Saturday, March 14, 2020

Whole Foods, conscious capitalists?

See this story. Remember CEO Mackey's dreams of conscious capitalism? I guess this is what he meant.

"Whole Foods could afford to offer employees unlimited paid sick time during the Coronavirus outbreak. Instead, they have suggested that employees donate their accumulated paid time off to their coworkers."

“'Considering [Whole Foods] is a billion dollar company, I think it is selfish asking the retail workers to figure it out within themselves,' a Whole Foods cashier wrote to Motherboard in an email. The cashier spoke to Motherboard under the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation from Whole Foods. 'The response from [Whole Foods and Amazon] has been quite poor, being a front end cashier I feel like we are the most exposed to the situation...Some of us have sick family members [whose] immune system is weak and [it] could be quite dangerous if they catch this virus.'"

Btw, I specifically deal with Whole Foods and conscious capitalism in my Integral Review paper. E.g.:
"Dawlabani (2018) still sees Whole Foods’ original intent as integral, but when its bottom line of profits fell the investors decided to change its business model, especially after Amazon bought it. 'This real Orange threat forced Mackey to start thinking differently.' Hence Mackey’s 'long-term prospects of continuing a culture of Conscious Capitalism at Amazon are highly unlikely.' As I noted above, the dynamics inherent to capitalism tolerated his conscious approach only as long as he made them money. When competition drove down its profits and share price the forces of capitalism drove out the conscious aspect in favor of its own inherent values. As expected, Mackey lost the bargain with the devil capitalism, as any such bargain inevitably will as long as it remains wed to it" (89-90).

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