Delta targets its workers with anti-union apps that push deceptive memes

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/10/crash-and-burn.html

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This makes me think of Mayday/Air Crash Investigation. A lot of the accidents are mainly due to pilot error or poor maintenance due to companies trying cut corners. This would definitely qualify under the latter and makes me glad I don’t fly often.

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The guillotine one just flat out confuses me. Why a guillotine? And it also states what the CEO makes… are they inadvertently advocating for the working class to rise up against their corporate overlords? :thinking:

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It’s a remix.

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Ah gotcha :smiley:

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It’d be a cold day in hell before I install an employer’s app on any phone I cared about. If it was “install the app if you want to work here” it would go on a burner phone, assuming I didn’t just walk out the door.

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You could always join the union and buy the games system too. Or are Delta admitting that they pay wages that are too low to do both, which means that the union is necessary?

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The union’s counter to the “you’ll lose money on union dues” argument is simple, too: you’ll get a pay bump after unionization that will cover the cost of dues, and then some. If your pay rate goes up a few grand a year, you still come out ahead in the end.

The case has been made that a strong labor movement raises wages for everyone – even non-union workers

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Yeah, I spent a really, really long time scratching my head over that one. Like… are they proposing building guillotines is just a fun hobby people should be engaged in instead of paying union fees? Are they threatening the union workers?? Did they seriously not realize that guillotines are for decapitating the bosses?!? How could they not get the symbolism???

Then I finally understood it was a remix… I think the article title had just primed me to expect to see the anti-union memes.

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Remixes or not, I read that as “We can make a lot of guillotines; keep your head down or else”.

At the very least, that is some straight up threatening workers for attempting to unionize. Because we all know the DoJ won’t enforce those laws, shouldn’t somebody be suing the hell out of Delta for creating a hostile work place environment?

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Haven’t you seen the repeated use of the guilotine in BB posts?

Also, that ad is horrible - the PS4 is where it is at.

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the original one is so tone deaf/condescending I kind of assume it’s a “remix” like the second one. But I will go with stupid over subtle sarcasm.

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Am I the only one that’s consistently baffled by the use of French Revolution imagery to argue for socio-economic change? After they overthrew the monarchy, there was a period of partisan warfare and mass executions, followed by the creation of an imperialist military dictatorship, and, when that collapsed, the restoration of the monarchy! I fully sympathize with the nobler goals of the revolution, and most of the current policies being supported with this imagery, but it seems like everyone has developed amnesia about everything that happened after Marie Antoinette lost her head.

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It the guillotine one real? Seem like a good message… to me.

The guillotine is a good image. Greedy exploiters will not stop until they are forced to stop, and the image is a reminder of that.

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Delta leadership believes that it’s more profitable to have non-union employees and have been very successful in the past in holding back unionization efforts. As a result of not having a union, employees are at the mercy of managers who punish them with indefinite suspension, which is a horrible form of psychological torture where you wake up every day wondering if you will ever get “called back” to work. This would not happen if those employees had a contract.

Delta farms out much of the “benefits” that employees do have, but there is little recourse when there are problems with the administrating vendor, or there is a change to a different vender. Employees fall between the cracks, sometimes at a financial loss, and there is nothing to compel management to be fair in rectifying that financial loss. Even if you get to the extraordinary point of proving your case, they can simply refuse to issue a check.

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The well known alternatives are a cigarette and blindfold (not good if you pro gun-control), a la lanterne (worryingly reminiscent of lynching) or the gulag (undesirable if you aren’t a tankie).

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Or, you know, find a solution that doesn’t include killing people :confused:
Though I assume that the guillotine imagery is tounge in cheek and a metaphor, given the editor’s general adversion to violence against people.

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We tried, they ignored us. Although they do seem to care more about their bank accounts than their lives, so that might be a better target.

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