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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

#411

Post by cwhiz »

jmjanzen wrote: post #258
cwhiz wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. It should be a free market. If the employees don’t like their treatment they should leave and take a different job. I am sure there is a UAW job out there to be had. The most likely outcome from this is that Tesla moves more and more production out of a California and into a more business friendly state, such as Texas.

Spreading democracy to the workforce does not make the market less "free." It just makes it easier to manipulate by the few.

Democracy in the workforce would be giving employees an option to join a union, or not.

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

#412

Post by L_226 »

aborsy wrote: post #199
vincnetas wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? Because for me, working in scandinavia, unions looked quite useful and reasonable.

I had this naive image in mind that unions are labor activists mobilizing against exploitative corporate practices. What I witnessed opened my eyes to the realities on ground, that seemed like almost opposite. As usual, life is more complicated! * The objective of trade unions is not to protect workers and improve their conditions (at least directly). It’s to protect themselves. * In every organization, there exists…

There is a solution to this; the union has become a parasitic entity between the labour pool and the employers right, so you can just legislate their ostensible raison d'être out of existence. That is, enforce fair conditions upon employers at a government level. Then encourage every person to leave their union, because they have no need anymore. Obviously, requires a high integrity government, actual fair enforcement against all parties etc.

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

#413

Post by cactus2093 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #328
cactus2093 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The percentage of humans living in poverty around the world has never been lower [0]. How is that just spin? I also can’t relate to your “all we hear about” point at all. I feel like I really have to go out of my way to find any discussion about anything good in the world, the vast majority of what I hear is negative takes like yours about how everything is horrible and everyone is oppressed. [0] https://data.worldba…

Sadly for the argument, this decrease in poverty only happened as a result of China - if you remove China there basically is no difference anymore. If you adjust your definition of poverty to local inflation, you also barely see any difference anymore.

But... Chinese people are still people? Who deserve to not live in poverty. I don’t understand your point.

I have also heard some compelling arguments that a similar transformation is likely on the way in sub-Saharan African over the next few decades.

Also these are real dollars, they are adjusted for inflation.

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

#414

Post by Jonnax »

dahfizz wrote: post #408
Jonnax wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see where Warren is wrong here. Care to explain it? Because it seems like the point of view advocated is "Politicans should not express views I don't like on social media"

If Warren tweeted that she was going to break up amazon because they were harming consumers and mistreating workers, etc, that would be one thing. Instead, she is going after amazon as a personal vendetta because she feels 'heckled'. She is explicitly attacking first amendment rights. It's a textbook case of corruption / abuse of power.

Are you actually serious? She's been going after amazon for years.

Like breaking up big tech companies is pretty much the only thing you hear about her in passing.

A personal vendetta against their twitter account just didn't start now.

Also this is corruption / abuse of power to you? You might want to get a new textbook.

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

#415

Post by URSpider94 »

dunnevens wrote: post #344
aphextron wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you have $500 a month laying around no problem.

In many states right now, there are zero cost premiums for those who make within 200-250% of the Federal Poverty Line. Percentage varies between states, or sometimes even by counties. This was part of Biden's stimulus package and should help a lot of people.

In many states. Not in all.

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

#416

Post by URSpider94 »

lolthishuman wrote: post #389
clcaev wrote: post #314

The entire concept of unionization seems unnecessarily confrontational. It does not need to be this way. Corporations are creations of the state. There is nothing preventing the state to require significant representation of employees in every board of directors. This board representation could support management that better reflects employee participation, e.g. Sociocracy. In this way, labour and capital could work…

It automatically creates an adversarial relationship. Terrible way to live life on either side of that construct. No one should be forced to work anywhere. Which also means working isn’t a right. Work somewhere that works with you and establish a healthy relationship. Set expectations and be clear on what is desired. One spends much of their time working, to do it in such a way where a cordial relationship is not the…

That’s easy to say, but which other auto plant in the Bay Area should workers go to work at? There aren’t any others.

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

#417

Post by URSpider94 »

cwhiz wrote: post #238
telaelit wrote: post #55

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.

I disagree. It should be a free market. If the employees don’t like their treatment they should leave and take a different job. I am sure there is a UAW job out there to be had. The most likely outcome from this is that Tesla moves more and more production out of a California and into a more business friendly state, such as Texas.

Where, exactly, are people who live in the SF Bay Area going to find a UAW job?

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

#418

Post by __turbobrew__ »

tsimionescu wrote: post #336
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest confusion I have is everybody seems to approach Amazon and Tesla unionization as "hopefully it happens so workers will get better wages!" I could be wrong but... I'm pretty sure Amazon and Tesla pay great relative to their space. Relatively demanding, sure. I get it. We've all seen the article where some Amazon worker urinated in a bottle because "the job is just so ruthless!". They employ hundreds of tho…

> I'm pretty sure Amazon and Tesla pay great relative to their space. > I'm sure most Amazon warehouse jobs start in the $15-20/hr range. How much better can you really get for what is essentially reading a screen, grabbing something off of a shelf, and putting it in a box? Amazon is also one of the richest companies in the world, largely dependant on the work of each and every one of those warehouse workers. Why is…

> Amazon's profit went up by 84% in 2020. Why shouldn't workers seek for their wages to go up 84% instead?

Amazon’s moneymaker is AWS, not the warehouse. At least in my city, AWS salaries have went up a fair amount in the last year or two, which makes sense given that AWS generates lots of profit.

The warehouse on the other hand has much thinner margins and if they largely increased warehouse worker salaries they might not be profitable.

Amazon is made into separate business units, so increasing salaries in one business unit which isn’t very profitable because the other business unit is profitable is just bad business.

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

#419

Post by URSpider94 »

mola wrote: post #185
fastball wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I don't understand the bad behavior here. Tesla is allowed to not give anything they want to unionized workers. If you want to force companies to capitulate to unions, cut out the middleman and just force companies to give things directly to workers.

They're not allowed to threaten employees who want to unionize. They may refuse to give options.

Actually, they can’t. The judge ruled that saying so represented an illegal threat, and the NLRB concurred. It’s been decided by law.

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

#420

Post by cma »

fastball wrote: post #378
whimsicalism wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is suggesting the government should treat unions preferentially, not equitably. Equity is in the eye of the beholder. I don't see how this law is treating unions preferentially, and am interested in how you distinguish it with the aforementioned minority shareholder protections.

The idea here seems to be that unions can interfere with the running of a business however they want (strikes, etc), but businesses should not be allowed to "interfere" with the formation of union, where "interfere" seems to be a very low bar in terms of what is unacceptable. When I say equitable treatment, I'm looking for symmetry, and I'm not seeing it here.

Seems like you are saying owners of small businesses can get together and collude under a combined business, with shares and voting, but individual workers must be atomized or if they do try to coordinate to bargain against the businesses, they get no similar help to do so as the shareholders get.
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