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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

#121

Post by mlindner »

dundarious wrote: post #10
mlindner wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite get that objection though, why do you need stated rules that a certain internal site is internal information? Everything is assumed to be internal information unless stated otherwise. That violates any HR policy anywhere. More so the guy was putting it on facebook to literally get people to stalk the guy. So I'm surprised he didn't get criminal charges.

Do you have info on the stalking? It is common practice when organizing a union to note the likely strongly anti-union people, to not solicit them, and inform them last of the effort. I say this because I presumed they were just screenshotting the guy's employment photo and name, and posting in the private group, "don't solicit this guy, he might scupper the effort."

Really? It would seem more likely they would try to harass the guy who's anti-union.

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

#122

Post by foepys »

darawk wrote: post #110
foepys wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All German car manufacturers are heavily unionized. VW has one of the strongest unions in Germany and is one of the largest car manufacturers in the world.

That's fine for companies in industries that are reasonably mature. But if you want to start a new company in a dynamic industry, Germany is very much not where you want to be. German GDP per capita is about 45k, as compared to 65k per capita in the US. But that hides a lot. Germany's most productive city is Berlin. Berlin's GDP per capita is....45k. The US on the other hand has cities like San Francisco, with a GDP…

> Germany's most productive city is Berlin

Where did you get this from? Germany is actually the only country in the EU where GDP per capita is higher when the capital is excluded. Munich is at 80,000€, Frankfurt (Main) 95,000€, Hamburg 60,000€, Berlin 40,000€ [1].

Germany is highly federated, with large companies near or in small towns or cities that only exist because the company was founded there decades or centuries ago.

You are talking about tech but this is about Tesla. I don't get why people are still treating Tesla like a tech company. They are making cars that happen to have some driving assistance. By that metric VW, BMW, and Daimler are also tech companies, each way larger than Tesla by cars sold, people employed, and GDP impact. Tesla is as much tech as WeWork was tech.

1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_deutschen_St%C3%A4dt... (German)

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

#123

Post by missedthecue »

villgax wrote: post #85

people need to look at the AmazonNews twitter handle, spews corpo BS at every turn almost like some intern got hold of that account

They pretty beautifully baited Sen. Elizabeth Warren into running her mouth today. She wrote -

"I'll fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets."

If she brings an anti-trust suit against them, it will be so easy for Amazon's lawyers to argue that she is only doing so to violate their first amendment rights, which she full out admitted to today.

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

#124

Post by mlindner »

foepys wrote: post #78
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.

All German car manufacturers are heavily unionized. VW has one of the strongest unions in Germany and is one of the largest car manufacturers in the world.

European unions are completely different from US unions in how they act. UAW is the only car union in the US and recently had federal probes and they arrested like 15 people in the leadership (they were using union dues to buy ferraris, backyard pools, and other such things). They currently have a federal monitor making sure they reform.

UAW is the union trying to organize Tesla's plant.

I should also note that almost all Japanese auto companies in the US are non-union and it's been that way for many decades.

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

#125

Post by neolog »

fastball wrote: post #72
neolog wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a commons problem; voluntary membership means free-riders will destroy the collective resource.

Except "my labor" is not a collective resource, so it's not really a tragedy of the commons situation.

The labor isn't the collective resource. It's the negotiating power.

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

#126

Post by dragonwriter »

colinmhayes wrote: post #105
dragonwriter wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of small-community, low-tech societies (very much “pre-capitalist” in the view of either capitalist or Marxist teleogical economic descriptions).

Low tech societies still have capital. I was looking at givedirectly recipient stories, https://live.givedirectly.org/newsfeed/search?search=Kenya+C... . Almost everyone uses their money to invest in their home, livestock, or children's education. The push and pull between capital and labor absolutely exists here.

> Low tech societies still have capital. I was looking at givedirectly recipient stories,

I was referring to historical low tech, small community societies, not any places integrated enough with the modern global economic to have “givedirectly recipient stories”. But, that aside:

> Almost everyone uses their money to invest in their home, livestock, or children's education

Neither a home nor children's education is capital. Livestock is, but plenty of historical societies didn't feature private ownership of livestock (though it's probably one of the oldest forms of private capital.)

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

#127

Post by mlindner »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #68
sjwright wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Tesla’s CEO is the richest human on the planet and we’re worried about workers taking too much? If Elon’s stressing over sustainability, let him take the pay cut.

He gets no salary already. He's paid only in stock.

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

#128

Post by davedx »

darawk wrote: post #110
foepys wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All German car manufacturers are heavily unionized. VW has one of the strongest unions in Germany and is one of the largest car manufacturers in the world.

That's fine for companies in industries that are reasonably mature. But if you want to start a new company in a dynamic industry, Germany is very much not where you want to be. German GDP per capita is about 45k, as compared to 65k per capita in the US. But that hides a lot. Germany's most productive city is Berlin. Berlin's GDP per capita is....45k. The US on the other hand has cities like San Francisco, with a GDP…

An issue dear to my heart (lived in EU most of my life).

I think it's more complex than you state. The EU is indeed one economic block, but the tech industry is quite varied within that block. Amsterdam has a relatively small but growing tech scene and the Dutch gov has been entrepreneur friendly for as long as I've been here. I just saw in the news a couple of days ago:

"Dutch cleantech startup Sympower raises €5.2 million to boost the European energy transition".

Berlin has quite a lot of fintech startups. I know because I worked with one. Yes the red tape and German regs are a PITA and slow things down. But I don't think unions or regulations are the only reason we have less tech startups here. It's also a lack of drive and vision within the population, a cultural thing.

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

#129

Post by heavyset_go »

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

> Unions are inherently evil, as is any organization which forces you to join.

Nobody is forcing you to work a union job. You're free to apply and work wherever you want.

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

#130

Post by TaylorAlexander »

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.

Without looking at how Detroit failed you cannot deduce from the presence of unions that they were the cause.
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