Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

Yes. We should fall behind our competitors to protect jobs. Companies that don't advance will fail. If you have a job that is likely to become obsolete start retraining now.

It isn't that hard and unions are not the solution.

Your employer belongs to multiple trade groups and donates to politicians and PACs that work in their interest.

A union would work in your interest.

Have there been issues? Oh, yeah.

But you can either create a union without those issues or continue to watch while the C level exec's and board and Wall Street get richer off your hard work.

Funny how the corporate shills never mention that the bank belongs to trade groups fighting for the shareholders but not you.

The country was stronger when there was higher union membership, unions and the GI bill built the middle class.

And since those "good old days", your pay has stayed pretty flat while the CEO class went from making 40 times your earnings to making over 400 times your earnings.

The system is rigged against you, unions help level the field.

Good luck all, don't let the rich people scare you into being poor.

“HA HA HA GTFO”

That’s the response you will get at every other interview you ever go to when they see on your resume you were part of a white collar union

If you look at some of the most effective unions going, look at the US pilots' unions. Most of the complaints of bad unions seem to be for jobs that are fairly low skill. Pilots are among the highest skill, highest paid jobs and their unions seem to actually get pretty decent results. I think it's at least possible that a union for highly skilled labor would be effective.

Everybody's ideal America is different. Whom gives a F about what some CEO's make? Musk, Gates, Buffet, etc all climbed by hard work, dead bodies, soul corrosion and talent. You want their lives? At least a meritocracy vs Union mediocrity. The government is pushing 'social/economic' ideology (ESG/DEI) and unions, yet they operate at a deficit. Private companies can't. In my experience Unions bring everyone to the lowest common denominator. BTW corporations don't pay taxes, people do.

@aaa actually:

Musk was born to wealthy parents and never had to work hard to get ahead in life.

Bill Gates' father was a prominent lawyer who served on multiple boards.

Jeff Bezos is a better example since he came from a much tougher situation but worked himself into Princeton and then a hedge fund for a few years before 30-year-old Bezos and his wife both quit to start their online business.

Buffett is awesome. Nobody can fault the world's greatest living investor who has given away most of his wealth and is still one of the wealthiest people on the planet.

Most of them come from a few universities where their legacy status/connections got them set up.

@sho+1nFnY3Iz

Most super wealthy people didn't inherit their money. Musk? Gates? Buffet? Bezos? We could go on all day, but this 'old money' thing is largely a myth in recent times. Death taxes and the fact that no one can string together very many generations before an id--t comes along makes sure of it in all but the rarest of cases.

First, AI is only replacing stupid jobs for the most part. If you really think WF is willing to pony up the cash that a real AI solution will require for handling in-depth thought work, LMFAO.

Second, As pro-union as I am (I'm in tech and want tech to be union) I don't believe that unions will have the power to stop the march of AI. They can negotiate better human wages and conditions for remaining jobs but it's a losing battle otherwise.

Finally, AI will work great until it doesn't. Then it will require humans to troubleshoot, repair, test, etc...

Upskill or get replaced. Just like factory workers.

Unions are the weakest strength duct tape for the real big problem: greed

Two big examples:

Large corporations must protect excess profitability at all costs. If they profit $25b one year and the next it is $24b, oh no. Loss! Stock price drop! Confidence gone.

The few wealthy and powerful individuals/families (about 1,500 citizens) must continue to grow their inherited wealth. There is no personal accountability to invest back into their communities, to demonstrate their belief in our country with limited risk to their status.

Solution?

Profit should be thought of as a reward when the socio-economic needs of a society have been met. We don't have that today, things are out of balance. The gov't must enforce/raise corporate tax rates and set additional tax rates for the wealthy.

As regular individuals and the media, we should not glorify money/power as if it represents the ideal America.

The ideal America is a fair one, where all social and economic classes of people can be free to move around and intersect comfortably. Capitalism w/ some guardrails is not socialism, it is merely a way to help the country maintain a healthy temperature for all.

Most people want this, yet many will read this and think someone will beat down their door and take something away that they earned. That thinking is a trap setup by our current situation.

No politician in their right mind is getting elected thinking like this. That is too bad.

And good luck finding a job at another bank that’s not unionized. I’m not a wf lifer, so that’s important to me. If the other bank knows wf is unionized, they will find a reason not to hire you. They (and other large companies) perceive it to be a disease.

AI is the current boogeyman. It will not replace most jobs in 5 years. The current crop of AI is more of a prototype to show what it could eventually do.

But it won't be solid enough to rely on autonomously for many, many years. It'll be a phased approach for jobs that AI can do better. Instead of replacing 10 people, maybe half will be replaced by AI while the remaining people oversee what they AI is actually doing, and correct and document the AI's mistakes.

The problem with unions is that if competing companies are not unionized and bearing those costs they can always beat us on price. Unionizing the buggy whip makers wouldn't have saved the industry or any individual company in it. There's a lot of jobs humans don't need to be doing, we'll have to shift to doing other things.