369
Google broke labor laws when it refused to bargain with YouTube Music contract workers
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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The big difference between Google and The Little Guy tends to be the lending rate. Google can borrow money at far closer to the prime rate than smaller businesses, so it can expand its services faster and profit on smaller margins than regional competitors. Ultimately, it can buy out competition simply by borrowing $Cost-of-Company, enshittifying services on a captive audience, and then paying back the marginal interest while collecting a fat marginal profit on top.
It would work if we had a large coalition of like-minded working people all pulling in the same direction.
But... look at the public attitude towards unionization and collective worker bargaining. Its still pretty hairy. Very hard to get folks outside of YouTube Music contract workers department to side with them. Harder still to get folks at Spotify and Pandora and Bandcamp all on the same team.
Doubly so when management has an enormous propaganda machine at its disposal, while individual workers are alienated and unable to dedicate all their time strictly to organizing.