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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

#71

Post by wtfrmyinitials »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #68
sjwright wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem with unions so long as membership is entirely voluntary for every employee. The problem I have is coercive collectivism. Also, is there any evidence that collective action returns a sustainably larger slice of corporate revenues?

Tesla’s CEO is the richest human on the planet and we’re worried about workers taking too much? If Elon’s stressing over sustainability, let him take the pay cut.

I may be confused, but your comment appears to be a bit of a non sequitur.

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

#72

Post by fastball »

neolog wrote: post #69
sjwright wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem with unions so long as membership is entirely voluntary for every employee. The problem I have is coercive collectivism. Also, is there any evidence that collective action returns a sustainably larger slice of corporate revenues?

It's a commons problem; voluntary membership means free-riders will destroy the collective resource.

Except "my labor" is not a collective resource, so it's not really a tragedy of the commons situation.

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

#73

Post by fastball »

boustrophedon wrote: post #22
meddlepal wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Tesla should be allowed every opportunity to stop them. I guess Tesla broke the law in this case, but I do not really agree with the ruling and the law. Musk should be allowed to present the possible downsides.

> And Tesla should be allowed every opportunity to stop them. We've tried this. People died over it. We enacted laws to prevent it from happening, so that labor can stand on equal ground with capital.

Yeah, pretty sure shooting people is not what GC meant by "every opportunity".

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

#74

Post by jakelazaroff »

wtfrmyinitials wrote: post #71
jakelazaroff wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla’s CEO is the richest human on the planet and we’re worried about workers taking too much? If Elon’s stressing over sustainability, let him take the pay cut.

I may be confused, but your comment appears to be a bit of a non sequitur.

GGP asked whether collective action returns a sustainable slice of corporate revenues, i.e. do unions demand so much that it harms the company. I’m saying that they should look at executive compensation through the same lens.

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

#75

Post by fastball »

joshuamorton wrote: post #17
meddlepal wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Tesla should be allowed every opportunity to stop them. I guess Tesla broke the law in this case, but I do not really agree with the ruling and the law. Musk should be allowed to present the possible downsides.

The downside musk presented was a lie though: a union could absolutely bargain for stock options.

But Tesla could outright refuse under any circumstances to give stock options to unionized employees, no?

That's their prerogative.

Also FWIW Musk clarified that he was talking about the fact that no UAW employees have stock options at any other company.

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

#76

Post by garyfirestorm »

avs733 wrote: post #56
drak0n1c wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing the current state of Detroit, you have a point that such practices may not have been sustainable.

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 bolt removed, oh I’m on a cigarette break which is followed by a lunch break then I’m gonna go over there and chat about something until it’s time to leave. But you can’t touch that wrench and no one can fire me for doing the same thing tomorrow. Somedays I want to quit and start learning serious programming and gtfo here.

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

#77

Post by fastball »

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.

Isn't the entire point of a union to give you negotiating leverage?

If you need the government to effectively do the negotiating for you by levying fines and such whenever the company goes against the union, what exactly is the point of the union?

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

#78

Post by foepys »

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.

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.

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

#79

Post by FireBeyond »

GavinMcG wrote: post #51
kova12 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are inherently evil, as is any organization which forces you to join. I lived in USSR until late teens and I remember how hard I was pressured to join into Komsomol. And that was when system was already collapsing. Unions are even worse than that - you join them or you have to give up your career. They only help mediocre lazy donkeys, and if I was Musk I would want them nowhere near my business

When I was working 48 to 72 hours a week as an EMT, I didn't find many of my coworkers to be "mediocre lazy donkeys." Far from it. They were kind and hardworking people. They were also frequently subjected to incompetent or inattentive managers who didn't both knowing the company policies and had to be constantly reminded to see employees as people. As a union steward I had to call managers several times per week to…

Some ambulance companies out here are so understaffed that employees regularly work 48 to 72 hours STRAIGHT. Still only get paid $13/hr though.

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

#80

Post by emptysongglass »

kova12 wrote: post #44
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…

Unions are inherently evil, as is any organization which forces you to join. I lived in USSR until late teens and I remember how hard I was pressured to join into Komsomol. And that was when system was already collapsing. Unions are even worse than that - you join them or you have to give up your career. They only help mediocre lazy donkeys, and if I was Musk I would want them nowhere near my business

My Danish engineers union helps me look over employment contracts before I sign so I fully understand my rights and unenforceable terms, they tell me if I'm asking for too little in salary, and they give me great insurance rates (like USAA in the states) for home, salary, and dental. They're also there for me if I just want to talk about my career or need guidance. I'm not forced into being a member but I really value them. It's nice to feel taken care of.

Employers work with unions here. It's not antagonistic like in the US. I don't know where it went wrong but to me it's very much like the antagonism between drivers and cyclists in the US: cyclists and drivers hate each other there and both sides frequently try to provoke the other (Critical Mass is the most obnoxious thing I've ever experienced and I'm not even a driver). There's none of that here. We have a lot of public infrastructure to support cyclists here but even in cities with relatively poor cycling infra like Berlin that antagonism is missing.

If I had to guess it's that there's a culture of seeing-only-from-your-side of things in the States: you're black, I'm white, you're male, I'm female, you're an elite, I'm blue-collar and you'll never know how it feels to be me. And because you'll never know, you are my enemy.

What a wrongheaded way of approaching the world.

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