Workers involved in union activities say Tesla is illegally intimidating them • Hacker News Board

Re: Workers involved in union activities say Tesla is illegally intimidating them

#11

Post by jxf » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:24 AM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #10

jxf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unions annoy me. Working conditions 75 years ago were truly deadly, and unions served a major purpose to humanize the work force. Just because a company isn't literally trying to kill you or introduce hazardous conditions for the sake of maximizing profits doesn't mean that unions aren't useful. In a lot of cases, their very presence is inhibitory to regressions in the rights of employees. Do unions have problems?…

> Do unions have problems? Yes, absolutely, and we shouldn't neglect those either. At the same time, scrapping them would be a very bad idea. Existing unions are not taking much in the way of steps to address those problems or clean up their image in the eyes of the public. Until unions can once again demonstrate openly and conclusively that their primary concern is the welfare of the worker rather than just being an…

> Until unions can once again demonstrate openly and conclusively that their primary concern is the welfare of the worker rather than just being another power player jockeying to get their share of the pie, scrapping them would be a very good idea.

As I said, their presence is an inhibitor to regressions in employee rights. If you scrap them, the inhibition is removed, so you'd have to replace it with stronger employee protections in the form of regulations if you wanted to keep the status quo for rights.

That's a bell that can't be easily unrung. I would think carefully about whether we want to introduce government-mandated rules into each industry about what is appropriate, as opposed to having the efficiency of self-regulation and negotiations.

Re: Workers involved in union activities say Tesla is illegally intimidating them

#12

Post by vacri » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:24 AM UTC

jxf wrote: post #7

exabrial wrote: post #2

Unions annoy me. Working conditions 75 years ago were truly deadly, and unions served a major purpose to humanize the work force. Nowadays we have "tax the robots" bills being sponsored by Unions and people somehow think it's "ok" to force someone to join a union to feed their family. When I see articles like this, I know what the right answer is but it's hard to empathetic at the same time.

> Unions annoy me. Working conditions 75 years ago were truly deadly, and unions served a major purpose to humanize the work force. Just because a company isn't literally trying to kill you or introduce hazardous conditions for the sake of maximizing profits doesn't mean that unions aren't useful. In a lot of cases, their very presence is inhibitory to regressions in the rights of employees. Do unions have problems?…

Unions are a necessary evil in my opinion. Haven't had a positive experience with them in my own life[1], but life without unions has been done (a lot), and it sucks.

[1] The first of these was telling the team I was on that because we were part-timers, we wouldn't get union resources allocated to resolve an issue we had. Funny that, we didn't pay 'part-time' dues, and our work was still just as necessary to putting food in our bellies.

Re: Workers involved in union activities say Tesla is illegally intimidating them

#13

Post by an_account » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:26 AM UTC

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #6

exabrial wrote: post #2

Unions annoy me. Working conditions 75 years ago were truly deadly, and unions served a major purpose to humanize the work force. Nowadays we have "tax the robots" bills being sponsored by Unions and people somehow think it's "ok" to force someone to join a union to feed their family. When I see articles like this, I know what the right answer is but it's hard to empathetic at the same time.

I'm pretty ambivalent about this. In some sectors you hear the story "he got paid $40 an hour to change light bulbs" but in other sectors (teachers?) workers are still chronically underpaid and mistreated. In short: you can't make black and white generalizations about these things. In some cases a union still makes sense, in others they've become dead weight or obsolete.

The teachers unions keeps terrible teachers employed. In California some school districts have pulled teachers from classrooms because they are unfit to teach, but they can't fire them because of union rules. They are literally paid to do nothing [1]. Many of the teachers I've talked to hate the union, but it's a very strong union and not much can be done about it.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/06/local/me-teachers6

Re: Workers involved in union activities say Tesla is illegally intimidating them

#14

Post by jhundal » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:27 AM UTC

friedman23 wrote: post #5

_m8fo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

couldn't you say the same thing about full time employment vs. being a contractor or part timer? why can't people organize themselves if they want to?

> why can't people organize themselves if they want to? That's fine, don't force people to organize and pay "dues".

At some point the majority of workers voted to organize. After that, anyone working there has made the choice to work a unionized job. I don't think it is fair to allow a single jobseeker to break the structure of a union this way. Why not consider asking these individuals to choose to work a different job if they object to paying union dues?

In general, there's an information asymmetry between workers and employers that collective bargaining presumably helps alleviate (especially in the private sector), and union advocates would say that the value of this outweighs the drawbacks of unions. That's the right question to be debating rather than the fairness of closed shops.

Re: Workers involved in union activities say Tesla is illegally intimidating them

#15

Post by vacri » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:27 AM UTC

Safety1stClyde wrote: post #9

> Tesla CEO Elon Musk ... promised to install both a roller coaster and free frozen yogurt machines throughout the facility. I had to double-check that I was not reading a satirical website after reading the above statement.

I get an even bigger laugh imagining the same sentence being used in an article about a different industry. Imagine "A nurses' strike today was averted when management agreed to install a rollercoaster and free frozen yoghurt machines"...

Re: Workers involved in union activities say Tesla is illegally intimidating them

#16

Post by verbify » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:30 AM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #10

jxf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unions annoy me. Working conditions 75 years ago were truly deadly, and unions served a major purpose to humanize the work force. Just because a company isn't literally trying to kill you or introduce hazardous conditions for the sake of maximizing profits doesn't mean that unions aren't useful. In a lot of cases, their very presence is inhibitory to regressions in the rights of employees. Do unions have problems?…

> Do unions have problems? Yes, absolutely, and we shouldn't neglect those either. At the same time, scrapping them would be a very bad idea. Existing unions are not taking much in the way of steps to address those problems or clean up their image in the eyes of the public. Until unions can once again demonstrate openly and conclusively that their primary concern is the welfare of the worker rather than just being an…

You could say the same about many other public institutions. To demonstrate:

The media seems more interested in sensationalist irrelevant news than informing the public (it pays better).

Until the media can once again demonstrate openly and conclusively that their primary concern is informing the public rather than just being another power player jockeying to get their share of the pie, scrapping them would be a very good idea.

Re: Workers involved in union activities say Tesla is illegally intimidating them

#17

Post by verbify » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:30 AM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #10

jxf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unions annoy me. Working conditions 75 years ago were truly deadly, and unions served a major purpose to humanize the work force. Just because a company isn't literally trying to kill you or introduce hazardous conditions for the sake of maximizing profits doesn't mean that unions aren't useful. In a lot of cases, their very presence is inhibitory to regressions in the rights of employees. Do unions have problems?…

> Do unions have problems? Yes, absolutely, and we shouldn't neglect those either. At the same time, scrapping them would be a very bad idea. Existing unions are not taking much in the way of steps to address those problems or clean up their image in the eyes of the public. Until unions can once again demonstrate openly and conclusively that their primary concern is the welfare of the worker rather than just being an…

You could say the same about many other public institutions. To demonstrate:

The media seems more interested in sensationalist irrelevant news than informing the public (it pays better).

Until the media can once again demonstrate openly and conclusively that their primary concern is informing the public rather than just being another power player jockeying to get their share of the pie, scrapping them would be a very good idea.

Re: Workers involved in union activities say Tesla is illegally intimidating them

#18

Post by aanm1988 » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:31 AM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #2

Unions annoy me. Working conditions 75 years ago were truly deadly, and unions served a major purpose to humanize the work force. Nowadays we have "tax the robots" bills being sponsored by Unions and people somehow think it's "ok" to force someone to join a union to feed their family. When I see articles like this, I know what the right answer is but it's hard to empathetic at the same time.

Comments like this annoy me. A few decades ago unions were powerful forces for worker rights, and served a major purpose by allowing collective bargaining.

Nowadays we have "right to work" laws being sponsored by companies and people somehow think it's "wrong" to join unions and bargain collectively.

When I see posts like this, I shake my head and wonder where we went wrong.

Re: Workers involved in union activities say Tesla is illegally intimidating them

#19

Post by aanm1988 » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:32 AM UTC

friedman23 wrote: post #5

_m8fo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

couldn't you say the same thing about full time employment vs. being a contractor or part timer? why can't people organize themselves if they want to?

> why can't people organize themselves if they want to? That's fine, don't force people to organize and pay "dues".

If you don't like it then vote with your feet.

Re: Workers involved in union activities say Tesla is illegally intimidating them

#20

Post by mikeash » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 1:36 AM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #2

Unions annoy me. Working conditions 75 years ago were truly deadly, and unions served a major purpose to humanize the work force. Nowadays we have "tax the robots" bills being sponsored by Unions and people somehow think it's "ok" to force someone to join a union to feed their family. When I see articles like this, I know what the right answer is but it's hard to empathetic at the same time.

I don't understand why collective bargain is expected on the employer side and reviled on the employee side. If employers can band together to form a company and present a unified front to the people they pay, why can't the people they pay band together to form a union and also present a unified front?

Why do we trash the very concept of unions because bad ones want to tax robots and such, but don't apply the same standard to companies, when so many of them kill people and poison the planet? If unions are bad because the Teamsters abuse their power, what do entities like Koch Industries, Mylan, or BP tell us about companies?