Tesla ran over worker rights, again, US labor judge finds
theregister.com
theregister.com
Jesus. Can someone explain how worker’s rights laws became so toothless?
Almost 100% of the comments in this thread seem to gloss over the fact that this lawsuit was due to the actions of one manager in an autobody store. And his actions were counter to Tesla's official policy which clearly states that it is acceptable to discuss salary. Based on the comments alone you'd think the article was about a class action suit.
Why extrapolate the actions of one person to those of the entire organization?
Go look at the job board on the Tesla website. Their salaries and benefits look great to me.
If managers are not following the policy, and leadership doesn't enforce the policy on the managers, the policy may as well not exist.
> Why extrapolate the actions of one person to those of the entire organization?
An employee was suspended and fired for talking about their salary, and for attempting to talk to the manager's manager. This kind of activity doesn't generally happen without the leadership chain being aware. It's a part of their job description to be aware. They, and/or HR, should have shut that shit down.
They didn't. Tesla should be held accountable, not given a softly spoken warning. Especially since it's not the first time the NLRB has had to point out to Tesla that they're breaking the law.
> Go look at the job board on the Tesla website. Their salaries and benefits look great to me.
Completely unrelated.
There are two named people who violated labor law, according to to the judge. They are Andre Ayala (manager) and Cedric Leith (associate manager). Quoting from "Legal Analysis", "The Section 8(A)(1) Violations" on p 14:
] During an all-hands shop meeting around mid-December, Ayala violated Section 8(a)(1) by instructing employees not to discuss their pay rates or the newly hired employees.
] After picking up his tools and turning to leave, Leith told him, "If I were you, I wouldn't talk to anybody." In the circumstances, Leith’s statement also violated Section 8(a)(1).
The facility has "approximately 25 employees, including 22 collision technicians", so it's not like there's much other local management.
Further, Tesla's organizational response was judged to be inadequate:
] Its attempted repudiation of Ayala’s statement regarding pay was timely since it was disseminated on June 13 - a little over a month after it first learned of the Region’s investigation regarding the statement and four days after the amended charge issued on June 9. However, the notice was deficient it all other respects.
followed by three points where it was deficient.
The "or any other issues" is extremely broad, and seems reckless. When an employee then tried to _internally_ escalate a concern, that employee was suspended and fired. A minimal slap on the wrist means that Tesla is likely to continue to suppress discussions of wages or workplace conditions, which sucks for workers -- but if the message coming out of this is that escalating _any_ concern above local management is likely to get you fired, I wonder what other kinds of issues will go unaddressed? Workplace safety issues? _Product_ safety issues? Would some of the quality control issues that were in the press some time ago have been more quickly addressed if internal communication didn't put people at risk of being fired?
An organization in which people cannot honestly escalate concerns _internally_ is dysfunctional, and has the potential to create harms for customers and shareholders in addition to employees.
HR should probably be more on the ball too. And implemented policies/procedures.
There's never just one person who messes up. Kinda like how it's never just the Junior Dev's fault when they delete the production database.
At times, it feels like we're cruising for a bruising but natural selection seems to be the only solution we can agree on.
Not much sense getting scared about fantasy scenarios. Nobody is seriously working on a Mars colony, it's not happening anytime soon, if ever.