Also, part of the infrastructure bill gives $15,000 credit to new EV car purchases (if the manufacturer hires union labor). Musk is fighting this.
And for the record: the last version of the bill is $7.5k + additional $4.5 if made by union.
Car makers that don't use union fight the $4.5k union provision, not the whole credit.
And for a good reason. The union provision would be historically unprecedented government handout to unions and potentially illegal. There are laws limiting what the government can do and this kind of discrimination of US workers that don't belong to union may very well cross the line.
Which is nearly 50% higher than the median wage. We cut down these incentives in the UK because they appeared to be a bung for the rich.
(Obviously, various quantities of parts for all vehicles assembled in the US will be imported. I do not know how Ford compares to Tesla in this regard.)
1 - https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2020...
And assembly is not manufacturing. The sentence you quoted is making careful use of weasel words by zeroing in on assembly.
Tesla brings in rolls of aluminum and steel (and other things) and puts out cars. Even the seats are manufactured in the same town. The motors are wound from scratch on site. Casting and stamping happens on site as well. Like you, I don’t know the full picture on externally sourced parts, but there are a lot fewer parts, and I do know weasel words when I see them.
But automakers all necessarily focus on assembly because at a minimum the electronics are imported. It would be a good idea to know fractions of parts that were sourced domestically, but an effort to do this in the 80s failed because it's too easy to game and ultimately consumers do not really care.
That seems like a good deal to me, and the bonus money won't go to any mexico-made models.
Unless you are suggesting Tesla... threaten to fire their employees unless they unionize? That doesn't sound very worker-friendly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/business/musk-labor-board...
And not every employer is pushing hard to prevent it from happening. Most employees just aren't that unhappy and would prefer to work under their own contract w/o answer into another intermediary that gets a cut of their money.
Your comment is evidence: it sets up a false dichotomy. The whole point at a workplace that chooses to unionize is that they want to work under a different, better contract, and they're willing to invest in the organizing that it takes to get there.
You seem really convinced that if Tesla forced and up/down vote on a union their employees would vote yes, and I just don't think that matches the reality of labor in the US.
At the root of this thread is that someone implicitly suggested forcing workers to unionize (or be fired) as a solution to Tesla not being unionized, and I stand that that's a gross distortion of what it means to grant rights to labor.
I don't see anyone interpreting things as "forcing workers to unionize" except you. The argument you're making seems to be a strawman.
How else could this be accomplished?
Or maybe I'm wrong, and Tesla is just going to have to reap what it sowed in violating long-established worker rights. That's another way a tax incentive could work: by translating into market rewards. That doesn't make it exclusive.
You want to "educate" workers in order to help them make the right choice... you are not coming at this from a position where you actually respect the rights of workers to make a choice.
Saying that Tesla would be forced to do anything here is absurd. I'm not the one making an "argument predicated on not giving the workers the right to choose."
Unions have done a lot of good in the past, but for the last couple of decades they seem to be more organizations more interested in paying big paychecks to their own representatives.
My understanding of unions is employers hate them in part because they make labor more expensive, which would seem to be exactly why one would want to be represented by a union. Is that not correct?
What I was trying to understand from the OP was what's missing from the picture and whether perhaps her role was somehow an outlier.
By limiting employment to only workers earning that extra 11%, yes, those workers are doing well but overall employment is lower, there are deadweight losses to pay for the union fees, and that isn't necessarily a policy that can scale to the whole economy. This is why there are such problems with youth unemployment in nations with high unionization rates -- it's tougher to break into that labor market.
there is option A:
In option A, you are already being paid the market wage for your job. The job has a number on it for the wage. That number doesn't change. When you unionize every job with a low number disappers. Thus joining a union can only hurt you, because at best you stay where you are (but pay the union overhead). Nevertheless the jobs that are unionized earn 11% more.
People who think of themselves as having bargaining power view themselves in this bucket, e.g. that they are being paid the market wage already and don't benefit from the union.
Then there is option B:
Unions cause the same workers to earn 11% more - the number does change -- and the firm just scales back on hiring (or lays off workers) until it's total labor expenditure is back in line with its expenses. People without a sense that they have market power (e.g. that the labor market is driven by real competitive pressure in which companies bid on your skills, as opposed to firms mandating wages to workers without better options).
Now someone who views themselves in category B would or would not join the union depending on whether they thought the risk/reward trade off was worth it. E.g. yes, maybe you'd be less likely to get the job but if you did you'd have a better life so maybe its worth it to you.
But note that these choices are not exogenous: once a lot of people join unions, the labor market as a whole becomes less flexible and they end up with fewer options. Thus their market power decreases and they are more dependant on the union. This is especially true if an industry as a whole unionizes. That gives unions a stickiness because those workers know it would be really hard to find a better job on their own. So unions are something you join out of greed but stay in out of fear.
Then of course people make irrational choices as well. E.g. they oppose unions purely because they are morally offended at price fixing, even if it's for their benefit, or support unions purely because they are morally offended by low paying jobs existing, even if there are people who would rather have those jobs than be unemployed. The fact of the matter is that labor markets are not always competitive but it's also true that in many cases they are quite competitive, or close enough to being competitive that they wouldn't justify the overhead of the union. So it depends on how competitive your particular labor market is, whether the union will help you or hurt you, and that is true even if people working for unions earn more on average than those who do not.
Still, the vast majority of workers in the U.S. don't have much exposure to what the tradeoffs even could be, so as to even make a decision. And frankly, for the folks here on HN, it's not especially surprising that a union isn't a priority. But there are a lot of people who would be grateful for things like consistent week-to-week scheduling, health coverage, fair dispute resolution, etc., and don't even know that there are peer workplaces that have all those things thanks to a union.
Many people believe this won't end up in the final bill.
But if it does, it's 100% sure it'll be challenged in court by every car maker that makes cars in US and doesn't use union labor: Toyota, Honda, BMW and others.
This bill hasn't passed yet, so it's hard to speak definitively about it, but the current draft bill provides:
a $12,500 rebate for vehicles that are:
- assembled in the United States, - with union labor
or a $7,500 rebate for most other electric vehicles
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-democrats-propose-...
As such, being made and assembled in the United States would be a requirement for the $12,500 rebate.