November 19, 2021 • 40 mins
We talk with Alexis about how just in time production and lean manufacturing have destroyed all resiliency in our supply chains and the effect keeping the supply chain running are having on the workers who form the real basis of the economy.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Uh, it's could it's happened? Could hear Robert Evans The
podcast that is now begun. Um. This is a show
about how things are falling apart and occasionally how to
how to maybe deal with that, maybe you try to
steer things in a better direction. We talk about a
bunch of stuff today. We're gonna be talking about more
supply line um um stuff. And and and in order to
(00:28):
kind of introduce this episode, we wanted to bring in Alexis,
who posted a threat on Twitter um about some of
their experiences in the industry in which they work that
that we all found very interesting. And so we just
wanted to bring Alexis on and uh and and first off,
have you kind of go over what what you went
over in that threat and then um kind of zero
(00:48):
win and talk about that. So Alexis, welcome to the show. Hi,
thanks for having me. Um. Yeah, I'm gonna let you
take it from here and then we'll we'll drill in
once you once you get through your your piece, all right,
So I'm just going to go ahead and read the
thread that I posted and then yeah, we'll go from there. Uh. So,
labor shortage discourse time. I work for a food manufacturing company,
(01:10):
specifically bottling and canning various beverages, and we are desperately understaffed.
The wages are competitive, but they can't keep anyone on
after they hire them. Why, because we're short on people.
As soon as someone is trained, they start throwing massive
amounts of mandatory over time on them to try and
cover the missing pieces while they look for more people
to hire in. Folks get burned out and quit. And
(01:31):
this is where my hate of just in time manufacturing
comes in. Obviously, in food manufacturing, you can't just stock
a warehouse with stuff and let it sit for a year,
but you can keep a couple of weeks worth stock
rotating at all times if you devote the warehouse space, employees,
et cetera to doing so. This would give you some
flex time to train your new people without having to
run everyone into the dirt. So, even with a place
(01:54):
that is offering decent money and benefits, because this is
a union shop, we can't keep people because we're making
a conscious decision to only ever have one to two
days of stock on hand to increase profits. Meanwhile, thanks
to lean manufacturing, we don't keep a ton of spare
parts for our equipment on hand. Thanks to the supply
chain just disruption, We've got packaging equipment that's been waiting
on replacement parts for six months, which further fux our
(02:16):
productivity doomed to downtime, which makes the company's schedule even
more overtime to try and make up for the lost
cases from equipment downtime, which burns out more employees, which
puts us in an even deeper labor hole. I've been
warning about just in time being a time bomb in
the making for over a decade now. When it works perfectly,
you're fine. A single interruption causes cascade effects. And since
(02:37):
everyone has been doing the just in time thing, there's
zero slack anywhere in the system. Grocery stores don't have
any extra soda in the back they get behind demand
builds up. Distribution doesn't have any pallets in the warehouse,
ha what warehouse, so they can't answer the surgeon demand
from grocery stores. Manufacturing doesn't have spare parts for aging equipment,
so we can't boost production. Spare parts makers don't have
(02:58):
stock build up, so and on it goes. The actual
approximate cause of this is deregulation of capitalism that is
incentivized quarterly profits and made long term thinking anathema to
c e O s. But sure, conservatives blame California for
not letting old trucks offload at the ports. That's it,
and that's that's the essence of my threat. I then
plug my podcast at the end. Yeah, so I wanted
(03:21):
to I'm curious as to kind of like, uh to
what it like. I'm trying to understand, like what the
solution is. Like We've talked a bit about Okay, just
in time, manufacturing is is problematic for a lot of reasons. Um,
keeping more like on the shelves is going to allow
you to avoid these crunches and is going to like
(03:42):
make supply line issues like the ones we've experiencing since
the start of the COVID pandemic less severe and less common. Um,
But how do you actually how do you actually make
that happen? Because I guess the traditional free market thing
is that, like, well, because this has been such a
problem for companies, um, you know, they'll naturally change the
system in order to avoid this in the future. I
(04:02):
don't feel like that's likely to happen. Um, And I'm wondering, like,
what do we uh what what what do you think
is the way forward here? Well, because some of the
problem is is right now, like most most companies, you
will pay taxes on stuff that you have stored in
a warehouse, things like that. Um, so no company is
going to voluntarily lower their profit margins if the other
(04:26):
companies don't do it themselves as well. So really there's
going to have to be some sort of forcing of
companies to uh have that on hand. And I don't
see just being able to write a law that says, oh, well,
you're required to have this much backstock on hand as
as being a functional way to work. And really, as
(04:47):
I'm sure you know, Robert, I know you're well aware
the capitalism itself is kind of the problem. But as
far as I guess, a solution to this sort of thing, um,
you would have to disincentivize the quarterly profits above all
in order to force companies back into long term thinking. Now,
(05:09):
from a purely like mechanical standpoint, um, I guess if
you if you did something to incentivize companies having backstock
or flex stock on on hand, that might help. But um,
I mean, I'm just I'm just a cog in the machine.
Getting ground up. So as far as like big solutions,
(05:30):
that's I mean, I've been looking at it ever since
I worked in a freaking casket factory and we started
doing just in time there, and just every time that
I've been in a place, a manufacturing place and seen
it happen, I'm just like, oh, this is gonna go
wrong because you can't. You can do just in time
if all of your suppliers are local, but having it
stretched across the global supply chain, it just it's inevitably
(05:54):
going to collapse in on itself. I'm sorry that I'm
not more helpful. No, no, but I mean this is
this is like the problem because there's a lot of
reasons why this supply chain is global. Some of them
are like labor related reasons, some of them are cost cunning,
some of them are just like pure pragmatism. UM. But
it's trying to like I I don't. I feel like
(06:15):
it's it's one thing to say, like, well, part of
the problem is that like all of these different pieces
come from different countries, um. And there's a number of
shady reasons for aspects of that. UM. But it makes
for greater problems when there's a pilin shortage and then like, Okay, well,
what are we what are we gonna Are you suggesting
that we make everything domestically because I don't feel like
that's a realistic solution. Um. Yeah, And it's like it's
(06:38):
just it's I'm trying to get a handle on there's
a couple of angles on this. There's there's what we
think is going to happen, um, and then there's the
question of like, is there a way that the system
as it exists could make this whole thing less vulnerable?
And and a lot of ways that's going to be
separate from the question of what would be better for
everyone to happen, because a lot of what would be
better for everyone to happen is a white A significant
(07:00):
chunk of these things that we have constantly stocked on
the shelves are no longer parts of our life, right. Um,
there's a lot of things that are made that we
do not need and that are there's an environmental cost
and a show social cost and YadA YadA, YadA. Um.
But I guess first I'm kind of curious to drilling in,
like how realistic do you think it is that the
system as it exists is going to like mitigate this
(07:23):
and come up with better ways to to do this
that render us less vulnerable to these supply crunches. Like
is there. I don't see a great financial incentive in
it for them yet, um, because they don't seem to
be hurting, right, Like that's that's the thing. Well actually,
and and again, please keep in mind this as limited
anecdotal evidence. Yeah, because it's gonna be definitely John Deer,
(07:44):
I know, was making record profits before all the this
union stuff happened, but like that's not everyone, right. So again,
I work for a soda manufacturer. So every time you're
you know, enjoying your your schmetzy Schmola or your or
your Chmago whatever whatever, I'm not going to explain which
(08:04):
company I work for because I don't want to get
in trouble. Um. And we're we're actually a captive bottler,
which means that it's a separate company, but we work
for the big soda corporation. I think that in certain
instances those things will change, because for example, just last week,
we had one of our four lines go down, so
(08:25):
our production capacity went down because we had a motor
burnout on the rollers that would move a full palette
out to be picked up by a forklift, and there
was no replacement motor in stock, and so we had
I think forty eight hours of downtime on this. Now,
all the way up at the top, the company executive,
(08:46):
you know, we're one of thirty some plants, they don't
care about why it was down, just that it was down.
So in our position here, um, the people a little
higher up the food chain than me are insisting like, hey,
we've been after you guys for months that we need
spares like this. And I think that as that sort
of stuff happens, as it cuts into potential future profits,
(09:10):
you know, it's not dropping their profits, but it's keeping
them from being even higher, maybe certain companies are going
to be like, Okay, maybe we do need a couple
more spares on the shelves. As far as on the
production side of it, I don't see that happening. I
think we're still going to be shipping out palettes of
you know, palettes of corn syrup infected carbonated water as
(09:31):
fast as we can make them. Which you and you
were talking about the environmental costs, like you do not
want to know how much water it takes to make
a single leader of soda. You really don't um. But
on this on the production like input side, I think
that companies are going to start stocking spare parts because
(09:52):
it has been and I still have friends who work
for other companies that I used to work for. It
has been all throughout the system, and I live in
them West. Every company is going through this where they're
having huge amounts of downtime because the things as small
as a gasket or an O ring are not on
the shelf, and they're finally companies are finally going to
(10:14):
listen to what their maintenance people have been screaming at them,
that we can't just stagger along and then oh, well
it's next day delivery. Yeah, and then you freak out
that this line was down for twenty four hours now
that it's not even next day delivery, it's next week delivery.
I think that side of it they're going to probably
try and fix. But the other side, shipping to the consumer,
(10:34):
I really don't see that they're going to change that. Yeah,
I mean that makes that makes sense, and we are
you are kind of lad thinking about this inevitably to
like two conclusions. One of them is that I have
my I'm sure parts of this the system will adapt,
as it already has been, in fact, which is why I,
like you haven't seen toilet paper run out as bad
(10:56):
as it did at the start of the pandemic. Again, right,
there is a degree to which the system is capable
of adjustment, but kind of in a larger sense, um
this is number one. I'm kind of left with the
feeling that because of the way this system was set
up and the fact that it was disrupted so severely,
it's kind of impossible to get a percent back on track,
(11:18):
especially considering the disruptions are going to continue, not just
waves of COVID, but you know, in natural disasters and whatnot,
shortages of of things like truck drivers, Like these different
little hits are going to keep coming, and I just
don't know that wherever going to like catch up everywhere
enough that like shortages of some sort aren't an aspect
of our lives kind of forever. And this is one
(11:40):
of those things that if you've spent a lot of
time outside of the United States, that's something a lot
of people have been dealing with for years. It's just
not something Americans are used to dealing with. And I
think I kind of feel like that's just where it
is now. Like I don't feel like every aspect of
our our production and consumption system is going to get
back where it to where it was February. I think
(12:00):
maybe that's never happening again. No, absolutely, it will not
ever happen. You were saying earlier that you know, there's
some practical reasons for the global supply chain. Like one
of the things that we've had such hard time getting
in is any of our concentrates that contain real vanilla. Obviously,
we can't grow vanilla in the United States. That's the
(12:21):
thing you have to I mean, that's part of why
colonialism exists, right, you need to go get vanilla. Yeah.
So yeah, So, like there are certain things that are
going to be stay have to stay global if we're
going to continue to make the things that we make,
and just from my side of it, being able to see, oh, well,
why can't we get this concentrate in oh because it
(12:43):
has vanilla as an ingredient, and there's been a bunch
of draughts and ship and so vanilla is in a crunch,
you know that sort of thing. So I just, um,
you're right in that, Yeah, we're going to have shortages.
There's it's you know, and it's not just the mechanical
side on ours. It's like we can't get can in,
we can't get concentrated in, we can't you know. Whatever
it is that we can't get in is going to
(13:04):
slow us down and demand will build up. I did
have somebody in that thread respond and say, I don't
see how demand for soda will build up, And I'm like, now,
I have a friend who's like a diet Dr. Pepper fiend,
and as soon as diet Dr Pepper shows up, now
she buys like packs. Demand will absolutely build up for
stuff When people feel like they're being deprived of something,
(13:25):
when it becomes available, they are going to hoard it
as best they can. Yeah, And that's again with soda,
just kind of an annoyance, although that can because individual
people can react in extreme ways, can snowball. I'm not
gonna be surprised if one of these days we have
somebody shoot up a fucking grocery store because they're whatever
was out. Um, But that's also not a necessity. And
(13:49):
I think that, like the concern is that especially when
you look at stuff like you know, there's a couple
of states that have like their wheat harvests and corn
harvest that were like half or less than half of
normal big chunks of a rack. It was like down
by I think like seventy um. Like these massive shortages
of growing basic food stuffs. Um. And that's all that's
(14:11):
all tight into this, Like it's not the same business
that you're on, but it's all tied into aspects of this,
and it's all tied into like a lot of our
ability to get that food out of the field is
reliant upon different kinds of mechanical harvesting equipment. The materials
to which to like fix and replace it are often
like caught up in this whole just in time problem
because they don't make enough of them, and sometimes they
(14:32):
don't have them in stores, and then there's like a
strike at John Deer and so more aren't getting made
and so there's not what you need to repair the
equipment in time to get stuff out of the field everywhere.
And in a year when you already have a reduction
of harvests like that cuts down on it further. UM.
Like I I think I don't know, it's it's this.
There's always a couple of things to look at, which
is like number one, as we've talked about like how
(14:54):
is the system uh going to try to handle this?
What ways are they going to be successful, what ways
they're going to fail? What things are you going to
have to endure? And what things? I think what I
want to talk about next is like what things do
we need to change, uh in order to like, as communities,
be more resilient to this stuff, which you know has
less to do with soda, which again is not a necessity,
(15:14):
but more to do with figuring out how to anticipate
and endure supply line disruptions right absolutely, And and while
I'm currently in soda, I have been in everything from
automotive too, I think as a or casket manufacturer, so
you know that. But when I can go through a
casket a week, you know, especially when you're driving your Yeah,
(15:37):
when I'm drunk driving in a boy right right through
a trailer park, I mean you're you're I mean, your
casket order has got to be through the roof. It is.
It is a lot a lot of people. Yeah, I
mean I I do actually wonder how fuck um I
mean like I do actually wonder how much like the
casket industry and something that has been affected by the
by like by the pandemic with the you know, an
(16:00):
influx of dead people, and how that's how how that's effective.
Thinks That's something I've been wondering about, but I have
not actually spent time looking into. I can't speak to
the pandemic specifically. I quit. I quit the casket industry
in two thousand and eight, but I do recall my boss,
the owner at the time, being very very upset that
Hurricane Katrina had a lower death toll than he anticipated,
(16:22):
because that's really she had over ordered the sheet metal
to make the caskets, and he was very piste off
about having all that extra stock because they were just society. Yes,
so that's that's good to hear. Yeah, great, he was
in a bad mood for like a month after Katrina
because it hadn't reached his expectation. Well, sure, that's a
(16:43):
real problem for for absolutely, he's got that's all the
sympathy critical support. That job was grim. I'm just gonna
say that that sounds like it. I have a through
a through a loved one, a connection to somebody who
is like works for a company that makes body bags
and was amazing for them. They did incredible in um.
(17:09):
I didn't hear any ghoulish stories. It's just like, yeah,
of course you guys made a bunch of extra money.
Sounds like that was great for you putting it. Putting
in a mental note to go through a bunch of
the campaign contributions of people who make body bags and
check if they're supporting anti mess Yes. Yeah, see if
big Corps got into this at all. Yeah, I mean, honestly,
(17:30):
the thing that the thing to do is, you know,
I'm not a big fan of the stock market in general,
but next time, the next time that there's a pandemic,
find out which companies make body bags on the stock
market and invest in those as soon as as soon
as the pandemic starts. I mean, I can tell you
what I'm I'm putting money into big corps as soon
as uh as soon as the next pandemic hits. That's
absolutely gonna happen. Oh boy, all right, Yeah, that's gam Yeah,
(17:56):
I think it's fine. There's a reason why after after
I started working there, I immediately told my husband, Hey,
make sure if I die before you, I'm cremated. So yeah,
I don't want to give these monsters any of my money.
What I what I'm looking into is just full full
body stuffing that people can pose me around it. But
(18:16):
that's a set for topic. Yeah, you talk about that
a lot, Garrison. What I did want to med ship
is like, actually, when you were talking about how they
hire in a lot of employees and they make them
were horrible hours and then they you know, they quitness
(18:39):
is kind of a constant kind of process and like
this isn't exclusive to that industry at all. Think one
of the worst defenders of this is actually the Postal Service. UM.
I think that the Postal Service has like the lowest
employee satisfaction out of any shipping company. Um And like my, my,
my fault. I worked for the Postal Service for a bit.
And when you first join up, you join as like
(19:00):
you join as a on like a non career employee path,
and then you can get promoted to a career employee
path after a few years. But the turnaround for the
non career employee paths is massive, Like local branches can
say after like people who start working at the Postal
Service will end up quitting within the year. Now that
number can be different based on nationally and for based
on like you know, based on what state you're in,
(19:21):
but but across the board, it's it's always around at
least fifty for employee turnaround for people who join up
the Postal Service on these like a city carrier assistant positions.
It's fascinating, yeah, because because when when you when you're
a non career employee path, you have to work seven
days a week and you can be called into work
basically any time, usually working around ten to twelve hour days.
(19:43):
All of the career employees all of the sounds but
like all of all of like all of like the
regular carriers get to work like their specific route and
that's it. That's their whole day. For the for the
people who are new to the job, they're forced to
work tons of routes um all in whenever someone else can't.
And we constantly be doing over time um and working
(20:05):
like basically NonStop NonStop with only like two like only
two holidays off a year or something. It's it's pretty intense, um,
which is why you know, when the postal service comes
have problems and because and and because there's so few,
there's generally not tons of employees. I mean like there
is lots like comparedively, like like like the Postal Service
is one of the bigger employers in the whole country.
(20:25):
But for people when when when employees drop off, filling
those positions can be really hard in times of like crisis.
So like you know, last year, when there's all these
problems with the Postal Service, all of these kind of
issues around the supply chain and how people treat their workers,
all of them like like you know, compound to create
one like much bigger problem which we saw last year
with the Postal Service and like late in like the
late summer um. So I just find it interesting how
(20:47):
it's like, you know, these same issues around like how
we treat workers is adding on to this problem of
like supply chains and getting stuff delivered and all this
kind of stuff. And so what what I find interesting
there is so you're you know, talking about the employee issue,
and yeah, it's sure. So I've been, uh the plant
I was working in, which is twenty minutes from my house,
(21:09):
closed down and now I'm working ninety miles away literally
an hour, and I am I am working four twelves
a week and I'm crashing at my parents house, which
they live about sixty miles away, so it's a little
bit better. Um. But also yeah, and my parents are
hard right evangelicals who do not agree with you know this,
(21:32):
so that's fun. But um, the plant that I was
in was a non union plant and the one I'm
in now is a Union plant. And one of the
things that I've noticed that's actually kind of different is
for once in the non union plant, things were actually
better because what we could do, what what what could
be done is, all right, we're all working seven days
(21:53):
a week. We have enough staffing that if nobody calls in,
we have one spare person who normally goes around and
gives aches and stuff like that. Well we could you know,
basically all take turns taking a day off during that
seven day week. At the Union plant that I'm at now, though,
it's all seniority based, so any time that they force
over time, they go from the bottom of the seniority
(22:16):
list on up. So the people the people who are
being forced into those which I described in the thread,
I think it was it was split off in the thread,
but the people who were being forced to stay over
four hours and then come in four hours early, where you, Oh,
you were working six to two. Now you're working, you know,
(22:37):
six to six, and then you're coming in at two
in the morning instead of six in the morning. The
next day. Are always the people who are the lowest
on the seniority list, which is same same thing with
the postal service. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's not there's
a number of different I mean I've heard that complaint
from a couple of different union gigs, um, and it's yeah,
(22:58):
it's a problem. Yeah, And it's that's why we get
these new people and they get trained up and now
they're trained and they're signed off, and then they immediately
go from because when you're training, you're not you can't
train on over time or whatever. But now it's oh, okay,
well now you're working every weekend. You're being forced over,
you're being forced in early, just NonStop. And so yeah,
(23:20):
they get trained for a month and then a month
after that they quit because they went from working a
relatively same amount to an absurd amount. We went fifty
eight days at one point without a day off. Yeah,
Like my dad went like almost i think like three
hundred days without with without a day off when he
(23:40):
started the postal service. A kind of funny thing is
like when you hear the Postal Service talking with this,
like from the in their own reports and on their
own website, what they find a problem with is not
not the turnaround in and of itself, but how they're
basically wasting money on trainings for people that don't end
up working. It's like that is their main concern, is
that they're spending all this money on training for people
(24:01):
that don't stick around often. Um, And like, yeah, well
maybe you should address why they don't stick around often.
That's that seems to be kind of the actual issue here. Yeah,
And what I've been pushing for, and I know this
is more on the labor side than on the on
the supply chain side that we were focusing on. I've
been pushing for instead of three shifts where we keep
(24:21):
just getting just hammered with this stuff, I want us
to do four shifts, twelve hour days and do like
a two on two off, three on three off type
swing shift where you have like one shift that works.
You know, you work three days one week, four days
the next week, and you work twelve hour days, but
really you wind up getting a bunch of days off,
(24:42):
you know, like that's if you're gonna work seven days
a week, that's the best way to do it in
my opinion. Yeah, I mean, like you know, it's there's
a lot of resistance to well, well, then we have
to hire these extra people. Will you're hiring those people anyway,
and then they're quitting. I mean, like you're not even
getting your value out of them slave drivers. I mean,
like you said, this is more, this is more than
the labor side than the supply chain side. But honestly,
(25:04):
these are these are like the same side, right, because
if you don't have employee like this is you know,
this is a fundamental you know thing, and like how
capitalism works, right, you need to have you know, workers
to make there have be any value at all. Right,
So if there's if there isn't any people to working,
then there is no supply chain. It's gone. Because if
we need people to do it both on the production
side and both in like the transportation side, that's like
(25:24):
you know ups um usps, you know FedEx, you know,
so like the mail carriers and stuff is very important
to all of this because you you you need in
order to for for there to be a supply chain,
there needs to be the chain part right where you
carry it from one place to to another. So it's both,
it's both on the production side and on the transportation side.
For how all these problems you know? Yeah, and one
(25:46):
and one of the things that I in the replies
to my thread which I got into, was that, um,
part of the the only slack in Just in Time
manufacturing is employees. They've pulled all of the slack out
of the system on the mechanical side and on the
production side of it, on all the physical side. The
(26:08):
only slack left is people, and they have stretched us
all to the absolute breaking point. Now I'm lucky, relatively speaking,
in that I'm salary so like I'm more on the
inventory side of things, so I'm not doing the hourly production,
seven day a week thing. Like I said, I work
four twelves, UM. But I can still you know, and
(26:31):
that that's this job, every other previous job not the
same thing. But I can still see where they've taken out.
Like once again, we used to have spares on the
shelf so that when something broke down we could fix
the machine and keep running. Now instead of the spare,
the spare is people working weekends. That's the spare part.
And that makes total sense, right, You're you're the capitalist.
(26:55):
A better spare that is a part on the shelf
costs you money into terms of like you need to
have that space, that's extra rent you're paying you need
to have bought that part. Having your people just killed
themselves is much cheaper. You can sort of misuse the
(27:19):
marks here, right. Like one of Mark's things is like, okay, well,
you know you have you have this increased machinery. You
have this increased machinery, but that means you're producing less
value because you know, you've you put more people out
of work. Was like, okay, well, what if what if
we just we re extend the work day again and
sort of you know, reverse all of the gains that
have been happening, well okay, I say have been happening,
reverse all the gains that happened between about nineteen thirty
(27:42):
and like nineteen seventy, and just oh well, what if
we just make everyone for a twelve hour days again?
And that that was you know, one of that was
the thing that would struck me both listening to this
and reading the threat was that it's it's not even
just wages, it's just it's it's it's it's it's just
the fundamental power rebalance. And then it's a fundamental power
and balance. It's gotten so bad that even like you know,
(28:04):
the the like sometimes the remains of the union system,
it's like it's not even you know, like the unions
like in this picture case like this is they're not
even it's not even really helping. It's just creating, like
you have a small labor aristocracy that you have everyone
else could be getting just like ground down. In this case,
it's that we've got we've got a small core of
people who have been there twenty or thirty years. And
(28:24):
and whereas before, maybe even ten years ago, they might
have viewed the union as a vehicle to help everybody,
things have gotten so bad that now it's just okay,
I'm going to use this system as much as I
can to cover my own ass because things have gotten
so damn bad. And obviously, you know, Reagan destroying the
(28:45):
unions and stuff like that help with that. But yeah,
it's that I and I feel like the union in
my job could be very helpful, um, but it would
require certain people in it too. Instead of looking out
for just their own interest because hey, I've been here
twenty five years, so I'm in the clear. Like, actually,
(29:07):
go okay, maybe I should you know, sacrifice a little
bit of of that power or that privilege to help
the people who are just hiring in so that we
can keep them so that that this doesn't have to
keep happening. Yeah, And it's you know, this is one
of the things that has made the John Dear strike,
that made it so powerful, was these those older workers
(29:29):
who I mean that they had a tiered system, right,
So you have workers hired I think before like ninety
seven got a full pension, and then like after ninety
seven was like a third of that, and then workers
hired in the last couple of years weren't getting any
pension at all. And a big part of the strike
is like all of the workers saying that's not acceptable, um,
including the ones who had a full pension, who had
some of a pension, like saying that like the fact
(29:49):
that the newer people are getting screwed over isn't acceptable.
And I've heard different reasons for why that happened, because
this is this tactic what you're talking about, and kind
of like what happened to John dear. It was a
common tactic. You know. It's the thing we talked about
in colonialism all the time. You want to divide the
population against you know, each other, each other one way
or the other, give them like make make them feel
(30:09):
as if their interests are not necessarily aligned, you know.
So the people who um. And there's reasons. I've heard
different reasons for why John Deere was different, including the
idea that like a lot of these are family jobs,
so it was not people. It was people being like, well,
my kid's not going to get a pension, and that's bullshit. Um. Anyway, Yeah,
I just it's it's it's important to talk about like
(30:30):
that as a problem and also to highlight different strikes
where that seems to have been overcome by the workers,
like this fact that they were attempted to be played
against each other didn't really work out, and where in
my case it very much is like another another example
being so we'll have people who are are lower on
the seniority list, and like let's say, for example, one
(30:52):
weekend we're running lines three and five and not the
other two. Well, the the newer people might only know
stuff online four. But if the new people don't get
scheduled to do something, even if they're just being forced
in to sweep the floor. The people who have the
higher seniority will throw a fit saying, well, they're lower seniority,
(31:15):
why aren't they in here as opposed to well, because
they can't run that machine, and then they don't want
to train them to run that machine. It's it's very
they've managed to succeed where the John Deer capitalists might
have failed in making this all about like all right working.
And I don't blame the people who have the higher
seniority on this because if my you know, if if
(31:37):
you're working, conditions are hell and you have the option
of okay, well, on a short term scale, I can
screw over this other person and actually see my family
once in a while. Most people are gonna do it,
especially if that person is somebody who just hired in
that you don't know, we'll scare that guy. And that's where,
(31:59):
once again, if unions were stronger, if there was more
than what is it right now, like to three of
jobs or a union job, but unions have been so
like just weakened that this sort of situation is allowed
to happen. I guess you could say, and I think, yeah,
that comes back to just like the solute, The solution
to the supply chain problem isn't really a solute like
(32:22):
it's it's it's not it's not a logistical solution. It's
not even really like a capital gained solution, like a
tax solution. The solution is that, you know, you have
to fundamentally change the balance of power between capital and labor.
And you know, I mean that and that and that
that can be like you know, I think things will
get better if it's if it's more unions, but like
things are going to continue to suck until like the
(32:45):
capitalists ceased to exist as a class. Yeah, and I
think that's like that that's because yeah, that's always the
And it's one of those like we get we get
critiqued on the internets sometimes because I think people will say, like, well,
you know, is your only solution to this? You keep
talking about like mutual aid and anarchism, and like I
just don't feel like that's a big scale solutions. Like yeah,
(33:09):
but the current system isn't going to work very well
on a big scale. Part of what we're always talking
about is like how to how to get your how
to get yourself and your people through the situation, because
that's also important. And it's the same thing with like
a union, right unionizing you and your fellow laborers and
your factory, or or making your union more effective and
more able to like advocate for everyone. That's not going
(33:30):
to fix the bigger problem. That's not going to deal
with the the issues that like, that's not going to
stop climate change, that's not going to stop supply line
crunches in a grand scale, it's not going to stop
creeping authoritarianism. But it can make life more bearable for
you and the people around you. And that's that's also
part of like getting by in a crumbling world. Absolutely, yeah,
(33:50):
And yep, it's it requires a bit of more foresight,
which I think was one of the other purposes behind
working as many hours as they do is when you're
so fucking tired all the time from working what you're working,
you don't have time to stop and think about the
larger implications of things. M hm and yeah, and that's
(34:14):
part of what they're going for. Yep. Yeah. So I
don't know anyone else get anything, well, I guess just
the clear solution of this is that I need to
just stuck up on Bang, right. I just need to
buy but I can because I love Bang. I. I
can't stop drinking Bang. I will. I'm scared of how
(34:36):
much Bag I drink. I will say. One of one
of the wonderful mutual aid solutions is if you're very,
very nice to the syrup mixing people, they will be
kind to you if you are working a double and
they will give you a shot of the energy drink
syrup before it's been mixed. Oh my god, oh boy,
you should not have told Garrison at a problem. Garrison's
(35:04):
going to quit his job podcasting just to be able
to get just gonna be shooting up energy drink here
on out. That's all I'm doing with my time. I'm
I'm leaving, leaving the call right now, finding the nearest factory.
And my second day on the on the job in
the soda manufacturing thing, I had a twenty four pack
of energy drink explode all over me change of clothes,
(35:28):
and that's when I learned that caffeine and toriing can
soak through your skin. Oh yes, I mean basically was
seeing sound Okay, So i I've just been looking up
inflatable hot tubs. And I feel like if I could
order enough pure energy drink syrup in an inflatable hot tub,
I could build basically the equivalent of Baron Harconan's rejuvenation bath,
(35:51):
but with like pure bangs syrup. That is that is,
that is my plan. Just be twelve caffeine and Tori.
It's just gonna be. We're all gonna quit our jobs.
We're just gonna have the same amount of money. They
get slower over time because we're again spending it all
on banks. The obviously you need you need the inside
person to supply you with the syrup. So we'll just
have sort of an Ocean's eleven situations where you guys
(36:12):
pull up to the loading dock and with a tanker
and I'm just hooking the truck up. You know, it's
gonna be like Scarface, but we're selling pure syrup. And
then Garrison loses his mind and winds up in a
machine gun fight in a mansion, and when instead of
burying his face into a mountain of cocaine, he's instead
got just a little He's just sticking his hand into
(36:35):
a bowl of syrup to absorb the caffeinated nutrients when
it's when I p it's just gonna be straight syrup.
Now that is yeah. Anyway, well that's the episode where
if people want to find you a lot, where can
they find you? So I host, along with my husband
(36:55):
and our friend Justin, we host a trans comedy and
pop culture podcast where we also interview interesting people. Um
it's called the Violet Wanderers. So you can find us
on Twitter at violet Wanderers or the Violet Wanderers dot
com or email the Violet wanders at gmail dot com.
And that's basically that's my Twitter handle. And I just
(37:19):
slowly got sucked into the Twitter hellscape where yeah that happens.
Originally one on just like oh, I'm gonna just promote
my show, and then I started responding to people and
before you know what, I'm writing twenty tweet rants about
just in time on my stupid gay podcast account. I
got into Twitter to converse with a Young Justice podcast
and that's why I created my Twitter accounts and here
I am now So I was trying to get a
(37:41):
planet side to beta key and I got it, but
the consequences were I am now here. Yeah, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter,
and it's consequences, disaster for your your this you're such
a child. I remember the first Planet Side Beta today, Chris.
It was an age and dreamed of Chris and you
(38:02):
all are welcome to come on the show anytime. I will.
I will bother you to come on my show sometime. Yeah.
Plugs plugs probably, Yeah. Like I said, the Violet Wanderers
were on Apple, were on Spotify, were on podcast Addict, whatever,
you know, all your major podcast platforms. Uh. The tagline
(38:24):
of the show is made for no one, so um,
expect a lot of queer humor, a lot of me
calling my husband a slut, and us talking about video games,
comic books, movies, and then occasionally just randomly interviewing really
interesting people who I harassed in the coming on the show,
like which Robert I know? You know Daniel Harper from
(38:47):
I Don't Speak German. He's been on a few times. Um,
we've had him on and and had some fun talking
about Nazis, which themes kind of, you know, counterintuitive, but
there's a lot of humor that can be found in
Nazis if you know the right places to look. And yeah,
I you know what, I just watched a German language
movie about Hitler that was made in two thousand seven
(39:09):
by a Jewish German comedian that includes I've watched a
lot of Hitler movies, you know, periodically, I just get
on Netflix and Hulu type and Hitler just kind of
watch whatever is there. This is the first time I
have seen Hitler fucking in a movie. I've never seen
anybody who had the courage to do that. And he
is just yeah, he's it's it's uncoming as one ball
(39:29):
just swinging in the land. It is. It is an
uncomfortable scene, but not the most uncomfortable scene in that
particular movie. Um, it's quite a film that's doesn't say,
that's pretty amazing. But yeah, come on, come on sometime
we'll play around vin Selmageddon, which is a game that
I've created, and uh, you know, if you guys don't
want to kill yourselves afterwards, then hey, you survived the game.
(39:51):
As long as I can get some syrup out of
the deal, that's that's all I want. I will, I will,
I will smuggle use some syrup out and mail it
to you. Okay, alright, well that's that's gonna do it
for all of us here today that it could Happen Here.
Until next time, I don't know, Go go read, Go
read The Dawn of Everything. It's good, it's worth reading.
(40:11):
Check it out. It could Happen Here is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Uh, it's could it's happened? Could hear Robert Evans The
podcast that is now begun. Um. This is a show
about how things are falling apart and occasionally how to
how to maybe deal with that, maybe you try to
steer things in a better direction. We talk about a
bunch of stuff today. We're gonna be talking about more
supply line um um stuff. And and and in order to
(00:28):
kind of introduce this episode, we wanted to bring in Alexis,
who posted a threat on Twitter um about some of
their experiences in the industry in which they work that
that we all found very interesting. And so we just
wanted to bring Alexis on and uh and and first off,
have you kind of go over what what you went
over in that threat and then um kind of zero
(00:48):
win and talk about that. So Alexis, welcome to the show. Hi,
thanks for having me. Um. Yeah, I'm gonna let you
take it from here and then we'll we'll drill in
once you once you get through your your piece, all right,
So I'm just going to go ahead and read the
thread that I posted and then yeah, we'll go from there. Uh. So,
labor shortage discourse time. I work for a food manufacturing company,
(01:10):
specifically bottling and canning various beverages, and we are desperately understaffed.
The wages are competitive, but they can't keep anyone on
after they hire them. Why, because we're short on people.
As soon as someone is trained, they start throwing massive
amounts of mandatory over time on them to try and
cover the missing pieces while they look for more people
to hire in. Folks get burned out and quit. And
(01:31):
this is where my hate of just in time manufacturing
comes in. Obviously, in food manufacturing, you can't just stock
a warehouse with stuff and let it sit for a year,
but you can keep a couple of weeks worth stock
rotating at all times if you devote the warehouse space, employees,
et cetera to doing so. This would give you some
flex time to train your new people without having to
run everyone into the dirt. So, even with a place
(01:54):
that is offering decent money and benefits, because this is
a union shop, we can't keep people because we're making
a conscious decision to only ever have one to two
days of stock on hand to increase profits. Meanwhile, thanks
to lean manufacturing, we don't keep a ton of spare
parts for our equipment on hand. Thanks to the supply
chain just disruption, We've got packaging equipment that's been waiting
on replacement parts for six months, which further fux our
(02:16):
productivity doomed to downtime, which makes the company's schedule even
more overtime to try and make up for the lost
cases from equipment downtime, which burns out more employees, which
puts us in an even deeper labor hole. I've been
warning about just in time being a time bomb in
the making for over a decade now. When it works perfectly,
you're fine. A single interruption causes cascade effects. And since
(02:37):
everyone has been doing the just in time thing, there's
zero slack anywhere in the system. Grocery stores don't have
any extra soda in the back they get behind demand
builds up. Distribution doesn't have any pallets in the warehouse,
ha what warehouse, so they can't answer the surgeon demand
from grocery stores. Manufacturing doesn't have spare parts for aging equipment,
so we can't boost production. Spare parts makers don't have
(02:58):
stock build up, so and on it goes. The actual
approximate cause of this is deregulation of capitalism that is
incentivized quarterly profits and made long term thinking anathema to
c e O s. But sure, conservatives blame California for
not letting old trucks offload at the ports. That's it,
and that's that's the essence of my threat. I then
plug my podcast at the end. Yeah, so I wanted
(03:21):
to I'm curious as to kind of like, uh to
what it like. I'm trying to understand, like what the
solution is. Like We've talked a bit about Okay, just
in time, manufacturing is is problematic for a lot of reasons. Um,
keeping more like on the shelves is going to allow
you to avoid these crunches and is going to like
(03:42):
make supply line issues like the ones we've experiencing since
the start of the COVID pandemic less severe and less common. Um,
But how do you actually how do you actually make
that happen? Because I guess the traditional free market thing
is that, like, well, because this has been such a
problem for companies, um, you know, they'll naturally change the
system in order to avoid this in the future. I
(04:02):
don't feel like that's likely to happen. Um, And I'm wondering, like,
what do we uh what what what do you think
is the way forward here? Well, because some of the
problem is is right now, like most most companies, you
will pay taxes on stuff that you have stored in
a warehouse, things like that. Um, so no company is
going to voluntarily lower their profit margins if the other
(04:26):
companies don't do it themselves as well. So really there's
going to have to be some sort of forcing of
companies to uh have that on hand. And I don't
see just being able to write a law that says, oh, well,
you're required to have this much backstock on hand as
as being a functional way to work. And really, as
(04:47):
I'm sure you know, Robert, I know you're well aware
the capitalism itself is kind of the problem. But as
far as I guess, a solution to this sort of thing, um,
you would have to disincentivize the quarterly profits above all
in order to force companies back into long term thinking. Now,
(05:09):
from a purely like mechanical standpoint, um, I guess if
you if you did something to incentivize companies having backstock
or flex stock on on hand, that might help. But um,
I mean, I'm just I'm just a cog in the machine.
Getting ground up. So as far as like big solutions,
(05:30):
that's I mean, I've been looking at it ever since
I worked in a freaking casket factory and we started
doing just in time there, and just every time that
I've been in a place, a manufacturing place and seen
it happen, I'm just like, oh, this is gonna go
wrong because you can't. You can do just in time
if all of your suppliers are local, but having it
stretched across the global supply chain, it just it's inevitably
(05:54):
going to collapse in on itself. I'm sorry that I'm
not more helpful. No, no, but I mean this is
this is like the problem because there's a lot of
reasons why this supply chain is global. Some of them
are like labor related reasons, some of them are cost cunning,
some of them are just like pure pragmatism. UM. But
it's trying to like I I don't. I feel like
(06:15):
it's it's one thing to say, like, well, part of
the problem is that like all of these different pieces
come from different countries, um. And there's a number of
shady reasons for aspects of that. UM. But it makes
for greater problems when there's a pilin shortage and then like, Okay, well,
what are we what are we gonna Are you suggesting
that we make everything domestically because I don't feel like
that's a realistic solution. Um. Yeah, And it's like it's
(06:38):
just it's I'm trying to get a handle on there's
a couple of angles on this. There's there's what we
think is going to happen, um, and then there's the
question of like, is there a way that the system
as it exists could make this whole thing less vulnerable?
And and a lot of ways that's going to be
separate from the question of what would be better for
everyone to happen, because a lot of what would be
better for everyone to happen is a white A significant
(07:00):
chunk of these things that we have constantly stocked on
the shelves are no longer parts of our life, right. Um,
there's a lot of things that are made that we
do not need and that are there's an environmental cost
and a show social cost and YadA YadA, YadA. Um.
But I guess first I'm kind of curious to drilling in,
like how realistic do you think it is that the
system as it exists is going to like mitigate this
(07:23):
and come up with better ways to to do this
that render us less vulnerable to these supply crunches. Like
is there. I don't see a great financial incentive in
it for them yet, um, because they don't seem to
be hurting, right, Like that's that's the thing. Well actually,
and and again, please keep in mind this as limited
anecdotal evidence. Yeah, because it's gonna be definitely John Deer,
(07:44):
I know, was making record profits before all the this
union stuff happened, but like that's not everyone, right. So again,
I work for a soda manufacturer. So every time you're
you know, enjoying your your schmetzy Schmola or your or
your Chmago whatever whatever, I'm not going to explain which
(08:04):
company I work for because I don't want to get
in trouble. Um. And we're we're actually a captive bottler,
which means that it's a separate company, but we work
for the big soda corporation. I think that in certain
instances those things will change, because for example, just last week,
we had one of our four lines go down, so
(08:25):
our production capacity went down because we had a motor
burnout on the rollers that would move a full palette
out to be picked up by a forklift, and there
was no replacement motor in stock, and so we had
I think forty eight hours of downtime on this. Now,
all the way up at the top, the company executive,
(08:46):
you know, we're one of thirty some plants, they don't
care about why it was down, just that it was down.
So in our position here, um, the people a little
higher up the food chain than me are insisting like, hey,
we've been after you guys for months that we need
spares like this. And I think that as that sort
of stuff happens, as it cuts into potential future profits,
(09:10):
you know, it's not dropping their profits, but it's keeping
them from being even higher, maybe certain companies are going
to be like, Okay, maybe we do need a couple
more spares on the shelves. As far as on the
production side of it, I don't see that happening. I
think we're still going to be shipping out palettes of
you know, palettes of corn syrup infected carbonated water as
(09:31):
fast as we can make them. Which you and you
were talking about the environmental costs, like you do not
want to know how much water it takes to make
a single leader of soda. You really don't um. But
on this on the production like input side, I think
that companies are going to start stocking spare parts because
(09:52):
it has been and I still have friends who work
for other companies that I used to work for. It
has been all throughout the system, and I live in
them West. Every company is going through this where they're
having huge amounts of downtime because the things as small
as a gasket or an O ring are not on
the shelf, and they're finally companies are finally going to
(10:14):
listen to what their maintenance people have been screaming at them,
that we can't just stagger along and then oh, well
it's next day delivery. Yeah, and then you freak out
that this line was down for twenty four hours now
that it's not even next day delivery, it's next week delivery.
I think that side of it they're going to probably
try and fix. But the other side, shipping to the consumer,
(10:34):
I really don't see that they're going to change that. Yeah,
I mean that makes that makes sense, and we are
you are kind of lad thinking about this inevitably to
like two conclusions. One of them is that I have
my I'm sure parts of this the system will adapt,
as it already has been, in fact, which is why I,
like you haven't seen toilet paper run out as bad
(10:56):
as it did at the start of the pandemic. Again, right,
there is a degree to which the system is capable
of adjustment, but kind of in a larger sense, um
this is number one. I'm kind of left with the
feeling that because of the way this system was set
up and the fact that it was disrupted so severely,
it's kind of impossible to get a percent back on track,
(11:18):
especially considering the disruptions are going to continue, not just
waves of COVID, but you know, in natural disasters and whatnot,
shortages of of things like truck drivers, Like these different
little hits are going to keep coming, and I just
don't know that wherever going to like catch up everywhere
enough that like shortages of some sort aren't an aspect
of our lives kind of forever. And this is one
(11:40):
of those things that if you've spent a lot of
time outside of the United States, that's something a lot
of people have been dealing with for years. It's just
not something Americans are used to dealing with. And I
think I kind of feel like that's just where it
is now. Like I don't feel like every aspect of
our our production and consumption system is going to get
back where it to where it was February. I think
(12:00):
maybe that's never happening again. No, absolutely, it will not
ever happen. You were saying earlier that you know, there's
some practical reasons for the global supply chain. Like one
of the things that we've had such hard time getting
in is any of our concentrates that contain real vanilla. Obviously,
we can't grow vanilla in the United States. That's the
(12:21):
thing you have to I mean, that's part of why
colonialism exists, right, you need to go get vanilla. Yeah.
So yeah, So, like there are certain things that are
going to be stay have to stay global if we're
going to continue to make the things that we make,
and just from my side of it, being able to see, oh, well,
why can't we get this concentrate in oh because it
(12:43):
has vanilla as an ingredient, and there's been a bunch
of draughts and ship and so vanilla is in a crunch,
you know that sort of thing. So I just, um,
you're right in that, Yeah, we're going to have shortages.
There's it's you know, and it's not just the mechanical
side on ours. It's like we can't get can in,
we can't get concentrated in, we can't you know. Whatever
it is that we can't get in is going to
(13:04):
slow us down and demand will build up. I did
have somebody in that thread respond and say, I don't
see how demand for soda will build up, And I'm like, now,
I have a friend who's like a diet Dr. Pepper fiend,
and as soon as diet Dr Pepper shows up, now
she buys like packs. Demand will absolutely build up for
stuff When people feel like they're being deprived of something,
(13:25):
when it becomes available, they are going to hoard it
as best they can. Yeah, And that's again with soda,
just kind of an annoyance, although that can because individual
people can react in extreme ways, can snowball. I'm not
gonna be surprised if one of these days we have
somebody shoot up a fucking grocery store because they're whatever
was out. Um, But that's also not a necessity. And
(13:49):
I think that, like the concern is that especially when
you look at stuff like you know, there's a couple
of states that have like their wheat harvests and corn
harvest that were like half or less than half of
normal big chunks of a rack. It was like down
by I think like seventy um. Like these massive shortages
of growing basic food stuffs. Um. And that's all that's
(14:11):
all tight into this, Like it's not the same business
that you're on, but it's all tied into aspects of this,
and it's all tied into like a lot of our
ability to get that food out of the field is
reliant upon different kinds of mechanical harvesting equipment. The materials
to which to like fix and replace it are often
like caught up in this whole just in time problem
because they don't make enough of them, and sometimes they
(14:32):
don't have them in stores, and then there's like a
strike at John Deer and so more aren't getting made
and so there's not what you need to repair the
equipment in time to get stuff out of the field everywhere.
And in a year when you already have a reduction
of harvests like that cuts down on it further. UM.
Like I I think I don't know, it's it's this.
There's always a couple of things to look at, which
is like number one, as we've talked about like how
(14:54):
is the system uh going to try to handle this?
What ways are they going to be successful, what ways
they're going to fail? What things are you going to
have to endure? And what things? I think what I
want to talk about next is like what things do
we need to change, uh in order to like, as communities,
be more resilient to this stuff, which you know has
less to do with soda, which again is not a necessity,
(15:14):
but more to do with figuring out how to anticipate
and endure supply line disruptions right absolutely, And and while
I'm currently in soda, I have been in everything from
automotive too, I think as a or casket manufacturer, so
you know that. But when I can go through a
casket a week, you know, especially when you're driving your Yeah,
(15:37):
when I'm drunk driving in a boy right right through
a trailer park, I mean you're you're I mean, your
casket order has got to be through the roof. It is.
It is a lot a lot of people. Yeah, I
mean I I do actually wonder how fuck um I
mean like I do actually wonder how much like the
casket industry and something that has been affected by the
by like by the pandemic with the you know, an
(16:00):
influx of dead people, and how that's how how that's effective.
Thinks That's something I've been wondering about, but I have
not actually spent time looking into. I can't speak to
the pandemic specifically. I quit. I quit the casket industry
in two thousand and eight, but I do recall my boss,
the owner at the time, being very very upset that
Hurricane Katrina had a lower death toll than he anticipated,
(16:22):
because that's really she had over ordered the sheet metal
to make the caskets, and he was very piste off
about having all that extra stock because they were just society. Yes,
so that's that's good to hear. Yeah, great, he was
in a bad mood for like a month after Katrina
because it hadn't reached his expectation. Well, sure, that's a
(16:43):
real problem for for absolutely, he's got that's all the
sympathy critical support. That job was grim. I'm just gonna
say that that sounds like it. I have a through
a through a loved one, a connection to somebody who
is like works for a company that makes body bags
and was amazing for them. They did incredible in um.
(17:09):
I didn't hear any ghoulish stories. It's just like, yeah,
of course you guys made a bunch of extra money.
Sounds like that was great for you putting it. Putting
in a mental note to go through a bunch of
the campaign contributions of people who make body bags and
check if they're supporting anti mess Yes. Yeah, see if
big Corps got into this at all. Yeah, I mean, honestly,
(17:30):
the thing that the thing to do is, you know,
I'm not a big fan of the stock market in general,
but next time, the next time that there's a pandemic,
find out which companies make body bags on the stock
market and invest in those as soon as as soon
as the pandemic starts. I mean, I can tell you
what I'm I'm putting money into big corps as soon
as uh as soon as the next pandemic hits. That's
absolutely gonna happen. Oh boy, all right, Yeah, that's gam Yeah,
(17:56):
I think it's fine. There's a reason why after after
I started working there, I immediately told my husband, Hey,
make sure if I die before you, I'm cremated. So yeah,
I don't want to give these monsters any of my money.
What I what I'm looking into is just full full
body stuffing that people can pose me around it. But
(18:16):
that's a set for topic. Yeah, you talk about that
a lot, Garrison. What I did want to med ship
is like, actually, when you were talking about how they
hire in a lot of employees and they make them
were horrible hours and then they you know, they quitness
(18:39):
is kind of a constant kind of process and like
this isn't exclusive to that industry at all. Think one
of the worst defenders of this is actually the Postal Service. UM.
I think that the Postal Service has like the lowest
employee satisfaction out of any shipping company. Um And like my, my,
my fault. I worked for the Postal Service for a bit.
And when you first join up, you join as like
(19:00):
you join as a on like a non career employee path,
and then you can get promoted to a career employee
path after a few years. But the turnaround for the
non career employee paths is massive, Like local branches can
say after like people who start working at the Postal
Service will end up quitting within the year. Now that
number can be different based on nationally and for based
on like you know, based on what state you're in,
(19:21):
but but across the board, it's it's always around at
least fifty for employee turnaround for people who join up
the Postal Service on these like a city carrier assistant positions.
It's fascinating, yeah, because because when when you when you're
a non career employee path, you have to work seven
days a week and you can be called into work
basically any time, usually working around ten to twelve hour days.
(19:43):
All of the career employees all of the sounds but
like all of all of like all of like the
regular carriers get to work like their specific route and
that's it. That's their whole day. For the for the
people who are new to the job, they're forced to
work tons of routes um all in whenever someone else can't.
And we constantly be doing over time um and working
(20:05):
like basically NonStop NonStop with only like two like only
two holidays off a year or something. It's it's pretty intense, um,
which is why you know, when the postal service comes
have problems and because and and because there's so few,
there's generally not tons of employees. I mean like there
is lots like comparedively, like like like the Postal Service
is one of the bigger employers in the whole country.
(20:25):
But for people when when when employees drop off, filling
those positions can be really hard in times of like crisis.
So like you know, last year, when there's all these
problems with the Postal Service, all of these kind of
issues around the supply chain and how people treat their workers,
all of them like like you know, compound to create
one like much bigger problem which we saw last year
with the Postal Service and like late in like the
late summer um. So I just find it interesting how
(20:47):
it's like, you know, these same issues around like how
we treat workers is adding on to this problem of
like supply chains and getting stuff delivered and all this
kind of stuff. And so what what I find interesting
there is so you're you know, talking about the employee issue,
and yeah, it's sure. So I've been, uh the plant
I was working in, which is twenty minutes from my house,
(21:09):
closed down and now I'm working ninety miles away literally
an hour, and I am I am working four twelves
a week and I'm crashing at my parents house, which
they live about sixty miles away, so it's a little
bit better. Um. But also yeah, and my parents are
hard right evangelicals who do not agree with you know this,
(21:32):
so that's fun. But um, the plant that I was
in was a non union plant and the one I'm
in now is a Union plant. And one of the
things that I've noticed that's actually kind of different is
for once in the non union plant, things were actually
better because what we could do, what what what could
be done is, all right, we're all working seven days
(21:53):
a week. We have enough staffing that if nobody calls in,
we have one spare person who normally goes around and
gives aches and stuff like that. Well we could you know,
basically all take turns taking a day off during that
seven day week. At the Union plant that I'm at now, though,
it's all seniority based, so any time that they force
over time, they go from the bottom of the seniority
(22:16):
list on up. So the people the people who are
being forced into those which I described in the thread,
I think it was it was split off in the thread,
but the people who were being forced to stay over
four hours and then come in four hours early, where you, Oh,
you were working six to two. Now you're working, you know,
(22:37):
six to six, and then you're coming in at two
in the morning instead of six in the morning. The
next day. Are always the people who are the lowest
on the seniority list, which is same same thing with
the postal service. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's not there's
a number of different I mean I've heard that complaint
from a couple of different union gigs, um, and it's yeah,
(22:58):
it's a problem. Yeah, And it's that's why we get
these new people and they get trained up and now
they're trained and they're signed off, and then they immediately
go from because when you're training, you're not you can't
train on over time or whatever. But now it's oh, okay,
well now you're working every weekend. You're being forced over,
you're being forced in early, just NonStop. And so yeah,
(23:20):
they get trained for a month and then a month
after that they quit because they went from working a
relatively same amount to an absurd amount. We went fifty
eight days at one point without a day off. Yeah,
Like my dad went like almost i think like three
hundred days without with without a day off when he
(23:40):
started the postal service. A kind of funny thing is
like when you hear the Postal Service talking with this,
like from the in their own reports and on their
own website, what they find a problem with is not
not the turnaround in and of itself, but how they're
basically wasting money on trainings for people that don't end
up working. It's like that is their main concern, is
that they're spending all this money on training for people
(24:01):
that don't stick around often. Um, And like, yeah, well
maybe you should address why they don't stick around often.
That's that seems to be kind of the actual issue here. Yeah,
And what I've been pushing for, and I know this
is more on the labor side than on the on
the supply chain side that we were focusing on. I've
been pushing for instead of three shifts where we keep
(24:21):
just getting just hammered with this stuff, I want us
to do four shifts, twelve hour days and do like
a two on two off, three on three off type
swing shift where you have like one shift that works.
You know, you work three days one week, four days
the next week, and you work twelve hour days, but
really you wind up getting a bunch of days off,
(24:42):
you know, like that's if you're gonna work seven days
a week, that's the best way to do it in
my opinion. Yeah, I mean, like you know, it's there's
a lot of resistance to well, well, then we have
to hire these extra people. Will you're hiring those people anyway,
and then they're quitting. I mean, like you're not even
getting your value out of them slave drivers. I mean,
like you said, this is more, this is more than
the labor side than the supply chain side. But honestly,
(25:04):
these are these are like the same side, right, because
if you don't have employee like this is you know,
this is a fundamental you know thing, and like how
capitalism works, right, you need to have you know, workers
to make there have be any value at all. Right,
So if there's if there isn't any people to working,
then there is no supply chain. It's gone. Because if
we need people to do it both on the production
side and both in like the transportation side, that's like
(25:24):
you know ups um usps, you know FedEx, you know,
so like the mail carriers and stuff is very important
to all of this because you you you need in
order to for for there to be a supply chain,
there needs to be the chain part right where you
carry it from one place to to another. So it's both,
it's both on the production side and on the transportation side.
For how all these problems you know? Yeah, and one
(25:46):
and one of the things that I in the replies
to my thread which I got into, was that, um,
part of the the only slack in Just in Time
manufacturing is employees. They've pulled all of the slack out
of the system on the mechanical side and on the
production side of it, on all the physical side. The
(26:08):
only slack left is people, and they have stretched us
all to the absolute breaking point. Now I'm lucky, relatively speaking,
in that I'm salary so like I'm more on the
inventory side of things, so I'm not doing the hourly production,
seven day a week thing. Like I said, I work
four twelves, UM. But I can still you know, and
(26:31):
that that's this job, every other previous job not the
same thing. But I can still see where they've taken out.
Like once again, we used to have spares on the
shelf so that when something broke down we could fix
the machine and keep running. Now instead of the spare,
the spare is people working weekends. That's the spare part.
And that makes total sense, right, You're you're the capitalist.
(26:55):
A better spare that is a part on the shelf
costs you money into terms of like you need to
have that space, that's extra rent you're paying you need
to have bought that part. Having your people just killed
themselves is much cheaper. You can sort of misuse the
(27:19):
marks here, right. Like one of Mark's things is like, okay, well,
you know you have you have this increased machinery. You
have this increased machinery, but that means you're producing less
value because you know, you've you put more people out
of work. Was like, okay, well, what if what if
we just we re extend the work day again and
sort of you know, reverse all of the gains that
have been happening, well okay, I say have been happening,
reverse all the gains that happened between about nineteen thirty
(27:42):
and like nineteen seventy, and just oh well, what if
we just make everyone for a twelve hour days again?
And that that was you know, one of that was
the thing that would struck me both listening to this
and reading the threat was that it's it's not even
just wages, it's just it's it's it's it's it's just
the fundamental power rebalance. And then it's a fundamental power
and balance. It's gotten so bad that even like you know,
(28:04):
the the like sometimes the remains of the union system,
it's like it's not even you know, like the unions
like in this picture case like this is they're not
even it's not even really helping. It's just creating, like
you have a small labor aristocracy that you have everyone
else could be getting just like ground down. In this case,
it's that we've got we've got a small core of
people who have been there twenty or thirty years. And
(28:24):
and whereas before, maybe even ten years ago, they might
have viewed the union as a vehicle to help everybody,
things have gotten so bad that now it's just okay,
I'm going to use this system as much as I
can to cover my own ass because things have gotten
so damn bad. And obviously, you know, Reagan destroying the
(28:45):
unions and stuff like that help with that. But yeah,
it's that I and I feel like the union in
my job could be very helpful, um, but it would
require certain people in it too. Instead of looking out
for just their own interest because hey, I've been here
twenty five years, so I'm in the clear. Like, actually,
(29:07):
go okay, maybe I should you know, sacrifice a little
bit of of that power or that privilege to help
the people who are just hiring in so that we
can keep them so that that this doesn't have to
keep happening. Yeah, And it's you know, this is one
of the things that has made the John Dear strike,
that made it so powerful, was these those older workers
(29:29):
who I mean that they had a tiered system, right,
So you have workers hired I think before like ninety
seven got a full pension, and then like after ninety
seven was like a third of that, and then workers
hired in the last couple of years weren't getting any
pension at all. And a big part of the strike
is like all of the workers saying that's not acceptable, um,
including the ones who had a full pension, who had
some of a pension, like saying that like the fact
(29:49):
that the newer people are getting screwed over isn't acceptable.
And I've heard different reasons for why that happened, because
this is this tactic what you're talking about, and kind
of like what happened to John dear. It was a
common tactic. You know. It's the thing we talked about
in colonialism all the time. You want to divide the
population against you know, each other, each other one way
or the other, give them like make make them feel
(30:09):
as if their interests are not necessarily aligned, you know.
So the people who um. And there's reasons. I've heard
different reasons for why John Deere was different, including the
idea that like a lot of these are family jobs,
so it was not people. It was people being like, well,
my kid's not going to get a pension, and that's bullshit. Um. Anyway, Yeah,
I just it's it's it's important to talk about like
(30:30):
that as a problem and also to highlight different strikes
where that seems to have been overcome by the workers,
like this fact that they were attempted to be played
against each other didn't really work out, and where in
my case it very much is like another another example
being so we'll have people who are are lower on
the seniority list, and like let's say, for example, one
(30:52):
weekend we're running lines three and five and not the
other two. Well, the the newer people might only know
stuff online four. But if the new people don't get
scheduled to do something, even if they're just being forced
in to sweep the floor. The people who have the
higher seniority will throw a fit saying, well, they're lower seniority,
(31:15):
why aren't they in here as opposed to well, because
they can't run that machine, and then they don't want
to train them to run that machine. It's it's very
they've managed to succeed where the John Deer capitalists might
have failed in making this all about like all right working.
And I don't blame the people who have the higher
seniority on this because if my you know, if if
(31:37):
you're working, conditions are hell and you have the option
of okay, well, on a short term scale, I can
screw over this other person and actually see my family
once in a while. Most people are gonna do it,
especially if that person is somebody who just hired in
that you don't know, we'll scare that guy. And that's where,
(31:59):
once again, if unions were stronger, if there was more
than what is it right now, like to three of
jobs or a union job, but unions have been so
like just weakened that this sort of situation is allowed
to happen. I guess you could say, and I think, yeah,
that comes back to just like the solute, The solution
to the supply chain problem isn't really a solute like
(32:22):
it's it's it's not it's not a logistical solution. It's
not even really like a capital gained solution, like a
tax solution. The solution is that, you know, you have
to fundamentally change the balance of power between capital and labor.
And you know, I mean that and that and that
that can be like you know, I think things will
get better if it's if it's more unions, but like
things are going to continue to suck until like the
(32:45):
capitalists ceased to exist as a class. Yeah, and I
think that's like that that's because yeah, that's always the
And it's one of those like we get we get
critiqued on the internets sometimes because I think people will say, like, well,
you know, is your only solution to this? You keep
talking about like mutual aid and anarchism, and like I
just don't feel like that's a big scale solutions. Like yeah,
(33:09):
but the current system isn't going to work very well
on a big scale. Part of what we're always talking
about is like how to how to get your how
to get yourself and your people through the situation, because
that's also important. And it's the same thing with like
a union, right unionizing you and your fellow laborers and
your factory, or or making your union more effective and
more able to like advocate for everyone. That's not going
(33:30):
to fix the bigger problem. That's not going to deal
with the the issues that like, that's not going to
stop climate change, that's not going to stop supply line
crunches in a grand scale, it's not going to stop
creeping authoritarianism. But it can make life more bearable for
you and the people around you. And that's that's also
part of like getting by in a crumbling world. Absolutely, yeah,
(33:50):
And yep, it's it requires a bit of more foresight,
which I think was one of the other purposes behind
working as many hours as they do is when you're
so fucking tired all the time from working what you're working,
you don't have time to stop and think about the
larger implications of things. M hm and yeah, and that's
(34:14):
part of what they're going for. Yep. Yeah. So I
don't know anyone else get anything, well, I guess just
the clear solution of this is that I need to
just stuck up on Bang, right. I just need to
buy but I can because I love Bang. I. I
can't stop drinking Bang. I will. I'm scared of how
(34:36):
much Bag I drink. I will say. One of one
of the wonderful mutual aid solutions is if you're very,
very nice to the syrup mixing people, they will be
kind to you if you are working a double and
they will give you a shot of the energy drink
syrup before it's been mixed. Oh my god, oh boy,
you should not have told Garrison at a problem. Garrison's
(35:04):
going to quit his job podcasting just to be able
to get just gonna be shooting up energy drink here
on out. That's all I'm doing with my time. I'm
I'm leaving, leaving the call right now, finding the nearest factory.
And my second day on the on the job in
the soda manufacturing thing, I had a twenty four pack
of energy drink explode all over me change of clothes,
(35:28):
and that's when I learned that caffeine and toriing can
soak through your skin. Oh yes, I mean basically was
seeing sound Okay, So i I've just been looking up
inflatable hot tubs. And I feel like if I could
order enough pure energy drink syrup in an inflatable hot tub,
I could build basically the equivalent of Baron Harconan's rejuvenation bath,
(35:51):
but with like pure bangs syrup. That is that is,
that is my plan. Just be twelve caffeine and Tori.
It's just gonna be. We're all gonna quit our jobs.
We're just gonna have the same amount of money. They
get slower over time because we're again spending it all
on banks. The obviously you need you need the inside
person to supply you with the syrup. So we'll just
have sort of an Ocean's eleven situations where you guys
(36:12):
pull up to the loading dock and with a tanker
and I'm just hooking the truck up. You know, it's
gonna be like Scarface, but we're selling pure syrup. And
then Garrison loses his mind and winds up in a
machine gun fight in a mansion, and when instead of
burying his face into a mountain of cocaine, he's instead
got just a little He's just sticking his hand into
(36:35):
a bowl of syrup to absorb the caffeinated nutrients when
it's when I p it's just gonna be straight syrup.
Now that is yeah. Anyway, well that's the episode where
if people want to find you a lot, where can
they find you? So I host, along with my husband
(36:55):
and our friend Justin, we host a trans comedy and
pop culture podcast where we also interview interesting people. Um
it's called the Violet Wanderers. So you can find us
on Twitter at violet Wanderers or the Violet Wanderers dot
com or email the Violet wanders at gmail dot com.
And that's basically that's my Twitter handle. And I just
(37:19):
slowly got sucked into the Twitter hellscape where yeah that happens.
Originally one on just like oh, I'm gonna just promote
my show, and then I started responding to people and
before you know what, I'm writing twenty tweet rants about
just in time on my stupid gay podcast account. I
got into Twitter to converse with a Young Justice podcast
and that's why I created my Twitter accounts and here
I am now So I was trying to get a
(37:41):
planet side to beta key and I got it, but
the consequences were I am now here. Yeah, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter,
and it's consequences, disaster for your your this you're such
a child. I remember the first Planet Side Beta today, Chris.
It was an age and dreamed of Chris and you
(38:02):
all are welcome to come on the show anytime. I will.
I will bother you to come on my show sometime. Yeah.
Plugs plugs probably, Yeah. Like I said, the Violet Wanderers
were on Apple, were on Spotify, were on podcast Addict, whatever,
you know, all your major podcast platforms. Uh. The tagline
(38:24):
of the show is made for no one, so um,
expect a lot of queer humor, a lot of me
calling my husband a slut, and us talking about video games,
comic books, movies, and then occasionally just randomly interviewing really
interesting people who I harassed in the coming on the show,
like which Robert I know? You know Daniel Harper from
(38:47):
I Don't Speak German. He's been on a few times. Um,
we've had him on and and had some fun talking
about Nazis, which themes kind of, you know, counterintuitive, but
there's a lot of humor that can be found in
Nazis if you know the right places to look. And yeah,
I you know what, I just watched a German language
movie about Hitler that was made in two thousand seven
(39:09):
by a Jewish German comedian that includes I've watched a
lot of Hitler movies, you know, periodically, I just get
on Netflix and Hulu type and Hitler just kind of
watch whatever is there. This is the first time I
have seen Hitler fucking in a movie. I've never seen
anybody who had the courage to do that. And he
is just yeah, he's it's it's uncoming as one ball
(39:29):
just swinging in the land. It is. It is an
uncomfortable scene, but not the most uncomfortable scene in that
particular movie. Um, it's quite a film that's doesn't say,
that's pretty amazing. But yeah, come on, come on sometime
we'll play around vin Selmageddon, which is a game that
I've created, and uh, you know, if you guys don't
want to kill yourselves afterwards, then hey, you survived the game.
(39:51):
As long as I can get some syrup out of
the deal, that's that's all I want. I will, I will,
I will smuggle use some syrup out and mail it
to you. Okay, alright, well that's that's gonna do it
for all of us here today that it could Happen Here.
Until next time, I don't know, Go go read, Go
read The Dawn of Everything. It's good, it's worth reading.
(40:11):
Check it out. It could Happen Here is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Betrayal: Season 4
Karoline Borega married a man of honor – a respected Colorado Springs Police officer. She knew there would be sacrifices to accommodate her husband’s career. But she had no idea that he was using his badge to fool everyone. This season, we expose a man who swore two sacred oaths—one to his badge, one to his bride—and broke them both. We follow Karoline as she questions everything she thought she knew about her partner of over 20 years. And make sure to check out Seasons 1-3 of Betrayal, along with Betrayal Weekly Season 1.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.