BoingBoing is one of my favorite blogs and normally quite progressive — Xeni Jardin in particular has done phenomenal coverage of Tibet and China over the last few years. However it’s disheartening to see a guest post today by a journalist named Charles Platt. Platt takes a job at Wal-Mart in a journalistic effort to see how bad Wal-Mart workers really have it. Surprisingly Platt sees Wal-Mart as something of a workers’ paradise, undeserving of its bad reputation.

The main thing to understand is that Platt really talks past the issues in his post. He thinks he’s rebutting Wal-Mart criticism by discussing his particular work training and job flexibility. But I’m fairly sure the desire to unionize workers at WalMart or criticize its executives’ exorbitant pay are not at all tied to issues of worker training, display creation, or employee policies that honor federally mandated break time. The attack is not on the quality of a service-industry job at all.

Platt doesn’t say how long he worked (he calls it a “brief experience”) or if he was able to survive, pay rent, make car payments based on his low wage, nor does he discuss if had adequate healthcare coverage, pension benefits, 401k, etc. He clearly made no effort to organize his coworkers into a union, so he has no perspective on what the response would be if he did so. All he did was get a job for a short period of time as a thought experiment. To even suggest that this “brief experience” is representative is at minimum disingenuous  and could very easily be called intellectually dishonest.

The post does make me think of the Discovery Channel show “Dirty Jobs.” In it the host goes around the country and does dirty jobs for a day at a time. Does he get a sense of what the job entails? Sure, but he also doesn’t make claims of knowing what being a chimney sweep for 40 years is like. However long Platt was working at Wal-Mart, it’s absurd for him to claim that he has an adequate or even real sense of what Wal-Mart employees go through based on his “brief experience.”

What’s most odd is Platt’s contention that his “brief experience” is enough to rebut critiques of unions like SEIU or United Food and Commercial Workers International Union are only around because the unions want to organize Wal-Mart workers and collect their dues. Platt seems to miss the point that unions always seek to organize workers for the benefit of the workers; sometimes that includes using the collective force of the union to go beyond contract negotiations, which is only possible through union dues.

It’s problematic that BoingBoing gave this guy space to run this crap, but it’s such a bad, misleading post that it’s become an opportunity for substantive rebuttal. Commentors in the thread are very pro-labor and make some good points. Warlord writes:

I’m living well in retirement because my building trades union negotiated wages and benefits from decent employers who were not afraid to cede power and money to an entity that suppied skilled labor that they could send out to their customers. Done right there is a synergy in the exchange between equals

Sadly Walmart is not willing to share their wealth with those who make it possible

Sadder still is the automatic dismissal of the union as a way for the worker to gain power making the trade of labor for money more equitable for all concerned

Sam C. goes hard after Platt:

Mr Platt makes three obviously false assumptions in the OP:

1) That Wal-Mart’s treatment of its employees is entirely down to the cuddly, affectionate nature of its management, and nothing to do with the ongoing efforts of unions and of whistleblowers like Ehrenreich.

2) That a few Horatio Alger-style anecdotes about success somehow refute the huge weight of evidence about structural disadvantage and injustice.

3) That everyone is like him – white, male, educated, mentally and physically healthy – or could become so if only they tried hard enough.

I expect this kind of ignorance, fantasy, and other-blindness in (some of) the teenagers I teach, but from a senior journalist, it’s just embarrassing. People’s lives are deeply shaped by social structure and by bad luck over which they have no control, and for which they are therefore not to blame. The attempt to shift the responsibility for poverty onto the poor isn’t just morally ugly – although it is that – it requires an astonishing level of self-deception. Wake up, Mr Platt.

Also worth note is A.B.’s push-back on Platt’s odd conclusions about union interest in Wal-Mart:

If Mr. Platt’s agenda or bias weren’t already obvious, this snn question revealed his anti-Union stance. Only a die hard anti-Union writer would ascribe bad motives to organizations that are fulfilling their explicit mandate.

Mr. Platt’s rhetorical question is as malicious as asking “why do hospitals have ambulances? I bet it’s so they can get patients to get millions in medical bills.” Or, more topically, “why do the Steelers players try to score touch downs? I bet it’s so the organization can make more money from the fans.”

Unions have the explicit goal of organizing and protecting workers. Monitoring the activities of an anti-Union organization, which is not only the largest retailer in the United States, but (from the Union’s point of view at least) underpays its workers and treats them poorly, would obviously be something one would expect of a Union.

Mr. Platt wrote this article in bad faith. [This comment has been partially disemvoweled (presumably by Platt and not a regular BoingBoing editor. I have edited some vowels back in to make it more legible.]

Again, I’d say the comment thread is largely critical of Platt’s piece, which is refreshing. It’s disappointing to see BoingBoing hand over space to such anti-union drivel based on anecdotal reporting of a journalist under cover. That said, this sort of reporting is easy to beat back. It always help when the enemies of change do a shoddy job in their resistance to workers’ rights.

Disclosure: I’m proud to work for the Service Employees International Union. This post was neither approved by nor written with the knowledge of SEIU. It represents my views alone.