If you believe "an employer should treat their employees right and that's that" then who steps in when they don't?
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Buzzfeed: Elon Musk is a Union Buster but he'll give you free Froyo & Roller Coaster
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If you believe "an employer should treat their employees right and that's that" then who steps in when they don't?
entremet
Member
I can only speak for myself, but I'm aware of union's essential role in securing worker rights historically. But that was the past and unions don't make sense in a lot of industries.
Also to clarify my position, I'm not anti union. I'm just not for UAW trying to bully its way into the Tesla workforce. If the Tesla workforce wants to unionize, they should do it themselves, not join up with those dinosaurs from UAW.
smokeandmirrors
Banned
the free market (praise be unto it) of course!
Ether_Snake
å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®å®
People can move to other companies, and there are labor laws in place so they can sue if something illegal is done. There is a reason people don't clamor for unions as much anymore: most well paid jobs are moving to cities, where job opportunities are plentiful, and worker mobility has significantly increased as well over the years. If companies screw people, those people move on fairly easily. Unions made sense when people had pretty much no choice but to work at the local factory or live in poverty, where people essentially had to rely on a company to survive. Times have changed significantly. They still make sense in some conditions, not this one.
Almost all public sector unions have performance standard reviews and specifically contracted methods to remove poor performing employees that are signed off by management (non union) employees. If poor performing individuals are in government service it's because management/appointee level employees aren't taking performance evaluation seriously enough.
Additionally because there is a structured process to remove employees government agencies then have to actually be able to define what acceptable performance is. In some agencies this can be impossible because the reality is they aren't permitted to hire enough people to actually do all the work. Period. So how do you remove anyone if no one can actually do enough work? See how the issue isn't as simplified from the inside?
Sure, and I appreciate that your statement has a lot more nuance than "I'm against unions" and it could have validity in some circumstances.
I would contend that at least some industries that don't appear to need unionized on paper certainly could use it. If you think cable/internet company service is bad now imagine if those employees weren't unionized.
I wonder sometimes if people's lives have become so unstable and unpredictable that even the concept of stability as a commodity isn't even thought of? It doesn't seem to come up as a secondary need for humans to thrive but can be significant. Mobility being high can also be viewed as stability being low, right? Which is good for some types of individuals/lifestyles but not all.
PdotMichael
Banned
Unions are always useful even in your describing cases if industries are so specialized and connected that employees can easily end on industry wide blacklists.
jakonovski
Member
Which industries exactly and why? Where does lack of bargaining power help the worker?
ZeezbruhTV
Member
Another Musk hit piece, lmao.
Labor laws and unions go hand in hand. Labor laws empower unions to fight for workers and unions collectively lobby politicians to keep labor laws strong.
What happens if you don't have the means to sue your employer after you're unjustly fired? Just suck it up?
ETA: Another thing we can look at is non-unionized corporations like Wal-mart that are built on the backs of the working poor. Taxpayers subsidize entire industries through social benefits programs because workers can't collectively bargain.
entremet
Member
Well the workforce is more mobile for one. We're essentially freelancers due to at will employment. So the responsibility is now on us to negotiate and seek fair compensation on our own.
Unfortunately, these are not skills that are taught to wide majority of the population.
I'm also not a believer in the free market solves all ills since there is no true free market.
Apple and Google were recently busted for collusion in keeping salaries down. That's not a true free market since the players are cheating basically.
Messofanego
Banned
Um
WTF
Hephaestus
Member
Can you join Unions from different industry than your own? Since Elon Musk is fighting against a lot of different powerful groups I wonder if it would be in his interest to join with the police union? That seems like it would bring a few perks with it.
Side note the only real beef Ive had with being in Unions in the trades is your reviews are meaningless because raises are already set in the contract. When I worked out of a Union I spent all my free time studying, working to be an expert in as many things as I could. I was able to demand and receive a very high wage.
Now that Im in a Union my wage is decent but no matter how hard I work or how much extra I do, I still only get the same 3% raise as the mediocre guys. So you just end up with a shop full of people that are "meh" that do just enough not to get written up too often.
The next guy at work that tells me "woah!, slow down its all pensionable hours, relax take it easy." Is getting hit with a fucking pick axe....joking kinda
Side note the only real beef Ive had with being in Unions in the trades is your reviews are meaningless because raises are already set in the contract. When I worked out of a Union I spent all my free time studying, working to be an expert in as many things as I could. I was able to demand and receive a very high wage.
Now that Im in a Union my wage is decent but no matter how hard I work or how much extra I do, I still only get the same 3% raise as the mediocre guys. So you just end up with a shop full of people that are "meh" that do just enough not to get written up too often.
The next guy at work that tells me "woah!, slow down its all pensionable hours, relax take it easy." Is getting hit with a fucking pick axe....joking kinda
Zoso Achilles
Member
What I don't understand is how this thread went so long with the information in the OP consisting of that click bait buzzfeed title and sections of that hatchet job reporting of his actual email.
Seriously, read the actual email. It's provided at the bottom of the story. It's been posted in this thread and largely ignored.
People are coming into this thread, reading the ridiculous title, and immediately jumping on the hate train.
No, Musk is not countering union and healthcare benefits with froyo and a roller coaster. Sounds absurd, right? That's because it is. Read.
That David vs Goliath comparison was about the odds they faced stating the company. But the article changes the context to make it seem to be about resisting the union.
If you are actually concerned with the rise of "fake news" in our current state, maybe start with actually reading in full before forming your opinions.
Seriously, read the actual email. It's provided at the bottom of the story. It's been posted in this thread and largely ignored.
People are coming into this thread, reading the ridiculous title, and immediately jumping on the hate train.
No, Musk is not countering union and healthcare benefits with froyo and a roller coaster. Sounds absurd, right? That's because it is. Read.
That David vs Goliath comparison was about the odds they faced stating the company. But the article changes the context to make it seem to be about resisting the union.
If you are actually concerned with the rise of "fake news" in our current state, maybe start with actually reading in full before forming your opinions.
Interesting. But I'll stick with the data we have rather than anecdotes.
jakonovski
Member
That's not really answering the question. What you're saying on a general level is that in an unpredictable environment you need to find coping mechanisms. Which of course is true, but I'll choose widespread unions instead.
CyclopsRock
Member
I don't blame him.
It works for some us (myself included) who are highly educated, with lots of working experience, without an own family and house. Many people aren't in this position though, so unions are necessarily for them. While I could lose my job almost instantly and be pretty okay with such a situation, many colleagues are shitting in their pants if they can't get a pay in the next three months.
elrechazado
Banned
The department of labor?
Coast guard.
It's easy to repeat the old line of "unions protect bad workers," since, yeah, sometimes it's true. But it's still not quite as black and white as that.
I previously worked for a union shop along with this one guy that was the kind of person you think of as the stereotypical bad worker that unions unequivocally protect. My friends and I always made fun of how shitty this guy was as a worker and how the union would protect him if it happened. Time eventually came when he got caught being shitty and was fired. Sure enough, the union fought for him to get another chance and he was back at work a month later. We laughed at how we were right, and then we laughed again when he got fired again and the union again fought for him to come back on. We all kept repeating the same old tired line about how the union was going to keep protecting this shitty worker. Well, it eventually came that he got fired, but never came back. It never dawned on us at the time, but as much as we kept bitching about him being protected, the union eventually did hit a breaking point and eventually washed their hands of him. Could be easy to just handwave this away as anecdotal evidence and it certainly not being the norm, but I've since seen plenty of documentation across multiple unions suggesting that, yes, eventually some unions will stop protecting shit workers.
On a related note, one of my best friends who worked at that same shop eventually ended up working as a technician for a non-union company. While he and his direct coworkers were not union, they often got paired up with union workers when they were contracted out by their company to assist at union shops.
He'd call the union workers lazy because they wouldn't start work until 9, made use of their lunch breaks, and then always clocked out at the end of their shift, while he always had to arrive early and couldn't leave until his task was done. While the extra money he pulled from those longer shifts was nice, we eventually started hearing about how he was having less and less time to spend with his children, and less time getting to socialize with people.
He'd comment on them being pampered by the union with all the protections their contracts offered, but then we started hearing about how his company would do things like suddenly change the travel policy (as his job relied heavily on travel), cutting into his earnings and also forcing him to spend his own money on gas for traveling back and forth between jobs.
And the biggest kicker was that, he'd also complain about unions protecting bad workers (which again, we both experienced with the one job we both had together). Then one day came when he was made to work a 16+ hour work day, followed by another extended work day that was timed to basically only give him a few hours to sleep, and only then if he just slept in his work van. When he started his shift the next day, he got sloppy with a task due to his exhaustion. He got found out, and the company called him out on it. Despite being a good worker otherwise, he got fired without any second chances. No union to help him.
In that moment, yeah, he was a bad worker. No denial about that. Do bad work, bad things happen. But given the circumstances, it's easy to see how he could have avoided it in the future. Had he had union representation, they could have appealed to his record as a good worker and argued for him to get a second chance on the stipulation that he didn't do it again. Hell, had he had union representation, he probably could have avoided things entirely because he wouldn't have had to pull two ridiculous back to back 16 hour shifts with little break between them.
Sure, sometimes unions protect people that don't deserve it. It sucks, because, yeah, it gives an extremely bad name to something that otherwise stands for a lot of good in this world. That said, knowing just how dramatically downhill my friend's life went after he got fired, I'll happily take a system where sometimes bad people get repeated chances versus a system where a good worker gets none.
I previously worked for a union shop along with this one guy that was the kind of person you think of as the stereotypical bad worker that unions unequivocally protect. My friends and I always made fun of how shitty this guy was as a worker and how the union would protect him if it happened. Time eventually came when he got caught being shitty and was fired. Sure enough, the union fought for him to get another chance and he was back at work a month later. We laughed at how we were right, and then we laughed again when he got fired again and the union again fought for him to come back on. We all kept repeating the same old tired line about how the union was going to keep protecting this shitty worker. Well, it eventually came that he got fired, but never came back. It never dawned on us at the time, but as much as we kept bitching about him being protected, the union eventually did hit a breaking point and eventually washed their hands of him. Could be easy to just handwave this away as anecdotal evidence and it certainly not being the norm, but I've since seen plenty of documentation across multiple unions suggesting that, yes, eventually some unions will stop protecting shit workers.
On a related note, one of my best friends who worked at that same shop eventually ended up working as a technician for a non-union company. While he and his direct coworkers were not union, they often got paired up with union workers when they were contracted out by their company to assist at union shops.
He'd call the union workers lazy because they wouldn't start work until 9, made use of their lunch breaks, and then always clocked out at the end of their shift, while he always had to arrive early and couldn't leave until his task was done. While the extra money he pulled from those longer shifts was nice, we eventually started hearing about how he was having less and less time to spend with his children, and less time getting to socialize with people.
He'd comment on them being pampered by the union with all the protections their contracts offered, but then we started hearing about how his company would do things like suddenly change the travel policy (as his job relied heavily on travel), cutting into his earnings and also forcing him to spend his own money on gas for traveling back and forth between jobs.
And the biggest kicker was that, he'd also complain about unions protecting bad workers (which again, we both experienced with the one job we both had together). Then one day came when he was made to work a 16+ hour work day, followed by another extended work day that was timed to basically only give him a few hours to sleep, and only then if he just slept in his work van. When he started his shift the next day, he got sloppy with a task due to his exhaustion. He got found out, and the company called him out on it. Despite being a good worker otherwise, he got fired without any second chances. No union to help him.
In that moment, yeah, he was a bad worker. No denial about that. Do bad work, bad things happen. But given the circumstances, it's easy to see how he could have avoided it in the future. Had he had union representation, they could have appealed to his record as a good worker and argued for him to get a second chance on the stipulation that he didn't do it again. Hell, had he had union representation, he probably could have avoided things entirely because he wouldn't have had to pull two ridiculous back to back 16 hour shifts with little break between them.
Sure, sometimes unions protect people that don't deserve it. It sucks, because, yeah, it gives an extremely bad name to something that otherwise stands for a lot of good in this world. That said, knowing just how dramatically downhill my friend's life went after he got fired, I'll happily take a system where sometimes bad people get repeated chances versus a system where a good worker gets none.
It's situational, but possible. I've worked with records for a textile company where the workers spent time organized under the United Food and Commercial Workers instead of the Textile Workers Union of America because there was already an established UFCW local in that town that was willing to represent them, which expedited the process that they'd have had to go through in order to bring the TWUA in and start setting things up from there.
AbortedWalrusFetus
Member
If the UAW were a European style union I would wager Musk wouldn't care. The fact that American unions treat managerial relationships as adversarial is the problem, particularly with the UAW. NUMMI showed the difference years ago, and if Musk could bring back that relationship to the plant it would probably be beneficial. The UAW made it impossible to bring lean manufacturing to the rest of GM and it caused the downfall of NUMMI. I wouldn't want to bring them back either.
cryptosporidium
Member
Um
this is amazing. what time period is this from?
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
Capital abusing labor and trying to maximize its own power isn't a conspiracy.
Unknown Soldier
Member
Tesla has an array of powerful interests opposing it. The traditional Big 3 American automakers, the oil companies, the governments of oil exporting nations, the American dealership cabals, the list is as formidable as it is long. It's kind of amazing how Musk hasn't had anyone try to assassinate him yet. What he is doing could destroy entire industries and national economies.
So yes, there are a lot of powerful people and a lot of big money opposing Tesla right now. It's not a conspiracy. It's real power and money at jeopardy from the ascendancy of the electric car.
Muppet of a Man
Member
Mr.Shrugglesツ;230998922 said:
It sure fucking does, when you don't have the foresight to put people's welfare before your profits.
M0nochromatic
Member
Thank you. Please people, check sources and do more then skim when forming thoughts regarding news. I know how easy it is to disagree or agree with something based on preconceived notions, but you have to be better then that in this day and age.
early 2000 from Marville, the worst comic ever printed
You need to give an example for this, because in almost no case I can think of is the stripping of collective bargaining better for employees.
Pretty sure a lot of what you are saying is incorrect.
1. Labor mobility has DECREASED in U.S and is still decreasing, not increasing.
2. Also union jobs do not have to be and are not only manufacturing jobs, so no, they didn't lose their use.
3. The real reason clamor for unions has decreased was the Republican wars against unions and worker rights. Hell we got one guy in this thread saying workers should have no say at all in their workplace. Which makes no fucking sense, since the workers have to endure that condition and with such an argument, we would be racing to the bottom.
In essence most of what you said is wrong and you need to rethink it.
1. You can't negotiate and seek fair compensation on your own because companies have more power than 1 person coming in and trying to get a "fair" pay because there will always be someone else who will work for unfair pay.
I like how you demonstrate how companies have a lot of power in keeping down salaries after talking about negotiating your own wage with said companies. It is not because people aren't taught how, it is simply the difference of power between negotiating parties.
Also can we stop with this fallacy. U.S's labor mobility has been decreasing, not increasing. U.S labor mobility is greater than Europe, but it has been decreasing.
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
I'm not saying it's a perfect system. I don't believe in unions, but at the same time, I can understand the issues at hand. I don't have a solution to the problem you're describing. If I did, I'd be doing something different than what I currently do.
JesseEwiak
Member
There is a solution - it's called collective organization of employees. In some kind of organization that unifies them.
Seriously? You are against a solution for such issues for "reasons", despite you recognizing it as a solution? There is no perfect system and there is no perfect solution. You can't be against a solution just because you don't like it, when it is proven to work. How can you be okay with that thought process?
It is the very same thought process as climate change deniers and flat Earth believers. We have the data and facts, but people don't believe in it because they just don't believe in it despite all data. Like what? I am not sure how anyone can change your mind with you saying this.
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
Because I have a LOT of friends in various unions that can't stand them. Sure, on paper, unions sound great. But in practice, they're not "rainbows and royalty treatment for everyone" like I think some people on GAF think they are.
I think it's worth reading pro-union AND anti-union propaganda as well as talking one on one with a number of union members to get a fair landscape before saying they're this amazing "for the people" entity.
E: Also, my reasons are what they are. I could outline all of them but it would 100% do ZERO good on GAF. More often than not, people have already made up their mind and want to yell louder than everyone else to make their opinion known. I guess I'm one of them here.
In some industries, maybe, but i the ones theyve made gain historically, to use your term, theyre the most needed because those corporations have seen the other sides power socially and legally eroded and are clawing back any gains made because they can.
WOW
How can collective action by waged labour be 'the past' or 'not make sense'?
Union structures need to change in response to the changes in industry & capital, and I agree that the giant monolithic unions of the past are both outdated and in many cases more concerned with their own perpetuity as institutions than protecting their members (for example the SDA collectively bargaining away weekend penalty rates in Australia, which has paved the way for the Fair Work Commission to do the same across the board), but with a mobile and even more geographically atomised workforce, workers collectives have as much, if not more value, than they did before.
IMO Elon certainly isn't a CEO you'd point to if profit making is the example. He invested 180 million he made from paypal into SpaceX/Tesla and almost lost all of it. A rocket startup and a car startup are not where you go if the object is to make a huge return, the chance of failure is enormously high. If you read the business press they all comment that Tesla loses money every quarter, but as far as I can tell he's making a calculated decision to expand now and make money later, money that he'll probably spend trying to get to Mars, and in the meantime create a shit ton of high tech jobs.
Tesla spend tons of money opening new stores, new superchargers, building battery factories, etc... They shipped tens of thousands of cars this year and plan for hundreds of thousands in the ones upcoming. These are cars and rockets manufactured in California, probably not the place for a factory if absolute bottom of the barrel wages is the goal. Tesla is making environmentally friendly electric cars that in the short term will have a higher price, not due to profits but the price paid for the development of the new technology.
His companies have created over 30,000 jobs in the US that wouldn't have been created if he didn't put his own money on the line to do it. It's not weird that people look up to him, not as a saint but as someone who has done a lot more good than not with his companies, and despite being an alleged "techno libertarian" he preferred Hillary Clinton to Trump and has called universal basic income a reasonable next step. It wasn't the UAW that came together of it's own volition and decided to push electric vehicles.
This is some steaming hot bullshit. Do you really think it's just about that challenging startup when the next sentence is about how the unions true allegiance is to that goliath? Just a coincidence that they hearken back to their startup struggles and just a coincidence that they then associate the union with their opponents in those days?
Do you always get played this easily?
Muppet of a Man
Member
I agree with everything you have said, as I've been a fan of what Musk has done with Tesla. He really is a genius visionary with true technical prowess to back it up. It does not mean that most people who are successful in these positions are not sociopaths. They absolutely are in spite of the good things they gain as a byproduct of stomping over anyone in their path. I don't think Musk is a particularly egregious sociopath like Thiel, Gates, or Jobs have been during their stints running their prospective companies. He seems to be self aware, at least, with a vision from the outset to help society deal with global warming. And Gates didn't really become a philanthropist until near his retirement at the behest of his wife and father. Jobs was just always a self absorbed asshole. Thiel, of course, is just diabolically evil.
But, it still does not mean he's immune from taking care of his employees, especially if they are getting a raw deal or hurt on the job. You can do great things and still make mistakes in other areas.
-Plasma Reus-
Service guarantees member status
That's a lot of presumptions.
NASA is vulnerable to the effects of politics.Everyone knows they aren't getting the freedom and money they need. But to assert a private company is the solution is careless at best, ignorant at worst.
Privatisation does not automatically mean efficiency. Efficiency, does not come from privatisation. It comes from competition. A more realistic solution is to create real competition between these national agencies. That's what helped NASA achieve incredible things. With the advent of privatisation, such competition ceases to exist, and corporate interests come to rise, which could result in the monopolisation of areas of space travel, and environmental catastrophes right above our heads.
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