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'.
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.
I'm not trying to define anything, just trying to explain the reference.
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.
Unionised workers typically get no or very few stock options compared to industries with no unionisation.
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).
I think the google and microsoft staff have been trying to create the first tech oriented one though.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.