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

#231

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 12:23 PM UTC

URSpider94 wrote: post #141

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.

The workers aren’t unionized yet. What the law is clear about, is that you’re not allowed to threaten workers for the act of trying to unionize the workplace.

“We give our workers stock options now. We do not expect to do so under a union contract.”

I don’t see that as “threatening workers”, but as a reasonable communication between employer and employees and a proper counterbalance against union claims that the workers will be better off if they unionize.

“We give our workers stock options now. No other automaker working under a union contract does so.” is something that I don't think anyone could reasonably find as threatening (even I don't think the first one is either, some may).

As an employee, I benefit from more information from both sides of the issue rather than having the union organizers be able to communicate unfettered and the company communications be restricted from pointing out any possible or foreseeable downsides.

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

#232

Post by capableweb » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 12:24 PM UTC

oarsinsync wrote: post #230

capableweb wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. Nobody seems to want to do something about it. It's easy, vote with your wallet. But since the choice is either A) help humanity by stop buying cheap consumer electronics or B) don't get any cheap consumer electronics to make your day 0.5% better, it seems we're stuck in exploiting humanity.

Not sure how buying expensive consumer electronics helps either, given how the excess profits continue to be captured rather than fairly distributed. There's even case studies celebrating these COOs turned CEOs for how well they've "optimised" their supply chains.

Well, my point was more to stop buying consumer electronics we don't really need, that just marginally increase our quality of life. Not that we should buy expensive electronics instead.

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

#233

Post by JBSmoove » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 12:28 PM UTC

samr71 wrote: post #30

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…

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.

GM has been unionized in some form or fashion for nearly a century.

And they were wildly profitable, and successful, one of the largest and most successful businesses in the entire world!

Toyota also has a large unionized workforce in many places!

They've also been wildly successful for many decades!

I'm really not getting this "wither and stagnate" argument.

Unless you mean if Tesla is unionized maybe in 60 years they will be disrupted by a new upstart firm.

Well...ok but that has nothing at all to do with unions.

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

#234

Post by JBSmoove » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 12:34 PM UTC

garyfirestorm wrote: post #76

avs733 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your comment unfortunately doesn’t match reality. The uaw people literally avoid any kind of work. I wouldn’t say all of them, but majority of them do. There is zero accountability. They behave with almost no regard to professional rules, they treat foreign nationals as hostile people. No concept of teamwork. First hand experience btw. They have turned simplest of the simple tasks into bureaucratic nightmare, need a…

Ford, GM, Dodge have made an absolute killing in SUVs and trucks over the last several years.

Ford sold about 900,000 F150 in 2019 alone. That's not even counting 250s and higher.

And these trucks and SUVs are WILDLY profitable!

And they are made with union labor...

I just don't get it since "the uaw people literally avoid any kind of work"

How do they build millions of trucks and SUVs then?

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

#235

Post by sgift » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 12:35 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #227

foepys wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everybody can rake in billions each year. It's perfectly fine for a company to make a few good quality wares that sell well in a niche. Somebody has to make air filters, lighting, brake pads, ropes, etc., you know? By your logic everybody should just try to become a tech mega corp and use VC until they set the latest trend or die. There is a lot of arrogance here on HN.

>By your logic everybody should just try to become a tech mega corp and use VC until they set the latest trend or die. Except that's not what I said. I said, competing in a market making widgets is not as desirable for a modern country/economy/company/employee vs one that exports software and innovation, like the US, as manufacturing, more often than not turns into a race to the bottom of reducing costs and I don't w…

> This is what's funny to me about the HN crowd. Saying they won't take jobs in Embedded Software/Hardware or the Video-Games industry because WLB is poor and it "pays peanuts" but at the same time preaching that 'someone' should work making stuff in factories, where salaries and WLB is actually poor. Not them of course, but 'someone' should do it.

Nice straw man you set up there. A company can make these things by building machines to do it. Funny thing: European companies are really good at making machines to do such things.

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

#236

Post by JBSmoove » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 12:39 PM UTC

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…

Germany's workforce in automotive and many other industries is HIGHLY unionized.

I've never heard of these people being lazy, not wanting to work etc.

In fact German engineering is the envy of the world!

VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and manufactured by heavily unionized workforces!

Sounds like your anecdotal bad experience with unions is not representative of reality.

And FWIW I can list you just as many terrible anecdotes about how awful business managers are...

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

#237

Post by sgift » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 12:42 PM UTC

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…

> That isn't an accident. Germany and most of Europe have no tech sector to speak of as a direct consequence of their labor and regulatory policies. The EU is a huge economic block, comparable in scale collectively to the US or China, and it has a highly educated population. And yet, it has near zero presence in the most important industry of the 21st century. That's a staggering indictment of their economic policy. 2nd and 3rd tier US cities have more tech than Europe does.

If I have to choose between having one of the two relevant industrial robot companies in the world (Kuka, the other would be Yaskawa, also not from the US or China), the market leader in automation systems, pneumatic systems, etc. (Festo) and "companies making money by systematic privacy violations" (Hello Facebook, Google et. al.) I know which I'd rather have. And which industry is more important.

I think the EU is doing just fine here. But thanks for the concern.

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

#238

Post by cwhiz » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 12:42 PM UTC

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.

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

#239

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 12:42 PM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #167

missedthecue wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They baited Warren by lying about the fact that Amazon warehouse / delivery employees have to urinate in bottles to meet deadlines? The tweets from their account caused significant negative press for Amazon on news and social media across the world. Amazon is a global company, this kind of disdain for employees isn't looked upon as favourably in other countries. It's bad for business. Especially from an official PR c…

Amazon doesn’t come out of this looking good either, but it’s pretty bad for a Senator to go around telling people that she’ll break up your company if you “heckle” her with “snotty tweets”.

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

#240

Post by JBSmoove » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 12:44 PM UTC

npad wrote: post #64

justin66 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Unionized ESOP companies aren't uncommon. You've got it a bit backwards about the adversarial relationship: having an ESOP and a union isn't some kind of organizational impossibility, and it can decrease the probability of a serious dispu…

Interesting, yeah those are good points. I can certainly see it reducing the severity of disputes in theory. In practice though I'm skeptical. I've read a little about the history of UAW. They really seemed to view workers vs mgmt as an adversarial zero sum game. Meanwhile Toyota were developing their production system using the kaizen principle of bottom up continuous improvement. Unions played a huge role in making…

Ford sold 900,000 F150s in 2019.

Toyota sold about 336,000 Camrys.

They sold a little over 110,000 Tundras.

About 200,000 Tacomas.

And Ford gets GIANT markups on the F150s, they are super profitable for them and the best selling truck for many many years now. Toyota, Honda aren't even close to American truck and SUV sales.

So explain to me again how US autos aren't competitive with Japanese brands?