Here's summary of the upcoming post:
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We have unbeatable strength when acting in unison as employees and consumers. We need to know what companies to avoid and work together to avoid them.
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We need to decide on specific expectations of companies moving forward. If they want us as employees and consumers, they need to treat us properly. What minimum wage are we really accepting? What hours? What benefits? How should C-level salaries be managed/capped?
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We need to decide a few companies to make examples of. One at a time, we walk away from them as employees and consumers. We never go back no matter what they offer. Companies moving forward will get the message and change or be left behind.
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We actively build our own competitors that willingly treat employees properly, rather than waiting for our oppressors to can in and change their ways.
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Do 2 and 3 on a global and local level until it's possible to thrive at any job.
There are so many good posts pointing out really despicable and often times illegal behavior of some company. But almost always, we have no idea what the company is called. How can we hold them accountable if we don't know who they are?
Corporations only speak money – more equals happy, less equals fear and panic. They won't begin to change until heads begin to roll, figuratively, meaning we need to work together to end entire businesses and make examples of a few if expect large scale change.
We won't have peaceful revolution, but we don't need to go after individuals. Never put out an individual person's name or details or cause them harm. But the business? Call them out by name in your titles. We can just go after their businesses and collectively dump them as employees and consumers. If we do this with just a few, especially bigger corporations, we will see retaliation immediately, and then change will come as we hold out and persist.
It will be vital that we work to form our own businesses in this time as well. We can't just expect our abusers to change and not have some longterm game to play, or for them to behave a certain way when we ourselves wouldn't do the same in their position. So, be that change. Work together to start businesses and compete by treating employees better.
A lot of people are probably scared of retaliation and that's an undeniable reality we have to accept. Our abusers and oppressors will 100% lash out at us for speaking of their misdeeds and holding them accountable for it, and for trying to walk away from their businesses.
That pain, though, is one we will have to endure if we ever expect to take their power away from them and actually head in a new direction.
My vote is to begin with Starbucks. Globally. We are done. No consumer ever walks in again, all employees walk out.
Even on smaller levels, we need to work together like this in our more direct communities to stop doing business with terrible local restaurants, landlords, gyms, etc.
So, please call these places out and let's start to actually make change happen by changing who we do business with.