• GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world
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    Just fyi, the CEO of Kimberly-Clark, Michael D. Hsu, earns $15.5 million per year, whereas warehouse workers typically earn about $50k a year, that’s about 0.33% or 300 times less.

    Kimberly-Clark made $2 billion profit in 2025. Yep, that’s $2 billion profit AFTER they have paid all the salaries, including CEOs.

    They clearly don’t make enough money to pay fair wages. No one ever thinks of the shareholders, smh…

  • RedSeries (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 days ago

    For those yelling about Unions being better than what this guy did:

    Unions were always the compromise. We’ve watched as corporations fight tooth and nail against unions, even closing locations and laying people off to quash them. Our union protections in the US are pathetically weak, especially with the current regime.

    Workers used to get beaten and threatened when they tried to advocate for better conditions. Eventually workers would start burning down their workplaces like this guy. In extreme cases they would kill the factory owner or foreman. If the conditions are unbearable and voices aren’t being heard, people will get desperate and do unthinkable things.

    For their sake, let’s hope the business and corporate types remember this before the bread or circuses run out.

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    paying a living wage is cheaper than trying to quell a labor uprising.

    • Typhoon@lemmy.ca
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      This is what they learned after the rise of unions. Unionization was the compromise they made to stop angry workers dragging owners into the streets and beating them to a pulp. They’ve forgotten those lessons.

    • PumpUpTheJam@lemmy.world
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      Most American firms would rather pay lawyers to fuck their employees over, than pay their employees more. Recreational Equipment Incorporated Co-operative are closing a flagship store in Manhattan rather than deal with a union.
      America hates Americans.

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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        14 hours ago

        Holy crap, granted I haven’t deep researched them or anything but I always thought of REI as the granola-munching fun hiking kids cooperative kind of environment…

        …friggin’ branding…bamboozled again.

    • smeenz@lemmy.nz
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      Also cheaper than the loss of stock, rebuild costs, and loss of income while rebuilding a warehouse. Some of it will be insured, but not all.

      • BillCheddar@lemmy.world
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        Plus, their customers will go elsewhere while things rebuild.

        Getting those customers back is no small task.

  • enphurgen@lemmy.world
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    No one was harmed and he got his point across. Keep up the good fight Americans, show them how much youre suffering under this regime and dont let the corporations/billionaires win

    • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Even comments-section of fox news was supporting it. Well, mainly calling it a fire-insurance scam, but I think conspiracy theories are how fascists express their love?

      • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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        Well, mainly calling it a fire-insurance scam

        Wildfires are antifa, but when someone actually does commit arson for class war reasons, it’s an insurance scam? What a bizarre psychosis.

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          22 hours ago

          In my experience conspiracy theorists tend to be rather mundane with shit like this, why that is is problematic up for debate but I assume it’s some fucked up version of Occam’s Razor with an absurdity modifier based off of scale or potential scale.

    • aceshigh@lemmy.world
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      No one was physically harmed, but there was financial harm. I wonder how many people lost their job due to the fire and now can’t pay their bills. The town only has 3k people, so I wonder how much of that population worked there.

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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        Funny how people barely scraping by with peanut wages is “Well we all have to just suck it up for the sake of the economy.” (Thatcher/Reagan types love to use this ‘take your medicine’ analogy.)

        …but burning down a corporate warehouse is also “Oh no. Now those workers can’t work for peanuts. :(”

        Almost like the power dynamic here is ridiculously askew and the company never feels the hurt.

        At least one direction here has a chance of actually shifting the balance, and that direction surely isn’t

        “Clock in day after day, say ‘yes, boss’, and hope for the best.”

      • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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        they were barely paid enough anyways, it isnt a lost to the workers. and warehouse job isnt exactly a career for people, not even long term or part time. they f’ around enough witht the hours to prevent that, and injuries are quite frequent in these jobs.

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        Oh no, think of the poor capitalists. They might get mad and stop giving us their crumbs!

        Get their meals, eat the rich!

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        The hard working warehouse employees will be receiving unemployment. They just got several weeks of PTO.

        The demolition and reconstruction is new work that will be going on for the next few years.

      • SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world
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        The warehouse was burned down because they weren’t paid enough on the first place.

        Either someone with some foresight gets ahead of the problem and starts paying people enough to live, cancelling debts, etc., or there’s now ~1-200 more people with little left to lose and the fires will spread.

        I know solidarity is unheard of in the US, but this is something that often builds it out of necessity if nothing else.

      • bthest@lemmy.world
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        financial harm

        Ah, the type of harm that’s the easiest to manage. Can’t really blame this dude for the harm capitalism causes after the fact via suppression of basic social safety nets.

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    If 9/11 taught us anything it is that there is nothing a man cannot do if he no longer fears the consequences.

    • Rooster326@programming.dev
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      9 hours ago

      Are you talking about Flight 93?or?

      I know they said we’d never forget but I don’t know what you are talking about that is specific to 9/11.

    • lobut@lemmy.ca
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      I was gonna riff off of “Warehouse Luigi” and say he’s “Waluigi” for short :P

  • TerdFerguson@lemmy.world
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    A desperate and enraged man will not be reasonable.

    FUCK YOU KIMBERLEY-CLARK. You’re a shitty employer.

    This hurt the share price, for a day anyway…

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    He’s just a fucking sociopath that ruined lives of countless coworkers who are now jobless. Fuck him, I hope he rots in prison

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      Those mansions and bunkers and yachts and private jets all require a surprising amount of working class labor to maintain. Often dozens of employees. The distribution center in the OP only had 8 employees at the time of the fire, so it would be comparably safer!

    • TrackinDaKraken@lemmy.world
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      And, in their bunkers, and on their islands, and hopefully first in their boardrooms. I wonder what they’re saying to each other.

  • randough@piefed.social
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    He could have been part of a unionization effort, instead he chose violence, harmed his peers, and took away that possibility.

    • Eldritch@piefed.world
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      These companies actively make that unfeesable. They’d spend the extra money to close the location. Claim it was unprofitable. And hire all new ununionized staff elsewhere.

      • krisevol@lemmy.zip
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        How is that different that now? Everyone is out of a job, the warehouse is closed, and those jobs aren’t coming back.

        • BillCheddar@lemmy.world
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          Yes, but now the owners get nothing either.

          And more importantly, the other owners of other companies have two brilliant examples of what can happen when you continue to fuck with workers: If you are lucky, workers will only burn all your shit to the ground. If you’re unlucky, you get Luigi’ed. EITHER WAY, THE NEXT BUSINESS OWNER WILL THINK TWICE ABOUT CUTTING WAGES AND FUCKING WITH WORKERS.

          That’s the benefit for all. You just have to be capable of thinking about someone other than yourself.

          • krisevol@lemmy.zip
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            The next owner will think twice about using American labor for sure, we can agree about that.

            • BillCheddar@lemmy.world
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              I can’t tell if you’re being deliberately obtuse or if you’re just thick-headed.

              By chance are you a conservative?

              • krisevol@lemmy.zip
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                No. Im liberal for California. Not to be confused with the democratic party btw. The Democrats party is the party if the elites and don’t listen to the working class. I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary. I love medical for all, but i absolutely think Obama care ruined healthcare and made it expensive as hell.

            • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              Oooo, what a threat. You sure got them. Nice. Nailed it. Well done. So thoughtful. So smart. Oh wise sage. So worldly.

              Hahahahahahaha

        • Eldritch@piefed.world
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          If you unionize the location mysteriously becomes unprofitable and they have to shut it down leaving everyone without a job. If you burn it down, the location closes leaving everyone without a job. But costing the bastards who can’t spare the profit to pay their workers a fair wage Millions. The arrangements of the unions was never please please Mr Boss Man can we be allowed to live too. It was paying us a fair wage or you might wake up dead in your own bed.

        • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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          The massive amount of product lost and the perfectly good building destroyed?

          Like, the difference is the damage — it’s a very big spectacle and proof that all it takes is 1 person in the right place and you can cause massive damage. The Dems aren’t going to save you if you don’t scare them into saving you.

    • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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      Companies fought to nullify unions. It’s the companies’ fault people don’t just join unions and negotiate anymore.

    • BillCheddar@lemmy.world
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      Hi, my name is (whatever the fuck your disappointed parents named you) and I don’t understand a lick about context, history, or why my one-off attempt at sounding smart comes off like I couldn’t find my own ass with two hands and a map.

      • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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        He filed a lawsuit in 2024 against his former employer, PrimeFlight, alleging unpaid wages and missed break times.

    • null@lemmy.org
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      You bring up a good point and it’s dumb you’re being downvoted for it. That being said, I don’t think a union would have hurt the shareholders in the same way.

      • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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        It’s not a good point.

        Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that corporations have gutted union rights, laws and the NLRB. Trying to organize a union is a long shot and you’re just as likely to be fired (for something completely unrelated, of course) the first time you start talking to people about unions.

        Companies like this can fire low wage employees all day every day for years (look at Amazon’s warehouse turnover rate) just to prevent a union from forming. If they ever get to the point where there will be a union vote the company will pay millions for some union busting firm to come in and suddenly all of the pro-union people’s work is under a microscope, anti-union propaganda is everywhere and they’re scaring the other workers with talks of closing the business if a union happens.

        They drag it out until everyone quits, is fired or is scared away from voting. Even if the vote passes the company is under no real obligation to negotiate with the union and the NLRB is effectively toothless. A union can go years and years without seeing any meaningful changes.

        Unions and labor rights were the compromise, what this man did is only a small taste of what it was like before the compromise. His target was inventory, not people. That wasn’t always the case.

        • null@lemmy.org
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          It’s a terrific point. All the people who worked there are now out of work.

          • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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            The point was:

            He could have been part of a unionization effort, instead he chose violence, harmed his peers, and took away that possibility.

            Saying that he should have just tried to unionize demonstrates an ignorance of the state of unionization in the US as I outlined in my comment.

            He could have begged outside of the headquarters too, for all of the good it would do. Treating unionization as if it were some viable option is not a good point.

            I’m not saying that everyone should burn their place of employment down, but he did it in a way that led to nobody being injured and the message resonates with a lot of people. Much like Luigi, it isn’t that what he did is the right thing, but it is undoubtedly a more effective message to the elites than printing union flyers and getting fired.

            California has unemployment and, assuming this company cheats their employees by making them all part-time, it pays as much or more than their lost wages.

            These kinds of things are going to keep happening as the lower class is squeezed by economic pressures and the elites who control the political system block any attempt at reforms that would benefit the labor class. In the grand scheme of things, the harm suffered here was financial and not measured in human lives.

    • SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world
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      There were ~65000 arson offenses in 2024 with 6% as “other” which I’m interpreting as businesses, warehouses, etc. similar to this one. Which gives a high estimate of ~4000 events similar to his per year.

      We are all hearing his story because he ‘flapped his gums’ and we aren’t hearing about the other 3999.