Corporatism made John Deere ripe for a strike

Optimized for failure.

The 10,000 workers striking John Deere represent the tension between Stein’s Law (“trends that can’t continue won’t”) and Keynes’s “The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

Deere has been a cursed hot mess for years, but somehow trundled on.

Until it stopped.

From Deere’s management’s perspective, this must come as a hell of a shock. They’ve relentlessly hollowed out their company, shafted their workers, and screwed farmers and the profits just kept piling up. What’s not to love?

The reality is that Deere was accumulating the kinds of non-monetary debts that mount in secret and default in public — like slowly eroding foundations beneath a glass-and-steel office tower that rot in secret until the whole thing pitches over.

Today on Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith catalogs those debts:

• Just-in-time management
• Technologically micromanaged workers
• Unrealistic timetables
• Reduced staffing and demanding workers take up the slack

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/10/the-john-deere-strike-organized-labors-turning-point.html