New EU Rules To Stop the Destruction of Unsold Clothes and Shoes (europa.eu) 111
The European Commission has adopted new measures under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) to prevent the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing, accessories and footwear. From a report: The rules will help cut waste, reduce environmental damage and create a level playing field for companies embracing sustainable business models, allowing them to reap the benefits of a more circular economy. Every year in Europe, an estimated 4-9% of unsold textiles are destroyed before ever being worn. This waste generates around 5.6 million tons of CO2 emissions -- almost equal to Sweden's total net emissions in 2021. To help reduce this wasteful practice, the ESPR requires companies to disclose information on the unsold consumer products they discard as waste. It also introduces a ban on the destruction of unsold apparel, clothing accessories and footwear.
What do they want them to do instead? (Score:3)
Re:What do they want them to do instead? (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of luxury brands destroy perfectly good clothing that has minor defects.
They get their logo wrong? Destroyed. Color off? Destroyed.
They care more about their image than the waste.
Re:What do they want them to do instead? (Score:5, Informative)
this isn't even that, it is really unsold, QA approved clothes (not saying good quality because that will widely depend of each brand)
say a XXL dress wasn't sold, they will not keep it in stock for ever, it waste space, require accounting and DB sku, all that have a cost that may be in the end higher than the product itself... So right now they destroy it to clean up.
What they must do now is either drop the price a lot, pass it to another company (that will again sell if a much lower price, even if it may require removing the brand) or donate it
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Pile up all the unused clothes until it reaches GEO (geosynchronous orbit)?
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I know... an entry in a database takes up so much room, and a dress stored on a hanger takes up tons of room.
Just toss it in a tote and once a week someone drops it off at the Salvation Army or Catholic Charities or Savers or whatever your local option is.
Who cares if it's last years style and still says Gucci on it... there's someone out there that could use that dress or pair of pants instead of wearing something that is the wrong size.
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And if it's made of a material that's dry clean only? Or something that's not very durable? Not everything is practical for people in need.
The net effect of this new policy will be manufacturers doing smaller product runs and there being less available and demand for less supply will result in higher prices. Manufacturers will not want to have to deal with new rules for excess inventory, so they'll just have scarce inventory.
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If they just let them be sold at Savers or Catholic Charities, even the suit would still help out... maybe someone does actually need a suit for some reason (job interview, court appearance?)and they don't have the $500+ for a new suit at whatever place you go for a suit off the rack. Not to mention, it's not like the suit making company is out much anyways... the off-the-rack suit was made in Bangladesh or Pakistan for fifty cents.
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the example of XXL, can be replace by XXS too, or 49 size shoes,etc it more related to less common sizes that can be harder to estimate the numbers sold
that can also happen in to some designs that unexpectedly sell worse
but yes, new market, but that is mostly the "pass to another company", can be their own or third party
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Re:What do they want them to do instead? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a guy on YouTube who told us about the visit he got from a Louis Vuitton rep. He's a leather smith who takes old handbags and makes them into wallets.
LV sent someone in person to try and make him cease and desist. He didn't.
The whole story is pretty interesting and to the point. High couture doesn't even want their scraps in the hands of peasants.
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Re:What do they want them to do instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of luxury brands destroy perfectly good clothing that has minor defects.
They get their logo wrong? Destroyed. Color off? Destroyed.
They care more about their image than the waste.
It's not even that. A lot of clothing is destroyed simply because it didn't sell. Season's over, throw it in the discount outlet store, doesn't sell within 3 months? Destroyed.
Re:What do they want them to do instead? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What do they want them to do instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, give it away; there are plenty of needy people in the world. Or else stop over-producing clothing and footwear in the first place.
Textile Mountain (Score:4, Informative)
All this does is contribute to Textile Mountain
https://www.textilemountainfil... [textilemountainfilm.com]
The best option would be to not overproduce at all, but that makes people unemployed so...
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Too bad there's not enough RAM/processor chips and storage devices available to have on-demand printing of clothing at local locations.
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So what? Buying clothes shouldn't be considered a substitute for welfare. Besides, most clothes are made in other countries, so we've already lost the jobs.
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Wonderful, export it to third world countries and destroy local jobs and companies because they can't compete with free shit from Europe.
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Well, that's simply terrible. Can't they be employed doing something else that's completely worthless?
Re:What do they want them to do instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
They destroy them to prevent discounted, new clothing reaching the market. They would be forced to discount to clear it and make way for new stuff, if it wasn't destroyed.
They will be looking for ways to keep it out of the hands of European consumers. Maybe ship it to somewhere else, but the risk is that it becomes less exclusive when people in poorer countries are wearing it. There is also a risk that people there buy it and sell it back to Europeans over the internet.
Re:What do they want them to do instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
In some cases they could also remove the branding, and sell it as cheap unbranded goods somewhere.
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Return garments to country of origin. e.g. European company sets up clothing factory in a 'poor' country any unsold items are returned to the community that manufactured them.
Soon everyone is wearing last season's luxury French chic where previously a humble factory worker couldn't afford the clothing they were sewing.
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Or simply sell it in bulk to a subsiduary outside the EU where there is no restriction, ship it and let them destroy it. Shipping it there will add a greater environmental impact than just destroying it at the back of the store.
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That sort of thing doesn't work in the EU. They get competent people to draft the laws, and oversee their implementation.
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After this, you will have to engage the services of a bespoke tailor to obtain a suit of clothing. Poors that cannot afford to do so will have to purchase theirs from the rag merchants on the street.
Re: What do they want them to do instead? (Score:2)
Donate. There are a myriad of clothing donation networks all over Europe.
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"What do they want them to do instead?"
Sell the items for a market-clearing price instead of creating artificial scarcity.
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Now these companies might just export it to 3rd world countries where they will be incinerated without a problem. They do this with unsold books too.
Why is this on Slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
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What if they apply the same rules to other products, such as silicon wafers? Or automobiles? Or currency? Can you imagine the EU bank websites having to have multiple pages of 'how to identify legal but misprinted Euro currency'?
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There is misprinted currency, it often commands a higher than face value once someone identifies the misprint.
Silicon wafers are either non functional (so its waste, not discarding a working product) or most partially functional chips are sold as lower spec products (eg faulty cores disabled, lower clockrate etc).
Something like an automobile consists of many thousands of discrete parts, so the individual faulty parts get replaced until you have a functional vehicle again.
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Extend it a bit further... fewer cheap Chinese knock-off products that last for a single use and then get thrown away; maybe cars (including EVs) should have better reparability (say the battery is dead as in won't charge... why can't you get a new one and swap it in your garage, or repair your 2025 ICE car when you have the tools); make household stuff last longer (like the old CRTs would last for 20-40 years without a problem, tube radios with their original tubes still work today... et cetera.
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Re:Why is this on Slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Textiles are technology. It is one of the most impactful and advanced technology we have. You think of it is as industry in large part because of how long we have been doing it. Also, most of the textile engineers are female, and I am betting you are not.
Carbon Fabric is the exact same thing as dense carbon fiber, just without a ton of resin to make it hard. Kevlar, Tencel, Phase Change Materials, Wearables, are all advanced technology. Not to mention new printing processes and treatments for fabrics.
As to why this particular story is on slashdot, it highlights legal actions against manufacturers because the manufactures are evil. This industry in particular is known for their outright evil - from both excessive margins and abusive employee/manufactuing conditions.
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The tech nexus is basically e-commerce. You might think nothing of returning something to Amazon - perhaps you buy clothes in 3 sizes and return the two that don't fit.
But e-commerce can't handle returns - it's so bad at it, that those ill-fitting clothes often just go straight to the landfill because it's easier to toss it into the garbage than to determine if it's possible to put it back in the stream of commerce. You'll find a lot of products like that - buy two blenders in different colors to return one
Re: Why is this on Slashdot? (Score:2)
Some consider that programming first happened with a loom, is that enough? Every self-respecting nerd knows that btw.
Re:Why is this on Slashdot? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm failing to find a tech nexus to this story.
Huh? What is it about this site that is tech? This is news for nerds. Stuff that matters. Is not destroying the world at the behest of corporations not stuff that matters? Maybe consider picking a different news site if you want just tech.
Re:private property rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
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And thus the solution is to do... nothing at all, because doing something only moves the problem.
Except then they can move the problem. And where it is moved then, they can move the problem. Until there is nowhere left to move the problem.
It may take time, but if everyone just gives up and says "the problem will just move elsewhere", the problem will never go away. Ever.
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It's a question of arbitrarily destroying perfectly good merchandise, because they would rather destroy it to keep the price artificially inflated, than sell it off cheap and thus decreasing the average price.
It is the same thing is the government came to your house and said: you cannot throw away this garbage, though you paid for it, you paid the taxes, you don't need it. Now you must keep it in your house even though you paid the waste disposal fees.
No this is saying that if you don't want it, you must offer to sell it to someone else or give it away, you're under no obligation to keep it. And if you've paid waste disposal fees then the waste disposal supplier should have right of resale/donation/recycling as they see fit.
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It's a question of arbitrarily destroying perfectly good merchandise, because they would rather destroy it to keep the price artificially inflated, than sell it off cheap and thus decreasing the average price.
This happens in tech too. At my old job, we were required to destroy returned merchandise, even if it was perfectly functional. This usually involved smashing screens, punching a screwdriver through the case, stomping on things etc until management deemed them "unrepairable." Then whatever was left got taken to a locked Dumpster so that nobody could upcycle any part.
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First, they are not expected to store it. They are expected to sell it at outlet stores for 1/2 off. Not 1 cent you fool, 1/2 off. Because this is not garbage, it is perfectly good clothinng etc. that merely did not sell at the full price. That is what all non-luxury brand companies do. But Jimmy Choo does not want to devalue their brand, so they just destroy the goods rather than sell it for 20% off.
This is NOT an insane thing the government is doing. It makes a TON of sense. Also, just so you know,
Re: private property rights? (Score:2)
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How on earth did you conjure up the idea that companies have to hold on to this stuff?
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what else does it mean? First of all just dealing with it is resource intensive and companies already do. Secondly why do you expect people to behave in a certain way just because you introduce some authoritarian law? You SHOULD expect them to solve the problem in a way that makes sense for them. If it made sense to donate the clothes they would have. There are already outlets, where older unsold clothes is shipped to be sold at a lower price. Once nobody buys stuff there, it has to be disposed of, it r
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...You SHOULD expect them to solve the problem in a way that makes sense for them. ....
Exactly. These things are dynamic; a rule or ask or pressure does not make people do exactly that thing but rather work out some way to meet their objective while broadly complying with your rule or ask. Or seeming to.
How intelligent people miss that is beyond me. You have to sincerely put yourself in the other negotiating party's shoes and imagine the best (or worst) way to counter your rule or ask. Only then can you understand what will happen.
It's like specifying a price cap - that doesn't make cos sell
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what else does it mean?
Well definitely not the most absurd conclusion you could possibly come up with which is what storing them forever is.
Companies destroy old clothing rather than donate it so consumers can't get their product for free or near free. Now they have to donate them where they can be used domestically or sent to a third world country (which is something that already happens). No one is going to pay rent on a warehouse for all of eternity because of this law because that is the most absurd thing they could do in res
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I think it would be better to keep letting them dispose of it in the EU, where there are environmental regulations.
Just one of those short-sighted environmental moves that takes a little pollution in a developed country and turns it into a lot of pollution in an undeveloped country, but allows activists and politicians to take an unearned victory la
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They aren't disposing of it in the EU. They're dumping it in countries with no environmental regulations. That's exactly what the rules are intended to stop.
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This law can't stop them from sending things to other nations for destruction. That's going to be very easy to get around, especially with all the carveouts in the legislation.
"Oh, those goods were incinerated? Gosh, we had nothing t
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This law can and will stop that. Exactly the scenario you depict here will be a crime under the law. That's what is happening now, and which is to be corrected. This is a law which vastly increases cost of polluting compared to optimizing resource use. That's the entire reason it exists.
I will add, this has worked in other fields. Recycling and lower overproduction is reality in many areas in the EU already, through much more limited regulation and tax incentives. This is an outlier in resource waste, which
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If they ship it to another country, that country will definitely sell the perfectly useable clothing, not burn it.
The idea of shipping it to then destroy it, in violation of EU laws is excessivly evil, even for the fashion industry. Once it leaves the EU, it would be sold.
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Having looked over the text of the bill, I'm thinking either that these companies are incredibly lazy, that recycling textiles has become far more expensive than it used to be (for centuries rags were turned back into clothes), or that this bill was really just
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I am reasonably sure that one can draft legislation that would make that illegal with massive fines if you do. Personally, I would make it so the directors all spend time in prison if they do that.
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This makes me wonder if there is a point where increasing environmental regulations leads to increased global pollution. Rules to keep the air and water clean are important, but there must be a point where they become so expensive to meet that industries move the polluting activity to somewhere tha
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Except you're wrong right at the premise. Nothing you do on your private property is without regulations from the government about it's destruction. Destruction permits exist, dumping permits exist, the municipal waste has limits on what it will take, and yes you very much are not allowed to dump rubbish on your own property either.
Welcome to the real world, the one where you aren't the only fucking idiot living and you need to get along with those around you.
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If the costs could actually be covered, then simply having disposal costs would work. But there is no way to reduce the externalities other than avoiding the disposal in the first place.
To claim that people should be able to simply dump externalities on others to get larger numbers on a spreadshet is authoritarian nonsense.
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the hell you say. Are you breathing the air? Eating the food? Drinking the water? Do you need clothes, a house, a car, petrol, entertainment? You are a walking talking externality. Again, people already pay for disposing of stuff, if the price does not cover something, that is a different question, but that is not the point of my comment. Lets say the clothing company does cover the costs of disposal, what business is it of anyone that they make 10,000 tons of clothes and then end up disposing of 700 ton
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Indeed I am, and that is why all of those things need to be reigned in. Companies should not be allowed to dump externalities on us, and we should not be allowed to dump externalities on others. Using the excuse "but others do it" only means those others also need to be reigned in.
The same logic SHOULD be applied to everything. Anything else is authoritarian nonsense. But we can't start with everything at once.
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Says who that a company 'dumps externalities' on us? It pays for disposing of the clothes.
How about your old clothes, you are throwing it away, you are paying for the trash to be collected, are you dumping externalities? You are PAYING for this to be disposed of, so does a company, everything else is authoritarian nonsense.
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You haven't even read the post, and from ignorance you promote authoritarian nonsense in order to destroy your own world to enrich the top percent. It's really sad how this site has fallen into antiintellectualism and authoritarianism.
Re:private property rights? (Score:4, Insightful)
So this is private property and it was created with private money, jobs were paid for, taxes were paid, these THINGS belong to the people (company) who created it. None of it is government's business how they want to use it but now government says: these things you own, you cannot destroy it, you must keep it?
These "things" were created using materials and resources - many of them non-renewable - which came out of the Earth, which is owned in common by all humanity. Furthermore, their manufacture relied on a good deal of societal infrastructure which is funded by public money. Additionally, there are many people who derive little or no benefit from the manufacture of these products, who nevertheless suffer the negative consequences of manufacturing and then destroying them - pollution, global warming, consumption of non-renewable resources, etc.
How do you not see that society has a moral right to regulate such activities? Are you so firmly wedded to your Randian brand of tunnel vision that you believe the world is somehow going to be OK if we continue to rape, pillage, and destroy it without regard for how that affects our fellow citizens? Can you not grasp that the harm of destroying huge quantities of brand new perfectly usable clothing has far more moral weight than "it's MY stuff, dammit!"?
Everything. (Score:2)
Everything not prohibited is compulsory.
Because SHEIN isn't big enough in EU yet (Score:1)
Ten seconds of thinking tells me that this will make it more costly to have a proper store network in EU.
So this will boost foreign storefronts that only import into EU what has been purchased by a customer already, and penalize anyone who actually has a proper retail store in EU.
This goes hand in hand with recent EU announcement that IS fighters cannot have their refugee status rejected based on them being members of that terrorist organization. Overbearing bureaucracy driven utterly insane by its sheer si
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This goes hand in hand with recent EU announcement that IS fighters cannot have their refugee status rejected based on them being members of that terrorist organization.
Citation required!
The current rules state (among other things) that "When applicants are considered a danger to national security or public order" asylum claims will be refused, and the applicant deported. One might imagine that a member of a terrorist organisation with a particular bugbear about western, secular, liberal democracies would fall into this category...
So... evidence?
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Last two decades called. They want their retarded narrative back.
For those not in the know, that's when highest EU court issued its interpretation of article 8 of ECHR. It treats everything in it as dead letter when it comes to "national security and public safety" exceptions that are written into the aforementioned article to mass immigration into EU. Immigrants have a right to private family and life, and that means infinite right to immigrate and not be removed no matter how much of a threat to national
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So, no actual citation to back up your rather far-fetched claim then, just more misinformation...
Immigrants have a right to private family and life, and that means infinite right to immigrate and not be removed no matter how much of a threat to national security they are.
No, it doesn't!
I mean, if I were to quote from the actual guidance issued by the court [coe.int] a reasonable reader might agree that it says "Article 8 cannot be construed as conferring the right to live in a particular location"
What the guide does say is that "... in immigration matters, where there is an arguable claim that expulsion threatens to interfere with the alien’s right to respect for his or her private
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Reality is of course that you're still pretending that reality doesn't exist by twisting every word you can.
Meanwhile interpretation I mentioned above has been used in countless immigration lawsuits successfully, including even the worst of the worst: IS terrorists. Can't deport. Have right to private life and family life.
This isn't even new. That shit was going on back in late 2010s immigration crisis. And since even UK accepts authority of the court in spite of leaving EU, this ruling enabled everything f
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I've no idea what your "experience" with EU in this regard is, but I would suggest checking your mental illness medication dosage if you at any point observed them to be outside spectrum ranging from "utterly awful shit like literally using police to deliver local underage girls to rape gangs" of EU era UK to "just occupy our own nation with our army to desperately try to hold off migrant terrorists" France and "just sweep it under the rug and prosecute anyone who tries to point out the problems".
In US, the
what about banning work places form firing people (Score:2)
what about banning work places form firing people for donations of unsold food?
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Why not ban destruction of unsold food by supermarkets? It's already the case in France and Brussels.
Good law (Score:2)
sure go ahead and "donate" them (Score:1)
... There are hundreds of Balkan clothing stores that need more stocks.
EU leader are totally obsessed with CO2 emissions (Score:1)
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Propaganda is telling you that your shitty situation is the fault of immigrants. If they all disappeared tomorrow, how would your life have improved?
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Re: Virtue signaling morons with no sense of prior (Score:2)
Both are wrong. Both spread propaganda and lies.
The real problem is that most cabinet politicians are useless at governing anything, and should probably be replaced by actual subject matter experts who actually understand the domain they are responsible for.
Good luck with that though, as actual experts are often too boring and uncharismatic to be voted in.
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As an American who has lost jobs to H-1Bs, life would definitely improved. When Trump dumped the program in ~2016, jobs came back in the tech sector. When Biden had his two H-1B lotteries last year, people got laid off left and right.
Sorry, America is full. Time to close the Golden Door.
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As an American who has lost jobs to H-1Bs, life would definitely improved. When Trump dumped the program in ~2016, jobs came back in the tech sector. When Biden had his two H-1B lotteries last year, people got laid off left and right.
Sorry, America is full. Time to close the Golden Door.
You should take up your complaints with the corporations doing the hiring.
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The corporation has to follow EEO rules... if someone (a minority) applies, and they don't have enough minorities working there, they have to preferentially hire the minority, even though me or you are qualified... that's the Government (technically, Depart Of Labor), not the corporation, whether they are H-1Bs or just immigrants (and if a legit business is hiring illegals, a nice, fat, heavy fine (at a minimum) should be waiting on the boss' desk).
Since Metro Surge and the cleanup, there's less crime in Mi
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The corporation has to follow EEO rules... if someone (a minority) applies, and they don't have enough minorities working there, they have to preferentially hire the minority, even though me or you are qualified...
Bullshit. Sounds like something the real Archie Bunker would say.
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My bad, it's not a rule, it's a law.
Out of everyone who applies for a job, they have to hire a certain percentage of minority applicants (and, from that percentage, a certain percentage has to be Asian, Mexican, Black (and that's another percentage... some have to be African-American, some have to be African immigrant)), et cetera (I know this happens, I've seen it... seen a Somalian who can barely use a Dewalt screw gun to drive a screw get hired at a high output freezer factory). If they don't hire enou
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Which one of us... me?
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Last year, Trump was in power. If you meant two years ago, that was when all big US IT firms had their post-covid hiring freezes..
Re: Virtue signaling morons with no sense of prior (Score:2)
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Most of the people I see being kidnapped are working.
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Legit, tax paying jobs... or being paid cash under the table?
ICE could bring in one person at a time out of 50 total and spend the whole day asking them questions, while the other 49 run, half of the 49 are the ones they should be holding, the other half are directing the first half where to hide, and half of the second half are true illegals... by the time they finish asking questions, everyone's hiding, they haven't brought one person in at all. OR... they sweep up fifty real quick, and someone else has
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no idea what "social networks" you read your news, but all the problems you point aren't really anything different from the last 40 years and mostly not a problem.
migrants, all countries in Europe had immigrants and emigrants indifferent times in the last century. Sure, countries with colonies had higher influx of migrants, that is the price to pay to promote trade and travel between old colonies. Either way, most migrants are welcome, they do jobs that the locals do not want anymore. long term migrants get
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forgot this:
remember when a country did a brexit ?!
them many EU migrants left the country... what happened next? they had major problems, even with food delivery!
they didn't had enough transporters, enough nurses, enough work force for many jobs as people left and they had no one to replace them...
they quickly created special access conditions to attract again the needed migrants, but even now they still have problems