vs.
"...Tesla failed to report serious injuries on legally mandated reports to make its numbers appear better than they actually were."
Now use Occam's Razor.
This being a real-world situation, it should be possible to figure out what's really going on, which is what California seems to be doing. No reason to make unwarranted assumptions either way in the mean time.
...is what I would say if I were Montgomery Burns. Tesla's PR people must be thinking it's better to win over the tiny Burns demographic and not the millions of Homer Simpsons out there.
vs
"Neptune is breathing, and so the ocean goes up and down, just like when you are in the tub and take a deep breath"
Now use Occam's Razor.
If you were unaware of the persistent activities of various organizations then you might think that unions creating false information is an absurd idea, just as you might feel about the tides if you were a simple peasant, ignorant of the work of physicists.
Unions, conventional automobile companies, and the oil industry are all terrified of electric cars. EVs mean less jobs, less parts, longer renewal cycles, and of course removing inflexibility from oil demand. EVs threaten industries collectively totaling trillions of dollars and in some cases even double digit percentages of nations' GDPs. It's absurd and naive to think these industries would do nothing.
... but Tesla is a corporation, and corporations act in their self-interest. Corporations (and governments and other large entities too) routinely omit negative information, cook their numbers, ignore problems, over-reach, and generally push boundaries in their race for profit, power, and status. As good as Tesla's mission is, I don't necessarily expect it to behave better than a standard issue corporation.
Conventional auto industries only implemented safety in vehicles and in factories after being repeatedly whacked upside the head. They still don't hesitate to ignore safety overseas when they can get away with it, nor do they hesitate to destroy the economic well being of entire regions of the country to save a bit on short term costs or flout environmental regulations.
Tesla is new, so they'll probably need to get whacked around a bit too. But I still hope they are successful because their mission is good for humanity in the long term. Continued reliance on oil is an existential risk to the human race.
I think that Tesla’s worker treatment problems should absolutely be addressed but I wouldn’t be so sure that unions are the answer.
It's not even like they are acting the same as the rest of the industry. Directly in the article it says that they have much higher injury rates than the rest of the industry. Either make the environment safer or at least give the workers enough equity that they benefit from pushing the company through as well. It's pretty disenguous for a rich guy like Elon to say that this is losing money now, so everyone has to sacrifice, when he's going to reap the benefits of that sacrifice
Regardless though, employees fight for unions in the US only when it's become really bad. There's such a baseline hatred of unions that you can't casually get one going here just by saying you might be able to get more money. Tesla might not have the capital to impeove things directly but they could at least hand out more equity to the employees so that their incentives aligned.
https://www.revealnews.org/article/tesla-says-its-factory-is...
> Reveal compared records from Tesla’s internal tracking system, obtained from a source, with the official logs, which were requested by an employee and provided to Reveal.
Somehow I doubt that will result in less disagreement.
Hi there, we did this reporting completely independently of the union.
This is another instance of deceptive Tesla wording, when Tesla says:
working directly with union supporters
what they mean is that some of the workers Reveal interviewed were in the union. Of course some of the interviewees weren't tied to the union but those go unmentioned.
I appreciate what Tesla did to popularize electric cars, but everything else isn't that great.
I really enjoy not needing a car and don't enjoy driving, even a nice one.
The various reports of low quality of Tesla's cars (like their doors :/ ) have also contributed to suppress any tesla envy.
If I really needed a car right now, I would start by comparing the different ones on the market, Tesla is not the only player in town anymore.
The view you espoused is fairly common but I don't understand why UAW would lead to poor quality cars when cars are designed and built using standardized procedures with machines that perform the same each time (not a rhetorical question, I really don't understand where this view comes from)
Citation please.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/business/28auto.html
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/business/15auto.html
Closest I can get you since all the journal articles are from conservative-leaning institutions with a vested interest against unionization. All three articles are about the new contracts UAW signed in 2007 as the auto industry was collapsing in the United States, all of which cite massive concessions back to the auto companies. Notably, Ford still got to fold 10 of their original 16 plants scheduled for closure, GM got to shift away massive healthcare obligations, and Chrysler managed to substantially reduce their employment guarantees.
If you were a union interested in a happy balance between company and employee rather than just making your employees score every short-term dollar that they could, you wouldn't need to concede like this with one, let alone every, major United States-founded auto maker.
It's worth noting that GM actually got the biggest haul up front since they got the opportunity to negotiate first.