
Tesla factory workers pushing for a union send demands to Tesla's Board - JumpCrisscross
http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-union-fremont-board-demands-2017-7
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evolve2k
This news is unsavory for many of us as it breaks the bubble. In no world is
it realistic that each employee report safety issues directly to the CEO. That
comment when heard by internal staff actually says the opposite, report it to
me and you risk your job.

[edit: I love Musk and all his visionary work. Consider it this way, think of
Musks usual week and how much he's up to, now imagine on a day he's announcing
a new Space X breakthrough that you are working on site and there is an issue
with the batch of door handles that have just arrived to you from the
warehouse. What should you do? Are you just going to stop work on the assembly
and drop Musk a line?)]

[edit 2: Seems Musk didn't actually say he wanted to be contacted directly by
employees facing safety issues, see below]

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skybrian
You might want to read the linked article, because that's not what it says:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-factory-
injur...](http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-factory-injuries-
email-2017-6)

"Musk then said he wants direct reports about every injury, without exception,
going forward. He also plans to spend time on the assembly line."

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evolve2k
Ok yes, on re-reading I think this article is talking bullshit. The sentence
does read "but has since told employees to report injuries directly to him",
but the linked article behind the article then explains that he wants all
injuries reported to him. Subtly different, dirty journalism. I think my point
on us living in a "Musk can't do wrong bubble stands" but on this occasion it
seems shoddy reporting should mean we can't make a strong comment on what he
should be doing here.

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michael_storm
_> Subtly different, dirty journalism._

Or it was a mistake. Journalists sometimes make them, too.

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forgotmysn
That's what editors are for. Bloggers can make those sort of mistakes, but
when it comes from a publisher like BI and the number of eyes it sees before
it gets pushed, it's safe to assume that they mean to say what they say.

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dwighttk
BI is a blog

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k-mcgrady
Are unions demonised in the US in a similar vain to socialism? i.e. made out
to be an evil that don't work despite working quite well in many, many other
countries? I'm seriously curious about this as I'm quite taken aback at the
general hate unions are getting ITT.

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erikpukinskis
The part of I don't like is that unions are given monopoly status within the
company.

Most of the unions I've seen aren't voluntary. When I was in grad school, I
was forced to pay dues into the union. I don't like that. I think there should
be as many unions as employees like. I don't understand how the union can be
understood to be negotiating on my behalf if I can't choose not to have them
negotiate on my behalf.

Once the union has negotiated a budget for itself, it has an independent
mandatee to sustain itself, which is sort of detached from any selective
pressures. If I'm a bad employee, I get fired. If the company is bad, it goes
bankrupt. If a union behaves badly, the consequences are indirect. A bad union
only gets its comeuppance if the company goes under.

Because the selective pressure on it is indirect, evolution can't happen
within regimes, it can only happen when union workers transfer (or don't)
organizational knowledge into a new host company. Basically, like a virus.
It's just weird to have an entity that doesn't face any consequences.

To the extent that employees have collective bargaining power, _they can just
use it_. Get a group together, write a letter to Elon, and threaten to quit.
See what he says. If you have any leverage, you can use it. If you don't have
any leverage why would the union fare any better?

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sangnoir
> Get a group together, write a letter to Elon, and threaten to quit. See what
> he says.

He'll identify the key players and throw them a bone and tell the rest to go
ahead and quit, maybe even sue them as an example. The whole point of a union
is that it can't be defeated by divide-and-conquer: it provides a reasonable
counter-balance to the amount of power wielded by the employer. Instead of the
threat of a few people quitting, their biggest leverage is "there'll be work
stoppage"

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alexc05
I'm a Tesla shareholder (of little significance in the grand scheme of things,
but I bought some) and this wouldn't put me off. In fact, I think they should
have a union.

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enknamel
As a shareholder this would really put me off. Unions are one of the main
reasons we had such a huge American auto crisis just a few years ago. I'm
largely anti-union anyways. We should have government enforced guarantees of
decent treatment. We shouldn't have a tyranny of the masses demanding ever
more pay, benefits, etc until a company is bled dry.

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halestock
Unions are the reason we have "government enforced guarantees of decent
treatment".

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enknamel
Yes. Now why do we need unions if their mission has been accomplished? Their
purpose has been served.

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jackvalentine
> Now why do we need unions if their mission has been accomplished?

To ensure that those protections are enforced. To ensure those protections
aren't rolled back. To advocate for their membership in a changing economy
where their work won't remain static for 40 years.

Maybe it's because I'm not American but is it really so hard to see why having
someone to advocate for the _people_ in the economy is a good thing? After
all, companies are just 'capital unions' that advocate for their members.

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DrScump
What makes you think that union leaders advocate primarily for "the people" as
opposed to their own best interests?

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jackvalentine
They often do either.

It's up to the members of a union to take sufficient interest in it that there
are appropriate and effective governance structures in place - in the same way
that it's up to the shareholders of a business to do the same.

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DrScump
That's like blaming individual voters for misdeeds by legislative bodies.
Except that with unions, ballots aren't necessarily secret.

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jackvalentine
I wasn't aware I was blaming anyone for anything?

Organizations of any kind have someone they're supposed to serve - from your
neighborhood bowls club to a fortune 500 company.

Organizational (corporate) governance is how you make sure the organization is
operating for the benefit of its intended recipients.

Some organizations do governance well. Some do it badly. When the owners
(shareholders, members etc) take their eye off the ball over time that
organization will skew towards badly.

I don't think this is a controversial statement at all, even when applied to
workers' unions.

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lawrenceyan
It seems like with any company that has a huge divide in terms of
knowledge/skill/salaried jobs, i.e. Tesla engineers vs. factory workers or
Lyft developers vs. drivers, there will always be a bias towards the smaller
elite core.

I wonder how this will play out in the future as class divides between high
skilled versus low skilled workers become more and more ever present within
the oncoming wave of mass automation.

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PhasmaFelis
Yeah. Amazon's treatment of its warehouse staff is famously awful.

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jon_richards
To be fair, Amazon's treatment of their software engineers is also famously
awful.

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PhasmaFelis
The warehouses are worse. One of the big stories was that Amazon engineers are
frequently seen crying at work, which is true. That wouldn't happen in the
warehouses, because they have an actual on-the-books rule that anyone crying
at work is to be fired immediately.

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mtl_usr
Now seems like the perfect timing to do such a thing considering the Model 3
is entering production, and a lot of customers are going to give Tesla a very
bad reputation if they can't get their Model 3 on time.

Of course, this will only give incentives to the company to further automate
it's production facilities, at the expanse of the workers.

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JKCalhoun
> this will only give incentives to the company to further automate it's
> production facilities, at the expanse of the workers.

That would happen regardless.

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losteverything
Does anyone know (or provide link) to current worker salary, benefits and work
rules?

I would bet they already have adopted most of the obvious union won rules such
as tenure, scheduling, overtime, sick leave, time off, differential, bidding,
etc...

Even Wal-Mart has adopted policies that are staples in some bargained areas.
Just not "no termination clause" among others

My experience says union national leadership cares #1 about membership; #2-100
everything else

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DrScump
May we ask which union(s) you have been a member of?

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losteverything
No. Tmi

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partingshots
Personally, I think Tesla doesn't want a push towards unionization because
fundamentally, the end game is all about automating away current factory
workforce. A union being implemented would make this a lot more difficult.

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forgotmysn
That's definitely true, but Elon seems pretty intent on staying at the
forefront of the debates surrounding automation and AI in the workplace. From
that perspective, it could allow Tesla, and himself, to become industry
leaders in promoting equitable solutions.

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yohann305
This is important, we need to keep watching this closely because it might
deter future big companies to manufacture in the USA.

Think about Apple. This is one more thing to worry about on top of higher
salaries than China.

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Daishiman
Germany's manufacturing companies have massive union presence in everything
they do and they're some of the most successful in the planet.

Let's stop with this ridiculous demonization of unions. American corporations
have chosen a confrontational model with unions and staff. It doesn't have to
be this way. There are better models around if the owners of capital are
willing to cooperate with workers.

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djrogers
Germany's unions and US unions operate under different laws, which grant
different rights and power to the unions, and apply different restrictions to
the employees and companies where unions are established. Comparing the two as
if they are the exact same thing is specious at best.

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Daishiman
And the balance is skewed way more towards German unions than American ones.

It's clearly not about the unions.

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dyeje
Would it make sense for them to join an existing auto workers union?

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pktgen
The article suggests that the United Auto Workers union is involved:

> It also asks Tesla to refrain from using anti-union rhetoric or action. In
> April, the United Auto Workers and three Tesla employees filed separate
> charges with the National Labor Relations Board claiming the company had
> coerced employees trying to aid the unionization effort into silence.

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johansch
This on top of the various disappointments (way too sparse interior (saying
that Model 3 drivers won't need a dashboard because of the $5k "self-driving"
feature... _facepalm_ ), way too expensive and needlessly grouped upgrades
from the base model, way late EU deliveries) from the Tesla Model 3 launch...

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Kenji
_The committee also calls on Tesla to release clear policies on how Fremont
factory workers can get promoted, adding that "there are no guidelines for
what is expected of us, or what defines success."_

Uh, what? Do they expect a checklist with items like "be there for 9 hours a
day" and so on? Frankly, people who need such a list are not the ones who
deserve a promotion - those who do deserve it just work away at the problems
and add value to whatever they put their hands on.

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skybrian
For software engineers it would be something vaguer like showing that you've
succeeded on a project with sufficient complexity. But I don't know what the
equivalent would be for factory workers.

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landon32
It'd be fine to say something like "demonstrated exceptional reliability and
proficiency in operating their machinery" could work. I know nothing about
factories though

