Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 161 posts

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#21

Post by weirdstuff »

dmitrygr wrote: post #9
virtuabhi wrote: post #6

"Tesla has a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board in November for charges that company supervisors and security guards harassed workers distributing union literature. Tesla denied the accusations. Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted." - Local paper http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/13/4819750/ Edit: Added more lines from the preceding paragraph

> pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted I hate sneakily-worded sentences like this. Also among them, were women, hetrosexuals, and probably one or two Vietnam veterans. Some believe they were targetted.

How's it sneaky? Business management and shareholders routinely try to shut down unionizing all the time throughout the last two centuries. My buddy is a manager at a national retail chain and often comments on how proactively anti-union they are, just like their competitors.

Other demographic groups like the ones you pointed out really don't have that same collective effect on the bottom line for shareholders across industries like those that unionize, whose only trait in common is that of a provider of labor.

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#22

Post by ShabbosGoy »

jandrese wrote: post #10
xfour wrote: post #2

Wow love to here the inside scoop on this. Anyone from Tesla want to comment. Accountability for late shipments?

Or it could just be trimming some fat.

Strange that always happens at the bottom of the org chart instead of the top.

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#23

Post by Avshalom »

dmoy wrote: post #19
Nothorized wrote: post #3

To give a scale, Tesla has more than 30 000 employees [1]. That is just a little above 1%. [1] https://electrek.co/2017/06/01/tesla-elon-musk-employees-har...

Yea seems like the more interesting title/angle for the article would be "Tesla misses model3 production by 5-6x", rather than "Tesla fires 1% of workforce".

1% is a hell of a lot of percent for a company of 30000.

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#24

Post by dmitrygr »

weirdstuff wrote: post #21
dmitrygr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted I hate sneakily-worded sentences like this. Also among them, were women, hetrosexuals, and probably one or two Vietnam veterans. Some believe they were targetted.

How's it sneaky? Business management and shareholders routinely try to shut down unionizing all the time throughout the last two centuries. My buddy is a manager at a national retail chain and often comments on how proactively anti-union they are, just like their competitors. Other demographic groups like the ones you pointed out really don't have that same collective effect on the bottom line for shareholders across…

Parent edited post. It said before "amongthem were pro union workers"

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#25

Post by jws »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #4

It’s interesing that the company can just decide not to report this as a mass layoff. While the performance reasons for letting someone go may be true, it seems like an easily exploitable loophole. Model 3 production rates were missed by a wide margin, so at least a few people should have known that management would react.

Company's don't get to decide. It is written in law. Check the WARN act, but the key threshold seems to be 500 workers at a single facility.

As an employer, getting rid of your worst 1% of workers once a year is just housekeeping.

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#26

Post by Avshalom »

cbanek wrote: post #14
Avshalom wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do public company actually have an obligation to report mass layoffs?

Yes, it's the WARN act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini... California also has their own version: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-...

TIL.

ETA: this is getting downvoted; I have enough karma that I don't care about being downvoted but for the record, I am sincere that Today I Learned.

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#27

Post by lord_jim »

Nothorized wrote: post #3

To give a scale, Tesla has more than 30 000 employees [1]. That is just a little above 1%. [1] https://electrek.co/2017/06/01/tesla-elon-musk-employees-har...

I found that number surprising, although I also know very little about what it takes to manufacture things. Any idea what the employee breakdown looks like in terms of profession and area of focus (since they have solar city too)?

Re: Tesla fired hundreds of employees in past week

#28

Post by grandalf »

It's important to keep in mind that Tesla (like Walmart, Whole Foods, and Amazon) has been targeted by big labor for infiltration and union formation [1] [2]

This is not necessarily because working conditions make workers feel that they would prefer the tradeoffs of unionization, but simply because Tesla is much more competitive without its workforce unionized, and so labor groups that are entrenched in legacy car manufacturing wish to prevent Tesla from accelerating those companies' decline.

In many states labor unions have significant power granted by favorable laws that far exceed the market power they derive simply from organizing labor and leveling the playing field a bit. [3] [4]

So while I strongly support organized labor in abstract [5], it's difficult to blame Tesla for wishing to make its workforce less vulnerable to attack from big labor. Like many interest groups, big labor is mostly concerned with its own survival [6] and growth, and is not really about the workers at all.

For example, when Borders Books employees went on strike, it was the big labor groups that sponsored ruffians to join the employees on the picket line and make the strike much more aggressive. Similarly, whenever you see an inflatable rat alongside striking workers, chances are that rat was brought in by big labor to help dramatize the strike effort. [7] They also help name and shame fellow employees who aren't enthusiastic about the union to exert social pressure to make it form.

1. https://groundswell.org/whole-foods-employees-move-to-unioni...

2. http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Union-Organizers-Targ...

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_labor_law

4. http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-charged-uaw-employees-s...

5. While labor laws came to exist for good reason and helped improve living standards quite a bit, they went too far and tried to address too many issues via labor laws. Many things that are given to workers via labor laws should be given to all citizens, whether employed or not. Labor laws should not create an incentive for firms to eliminate unions, and should not act to correct social inequality. If such measure are needed they should happen via other laws.

6. https://www.unionfacts.com/employee/Air_Line_Pilots/TIMOTHY/...

7. http://mentalfloss.com/article/28466/story-behind-giant-infl...

Post reply on HN