Ok I'm over my head with this kinda thing... Someone care to enlighten me on what he did wrong exactly? Reuters expects you to already know the ins and outs of the law apparently
[1] https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2021/03/25/elon-musk-...
The National Labor Relations Act has survived court challenges since 1935. I doubt it'll go down here.
If policies like the war on drugs and asset forfeiture are (as I suspect) not actually supported by the people, then my route is to convince my fellow voters that we should get rid of those laws/policies. Perhaps we should elect representatives who will do a better job of doing what we want; perhaps we should let our existing representatives know how we stand. My route is definitely not to support leaving those laws on the books as I cheer on the government failing to enforce those laws. That doesn't question the laws I don't like, that questions the entire notion of the rule of law. (In particular, one moral issue I have with both the war on drugs and asset forfeiture is the way that those laws lend themselves to selective enforcement - so it certainly does not help my cause for the government to happen not to enforce them today but to retain the option in the future!)
If they are supported by the people, but they're not constitutional, then I do not, in fact, support the government spending my tax revenues defending unconstitutional laws, and I attempt to vote for executives (presidents who appoint attorneys, district attorneys that I can vote for directly, etc.) who know better than to defend unconstitutional laws. And I do also monetarily support organizations that sue the government in court. In this particular case, as a sibling comment noted, it seems hard to believe that the NLRA violates the First Amendment and nobody's noticed in almost a century.
If a law is supported by the people and constitutional, then my only legitimate avenue is to try to change the people's minds - it's not legitimate for me to sidestep debate on the merits of the law and say "Oh, my poor tax dollars! How expensive enforcing this law would be!" (And asset forfeiture pays for itself, so it's not like that argument would even work.)
I mean, if that's your position, that's your position.
If it's an "immoral" but constitutional law, then I'm in a harder place. As a leftist Christian I'm pretty aware that my personal views on morality are not particularly widely shared by my fellow citizens (even though I happen to agree about DOMA being immoral), and part of the deal of living in a constitutional democracy (as opposed to an absolute monarchy or a theocracy) is that I don't get to impose the entirety of my morality on others and they don't get to impose theirs on me. And that's a great deal for me, knowing just how many Christians think merely being left-leaning is immoral and just how many left-leaning folks think merely being Christian is immoral. Our society has decided to enshrine a subset of widely-agreed morality into the Constitution - that certain laws are so unjust that they may not be made - and then we agree that the rest of it is up to the mechanisms of democracy.
So if it's constitutional, I'll certainly do my best to argue that the law should be repealed, through the legislative process, and I'll try to convince others to convince their representatives in turn to repeal the law.
But if it's constitutional, and it's popular - what exactly should I advocate when I say the government shouldn't enforce it?
Should I say that the government should spontaneously decide not to enforce this one law? Besides the obvious problem of it remaining on the books unchallenged, which would have made the process of overturning it even longer, it seems directly contrary to the rule of law to support laws going unenforced because of one person's view of morality. What happens when someone convinces the SEC it's immoral to go after ICOs because the growth of cryptocurrency is important to humanity, or whatever? What happens when someone convinces the IRS it's immoral to enforce tax laws against business owners, based on the morality described in Atlas Shrugged? Were I to support the principle of not enforcing laws that someone calls immoral, I suspect it would not actually achieve my political goals.
Should I say that the government should get out of the business of enforcing all laws about a certain subject? That also would go poorly - in the case of DOMA, I'd be saying that the government should not regulate marriage at all and should refrain from enforcing laws that ban child marriages, non-consensual marriages of adults, polygamy, immigration fraud, and so forth. I won't say that.
Should I say that the Constitution should be amended to enshrine my view of morality? Sure, but I think that's an extremely arduous process, and I think it's great that it requires so much of the country to agree on it, because, again, I don't want to be subject to other people's view of morality. I'll happily try to convince enough people that we should amend the Constitution, but it's easier - by design - to convince enough people that we should just repeal the law.
But what do you think lawyers arguing cases before the courts do? They don't simply say "Please, O smart judge, tell me if this is constitutional." They come up with their own argument for or against it, as strong as they can make it, and they try to persuade the court. You can do that same analysis and just not argue before any court.
The DOJ memo I linked has them doing exactly that: the president (who was a trained lawyer) concluded that DOMA was unconstitutional and told the DOJ, and the lawyers there looked at it and agreed. There's an interesting distinction made there between "professionally responsible" arguments and "reasonable" ones.
Before it ever gets to court, how would you know a law is unconstitutional? Or are you willing to make that call yourself?
If you’re willing to make that call yourself, what happens when the courts disagree? Do you then change your mind? Or do you continue to hold your belief?
I’m trying to understand how your approach works in the real world.
Frankly, I don't often have a strong opinion on whether something is constitutional or not, because I'm not a constitutional law scholar, and both the judges and the lawyers are more qualified than I am. If you asked me in 2015 whether Obergefell had a constitutional right to get married, I probably would have looked at the circuit split and shrugged. Who am I to have the right answer when a bunch of experts can't agree? You may as well ask a Supreme Court justice to code-review a kernel patch I wrote - on what basis should they have an opinion on it?
But there are rare times when an obviously unconstitutional law gets passed. I did believe that the "heartbeat bills" that were recently proposed and passed were unconstitutional, because of Roe v. Wade, and it seems like the courts have generally reached that conclusion too. Those are great examples of laws where I'd be supportive of the state attorneys not wasting resources on defending them, because I think it would pretty clearly be a waste. (But if the courts were to say there's some reason that these laws don't run afoul of Roe, then I would suspect they understand the Constitution better than I do and I would try to understand their reasoning. That likely wouldn't change my mind on whether the law is moral, but I would feel like I should hear them out on whether it's constitutional.)
Sometimes I continue to believe that the courts made a mistake, but I understand that my opinion isn't the one that counts, the courts' opinion is, unless I can change who's on the courts (by voting for them or for the people who appoint them, or by supporting those election campaigns).
If it ever happens that I see something where it seems like the courts are so obviously wrong about some law's constitutionality, to the point where I can no longer trust the courts to enact justice in their conclusions about anything, then I would be obligated to oppose the whole system of government. But that's a very high bar. Even after Dred Scott v. Sandford, the primary conclusion in terms of the constitutional merits of the decision (as opposed to the moral merits) seems to have been that the Constitution needed amending, not to that the system reached the wrong conclusion with the Constitution as it existed.
(To be clear, there is an argument that Dred Scott was wrong given the Constitution at the time for trying to interpret Sanford's right to property in the way it did. That argument was used by Scalia to dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey and by Roberts to dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges. If my goal is morally-good decisions aligned with my morality, it would be counterproductive to agree with Scalia and Roberts' argument that Dred Scott was bad because it was invalid.)
So far, I have not seen anything from our present government - not DOMA, not asset forfeiture, not the immoral restrictions on medical care that certain states are passing lately, not the deaths of innocents both by domestic police and overseas soldiers, not our treatment of people trying to cross the border, much as I hate all of those things - that is bad enough to compel me to question the whole system of government. Every year I decide to pay my taxes (or, more practically, to keep my high-paying tech job that results in more tax revenue from me than the government spends on me), I decide I don't have a moral objection to the system of government, and I can satisfy my moral obligations by using the levers that system gives me as a voter.
* interrogated workers over suspected unionization efforts
* threatened workers with the loss of their stock options if they unionized
* fired one worker and disciplined another over protected union-related activity
* had a policy prohibiting employees from communicating with the media, in violation of their right to speak “concerning labor disputes and terms and conditions of employment”
Elon's tweet is a side-show.
And there are big regulations about not doing anti union things.
I, for one, can’t see anything particularly wrong with this tweet and don’t really care what the law says, I’m opposed to unions and labor boards having the power to silence somebody saying this.
you really don't see the difference between just anyone saying this and the employer saying this? what you personally feel about unions is irrelevant; there is a very clear imposition of power over the employee here and manifestly why the laws are as strict as they are. just so no one willfully misconstrues what i'm saying: what's at issue here is that the employee's continued employment is contingent on their employer's opinion of them hence this is tantamount to an overt threat. saying you don't see anything wrong with what he said is like saying you see anything wrong with a teacher implying quid pro quo for sexual favors from students.
Is change payment schedule after unionization legal?
> The acronym TIPS can help remind employers not to:
> * Threaten—never threaten to retaliate against employees by terminating them or reducing pay or benefits.
> * Interrogate—do not interrogate employees about their activities or activities of co-workers.
> * Promise—do not promise anything to employees, such as promotio ns or benefits, in exchange for not supporting the union.
> * Surveillance/Spying—never spy on union activities.
Hm, where is this imposition of power? I see what could be clearly called bargaining.
Btw, my apologies if this sounds too harsh, but comparing it to "sexual favors" not only absolutely meaningless, but probably qualifies as a dirty emotional trick aimed at ungrounded shaming of those who disagree with you.
Isn't this ironic? The whole point of a union is collective bargaining power; individual employees do not have any bargaining power so how exactly is musk engaging in bargaining? With whom is he bargaining?
>but comparing it to "sexual favors" not only absolutely meaningless,
They're both examples of coercion by someone with power over a subordinate, they both involve trading your body (in the form of labor or sex) for money (or some sort of compensation), and they're both generally recognized as exploitative. These are three obvious features that make them analogous propositions.
No, the teacher is (indirectly) your employee and it doesn't matter. If they threaten to withhold a grade you've earned it's clearly criminal, regardless of the threat used.
> they both involve trading your body (in the form of labor or sex) for money (or some sort of compensation)
If prostitution and a job are the same then it means prostitution isn't bad. But maybe your equivalency is wrong.
> they're both generally recognized as exploitative
I bet you'd say that letting your starve by not hiring you would be exploitative too.
It's incorrect statement. I bargained with my employers multiple times in individual capacity. There are some points which are easier to bargain about collectively, and some which are better done individually, btw
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/495/associated-...
> In addressing the First Amendment issue, Roberts observed that although the AP claimed to have discharged the employee for biased reporting, the record revealed the actual reason to be his union activity, which had no bearing on First Amendment issues: “The business of the Associated Press is not immune from regulation because it is an agency of the press. The publisher of a newspaper has no special immunity from the application of general laws. He has no special privilege to invade the rights and liberties of others.”
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29/158
Musk would similarly find himself in trouble if he said, say, "OHSA rules are bullshit and you don't have to follow them", despite it being First Amendment speech.
Doing it in this case would be retaliation for a protected action. The National Labor Relations Act ensures the right to organize unions, and changing pay as a result of union-related activity would be illegal retaliation.
This is similar to how an at-will employee can be fired for any reason _except_ for a protected class, like their race / gender / religion, etc.
I’ll take my downvotes, but think about it. It’s a startup, they didn’t have huge profits at that time. People should be allowed to state facts, or opinions for that matter.
See https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45833ef7a1 for the actual language. A snippet:
"The General Counsel argues that to remedy fully CEO Musk’s unlawful May 20, 2018 tweet, which coercively threatened that employees would lose their stock options if they selected the Union as their representative, the Board should order the Respondent to have Musk delete that tweet and to post a notice addressing that violation at its facilities nationwide. Consistent with our recent decision in FDRLST Media, LLC, we shall order the Respondent to direct Musk to delete the unlawful tweet from the @elonmusk Twitter account and to take appropriate steps to ensure that Musk complies with the directive."
What he meant isn't what's at issue. It's what it appears to be to employees.
I don't think first amendment rights mean you have the right to literally say or write whatever you want, such as a threat, without consequence. And Musk did make a threat, it was just a milder one than to send in the Pinkertons.
Also, which constitutional rights are in conflict here? Labor law is just enacted law, not constitutional in nature. If labor law conflicts with the Constitution, the Constitution wins.
Obviously extreme examples, but making a point that first amendment has many things it does not protect.
I wasn't asking about whether terroristic threats were legitimate exceptions to First Amendment protections; I asked whether labor law was.
My personal feelings are that if a company needs to resort to threats and retaliation to prevent unionization, then the workers do deserve to unionize, because the company clearly is willing to trample on any worker who dares threaten its authority, and only collective action on the workers' part is likely to counter that.
The "just a prank, bro" defense?
He could have said that he/Tesla have been trying to get those included but UAW refuses. Instead, he just says, "Well they usually don't, so I mean it's your call if you want to lose them or not, /shrug."
If he cared, he'd put in the effort. Instead, he's just citing precedent in the form of a vague threat instead of being the "cool CEO" people make him out to be and trying to do some good.
Removing stock options just means that many fewer communionists have a say over other matters in the company because they won't buy stock.
The issue is the way unions work (or at least my understanding, correct me if wrong) is that in many places once a union has taken hold, they actually get the right to prevent a non-unionized worker for working. That's absolutely crazy to me (and evil, and inefficient).
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Note: The above doesn't mean that Elon doesn't treat his workers like shit - he does. I wish people would see through the cult of personality with him, because so many workers have sustained injuries on the job or just burnt themselves out for someone who really doesn't care about them.
The thing with trying to save humanity from existential threats, is ethically speaking you can justify sacrificing as many actual humans for the cause as necessary.
But yeah, unions aren't the mechanism to fix that.
Lots of states don't work that way (with "right to work" joining a union is always purely optional). The problem is that it empirically results in far worse outcomes for workers. With right to work unions are weaker because individuals can freeload off of the improvements in pay / working conditions achieved by a union without contributing back.