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Elon Musk’s anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor board

reuters.com

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Re: Elon Musk’s anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor board

#51

Post by GavinMcG »

kova12 wrote: post #44
dundarious wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That logic doesn't hold if you share a belief in Tesla's stated mission "to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport", and also want to be in a union -- which is a reasonable set of beliefs and desires to hold. And I don't see how unions would be intrinsically incompatible with Tesla's mission or operations. There's no reason I know of to hold that it is an immutable fact that Tesla's workers are non-union -- s…

Unions are inherently evil, as is any organization which forces you to join. I lived in USSR until late teens and I remember how hard I was pressured to join into Komsomol. And that was when system was already collapsing. Unions are even worse than that - you join them or you have to give up your career. They only help mediocre lazy donkeys, and if I was Musk I would want them nowhere near my business

When I was working 48 to 72 hours a week as an EMT, I didn't find many of my coworkers to be "mediocre lazy donkeys." Far from it. They were kind and hardworking people. They were also frequently subjected to incompetent or inattentive managers who didn't both knowing the company policies and had to be constantly reminded to see employees as people. As a union steward I had to call managers several times per week to straighten out issues that should have required nothing more than common sense.

The reality of things isn't generally dramatic and hyperbolic, like you make out. Managers weren't looking for opportunities to screw people, and I wasn't looking for opportunities to make it harder to do business. They wanted to get on with their day, and I wanted to help my coworkers have good jobs. Evil? Come on.

Re: Elon Musk’s anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor board

#52

Post by mhh__ »

kova12 wrote: post #46
boustrophedon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Tesla should be allowed every opportunity to stop them. We've tried this. People died over it. We enacted laws to prevent it from happening, so that labor can stand on equal ground with capital.

[flagged]

I don't believe in the practice of Marxism, however I do believe that Marxism broadly calls correctly the issues society has.

Re: Elon Musk’s anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor board

#53

Post by sjwright »

hellomyguys wrote: post #8
DudeInBasement wrote: post #7

If they want to work for the UAW, then they should join GM or other factories. Why join Tesla if you really wanted to work for the UAW?

Or Tesla’s workers can collectively decide for what’s best for themselves?

I have no problem with unions so long as membership is entirely voluntary for every employee. The problem I have is coercive collectivism.

Also, is there any evidence that collective action returns a sustainably larger slice of corporate revenues?

Re: Elon Musk’s anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor board

#54

Post by dragonwriter »

kova12 wrote: post #46
boustrophedon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Tesla should be allowed every opportunity to stop them. We've tried this. People died over it. We enacted laws to prevent it from happening, so that labor can stand on equal ground with capital.

[flagged]

> Labor, Capital - jeez there's plenty of countries built on Marxist ideology you are advocating.

No, there aren't. There are plenty of countries built on Leninist (and it's descendants, including Maoist) ideology, which advertise themselves as being Marxist as well, but Leninism sharply deviates from Marxism on a number of key points largely because Marxism is grounded in the necessity of starting with mature capitalism, and Lenin wanted a shortcut for the USSR (and later movements following Lenin likewise sought to bypass, rather than develope through and from, mature capitalism.)

Also, recognition of the existence of the conflict within capitalism that Marx’s proposals sought to address isn't the same thing as advocating Marxism.

Re: Elon Musk’s anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor board

#55

Post by telaelit »

I wish the NRLB would be much harsher against business owners and executives who engage in anti-union rhetoric and behaviors. People have the right to form unions, lying about losing benefits and lowering pay should be handled much more harshly, there should be actual penalties instead of just having to read a statement and delete a tweet.

Re: Elon Musk’s anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor board

#56

Post by avs733 »

drak0n1c wrote: post #38
samr71 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unionizing Tesla would almost certainly not "accelerate the advent of sustainable transport". More likely cause it to wither and stagnate for the gain of a privileged few as we saw with GM et al.

Seeing the current state of Detroit, you have a point that such practices may not have been sustainable.

Detroit did this to themselves. They failed to innovate and got beat by the Japanese on quality. That wasn’t the unions fault, but the union gets blamed.

The unions complaints were only that they were gonna get left holding the bag when things got bad while the c suite floated off with full pockets..and they were right.

Re: Elon Musk’s anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor board

#57

Post by mrkstu »

mhh__ wrote: post #52
kova12 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't believe in the practice of Marxism, however I do believe that Marxism broadly calls correctly the issues society has.

Identifying the issues is much less difficult than articulating effective solutions.

Re: Elon Musk’s anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor board

#58

Post by mrkstu »

dragonwriter wrote: post #49
colinmhayes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All economies consist of labor and capital vying for resources.

> All economies consist of labor and capital vying for resources Economies without property rights in capital do not. They may have other (and even more significant) problems, but they don't have that one.

An example of such an economy IRL?

Re: Elon Musk’s anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor board

#59

Post by avs733 »

npad wrote: post #32
sharkjacobs wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? If you don't think that Elon means employees will lose their stock options if they unionize, then what does he mean?

I'm taking it to mean union employees wouldn't get new grants. Which makes sense to me - I have a hard time squaring how you can be in a union with an adversarial relationship to management, whilst at the same time being an owner of the company. It's one or the other.

Unions don’t have to be adversarial...and it is often driven by management, as you are seeing here.

Re: Elon Musk’s anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor board

#60

Post by lazide »

1996 wrote: post #18
gamblor956 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Union contracts are employer specific (and in some cases, facility specific), and if the Tesla factory workers unionized, they could negotiate for stock grants. The threat was that Tesla would revoke stock option grants if the workforce unionized, or refuse to negotiate over the availability of stock options, which is illegal under current federal labor regulations. No, most other automakers don't offer stock, becaus…

> Union contracts are employer specific (and in some cases, facility specific), and if the Tesla factory workers unionized, they could negotiate for stock grants If it was my factory, I would cut the stock grant and fire them all - unionized or not - to end a clear message to the other factories: "you only have one job, while I have more than one factory"

Which many people would consider hostile to workers in general and the people around your factory - which may not matter, or maybe it will.
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