The NLRB general counsel has accused US’s largest corporations of creating distractions to cover their law-breaking
The US’s top labor lawyer has said her agency will not “succumb” to Amazon, Starbucks and SpaceX’s attempts to legally challenge the National Labor Relations Board and its ability to enforce federal labor law.
Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB general counsel, accused some of the US’s largest corporations of “jumping on the bandwagon” in mounting legal challenges to the labor watchdog, which has found itself at the center of the ongoing battle between the companies and a wave of unionizing efforts by workers.
Attorneys representing Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Amazon, Trader Joe’s and Starbucks have all argued in recent months that the NLRB is “unconstitutional” and has overstepped its authority.
Actually this is worth delving into a little bit.
This pattern is called Never Play Defense – MotoAsh is throwing out repeated accusations and shifting the frame of the discussion so that anything I say to demonstrate that any given one of them isn’t accurate just gets a response that’s some new line of attack. It’s a way to take a tremendously weak or specious argument (in this case, the idea that Biden’s bad for labor) and make it look like a serious contender in the arena of ideas.
So take a look at what’s happened:
So at that point I have a choice. I can respond to the new accusation, or I can stick with the old point that I was making before the framing shifted, or I can just respond in kind to the personal insults. All three of these are bad responses. The video lays it out in a little more detail, but basically, we’re now on the fourth iteration of a new thing to talk about, and just responding factually can actually make a winning argument look like it’s “losing” because of the flow of conversation. A lot of times people who use this style are happy to continue it forever, because they know they’re getting their points across and into the mainstream. For as dishonest an approach as it is, it’s actually really effective.
Tell you what, MotoAsh: Usually with this kind of thing I like to just ignore the bad faith claims after a certain point and calmly lay out my own talking points for people to read, with the factual citations of why they are accurate. But if you want a real response, then sure. Lay out exactly what you’re saying in full. I can tell you what you’re wrong about with some citations, and we can call it a day. How’s that sound?
(I somewhat anticipate they won’t want to do that, which is fine from my side too.)
Thank you for this. Any pointers on how to suss out such things faster/at all?
The video goes into a bunch more detail, but for me I think just take a step back. Why are you in the conversation? For me I like talking about this stuff and learning about it, and I think it’s productive to communicate my point of view. If you look at it like that, it’s easier to avoid getting sucked into a back and forth or just pointless bickering – like what’s the overall goal? I mean it’s fine just endlessly answering bad-faith arguments one after another if you want to, but usually it doesn’t feed any particular end goal. It’s just a waste of time.
If someone makes a substantive argument I’ll feel like I have to respond to it, but if they’re clearly just using the opportunity of us talking to blather a shifting series of stock flimsy Biden-is-bad constructions, then I don’t feed too much into it; I think it’s perfectly fine to just make my own series of constructions for my own point of view.
I like to give them the information that was quickly found online, after sifting through multiple sources to make sure I’m not the stupid one, provide those sources, and then to tell them how fucking stupid they are because I have no patience for bullshit.
Works for me at least.