Appeal to solidarity?
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Original Question
Brief description:
I work for a company with around 100 points of sale and a head office. About 70 people work at the head office and about 15 per shop.
Because of the corona virus, most people at headquarters want to work from home, but management refuses. They argue that we should be "in solidarity" with our colleagues in the stores. After all, they cannot work from home.
This sounds like a fallacy to me. But I cannot figure out what fallacy this is.
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Answers
3The thing I can think of is "Flag waving" which uses appeal to emotion to manipulate a group.
In this instance, the implication is that the those working in the stores require solidarity and therefore to not satisfy that need is to let down those workers.
Flag waving also incorporates an ad populum sentiment that we must all act as one in action and deed and therefore it is the right thing to do.
I don't see a fallacy.
I can see reasons to disagree and fallacy is not the only basis.
Team-building ("solidarity"), especially if it's recognized and appreciated by the store employees, may be a goal of the head office.
OTOH, if it's not valuable to the store folks, it could be just virtue-signalling Tokenism .
Without knowing the history of the head office, I don't see a fallacy.
If I understand this correctly, it is basically
If group X suffers, we should suffer as well to show our solidarity.
This concept or idea can be debated, but I see the main problem in the trade off . Take for example one plant that goes on strike. Another plant may do the same to show solidarity (i.e., they are striking for the rights/benefits of the other plant, not their own). They might sacrifice risking their jobs, not being paid, etc., which, arguably, is a reasonable trade off. In your case, the sacrifice for solidarity is the unnecessary risk of death, serious illness, and spreading the virus. I would argue that this is unreasonable, that is, the risk of death, serious illness, and spreading the virus far exceeds the benefits of "solidarity," I would think any reasonable employee that can't work from home would agree.
* Just a note that at some point, the risk of death, serious illness, or spreading the virus will become negligible so that this idea of "solidarity" becomes reasonable.
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"most people at headquarters want to work from home"
"After all, they cannot work from home."
Would you be able to clarify this contradiction? How can they want to work from home if they cannot work from home? Perhaps a little more detail so I can better understand the argument.