Yeah, they’re gonna lift the working class right into a company town.
Only rich people would think this was a good idea.
Learn your history, people!
We DID this shit- for DECADES. It was fucking awful. Companies paid people in “scrip” which was only good for use at the Company Store. So effectively, the company got your money coming and going, and they didn’t pay you at all. And the longer it went on, the less likely you were to have savings that could have helped you move away or get a different job.
I’ve already seen one ad trying very sneakily to promote the idea of “AmazonBucks”, including giving them to workers as rewards, or instead of things like healthcare, sick days, and PTO.
Here’s your reminder that scrip is fucking illegal, that company towns are always a shit idea that should stay dead and buried, and that if unions didn’t work? Every big company out there wouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail to destroy them.
#UnionStrong #SolidarityForever
You know the song “Sixteen Tons”? If you don’t or need a reminder, here’s the chorus:
You load sixteen tons, whad’ya get? Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go-- I owe my soul to the company store...
The song is about a coal miner in a company town--a man so far in the hole thanks to the system that even death won’t release him. It was first recorded in 1947--less than a hundred years ago.
Company towns are BARBARIC. It’s a massively exploitative system and when early 20th century workers fought back against them they were evicted, arrested, and murdered (your history reading subject for today: the Coal Wars, especially the events in Matewan, West Virginia and Ludlow, Colorado).
Don’t fall for this shit again.
















