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

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

#181

Post by KaiserPro » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 9:03 AM UTC

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.

what? how is that not stopping people unionise?

If I join a union at work, it has no bearing on my stock options. In the uk its illegal to discriminate like that, precisely because employers like tesla would make it economically impossible to join a union.

As an aside, if you take away the shares, there is little incentive to work together to increase the share value. So of course unions are going to be incentivised differently.

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

#182

Post by Xylakant » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 9:07 AM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #165

Xylakant wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are very much ignoring a lot of historical developments that lead to the situation that Berlin is in. Berlin used to be an industrial powerhouse, many well-known companies were founded there - Siemens for example. Borsig, Varta, Osram, ... had large factories in the city. However, after WW2, Berlin was divided and the western part hard to reach, so most companies relocated, most industries disappeared. Siemens mo…

Most of my favorite audio software comes from Germany. You make great points about Berlin and about GDP per capita. It remains true that Europe doesn’t have nearly the number of startups that the United States does, and this is notable.

It’s notable, but the question of why that is so and whether that’s problematic is not as clear cut as it seems to be. For example, germany has a traditional industrial base that consists of mid-size, often family-owned businesses. We even have a word for it - Mittelstand. Quite some are world-leaders in their field. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing is certainly open for debate, but it’s not as simple as “no unicorn startups in germany - fail.”

TL;DR: it’s complicated.

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

#183

Post by vagrantJin » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 9:07 AM UTC

emteycz wrote: post #159

ear7h wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1st amendment does not and should not apply to business matters. You don't even need to look far from the subject matter, Musk has gotten in trouble before over misleading tweets. I don't see anyone bring up the first amendment when discussing corporate fraud. Why is it that executives can be accountable to shareholders but not workers?

Because the workers don't own the company. Accountability to shareholders is built upon ownership.

And a phat paycheque.

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

#184

Post by mola » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 9:08 AM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #93

foerbert wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Don't roads exist to facilitate vehicle transportation? If you need to do construction in order to make roads, what exactly is the point of them? I don't understand what your thinking here is. You're comparing the expected results of a thing existing with possible actions to facilitate conditions for that thing to exist. Why are these supposed to be somehow equivalent or comparable?

I think their point is that the American form of unionization is bunk. If you look to Europe workers are free to choose between many associations of voluntary unions which advocate for their specific interests. They are not forced to have a single representative for negotiations with their employer and are free to abstain from of participation as well.Much like the American voting system and American Congress, unions…

American mentality embraces zero sum game as the only possibilty, so the end game is usually bad but stable results.

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

#185

Post by mola » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 9:10 AM UTC

fastball wrote: post #95

foerbert wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Don't roads exist to facilitate vehicle transportation? If you need to do construction in order to make roads, what exactly is the point of them? I don't understand what your thinking here is. You're comparing the expected results of a thing existing with possible actions to facilitate conditions for that thing to exist. Why are these supposed to be somehow equivalent or comparable?

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.

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

#186

Post by mnsc » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 9:12 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #120

jakelazaroff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual employees have every bit as adversarial a relationship to management as union members. They just have much less bargaining power.

What do you mean by less bargaining power? As an individual I feel like I have relatively more bargaining power, because when eg talking about pay I just need to convince the company to bump one total comp package, mine. So I can negotiate much more aggressively and get more done, then someone who tried to get the company to raise thousands of pay packages. Also, I have an easy time convincing the company that I am l…

> I just need to convince the company to bump one total comp package, mine

> ...

> Also, I have an easy time convincing the company that I am leaving (or not joining), if they don't accede to my demands.

And when your aggressive negotiating is too much of a hassle for the company they just have to fire one "problematic" employee, you. And unless you have created a hellhole of a system architecture in your project that only you can maintain as insurance/backup to your aggressive negotiation, you will be surprised to see just how replaceable you are.

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

#187

Post by upbeat_general » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 9:13 AM UTC

bendbro wrote: post #163

[flagged]

I’d bet that most unions (in the US) don’t have professional certifications and tests. Most unions in the US are for low(er) skilled jobs.

Collective bargaining is literally the whole point of a union (and essentially forms the definition of a union).

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

#188

Post by opencl » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 9:23 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #180

Frondo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Taft-Hartley Act banned closed shops in 1947: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop#United_States It's literally the first line of that section.

So why are so many people in this thread complaining about "having" to join a union?

The law bans employers from requiring people to be union members before they are hired. In states without right to work laws it is still legal to require employees to join the union after being hired.

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

#189

Post by input_sh » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 9:25 AM UTC

minism wrote: post #166

input_sh wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it feels more like some executive on cocaine found out the Twitter password.

is this from https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/13755366054154936... ?

Yup. Also see his article with screenshots backing up the pissing in the bottle claim: https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-bottl...

100% sure that wouldn't have happened if that tweet from @amazonnews didn't piss off some Amazon employee. They're really not doing themselves any favours by letting whoever posted those tweets to tweet from their official account.

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

#190

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 9:27 AM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #165

Xylakant wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are very much ignoring a lot of historical developments that lead to the situation that Berlin is in. Berlin used to be an industrial powerhouse, many well-known companies were founded there - Siemens for example. Borsig, Varta, Osram, ... had large factories in the city. However, after WW2, Berlin was divided and the western part hard to reach, so most companies relocated, most industries disappeared. Siemens mo…

Most of my favorite audio software comes from Germany. You make great points about Berlin and about GDP per capita. It remains true that Europe doesn’t have nearly the number of startups that the United States does, and this is notable.

GDP is weird. For instance, private healthcare pushes GDP up, but I'm not sure Germans would like to have a higher GDP and pay a bunch more for healthcare in a market like situation.

More generally, if you look at Europe there are actually far more startups. They generally have much lower valuations though, because there isn't as much capital going into VC.

And probably you should look at Sweden as it does better than the US on a per capita basis in terms of startups.