Elon Musk’s anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor board
reuters.com
reuters.com
Because it's unpopular, it also won't get discussed anywhere... ( My perception could obviously be wrong, bit it would get silenced immediately for bringing it up)
We have a powerfull union here in Belgium ( connections with politics) and since a lot had already accomplished, they keep fighting for ridiculous things for the mere purpose of keeping themselves relevant.
One of their most favorite is classifying teachers as very hard labor. Coming from a background where my dad worked 18/24 and 7/7 that stings. I know multiple teachers and I don't consider that hard labor. It's important labor, yes. But they don't have a lot of stress of other professions, not much working hours and a lot of vacation.
Keeping your course up to date every year is not stressful ( if that even happens. A lot of professors copy-paste their work)
Important note: depending on the students age they teach ( toddlers, middle aged, adults. I do believe it gets harder and they need to add more hours. But classifying everyone as one is a mistake in my POV.
It seems to me that this kind of sentiment ("I've experienced hardships or know people who did, so why does this group deserve better?") is quite prevalent here in germany as well.
I think this is a common trope among richer countries at least, and probably one of the most effective strategies or rhetoric patterns to stall social progress.
Sometimes I'm catching myself thinking along similar lines, and when I do, I'll try to step back and try to examine why I'm having these thoughts, and if there's actually an argument against having changes like this. Is there any disadvantage for me, or for anyone really?
Labelling something incorrect is what I l'm suggesting what they are doing. To stay relevant. So members keep paying their member fees.
I'm not saying it has any disadvantages to me and that shouldn't matter at all.
Eg. Teachers here in middle school are labeled as a physical heavy profession and receive advantages.
Explain to me what is exactly physical heavy about teaching.
And it's not just that. Working for the government here in general is labeled like that and it's just a reminder of the past ( in my opinion) to keep their benefits ( early and big pension).
Does that disadvantage me? Yes, because I don't have a physical profession. But neither do they.
I think it's more of an insult to those that actually have a heavy physical profession and have potential health problems because of that.
And the sensitivity of some of them would cause a disgrace for any politician to mention ( eg. because yes, teachers are important)
I wouldn't call it inaccurate, but more like deceit.
In Ireland there’s a reasonable respect for education – depending on socio-economic background and attitudes young people pick up from their parents – and teaching is still a stressful occupation.
I’ve known a lot of secondary school teachers and unless you’re lucky enough to teach in a well-run school with a majority of students whose parents value education, there’s a huge amount of stress dealing with adolescent behaviour.
In some cases, the teachers are trying to improve the lives of students whose parents who can’t cope because they’re single and struggling to provide for their family and don’t have the time for parenting. In the worst cases, the students have parents who are involved in crime or addicted to drugs.
Bad management of a school by the principal and other administrators can compound. I once lived with a teacher who came home from work crying on a weekly basis because of the abuse she got from anti-social students and the lack of proper disciplinary or management backup meant that the were no serious consequences for abuse of the teacher (or the students who were there to learn). There are many teachers who regularly put up with abuse and harassment that would not be tolerated in any other profession.
The “non-working” hours are spent correcting homework, preparing and refining learning materials, doing administrative paper-work to show what students are attending and/or doing work, follow-up with phone-calls to parents, etc.
I know I wouldn’t want to work as a teacher if the wages were doubled: certainly, the holidays certainly don’t go far enough to balance the day-to-day stress.
BTW, I wouldn’t want to be a nurse either. That’s another profession I have a massive respect for.
Well, it's labeled "heavy physical activity". I did say it's important work ( eg. Respectful), I also said that's exactly why it could be political suicide by just mentioning it. I also didn't think I dispresected teachers themselves, but directed more to the unions.
Also, special needs are separated and are also labeled "heavy emotional work" here.
In this case, i'm talking about the heavy physical.
Also, the examples you mentioned:
Correcting homework is to be done during a normal workweek. Since no teacher here stands in class full-time ( ~ 26 hours in general).
Contact with parents is 2 days per year during normal days ( mo-fr)
Administrative paper work is done during class, at the start.
Now the concern is deleting tweets. Embourgeoisiement has slowed and confused the struggle of labor. The reckoning of the owner class is long overdue, as evidenced by this typical hubris.
In today's world, this reckoning must be at once international and complete. We have the infrastructure for liberation on a global scale.
Now more to your point. The worker movements in the developed west was not shy to use force.
An example in England would be workers marching to a factory owners house demanding better working conditions or else they’d kill him. I believe similar events also happened in the US.
When?
Liberation from what? Will this time commies implement true coomunism and create heaven on earth with your ersatz religion?
Employment in the US is totally voluntary, with unemployment one of the lowest in the developed world, immense competition for tech talent, and you think this requires 'reckoning of the owner class' - which is often the SAME workers' 401k accounts?
What exactly is your ideal - that 'workers', who are also 'owners', fight themselves?
It’s not like the original tweet wasn’t widely discussed.
If anyone getting paid out of taxpayer funds doesn't grok the Bill of Rights, then their employment is what needs deleting.
If Elon stood on the street corner shouting lies into a megaphone? Sure, maybe there'd be an argument there
People need to think these things through ahead of them getting too far into Godwin's Law territory.
I don't understand the fascination of some sects of the United States with defending such obviously detrimental practices with "well under an extremely loose reading of this amendment it might technically be allowed, and as we all know amendments can't possibly be changed so there's nothing we can do".
By your logic, Elon could tweet Tesla's financial results on twitter during a quiet period before public release "because first amendment". The first amendment doesn't give you carte blanche to break the law without consequence...
If equality before the law were a meaningful concept any longer, the distinction between business accounts with SEC constraints as modifying the 1A might be coherent.
These days the government enjoys the tyranny of selective enforcement (e.g. riots vs. "peaceful protests") to the extent that regarding your point as a fair one is challenging.
If, for instance, as you were hiring people, you told them "we don't hire black people", even if you did hire black people, you would still be opening yourself up to suit, even with freedom of speech.
Before you say it, yes, the workers are being coerced. The implicit threat is that they will lose their jobs if they don't listen to the employer's anti-union rhetoric.
"Oh, but they can just quit and not be forced to listen to it," you say? Well, no, the average American worker can't afford to just walk away from a job. Thus, it's coercion.
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?
Don't roads exist to facilitate vehicle transportation? If you need to do construction in order to make roads, what exactly is the point of them?
I don't understand what your thinking here is. You're comparing the expected results of a thing existing with possible actions to facilitate conditions for that thing to exist. Why are these supposed to be somehow equivalent or comparable?
I've no idea why the US unions tend to be closed-shop, possibly because the high antagonism from employers makes it the only stable solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop#United_States
It's literally the first line of that section.
[1] https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-compulsory-union-member...
If you want to force companies to capitulate to unions, cut out the middleman and just force companies to give things directly to workers.
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.
Part of why this is not a simple "both sides" issue is because we're talking about one side that exists and one side that might one day exist. The non-extant union can't weigh in on company statements or make any statements of their own.
So these rules exist to help ensure the workers are not unduly influenced by the company when they consider making that union finally exist. I don't see a problem with this.
And the entire point is that the union forming could be bad for workers in various ways, so if I was a worker I would want to be made aware of what could possibly go wrong before I joined the effort to unionize and no longer had a choice in the matter after the union is fully formed and going strong.
But if they're paying the workers part in cash and part in options, and the union organizers are pitching that they'll raise their wages, I think it's fair for the company to point out that that is likely to result in moving some of the comp from options into cash.
The UAW and representatives can certainly make statements today. Here's one: https://uaw.org/statement-uaw-vice-president-cindy-estrada-d...
On what possible basis could Musk be making a fully good-faith statement that he has good reason to believe it is impossible for a union to negotiate on such grounds? Obviously he is free to stick on that point in actual negotiations, but again he can't in any kind of good faith negotiate in public with an entity that doesn't exist yet.
As for UAW, that's kind of getting into the detailed specifics of this instance. Maybe there's more room to argue for looser regulations when there are extant industry unions? But that would also seem to push things more in favor of larger, more encompassing unions rather than smaller more specific ones, which I imagine most people in favor of less regulation wouldn't be fond of either.
Musk has a significant say in whether employees continue to receive options, and I can’t see why the union would ask to take that away, given that options are presumably very popular with their members.
Saying that life will get worse with a union is one thing. Saying that it will get worse because I will make it worse is another.
I think it makes a lot of sense to regulate this kind of activity. It's not about forcing companies to 'give in' or not to unions, but about helping to protect the ability for the union to form in the first place.
We can argue forever about how much company statements might influence the ability for unions to form, but at the end of the day the actual regulation here is basically just stopping the company from setting up their own strawmen in hopes of influencing workers. Naturally, it's very easy to talk tough when you're just pretending to negotiate against yourself. Not doing this seems like a pretty mild restriction, so I don't think it's a particularly onerous regulation.
But that's not what this is suggesting, right? This is suggesting the government should treat unions preferentially, not equitably.
Equity is in the eye of the beholder. I don't see how this law is treating unions preferentially, and am interested in how you distinguish it with the aforementioned minority shareholder protections.
When I say equitable treatment, I'm looking for symmetry, and I'm not seeing it here.
The point of these sorts of laws is to give unions a fighting chance to take hold in places where employees want them, but are afraid of retaliation if they tried to form one.
Unionised workers typically get no or very few stock options compared to industries with no unionisation.
Correlation is not causation (they are in different industries.)
> Also where is the conversation around building a better product to add more value in this union debate?
That's what "codetermination" is. European branches of US tech companies do have works councils, which are like mini-codetermination.
I think the google and microsoft staff have been trying to create the first tech oriented one though.
In France, it's mandatory for companies with more than 50 employees to have workers council and that has to be consulted on serious decisions ( changing offices, firing people, layoffs, etc.) and has some limited negotiation power. They negotiate company-wide policies (accord) on behalf of the employees that have to be at least as good as the branch-wide policies ( convention collective) - e.g. all workers in media companies get 20 days extra vacation because that's what the branch collective bargaining agreement says.
Furthermore, oftentimes ( sometimes it's mandatory), there are profit sharing schemes, e.g in my company 1% of the profits is shared among the employees, so your incentives are directly aligned with the company ( it comes to around a salary's worth of a bonus, so it's decent).
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.
and saying workers should just go and join a union backed job is even sillier when <15% of all full time workers are apart of a union [1]
workers are less well off but it's ok because "individualism"
These laws are violating the right of business to freely contract, while reducing the opportunity for those who don't have unionized jobs to compete for those jobs. So Right to Work is anti-'exploitation of businesses and outside workers'.
I'm not trying to define anything, just trying to explain the reference.
The democratic ideal is people coming together voluntarily to work toward their common interests, with no one being forced to participate against their will. The right to secede is key—it's not a legitimate democracy if you aren't allowed to leave.
Majority rule is inherently better than rule by any specific group in two respects: One, more people benefit from it. Even if you have two blocks who always vote together, it's better if 60% benefit at the expense of 40% than vice versa. Two, that doesn't actually happen: Sometimes you are on the winning side, sometimes on the losing one so it somewhat (not perfectly) cancels out.
And democracy isn't just majority rule. Separation of powers and a catalog of fundamental rights are also important to ensure everyone's interests are considered when making a collective decision. So is a culture of just doing so, when voting and in general.
And that is where we disagree. Aggression is often an easier path to achieving your goals—maybe the only viable path in some cases—but it's never "unavoidable". You just have to accept that you won't always get what you want.
> … it's better if 60% benefit at the expense of 40% than vice versa.
Maybe, if you had to choose one or the other. If you're of a utilitarian mindset (I'm not, so this 60%-vs-40% argument carries no weight with me) it would depend on exactly how much benefit vs. how much expense. And it seems to me that democracy more commonly results in a vocal, activist, well-motivated minority receiving concentrated benefits at the expense of the majority. The expense is just more widely distributed, making it hard to get the people on the losing side worked up about it. Example: If I can get $1000 in benefits in exchange for 5,000 other people paying $1 each, I have a strong incentive to lobby and vote for that arrangement. The 5,000 other people would each probably expend more effort fighting the measure (each time it's introduced!) than it would cost them to just let it pass. Not to mention that it makes them look petty and/or greedy, fighting over a mere $1 bill. Yet if the measure passes it would result in a net $4,000 loss to the group. Now repeat that for 1,000 other special-interest proposals… the group that benefits from each proposal varies, but in the end everyone loses.
> Sometimes you are on the winning side, sometimes on the losing one so it somewhat (not perfectly) cancels out.
While it would obviously be a very rare individual indeed who was always on the losing side, I wouldn't say it "cancels out" (even imperfectly). Some see a significant net benefit while others can expect a significant net loss. And then you have the net loss to society as a whole, both in terms of economic overhead (the transfers are not perfectly efficient, and also result in a less productive allocation of resources) as well as morally in terms of normalizing the use of aggression as a "legitimate" means of achieving policy goals.
> And democracy isn't just majority rule.
On that we agree, but in my opinion the "catalog of fundamental rights" recognized by all democracies which fit the definition of "government" (i.e. democracies which do not treat group membership as voluntary and subject to secession, or which fail to recognize and respect the natural personal and property rights of non-members) leaves out certain inconvenient rights which are equally or more fundamental.
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.
Not to mention your argument should be that cartels should be legal, not that unions should not be.
That's not true if the company is in violation of an existing contract though, then the company is breaking the law and must rehire everyone, but I'll reiterate: they're breaking the law to begin with.
Has anyone commenting here even read Elon's tweet in question?
"Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare." - Elon, https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/998454539941367808
Edit to add: lots of Elon hate blocking critical thinking here on HN.
This is literally textbook union busting BS. It's been the same line for 200 years.
So any CEO saying that unions aren't wanted is "union busting"? This just seems like watering down the word until it means almost nothing.
There was a time when "union busting" meant literally busting striking member's heads.
This is being warped and a lack of reasoning at the same level of absurdity as changing master-slave language in programming to shallowly appeal/respond to racism issues.
The point of the tweet is that Tesla workers are already treated better than their UAW counterparts. Why let the UAW come in and screw it up?
Threat's the wrong word but purposefully misused, even if it causes fear or rather it will cause a fear of a sense of loss of value - because if employees value owning/gaining Tesla stock over whatever else they potentially could negotiate through a union, then there's certainly a fear of potential loss - but Elon pointing out that possibility isn't a threat itself.
Firstly, I don't know the context in which this was tweeted, but looking at it, it's not in my opinion egregiously or "obviously" anti-union, but the definition of this is of course a legal one and not a subjective one, so it doesn't really matter what any of us "think" is anti-union, what matters is the legal text in the region where it is tried. With that said, I'd also like to state my opinion that I think it's at least quite unprofessional for any senior executive to voice any kind of anti-union sentiment regardless of how mild it is, I would expect that both parties keep to certain standards of discussion and avoiding bad faith, which in my mind means not discarding the entire raison d'être of the other party.
Secondly, pointing out that unions are opposed to individualized salary negotiations is hardly a criticism of unions as much as it is a statement of fact. If the unions cannot meet this point in debate but need to revert to legal action, I think that speaks to the sad state of pro-union ideology today.
Labels like "unprofessional" are repugnant to some people, because they have been, and continue to be, used to justify arbitrary application of personal taste and frankly BS in the workplace, for example to bully people into wearing neckties.
I doubt this is a good standard to go for when trying to engage Elon. I do understand however that it's your opinion — no argument that you are free to it, and I even think it's productive to air it… in part because it gives people like me a chance to offer a counter perspective.
You bring up a good point here and I think it applies to all of his ventures: Why trust anything the guy does?
However, when it comes to safety, the public must have trust. Very solid trust. Because 2+ tons of car at 70mph that claims to steer itself cannot be untrusted.
There's something to be said for a hybrid of human and machine attention though. From real world personal experience, there are some safety advantages.
I agree, it's a much better to cut through the BS and go straight for the time that Musk and Tesla tried to have a former employee murdered by the police by accusing them of being a mass shooter[1] all because Musk thought the employee was a whistleblower for public safety.
I think that incident illustrates Musk's attitude towards Tesla employees well.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon...
Some unions are great. IBEW Local 353 comes to mind. The best unions have slogans like "when the boss is well paid, we get what we want in negotiations" and the worst unions have essentially the opposite mindset. I've literally seen members from ATU Transit Union Local 113 throw an empty coffee cup on the ground during a nighttime subway construction project and say "job creation" during their duties.
There is a right way to do unions and a wrong way. Germany seems to get this better than North America. Too often in North America things get divided into pro-this or anti-that, instead of being a discussion on how to do something right or how to properly align incentives so that the right outcome happens.
I'm not anti-union. I like the protection that some unions provide their workers; especially in specialized, high risk trades like welding or electrical. That said, I don't think Tesla would be Tesla with a heavy union throwing unnecessary delays around. Their safety record is quite good and their compensation is better than average even without the stellar stock performance. Before advocating that Tesla should unionize I'd prefer to see structural changes in unionization come to North America so that we have an environment that fosters a healthier relationship between employer and union. I don't want every North American company rusting away like Detroit.
"Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare."
What does he mean by "giving up stock options"?
It's simple but people seem to be trying to make it seem convoluted to try to maintain confusion to make it look like they have a case to call it a threat. It's ridiculous.
The actual solution in fact is to take the burden off of employers: we need adequate UBI so people don't need to work to survive (including covered healthcare etc), therefore if a company isn't treating or paying their workers adequately for the work at hand then they can simply stop working there - and that is them taking a stand against the company; taking income is also problematic - you're penalizing work getting done, instead a VAT on production is much better method of skimming off some value created to redistribute back into society; feed some of the ROI back into society, fuel the largest cog of capitalism - consumers - via UBI - and the system, society, will thrive.
How can this be legal in america? Isn't it pressuring the workers not to unionise?
A company can care enough for its workers so that they don't see value in unions. But it can't force them via pressure.
Has anyone seen joining unions actually cause positions that got stock to stop getting stock? Is this like an overwhelmingly common thing I don’t know about?
It's an overt threat. Tesla has used it's stock compensation as a weapon against employees in the past. There are countless examples of people being fired days/weeks before stock options vested, essentially a form of wage theft:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-19/tesla-wor... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/07/01/tesla-p... https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/iiwuxr/she_moved...
idk. In my experience I would much rather get payed for my work in money I can use immediately, rather then being forced to play a game in a system I don’t believe in. I’ve worked for a few companies which gave me stock options (one of them was really good) and in practice what you end up getting is less then a month salary at best. I think companies love to give stock options because it adds bells and whistles to your benefits, it looks like they are giving you more then they are. If I had a choice I would much rather see my salary go up as the company raises in value then to be handed out stock.
That said, I’m not well versed in union logic so I don’t know if this is the reason why unions are against this practice. I am just glad they are.
https://smlr.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/documents/facul...
...and one of the main things Unions prevent - is employee ownership in the company. Crazy.
I sure hope the horrors I saw won’t happen to Tesla.
* 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 people with diverse attributes: capabilities, attitudes towards work/life, etc. There are always people who don’t want to or can’t work; and guess what they do? They join unions to protect themselves. Over time union center became international house of suckers and weirdos, each worse than the other.
* In an effort to protect themselves, unions politicized the work environment. They put themselves everywhere in key committees, including a union committee having last word on hirings and firings. That made them unfirable. They exploited the coronavirus situation, to blame employers and opponents. A scientific project can become a playground for union politics. I believe in climate change, but not in politicizing it. They seize every opportunity to attack employers and those not aligned with them. The goal is to use any chance to perpetuate an image that they protect people.
* Union will plot against any excellence in organization. To minimize contrast, they work hard to fail good people and projects around, or portray them as worker-abusers (ie, the reason that they succeed is because they abuse people).
* Unions will fiercely defend status quo and do not allow any constructive reform. The area of specialty that they advertised for themselves was an ancient technology from 1980s (and even that they wouldn’t do it). Every time people suggested to reform the department activities, they refused the proposals. You may not believe it, but department told them, OK, you can keep doing your own activities, we don’t reform them, but other people can start projects in orthogonal directions not related to yours. They still refused (they didn’t want competition) and basically forced everyone to work on their ancient advertised area of activity.
* Union engaged in all sorts of abusive practices. It was disgusting to see a lot of them rarely showed up at work (which was strange considering that they put themselves in various committees). I asked a department manager (“responsable”) how come this or that guy shows up at work only few times a year. He said, if you are a known member of union you can do that, and this is an issue in France. They yell, and bully people, create a toxic environment for others, repel and fire those not blending in etc,
* Union members felt very entitled and justified their actions by making themselves believe a skewed view of the world. They felt that they are entitled to a life even with ZERO work, and world owes to them.
* Unions will be perpetually on strike. What makes you think they will be happy with a laid back 9-5 job with decent pay and great benefits? Even with no work, they still go on strikes. They take tax money from society with little contribution, and make your commute and life periodically miserable.
* Unions are especially problematic in public sector, where incentives are aligned with cronyism not meritocracy. A lot of people are hired who lack abilities to perform the work in question. They form large powerful unions.
Don’t get me wrong. There might be a place for “traditional” textbook unions. But I don’t know if it ever works in practice. My experience was negative and counterintuitive.
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...
Sure, but for each of those there are 10-100 other smaller companies in automotive or other industries that don't have unions, and some German companies have stirred up quite a few scandals of not following the employment laws or abusing their workforce, which coincidentally was mostly immigrants.
Cherry picking the big, wealthy car brands to represent the manufacturing industry is like cherry picking FAANG for representing the software dev industry.
But pointing out there are wildly successful unions filled with hardworking people is "cherry picking"?
There are good and bad unions everywhere, but I think the closed-shop restrictions in the US that force you to join a particular union as a condition of employment exacerbates the worst qualities of them here.
And German car engineering is mostly known for being overly complicated, I say that as a German.
Close to zero progress in electrifying European produced cars. I would say unions are the cause for the delay resisting any change away from skills their members have, but obsoleted by electric cars with 1/10 the number of parts required.
Being German doesn't give your statement credibility - you don't have to be German to drive or understand a German car.
If you said "as a German automotive engineer" then it might carry some weight, but only if also provided specifics.
Protecting themselves ? check. Politicized the work environment ? check. Abusive practices ? check. Skewed view of the world and cronyism ? check.
I think what you are seeing is just a reflection of who succeeds in French companies. Some chose unions, some management, some find other niches, but none of these seem attached to specific values to me.
The ceiling on bad behavior is set by management, because they can do all of those bad things people claim unions do, and more - right now. The union gives you recourse
In a working market, pitching companies one against the others could have the same effect as unions, but I think there is enough implicit and explicit collusion and perverse incentives that we are far from that ideal.
Lawyers are famously hated around the world. But it's almost universally better to fight one if you have one on your side. Same with unions and companies. Having worked in two companies in the last few years in the same market, in the same area, one union and one not... The difference is night and day in favor of the unionized shop.
The basic problem is, if we have such powerful semi-paralegal entity (considering its scope and power), it protects people in need, but what mechanisms do we have in place to prevent it from evolving into an entity protecting itself (or to a mixed state), attracting those with perverse incentives in addition to those in need?
I agree with comments above. I wouldn’t say we should rush to dismiss unions. It probably depends on a lot of factors, eg, on country and how it’s set up. However, we need to recognize that this is an organization functioning like any other, eg, a bank, it has internal motives and can, and will, use its concentrated power to produce good and bad results. We probably need a balanced approach, and checks ...
As a mostly labourer union, CGT is a minority in universities, especially among teachers and researchers (less so in administrative and maintenance departments).
Having read it, I now don't believe for one minute you "had a naive image in mind" before or "opened your eyes" after your experience.
This isn't an argument against unions, it is an argument against any kind of human organization. Its more damning to how Tesla is now then to Tesla with unionized workers. Following your logic you should be all for unions and if you took it further, anti-capitalist.
Also, power doesn't corrupt. It reveals.
Seem like a strawman, worker conditions are light years ahead where workers are organized.
You sound like someone arguing against companies or capitalism because tax evasion exists saying “maybe there’s a case for textbook capitalism but in reality it doesn’t work” when we have literal proof that not capitalism and unions work. Nothing is perfect and ofcause unions can be better and companies can as well. But the net effect of unions is positive, and they form naturally in every place where you don’t allow anti-union policies and anti union worker discrimination.
My first experience were of course were teachers. At least half of them hates children but love being the boss in the room. Most of them quit before because obtaining their seniority, and they tend to be the more conscientious ones. In 6th grade I had a teacher fired because she physically assaulted me multiple times by hitting me on the arms, during most of the scholar year. Did I say fired? No sorry, only unpaid leave for one week, and she was replaced by none other than... her son, because seniority I guess. In primary school our physical education teachers were obese.
The whole region (multiple cities in a rural area) where I grew up saw auto dealerships workers on strike / lock out for years. It began at the end of high school, at the end of university it was still going on 5~6 years later.
My first ever was in a grocery store, I was fired because "finally the union wants that job".
Stories I've heard from others abound: solder a lose component on a PCB? That's tech's job. Caught talking to a union member alone? Let's just say if having half the people you meet giving you death stares not enough, then be ready to defend yourself against all paranoid claims made against you. Army sub-contractors caught stealing gas masks and laptops by MPs?? Nah, "you have to build a file before firing them". People who did the coop programs (5 paid internships) in unionized organizations came back with quite a few horror stories of their own.
The worse is that we're forced to join and pay (at least software is pretty much free from unions), so much for liberty of association. Most votes are held with show of hands. They can be done secretly, but the vote to do that is also a show at hand, good luck being "that guy" who defies the executives' wishes for a strike when the war chess is full. And that's not even mentioning the various corruption scandals involving intimidation, threats of violence and organized crime.
Sure there arn't as many mega rich, but then there arn't people hundreds of thousands of people being bankrupted by medical bills either.
If you have good insurance, sure. If you're unemployed, one bad illness or injury means instant bankruptcy.
I didn't live in a high CoL area either. Everyone who isn't wealthy or socially connected to get a job that pays above average is priced out of visiting a doctor at all right now.
The most we'd pay in tax is £8k: https://listentotaxman.com/38000?
that covers all our health insurance as well. There is no copay, there are no "your condition isn't covered anymore". The only issue now is wait times, but thats because we're balls deep in a pandemic.
They certainly haven’t. However, the yellow vests movement fizzled out a long time ago. And union-bashing certainly isn’t the way to go if you care about equality, however imperfect they are.
Actually hating them probably means you have a lot of misplaced anger.
Also, on what planet could Bezos be described as an oligarch? Not this one. Everyone on the left and the right hates him for various reasons. The previous president hated him. This president just told his workers to unionize. Senators are constantly portraying him as Satan incarnate.
He has no political power in Washington. They hate him.
I just did a similar analysis for a job in the US vs one in Canada. The actual salary in the US was much higher, but including healthcare expenses closed a lot of the gap. In some cases (e.g., chronic illness or young kids), the lower Canadian salary was a better "deal" overall.
Me I'm fully aware that I'm paying whats amounts to $900/month protection money in the form of health insurance. Protection money because really the co-payes I have to pay are close cost of actually providing medical goods and services.
Shantytowns have been growing across the US for almost 30 years.
Unions are just formalized reality, like fiscal economics, politics, etc
IMO, while we may not live to see it, I’m pretty sure out last 100-150 years of economic thought is, big picture style, on its way out.
It may take decades but once everyone is a gig worker, the political argument for universal healthcare will be undeniable.
IMO that’s more in-line with someone like Adam Smith, whose only condition for a market was free movement of workers between a market of opportunity.
This has somehow been mutated into a market of goods and services, probably out of laziness.
Don't get me wrong, France (and the EU) has its share of problems. But "better protections for their workers" is not one of them. EU countries decided to use a small portion of their enormous wealth building a safety net and decent worker protections. The US does this to a much lesser degree, preferring instead to center corporate profits and the wealthy.
If you don't pull your own weight, then I would love working with you.
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.
What industry?
Maybe we need to open a gigantic can of worms that “runs counter to globalization” if we’re talking about sending those jobs to countries with unethical working conditions.
There are many examples in the manufacturing industry, though unions aren't the only factor.
> Maybe we need to open a gigantic can of worms that “runs counter to globalization” if we’re talking about sending those jobs to countries with unethical working conditions.
I couldn't agree more, the problem is there are powerful interests that will keep trying to sweep this issue under the rug.
Ok. So what industry / example specifically?
Free trade moves industries elsewhere.
But actually killing an industry: technology, war, social changes, demand and laws that outlaw things.
Not advocating either position here, just pointing this out.
I'm not sure I'd characterize this as anything reasonable. At what point does this warrant self defense by the people stuck?
Also something I forgot to yesterday: unions that prevents downsizing or restructuring efforts to tackle industry changes, ending by killing the companies in question. Or, when a falling factory is about to be bought, imposing such constraints that all deal fall trough.
The US is the classic born on 3rd Base.
In fact, teachers are significantly more likely to be predators than even priests. [3] Thanks to unions who go to bat for them.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443437504577547...
[2] https://www.nj.com/education/2017/12/teachers_accused_of_sex...
[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-media-ignored-sex-abuse-in-...
Employees don't even decide if they want unions or not.
Snippet below:
> Tesla CEO Musk's anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor board
> Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk’s 2018 tweet threatening employees would lose their stock options if they formed a union was illegal and should be deleted, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board said on Thursday.
Deleting the tweet is maybe not ideal. Any future viewers of it should have the context added that it's an illegal threat.
Reuters actually had the scoop over 24 hours before the register.
"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.
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 channel.
A US Senator threatening to retaliate and break-up a business because she didn't like tweets about her is straight-up authoritarian thuggery.
It's the same shit Trump used to do but when Liz does it...well it's GREAT, she's "fighting for the working class"
And it's okay for their official PR twitter account to lie and say it doesn't happen?
But it's not okay that a politician says they're going to do something about it?
US Senators should not be threatening retaliation against a company because of tweets that piss them off.
Why is this only bad when Trump or a Republican does it?
I presume the people that voted for Warren are on her side in this argument so she's being an advocate for their views.
Just because you think Amazon's employees being forced to piss in bottles isn't bad to you doesn't mean that others sees it as an injustice that makes people angry.
>Why is this only bad when Trump or a Republican does it?
Maybe treat each event on a case by case basis rather than a blanket rule?
Care to explain it? Because it seems like the point of view advocated is "Politicans should not express views I don't like on social media"
Instead, she is going after amazon as a personal vendetta because she feels 'heckled'. She is explicitly attacking first amendment rights. It's a textbook case of corruption / abuse of power.
Like breaking up big tech companies is pretty much the only thing you hear about her in passing.
A personal vendetta against their twitter account just didn't start now.
Also this is corruption / abuse of power to you? You might want to get a new textbook.
It’s the “so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets” part that’s bad. Regardless of how you feel about her campaign to break up big tech, this is an appalling thing for a government official to say. I hate Twitter and Twitter culture as much as anyone, but “you shouldn’t be powerful enough to be snotty to a senator” is dystopian in my book.
If Amazon is breaking employment law or anti-monopoly law or anything else it can be fined or broken up. What it should not be is silenced.
If Amazon started running adverts about a giant space monkey that wanted to eat the moon, what would happen?
I've quote the tweets below.
Warren has been campaigning to break up large tech companies.
What is so unprofessional about that? Clearly if she was to try and get them fined or broken up it would be through these laws.
She isn't silencing them. She's saying that there'll be consequences.
And Amazon's PR isn't a small company. They can take the heat.
I don't agree with you. A company that forces employees to piss in bottles and lies about it should have their lies face consequences.
Warren isn't removing their tweets. How are they being silenced?
Here is the quotes:
``` After she posted the video on Twitter, saying that companies like Amazon "pay close to nothing in taxes," the tech giant quickly fired back.
"You make the tax laws @SenWarren; we just follow them," it tweeted from its official news account.
"If you don't like the laws you've created, by all means, change them," it added.
Amazon said that it had paid "billions of dollars" in corporate taxes over the past few years alone.
Warren hit back, saying: "I didn't write the loopholes you exploit, @amazon – your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did.
"But you bet I'll fight to make you pay your fair share," she added. "And fight your union-busting. And fight to break up Big Tech so you're not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets." ```
Anyone should be able to heckle senators on twittwr! From Mark Zuckerberg to the homeless man in the nearby park!
Amazon does not want its employees to piss into bottles. But sometimes employees (predominantly male I hope) do piss into bottles, because they did not plan correctly, or just had to go while on the road. If caught, these employees (and their managers) are then reprimanded. If they get a chance to defend themselves, of course they claim it was due to the deadline, not poor planning or bladder control or uncommon hygiene ethics.
Amazon factually states: Hey, if we required our employees to pee into bottles to meet deadlines, do you seriously think people would work for us, and not 100s of other low-paid jobs which don't have that medieval requirement?
Politicians: Hey, this you?! I have lots of pictures of bottles with piss! Where is your snotty reply now? You say that your employees do not have to piss into bottles, so how come I have those pictures?! Huh?!
It is embarrassing to both sides. Especially for official government employees (who also don't have to pee into bottles to meet deadlines, but I am sure you can turn up at least some pictures: if not, find any traces of cocaine use in the Capitol, then posit that the US congress have their senators use cocaine in the toilet to meet deadlines. Or, you know, bi-partisan plan to have low-skilled employees share in the American dream made possible by Amazon, but I guess that does not fit inside a tweet).
No, but solid rhetorics. This is the part you give proof of the fact that Amazon have their workers pee in bottles to meet deadlines. Not point to something else entirely that goes far beyond the things you pose as facts, which are not. Don't look at that! Look at this documentary that goes far far beyond it. Well played! And solid one for PBS for exposing the worker abuse that Amazon is now in court for! We need the free press to save worker laws.
I would agree that is a terrible problem. Perhaps Amazon should focus more attention on catching such employees early and letting them go (or offering them potty training with quarterly evaluations)? But then where does the average go? Deadlines get even tighter! Or you could make your wage relative to your worker speed: the fastest people earn the most. Only if you think you still earn enough for shitty work will you then be forced to keep doing that job. Or should Amazon be more kind to these employees who can't seem to manage their personal hygiene or fall way below average worker speeds? Treat and pay them the same as the 99% employees who don't shit and deliver? That would lead to an equal outcome for sure.
But in all seriousness, it would be optimal for a society that values liberty and freedom to move away from platforms to standards. No need to breakup FANGS if NIST or something similar defines qualitative API standards for social networks, or more broadly societal network services. And this will also be a huge boon for the startup space and true non-predatory innovation in the virtual services space.
I thought I liked her policies but this sounds authoritarian. I'd prefer politicians stay tf off twotter unless they got the stomach for it. They're speaking about "authenticity" and the problem of people hiding behind handles whenever given the chance. But they are themselves only interested in "engineering consent" for those who bankrolled their move into office. The consensus should be that they have to be able to put up with a very wide variety of opinions (and most certainly the "snooty" kind).
This far predates a spat with an Amazon twitter handle
That's a huge difference.
100% sure that wouldn't have happened if that tweet from @amazonnews didn't piss off some Amazon employee. They're really not doing themselves any favours by letting whoever posted those tweets to tweet from their official account.
Sanders is 1% of half of Congress. Not dictator of Vermont.
They lied about what Warren said.
A gentle reminder to everyone on HN, Not everyone lives in US, and even if they do not everyone is well versed in everything going on in US.
they are scared. they are really scared.
it's like amazon entire business model is based on exploitation of labor.
Wait till you find out how the electronics and clothes in your house are made and how the materials they're made from are sourced or what the workforce that picks the fruit and vegetables you see in the supermarket, endures.
It is rarely (never?) discussed in the west how all the consumer goods are cheap simply because the supply chain relies on poor exploitable people and exploiting the environment.
All we hear about is the positive spin, how capitalism and globalization have blessed us with cheap goods and how those poor farmers halfway around the world now have paying jobs, woo-hoo!
I don't know, I see it talked about all the time, but 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.
The parts of our society that profit off cheap offshore labor are quick to spin stories accusing people of being nationalist/protectionist/racist, but their profit margin is being defended in the process and the issues distracted from.
At the same time, if I lived in a largely agrarian society and factory work offered me the choice to get out of poor farm labor work, I’d jump at it the same way my ancestors did. I feel most of us can appreciate the value and prosperity that the global supply chain has brought, while simultaneously lamenting the destruction of domestic industry and the exploitation that has accompanied it.
We don’t have to be all-for or all-against, though I think when “free trade” agreements come up, they should be regarded very suspiciously, and when accusations fly about nationalism and protectionism, those should be seen as the cheap and distracting rhetorical devices they are.
There is no ethical consumption under captialism. Blah blah blah.
I also can’t relate to your “all we hear about” point at all. I feel like I really have to go out of my way to find any discussion about anything good in the world, the vast majority of what I hear is negative takes like yours about how everything is horrible and everyone is oppressed.
If you adjust your definition of poverty to local inflation, you also barely see any difference anymore.
I have also heard some compelling arguments that a similar transformation is likely on the way in sub-Saharan African over the next few decades.
Also these are real dollars, they are adjusted for inflation.
As for Chinese people, it is amazing that they came out of poverty. But clearly it's not thanks to free market capitalism.
The poverty line is also arbitrarily low, with many countless people over the poverty line who are dying of hunger. A more realistic poverty line would probably be several times bigger than the current value, which would fuether skew the numbers.
Not to mention, as others have pointed out, the vast majority of people taken out of poverty were taken out by dictatorial China's social programs, not capitalism.
> You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.
Meanwhile, The Intercept has mountains of evidence that Amazon itself knows that its workers pee in bottles[2].
It's so blatant that I thought the account was a parody, but it's real.
[1] https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1374911222361956359
[2] https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-bottl...
Labor Board: Quick, hide the evidence before we have to do more work.
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.
> [...] because otherwise they could be demanding something more valuable?
Like twice as many stock options? I'm a bit confused. Stock options are fungible. You can make granting of stock options worth arbitrary many dollars, by eg increasing the volume or lowering the strike price etc.
When a direct relationship exists between the parties, this is a possibility. When there is a third party dictating what happens, this is much less realistic.
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.
Not sure what the laws are. There might be laws saying that you can't discriminate against people in unions, so in order not to hand stock options to unionized employees, they might have to withhold stock options from all employees?
(No clue, just speculating.)
I mean yes. And then a union could strike. At which point elon would have a decision to make: is proving a dumb point worth his business?
> Also FWIW Musk clarified
Presumably on lawyers advice.
> no UAW employees have stock options at any other company.
But that,as others have explained, isn't relevant. Nothing stops the Tesla union from maintaining those perks, and options aren't valuable at most auto companies anyway, so aiming for different perks is superior.
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.
This is simply not true, except in the most pedantic and disingenuous sense.
There were violent strikes by some groups of unionized workers, that broke the law, and that resulted in some deaths, if that's what you're referring to. There is absolutely no reason this thuggery should have been rewarded by giving the strikers what they demanded, which was the abrogation of the company owners' private property and contracting rights.
As it happened, US industry, and with it US wages, grew much faster before society gave into the unions, when the US was still a free market where people had a sacred right to freely contract.
Unless you're also happy about shooting people starting a union or striking, you should read this article to learn why this is a really bad idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
Mostly I wanted to give a bit more historic context. Japan is arguably a more productive economy and a better place to live than India, and Pseudoerasmus suggests that this is at least partly because labour was not able to mount as effective a defense as in India.
To belabour that point: Fred says at https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPINA156NRUG that the labour share of GDP in India is something above 50%.
Japan is also something above 50%: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPJPA156NRUG
India's GDP per capita is about 1.9k USD. The number for Japan is about 40k USD.
So even in the hypothetical world where Indian labour would somehow be so strong it would capture 100% of GDP, that would still be only about 10% of what Japanese workers get.
Now, of course, any nuanced argument will take into account that labour suppression wasn't the only difference between Japan and India.
But the important thing is that this shifts the context of the argument: instead of a knee-jerk attitude of 'unions are obviously good for workers in the long run', we have some more explaining to do.
(With sufficient mental gymnastics, you might stil be able to argue that unions and strong labour in general is good for standard of living. But at least now you have to engage in that gymnastics.)
Also, is there any evidence that collective action returns a sustainably larger slice of corporate revenues?
That’s over four million percent more than the median employee’s total compensation. But he’d rather union bust than be a slightly less rich centibillionaire.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/business/highest-pa...
Great, so bring a union in. Maybe median wages will briefly jump 10% or so in response to threats. Within five years the median wage probably won't be any higher. Probably lower if union action rattles investor confidence and Tesla's access to capital shrinks, leading to less future investment, in turn leading to less profit and fewer jobs at the company.
With all this talk of bringing in a bloated Detroit union bureaucracy into Fremont, you might as well plead with Tesla to focus less on US manufacturing over the next decade. Yay, everyone wins!
This discussion clearly isn’t going anywhere, so I’m ducking out. Have a nice day!
> Work somewhere else.
You could equally say to any workers at Tesla who want to establish a union. Work somewhere else.
As for how to choose, I'm not sure.
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 -- so why shouldn't someone join Tesla and attempt to unionize.
It seemed to me they were just going to join the UAW.
There are two assembly plants within a few miles of where I grew up in the US. Both Japanese car companies, to this day they aren’t union and they are doing fine. There have been a few dustups from the UAW over the years, but they were never successful in flipping the workforce.
I think the threat of unionizing might help keep Tesla more invested in avoiding the type of environment that would foster broad support of organizing within the company.
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.
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 per capita of 98k, fully 2x that of Germany's best city.
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.
Tesla would never have gotten off the ground anywhere in the EU, and our climate change prospects would be a lot worse off for it. If we want to solve the major problems facing the world, it's going to require major innovation, and that isn't going to come from EU style market regulation.
Where did you get this from? Germany is actually the only country in the EU where GDP per capita is higher when the capital is excluded. Munich is at 80,000€, Frankfurt (Main) 95,000€, Hamburg 60,000€, Berlin 40,000€ [1].
Germany is highly federated, with large companies near or in small towns or cities that only exist because the company was founded there decades or centuries ago.
You are talking about tech but this is about Tesla. I don't get why people are still treating Tesla like a tech company. They are making cars that happen to have some driving assistance. By that metric VW, BMW, and Daimler are also tech companies, each way larger than Tesla by cars sold, people employed, and GDP impact. Tesla is as much tech as WeWork was tech.
1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_deutschen_St%C3%A4dt... (German)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_cities_by_GDP
> Germany is actually the only country in the EU where GDP per capita is higher when the capital is excluded. Munich is at 80,000€, Frankfurt (Main) 95,000€, Hamburg 60,000€, Berlin 40,000€ [1].
I was using the city with the highest absolute GDP. That's a fair point that Munich has a higher GDP per capita.
> You are talking about tech but this is about Tesla. I don't get why people are still treating Tesla like a tech company. They are making cars that happen to have some driving assistance. By that metric VW, BMW, and Daimler are also tech companies, each way larger than Tesla by cars sold, people employed, and GDP impact. Tesla is as much tech as WeWork was tech.
My point about tech isn't so much the nature of the business, as the presence of a well functioning startup scene. I think it would be very very difficult to start a new capital and labor intensive company like Tesla in Germany today, and the non-presence of tech is just symptomatic of the difficulty of starting new businesses.
Compare the largest companies by revenue in the US to Germany:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_German_compani...
Most of the German ones were founded in the first half of the 20th century, if not earlier (you have to be a little careful reading the list, a few say they were founded recently, but they were really just the mergers of old companies - there are a couple legitimately new ones though). In the US, there are tons of companies founded in the last few decades on the list. My argument is that the German economy is mostly sustaining itself on the back of its economic achievements prior to the institution of its modern labor policies. Economic dynamism has been hamstrung.
You make great points about Berlin and about GDP per capita.
It remains true that Europe doesn’t have nearly the number of startups that the United States does, and this is notable.
TL;DR: it’s complicated.
More generally, if you look at Europe there are actually far more startups. They generally have much lower valuations though, because there isn't as much capital going into VC.
And probably you should look at Sweden as it does better than the US on a per capita basis in terms of startups.
It's really not always about the money...
I think it's more complex than you state. The EU is indeed one economic block, but the tech industry is quite varied within that block. Amsterdam has a relatively small but growing tech scene and the Dutch gov has been entrepreneur friendly for as long as I've been here. I just saw in the news a couple of days ago:
"Dutch cleantech startup Sympower raises €5.2 million to boost the European energy transition".
Berlin has quite a lot of fintech startups. I know because I worked with one. Yes the red tape and German regs are a PITA and slow things down. But I don't think unions or regulations are the only reason we have less tech startups here. It's also a lack of drive and vision within the population, a cultural thing.
This reminds me about the time we wanted better safety gear to our milling machine and boss basically told us that if we focus on safety too much, we might aswell shut the shop down.
Sure, I work with the risk of injuring myself, so that you can make 10x my income.
That can’t be both true. If the average is 45k, there must be higher ones, unless GDP per capita is a flat 45k across all its cities.
So what about a food delivery company with €1.238 billion (2019) in revenue per year? Good or bad?
For comparison Deliveroo is £476 million (2018) and DoorDash is $2.886 billion (2020)
That company was founded in Berlin (Delivery Hero).
> it has near zero presence in the most important industry of the 21st century
I guess most people never heard about them, because they target the local/European market. But they exist
In Germany, there are a lot of so called 'hidden champions' - companies that are small but focus on some higher end, niche products, e.g. oil filters,special purpose ball bearings,etc. The same is the case in many other European countries. This stay small approach is hard understand from the US,or Chinese perspective,where if you don't make $1B in revenue, nobody's going to put you on a map.
Which is great, but manufacturing those products doesn't generate the kind of cashflow or global influence that US tech companies generate.
Curious how many people here praising these hidden champions has worked for or wishes to work for one. I worked for a couple and it was eye-opening on never doing it again and avoiding them like the plague since they provide no high paying jobs and generate nearly no innovation as they simply survive on having cornered a niche market where neither US nor Chinese companies bother to compete because either the margins or volumes are too low and the decades-long relations with their customers are more valued in those businesses rather than cheaper price or better products.
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.
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 want to work in such an industry anymore since I saw how the sausage is made and I have goals in life that are not compatible with working in manufacturing.
>There is a lot of arrogance here on HN. >Somebody has to make air filters, lighting, brake pads, ropes, etc., you know?
Would you like to be this 'somebody' working in a factory making oil-filters or would you rather be in a a high demand, high paying job?
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.
Did you have any experience in this sector or it just an amrchair argument from an ivory tower of an white collar worker? Because I have first hand experience and factories, even in Europe still need quiet a few personnel.
And not all industries are automated, just ask people working in the meat packing industry or in Amazon warehouses, how their jobs are. Yes, in Europe.
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.
UAW is the union trying to organize Tesla's plant.
I should also note that almost all Japanese auto companies in the US are non-union and it's been that way for many decades.
If the narrative that unions hinder business growth was true, you have to provide with some mechanism for which that would be the case. An easy one is that businesses have to spend more per workers and hence cannot afford bigger investment. This sounds right, but it is anything but. If that were the case you wouldn’t see Volvo factories still operating in Sweden.
What is it precisely that unions in America are doing which is not a national law in Europe, and European unions aren’t doing which causes businesses “to wither and stagnate for the gain of a privileged few”?
U.S. unions are much more adversarial, seeing themselves as the enemy of management. In fact it is illegal for a member of management to be in a union in the U.S.
In Germany, unions hold board seats and see themselves more as partners, invested in the overall success of the business. The principle of codetermination means that union members can be in management. In Germany, unions are much closer to trade organizations or professional organizations, rather than the worker-management divide in the U.S.
In terms of politics, it's hard to be cognitively captured by the whole "greedy corporations oppressing workers" meme when you are sitting on the board and realize that your livelihood depends on the business doing well.
Similarly, German CEOs do not have the astronomical executive pay that US CEOs have. They are much more down to earth.
Germany is a nation that has had social insurance since Bismarck, primarily to contain a vigorous and violent left wing movement during the Kulturkampf of the late 19th Century. German unions are often quite conservative with respect to the culture wars and are hostile to that movement, which has its base more in the universitites and eco-groups than in the heavily unionized shop floors and production lines.
Yet at the same time, Germany has had no minimum wage until 2015. The US had a minimum wage since 1938. This, too, is because historically German businesses adopted a much more cooperative relationship to workers.
So even though it's true that Germany has high rates of unionization and an innovative economy, that does not mean that unions in the US would lead to the same outcomes. German and US unions are different beasts.
Union shop or not, employers in the US are more adversarial, primarily serving the interests of shareholders and will usually not voluntarily give workers a seat at the table. Of course the American unions have to be different as the environment is less cooperative than Germany
You seem to be replying as though I’m saying he’s not wealthy? Obviously he’s extremely wealthy by any definition. But most ultra-wealthy people are a LOT more diversified in their portfolio than Musk is. Someone with a diverse portfolio stands more chance of being able to functionally realise their wealth—if, say, they wanted to donate a large chunk of it to some charitable cause.
An argument could be made that Buffet is far and away the richest person (in terms of realisable wealth) due to his highly diverse holdings.
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.
Just because one company is partially unionized that does not mean that all workers who wish to be part of a union try to work at that company. Maybe the working conditions changed (for the worse), or maybe the worker doesn’t want to move to another state just to work for a company that is unionized. Either way, it’s not like there’s a 1 company quota in every industry that can be unionized and then bam problem solved.
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/the-biden-era-of-labor-law...
I could be wrong but... I'm pretty sure Amazon and Tesla pay great relative to their space. Relatively demanding, sure. I get it. We've all seen the article where some Amazon worker urinated in a bottle because "the job is just so ruthless!". They employ hundreds of thousands of workers worldwide. If it was that bad, I think they'd have a harder time hiring.
I could have sworn I read that if you are a hardworking Amazon warehouse worker, they'll train you for a more technical job. That seems like a pretty good benefit. I'm sure most Amazon warehouse jobs start in the $15-20/hr range. How much better can you really get for what is essentially reading a screen, grabbing something off of a shelf, and putting it in a box? Maybe drive a forklift/unload a truck with a pallet jack.
I feel like the same people who want Amazon to unionize so workers can get better wages + healthcare, also don't want Amazon to kill mom + pop shops. Ok... How is a mom and pop shop supposed to pay $20/hr with healthcare for a warehouse worker when they don't have AWS money falling from the sky?
There are many worse places to work, but that's whataboutism and using that argument leads to a race to the bottom.
I'd be willing to wager this "fact" has been brought up more in this thread alone than has actually happened on the job. Makes for great sensationalism, though. The union cause would be much better served without this silly BS being shared like it's the actual cause of woos.
https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-bottl...
"Leaked memo shows Amazon knows delivery drivers resort to urinating in bottles"
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/25/amazon-de...
> The email [May 2020] went on to say: “We’ve noticed an uptick recently of all kinds of unsanitary garbage being left inside bags: used masks, gloves, bottles of urine.”
> Workers have previously told the Guardian they needed to urinate inside water bottles on a daily basis for fear of missing delivery rates. A forum on Reddit dedicated to Amazon drivers, which, while impossible to vet completely for authenticity, nonetheless shows hundreds of comments from drivers claiming they frequently have to urinate in water bottles for lack of bathroom breaks while on the job
https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+warehouse+ambulance
"How much better" would be things like AC when the weather is too hot (which it seems has improved after all the negative press), and other safety considerations as mentioned in all the articles.
I'm not for or against unions here, but I'm certain Amazon could do better.
https://www.nelp.org/publication/amazons-disposable-workers-...
As for people hired, try upwards of 600,000 in front line roles, with high turnover. They keep hiring because many don't last over a year in the warehouses. People need cash, and the hiring process is incredibly frictionless.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazons-turnove...
Do these people not deserve better working conditions?
You're severely underestimating the punishing conditions of an Amazon warehouse job.
A picker has a tablet that alerts them of an item to get. A clock starts counting down on the time you have to get to the right bin, find the item, and scan it. The warehouse sorting algorithms created by Amazon engineers optimize for retrieval time - but the warehouses are so huge, this means in practice that you have exactly as much time as you need assuming you never stop moving. For your entire 8-9 hour shift.
A typical amazon warehouse worker is essentially powerwalking non-stop for 8 hours straight on hard concrete floors. Breaks begin at a scheduled time, but your break begins when you sign out of your device, then you walk some distance to the break room (typically a 3-5 minute walk), AND you have to be signing back in to your device at the end of your break time. In practice this means your actual resting time on break is typically 5 minutes or less for 15's, 15-20 minutes for lunch. You are not allowed to sit or rest anywhere other than the break room.
If you sign back in only a few seconds late from your break, a manager will speak with you about it. If you sign back in 30 seconds late a few times in a row, you can be fired.
It's true that Amazon pays well in the warehouse space and is constantly hiring people with no experience. However, this isn't because Amazon is a great place to work - it's because there is an incredible amount of churn. People burn out of Amazon warehouse work constantly.
If you search on google for Amazon warehouse stories, you'll find a lot of people talking about how physically punishing the job is, about the constant stress from 22-year-old "managers" doing their rotation through a warehouse and enforcing Amazon's draconian rulebook without a thought in their head about the people they're taking to task for coming back from lunch 30 seconds late.
There's a blog out there from a guy who worked in Amazon warehouses in the Midwest, who documented everything while looking into trying to organize. The stories he tells about the work environment are hair-raising.
Amazon has figured out how to optimize the physical output of a human being, squeezing every last ounce of productivity from them every second of a shift until they either quit from burnout or get fired for not "making rate" (total % of lateness picking or packing assigned items). The fact that Amazon has an endless supply of people signing up to work in this environment says less about Amazon and more about the state of the American economy and how many desperate people are out there who need to sell their physical and mental health to Bezos pay their bills.
> I'm sure most Amazon warehouse jobs start in the $15-20/hr range. How much better can you really get for what is essentially reading a screen, grabbing something off of a shelf, and putting it in a box?
Amazon is also one of the richest companies in the world, largely dependant on the work of each and every one of those warehouse workers. Why is it ok for the company to try to squeeze every penny of profit, but not for employees to try to squeeze every possible penny of wage out of the company?
Amazon could probably make a great profit even if it paid its warehouse workers 30 or even 100 USD per hour. Why is it a priori wrong for employees to try to move the needle in that direction?
If that's unrealistic, still: Amazon's profit went up by 84% in 2020. Why shouldn't workers seek for their wages to go up 84% instead?
Not saying that they should, but there is a strange double standard in these sorts of discussions, where it is taken for granted that the company should seek to extract the maximum amount of profit from its workers, but the other way around is seen as abnormal.
So, say Amazon's net income in 2019 was $11.5B, and that they paid employees about $25B. Even if Amazon's scale in 2020 required no additional workers, increasing wages for those existing workers by 84% would have wiped out Amazon's entire profit and more despite a banner year.
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 might not be profitable.
Amazon is made into separate business units, so increasing salaries in one business unit which isn’t very profitable because the other business unit is profitable is just bad business.
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 that's great, but if they treat those same workers like absolute shit with inhumane working conditions, then that's a problem that a union can help resolve.
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 in that world, the factory workers I worked with would have considered an Amazon warehouse job to be a dream job.
I feel dirty now for having defended Amazon, but the truth is the truth.
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.
I’m actually for having unions, but they should be limited in size, and it should be easy for workers at a given site, or with a particular job role to quit the union and form their own.
As it is, with an Amazon union, employees will have two abusive monopolies to fight instead of just one.
Unions can (and do!) negotiate working conditions.
Dunno about Tesla but based on everything I've read, Amazon's "blue collar" workforce appears to have productivity requirements that are mostly unobtainable without taking shortcuts (like skipping lunch and bathroom breaks) and these jobs appear to have an extremely high turnover rate, which speaks to the crap nature of the job.
A lot of people would not mind taking a small cut in pay for more humanitarian working conditions. People, generally, like being treated like people and not machines. But I don't actually think this is needed, I think Amazon can both improve working conditions and make a strong profit.
For a quick example, my cousin has a union job where a paid lunch break (half hour) was negotiated every day. Union leaders routinely make their rounds around the office to make sure everyone is actually taking their lunch break and not feeling forced to work through lunch.
Amazon makes bank because they can get away with exploiting workers more than a mom and pop shop can, or small businesses.
--- edit ---
Amazon also has an extremely high turn over rate revealing the cruelty of their workplaces: https://labor411.org/411-blog/warehouse-worker-turnover-rate...
Cite from economist for counties with lower pay: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/01/20/what-amaz... and chart without a paywall: https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1375127251004571649/pho...
Let's stop with the feel good "Amazon must pay better than alternatives because they're wealthy" and look at the facts.
Mom and pop warehouses pay $12-$13/hr in my county and Amazon pays $15-$20/hr with health care I believe.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/01/20/what-amaz...
[1] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/01/20/what-amaz...
- sorry for the second comment but I wanted to cut to the chase
> You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-bottl...
[2] https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1374911222361956359
It's not an alternative to a union, but an additional right. Workers can also form councils at shop floor level - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council
> The entire concept of unionization seems unnecessarily confrontational.
Unionization is confrontational by definition because it's the materialization of completely opposing interests. A unified workforce that can make collective demands on their employer is economically never in the interest of the employer.
> There is nothing preventing the state to require significant representation of employees in every board of directors.
There is not a single doubt in my mind that this would be seen by almost anyone as an extremely left-wing policy. When you say "there is nothing preventing the state" I'm not sure what you mean, unless you have a country with a very left leaning populace there is no way this would fly. For an example from my country, have a look at "employee funds".[1] The purpose was essentially to tax companies, use the money to buy stock in the companies, and give ownership to a part of the companies to trade unions. So, in a way, exactly what you mention. Remember that this was attempted in a country that had a post-war social democratic majority for decades, and even then it didn't work.
> In this way, labour and capital could work together in a more integrated manner, avoiding much of this unnecessary conflict.
Again, the conflict between labor and capital is not "unnecessary", it's built into the power relation. While everybody benefits from the company doing well in the long run during an equilibrium where everybody's happy, in the short term, changes to the benefit of the employer are often negative to the employees, and vice versa.
Even so, perhaps the reasoning frame you promote is one of our challenges. I see labour and capital as being in conflict when they are out of balance with regard to one another.
In particular, I do not think labour (or capital) must always be in the driver's seat. I think that every situation probably has a healthy balance of power, dependent upon the circumstances, where both capital and labour are respected for the contributions they make to the enterprise.
Otherwise we have what we have now, rampant unfairness and tension but no conflict because the board can get away with whatever conditions PR allows them to get away with.
> Short of having mandatory employee ownership unions are the next best thing, and one is far easier in the US.
Again, just saying this is easy but what is the meaning of union in this context? What a union is and what it does has been wildly different thought history, form country to country and form industry to industry.
What are the exact powers of that union mandatory union?
These discussions are always so abstract, union are almost an article of faith for some people.
No one should be forced to work anywhere. Which also means working isn’t a right. Work somewhere that works with you and establish a healthy relationship. Set expectations and be clear on what is desired.
One spends much of their time working, to do it in such a way where a cordial relationship is not there; it might as well be no different than hell.
Find somewhere else to work if a company doesn’t work with your ethos. Unionizing to coerce and compel is so disgusting. It’s plainly a form of bullying. That’s no way to live life.
A corporation would like to pay its employees as little as possible. The employees would like the opposite. What am I missing? - genuine question.
The actual only way that capital and workers can have a non-adversarial relationship is if the workers are in control of the capital. Otherwise capital will always be leverage used to extract surplus value from workers. That, on a large scale, is socialism by the way.
This is ridiculous. Where's the fucking fine?
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trou...
It is also worth noting that virtually every major news company has a fully unionized workforce who essentially can't be replaced and have a financial conflict of interest in how the public perceives left vs right policies and parties.
The tweet is https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/998454539941367808
> Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare.
where he is talking about the fact that other companies with the UAW do not have stock options for their employees , which he even clarifies in this next tweet https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999415738967277568
> Exactly. UAW does not have individual stock ownership as part of the compensation at any other company.
This is apparently "intimidation". And as for the guy fired
> In another incident, a union-affiliated worker, Jose Moran, accessed Workday, Tesla's internal HR system, to look up information about an employee who opposed the union. Moran took a screenshot of the other worker's Workday page—which included his name, photo, job title, and other information—and texted it to another union-affiliated employee, Richard Ortiz. Ortiz wound up using the anti-union employee's picture in a post on a private Facebook group for pro-union Tesla employees.
> Richard Ortiz was fired after the incident , but because Tesla did not have standing rules against browsing employees' profiles on Workday or screenshotting them , apparently that's not allowed.
In addition, the employee who was fired didn’t access the internal system. Someone else did, and texted him the photos, which he posted. The person who allegedly accessed the system only got a warning. So, if the concern is the improper access of company systems, then they punished the wrong guy.
The real question is if they'd have been fired for doing that if they weren't a union organizer. And perhaps more importantly, whether you'd be able to convince a judge that looking up co-workers on an internal directory and/or posting about them privately on Facebook is always a firable offense.
I have participated in "get out the vote" operations. In that case it's quite similar: you mostly want to avoid knocking on the door of likely-strong-no households, as you have so many likely-strong-yes doors to knock, and debating people on the doorstep is a waste of precious time when close to an election/primary -- so you can see the value in having a good data operation to know which houses are likely one way or the other, and spreading that knowledge to your canvassers.
So it seems to me that what Oritz did must qualify as protected activity...
The threat was that Tesla would revoke stock option grants if the workforce unionized, or refuse to negotiate over the availability of stock options, which is illegal under current federal labor regulations.
No, most other automakers don't offer stock, because the UAW didn't negotiate that with other automakers. However, for most other automakers, (and indeed, outside of tech generally) stock options are not worth much because the stock doesn't appreciate rapidly and it's not worth the administrative burden of issuing/tracking options for share gains in the fractions of a dollar. Most other automakers do allow employees to purchase (actual) shares of company stock out of pre-tax income, which is generally a huge benefit for companies that actually make money and are valued on fundamentals.
If it was my factory, I would cut the stock grant and fire them all - unionized or not - to end a clear message to the other factories: "you only have one job, while I have more than one factory"
This is true in the US, but it's not true in other countries which learned from our mistakes and implemented wage boards/sectoral bargaining, where a union contract applies to an entire industry at once. This makes the employer less likely to feel they're becoming uncompetitive by accepting the union, which is good since in the past they tended to react by having all their employees killed by the Pinkertons.
If you don't think that Elon means employees will lose their stock options if they unionize, then what does he mean?
So it's really an us vs them mentality. Either I get richer, or you get richer. Don't expect these people to start reasoning about making the company they work for competitive.
At least this is the case in europe.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
As an individual I feel like I have relatively more bargaining power, because when eg talking about pay I just need to convince the company to bump one total comp package, mine.
So I can negotiate much more aggressively and get more done, then someone who tried to get the company to raise thousands of pay packages.
Also, I have an easy time convincing the company that I am leaving (or not joining), if they don't accede to my demands.
No union can credibly threaten that all unionized employees will quit, if they don't get a 40% pay rise.
None of what you wrote applies to assembly line workers. And arguably, it doesn't apply to junior software devs either.
> Yes, the workers will eventually come back to work, but only after they gain some concessions from management, and it can be a long time before they come back.
Workers don't get paid while on strike (they get some money back from the union that they saved there themselves). There's no guarantee that management will make concessions.
Yes, it can be a long time before workers come back.
> ...
> Also, I have an easy time convincing the company that I am leaving (or not joining), if they don't accede to my demands.
And when your aggressive negotiating is too much of a hassle for the company they just have to fire one "problematic" employee, you. And unless you have created a hellhole of a system architecture in your project that only you can maintain as insurance/backup to your aggressive negotiation, you will be surprised to see just how replaceable you are.
So if that's too 'problematic' for them, they don't need to hire me.
If you want to negotiate just as aggressively while working for them, you have to have your outside options all lined up. Basically, yes, if you threaten to leave, you should not be surprised if they call your bluff and take wish you farewell.
Always be aware of your BATNA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat... and make sure it's a good one.
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 dispute between management and the union. [1]
[1] https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr347.html
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 US autos uncompetitive against the Japanese brands for a long time.
I want to be pro-union but it's hard when you observe their real world behaviour. All too often they slowly strangle their company, making it less and less competitive and innovative and ultimately dooming it to defeat by new entrants who aren't yet encumbered by unions.
Eg German unions have a reputation, at least compared to the US, of cooperating much more with their host companies. Similar also for Scandinavian unions.
> It could also be the case that US unions operate in a country where power is held by a class of people who would really prefer their serfs to STFU and get back to whatever dangerous, ill-paid task they were assigned.
What makes you think European business owners are less greedy or evil? Capital is internationally mobile, and it's the same index funds owning a good chunk of all companies everywhere, too.
And within Europe, the places with the best off workers tend to be the ones with pro-business laws, like Switzerland (and in contrast to Greece or France).
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?
> They really seemed to view workers vs mgmt as an adversarial zero sum game.
That doesn't really affect the feasibility or otherwise of running an ESOP as a union shop. On the contrary, I imagine that if you view the entire thing as zero-sum, you might be more prone to think about what is going to happen to your stock's value if you strike, or take steps that negatively effect efficiency.
If you're not thinking zero-sum, you can use some pretty handwavey logic for thinking the next bonus you demand doesn't really negatively effect people like your coworkers or the shareholders, since you're merely being compensated for your inherent greatness that will inevitably lead to the company's greater success, blah blah... congratulations, you appear to be in senior management.
> Meanwhile Toyota were developing their production system using the kaizen principle of bottom up continuous improvement. Unions played a huge role in making US autos uncompetitive against the Japanese brands for a long time.
It doesn't seem unfathomable to me that a unionized company could develop something like the Toyota Production System. The German companies tout having learned from Toyota, and I don't know how true that is, but the successful, modern German car companies are all unionized. (in the greater context, Tesla is still nonunion and didn't appear to pay any attention to TPS when they brought their production online, which is maybe interesting)
This is common anti-union rhetoric. Am I an owner, with my $600 stock, and can I convince 89.5% of the other stock holders to vote with me?[0] Doesn't sound like ownership.
[0] see supermajority voting
If I join a union at work, it has no bearing on my stock options. In the uk its illegal to discriminate like that, precisely because employers like tesla would make it economically impossible to join a union.
As an aside, if you take away the shares, there is little incentive to work together to increase the share value. So of course unions are going to be incentivised differently.
These issues (among others) are addressed at length in the NLRB's decision (https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45833d3fce) which takes into account probably thousands of pages of briefs, witness statements, and legal analysis.
The decision itself is only ~50 pages and is readable without a legal background. The section "credibility findings" which starts on page 32 might interest you.
The full docket activity page for the case is here (https://www.nlrb.gov/case/32-CA-197020).