Tesla workers speak out: 'Anything pro-union is shut down really fast' | Hacker News Reader

Tesla workers speak out: 'Anything pro-union is shut down really fast'

theguardian.com

72 pointsSmkyMt39 comments

> He added that management quickly finds reasons to fire employees who tout their efforts to form a union and those who are fired are pushed to sign non-disclosure agreements before receiving their last paycheck.

I’d hope this is just a misunderstanding of the facts or something, because wow that last part’s just horrifying.

Wage theft in the US is measured in billions of dollars per year. Imagine what other abuses that aren't so flagrant and easy to quantify proliferate.

How is that relevant? Nobody is accusing Tesla of systematically playing games with the books to deny people compensation they are owed (they're accusing Tesla of other unethical practices).

edit:

Never mind. Either I misread or you edited your comment to add the second sentence.

The implication was that management was using a worker's final paycheck as leverage to pressure them into signing an NDA. That's using wage theft as a threat.

I thought that's exactly what the accusation was: witholding the last pay packet until the agreement was signed. This isn't the same as the more respectable practice of extra redundancy payments that are conditional on signing a no-sue agreement.

This is fairly common. Most severance payments are settlements, of which the first offer is made by the company.

Employees can refuse the settlement, then sue their former employer under various wrongful dismissal/common law severance heads, but that requires getting a lawyer, and lawyers are generally more expensive than the few extra months of wages you'll get back. The cost of getting justice is used to scalp workers for a month or two of earnings all the time.

... Unless you were sexually assaulted and offered peanuts, or recorded your immediate supervisor threatening you with physical harm or something. Then lawyering up pays off.

I’m hoping that’s the misunderstanding: Severance != last paycheck.

When/as more and more employees are paid to / held to a standard that keeps them a paycheck or two from insolvency, these mandated non-disclosure/-disparagement/-right-to-sue agreement, in return for severance pay/benefits, have taken on increasing pressure and importance.

People in "the tech world" may not experience nor realize the immediate existential threat many people live under, with a job loss.

These become another way in which "corporate America" is essentially stifling free speech and individuals' rights.

Corporations lobbied heavily to be able to spend unlimited amounts in political campaigns.

But, they won't let their workers say a word -- not even about their own direct life experiences.

A bonus payment if you sign an NDA on departure seems pretty common.

Disappointing, but not surprising. Once a company decides that their workers are the enemy rather than an asset or part of the team, this kind of thing creeps in anywhere. Like Musk conspicuously smoking weed while running a factory that drug tests its workers.

Ford at least planned for his workers to be able to buy his cars, but that's clearly going to be further away on the Tesla roadmap than a trip to Mars.

>Musk conspicuously smoking weed while running a factory that drug tests its workers

To protect the safety of your workers, you do not want someone who is high/impaired operating machinery that can kill them or others. If you've been in an industrial factory or seen videos of factory deaths, you know how serious such a threat can be. I wouldn't be surprised if the worker testing was part of their insurance contract.

>Musk conspicuously smoking weed while running a factory that drug tests its workers

To protect the safety of your workers, you do not want someone who is high/impaired operating machinery...

Drug tests can't tell if you are currently intoxicated. It's not like a breathalyzer. I doubt they would make a rule that says you can't have a drink after work.

I went, as a firefighter, to a fire at a legal marijuana grow op. Just a small little thing, but approximately 1 1/2 lb of product was caught up in the fire.

I was advised as the officer to fill out an exposure report. Why worry, I thought - yes, we could smell it, strongly, yes, there was some smoke, etc., but for the most part, nice and funny as a story.

Our Medical Services Officer reminded me that THC stays in the system for quite a while. And for those volunteers, this would be a record that would protect them if they got tested in their day job, saying that it was an "exposure", not something else.

Off-Topic: What caused that fire?

Sampling product, and a lighter gun left burning...

> nice and funny as a story.

You'll enjoy this one too: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3017682/Entire-town...

> Like Musk conspicuously smoking weed while running a factory that drug tests its workers.

Just like the Air Force has to now consider whether it can work with Musk; Tesla as a company that is owned by others than Musk also needs insurability; It's likely that Musk didn't set or invent this policy but Tesla's insurers (for workplace safety and maybe even product) require drug testing.

I think the entire practice of exit interviews should be outlawed. Perhaps replaced with an optional post-exit interview that takes place after the final payment has been received, and that comes with compensation of it's own.

Totally common. You get a non toxic reference, money, and agree to STFU.

Last pay due is unconditional, barring any financial agreement and balance in play.

No, this is hush money being tied to being quiet, often framed as road money.

  pushed to sign non-disclosure agreements before receiving their last paycheck

Illegal in CA, at least. I suspect they are conflating a severance with the paycheck.

I am progressive as it gets but living in NY and witnessing the current state of MTA plus attitude of other union workers my ideas about unions has changed completely. We have to find better ways to protect our workers without letting them abuse the system.

Has anyone here as part of their job had to work with a union? My interactions have also been... challenging at best, with a lot of red tape. I chalked it up to a one-off bad experience, but wondering now if it's more common.

The article doesn't say anything about NYC or the MTA, did you even read it, or are you replying to the words "pro-union" in the submission title?

Since when discussions on a HN thread are limited to the keyword on an article? It seems like you are the one who did not understand the context of the article. My comment is about relevancy of unions in our day. I apologize if everyone else thinks my comment was off topic.

Your comment is lazy. You saw "pro-union" in the submission title and delivered a canned anti-union reply. It's discouraging that you've misinterpreted my single-sentence comment and inverted its meaning in your reply just now, but I trust that you can persist through the entire article submission and formulate a relevant reply, if you are motivated to do so.

Imagine criticizing coffee shops as a whole because you got bad coffee at a starbucks. Is there something inherent to unions that make them generally bad?

BTW, the issues with the NY subway have little to do with the TWU and more to do with mismanagement by Cuomo.

Not surprising... the opposite would be the exception, this is pretty much the rule in 2018.

The US auto industry still has a pretty significant union presence, especially the US-based companies that aren't Tesla. The UAW has ~430k members[1] out of the ~950k total US auto manufacturing workforce[2].

Most of the foreign companies building cars in the US are quite anti-union though. Somewhat ironically the building that is currently Tesla's factory used to be Toyota's only unionized factory.

[1] https://uaw.org/uaw-grows-almost-15000-new-members-2017-7500...

[2] https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iagauto.htm

> Most of the foreign companies building cars in the US are quite anti-union though

I would assume this is because of different protected worker rights in the EU vs US. So they probably try to employ similar steps here.

  Toyota's only unionized factory

To my knowledge, every Toyota factory in Japan is unionized.

Yes, I should have been more specific. Only unionized factory in the US.

Japan and Germany both have heavily unionized domestic auto manufacturing workforces, it's just their factories in the US that don't.

If I were a shareholder I'd advise Elon to do something truly epic to distract from this. Like what if instead of the rainbow road easter egg they added a bacon road?

Shitty if true.

If Tesla is anti-union, and they have every right to be, they can just fire people who strike. Firing them before they strike is not ok.

> If Tesla is anti-union... they can just fire people who strike.

I'm not so sure, it seems like they can't in many circumstances:

https://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2014/10/can-you-be-fi...

Weird. So I could get a job and then just hang out outside “striking” and not work and still get paid and they can never fire me?

I don’t understand the laws here.

> Weird. So I could get a job and then just hang out outside “striking” and not work and still get paid and they can never fire me?

Striking workers don't get paid by the employer while they're striking. That's why unions have "strike funds" -- to keep striking members financially solvent while they strike.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_pay

> I don’t understand the laws here.

They're meant to protect the rights of employees to strike. If companies were allowed to fire union members just because they're participate in union activities (like strikes), it'd be trivial for management to break union power for the low wage/low skill jobs that most need unions.

I see. Well in that case it seems like Tesla can just wait for a strike, hire more workers to replace the ones who are striking while keeping the strikers on the books without pay, and then if the strikers ask for their shifts back, just phase them in, while also doing rolling layoffs to get rid of unnecessary workers (strikers or new hires depending on who has the lowest performance).

Then unions could defeat this by doing rhythmic striking, but I think Tesla might be in their rights to fire a worker who is repeatedly striking in a systematic way to interfere with Tesla’s hiring.

I bet you could get sacked from Tesla for even mentioning the Union of Myanmar

"Speaking Out" against standard practice, and getting the ear of a reporter because your company makes headlines more often. Yay.

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