LastWeekTonight
4 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2021–2026
23:37 · 8.5M views · Nov 15, 2021
A Last Week Tonight segment on union busting that explains the tactics employers use and why they face few consequences. It is delivered as comedic commentary.
Cited in unionization threads at Tesla, Amazon, Google and Wikimedia as a humorous overview of union-busting methods.
4 comments from Hacker News
> So what exactly did Google spend their money on? What exactly did these "union-busting" consultants do? I think the sentiment here is that hiring "union-busting" consultants clearly implies strong anti-union sentiment by management and an equally strong desire to quell rising union sentiment within the company. Companies, especially big tech companies, like to seem friendly to employees and make them feel like they're in charge, and the company is "run by them". They like to keep a facade of being "benevolent" dictators ultimately motivated by being the best they can for users. In reality, they're corporations, and they'll do what's best for their bottom-line, wether that aligns with their employees' and users' interests interests or not. In this case, that involved retaliating against employees involved with the Google Walkout, which on top of challenging this benevolent image, is illegal. Of course, Google won't admit it was retaliation. They want to seem unbothered by the fact there's union sentiment within its ranks, and will tolerate the Alphabet Workers Union's existence. Hiring a union-busting consultancy clearly conveys this is not the case. There's a lot of reason to criticize union-busting in general too; it usually employs misinformation and scare tactics; this has happened at Amazon, for example [1]. Regardless of wether this has been the case at Google, it's clear they're not as indifferent to the organization of their workers as they claim they are. [1]: [VIDE
Wikipedia's side > [W]e believe a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board is the appropriate path forward. This process protects individual choice and ensures that any outcome reflects the collective will of those eligible to participate. > [Jimmy Wales:] One of the problems with the process so far is that it was not secret and we have heard from some staff members that they felt pressured because the organizers would know how they decided. That isn't a great process and it goes against our movement's values quite badly to have people in a situation where they are pressured into something one way or the other. Counter-argument > The community response to the WMF statement has mostly been one of dismay, with fears that the Foundation will use the time gap between now and the secret ballot to discourage employees from union involvement, using union busting methods as described humorously in an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver The episode is this video , a transcript is at [LINK] --- Honestly, I'm on Wikipedia's side: there should be a true secret ballot. It should be soon and I'd be fine seeing the union win. Sure Wikipedia can use threats and propaganda in the meantime (so can Wiki Workers United), but that is less coercive than a public ballot.
yeah, collective bargaining never does any good /s [LINK] Last week tonight on union busting: this video When a union does not work or is corrupt, we fix the union, we don't give away the collective power to the opposing side of the negotiation: oh no, my lawyer is not doing my best interest he's only trying to rake up the fees! you know what? I'll let my opponent's lawyer represent me in court instead!
I watched this John Oliver[0] a few days ago which shows that apparently (I am not from the US and also have never had to deal with unions) it does not matter anyway illegal or not. [0] this video