Comment by mlindner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mlindner | Hacker News Reader

To repeat the key info from this case that makes one question the NRLB ruling (from reddit originally):

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.

> why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?

If you don't think that Elon means employees will lose their stock options if they unionize, then what does he mean?

“It would be a real shame if something were to happen to those stock options once you unionized, wouldn’t it?”

The likelihood that the UAW would roll in, start collecting dues and then do nothing with the comp structure seems extremely small.

I'm taking it to mean union employees wouldn't get new grants. Which makes sense to me - I have a hard time squaring how you can be in a union with an adversarial relationship to management, whilst at the same time being an owner of the company. It's one or the other.

Why are these things at odds? It seems like the ideal outcome for the union would be to have a significant ownership stake in the company and share in its success, rather than have an adversarial relationship and drag down profits. Making the company uncompetitive in the market is bad for the union in the long run.

Representatives of the union see the world differently. They don't see collaboration on the same goal, they see rich management exploiting employees to get even richer.

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.

Interesting that this would be the case in Europe. Germany has had 'codetermination' laws for decades, where they have (typically union) representation on the boards of large corporations[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany

This doesn't invalidate my remark though. Nothing says these union board members are there to make the company more competitive. They are there to provide better working conditions.

Still, the point stands that of all the European states, labor is arguably strongest in Germany, and at the same time Germany industry is extremely competitive. If strong labor was a huge competitive disadvantage you'd think Germany would be falling behind, but instead it's quite the opposite.

Individual employees have every bit as adversarial a relationship to management as union members. They just have much less bargaining power.

What do you mean by less bargaining power?

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.

These may all be fine arguments as to why a high-level(!) software developer might not want to join a union.

None of what you wrote applies to assembly line workers. And arguably, it doesn't apply to junior software devs either.

Unions threaten that all employees will quit all.the.time. It’s called a strike. It’s their primary bargaining power. 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.

I know about strikes. They are different than everyone quitting.

> 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.

> I just need to convince the company to bump one total comp package, mine

> ...

> 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.

To be honest, I do most of the aggressive negotiations before I join the company.

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.

> I have a hard time squaring how you can be in a union with an adversarial relationship to management, whilst at the same time being an owner of the company. It's one or the other.

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

Interesting, yeah those are good points. I can certainly see it reducing the severity of disputes in theory.

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.

So it depends a bit on whether you talk about real world US unions like the UAW, or about what unions could be in theory and might be in other parts of the world.

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. When the most egregious wrongs are simply illegal and never happen then it is much easier for capital and labor to have a less adversarial relationship, but when you operate in a country like the US I would assume it is necessary for a union to be a bit more aggressive in its actions and objectives.

It could also be the case that most people commenting do not have experience with very many unions and have adopted the portions of a goofy pro- vs anti-union argument that has existed in popular US culture since right-wing think tanks began poisoning public political dialogue in the seventies.

Oh, German unions have their problems as well.

> 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.

Business owners in Europe are not any less greedy or evil, they are simply constrained by laws and the political environment to be unable to commit the worst offenses.

Not sure. Workers in the US are better off than in Europe.

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).

Ford sold 900,000 F150s in 2019.

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?

Look outside the US and you can easily see how US Auto is uncompetitive.

"For a long time" was the qualifier. I was talking about the 70s and 80s when Japanese imports were disrupting the market.

> In practice though I'm skeptical.

> 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)

Unions don’t have to be adversarial...and it is often driven by management, as you are seeing here.

"owner of the company"?

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

what? how is that not stopping people unionise?

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.

Only, employee-owned co-ops demonstratee that you actually can have it both ways.

Union contracts are employer specific (and in some cases, facility specific), and if the Tesla factory workers unionized, they could negotiate for stock grants.

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.

> Union contracts are employer specific (and in some cases, facility specific), and if the Tesla factory workers unionized, they could negotiate for stock grants

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"

Which is illegal under decades-old labor laws...

Congratulations on committing the same crime as in the article?

Which many people would consider hostile to workers in general and the people around your factory - which may not matter, or maybe it will.

Thank you for proving why unions are needed, and why they often have an adversarial relationship with management.

> Union contracts are employer specific (and in some cases, facility specific), and if the Tesla factory workers unionized, they could negotiate for stock grants.

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.

> 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.

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 don't quite get that objection though, why do you need stated rules that a certain internal site is internal information? Everything is assumed to be internal information unless stated otherwise. That violates any HR policy anywhere. More so the guy was putting it on facebook to literally get people to stalk the guy. So I'm surprised he didn't get criminal charges.

You don't need the rules to know that sharing information from internal sites might be prohibited. You need them to be able to prove that sharing information like this would get somebody fired. The other possibility (which the NLRB seems to believe) is that Tesla normally would have been OK with this sort of sharing or given only a warning, but this time was specifically looking for an excuse to fire the employee.

Do you have info on the stalking? It is common practice when organizing a union to note the likely strongly anti-union people, to not solicit them, and inform them last of the effort. I say this because I presumed they were just screenshotting the guy's employment photo and name, and posting in the private group, "don't solicit this guy, he might scupper the effort."

Accessing org info for private purposes seems ethically deficient.

In the abstract I would agree, but there are degrees of offense before firing someone -- I would imagine I would not be fired for doing same when organizing who to invite or not invite if I was organizing a poker game ("invite anyone, except this guy"). So the actions here seem quite harsh and retaliatory. I haven't read the NLRB's report, but my thoughts are similar to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26598779

Really? It would seem more likely they would try to harass the guy who's anti-union.

Doesn't seem that way to me. As I said, one of the first steps in organizing is usually identifying your strong-no to strong-yes people, and building support among the yes side first. I don't have experience in organizing a workplace, but the information above is second-hand from conversations with people who have.

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.

I don't see how it isn't a firable offense given that it violates the confidentiality agreement that lists termination as a possible consequence of violation.

So it seems to me that what Oritz did must qualify as protected activity...

First of all, the system wasn’t treated as confidential information, and workers weren’t told that use of the system was restricted. Second, the data they extracted were simply names and photos. Third, they posted them to a FB group comprising Tesla employees. If you read the judgment, indeed, all of these actions are considered protected activity.

If you read the policy they had people sign (it is included in the official opinion linked in other comments) it would seem to be expressly included under that policy.

> To repeat the key info from this case that makes one question the NRLB ruling...

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).

Because of all of the above I disagree with the ruling. While yes Elon's tweet is borderline "intimidation", the guy was fired for very legitimate reasons, taking internal company information about employees and basically doxxing them on facebook. The NLRB shouldn't be defending doxxers.

He didn’t Dox them - he didn’t publish their home addresses or phone numbers, he merely said “these people testified on behalf of the company at a state hearing.” This is very clearly protected organizing activity, as documented with multiple case citations in the judge’s ruling.

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.

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