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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

#491

Post by aidenn0 »

aphextron wrote: post #304
trixie_ wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought there are 'out of pocket maximums' set by the government to avoid that? The most that individuals will have to pay out-of-pocket in 2020 is $8,200 and $16,400 for families.

>The most that individuals will have to pay out-of-pocket in 2020 is $8,200 and $16,400 for families. If you have good insurance, sure. If you're unemployed, one bad illness or injury means instant bankruptcy.

There's a huge set of caveats for the maximum out-of-pocket. The maximum is only for "in network" care. You can very easily end up with out-of-network care for various reasons (including going to an in-network hospital but being treated by a doctor who is out-of-network without being informed of this fact). Maximum out-of-pocket for out-of-network is $40k per person per year on my insurance.

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

#492

Post by iliketosleep »

door100 wrote: post #487
baud147258 wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or the deadwood that gets protected because they belong to an union. Or unions being against remote work because that'd reduce employee control. Or union leadership just using their membership to laze around. Or union opposing projects they don't like. Or union harassing (including physically) managers. And to say nothing of railway union who apparently have a Mission to gridlock the country every few years (usually…

Even if all of these were true (I would describe most of them as a mischaracterization at best), do you honestly think that outweighs everything that I described? The worst thing that people can say about unions is they are bureaucratic and inconvenient. The worst things people can say about, say, working conditions in many non-unionized American workplaces are far, far worse. People dying, unfairly losing their job…

> The worst thing that people can say about unions is they are bureaucratic and inconvenient.

I disagree. Unions can lead to the death of entire industries - I have seen it with my own eyes. Inefficiencies created by unions lead to jobs going to places where such unions do not exist. Personally, I do believe the workers need to be protected, but if you protect workers then you also need to protect industries, and this opens a gigantic can of worms as it runs counter to globalization and free trade.

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

#493

Post by NeutronStar »

URSpider94 wrote: post #438
loceng wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Punishment? It's negotiation. It's Elon stating that Tesla won't be putting stock options on the table, but a union still could then negotiate - they could potentially negotiate to refuse to work unless they're getting stock but it sounds like Tesla is drawing the line there because they believe that their stock is valuable and will become much more valuable; employees will have to decide for themselves if they want…

That’s exactly the kind of thing that’s forbidden under the law. You can’t threaten to take a current benefit off the table if employees unionize.

But that's not what's happening. What's happening is that the union is against using stock options as benefits.

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

#494

Post by hemantv »

door100 wrote: post #309
aborsy wrote: post #134

Working in France completely changed my view of unions. I sure hope the horrors I saw won’t happen to Tesla.

The horrors of... a 35 hour workweek, 5 weeks paid vacation, 16 weeks paid maternity leave, universal healthcare, and no at-will employment?

There is reason US is very competitive globally vs France just the shell of its former glory

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

#495

Post by NeutronStar »

tsimionescu wrote: post #442
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mig…

I doubt warehouse salaries are a significant percentage of costs for Amazon outside AWS. And the non-AWS part of Amazon is still significantly larger than AWS (revenue ~346 billion dollars vs ~40 billion for AWS) even if it is indeed less profitable. Warehousing is of course not that profitable, but it is a significant enabler for the sales of the rest of the business (perhaps even for AWS infrastructure).

On one hand op was talking about profit on the other you talk about revenue? You can't compare apples to oranges..

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

#496

Post by supercanuck »

hemantv wrote: post #494
door100 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The horrors of... a 35 hour workweek, 5 weeks paid vacation, 16 weeks paid maternity leave, universal healthcare, and no at-will employment?

There is reason US is very competitive globally vs France just the shell of its former glory

Yes. Geography

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

#497

Post by missedthecue »

ryandrake wrote: post #400
door100 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The horrors of... a 35 hour workweek, 5 weeks paid vacation, 16 weeks paid maternity leave, universal healthcare, and no at-will employment?

You forget, with a union, the world's richest man might get richer every day at a slightly slower rate than he currently gets richer. That's the real horror!

Why does it have to be zero sum?

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

#498

Post by ncallaway »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #466
ncallaway wrote: post #346

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!" That might be the thing you're wrong about. It sounds like most of the Amazon unionization efforts _aren't_ necessarily about better pay. It seems like more of the focus is about better, more humane working conditions. If Amazon pays its workers slightly above average…

>> they treat those same workers like absolute shit with inhumane working conditions I think this debate is going to be like all the others on the topic, if you have never done manual labor, warehouse work, or factory work you are going to talk about the "inhumane working conditions", and if you have done that type of work you consider an Amazon warehouse job to be a great job for an unskilled laborer. I did 10 years…

Any job that doesn't give workers time to use the bathroom when they need to is inhumane.

Any job that is too warm, and doesn't provide workers adequate water, breaks, or AC such that workers are feinting or suffer health consequences is inhumane.

If the working conditions elsewhere are worse than that, then it's not a positive mark for Amazon. It's a black mark for those workplaces.

> I feel dirty now for having defended Amazon, but the truth is the truth.

I don't know if you have condemned Amazon, so much as tarred other workplaces if they also fail to meet these standards.

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

#499

Post by missedthecue »

joshuamorton wrote: post #422
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.

Or Alabama? Which would never get a union... Unions are an aspect of a free market. They're an organization of individuals with a common goal in exactly the same way corporations are.

Unions are anti-free market. They are monopoly cartels protected by the federal government. If people who sell peanut butter joined together to sell their products at a higher price, the DOJ would bust them up. If people who sell labor join together to do the same type of rent seeking, congress sets up the NLRB to protect them.

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

#500

Post by onelovetwo »

IntelMiner wrote: post #489
smitty1e wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the First Amendment amount to a fart in a thunderstorm any longer? If anyone getting paid out of taxpayer funds doesn't grok the Bill of Rights, then their employment is what needs deleting.

The first amendment doesn't protect a private company making statements on a private platform If Elon stood on the street corner shouting lies into a megaphone? Sure, maybe there'd be an argument there

Thats complete nonsense. This isn't the private company making a decision on its platform, this is a government agency forcefully having a tweet removed.
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