Is Outrage Over United Airlines Assault A Revolt Against Corporate Authoritarianism?

I don't remember the last time an incident blew up so big on social media as that horrible attack by United Airlines on a passenger over the weekend. 

As you probably are well aware of by now, United overbooked a flight from Chicago to Louisville, and tried to get volunteers to leave the plane.

Nobody did, so they picked people are random. One guy who had to get back to Louisville objected, so United called in the Chicago cops to beat the crap out of him and drag him off the plane.

That's not how the Orwellian overlords at United would describe the incident, but anyone who has seen the video knows it's true.

This has been building for some time now: Somewhere along the line, a huge swath of corporate America has decided the customers are the enemy, and they have free reign to cheat them, abuse them.

All with the help of Congress, who have been paid off by corporations to pass laws that favor these rich donors and screw the rest of us.  You can steal a lot more money from the boardroom than robbing a person on the street with a gun.

That's why United and all the other airlines can overbook flights and kick people off. It's more profitable, and screw it if you can't make it to Aunt Matilda's funeral in Des Moines.

The United assault on a passenger was the most egregious example of corporate authoritarianism yet, and the explosion on social media, was a giant collective, "I'm sick and tired of this and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

Sure, the extreme public ire was aimed at United. But the force of it was inspired by all of our experiences: Gettting screwed by the 150 pages of legalese in every consumer transaction that only a trademark lawyer can understand. Being forced to wait on hold for three hours or more until somebody at the insurance company deigns to answer the phone, then promptly hangs up on you.

That kind of thing.

And it's all dressed up in Orwellian corporate speak that's enough to make you vomit

The United Airlines assault on this passenger was a master class by United on this PR wording.

First, being beat up and dragged unconscious from a plane is not an assault. It was "re-accommodating," as if United regretfully had to transfer you from one five star hotel to another.

United's hired goons - in the form of the odius Chicago Police - said the man's injuries were because he "fell."  Because being socked in the face enough to knock you over is just your clumsiness, you understand.

Later Monday, United CEO Oscar Munoz blamed the victim, saying he had been "belligerent" for not getting off the plane. In other words, the victim apparently had no right to be upset about being denied something he probably paid hundreds of dollars for - a cramped seat on a flight to Louisville.

You're supposed to be overjoyed to be toyed with by a corporation like United!

As Jimmy Kimmel said last night, imagine going to Applebee's and being forcibly dragged out of the restaurant 20 minutes into your meal because the place was "overbooked." It's the same thing as what happened on United!

Kimmel ran a parody ad from United that was funny because it was so incredibly close to the truth. Not just of what goes on at United but many other grifting large corporations. Here's a quote from Kimmel's United "ad"

"We're United Airlines. You do what we say when we say, and there won't be a problem....If we say you fly, you fly, if not, tough shit. Give us a problem, and we'll drag your ass off the plane. And if you do this we'll beat yo so badly you'll be using your own face as a flotation device. United Airlines: Fuck you."

By the way, check out all the proposed new slogans for United in this link.

I hope the public outrage over United lives on, intensifies and spreads to other corporations who treat the public, the environment and everything else like shit for fun and profit.

People are boiling angry over a lot of things anyway, including how the government is run and how it no longer represents us, but represents corporations.

I'm sounding like Bernie Sanders, but this is exactly why he struck such a chord. He's right. The corporations are running the show, and often doing so in a criminal, morality-free way. The extreme anger at United is a symptom of that.

Let's keep fighting. But not physically, like United does.

In case you need a reminder of how brutal the assault was, here you go:

This Company REALLY Hasn't Gotten The Hang Of PR

JetSmarter might be a decent company, but their
PR department sure needs work. 

When I worked in journalism, I got pitches all the time from companies who want to get exposure for their products and services.

Sometimes the pitches were helpful, sometimes not. A few prompted me to write stories about the companies, sometimes I would run screaming out of the room the PR pitch was so bad.

The following has to be the worst effort at trying to get a publication to write a story.

A website called The Verge not along ago got a note from an outfit called JetSmarter, a company thats been called the "Uber for Private jets."

JetSmarter offered a Verge reporter a demonstration of its service, involving a round-trip light in the United States, in exchange for what The Verge says was a demand for uncritical puff piece with the following demands from JetSmarter:

"Upon the execution of this Agreement, Journalist shall provide Company with a credit card and a copy of an ID of the credit card holder ("Credit Card") and shall authorize Company to charge the Credit Card in the amount of $2,000 should (i) Journalist cancel the trip on the date of departure of the outbound flight or in the event that Journalist fails to arrive at the departure location at the scheduled departure time or other unforeseen delays or (ii) in the event Journalist fails to post the article described above on the first page of this agreement."

In other words, if The Verge took on this story, they'd have to pay $2,000 if a glowing puff piece about JetSmarter "within 5 business days."

Whoever at JetSmarter came up with this has NO idea what he or she is doing. The best way to NOT get a puff piece is to do sometthing like this. Instead, you get negative coverage and mockery, which is what The Verge and, now,  me are doing.

Also, is JetSmarter too cheap to release promotional material themselves? They wanted a journalist to do the work for them, so they wouldn't have to pay anything?

PR is all about selling, flattery, relationships and trying to find win-win situations. Bullying like JetSmarter did the absolute opposite of that.

To state the obvious, The Verge chose not to write the puff piece, but instead wrote a slam against JetSmarter that I'm using as a basis for this post

Time to get a new public relations department, guys.

Donald Trump Isn't Creating All Those New Jobs, At Least Not Yet

Is President Trump unfarily taking credit for job
creation that would have happened with or without him?

Anybody would be cheered by the flurry of news that companies are hiring, or moving jobs back to the United States from overseas.  

Donald Trump takes a lot of credit for this, and as much as I dislike him, if he's responsible for actually bringing new, well paying jobs to the United States, who am I to complain?

Job growth is job growth, so it's something to be celebrated.

However, like so many things involving our new president Donald Trump, things aren't as they seem, at least if a really interesting NBC news report is correct. 

As always, the problem involved Donald Trump's tweets.

He has the ability to send a corporation's stock plummeting if he is displeased with the company and tweets about it.

No CEO or PR department wants that, so some corporations are issuing jobs annoucements to stave off the dreaded Donald Trump negative tweet.

So the companies are making annoucements that they're creating new jobs. The trouble is, says NBC, that these annoucements are recycled. Usually, the added jobs were already planned before Trump came along.

Trump is conning again. He's taking credit for jobs that would have been created whether he was around or not.

That's what I mean when things aren't as they seem. Companies look great if they announce now they are creating jobs, even though this has nothing to do with Trump. It just gets Trump off their back.

Trump knows this. That's why he tweets those negative things. So he can look good and claim he is already creating jobs.

Maybe he's hastening things a little. General Motors said it has long planed to increase capital expenditures, including hiring more workers, but Trump accelerated the plans a little.

Planned job increases at Wal-Mart are planned to be at roughl the same pace as recent years, so there's nothing too special there.

Of course, Trump has responded to the NBC News story as fake and wrong in, you guessed it, a series of tweets in the days before he wass inaugurated on Friday.

Trump's bluster and threats might also be keeping jobs in the U.S., at least temporarily, as company's don't want to face the bad PR Trump can create.

However, I wonder if that's a sustainable job creation ploy. A really sound economic foundation helps create jobs, and that takes work and skill.

I wonder if Trump can go beyond threats and tweets and actually help build the nation's economy.

I'm dubious.

I Hate Welfare Queens. You Know, Like Walmart and McDonald's

Are low wage employers the new welfare queens?
If we are using tax dollars to subsidize
the workers who don't make enough to sustain
themselves, they probably are the queens.  

Like pretty much everyone else, I don't like my tax dollars going to welfare cheats.

You know the type. These are the people who get public assistance when they shouldn't. They've found a way to receive government largess even though they already make tons of money.

The latest incarnation of the proverbial Welfare Queen some companies, like Walmart and McDonald's and all kinds of other major firms that pay minimum wage or just barely above.

They pay their workers to enhance their corporate bottom lines. The pay is so low many of the employees are on public assistance.

They can't get by on their meager salaries. So they live in subsidized housing. They're collecting SNAP benefits to put food on the table. (SNAP is the latest federal incarnation of what is commonly known as food stamps.)

This arrangement benefits the corporations, since they don't have to pay their employees adequately. Let the government do it. Your taxes and mine.

The University of California/Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education says us taxpayers are really, really subsidizing companies like Walmart and McDonald's.

It turns out us American taxpayers are subsidizing these corporations to the tune of $153 billion, yes that's billion a year.

Here's what the University of California/Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education says:

"Nearly three quarters (73 percent) of enrollees in Amerca's major public support programs are members of working familiies. The taxpayers bear a significant portion of the hidden costs of low wage work in America."

Or, to put it in more explicit terms, here's how Gawker described the situation in an article about the Berkeley study:

"It is one thing to say 'Fast food workers don't deserve $15 per hour.' But realize that what you are saying really amounts to, 'I prefer to pay the difference between what fast food workers earn and what they need to live myself, rather than making their employers pay it.' 

Yep. Your tax dollars at work. The corporate executives and shareholders, many of whom already have tons of money, are welfare queens. By paying such low wages, the government keeps these employees out of homelesseness and hunger, or at least we hope.

Shouldn't the employers be paying the workers enough money to live on, rather than making us tax payers do it? Sure, that would mean the price of some goods and services from places like Walmart and McDonald's would go up.

But either way, we're already paying.  Plus, those of us who don't even like going to Walmart and McDonald's are subsidizing the rich executives and the (often somewhat rich) shareholders in these
companies.

I know the argument. The burger flipper jobs are said to go to teenagers trying to make an extra buck for their weekend partying.

Some teenagers do work low wage jobs for that reason, or as a means of saving money for something more worthwhile.  However, most of the employees are trying to make a living on money that's not enough to live on. So they're on public assistance. On us taxpayers' dime, I will remind you again.

Or, I suppose we could be completely heartless and end government assistance to these working poor. That's one way to get rid of the problem. Starve 'em to death.

I still like the idea of pay increases more, though.

A lot of low wage workers get this. And they don't want to be on public assistance. They'd rather just collect an adequate paycheck and go on with their lives. Protests are ongoing around the country fighting for a $15 an hour wage.

I don't think that wage level will happen anytime soon, but I'd like to see some serious pay increases. Even if I have to pay more for a Big Mac to get there.

Some companies pay their workers more and do just fine. Costco is widely cited as having higher wages than most retailers and the warehouse store chain is doing just fine. It doesn't hurt that the higher wages helps Costco retain employees, who become proficient at their job, which leads to better customer service, which leads to more customers, and more profits for the company.

Well, why don't these people in low wage jobs look for other jobs, or get some education or training to obtain a higher paying job?

A lot of them probably would if they could.

A big trend among low wage employers is helping to prevent worker mobility, or their ability to seek training and education elsewhere.

It's hard enough that education is expensive, but now it's even harder because employers are preventing workers from having a set schedule so they go to classes, obtain reliable daycare for kids, or have a specific time of day to get things done.

The New Republic explains it:

"Just-in-time scheduling, as the practice is known, allows employers to efficiently allocate resources. Scheduling software offers real time analysis for staffing needs.

When customers flock to a store, managers bring in on-all workers. When business is slowk managers don't call those workers in - or they turn they away.

In some cases, these workers will have already commuted to work, paid for child are and arranged their lives around a shift that evaporates, leaving them no recompense for their troubles.

The unpredictable schedules interfere with such basic daily activities as grocery shopping, doctor's appointments and looking for a better job."

I suppose there are people who like these flexible schedules and it works for them. But what of the employees who can't manage it? They're still forced to live this way without relying on a steady paycheck.

I noticed yesterday that the New York Attorney General is looking into this practice to see if it is even legal in that state.

With all this going on, yeah, it's definitely time to put a stop to the new breed of Welfare Queens. I'd love it if Walmart and those other companies reimburse me and the millions of other taxpayers that subsidizes them.

I mean, what benefit is society as a whole getting by having our tax dollars subsidize big corporations like this.

The arrangement needs to change. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Everything That's Wrong With Major American Business

JetBlue is going to a fee system that other airlines use
to torture us. Because Wall Street wants JetBlue to make
bigger profits for them. The American Way I guess.Add caption

A few weeks ago, Wall Street analysts said they were not all that crazy about JetBlue.

The problem? They are "overly brand conscious and customer focused."

JetBlue is making money hand over fist. But not to the extend of other airlines, and not to the extent of what fat cat shareholders want. They want more money to add to their billions.

To do that, they have to make flying for us minions as rough as possible. And as expensive as possible.

It's not good enough to be profitable and treat people like human beings, i.e. fairly. You must, MUST screw them as much as possible.

Apparently, it's the American Way.

The fee system that airlines have horribly imposed on us is designed expressly to given us the most unpleasant flying experience possible while maximizing profits to the extreme.
Here's how the New Yorker describes this evil system:

"If fees are great for airlines, what about for us? Does it make a difference if an airline collects its cash in fees as opposed to through ticket sales?

The airlines, and some economists, argue that the rise of the fee model is good for travellers. You only pay for what you want, and you can therefore save money, if you, for instance, don't mind sitting in the middle seats in the back, waiting in line to board, or bringing your own food.

That's why American Airlines calls its fees program 'Your Choice' and suggests that it makes the 'travel experiencce even more convenient, cost-effective, flexible and personalized.'

But the fee model comes with systematic costs that are not immediately obvious. Here's the thing: in order for fees to work there needs to be something worth paying to avoid. That necessitates, at some level, a strategy that can be described as 'calculated misery.'"

In other words, the more horrible the airlines make flying, the more they torture us, the more they insist on trying to make a 200 pound person like me sit in a seat designed for a 75-pounder, the more we will pay to accept escape from the torture and the more money they'll make.

Where will this trend end? "Hey, pay a $300 'no whipping' fee and we won't give you 100 lashes before you board."

I think airline executives would go for that, if aggravated assault wasn't still illegal. But don't worry. Congress will make it legal. If it contributes to corporate profits, which means they get more campaign money from the corporations.

This gets us back to JetBlue. That airline was trying to treat its customers with a basic level of respect. But nope, the Wall Street overlords will have none of that. Not of more profits can be squeezed out so they can buy that third beach house in the Hamptons.

Of course the free market types say if we don't like it, we can just go to the competition. But all of the so-called competition is under orders from Wall Street to commit exactly the same abuse on customers. So there really is no "competition."

As the New Yorker put it:

"When an airline like JetBlue is punished for merely trying to treat all of its passengers decently, something isn't right."

Look, I'm totally on board with one basic concept of capitalism.  Corporations must make profits. They provide a service we want, we pay for it, and they make money. Investors are happy, we're happy for getting the service we want, and live goes on wonderfully. Awesome! I love it!

What I don't love is the ethos that has taken over Corporate America. Instead of having us pay reasonable prices in exchange for goods and services, and have us coming back for more, the larger corporations by and large treat most of us with contempt.

That the 1% regards the rest of us as the enemythat has to be crushed, taken advantage of, left penniless and then discarded.

Of course, with that business model, how do they expect to make money once we're all spent?

 

Should You Be Paid While You're At Work? Court Says No, But....

The U.S Supreme Court said last month
you don't have to pay these warehouse workers
for some of their time on the job.
Unfair, yes, but we wouldn't want to dent
a billionaire CEO's salary, would we?  

I was annoyed by a U.S. Supreme Court decision recently that said companies don't have to pay employees for all the time they are at work.   

Yes, you still have to pay people, but some companies now have these security checkpoints where people end up waiting in line for a half hour or more daily to be checked to make sure they're not stealing stuff.

Amazon warehouses in particular are famous for this.

The court decided that companies don't have to pay employees for the time they wait in line to prove they aren't a criminal stealing from the company.

In the Supreme Court case, two employees of Amazon Distribution Centers in Nevada said the half hour wait for the security screening took a half hour each day when they left work, so they should be paid for that time.

The Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling and said while the screenings are for the benefit of the company, the security screening ws not part of their job duties.

Which confuses me, since their bosses are making them stand in line for the security screening, but what to I know?   How is it not a job duty if the boss says you HAVE to stand in these lines or be fired?

As Slate pointed out, this also means that companies like Amazon have no incentive to limit the time employees wait in security lines. The attitude might become, "If it takes an hour, who cares if we're wasting our employees' time We don't have to pay for it."

As if these employees' burning desire is to spend their time away from work standing in security lines at the place they work.

I'm sure this unpaid security line stuff is just super for morale. But what do the companies care? To them, employees are just a mindless herd, like in a cow barn, and shouldn't demand niceties like being paid for being at work.

Consumerist tells us, however, that some states have laws saying that you have to pay workers who are, well, at work. There are lawsuits by business trying to overturn these state laws, but other states are considering enacting laws that make employers pay people who are at work.

Look for some court decisions over these state laws in the coming months.

Retailers say paying employees to go through security screenings, i.e. making them work, will be awfully expensive for them. But I dunno. I bet if they raise prices by a penny for some of their products, they'll recoup things nicely.

Or do they prefer that employees spend their entire day working for them, and not get paid at all for anything?

Geez, maybe we could take this one step further and not pay employees at all for working. Slavery would be great for the bottom line, not to mention the CEO's pay, wouldn't it?

Torturing Airline Passengers is Seasonal Tradition

A lot of us are taking planes to see the family this holiday season, my husband included, so that means it's time for the national game to begin: Torturing airline passengers!

It started early this year with this news. About a week ago, Delta Airlines employees thought the perfect target for a holiday torture would be to focus on a Marine that had been badly wounded and disabled in Afghanistan, according to the Washington Post.

Delta Airlines is accused of mistreating
a disabled Marine in a wheelchair

Lance Cpl. Christian Brown is a double amputee, and Delta employees thought such a person belonged in back of the plane, and clumsily bumped and pushed and jarred his wheelchair down the narrow plane aisle in full view of everybody.

There were plenty of chances to give him a far more dignified ride. Several passengers in First Class in the front of the plane offered to give up their seats for Brown, but the employees refused, saying the plane had to take off immediately.

Turns out the plane was actually running early. And besides, how long would it take for somebody in First Class to move to Coach and give Brown the seat?

The Washington Post quoted retired Army Lt. Col. Keith Gafford, who witnessed the incident thusly:

“I have been flying with Delta for a gazillion years and this crew treated Chris worse than you’d treat any thing, not even any body. I did 27 years in the military. I have seen a lot of things and have seen a lot of guys die, but I have never seen a Marine cry,” said Gafford, who served two tours in Iraq. “What the kid said was, ‘I have given everything that I can give and this is the way I am being treated? This is how I will be treated for the rest of my life?’” 

A Delta spokesperson gave the usual corporate apology, and said the company would take the additional necessary next steps, but didn't say what those steps are. Firing? Retraining? Or is Delta just going to let the whole thing blow over?

Meanwhile, the Transportation Security Administration thought it would be fun to harass a wheelchair bound, sick 12 year old girl at a Dallas airport, according to television station KDFW, Fox 4 in Dallas.

Apparently, the TSA agents detected what was believed to be bomb residue on the girl's hand and/or wheelchair. False positives happen sometimes, so OK, so far, not so bad.

TSA is also accused of abusing somebody
in a wheelchair, this time a 12 year old girl

But in this case, they kept the girl out in the public eye, not letting her mother near her, and not explaining what was going on. This lasted for nearly an hour, during which the girl was clearly upset, and occasionally cried.  They finally let her go without an apology.

How about a little compassion until or unless it was proven the kid was some nasty little terrorist, or something?  And maybe investigate the situation out of the view of all those passersby?

Yes, I know the TSA has a tough job and yes, I know we all want them to stop anybody from making terrorist mischief on our planes, and yes, some people are going to be subject to false alarms. Deal with it. But do you really have to be this insensitive?

TSA, in response to the publicity, like Delta, sent out the usual bland statement:

"TSAs mission is to safely, efficiently and respectfully screen nearly two million passengers each day at airports nationwide. We are sensitive to the concerns of passengers who were not satisfied with their screen experience and we invite those individuals to provide feedback to TSA through a variety of channels." 

Which leads me to my big point here. It' is INFURIATING that every time some company or some agency gets called on the carpet with some real or alleged misdeed, they resort to these same bland statements, that was probably written by one guy 20 years ago and just recycled by everybody.

These bland PR statements arguably anger people more than the original problem, because they don't address specifics, and don't say what will be done to fix the problem. The message in these statements. "Go away and quit bothering us. We'll do what we damn well please."

And notice how the TSA statement implicit blames the girl and her mother for the PR mess. They wanted them to provide feedback in their channels. So that unpleasant publicity not happen and the TSA can just bury the problem without doing anything.

More people ought to stand up and make a public stink if treated horribly. That doesn't mean complaining at every slight, or going into hystrionics. But really. let's hold people and companies just a tiny bit accountable, shall we?

Bank Of America Says Dead Woman Must Tell Them She is Dead

I love to hate these stories, but it seems there's so many examples of company's "customer service" that gets so bureaucratic, out of whack, stupid and totally insane that there must be a competition among these companies on who can be most outrageous with customers.

A strong contender is Bank of America. A college kid's mom died, and it was up to him to tell mom's mortgage holder, that she was deceased and thus no longer able to pay the mortgage, and since he couldn't find the mortgage documents could they help?
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Could Bank of America help? Oh, that kid's a riot, isn't he?
 
Bank officials kept telling the kid, named Matt, that his dead mom would have to tell the bank she was dead before things could get straightened out, according to Consumerist. 

The kid, Matt was his name, thought sending Bank of America a copy of his mom's death certificate would straighten everything up. Boy is Matt naive! He actually thought doing something that made perfect sense would work! Ha!

Actually, according to Consumerist, he kept sending copies of the death certificate, but Bank of America kept losing them. Or so they said. I think they just threw them out, just to mess with the kid's head.

Even after they acknowledged they got the death certificate, on the fourth try, the bank told Matt his mom would still have to talk to them before the mortgage questions could be sorted out.

They also sent the account to collections to start harassing him to pay up until a sympathetic lawyer got him a ceast and desist order.

Last we heard, this case is still uresolved.

How could a bank, which is supposed to be full of smart people who really know how to manage money, be like this?  Do people just sit around and do nothing? Or do they feel like they have power, and can toy with this kid like a cat who's caught a mouse and is keeping it alive for awhile as a plaything before killing it?

I always hear stories like Matt and the Bank of America. Only bad publicity seems to fix things. I guess institutions play this game because they can.

It's not like everyone is like this. Matt said he had to settle things with his mom's other creditors, who ranged from OK, to, in the case of Chase and Capital One, quite helpful.  So it's not impossible to be, well, not impossible.

If everything the Consumerist said is true, I  hope the people at Bank of America who messed with this kid who was trying to mourn his mother are proud of themselves. Because nobody else is.