video is in the south. Very different in the north. To bad the under funding is from company's that went bankrupt to get out of contracts. I am not sticking up for the teamsters.they are thug. But this is about union busting. Plain and simple. SS least a did not believe in unions. This was a long time ago for me. But look at what happen to kmart.i left karmt when a Wal-Mart tried to hire me away at a much higher wage. I went to HR and asked for a raise based on Wal-Mart's offer. I was threatened to be fired if I ever brought up the subject. I quit 1week befor Xmas 1989and never worked in a retail store like Kmart,Wal-Mart,etc. Needless to say Kmart was kissed when I walked out right before xmas.but I had to think of myself as Kmart did not give a shit. What was once a good career(retail) is now minimum wage even with 20 years plus experience. To bad this country is now a joke on decent jobs
Nah they actually just want you to be qualified in something or go to school for a decent job :) sorry putting items on shelves and managing part time high schoolers didn’t give ya the big bucks you were hoping
The facts are that you could work at Kmart 40 hours a week and not make enough to survive which is a common thing with Big Business today (the only thing with Kmart as it is basically dead with only 400 stores left).
@Jason Exactly! Pisses me off whenever people say that. “Right to work” is short for “right to work without having to join a union.” You’d think a supposed “manager” would know that distinction, but this story is either fake or they’re terribly uneducated.
having worked in the steel workers union, id say the separation of worker and management is huge, lots of back stabbing and no communication. pay and benefits were great, easiest job ive ever had, and the laziest people ive ever seen.
I remember when the Kmart by me closed somewhere between '09 and '12. They kept that hell hole open until it was literally ONE SINGLE isle in the ENTIRE store, even the last standing register looked like they sold parts off of it. It has sat vacant since. Blue light special say whaaaa? 😂
So Kmart is saying employees wages will go down, they'll have fewer paid holidays, less paid leave time. So why would Kmart discourage something that would only help Kmart's bottom line? Hmmmm
The thing about Business is it's very goal is to eliminate Unions and create as much profit for themselves as possible so it is not surprising Kmart tried this very same thing (especially when this was when the CEO was buying his yacht with Kmart money and Kmart was buying a ton of Companies).
And remind me why Sears/Kmart is failing since 2010, same boat that the grocery chain Safeway/Albertsons botched deal. walmart ain't to far behind either.
I believe the Bankruptcy in 2002 saved the company-- if there's anything killing them, it's the continued poor management at the top (Fast Eddie) that's shooting them in the foot.
Ill be the first to admit that Unions can't do much nowadays, and their members have voted away any future members' benefits, but, Anytime a company calls you an "associate", or "valued team member", tape your ass cheeks together immediately!
METALMAN4Wii make sure you have a good union and a good union rep, though. Any union set up by the company or represented by a sellout (or just having a sucky union) can land you back in the same crappy situation as if you didn’t have a union in the first place. My brother worked for UPS and their union screwed him and his coworkers over.
@@princessmarlena1359 You gotta be your own boss in life if you wanna live comfortable, like buying cars from Copart and IAA fixing them up and selling them for a profit. hell some just need a new battery and oil change and a wash and easy $1500 profit. sell 10 a month that's $15,000 before taxes I never even make that in a year.
METALMAN4Wii no doubt about that. My brother became self employed after that. I personally prefer the theater. I don’t mind the lower pay, I love what I do. I hope to have my own performing act some day, as a professional illusionist and escape artist stage magician. I know it doesn’t pay that much but I enjoy doing it.
@@princessmarlena1359 Well popcorn has a high profit mark up, also as long as you love doing what you do an aren't destroying people lives that's all that matters.
METALMAN4Wii right? I wasn’t trying to bash unions, for the record. I was just stating that sometimes the wrong ones can screw things up for the workers and give unions a bad name. I sympathize with you regarding a 19 year old snot-nosed manager being a stupid jerk. I’ve had to put up with that kind of nonsense as well.
The secret sauce of capitalism has always been ringing surplus value out of workers by getting them to work harder for less. Marx wrote about it 150 years ago and try as they might, no one's been able to prove him wrong since.
No, the labor market gives leverage to workers, via the very same mechanisms that employers have to leverage. Productivity demands compensation. The secret sauce of capitalism is product/process innovation or improvement.
As of this post (7/12/20), Kmart is still holding on at only 44 locations, way WAY down from their peak in 1994 of nearly 2,500 stores. They're currently owned by an outfit called Transformco, based out of Illinois... which is in turn owned by a company owned by the guy that put Kmart in the spot they're currently in. I don't think there'll be a comeback for them, but stranger things have happened...
Ed Lampert.... Chuck Conaway.... Remember their names when someone talks about Kmart's demise, these names are synonymous with corruption, crookedness, and downright horrible activities.
I don't give a fuck about "upholding our brand's reputation for high quality service", we work to get paid, and unions help us to secure that paycheque.
10:00 The same thing happened in Australia. Prior to retail workplace agreements, the award rates went up at a steady rate. After retail workplace agreements were introduced, the unions weren't pushing to have the state and federal award wages to increase, because they were busy negotiating separate workplace agreements. Union workers told retail workers they were being paid much higher than the state and federal awards. While that is technically true, it was only due to the reduction in state and federal award wages increases, compared to pre-workplace agreement years. About four or five years after workplace agreements were introduced, comparing the average inflation rate, staff of one supermarket were actually being paid approximately 30% less than they were being paid under the original award wages, prior to the introduction of workplace agreements.
@@Landie_Man most States are a right to work which means they can pretty much fire you for anything as long as it's not discriminating against your race,age, sex, religion or sexual orientation.
@@AmericanNinja85 Actually you are confusing it with “At Will” employment. At will means you can leave your job for any reason and can be let go without a reason,as long as it’s not for age,color,sexual orientation etc.... Right to work is when you have the right to work without being forced to join a union. The more you know 😀😀
Would love to see interviews with these workers along with the forest park union ones. I'll bet the ones that use the 401k are better off then the pension. I'll bet the ones with 19 years in before it closed and lost all retirement would agree with this now..lol
kind of a catchy tune, "Kmart Noonan, Kmart Noonan, a really good place to be.....", I like it....they should put an album, and concert tour to back it up...I'd go for sure and get front-row seats!!!
This always gets me, when companies complain about paying a part of your paycheck to unions... And?? The few bucks a week you pay is nothing. The fact is, you get paid worlds above what a non-union worker gets paid. These kinds of videos are pure propaganda. Companies often say unions are greedy. Maybe they ought to look in a mirror. CEOs pay usually average multiple hundred times workers' pay. A Union presence doesn't change this. It simply means more money for the workers on the production floor. Boo hoo, boo hoo. Maybe this means the manager can't buy that 3rd yacht. Tough shit.
Get paid worlds above??? I make more now that I left a stupid ass skeamsters job and it’s actually worlds more about a third more. FACTS union ain’t needed in this day and age we got labor laws and shit now fuck skeamsters
well you know, sometimes unions are actually bad. my twitch chat tried to form a union and rise up against me (the streamer). luckily i am currently making them watch this video so i think i've held them off for a few more stream
Isn't the Teamsters controlled by a group called La Cosa Nostra, a.k.a. "the mob"? La Cosa Nostra has long been well-known as a worker and human rights champion, lol!
This really threw me off, because I live right next to a Forest Park, but it's a park in a forest so I was like "when tf did a Kmart distribution center open up over here??"
I skimmed through K-Mart's pay scale statistics. According to K-Mart, they paid about $3 more per hour than places that were unionized. If that's true, then why was K-Mart so anti-union? Let the employees unionize and pay them $3 less. K-Mart would save big time. Anyway, not having a union didn't save K-Mart.
In all likelihood the cost to produce this video cost more than the pay increases requested by the union. You could have just paid the people a decent wage.
While this shit is absolute cringe, anybody who thinks the Teamsters are the "good guys" in a union scenario have clearly never done their homework. Their history of corruption and financial mismanagement is otherworldly..
I worked at kmart in the 1990s .... it was pretty miserable... very few smiles and bad pay $5.75 an hour. This video shows the lies of this type of corporation
This anti union stuff was so successful they shrunk the middle class in their areas and had the lowest labor cost ever... so did everyone else and suddenly demand fell like a rock and they went bankrupt. No one saw this coming. Who knew destroying your own demand base would lower demand and revenue in the future to a point one became economically none viable.
I had a short stint at home Depot. Biggest red flag was their anti union rhetoric. I was let go for something trivial. If I'd had a union wouldn't of happened. If a company puts this much effort in anti union propaganda it's because it benefits them.
I worked for a union shop (UFCW) for 15 years, and to be honest it was not a great experience. Promotions were based on seniority vs actual hard work, my “pension” was laughable, the “raises” were an insulting .10 a year and the health insurance didn’t even cover routine visits. They looked the other way when the company made all hires part time so they couldn’t get their benefits. So unionizing every industry doesn’t benefit their employees, just the unions that collect their dues. When I left for a non union place, I became a supervisor within a year and I’m making more in 2 years than I made there in 10. All the pro union guys don’t want to admit their flaws, only to point out how magical and great they are, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I find it ironic. Now that you've basically help chase out factory work, your now going after retail, and obviously failed at that so you'll just hit up Mcdonalds fry cooks with this nonsense. Look, I am not opposed to unions as a whole, but I am not opposed to companies refusing to go along with this stuff too. It's called freedom and a free market enterprise. Besides the only thing being in a union had cost me was money and jobs, and I am glad we finally have a right to work law here in my state. Not had a problem negotiating my own pay since and I make more then my last union job. Just saying.
You have way less power than you think you do, and you can be fired for just about any reason, no matter how ridiculous. If you bothered to look beyond your own experience, you'd see how much less workers make in Right to Work states and in non-organized industries, and when you adjust for inflation wages, benefits, and even reasonable scheduling have slid terribly as unions have been pushed out. Countries like Canada and Germany got through the recession much better than we did despite heavy unionization, and VW wanted their Tennessee workers to go union because it works well in Germany. Even non-union shops pay more if the industry they are in has some union representation. There's a difference between companies not wanting unions in and their strong arming employees. Federal law heavily favors companies over unions. Belonging to a union is in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the foundation for modern human rights standards. And free markets are only freedom for those who profit. Those companies don't give a shit about you. Just sayin'.
Uh huh. You know the best way to solve this?? GO WORK FOR YOURSELF!!!!! That's right. take on the risks, start a business and if that business flourishes... problem solved. But I don't just speak for me here. Nothing hurts worse then getting laid off or fired. I get it. But, that's your job to make yourself so useful they can't or you start your own. That's what I did. Let's just say I've bothered to look beyond my own experiences, and now I help others with my methods. I own that experience now and I like being able to hire and fire how I see fit and while of course I have my standards. If your lazy, you don't need to be and that's not my fault. I also like being able to promote good people. It's called freedom last I checked. I started off sweeping the floors of a factory, if I can do it anyone can. It's just too easy to make excuses and stay in that box. You know?
Unions in General ============== Pear CD, unions may not always support their workers, but at the same time they often do give workers more bargaining power. Unionized teachers at my previous high school(before I went to university) were payed way more, had health insurance, and job security that teachers at the non-unionized school did. The "Free Market" Argument ======================= Beyond that your "free market" argument is a poor argument.....places where I worked in the "free market" forced workers to work off the clock without pay, else we would be fired. We were payed minimum wage and had to look the other way while the manager gave away company product to their friends and family members.......and when I got hired at a Union shop the stewards kept that kind of shit from happening. At least at a union shop you have an advocate. Companies get away with making people work off the clock because there are no witnesses. The law is in their favor because they use legal bribery called "lobbying". Want an unfair edge in the "free market"? buy a politician, its that easy! Worker's Rights Without Advocacy ============================ Imagine you are working for a company with exploitative business practices, that has a strong advantage, with no witnesses or representation, and in the game of the free market, you the individual worker are alone, and there are a thousand replacements for you that will work cheaper, faster, and harder: illegal immigrants that don't have the same rent and taxes to pay, companies that can outsource your work, and students that live with parents that don't pay rent that will take less pay, will work off the clock for free, and will put up with what no working person with rent ever could. Pear CD Post Appears Manipulative: Contradictory ========================================= If a guy doesn't care about their worker's rights, not being forced to work off the clock, and does not want an advocate and witness then that's fine....but I don't think you are a worker, I think you are an owner or hired by an owner as a union-buster, or just not very well travelled. Your own text contradicts itself, in a manipulative fashion: * "I find it ironic. Now that you've basically help chase out factory work, your now going after retail, and obviously failed at that so you'll just hit up Mcdonalds fry cooks with this nonsense" * yet you say: "Look, I am not opposed to unions as a whole, " * and the rest of your post goes on bashing unions as a whole, not mentioning one positive about them: " but I am not opposed to companies refusing to go along with this stuff too. It's called freedom and a free market enterprise. Besides the only thing being in a union had cost me was money and jobs, and I am glad we finally have a right to work law here in my state." * lastly the most laughable part is the negotiation part of it, which is funny because most average workers and fry cooks get minimum wage or less(working off the clock lowers your average wage below minimum) and they cannot bargain: "Not had a problem negotiating my own pay" "Bargaining" for Your Own Pay as an Individual ===================================== Here is what it would look like at my non-union job: employee: "I would like at least 8.00 an hour rather than bare minimum because I am always on time and am a hard worker, and I run several tasks that are normally done by separate people." boss: "I will take that into consideration but our company pays 7.25" employee: "If I do not get a raise I will not be able to afford my rent and I will have to find employment elsewhere" boss: "sorry that you didn't work out here" *boss places out a now hiring sign and promptly gets some desperate people that do not have rent to pay Response to "GO WORK FOR YOURSELF!!!!" ==================================== I am sorry but that is about the most unrealistic and asinine argument I have ever heard. Most normal workers simply do not have the capital, favorable economic area, or the ability to navigate the legal system to establish a business when they are paying rent, medical bills, interest bearing loans, and other costs. Furthermore established businesses can buy in bulk, you can't, established businesses don't pay rent and have lower overhead and bulk equipment, you can't, large established businesses can to a large extent slaughter smaller business in price wars and buy property more easily, your can't. Overall Rating of Post =================== Self contradictory Poor arguments Manipulative or Very Poorly Informed Post Appears to have no concept of reality Second Post implies that people who want fair pay as being lazy
@@PearComputingDevices "go work for yourself" that is not possible for the majority of people and for those living paycheck to paycheck it is practically impossible. Unions are good for collective bargaining power. If there is an excess supply of workers in your field you have little to no chance of having the bargaining power to increase your wage and other benefits if you go it solo. If the supply of workers was less than the demand then we would never need unions. But that only occurs in some fields
MrEroticWalrus That's a self defeating attitude. I done it. Granted I started out small, and had to work my way around some big fish. It didn't cost me much either. If your living from pay check to pay check, that's not a companies problem. That's yours. If your living like that, why would you keep living that way? I'll never understand that. If your that bad off, why should a boss pay you more for no more skills? Find what your good at, harness that talent and use it to make more money. Problem solved. The only person holding you back isn't some company not paying you enough, it's yourself. I got a buddy, dumb as a brick, drinks like a fish. But he can paint bricks like nobody I have ever known. He's not punching a clock waiting on a paycheck. He''s making bank. If that guy can do it, I am sure you can find something more profitable then stocking shelves at some Kmart.
