[HN Gopher] Elon Musk's anti-union tweet from 2018 must be delet...
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Elon Musk's anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted: U.S. labor
board
Author : samizdis
Score : 417 points
Date : 2021-03-26 23:18 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| ddevault wrote:
| Oh no, he has to _delete_ a _tweet_! A two-year old tweet! The
| humanity!
|
| This is ridiculous. Where's the fucking fine?
| sebow wrote:
| So much for freedom of speech. (Yes, even on privately-owned
| platforms, because they have been previously deemed "public
| space" in court cases.)
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Glad to see the NRLB still has teeth. I was worried it basically
| fell to the wayside nowadays.
| judge2020 wrote:
| What do you mean in terms of falling to the wayside? It's a
| politically-appointed board, so you can expect things to change
| with each administration, but it's not like it did nothing
| during the Trump administration. This is a pretty good overview
| of the changes that happened and might be reversed over the
| next year:
|
| https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/the-biden-era-of-labor-law...
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| There is a federal board that makes people delete tweets?
| capableweb wrote:
| It makes sense to ask the individual directly to delete a Tweet
| deemed illegal, since Twitter seems to not act within the laws
| of their country.
| rsynnott wrote:
| There are limits to free speech. In particular, threatening to
| do illegal things is often borderline, and can itself be a
| crime.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| clcaev wrote:
| The entire concept of unionization seems unnecessarily
| confrontational. It does not need to be this way. Corporations
| are creations of the state. There is nothing preventing the state
| to require significant representation of employees in every board
| of directors. This board representation could support management
| that better reflects employee participation, e.g. Sociocracy. In
| this way, labour and capital could work together in a more
| integrated manner, avoiding much of this unnecessary conflict.
| Or, at least moving the conflict to more granular level of
| problem solving where views can be grounded in real-world
| challenges.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| This sounds like "we don't need unions if we mandate unions".
| Many countries do this, and with success.
|
| The actual only way that capital and workers can have a non-
| adversarial relationship is if the workers are in control of
| the capital. Otherwise capital will always be leverage used to
| extract surplus value from workers. That, on a large scale, is
| socialism by the way.
| marricks wrote:
| I agree, if one wants to avoid the conflict of a union a work
| place should be at least 51% employee owned. Short of having
| mandatory employee ownership unions are the next best thing,
| and one is far easier in the US.
|
| Otherwise we have what we have now, rampant unfairness and
| tension but no conflict because the board can get away with
| whatever conditions PR allows them to get away with.
| [deleted]
| nickik wrote:
| There are so many issues with simply saying 'workers should
| own 51% of the company'. That statement and causes so many
| issues in every aspect of how companies are now run an
| financed, its hard to even imagine what such a regulation
| would mean or how it would work in practice.
|
| > Short of having mandatory employee ownership unions are the
| next best thing, and one is far easier in the US.
|
| Again, just saying this is easy but what is the meaning of
| union in this context? What a union is and what it does has
| been wildly different thought history, form country to
| country and form industry to industry.
|
| What are the exact powers of that union mandatory union?
|
| These discussions are always so abstract, union are almost an
| article of faith for some people.
| whatinthewhy wrote:
| Why 51%? Why not split labor ownership equally with capital?
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Because it is an unequal relationship to begin with.
| Finding consensus in a 100% worker controlled organization
| is already a lot of work. We know capital is pretty okay
| with propagandizing if you look at current unionbusting
| practices, and they likely have more capital (haa) to do
| it.
| lolthishuman wrote:
| It automatically creates an adversarial relationship. Terrible
| way to live life on either side of that construct.
|
| No one should be forced to work anywhere. Which also means
| working isn't a right. Work somewhere that works with you and
| establish a healthy relationship. Set expectations and be clear
| on what is desired.
|
| One spends much of their time working, to do it in such a way
| where a cordial relationship is not there; it might as well be
| no different than hell.
|
| Find somewhere else to work if a company doesn't work with your
| ethos. Unionizing to coerce and compel is so disgusting. It's
| plainly a form of bullying. That's no way to live life.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| That's easy to say, but which other auto plant in the Bay
| Area should workers go to work at? There aren't any others.
| ryandrake wrote:
| In many companies, you don't need a union to make it
| adversarial: it's already an adversarial relationship. It's a
| war with only one side shooting. The union just attempts to
| arm the other side. It would be great if leadership and
| employees were actually on the same side (rather than just in
| words), with things like employee representation on the
| board, and fair bargaining for wages with equal power on
| either side, but that's just not a reality at most jobs.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| The biggest confusion I have is everybody seems to approach
| Amazon and Tesla unionization as "hopefully it happens so
| workers will get better wages!"
|
| I could be wrong but... I'm pretty sure Amazon and Tesla pay
| great relative to their space. Relatively demanding, sure. I
| get it. We've all seen the article where some Amazon worker
| urinated in a bottle because "the job is just so ruthless!".
| They employ hundreds of thousands of workers worldwide. If it
| was that bad, I think they'd have a harder time hiring.
|
| I could have sworn I read that if you are a hardworking Amazon
| warehouse worker, they'll train you for a more technical job.
| That seems like a pretty good benefit. I'm sure most Amazon
| warehouse jobs start in the $15-20/hr range. How much better
| can you really get for what is essentially reading a screen,
| grabbing something off of a shelf, and putting it in a box?
| Maybe drive a forklift/unload a truck with a pallet jack.
|
| I feel like the same people who want Amazon to unionize so
| workers can get better wages + healthcare, also don't want
| Amazon to kill mom + pop shops. Ok... How is a mom and pop shop
| supposed to pay $20/hr with healthcare for a warehouse worker
| when they don't have AWS money falling from the sky?
| ljp_206 wrote:
| "Relatively demanding" is an understatement. It seems as
| though you're really downplaying how much this job sucks. The
| awful nature of the conditions are well known:
|
| https://www.nelp.org/publication/amazons-disposable-
| workers-...
|
| As for people hired, try upwards of 600,000 in front line
| roles, with high turnover. They keep hiring because many
| don't last over a year in the warehouses. People need cash,
| and the hiring process is incredibly frictionless.
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazons-
| turnove...
|
| Do these people not deserve better working conditions?
| CptFribble wrote:
| > If it was that bad, I think they'd have a harder time
| hiring.
|
| You're severely underestimating the punishing conditions of
| an Amazon warehouse job.
|
| A picker has a tablet that alerts them of an item to get. A
| clock starts counting down on the time you have to get to the
| right bin, find the item, and scan it. The warehouse sorting
| algorithms created by Amazon engineers optimize for retrieval
| time - but the warehouses are so huge, this means in practice
| that you have exactly as much time as you need assuming you
| never stop moving. For your entire 8-9 hour shift.
|
| A typical amazon warehouse worker is essentially powerwalking
| non-stop for 8 hours straight on hard concrete floors. Breaks
| begin at a scheduled time, but your break begins _when you
| sign out of your device,_ then you walk some distance to the
| break room (typically a 3-5 minute walk), AND you have to be
| signing back in to your device at the end of your break time.
| In practice this means your actual resting time on break is
| typically 5 minutes or less for 15 's, 15-20 minutes for
| lunch. You are not allowed to sit or rest anywhere other than
| the break room.
|
| If you sign back in only a few seconds late from your break,
| a manager will speak with you about it. If you sign back in
| 30 seconds late a few times in a row, you can be fired.
|
| It's true that Amazon pays well in the warehouse space and is
| constantly hiring people with no experience. However, this
| isn't because Amazon is a great place to work - it's because
| there is an incredible amount of churn. People burn out of
| Amazon warehouse work constantly.
|
| If you search on google for Amazon warehouse stories, you'll
| find a lot of people talking about how physically punishing
| the job is, about the constant stress from 22-year-old
| "managers" doing their rotation through a warehouse and
| enforcing Amazon's draconian rulebook without a thought in
| their head about the people they're taking to task for coming
| back from lunch 30 seconds late.
|
| There's a blog out there from a guy who worked in Amazon
| warehouses in the Midwest, who documented everything while
| looking into trying to organize. The stories he tells about
| the work environment are hair-raising.
|
| Amazon has figured out how to optimize the physical output of
| a human being, squeezing every last ounce of productivity
| from them every second of a shift until they either quit from
| burnout or get fired for not "making rate" (total % of
| lateness picking or packing assigned items). The fact that
| Amazon has an endless supply of people signing up to work in
| this environment says less about Amazon and more about the
| state of the American economy and how many desperate people
| are out there who need to sell their physical and mental
| health to Bezos pay their bills.
| 13of40 wrote:
| I feel like I'm going to be remembering this post every
| time I click the "Buy Now" button from now on. I wonder if
| this means it's more humane to buy from third party sellers
| rather than Prime?
| cbnotfromthere wrote:
| Please call me back when you can prove those Amazon
| employees signed their work contracts with a gun to their
| temples.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure Amazon and Tesla pay great relative to
| their space.
|
| > I'm sure most Amazon warehouse jobs start in the $15-20/hr
| range. How much better can you really get for what is
| essentially reading a screen, grabbing something off of a
| shelf, and putting it in a box?
|
| Amazon is also one of the richest companies in the world,
| largely dependant on the work of each and every one of those
| warehouse workers. Why is it ok for the company to try to
| squeeze every penny of profit, but not for employees to try
| to squeeze every possible penny of wage out of the company?
|
| Amazon could probably make a great profit even if it paid its
| warehouse workers 30 or even 100 USD per hour. Why is it a
| priori wrong for employees to try to move the needle in that
| direction?
|
| If that's unrealistic, still: Amazon's profit went up by 84%
| in 2020. Why shouldn't workers seek for their wages to go up
| 84% instead?
|
| Not saying that they should, but there is a strange double
| standard in these sorts of discussions, where it is taken for
| granted that the company should seek to extract the maximum
| amount of profit from its workers, but the other way around
| is seen as abnormal.
| cbnotfromthere wrote:
| "Not saying that they should, but there is a strange double
| standard in these sorts of discussions, where it is taken
| for granted that the company should seek to extract the
| maximum amount of profit from its workers, but the other
| way around is seen as abnormal. "
|
| Your claim is fallacious because unions are 3rd parties.
| Nobody has anything against the 2 parties (employee and
| employer) trying to legally extract as much out of each
| other as possible.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| > Amazon's profit went up by 84% in 2020. Why shouldn't
| workers seek for their wages to go up 84% instead?
|
| Amazon's moneymaker is AWS, not the warehouse. At least in
| my city, AWS salaries have went up a fair amount in the
| last year or two, which makes sense given that AWS
| generates lots of profit.
|
| The warehouse on the other hand has much thinner margins
| and if they largely increased warehouse worker salaries
| they might not be profitable.
|
| Amazon is made into separate business units, so increasing
| salaries in one business unit which isn't very profitable
| because the other business unit is profitable is just bad
| business.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I doubt warehouse salaries are a significant percentage
| of costs for Amazon outside AWS. And the non-AWS part of
| Amazon is still significantly larger than AWS (revenue
| ~346 billion dollars vs ~40 billion for AWS) even if it
| is indeed less profitable. Warehousing is of course not
| that profitable, but it is a significant enabler for the
| sales of the rest of the business (perhaps even for AWS
| infrastructure).
| mlyle wrote:
| > If that's unrealistic, still: Amazon's profit went up by
| 84% in 2020. Why shouldn't workers seek for their wages to
| go up 84% instead?
|
| So, say Amazon's net income in 2019 was $11.5B, and that
| they paid employees about $25B. Even if Amazon's scale in
| 2020 required no additional workers, increasing wages for
| those existing workers by 84% would have wiped out Amazon's
| entire profit and more despite a banner year.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You're right, I made a classic mistake in comparing
| percentages...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Amazon is the company that knows its drivers are peeing in
| bottles to meet their quotas[1], but then tweets things like
| this in response[2]:
|
| > _You don't really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do
| you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth
| is that we have over a million incredible employees around
| the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages
| and health care from day one._
|
| [1] https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-
| bottl...
|
| [2] https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1374911222361956359
| hedora wrote:
| I don't see why people expect existing US unions to improve
| the situation. They have entrenched political interests and
| represent many different industries. Once they've managed to
| get into an company, they're repeatedly demonstrated they
| have no interest in listening to or advocating for the
| workers they represent.
|
| I'm actually for having unions, but they should be limited in
| size, and it should be easy for workers at a given site, or
| with a particular job role to quit the union and form their
| own.
|
| As it is, with an Amazon union, employees will have two
| abusive monopolies to fight instead of just one.
| marricks wrote:
| Warehouse work used to pay _more_ than $15 /hr, and if you
| look at the stats workers in counties _without_ Amazon
| warehouses get paid more[1]. Pay is closer to 20 an hour.
|
| [1] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/01/20/what-
| amaz...
|
| - sorry for the second comment but I wanted to cut to the
| chase
| astura wrote:
| It's probably (mostly) not about pay.
|
| Unions can (and do!) negotiate working conditions.
|
| Dunno about Tesla but based on everything I've read, Amazon's
| "blue collar" workforce appears to have productivity
| requirements that are mostly unobtainable without taking
| shortcuts (like skipping lunch and bathroom breaks) and these
| jobs appear to have an extremely high turnover rate, which
| speaks to the crap nature of the job.
|
| A lot of people would not mind taking a small cut in pay for
| more humanitarian working conditions. People, generally, like
| being treated like people and not machines. But I don't
| actually think this is needed, I think Amazon can both
| improve working conditions and make a strong profit.
|
| For a quick example, my cousin has a union job where a paid
| lunch break (half hour) was negotiated every day. Union
| leaders routinely make their rounds around the office to make
| sure everyone is actually taking their lunch break and not
| feeling forced to work through lunch.
| api wrote:
| I listened to a podcast recently about Amazon union drives
| and apparently the big gripe isn't wages but working
| conditions. The almost universal sentiment is that people are
| treated like robots. Breaks are so rare and short that
| pissing in bottles or defecating in bags is common. Sometimes
| people have to choose between relieving themselves and eating
| since the break is too short for both. Most of the people
| interviewed wanted more humane working conditions.
|
| There are many worse places to work, but that's whataboutism
| and using that argument leads to a race to the bottom.
| [deleted]
| tomnipotent wrote:
| > pissing in bottles or defecating in bags is common
|
| I'd be willing to wager this "fact" has been brought up
| more in this thread alone than has actually happened on the
| job. Makes for great sensationalism, though. The union
| cause would be much better served without this silly BS
| being shared like it's the actual cause of woos.
| rapnie wrote:
| I don't know, but read this yesterday:
|
| "Leaked memo shows Amazon knows delivery drivers resort
| to urinating in bottles"
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/25/amazon
| -de...
|
| > The email [May 2020] went on to say: "We've noticed an
| uptick recently of all kinds of unsanitary garbage being
| left inside bags: used masks, gloves, bottles of urine."
|
| > Workers have previously told the Guardian they needed
| to urinate inside water bottles on a daily basis for fear
| of missing delivery rates. A forum on Reddit dedicated to
| Amazon drivers, which, while impossible to vet completely
| for authenticity, nonetheless shows hundreds of comments
| from drivers claiming they frequently have to urinate in
| water bottles for lack of bathroom breaks while on the
| job
| blueline wrote:
| It's so common that within 16 hours of soliciting
| anonymous tips about the prevalence of it within Amazon,
| the intercept was able to fill an entire article with
| evidence of how common it is
| ncallaway wrote:
| "Stop pointing out the worst abuses of the workers, in
| your effort to reduce the abuse of workers!"
|
| https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-
| bottl...
| marricks wrote:
| Counties with Amazon warehouses have a lower pay rate for
| warehouse work than counties without them.
|
| Amazon makes bank because they can get away with exploiting
| workers more than a mom and pop shop can, or small
| businesses.
|
| --- edit ---
|
| Amazon also has an extremely high turn over rate revealing
| the cruelty of their workplaces:
| https://labor411.org/411-blog/warehouse-worker-turnover-
| rate...
|
| Cite from economist for counties with lower pay:
| https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/01/20/what-
| amaz... and chart without a paywall: https://twitter.com/pari
| smarx/status/1375127251004571649/pho...
|
| Let's stop with the feel good "Amazon must pay better than
| alternatives because they're wealthy" and look at the facts.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Counties with Amazon warehouses have a lower pay rate for
| warehouse work than counties without them.
|
| Mom and pop warehouses pay $12-$13/hr in my county and
| Amazon pays $15-$20/hr with health care I believe.
|
| https://www.amazondelivers.jobs/about/benefits/
| marricks wrote:
| That's a nice local statistic but it's probable at this
| point amazon is depressing warehouse work wages that
| _used_ to be quite a bit above minimum wage.
|
| https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/01/20/what-
| amaz...
| ncallaway wrote:
| > The biggest confusion I have is everybody seems to approach
| Amazon and Tesla unionization as "hopefully it happens so
| workers will get better wages!"
|
| That might be the thing you're wrong about. It sounds like
| most of the Amazon unionization efforts _aren't_ necessarily
| about better pay. It seems like more of the focus is about
| better, more humane working conditions.
|
| If Amazon pays its workers slightly above average that's
| great, but if they treat those same workers like absolute
| shit with inhumane working conditions, then that's a problem
| that a union can help resolve.
| esprehn wrote:
| I think the assumption is that mom and pop shops have a
| better baseline working environment, ex.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+warehouse+ambulance
|
| "How much better" would be things like AC when the weather is
| too hot (which it seems has improved after all the negative
| press), and other safety considerations as mentioned in all
| the articles.
|
| I'm not for or against unions here, but I'm certain Amazon
| could do better.
| junippor wrote:
| Isn't the relationship between unions and corporations
| NECESSARILY confrontational?
|
| A corporation would like to pay its employees as little as
| possible. The employees would like the opposite. What am I
| missing? - genuine question.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| In Germany, for instance, companies are required to have
| union members on the board. From what I understand about the
| structure of unions there, it allows unions to advocate on
| behalf of employees while being less confrontational. It's
| ostensibly a more effective way for the two parties to
| collaborate effectively to everyone's benefit.
| dbspin wrote:
| This exists in Germany, it's called codetermination - https://e
| n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany#:~:....
|
| It's not an alternative to a union, but an additional right.
| Workers can also form councils at shop floor level -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_council
| hnarn wrote:
| I admire that you keep an open mind in a subject that is
| normally extremely infected, but I think your perspective shows
| a slight lack of understanding for the history of labor
| conflict around the world. I don't know if you'll find it
| helpful, but I'll just chime in on some of your points:
|
| > The entire concept of unionization seems unnecessarily
| confrontational.
|
| Unionization is confrontational by definition because it's the
| materialization of completely opposing interests. A unified
| workforce that can make collective demands on their employer is
| economically never in the interest of the employer.
|
| > There is nothing preventing the state to require significant
| representation of employees in every board of directors.
|
| There is not a single doubt in my mind that this would be seen
| by almost anyone as an extremely left-wing policy. When you say
| "there is nothing preventing the state" I'm not sure what you
| mean, unless you have a country with a very left leaning
| populace there is no way this would fly. For an example from my
| country, have a look at "employee funds".[1] The purpose was
| essentially to tax companies, use the money to buy stock in the
| companies, and give ownership to a part of the companies to
| trade unions. So, in a way, exactly what you mention. Remember
| that this was attempted in a country that had a post-war social
| democratic majority for decades, and even then it didn't work.
|
| > In this way, labour and capital could work together in a more
| integrated manner, avoiding much of this unnecessary conflict.
|
| Again, the conflict between labor and capital is not
| "unnecessary", it's built into the power relation. While
| everybody benefits from the company doing well in the long run
| during an equilibrium where everybody's happy, in the short
| term, changes to the benefit of the employer are often negative
| to the employees, and vice versa.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_funds
| clcaev wrote:
| I'm not sure why you are currently downvoted; it seems like a
| contribution to this discourse.
|
| Even so, perhaps the reasoning frame you promote is one of
| our challenges. I see labour and capital as being in conflict
| when they are out of balance with regard to one another.
|
| In particular, I do not think labour (or capital) must always
| be in the driver's seat. I think that every situation
| probably has a healthy balance of power, dependent upon the
| circumstances, where both capital and labour are respected
| for the contributions they make to the enterprise.
| telaelit wrote:
| I wish the NRLB would be much harsher against business owners and
| executives who engage in anti-union rhetoric and behaviors.
| People have the right to form unions, lying about losing benefits
| and lowering pay should be handled much more harshly, there
| should be actual penalties instead of just having to read a
| statement and delete a tweet.
| fastball wrote:
| Isn't the entire point of a union to give you negotiating
| leverage?
|
| If you need the government to effectively do the negotiating
| for you by levying fines and such whenever the company goes
| against the union, what exactly is the point of the union?
| URSpider94 wrote:
| The union doesn't exist yet at their site. The government
| provides the guarantee of a fair election on whether to
| unionize, free of threats from either management or the
| union. Once the site is unionized, the union can indeed
| defend itself by negotiating with management.
| [deleted]
| alkonaut wrote:
| The governments role should be to ensure a level playing
| field between employers and labor. That means the government
| at a minimum needs to protect those who want to organize.
| foerbert wrote:
| Huh?
|
| Don't roads exist to facilitate vehicle transportation? If
| you need to do construction in order to make roads, what
| exactly is the point of them?
|
| I don't understand what your thinking here is. You're
| comparing the expected results of a thing existing with
| possible actions to facilitate conditions for that thing to
| exist. Why are these supposed to be somehow equivalent or
| comparable?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think their point is that the American form of
| unionization is bunk. If you look to Europe workers are
| free to choose between many associations of voluntary
| unions which advocate for their specific interests. They
| are not forced to have a single representative for
| negotiations with their employer and are free to abstain
| from of participation as well.Much like the American voting
| system and American Congress, unions are winner take all
| majority rule. If you are in the minority of a union it may
| not advocate for your interest and you have no option to
| turn to.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The term for this is "closed shop".
|
| I've no idea why the US unions tend to be closed-shop,
| possibly because the high antagonism from employers makes
| it the only stable solution.
| Frondo wrote:
| The Taft-Hartley Act banned closed shops in 1947:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop#United_States
|
| It's literally the first line of that section.
| pjc50 wrote:
| So why are so many people in this thread complaining
| about "having" to join a union?
| opencl wrote:
| The law bans employers from requiring people to be union
| members before they are hired. In states without right to
| work laws it is still legal to require employees to join
| the union after being hired.
| pjc50 wrote:
| So it's still a closed shop in practice? Was the only
| point of passing this law to confuse the issue?
| pseudalopex wrote:
| No. It's legal to require non members to pay an agency
| fee for the services the union is required to provide
| them.[1]
|
| [1] https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-of-compulsory-
| union-member...
| makomk wrote:
| On paper, that means you don't have to join the union in
| order to get a job - just pay the union fees and work
| under the union contract (which is to say, almost all the
| downsides of joining but without any actual say in how
| the union is run). In practice, I think people who do
| this tend to get blacklisted by the union and have
| trouble getting jobs in future. I know the Hollywood
| unions in particular are very aggressive and public about
| threatening anyone who takes that option with
| blacklisting, and there are zero consequences for them
| for doing this.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| As a counterpoint, in my unionized school district, both
| options were quite popular and you didn't need to pay the
| full dues, only like 70%.
| mola wrote:
| American mentality embraces zero sum game as the only
| possibilty, so the end game is usually bad but stable
| results.
| foerbert wrote:
| I don't see how that could be their point. They said
| nothing about multiple unions, nor is the article in any
| way related to it.
| fastball wrote:
| I guess I don't understand the bad behavior here. Tesla is
| allowed to _not_ give anything they want to unionized
| workers.
|
| If you want to force companies to capitulate to unions, cut
| out the middleman and just force companies to give things
| directly to workers.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| The workers aren't unionized yet. What the law is clear
| about, is that you're not allowed to threaten workers for
| the act of trying to unionize the workplace.
| sokoloff wrote:
| "We give our workers stock options now. We do not expect
| to do so under a union contract."
|
| I don't see that as "threatening workers", but as a
| reasonable communication between employer and employees
| and a proper counterbalance against union claims that the
| workers will be better off if they unionize.
|
| "We give our workers stock options now. No other
| automaker working under a union contract does so." is
| something that I don't think anyone could reasonably find
| as threatening (even I don't think the first one is
| either, some may).
|
| As an employee, I benefit from more information from both
| sides of the issue rather than having the union
| organizers be able to communicate unfettered and the
| company communications be restricted from pointing out
| any possible or foreseeable downsides.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| First of all, that's not what Elon said. He said
| something to the effect of "why do you want to join a
| union and lose stock options?" Just like someone who
| approaches you on a dark street and says "nice car,
| wouldn't want anything to happen to it." Of course, when
| you call the police, he's going to explain that he
| genuinely appreciates a fine automobile and was
| expressing his concern given the troubles in the
| neighborhood.
|
| Musk has a significant say in whether employees continue
| to receive options, and I can't see why the union would
| ask to take that away, given that options are presumably
| very popular with their members.
|
| Saying that life will get worse with a union is one
| thing. Saying that it will get worse because I will make
| it worse is another.
| foerbert wrote:
| That's real easy to say when there isn't a union yet. And
| the company has zero incentive to give any kind of
| realistic and useful information in this situation. They
| can say whatever they want, and it doesn't mean anything.
| They don't even know what the non-existent union will
| want or care about later, so how they can have any
| accurate expectations even if they are perfectly rational
| and honest. The only purpose these statements serve is to
| try to prevent unionization.
|
| Part of why this is not a simple "both sides" issue is
| because we're talking about one side that exists and one
| side that might one day exist. The non-extant union can't
| weigh in on company statements or make any statements of
| their own.
|
| So these rules exist to help ensure the workers are not
| unduly influenced by the company when they consider
| making that union finally exist. I don't see a problem
| with this.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I agree that they shouldn't be _unduly_ influenced by the
| company when contemplating joining a union.
|
| But if they're paying the workers part in cash and part
| in options, and the union organizers are pitching that
| they'll raise their wages, I think it's fair for the
| company to point out that that is likely to result in
| _moving_ some of the comp from options into cash.
|
| The UAW and representatives can certainly make statements
| today. Here's one: https://uaw.org/statement-uaw-vice-
| president-cindy-estrada-d...
| fastball wrote:
| Everything you're saying applies to union organizers
| though, which _do exists_ before the union is formed.
|
| And the entire point is that the union forming _could_ be
| bad for workers in various ways, so if I was a worker I
| would want to be made aware of what could possibly go
| wrong _before_ I joined the effort to unionize and no
| longer had a choice in the matter after the union is
| fully formed and going strong.
| Trombone12 wrote:
| How could the organisers know what future members want
| then the company spend much effort on preventing workers
| from talking to each other?
| fastball wrote:
| How do companies spend so much effort preventing workers
| from talking to each other?
| foerbert wrote:
| This isn't about any actual negotiation though. This is
| about a public statement aimed at discouraging even
| attempting to unionize. This is well before the point
| where the union and company would be negotiating.
|
| I think it makes a lot of sense to regulate this kind of
| activity. It's not about forcing companies to 'give in'
| or not to unions, but about helping to protect the
| ability for the union to form in the first place.
|
| We can argue forever about how much company statements
| might influence the ability for unions to form, but at
| the end of the day the actual regulation here is
| basically just stopping the company from setting up their
| own strawmen in hopes of influencing workers. Naturally,
| it's very easy to talk tough when you're just pretending
| to negotiate against yourself. Not doing this seems like
| a pretty mild restriction, so I don't think it's a
| particularly onerous regulation.
| mola wrote:
| They're not allowed to threaten employees who want to
| unionize. They may refuse to give options.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| Actually, they can't. The judge ruled that saying so
| represented an illegal threat, and the NLRB concurred.
| It's been decided by law.
| cma wrote:
| I guess businesses don't need the government laws enforcing
| shareholder voting rights and minority shareholder
| protections then right?
| fastball wrote:
| No absolutely the government should enforce legal
| agreements via the legal system.
|
| But that's not what this is suggesting, right? This is
| suggesting the government should treat unions
| preferentially, not equitably.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No, this is suggesting that government should enforce
| workers' rights to decide freely if they want to
| unionize. Companies routinely skirt this right by taking
| explicit anti-unionization efforts, and there are many
| firms specializing in this.
| fastball wrote:
| What is required for "free" decision-making?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Making sure no one is strong arming or threatening,
| harassing, or bribing the ones who have to make that
| decision, nor thought leaders among them.
| fastball wrote:
| Yes, I would say that is kinda a given. Don't think
| Elon's tweet counts as any of these things though.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > This is suggesting the government should treat unions
| preferentially, not equitably.
|
| Equity is in the eye of the beholder. I don't see how
| this law is treating unions preferentially, and am
| interested in how you distinguish it with the
| aforementioned minority shareholder protections.
| fastball wrote:
| The idea here seems to be that unions can interfere with
| the running of a business however they want (strikes,
| etc), but businesses should not be allowed to "interfere"
| with the formation of union, where "interfere" seems to
| be a very low bar in terms of what is unacceptable.
|
| When I say equitable treatment, I'm looking for symmetry,
| and I'm not seeing it here.
| cma wrote:
| Seems like you are saying owners of small businesses can
| get together and collude under a combined business, with
| shares and voting, but individual workers must be
| atomized or if they do try to coordinate to bargain
| against the businesses, they get no similar help to do so
| as the shareholders get.
| kelnos wrote:
| The problem is that collective action is difficult before you
| have the union, and companies/executives have a lot of power
| to dissuade people from forming unions. In the past that's
| involved physical threats and actual violence. Nowadays I
| expect it's more posturing and economic threats, but they can
| still have the desired effect.
|
| The point of these sorts of laws is to give unions a fighting
| chance to take hold in places where employees want them, but
| are afraid of retaliation if they tried to form one.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I mean the quote about options is probably true. It just means
| employees won't be given any _more_ options.
|
| Unionised workers typically get no or very few stock options
| compared to industries with no unionisation.
| oivey wrote:
| Unionized workers get what they negotiate for. Given how tech
| works, a Tesla union very well could demand options. It is
| absolutely false that unionization precludes employees
| getting options.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Except they usually don't... Unionized industries tend to
| be adversarial - if the employees get a better deal, then
| the employer does less well. Therefore receiving options is
| a poor negotiation tactic.
| astrange wrote:
| Only in the US setup. Europe uses codetermination and
| other systems that align them with their employers.
| Although they tend to get paid less than US tech
| companies, but so does everyone.
| weyland108 wrote:
| What ? Seems like I am better of without a union if I am
| getting more pay?. Also where is the conversation around
| building a better product to add more value in this union
| debate?
| astrange wrote:
| > Seems like I am better of without a union if I am
| getting more pay?
|
| Correlation is not causation (they are in different
| industries.)
|
| > Also where is the conversation around building a better
| product to add more value in this union debate?
|
| That's what "codetermination" is. European branches of US
| tech companies do have works councils, which are like
| mini-codetermination.
| sofixa wrote:
| You're getting more pay for a wild variety of reasons (
| VC inflation, a lot of things that pay has to compensate
| for, etc.), nothing to do with unions.
|
| In France, it's mandatory for companies with more than 50
| employees to have workers council and that has to be
| consulted on serious decisions ( changing offices, firing
| people, layoffs, etc.) and has some limited negotiation
| power. They negotiate company-wide policies (accord) on
| behalf of the employees that have to be at least as good
| as the branch-wide policies ( convention collective) -
| e.g. all workers in media companies get 20 days extra
| vacation because that's what the branch collective
| bargaining agreement says.
|
| Furthermore, oftentimes ( sometimes it's mandatory),
| there are profit sharing schemes, e.g in my company 1% of
| the profits is shared among the employees, so your
| incentives are directly aligned with the company ( it
| comes to around a salary's worth of a bonus, so it's
| decent).
| DaedPsyker wrote:
| We are all paid less than in the US, union or not. In the
| UK, its mostly older industries that are covered by
| unions these days.
|
| I think the google and microsoft staff have been trying
| to create the first tech oriented one though.
| cwhiz wrote:
| I disagree. It should be a free market. If the employees don't
| like their treatment they should leave and take a different
| job. I am sure there is a UAW job out there to be had.
|
| The most likely outcome from this is that Tesla moves more and
| more production out of a California and into a more business
| friendly state, such as Texas.
| joppy wrote:
| So in a "free" market, one side has all the bargaining power
| and the other side has none of it? What does a free market
| mean to you?
| cwhiz wrote:
| It means the employees can choose to leave and choose
| whether they want to join a union.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| The NLRB has jurisdiction in Texas
| jmjanzen wrote:
| Spreading democracy to the workforce does not make the market
| less "free." It just makes it easier to manipulate by the
| few.
| cwhiz wrote:
| Democracy in the workforce would be giving employees an
| option to join a union, or not.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| Where, exactly, are people who live in the SF Bay Area going
| to find a UAW job?
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Or Alabama? Which would never get a union...
|
| Unions are an aspect of a free market. They're an
| organization of individuals with a common goal in exactly the
| same way corporations are.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| This free market you speak of is in fact fairly sensitive to
| initial conditions, and will never reconcile the interests of
| the rich and poor on its own.
| ausbah wrote:
| calling it a free market is laughable naive. the market is
| lopsided in favor of businesses because many laws at the
| state and federal are explicitly pro-business and anti-union;
| see "right to work laws", the 1947 Taft-Harley act, etc. -
| especially over the past 20 years
|
| and saying workers should just go and join a union backed job
| is even sillier when <15% of all full time workers are apart
| of a union [1]
|
| [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
| cwhiz wrote:
| Right to work is only anti union because it allows
| employees to choose whether or not to join a union. Forcing
| an employee to join a union is absolutely not pro-employee.
| lukejduncan wrote:
| Right to work is pro employee. If unions want membership
| they shouldn't be able to coerce it. They should have to
| earn it and compete for it. If a union can't survive based
| on voluntary membership then that tells you something.
| ausbah wrote:
| it is the state infringing in the market on the side of
| business and capital by restricting the ability of
| workers to collectively bargain with employers
|
| workers are less well off but it's ok because
| "individualism"
| lukejduncan wrote:
| No one is being restricted from bargaining collectively.
| They're just being given the choice to opt out. Unions
| just get upset because they lose their monopoly status to
| police workers voices who disagree with their position
| and politics.
| jellicle wrote:
| I'm glad to hear you are calling for employees to be able to
| freely form a union and strike (which employees are mostly
| banned from doing today).
| whimsicalism wrote:
| In the free market, should businesses not be able to freely
| agree to a contract? Most anti-union laws limit the types of
| contracts private actors are able to voluntarily consent to,
| which seems less of a "free market."
| dnautics wrote:
| for behaviours, yes, but for rhetoric, you're toeing a very
| dangerous line up against the 1st amendment.
| eecc wrote:
| Hey let's not make it a freedom of speech issue. If you speak
| the words "if you what I dislike I'll beat you up" you're not
| asserting a 1A right, you're just a bully
| ear7h wrote:
| The 1st amendment does not and should not apply to business
| matters. You don't even need to look far from the subject
| matter, Musk has gotten in trouble before over misleading
| tweets. I don't see anyone bring up the first amendment when
| discussing corporate fraud. Why is it that executives can be
| accountable to shareholders but not workers?
| dnautics wrote:
| "does not and should not apply to business matters" The
| problem is this: At what point does something become a
| "business matter"? And yes, I have opined that the SEC is
| playing with fire and possibly sowing the seeds of its own
| irrelevance with it's threats to musk.
| emteycz wrote:
| Because the workers don't own the company. Accountability
| to shareholders is built upon ownership.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| And a phat paycheque.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| ? Not at all. I'm not quite sure why people on HN think the
| 1st amendment is such a golden bullet, but it is not. There
| are lots of exceptions, including threatened retaliation, to
| what might be permissibly said in the workplace.
|
| If, for instance, as you were hiring people, you told them
| "we don't hire black people", even if you did hire black
| people, you would still be opening yourself up to suit, even
| with freedom of speech.
| cma wrote:
| In the end I think courts will say the promised anti-union
| rollercoaster and yogurt complexes must be built. Fraudulent
| promises as part of commerce and labor negotiation are
| excluded from protection under pretty much every
| interpretation of the 1st amendment out there.
|
| https://elonmusk.today/#frozen-yogurt-rollercoasters
| dnautics wrote:
| IANAL, but if it's not in writing, I believe you have to
| prove that musk never intended to deliver, and that's gonna
| be hard to prove. Otherwise you can nail people down to a
| few hundred prosecutable offenses a year and that is not a
| recipe for social success when there are sufficient numbers
| of vindictive jerks around.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The article said it was in an email.
| loceng wrote:
| How is anyone buying into the complete false statement/propaganda
| that what Elon said is a threat?
|
| Has anyone commenting here even read Elon's tweet in question?
|
| "Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union.
| Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up
| stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than
| when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare." - Elon,
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/998454539941367808
|
| Edit to add: lots of Elon hate blocking critical thinking here on
| HN.
| aphextron wrote:
| >"Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting
| union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues
| & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X
| better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets
| healthcare." - Elon,
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/998454539941367808
|
| This is literally textbook union busting BS. It's been the same
| line for 200 years.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Why would they not get stock options? Sounds like a punishment
| for voting union?
| loceng wrote:
| Punishment? It's negotiation. It's Elon stating that Tesla
| won't be putting stock options on the table, but a union
| still could then negotiate - they could potentially negotiate
| to refuse to work unless they're getting stock but it sounds
| like Tesla is drawing the line there because they believe
| that their stock is valuable and will become much more
| valuable; employees will have to decide for themselves if
| they want to risk potentially losing out on getting stocks
| and weigh if that's valuable enough for them for whatever
| else the union may or may not be able to negotiate. Arguably,
| as Elon said, they haven't unionized yet because of that
| potential loss - but it's not a threat, and arguably the
| employees are smart enough to decide for themselves.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| That's exactly the kind of thing that's forbidden under the
| law. You can't threaten to take a current benefit off the
| table if employees unionize.
| cinntaile wrote:
| So if I tell you that you can join a union but if you do
| you won't get stock options, then I have negotiated with
| you?
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| I think the threat is that union members wouldn't get stock
| options.
| loceng wrote:
| That's not a threat - that's called pointing out a fact, it's
| called reasoning, that employees would be doing themselves
| when balancing out the pros and cons; just because Elon's
| pointing out pros and cons doesn't make something a threat.
| The employees and union still have the ability to decide
| based on pros and cons.
|
| This is being warped and a lack of reasoning at the same
| level of absurdity as changing master-slave language in
| programming to shallowly appeal/respond to racism issues.
| hedora wrote:
| It wasn't a threat: UAW has never allowed that type of
| compensation in a union contract, and have specifically
| blocked attempts to tie compensation to performance in the
| past.
|
| The point of the tweet is that Tesla workers are already
| treated better than their UAW counterparts. Why let the UAW
| come in and screw it up?
| xutopia wrote:
| I think the devil is in the details here. Is he saying that if
| people unionize they don't get stock options? Why is that? Is
| it a threat?
| loceng wrote:
| No, it's a fact - pros and cons. Tesla has no obligation to
| provide stock to employees - and so employees/unions get to
| decide what is the better potential option for them - and I
| suppose it's a risk for employees to unionize if they will no
| longer then be getting stock; unless a union somehow can
| force Tesla to give X stock to unionized employees, I don't
| know all nor have I thought through all possibilities - so
| there's possibly nuance missing but Elon's tweet itself isn't
| a threat.
|
| Threat's the wrong word but purposefully misused, even if it
| causes fear or rather it will cause a fear of a sense of loss
| of value - because if employees value owning/gaining Tesla
| stock over whatever else they potentially could negotiate
| through a union, then there's certainly a fear of potential
| loss - but Elon pointing out that possibility isn't a threat
| itself.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| To understand the political evolution of Western democracies, it
| is instructive to read about the alliance between rent-seeking
| labor unions and the Democratic Party in the largest Western
| democracy, the US:
|
| https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trou...
|
| It is also worth noting that virtually every major news company
| has a fully unionized workforce who essentially can't be replaced
| and have a financial conflict of interest in how the public
| perceives left vs right policies and parties.
| mlindner wrote:
| To repeat the key info from this case that makes one question the
| NRLB ruling (from reddit originally):
|
| The tweet is
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/998454539941367808
|
| > Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union.
| Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up
| stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than
| when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare.
|
| where he is talking about the fact that other companies with the
| UAW do not have stock options for their employees , which he even
| clarifies in this next tweet
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999415738967277568
|
| > Exactly. UAW does not have individual stock ownership as part
| of the compensation at any other company.
|
| This is apparently "intimidation". And as for the guy fired
|
| > In another incident, a union-affiliated worker, Jose Moran,
| accessed Workday, Tesla's internal HR system, to look up
| information about an employee who opposed the union. Moran took a
| screenshot of the other worker's Workday page--which included his
| name, photo, job title, and other information--and texted it to
| another union-affiliated employee, Richard Ortiz. Ortiz wound up
| using the anti-union employee's picture in a post on a private
| Facebook group for pro-union Tesla employees.
|
| > Richard Ortiz was fired after the incident , but because Tesla
| did not have standing rules against browsing employees' profiles
| on Workday or screenshotting them , apparently that's not
| allowed.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Union contracts are employer specific (and in some cases,
| facility specific), and if the Tesla factory workers unionized,
| they _could_ negotiate for stock grants.
|
| The threat was that Tesla would revoke stock option grants if
| the workforce unionized, or refuse to negotiate over the
| availability of stock options, which is illegal under current
| federal labor regulations.
|
| No, most other automakers don't offer stock, because the UAW
| didn't negotiate that with other automakers. However, for most
| other automakers, (and indeed, outside of tech generally) stock
| _options_ are not worth much because the stock doesn 't
| appreciate rapidly and it's not worth the administrative burden
| of issuing/tracking _options_ for share gains in the fractions
| of a dollar. Most other automakers _do_ allow employees to
| purchase (actual) _shares_ of company stock out of pre-tax
| income, which is generally a _huge_ benefit for companies that
| actually make money and are valued on fundamentals.
| astrange wrote:
| > Union contracts are employer specific (and in some cases,
| facility specific), and if the Tesla factory workers
| unionized, they could negotiate for stock grants.
|
| This is true in the US, but it's not true in other countries
| which learned from our mistakes and implemented wage
| boards/sectoral bargaining, where a union contract applies to
| an entire industry at once. This makes the employer less
| likely to feel they're becoming uncompetitive by accepting
| the union, which is good since in the past they tended to
| react by having all their employees killed by the Pinkertons.
| 1996 wrote:
| > Union contracts are employer specific (and in some cases,
| facility specific), and if the Tesla factory workers
| unionized, they could negotiate for stock grants
|
| If it was my factory, I would cut the stock grant and fire
| them all - unionized or not - to end a clear message to the
| other factories: "you only have one job, while I have more
| than one factory"
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Which is illegal under decades-old labor laws...
| astrange wrote:
| Congratulations on committing the same crime as in the
| article?
| slumpt_ wrote:
| This is mind-bendingly ignorant. Read up on US history.
| lazide wrote:
| Which many people would consider hostile to workers in
| general and the people around your factory - which may not
| matter, or maybe it will.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| Thank you for proving why unions are needed, and why they
| often have an adversarial relationship with management.
| [deleted]
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| > why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?
|
| If you don't think that Elon means employees will lose their
| stock options if they unionize, then what does he mean?
| jcims wrote:
| The likelihood that the UAW would roll in, start collecting
| dues and then do nothing with the comp structure seems
| extremely small.
| elliekelly wrote:
| "It would be a _real shame_ if something were to happen to
| those stock options once you unionized, wouldn't it?"
| npad wrote:
| I'm taking it to mean union employees wouldn't get new
| grants. Which makes sense to me - I have a hard time squaring
| how you can be in a union with an adversarial relationship to
| management, whilst at the same time being an owner of the
| company. It's one or the other.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Why are these things at odds? It seems like the ideal
| outcome for the union would be to have a significant
| ownership stake in the company and share in its success,
| rather than have an adversarial relationship and drag down
| profits. Making the company uncompetitive in the market is
| bad for the union in the long run.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Representatives of the union see the world differently.
| They don't see collaboration on the same goal, they see
| rich management exploiting employees to get even richer.
|
| So it's really an us vs them mentality. Either I get
| richer, or you get richer. Don't expect these people to
| start reasoning about making the company they work for
| competitive.
|
| At least this is the case in europe.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Interesting that this would be the case in Europe.
| Germany has had 'codetermination' laws for decades, where
| they have (typically union) representation on the boards
| of large corporations[1].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
| KaiserPro wrote:
| what? how is that not stopping people unionise?
|
| If I join a union at work, it has no bearing on my stock
| options. In the uk its illegal to discriminate like that,
| precisely because employers like tesla would make it
| economically impossible to join a union.
|
| As an aside, if you take away the shares, there is little
| incentive to work together to increase the share value. So
| of course unions are going to be incentivised differently.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Individual employees have every bit as adversarial a
| relationship to management as union members. They just have
| much less bargaining power.
| eru wrote:
| What do you mean by less bargaining power?
|
| As an individual I feel like I have relatively more
| bargaining power, because when eg talking about pay I
| just need to convince the company to bump one total comp
| package, mine.
|
| So I can negotiate much more aggressively and get more
| done, then someone who tried to get the company to raise
| thousands of pay packages.
|
| Also, I have an easy time convincing the company that I
| am leaving (or not joining), if they don't accede to my
| demands.
|
| No union can credibly threaten that all unionized
| employees will quit, if they don't get a 40% pay rise.
| atq2119 wrote:
| These may all be fine arguments as to why a high-level(!)
| software developer might not want to join a union.
|
| None of what you wrote applies to assembly line workers.
| And arguably, it doesn't apply to junior software devs
| either.
| mnsc wrote:
| > I just need to convince the company to bump one total
| comp package, mine
|
| > ...
|
| > Also, I have an easy time convincing the company that I
| am leaving (or not joining), if they don't accede to my
| demands.
|
| And when your aggressive negotiating is too much of a
| hassle for the company they just have to fire one
| "problematic" employee, you. And unless you have created
| a hellhole of a system architecture in your project that
| only you can maintain as insurance/backup to your
| aggressive negotiation, you will be surprised to see just
| how replaceable you are.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| Unions threaten that all employees will quit
| all.the.time. It's called a strike. It's their primary
| bargaining power. Yes, the workers will eventually come
| back to work, but only after they gain some concessions
| from management, and it can be a long time before they
| come back.
| [deleted]
| avs733 wrote:
| Unions don't have to be adversarial...and it is often
| driven by management, as you are seeing here.
| snypher wrote:
| "owner of the company"?
|
| This is common anti-union rhetoric. Am I an owner, with my
| $600 stock, and can I convince 89.5% of the other stock
| holders to vote with me?[0] Doesn't sound like ownership.
|
| [0] see supermajority voting
| justin66 wrote:
| > I have a hard time squaring how you can be in a union
| with an adversarial relationship to management, whilst at
| the same time being an owner of the company. It's one or
| the other.
|
| Unionized ESOP companies aren't uncommon.
|
| You've got it a bit backwards about the adversarial
| relationship: having an ESOP and a union isn't some kind of
| organizational impossibility, and it can decrease the
| probability of a serious dispute between management and the
| union. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr347
| .html
| npad wrote:
| Interesting, yeah those are good points. I can certainly
| see it reducing the severity of disputes in theory.
|
| In practice though I'm skeptical. I've read a little
| about the history of UAW. They really seemed to view
| workers vs mgmt as an adversarial zero sum game.
| Meanwhile Toyota were developing their production system
| using the kaizen principle of bottom up continuous
| improvement. Unions played a huge role in making US autos
| uncompetitive against the Japanese brands for a long
| time.
|
| I want to be pro-union but it's hard when you observe
| their real world behaviour. All too often they slowly
| strangle their company, making it less and less
| competitive and innovative and ultimately dooming it to
| defeat by new entrants who aren't yet encumbered by
| unions.
| eru wrote:
| So it depends a bit on whether you talk about real world
| US unions like the UAW, or about what unions could be in
| theory and might be in other parts of the world.
|
| Eg German unions have a reputation, at least compared to
| the US, of cooperating much more with their host
| companies. Similar also for Scandinavian unions.
| evgen wrote:
| It could also be the case that US unions operate in a
| country where power is held by a class of people who
| would really prefer their serfs to STFU and get back to
| whatever dangerous, ill-paid task they were assigned.
| When the most egregious wrongs are simply illegal and
| never happen then it is much easier for capital and labor
| to have a less adversarial relationship, but when you
| operate in a country like the US I would assume it is
| necessary for a union to be a bit more aggressive in its
| actions and objectives.
| justin66 wrote:
| > In practice though I'm skeptical.
|
| > They really seemed to view workers vs mgmt as an
| adversarial zero sum game.
|
| That doesn't really affect the feasibility or otherwise
| of running an ESOP as a union shop. On the contrary, I
| imagine that if you view the entire thing as zero-sum,
| you might be _more_ prone to think about what is going to
| happen to your stock 's value if you strike, or take
| steps that negatively effect efficiency.
|
| If you're not thinking zero-sum, you can use some pretty
| handwavey logic for thinking the next bonus you demand
| doesn't _really_ negatively effect people like your
| coworkers or the shareholders, since you 're merely being
| compensated for your inherent greatness that will
| inevitably lead to the company's greater success, blah
| blah... congratulations, you appear to be in senior
| management.
|
| > Meanwhile Toyota were developing their production
| system using the kaizen principle of bottom up continuous
| improvement. Unions played a huge role in making US autos
| uncompetitive against the Japanese brands for a long
| time.
|
| It doesn't seem unfathomable to me that a unionized
| company could develop something like the Toyota
| Production System. The German companies tout having
| learned from Toyota, and I don't know how true that is,
| but the successful, modern German car companies are all
| unionized. (in the greater context, Tesla is still
| nonunion and didn't appear to pay any attention to TPS
| when they brought their production online, which is maybe
| interesting)
| JBSmoove wrote:
| Ford sold 900,000 F150s in 2019.
|
| Toyota sold about 336,000 Camrys.
|
| They sold a little over 110,000 Tundras.
|
| About 200,000 Tacomas.
|
| And Ford gets GIANT markups on the F150s, they are super
| profitable for them and the best selling truck for many
| many years now. Toyota, Honda aren't even close to
| American truck and SUV sales.
|
| So explain to me again how US autos aren't competitive
| with Japanese brands?
| thirdlamp wrote:
| Look outside the US and you can easily see how US Auto is
| uncompetitive.
| klyrs wrote:
| Only, employee-owned co-ops demonstratee that you actually
| can have it both ways.
| seoaeu wrote:
| > Richard Ortiz was fired after the incident , but because
| Tesla did not have standing rules against browsing employees'
| profiles on Workday or screenshotting them , apparently that's
| not allowed.
|
| The real question is if they'd have been fired for doing that
| if they weren't a union organizer. And perhaps more
| importantly, whether you'd be able to convince a judge that
| looking up co-workers on an internal directory and/or posting
| about them privately on Facebook is always a firable offense.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I don't see how it isn't a firable offense given that it
| violates the confidentiality agreement that lists termination
| as a possible consequence of violation.
|
| So it seems to me that what Oritz did must qualify as
| protected activity...
| URSpider94 wrote:
| First of all, the system wasn't treated as confidential
| information, and workers weren't told that use of the
| system was restricted. Second, the data they extracted were
| simply names and photos. Third, they posted them to a FB
| group comprising Tesla employees. If you read the judgment,
| indeed, all of these actions are considered protected
| activity.
| mlindner wrote:
| I don't quite get that objection though, why do you need
| stated rules that a certain internal site is internal
| information? Everything is assumed to be internal information
| unless stated otherwise. That violates any HR policy
| anywhere. More so the guy was putting it on facebook to
| literally get people to stalk the guy. So I'm surprised he
| didn't get criminal charges.
| seoaeu wrote:
| You don't need the rules to know that sharing information
| from internal sites might be prohibited. You need them to
| be able to prove that sharing information like this would
| get somebody _fired_. The other possibility (which the NLRB
| seems to believe) is that Tesla normally would have been OK
| with this sort of sharing or given only a warning, but this
| time was specifically looking for an excuse to fire the
| employee.
| dundarious wrote:
| Do you have info on the stalking? It is common practice
| when organizing a union to note the likely strongly anti-
| union people, to not solicit them, and inform them last of
| the effort. I say this because I presumed they were just
| screenshotting the guy's employment photo and name, and
| posting in the private group, "don't solicit this guy, he
| might scupper the effort."
| adolph wrote:
| Accessing org info for private purposes seems ethically
| deficient.
| dundarious wrote:
| In the abstract I would agree, but there are degrees of
| offense before firing someone -- I would imagine I would
| not be fired for doing same when organizing who to invite
| or not invite if I was organizing a poker game ("invite
| anyone, except this guy"). So the actions here seem quite
| harsh and retaliatory. I haven't read the NLRB's report,
| but my thoughts are similar to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26598779
| mlindner wrote:
| Really? It would seem more likely they would try to
| harass the guy who's anti-union.
| dundarious wrote:
| Doesn't seem that way to me. As I said, one of the first
| steps in organizing is usually identifying your strong-no
| to strong-yes people, and building support among the yes
| side first. I don't have experience in organizing a
| workplace, but the information above is second-hand from
| conversations with people who have.
|
| I have participated in "get out the vote" operations. In
| that case it's quite similar: you mostly want to avoid
| knocking on the door of likely-strong-no households, as
| you have so many likely-strong-yes doors to knock, and
| debating people on the doorstep is a waste of precious
| time when close to an election/primary -- so you can see
| the value in having a good data operation to know which
| houses are likely one way or the other, and spreading
| that knowledge to your canvassers.
| mlindner wrote:
| Because of all of the above I disagree with the ruling. While
| yes Elon's tweet is borderline "intimidation", the guy was
| fired for very legitimate reasons, taking internal company
| information about employees and basically doxxing them on
| facebook. The NLRB shouldn't be defending doxxers.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| He didn't Dox them - he didn't publish their home addresses
| or phone numbers, he merely said "these people testified on
| behalf of the company at a state hearing." This is very
| clearly protected organizing activity, as documented with
| multiple case citations in the judge's ruling.
|
| In addition, the employee who was fired didn't access the
| internal system. Someone else did, and texted him the photos,
| which he posted. The person who allegedly accessed the system
| only got a warning. So, if the concern is the improper access
| of company systems, then they punished the wrong guy.
| lakecresva wrote:
| > To repeat the key info from this case that makes one question
| the NRLB ruling...
|
| These issues (among others) are addressed at length in the
| NLRB's decision
| (https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d45833d3fce)
| which takes into account probably thousands of pages of briefs,
| witness statements, and legal analysis.
|
| The decision itself is only ~50 pages and is readable without a
| legal background. The section "credibility findings" which
| starts on page 32 might interest you.
|
| The full docket activity page for the case is here
| (https://www.nlrb.gov/case/32-CA-197020).
| pmorici wrote:
| Calling this tweet "anti-union" seems like spin. It is pointing
| out facts that one might want to consider before deciding to
| unionize. The fact that employees lose stock options when they
| unionize isn't so much a threat as it is a fact about how unions
| work because historically unions are against any kind of
| incentive or merit pay so they refuse options as compensation. It
| is a fact that UAW hasn't negotiated options as part of the pay
| for it's members at any of the other companies where it
| represents workers.
| loceng wrote:
| Try explaining that to the people downvoting and commenting
| where I point this out -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26602600
| runarberg wrote:
| (I have a gripe with the stock market so take this post with a
| grain of salt)
|
| idk. In my experience I would much rather get payed for my work
| in money I can use immediately, rather then being forced to
| play a game in a system I don't believe in. I've worked for a
| few companies which gave me stock options (one of them was
| really good) and in practice what you end up getting is less
| then a month salary at best. I think companies love to give
| stock options because it adds bells and whistles to your
| benefits, it looks like they are giving you more then they are.
| If I had a choice I would much rather see my salary go up as
| the company raises in value then to be handed out stock.
|
| That said, I'm not well versed in union logic so I don't know
| if this is the reason why unions are against this practice. I
| am just glad they are.
| hnarn wrote:
| I'm a very pro-union guy, so I'll give my five cents just for
| the sake of discussion:
|
| Firstly, I don't know the context in which this was tweeted,
| but looking at it, it's not in my opinion egregiously or
| "obviously" anti-union, but the definition of this is of course
| a legal one and not a subjective one, so it doesn't really
| matter what any of us "think" is anti-union, what matters is
| the legal text in the region where it is tried. With that said,
| I'd also like to state my opinion that I think it's at least
| quite unprofessional for any senior executive to voice any kind
| of anti-union sentiment regardless of how mild it is, I would
| expect that both parties keep to certain standards of
| discussion and avoiding bad faith, which in my mind means not
| discarding the entire _raison d 'etre_ of the other party.
|
| Secondly, pointing out that unions are opposed to
| individualized salary negotiations is hardly a criticism of
| unions as much as it is a statement of fact. If the unions
| cannot meet this point in debate but need to revert to legal
| action, I think that speaks to the sad state of pro-union
| ideology today.
| natch wrote:
| You're talking about whether the most visible champion of
| Dogecoin, whose formal title at his company is Techking, and
| who added a fart-on-demand feature to his products, and
| saying that one of his tweets regarding a currently non-
| existent party, a Tesla union organization, is
| unprofessional.
|
| Labels like "unprofessional" are repugnant to some people,
| because they have been, and continue to be, used to justify
| arbitrary application of personal taste and frankly BS in the
| workplace, for example to bully people into wearing neckties.
|
| I doubt this is a good standard to go for when trying to
| engage Elon. I do understand however that it's your opinion
| -- no argument that you are free to it, and I even think it's
| productive to air it... in part because it gives people like
| me a chance to offer a counter perspective.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I doubt this is a good standard to go for when trying to
| engage Elon_
|
| I agree, it's a much better to cut through the BS and go
| straight for the time that Musk and Tesla tried to have a
| former employee murdered by the police by accusing them of
| being a mass shooter[1] all because Musk thought the
| employee was a whistleblower for public safety.
|
| I think that incident illustrates Musk's attitude towards
| Tesla employees well.
|
| [1]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-
| elon...
| Balgair wrote:
| > You're talking about whether the most visible champion of
| Dogecoin, whose formal title at his company is Techking,
| and who added a fart-on-demand feature to his products, and
| saying that one of his tweets regarding a currently non-
| existent party, a Tesla union organization, is
| unprofessional.
|
| You bring up a good point here and I think it applies to
| all of his ventures: Why trust anything the guy does?
|
| However, when it comes to safety, the public must have
| trust. Very solid trust. Because 2+ tons of car at 70mph
| that claims to steer itself cannot be untrusted.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| I have a nuanced opinion on unions after dealing with a bunch
| of them in a former life as a construction inspector /
| structural engineer (EIT).
|
| Some unions are great. IBEW Local 353 comes to mind. The best
| unions have slogans like "when the boss is well paid, we get
| what we want in negotiations" and the worst unions have
| essentially the opposite mindset. I've literally seen members
| from ATU Transit Union Local 113 throw an empty coffee cup on
| the ground during a nighttime subway construction project and
| say "job creation" during their duties.
|
| There is a right way to do unions and a wrong way. Germany
| seems to get this better than North America. Too often in
| North America things get divided into pro-this or anti-that,
| instead of being a discussion on how to do something right or
| how to properly align incentives so that the right outcome
| happens.
|
| I'm not anti-union. I like the protection that some unions
| provide their workers; especially in specialized, high risk
| trades like welding or electrical. That said, I don't think
| Tesla would be Tesla with a heavy union throwing unnecessary
| delays around. Their safety record is quite good and their
| compensation is better than average even without the stellar
| stock performance. Before advocating that Tesla should
| unionize I'd prefer to see structural changes in unionization
| come to North America so that we have an environment that
| fosters a healthier relationship between employer and union.
| I don't want every North American company rusting away like
| Detroit.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Correlation is not causation, and in this case it's a stretch
| to argue that's what he was saying. "Don't vote union, you'll
| have to move to Detroit!"
|
| Has anyone seen joining unions actually cause positions that
| got stock to stop getting stock? Is this like an overwhelmingly
| common thing I don't know about?
| knz_ wrote:
| > Has anyone seen joining unions actually cause positions
| that got stock to stop getting stock? Is this like an
| overwhelmingly common thing I don't know about?
|
| It's an overt threat. Tesla has used it's stock compensation
| as a weapon against employees in the past. There are
| countless examples of people being fired days/weeks before
| stock options vested, essentially a form of wage theft:
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-19/tesla-
| wor... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/07/01/t
| esla-p... https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/iiwuxr/
| she_moved...
| lupire wrote:
| It's a made up lie. Actors are in a union and they get
| profit-sharing and individual performance-based pay.
| theknocker wrote:
| >fucktarded big government clowns make themselves look like a
| giant toolshed
|
| What else is new?
| bendbro wrote:
| I will never join a union. Professional certifications, tests,
| dues, stupid rules about who can do what job when? No thanks.
| I'll gladly collectively bargain for higher compensation and
| better conditions though.
|
| People who think this Nth attempt at a union won't succumb to the
| same pitfalls as earlier attempts are the same idiot idealists
| who think their novel attempt at communism will absolutely
| succeed. I'm not interested in participating in complicated,
| untestable, unrevertable systems unless they are pitted against
| competitive alternatives. Collectives, especially large ones,
| generally only change by dying and being replaced.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Professional certifications, tests, dues, stupid rules about
| who can do what job when? No thanks.
|
| That can be part of a union, but then they are democratic, so
| it depends on who you elect to run things. A bad union is just
| like a bad employer.
|
| > I'll gladly collectively bargain for higher compensation and
| better conditions though.
|
| I mean that's literally the point of a union. they are there to
| bring the money to take the employer to court. (ideally the
| threat is enough to get changes.)
|
| I do think its cute that you think that a democratic union is
| akin to communism. There is nothing stopping a workplace from
| having more than one union, its quite common in the UK.
| bendbro wrote:
| > That can be part of a union, but then they are democratic,
| so it depends on who you elect to run things. A bad union is
| just like a bad employer
|
| I think a bad union is more common than a bad company, since
| collectives run democratically produce less agile and less
| productive outcomes than collectives run executively.
| Unfortunately a union has to run democratically, because they
| seek to produce equitable outcomes, not productive outcomes.
|
| To rephrase what I'm saying, I would prefer a single manager
| deciding how my job functions over a democratically elected
| committee deciding how my job functions, except when it comes
| to negotiating higher wages, compensation, obvious safety
| concerns, hours, etc.
|
| > I do think its cute that you think that a democratic union
| is akin to communism. There is nothing stopping a workplace
| from having more than one union, its quite common in the UK
|
| I don't think it is akin to communism, I just think the same
| failings that enable people to blindly prefer communism also
| lead them to blindly prefer unions. In my experience in the
| US, unions typically negotiate an exclusive and mandatory
| contract with the company. All employees have to join the
| union.
|
| Reading the wiki on US unions, it seems the things I complain
| about are actually caused by the US federal union laws
| themselves. The worst part being:
|
| > Once the union won the support of a majority of the
| bargaining unit and is certified in a workplace, it has the
| sole authority to negotiate the conditions of employment
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_S.
| ..
|
| [edit]: Too add, it seems clear that unions, as they
| currently are in the US, are useful for lower paid, low skill
| jobs. For higher skill, higher pay jobs, which this Tesla job
| may be, I don't think unions are an obvious good.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| > democratic union is akin to communism
|
| Because in 99% cases it is.
| porb121 wrote:
| I can't tell if you're being facetious or not
| upbeat_general wrote:
| I'd bet that most unions (in the US) don't have professional
| certifications and tests. Most unions in the US are for low(er)
| skilled jobs.
|
| Collective bargaining is literally the whole point of a union
| (and essentially forms the definition of a union).
| pensatoio wrote:
| I can't imagine any situation where collective bargaining would
| grant me a better outcome than negotiating on my own.
|
| I understand unions for lower skill jobs in the private sector,
| but it's a crazy play if you're in a profession with a higher
| barrier for entry.
|
| Blue or white collar, you have way more negotiating power than
| you think.
| aborsy wrote:
| Working in France completely changed my view of unions.
|
| I sure hope the horrors I saw won't happen to Tesla.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| I saw bad non-union companies, and I hope those horrors won't
| happen to Tesla.
| door100 wrote:
| The horrors of... a 35 hour workweek, 5 weeks paid vacation, 16
| weeks paid maternity leave, universal healthcare, and no at-
| will employment?
| ryandrake wrote:
| You forget, with a union, the world's richest man might get
| richer every day at a _slightly slower rate_ than he
| currently gets richer. That 's the real horror!
| kepler1 wrote:
| Ah, classic selection bias blinders on. Sure, great benefits
| for those who have jobs. What about for the people who can't
| get employed due to the conditions on labor? The young, poor,
| already jobless? Not so much concern for them, you got yours.
| DeonPenny wrote:
| This part. People point to things like wealth inequality
| but not point to median incomes or employment rates, or
| marriage rates or birth rates. its extreme selection bias.
| If france was a country its median income with be
| comparable with alabama.
| kergonath wrote:
| I am not sure the American underclass (a large part of
| Trump's support base) is faring much better. Even with
| larger unemployment, inequalities are still not as bad as
| in the US. Several countries have similar problems, whether
| it takes the form of 10% unemployment or working-class
| poor.
| neaden wrote:
| I'm not sure how COVID has effected it, but for the past
| years France has had a higher prime age labor force
| participation rate then the US, so it doesn't seem to be
| causing that issue.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| And yet, the level of inequity in france is nowhere near as
| much as USA.
|
| Sure there arn't as many mega rich, but then there arn't people
| hundreds of thousands of people being bankrupted by medical
| bills either.
| trixie_ wrote:
| I thought there are 'out of pocket maximums' set by the
| government to avoid that? The most that individuals will have
| to pay out-of-pocket in 2020 is $8,200 and $16,400 for
| families.
| aphextron wrote:
| >The most that individuals will have to pay out-of-pocket
| in 2020 is $8,200 and $16,400 for families.
|
| If you have good insurance, sure. If you're unemployed, one
| bad illness or injury means instant bankruptcy.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| We have ACA now, anyone can get affordable insurance.
| aphextron wrote:
| Sure, if you have $500 a month laying around no problem.
| dunnevens wrote:
| In many states right now, there are zero cost premiums
| for those who make within 200-250% of the Federal Poverty
| Line. Percentage varies between states, or sometimes even
| by counties. This was part of Biden's stimulus package
| and should help a lot of people.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| In many states. Not in all.
| dunnevens wrote:
| I mentioned it wasn't in all states. But it's still going
| to affect the premiums of millions. It's a good thing.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Tell that to the millions of people who live in states
| that never expanded Medicaid under the ACA.
| knz_ wrote:
| No, they can't. When I was poor and working full-time for
| $15/hr the best I could get was a bare minimum healthcare
| plan that would have taken more than the free money I had
| after rent and food for the month -- and this was despite
| not paying any cost for transportation to work and not
| owning a car or buying anything besides rent, food and
| the cheapest MVNO phone plan I could find.
|
| I didn't live in a high CoL area either. Everyone who
| isn't wealthy or socially connected to get a job that
| pays above average is priced out of visiting a doctor at
| all right now.
| ljp_206 wrote:
| The conundrum is that anyone who can afford to shell out
| $500+ a month for the most basic plan doesn't need it /
| probably has a better plan through work. The complexity
| and cost of the band aid system we have now is a joke the
| world over.
| LMYahooTFY wrote:
| How is being bankrupted by medical bills relevant to unions?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The weakness of the latter directly contributes to the
| former.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Given that the yellow vest protests have been going on for
| two and a half years now, I would not hold up France as a
| model for income equality. The U.S. may be a decade in
| advance of most countries in this respect, but there's no
| indication I can find that France has the problem solved with
| its approach.
| kergonath wrote:
| > there's no indication I can find that France has the
| problem solved with its approach
|
| They certainly haven't. However, the yellow vests movement
| fizzled out a long time ago. And union-bashing certainly
| isn't the way to go if you care about equality, however
| imperfect they are.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| The middle class is also much, much poorer.
| pbreit wrote:
| There's a place for unions since companies have an inherent
| organizational advantage. But they always seem to spin out of
| control.
| Black101 wrote:
| There are unions in the US too.. My wife's workplace got
| unionized... initially the salaries increase a few percents but
| after that, it didn't appear to make that much of a difference.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| In Eastern Canada our unions have become problematic too,
| though they're not as vile as France's.
|
| My first experience were of course were teachers. At least half
| of them hates children but love being the boss in the room.
| Most of them quit before because obtaining their seniority, and
| they tend to be the more conscientious ones. In 6th grade I had
| a teacher fired because she physically assaulted me multiple
| times by hitting me on the arms, during most of the scholar
| year. Did I say fired? No sorry, only unpaid leave for one
| week, and she was replaced by none other than... her son,
| because seniority I guess. In primary school our physical
| education teachers were obese.
|
| The whole region (multiple cities in a rural area) where I grew
| up saw auto dealerships workers on strike / lock out for years.
| It began at the end of high school, at the end of university it
| was still going on 5~6 years later.
|
| My first ever was in a grocery store, I was fired because
| "finally the union wants that job".
|
| Stories I've heard from others abound: solder a lose component
| on a PCB? That's tech's job. Caught talking to a union member
| alone? Let's just say if having half the people you meet giving
| you death stares not enough, then be ready to defend yourself
| against all paranoid claims made against you. Army sub-
| contractors caught stealing gas masks and laptops by MPs?? Nah,
| "you have to build a file before firing them". People who did
| the coop programs (5 paid internships) in unionized
| organizations came back with quite a few horror stories of
| their own.
|
| The worse is that we're forced to join and pay (at least
| software is pretty much free from unions), so much for liberty
| of association. Most votes are held with show of hands. They
| can be done secretly, but the vote to do that is also a show at
| hand, good luck being "that guy" who defies the executives'
| wishes for a strike when the war chess is full. And that's not
| even mentioning the various corruption scandals involving
| intimidation, threats of violence and organized crime.
| vincnetas wrote:
| Can you elaborate? Because for me, working in scandinavia,
| unions looked quite useful and reasonable.
| aborsy wrote:
| I had this naive image in mind that unions are labor
| activists mobilizing against exploitative corporate
| practices. What I witnessed opened my eyes to the realities
| on ground, that seemed like almost opposite. As usual, life
| is more complicated!
|
| * The objective of trade unions is not to protect workers and
| improve their conditions (at least directly). It's to protect
| themselves.
|
| * In every organization, there exists people with diverse
| attributes: capabilities, attitudes towards work/life, etc.
| There are always people who don't want to or can't work; and
| guess what they do? They join unions to protect themselves.
| Over time union center became international house of suckers
| and weirdos, each worse than the other.
|
| * In an effort to protect themselves, unions politicized the
| work environment. They put themselves everywhere in key
| committees, including a union committee having last word on
| hirings and firings. That made them unfirable. They exploited
| the coronavirus situation, to blame employers and opponents.
| A scientific project can become a playground for union
| politics. I believe in climate change, but not in
| politicizing it. They seize every opportunity to attack
| employers and those not aligned with them. The goal is to use
| any chance to perpetuate an image that they protect people.
|
| * Union will plot against any excellence in organization. To
| minimize contrast, they work hard to fail good people and
| projects around, or portray them as worker-abusers (ie, the
| reason that they succeed is because they abuse people).
|
| * Unions will fiercely defend status quo and do not allow any
| constructive reform. The area of specialty that they
| advertised for themselves was an ancient technology from
| 1980s (and even that they wouldn't do it). Every time people
| suggested to reform the department activities, they refused
| the proposals. You may not believe it, but department told
| them, OK, you can keep doing your own activities, we don't
| reform them, but other people can start projects in
| orthogonal directions not related to yours. They still
| refused (they didn't want competition) and basically forced
| everyone to work on their ancient advertised area of
| activity.
|
| * Union engaged in all sorts of abusive practices. It was
| disgusting to see a lot of them rarely showed up at work
| (which was strange considering that they put themselves in
| various committees). I asked a department manager
| ("responsable") how come this or that guy shows up at work
| only few times a year. He said, if you are a known member of
| union you can do that, and this is an issue in France. They
| yell, and bully people, create a toxic environment for
| others, repel and fire those not blending in etc,
|
| * Union members felt very entitled and justified their
| actions by making themselves believe a skewed view of the
| world. They felt that they are entitled to a life even with
| ZERO work, and world owes to them.
|
| * Unions will be perpetually on strike. What makes you think
| they will be happy with a laid back 9-5 job with decent pay
| and great benefits? Even with no work, they still go on
| strikes. They take tax money from society with little
| contribution, and make your commute and life periodically
| miserable.
|
| * Unions are especially problematic in public sector, where
| incentives are aligned with cronyism not meritocracy. A lot
| of people are hired who lack abilities to perform the work in
| question. They form large powerful unions.
|
| Don't get me wrong. There might be a place for "traditional"
| textbook unions. But I don't know if it ever works in
| practice. My experience was negative and counterintuitive.
| mellosouls wrote:
| I actually read your comment in good faith expecting to see
| some actual union-specific critiques, but it is just an
| absurdly biased caricature of the very worst of people and
| motives who exist in every type of organisation.
|
| Having read it, I now don't believe for one minute you "had
| a naive image in mind" before or "opened your eyes" after
| your experience.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Power in all forms corrupts whether its corporate,
| governmental, or union. No organization of humans is free
| of these sorts of things which is why individual freedoms
| are important. OP's naivety was the ignorance of the
| aforementioned condition of human organizations.
| Kbelicius wrote:
| > Power in all forms corrupts whether its corporate,
| governmental, or union. No organization of humans is free
| of these sorts of things which is why individual freedoms
| are important. OP's naivety was the ignorance of the
| aforementioned condition of human organizations.
|
| This isn't an argument against unions, it is an argument
| against any kind of human organization. Its more damning
| to how Tesla is now then to Tesla with unionized workers.
| Following your logic you should be all for unions and if
| you took it further, anti-capitalist.
|
| Also, power doesn't corrupt. It reveals.
| r0p3 wrote:
| What was your job in france that gave you this experience?
| aborsy wrote:
| It was at a university and the union is called in France
| CGT.
|
| The basic problem is, if we have such powerful semi-
| paralegal entity (considering its scope and power), it
| protects people in need, but what mechanisms do we have
| in place to prevent it from evolving into an entity
| protecting itself (or to a mixed state), attracting those
| with perverse incentives in addition to those in need?
|
| I agree with comments above. I wouldn't say we should
| rush to dismiss unions. It probably depends on a lot of
| factors, eg, on country and how it's set up. However, we
| need to recognize that this is an organization
| functioning like any other, eg, a bank, it has internal
| motives and can, and will, use its concentrated power to
| produce good and bad results. We probably need a balanced
| approach, and checks ...
| wott wrote:
| > It was at a university and the union is called in
| France CGT.
|
| As a mostly labourer union, CGT is a minority in
| universities, especially among teachers and researchers
| (less so in administrative and maintenance departments).
| JBSmoove wrote:
| Germany's workforce in automotive and many other industries
| is HIGHLY unionized.
|
| I've never heard of these people being lazy, not wanting to
| work etc.
|
| In fact German engineering is the envy of the world!
|
| VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and
| manufactured by heavily unionized workforces!
|
| Sounds like your anecdotal bad experience with unions is
| not representative of reality.
|
| And FWIW I can list you just as many terrible anecdotes
| about how awful business managers are...
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| You know what they also all of in common? Zero innovation
| since decades.
|
| And German car engineering is mostly known for being
| overly complicated, I say that as a German.
| 1nverseMtx wrote:
| Agree.
|
| Close to zero progress in electrifying European produced
| cars. I would say unions are the cause for the delay
| resisting any change away from skills their members have,
| but obsoleted by electric cars with 1/10 the number of
| parts required.
| detaro wrote:
| On what evidence do you say that? The German auto unions
| have been saying for years that the switch to electric
| needs to be planned and managed exactly so the sector
| remains competitive and can employ people
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| VW group has twice the EVs in pipeline than Tesla. Sales
| are probably gonna overtake Tesla this or next year. They
| are not as fun as Teslas but they are solid products that
| people seem to prefer over fart mode that cost them extra
| $10k.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> VW, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche all German engineered and
| manufactured by heavily unionized workforces!_
|
| Sure, but for each of those there are 10-100 other
| smaller companies in automotive or other industries that
| don't have unions, and some German companies have stirred
| up quite a few scandals of not following the employment
| laws or abusing their workforce, which coincidentally was
| mostly immigrants.
|
| Cherry picking the big, wealthy car brands to represent
| the manufacturing industry is like cherry picking FAANG
| for representing the software dev industry.
| jbroson wrote:
| SO OP gets to claim based on his anecdotal experience
| that unions are awful and full of lazy people.
|
| But pointing out there are wildly successful unions
| filled with hardworking people is "cherry picking"?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| I didn't say unions are not successful, I said that
| workplaces like VW or Porsche are not the norm in
| Germany. They're like Germany's FAANG; very successful,
| but not the norm for every industry employee there since
| they don't all enjoy such good conditions.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| I have yet to hear people in Europe being upset that they
| are unionized.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I had a friend from France getting his undergraduate
| degree in the US Marvel at how much learning we were
| getting done, since we didnt spend half of every semester
| on strike.
|
| There are good and bad unions everywhere, but I think the
| closed-shop restrictions in the US that force you to join
| a particular union as a condition of employment
| exacerbates the worst qualities of them here.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Again, I didn't say unions are bad, I said they're not
| the norm for every employee in europe
| kepler1 wrote:
| Um, some unemployed rioters and burning cars in France
| every single weekend would beg to differ with you.
| gglnx wrote:
| I don't know why you claim that smaller companies in the
| automotive sector in Germany don't have ununionzed
| workforces, but the IG Metall has a >>Organisationsgrad<<
| in this sector (how many of the workers are union
| members) above 90 percent (see
| https://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/gewerkschaften-
| die-u...).
| hrktb wrote:
| Going through all of your point, it felt like every
| "unions" mention could be replaced with "management".
|
| Protecting themselves ? check. Politicized the work
| environment ? check. Abusive practices ? check. Skewed view
| of the world and cronyism ? check.
|
| I think what you are seeing is just a reflection of who
| succeeds in French companies. Some chose unions, some
| management, some find other niches, but none of these seem
| attached to specific values to me.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| This is the kicker with every one of these discussions,
| really.
|
| The ceiling on bad behavior is set by management, because
| they can do all of those bad things people claim unions
| do, and more - _right now_. The union gives you recourse
| karaterobot wrote:
| You're right about that, but I want to support the
| original commenter a bit and point out that management
| isn't going away, and adding unions on top of that is not
| an improvement if they share the same flaws.
| hrktb wrote:
| You have a point. Then unions' raison d'etre is to
| counterbalance management, so them ending up using the
| same tools and having the same flaws would still be OK to
| me if they provide an opportunity to get what you
| wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
|
| In a working market, pitching companies one against the
| others could have the same effect as unions, but I think
| there is enough implicit and explicit collusion and
| perverse incentives that we are far from that ideal.
| L_226 wrote:
| There is a solution to this; the union has become a
| parasitic entity between the labour pool and the employers
| right, so you can just legislate their ostensible raison
| d'etre out of existence. That is, enforce fair conditions
| upon employers at a government level. Then encourage every
| person to leave their union, because they have no need
| anymore. Obviously, requires a high integrity government,
| actual fair enforcement against all parties etc.
| villgax wrote:
| people need to look at the AmazonNews twitter handle, spews corpo
| BS at every turn almost like some intern got hold of that account
| kome wrote:
| holy fucking shit... https://twitter.com/AmazonNews you are
| right. woah.
|
| they are scared. they are really scared.
|
| it's like amazon entire business model is based on exploitation
| of labor.
| villgax wrote:
| Wait till you find out that they have a twitter handle &
| department for Public Policy as well. Why does a global
| e-commerce giant even need one unless they want to
| lobby/pressurise politicians & govt's altogether
|
| https://twitter.com/amazon_policy
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> it's like amazon entire business model is based on
| exploitation of labor_
|
| Wait till you find out how the electronics and clothes in
| your house are made and how the materials they're made from
| are sourced or what the workforce that picks the fruit and
| vegetables you see in the supermarket, endures.
|
| It is rarely (never?) discussed in the west how all the
| consumer goods are cheap simply because the supply chain
| relies on poor exploitable people and exploiting the
| environment.
|
| All we hear about is the positive spin, how capitalism and
| globalization have blessed us with cheap goods and how those
| poor farmers halfway around the world now have paying jobs,
| woo-hoo!
| shmageggy wrote:
| > rarely (never?) discussed in the west
|
| I don't know, I see it talked about all the time, but
| nobody seems to be able to do anything about it.
| capableweb wrote:
| > nobody seems to be able to do anything about it.
|
| Nobody seems to want to do something about it. It's easy,
| vote with your wallet. But since the choice is either A)
| help humanity by stop buying cheap consumer electronics
| or B) don't get any cheap consumer electronics to make
| your day 0.5% better, it seems we're stuck in exploiting
| humanity.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| Not sure how buying expensive consumer electronics helps
| either, given how the excess profits continue to be
| captured rather than fairly distributed. There's even
| case studies celebrating these COOs turned CEOs for how
| well they've "optimised" their supply chains.
| capableweb wrote:
| Well, my point was more to stop buying consumer
| electronics we don't really need, that just marginally
| increase our quality of life. Not that we should buy
| expensive electronics instead.
| aksss wrote:
| Another option legally would be to disincentive the
| purchase of materials manufactured in those overseas
| areas to which you refer, or tax the bejesus out of
| companies using them as labor sources. I think there's
| room for talk of tariffs and tax penalties for offshoring
| labor/manufacturing, and I'm not really familiar with
| other levers to turn that would fix this. Efforts to
| enforce better working conditions in other countries come
| and go, are easy to game and are quickly forgotten.
|
| The parts of our society that profit off cheap offshore
| labor are quick to spin stories accusing people of being
| nationalist/protectionist/racist, but their profit margin
| is being defended in the process and the issues
| distracted from.
|
| At the same time, if I lived in a largely agrarian
| society and factory work offered me the choice to get out
| of poor farm labor work, I'd jump at it the same way my
| ancestors did. I feel most of us can appreciate the value
| and prosperity that the global supply chain has brought,
| while simultaneously lamenting the destruction of
| domestic industry and the exploitation that has
| accompanied it.
|
| We don't have to be all-for or all-against, though I
| think when "free trade" agreements come up, they should
| be regarded very suspiciously, and when accusations fly
| about nationalism and protectionism, those should be seen
| as the cheap and distracting rhetorical devices they are.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I'd rather actually vote for policy with teeth, and not
| pretend that my individual purchasing choices are going
| to change the world.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| I tried that for a while. Some time later I found out
| that they source their products from the same factories
| and the only thing I've done is prove that marketing
| works if you wanna convince people to pay premiums for
| imaginary differences.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| We are never going to "consumer choice" our way away from
| labor exploitation, it requires laws.
| aspaceman wrote:
| Lol. "Don't buy the things with exploitative labor." Good
| fucking luck. Bury your head in a hole and produce squash
| or some shit.
|
| There is no ethical consumption under captialism. Blah
| blah blah.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| The percentage of humans living in poverty around the world
| has never been lower [0]. How is that just spin?
|
| I also can't relate to your "all we hear about" point at
| all. I feel like I really have to go out of my way to find
| any discussion about anything good in the world, the vast
| majority of what I hear is negative takes like yours about
| how everything is horrible and everyone is oppressed.
|
| [0] https://data.worldbank.org/topic/11
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Those numbers mean nothing. First of all, anything before
| maybe 1900--1950 is meaningless, as no one was collecting
| data about how people actually lived. They are only
| estimates based on national fortunes, for periods of time
| when many people mostly lived off the land.
|
| The poverty line is also arbitrarily low, with many
| countless people over the poverty line who are dying of
| hunger. A more realistic poverty line would probably be
| several times bigger than the current value, which would
| fuether skew the numbers.
|
| Not to mention, as others have pointed out, the vast
| majority of people taken out of poverty were taken out by
| dictatorial China's social programs, not capitalism.
| cfn wrote:
| It really depends on the definition of poverty. I pretty
| much took the argument you are making for granted until
| recently. I mean, how can we argue against raising people
| out of poverty, right? But recently I watched this
| interview with Paul Kingsnorth and he makes a compelling
| case for why these numbers don't tell the whole story. I
| am linking to the middle of the interview more or less
| this is mentioned but the whole interview is quite
| interesting:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojZjl8M921U&t=2534s
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Sadly for the argument, this decrease in poverty only
| happened as a result of China - if you remove China there
| basically is no difference anymore.
|
| If you adjust your definition of poverty to local
| inflation, you also barely see any difference anymore.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| But... Chinese people are still people? Who deserve to
| not live in poverty. I don't understand your point.
|
| I have also heard some compelling arguments that a
| similar transformation is likely on the way in sub-
| Saharan African over the next few decades.
|
| Also these are real dollars, they are adjusted for
| inflation.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Inflation in different countries goes at different rates.
| You can't use dollar inflation for these conditions, as
| prices rise much faster in those countries.
|
| As for Chinese people, it is amazing that they came out
| of poverty. But clearly it's not thanks to free market
| capitalism.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| From the @AmazonNews Twitter[1]:
|
| > _You don't really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do
| you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is
| that we have over a million incredible employees around the
| world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and
| health care from day one._
|
| Meanwhile, The Intercept has mountains of evidence that Amazon
| itself _knows_ that its workers pee in bottles[2].
|
| It's so blatant that I thought the account was a parody, but
| it's real.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1374911222361956359
|
| [2] https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-
| bottl...
| missedthecue wrote:
| They pretty beautifully baited Sen. Elizabeth Warren into
| running her mouth today. She wrote -
|
| " _I 'll fight to break up Big Tech so you're not powerful
| enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets._"
|
| If she brings an anti-trust suit against them, it will be so
| easy for Amazon's lawyers to argue that she is only doing so to
| violate their first amendment rights, which she full out
| admitted to today.
| astrange wrote:
| Senators don't bring antitrust suits against anyone, as far
| as I know. That would be a separate branch of government.
| eternalban wrote:
| But they can engage in virtue signaling like the rest of
| us.
|
| But in all seriousness, it would be optimal for a society
| that values liberty and freedom to _move away from
| platforms to standards_. No need to breakup FANGS if NIST
| or something similar defines qualitative API standards for
| social networks, or more broadly societal network services.
| And this will also be a huge boon for the startup space and
| true non-predatory innovation in the virtual services
| space.
| aetherson wrote:
| Senators can pass laws increasing the grounds for antitrust
| actions.
| astrange wrote:
| But the things they say about the laws aren't very useful
| if you're suing to get the law overturned. (Related, you
| can't use defenses like attorney-client privilege if
| Congress asks you to submit documents, you just do it.)
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > _" I'll fight to break up Big Tech so you're not powerful
| enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets."_
|
| I thought I liked her policies but this sounds authoritarian.
| I'd prefer politicians stay tf off twotter unless they got
| the stomach for it. They're speaking about "authenticity" and
| the problem of people hiding behind handles whenever given
| the chance. But they are themselves only interested in
| "engineering consent" for those who bankrolled their move
| into office. The consensus should be that they have to be
| able to put up with a very wide variety of opinions (and most
| certainly the "snooty" kind).
| mikeryan wrote:
| Breaking up Big Tech isn't an idle threat from Warren. It was
| an explicit part of her platform when running for president.
| She has always believed that some companies run afoul of
| anti-trust laws.
|
| This far predates a spat with an Amazon twitter handle
|
| https://2020.elizabethwarren.com/toolkit/break-up-big-tech
| missedthecue wrote:
| Yes, she's long pushed for it, but today she said she would
| so it _so that they wouldn 't heckle public officials_.
|
| That's a huge difference.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| That won't work, because she's been talking about breaking up
| Amazon for years now.
| Jonnax wrote:
| They baited Warren by lying about the fact that Amazon
| warehouse / delivery employees have to urinate in bottles to
| meet deadlines?
|
| The tweets from their account caused significant negative
| press for Amazon on news and social media across the world.
|
| Amazon is a global company, this kind of disdain for
| employees isn't looked upon as favourably in other countries.
| It's bad for business.
|
| Especially from an official PR channel.
| 2-tpg wrote:
| > the fact that Amazon warehouse / delivery employees have
| to urinate in bottles to meet deadlines?
|
| Amazon does not want its employees to piss into bottles.
| But sometimes employees (predominantly male I hope) do piss
| into bottles, because they did not plan correctly, or just
| had to go while on the road. If caught, these employees
| (and their managers) are then reprimanded. If they get a
| chance to defend themselves, of course they claim it was
| due to the deadline, not poor planning or bladder control
| or uncommon hygiene ethics.
|
| Amazon factually states: Hey, if we required our employees
| to pee into bottles to meet deadlines, do you seriously
| think people would work for us, and not 100s of other low-
| paid jobs which don't have that medieval requirement?
|
| Politicians: Hey, this you?! I have lots of pictures of
| bottles with piss! Where is your snotty reply now? You say
| that your employees do not have to piss into bottles, so
| how come I have those pictures?! Huh?!
|
| It is embarrassing to both sides. Especially for official
| government employees (who also don't have to pee into
| bottles to meet deadlines, but I am sure you can turn up at
| least some pictures: if not, find any traces of cocaine use
| in the Capitol, then posit that the US congress have their
| senators use cocaine in the toilet to meet deadlines. Or,
| you know, bi-partisan plan to have low-skilled employees
| share in the American dream made possible by Amazon, but I
| guess that does not fit inside a tweet).
| riversflow wrote:
| The warehouse/delivery worker abuse at amazon runs deep,
| and it goes far beyond employees peeing in bottles.
| Checkout the Frontline documentary, Amazon Empire: The
| Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos [1]
|
| [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/amazon-
| empire/
| 2-tpg wrote:
| > it goes far beyond employees peeing in bottles.
|
| No, but solid rhetorics. This is the part you give proof
| of the fact that Amazon have their workers pee in bottles
| to meet deadlines. Not point to something else entirely
| that goes far beyond the things you pose as facts, which
| are not. Don't look at that! Look at this documentary
| that goes far far beyond it. Well played! And solid one
| for PBS for exposing the worker abuse that Amazon is now
| in court for! We need the free press to save worker laws.
| 2-tpg wrote:
| Deadlines are calculated from the average worker speeds.
| Perhaps some Amazon employees really are below average,
| or do not give it their best at all, so they are forced
| to piss in bottles and poop into the delivery car before
| returning it to station to meet these devilish average-
| worker deadlines.
|
| I would agree that is a terrible problem. Perhaps Amazon
| should focus more attention on catching such employees
| early and letting them go (or offering them potty
| training with quarterly evaluations)? But then where does
| the average go? Deadlines get even tighter! Or you could
| make your wage relative to your worker speed: the fastest
| people earn the most. Only if you think you still earn
| enough for shitty work will you then be forced to keep
| doing that job. Or should Amazon be more kind to these
| employees who can't seem to manage their personal hygiene
| or fall way below average worker speeds? Treat and pay
| them the same as the 99% employees who don't shit and
| deliver? That would lead to an equal outcome for sure.
| JBSmoove wrote:
| I don't care who was "baited"
|
| A US Senator threatening to retaliate and break-up a
| business because she didn't like tweets about her is
| straight-up authoritarian thuggery.
|
| It's the same shit Trump used to do but when Liz does
| it...well it's GREAT, she's "fighting for the working
| class"
| Jonnax wrote:
| So it's okay for a business to treat employees so badly
| they find they have to piss in bottles?
|
| And it's okay for their official PR twitter account to
| lie and say it doesn't happen?
|
| But it's not okay that a politician says they're going to
| do something about it?
| jbroson wrote:
| Amazon's actions have absolutely nothing to do with this.
|
| US Senators should not be threatening retaliation against
| a company because of tweets that piss them off.
|
| Why is this only bad when Trump or a Republican does it?
| Jonnax wrote:
| Why can't US Senators do that?
|
| I presume the people that voted for Warren are on her
| side in this argument so she's being an advocate for
| their views.
|
| Just because you think Amazon's employees being forced to
| piss in bottles isn't bad to you doesn't mean that others
| sees it as an injustice that makes people angry.
|
| >Why is this only bad when Trump or a Republican does it?
|
| Maybe treat each event on a case by case basis rather
| than a blanket rule?
| dahfizz wrote:
| I would expect more nuance from an HN reader. It's
| possible for both amazon and warren to be in the wrong.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| But in this case the Amazon Twitter account is in the
| wrong while Warren is in the right. Amazon Twitter
| straight up lied. Warren is actively doing the job she
| was elected to do of motivating change to make laws and
| rules that will change the underlying foundation of the
| business landscape in ways that she and those who voted
| for her perceive as positive.
| Jonnax wrote:
| I don't see where Warren is wrong here.
|
| Care to explain it? Because it seems like the point of
| view advocated is "Politicans should not express views I
| don't like on social media"
| dahfizz wrote:
| If Warren tweeted that she was going to break up amazon
| because they were harming consumers and mistreating
| workers, etc, that would be one thing.
|
| Instead, she is going after amazon as a personal vendetta
| because she feels 'heckled'. She is explicitly attacking
| first amendment rights. It's a textbook case of
| corruption / abuse of power.
| Jonnax wrote:
| Are you actually serious? She's been going after amazon
| for years.
|
| Like breaking up big tech companies is pretty much the
| only thing you hear about her in passing.
|
| A personal vendetta against their twitter account just
| didn't start now.
|
| Also this is corruption / abuse of power to you? You
| might want to get a new textbook.
| concordDance wrote:
| Politicians should not be threatening to silence people
| or companies, regardless of whether the latter are lying
| or treating people badly.
|
| If Amazon is breaking employment law or anti-monopoly law
| or anything else it can be fined or broken up. What it
| should not be is silenced.
| Jonnax wrote:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/elizabeth-warren-amazon-
| twit...
|
| I've quote the tweets below.
|
| Warren has been campaigning to break up large tech
| companies.
|
| What is so unprofessional about that? Clearly if she was
| to try and get them fined or broken up it would be
| through these laws.
|
| She isn't silencing them. She's saying that there'll be
| consequences.
|
| And Amazon's PR isn't a small company. They can take the
| heat.
|
| I don't agree with you. A company that forces employees
| to piss in bottles and lies about it should have their
| lies face consequences.
|
| Warren isn't removing their tweets. How are they being
| silenced?
|
| Here is the quotes:
|
| ``` After she posted the video on Twitter, saying that
| companies like Amazon "pay close to nothing in taxes,"
| the tech giant quickly fired back.
|
| "You make the tax laws @SenWarren; we just follow them,"
| it tweeted from its official news account.
|
| "If you don't like the laws you've created, by all means,
| change them," it added.
|
| Amazon said that it had paid "billions of dollars" in
| corporate taxes over the past few years alone.
|
| Warren hit back, saying: "I didn't write the loopholes
| you exploit, @amazon - your armies of lawyers and
| lobbyists did.
|
| "But you bet I'll fight to make you pay your fair share,"
| she added. "And fight your union-busting. And fight to
| break up Big Tech so you're not powerful enough to heckle
| senators with snotty tweets." ```
| concordDance wrote:
| The alarming thing is her thinking that power is required
| to be able to heckle senators.
|
| Anyone should be able to heckle senators on twittwr! From
| Mark Zuckerberg to the homeless man in the nearby park!
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| The problem is not that Amazon is criticising
| politicians. The problem is that Amazon _doesn 't need to
| care_; it'll get loads of money anyway. I need to care
| about what I say, because if I upset people, they'll stop
| interacting with me.
|
| If Amazon started running adverts about a giant space
| monkey that wanted to eat the moon, what would happen?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Amazon doesn't come out of this looking good either, but
| it's pretty bad for a Senator to go around telling people
| that she'll break up your company if you "heckle" her with
| "snotty tweets".
| input_sh wrote:
| To me it feels more like some executive on cocaine found out
| the Twitter password.
| minism wrote:
| is this from https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/13755
| 366054154936... ?
| input_sh wrote:
| Yup. Also see his article with screenshots backing up the
| pissing in the bottle claim:
| https://theintercept.com/2021/03/25/amazon-drivers-pee-
| bottl...
|
| 100% sure that wouldn't have happened if that tweet from
| @amazonnews didn't piss off some Amazon employee. They're
| _really_ not doing themselves any favours by letting
| whoever posted those tweets to tweet from their official
| account.
| golergka wrote:
| Honest question: what's wrong with these tweets?
| ksec wrote:
| I see this being downvoted.
|
| A gentle reminder to everyone on HN, Not everyone lives
| in US, and even if they do not everyone is well versed in
| everything going on in US.
| villgax wrote:
| The one denying claims of pee bottles is factually wrong
| & is actually evident from the operations staff
| guidelines, which probably the one tweeting doesn't know
| about.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The peeing in bottles thing is true.
|
| Sanders is 1% of half of Congress. Not dictator of
| Vermont.
|
| They lied about what Warren said.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Vermont has a tiny population, Sanders has massive
| influence. If he wanted to work on mobilizing change in
| his state he could. Now a better counter argument is he
| is elected to work in the federal government, so his
| constituents don't expect him to effect change in their
| state law.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| This is the first time I hear about Amazon News account,
| but from a factual perspective, they are right, despite
| one like it or not. Sanders is indeed a powerful
| politician, which is what they said in the tweet. $11.75
| vs. $15 is a 20% gap, which is quite a lot and is also a
| fact. Again, I'm looking at it purely from a factual
| perspective. It seems to me that the criticism mainly
| comes from people not liking AmazonNews being blatantly
| honest in their tweets and not giving a shit about
| political correctness. My impression is based on quickly
| glancing at the most recent tweets, so I could be wrong
| -\\_(tsu)_/-.
| riversflow wrote:
| How are they a "progressive workplace" from a factual
| perspective?
| aksss wrote:
| Well they support a national $15/hr minimum wage, for one
| thing, though the cynical side of me thinks this is more
| to close the door behind them on competition and will
| result in further closures of small local alternatives.
| vultour wrote:
| I just found out about that account yesterday and it took me a
| minute to realise it's not an onion spinoff.
| bluedays wrote:
| _Labor board joins the chat_
|
| Labor Board: Quick, hide the evidence before we have to do more
| work.
| DudeInBasement wrote:
| If they want to work for the UAW, then they should join GM or
| other factories. Why join Tesla if you really wanted to work for
| the UAW?
| dundarious wrote:
| That logic doesn't hold if you share a belief in Tesla's stated
| mission "to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport",
| and also want to be in a union -- which is a reasonable set of
| beliefs and desires to hold.
|
| And I don't see how unions would be intrinsically incompatible
| with Tesla's mission or operations. There's no reason I know of
| to hold that it is an immutable fact that Tesla's workers are
| non-union -- so why shouldn't someone join Tesla and attempt to
| unionize.
| jcims wrote:
| If the plan was to create a new collective with a charter
| that was consistent with the long view of Tesla while
| protecting and advocating for labor then you've got a fair
| point.
|
| It seemed to me they were just going to join the UAW.
|
| There are two assembly plants within a few miles of where I
| grew up in the US. Both Japanese car companies, to this day
| they aren't union and they are doing fine. There have been a
| few dustups from the UAW over the years, but they were never
| successful in flipping the workforce.
|
| I think the threat of unionizing might help keep Tesla more
| invested in avoiding the type of environment that would
| foster broad support of organizing within the company.
| sershe wrote:
| Tesla doesn't owe them a job. They can make their own
| company, make it unionized, and make it popular.
| samr71 wrote:
| Unionizing Tesla would almost certainly not "accelerate the
| advent of sustainable transport". More likely cause it to
| wither and stagnate for the gain of a privileged few as we
| saw with GM et al.
| [deleted]
| runarberg wrote:
| What makes you so sure about that? Do you have any examples
| of how unionized workers produce less sustainable business
| then non-unionized workers? I don't think Detroit is a good
| example as auto-workers in Europe still produce plenty
| growth for their business, while mostly belonging to a
| union.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| Seeing the current state of Detroit, you have a point that
| such practices may not have been sustainable.
| avs733 wrote:
| Detroit did this to themselves. They failed to innovate
| and got beat by the Japanese on quality. That wasn't the
| unions fault, but the union gets blamed.
|
| The unions complaints were only that they were gonna get
| left holding the bag when things got bad while the c
| suite floated off with full pockets..and they were right.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| Your comment unfortunately doesn't match reality. The uaw
| people literally avoid any kind of work. I wouldn't say
| all of them, but majority of them do. There is zero
| accountability. They behave with almost no regard to
| professional rules, they treat foreign nationals as
| hostile people. No concept of teamwork. First hand
| experience btw. They have turned simplest of the simple
| tasks into bureaucratic nightmare, need a bolt removed,
| oh I'm on a cigarette break which is followed by a lunch
| break then I'm gonna go over there and chat about
| something until it's time to leave. But you can't touch
| that wrench and no one can fire me for doing the same
| thing tomorrow. Somedays I want to quit and start
| learning serious programming and gtfo here.
| JBSmoove wrote:
| Ford, GM, Dodge have made an absolute killing in SUVs and
| trucks over the last several years.
|
| Ford sold about 900,000 F150 in 2019 alone. That's not
| even counting 250s and higher.
|
| And these trucks and SUVs are WILDLY profitable!
|
| And they are made with union labor...
|
| I just don't get it since "the uaw people literally avoid
| any kind of work"
|
| How do they build millions of trucks and SUVs then?
| markdown wrote:
| Be glad you aren't slaving from 6am to 6pm. Unions fought
| for the privileges you enjoy now, whether or not you are
| yourself in a Union.
|
| Further, if more people joined and supported Unions,
| Americans might one day get to enjoy the work/life
| balance that most of the rest of the world enjoys, with
| sufficient vacation time, paternity and maternity leave,
| etc.
| eru wrote:
| > Be glad you aren't slaving from 6am to 6pm. Unions
| fought for the privileges you enjoy now, whether or not
| you are yourself in a Union.
|
| Be glad you aren't sitting in total darkness: I am
| praying every morning that the sun goes up. Sunlight is a
| privilege you enjoy now, whether you are joining my
| prayers or not.
|
| (Correlation ain't causation.)
| cloudfifty wrote:
| Are you suggesting that the labour movement is actually
| not the cause of (western-)Europe's significantly better
| labour/welfare laws than the US - which unsurprisingly
| happens to never had a European-style mass labour
| movement?
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| I do admit we got some labor rights out of the union
| movement. But there has to be a balance between rights
| and duties. I am only talking about accountability. Also
| I work in R&D and hence my situation is a little
| different from manufacturing. Also FYI I do slave from
| 8am to 8pm on most of the days.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Without looking at how Detroit failed you cannot deduce
| from the presence of unions that they were the cause.
| JBSmoove wrote:
| GM has been unionized in some form or fashion for nearly a
| century.
|
| And they were wildly profitable, and successful, one of the
| largest and most successful businesses in the entire world!
|
| Toyota also has a large unionized workforce in many places!
|
| They've also been wildly successful for many decades!
|
| I'm really not getting this "wither and stagnate" argument.
|
| Unless you mean if Tesla is unionized maybe in 60 years
| they will be disrupted by a new upstart firm.
|
| Well...ok but that has nothing at all to do with unions.
| foepys wrote:
| All German car manufacturers are heavily unionized. VW has
| one of the strongest unions in Germany and is one of the
| largest car manufacturers in the world.
| eru wrote:
| That's true, but you also have to keep in mind that
| German unions are not quite like their American
| counterparts.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Unions in Germany are _very_ different from unions in the
| U.S.
|
| U.S. unions are much more adversarial, seeing themselves
| as the enemy of management. In fact it is illegal for a
| member of management to be in a union in the U.S.
|
| In Germany, unions hold board seats and see themselves
| more as partners, invested in the overall success of the
| business. The principle of codetermination means that
| union members can be in management. In Germany, unions
| are much closer to trade organizations or professional
| organizations, rather than the worker-management divide
| in the U.S.
|
| In terms of politics, it's hard to be cognitively
| captured by the whole "greedy corporations oppressing
| workers" meme when you are sitting on the board and
| realize that your livelihood depends on the business
| doing well.
|
| Similarly, German CEOs do not have the astronomical
| executive pay that US CEOs have. They are much more down
| to earth.
|
| Germany is a nation that has had social insurance since
| Bismarck, primarily to contain a vigorous and violent
| left wing movement during the Kulturkampf of the late
| 19th Century. German unions are often quite conservative
| with respect to the culture wars and are hostile to that
| movement, which has its base more in the universitites
| and eco-groups than in the heavily unionized shop floors
| and production lines.
|
| Yet at the same time, Germany has had no minimum wage
| until 2015. The US had a minimum wage since 1938. This,
| too, is because historically German businesses adopted a
| much more cooperative relationship to workers.
|
| So even though it's true that Germany has high rates of
| unionization and an innovative economy, that does not
| mean that unions in the US would lead to the same
| outcomes. German and US unions are different beasts.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Unions in Germany are very different from unions in the
| U.S
|
| Union shop or not, employers in the US are more
| adversarial, primarily serving the interests of
| shareholders and will usually not voluntarily give
| workers a seat at the table. Of course the American
| unions have to be different as the environment is less
| cooperative than Germany
| darawk wrote:
| That's fine for companies in industries that are
| reasonably mature. But if you want to start a new company
| in a dynamic industry, Germany is very much not where you
| want to be.
|
| German GDP per capita is about 45k, as compared to 65k
| per capita in the US. But that hides a lot. Germany's
| most productive city is Berlin. Berlin's GDP per capita
| is....45k. The US on the other hand has cities like San
| Francisco, with a GDP per capita of 98k, fully 2x that of
| Germany's best city.
|
| That isn't an accident. Germany and most of Europe have
| no tech sector to speak of as a direct consequence of
| their labor and regulatory policies. The EU is a huge
| economic block, comparable in scale collectively to the
| US or China, and it has a highly educated population. And
| yet, it has near zero presence in the most important
| industry of the 21st century. That's a staggering
| indictment of their economic policy. 2nd and 3rd tier US
| cities have more tech than Europe does.
|
| Tesla would never have gotten off the ground anywhere in
| the EU, and our climate change prospects would be a lot
| worse off for it. If we want to solve the major problems
| facing the world, it's going to require major innovation,
| and that isn't going to come from EU style market
| regulation.
| foepys wrote:
| > Germany's most productive city is Berlin
|
| Where did you get this from? Germany is actually the only
| country in the EU where GDP per capita is higher when the
| capital is excluded. Munich is at 80,000EUR, Frankfurt
| (Main) 95,000EUR, Hamburg 60,000EUR, Berlin 40,000EUR
| [1].
|
| Germany is highly federated, with large companies near or
| in small towns or cities that only exist because the
| company was founded there decades or centuries ago.
|
| You are talking about tech but this is about Tesla. I
| don't get why people are still treating Tesla like a tech
| company. They are making cars that happen to have some
| driving assistance. By that metric VW, BMW, and Daimler
| are also tech companies, each way larger than Tesla by
| cars sold, people employed, and GDP impact. Tesla is as
| much tech as WeWork was tech.
|
| 1: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_deutschen_St%C
| 3%A4dt... (German)
| darawk wrote:
| > Where did you get this from?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_cities_by_GD
| P
|
| > Germany is actually the only country in the EU where
| GDP per capita is higher when the capital is excluded.
| Munich is at 80,000EUR, Frankfurt (Main) 95,000EUR,
| Hamburg 60,000EUR, Berlin 40,000EUR [1].
|
| I was using the city with the highest absolute GDP.
| That's a fair point that Munich has a higher GDP per
| capita.
|
| > You are talking about tech but this is about Tesla. I
| don't get why people are still treating Tesla like a tech
| company. They are making cars that happen to have some
| driving assistance. By that metric VW, BMW, and Daimler
| are also tech companies, each way larger than Tesla by
| cars sold, people employed, and GDP impact. Tesla is as
| much tech as WeWork was tech.
|
| My point about tech isn't so much the nature of the
| business, as the presence of a well functioning startup
| scene. I think it would be very very difficult to start a
| new capital and labor intensive company like Tesla in
| Germany today, and the non-presence of tech is just
| symptomatic of the difficulty of starting new businesses.
|
| Compare the largest companies by revenue in the US to
| Germany:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_i
| n_t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_Germ
| an_compani...
|
| Most of the German ones were founded in the first half of
| the 20th century, if not earlier (you have to be a little
| careful reading the list, a few say they were founded
| recently, but they were really just the mergers of old
| companies - there are a couple legitimately new ones
| though). In the US, there are tons of companies founded
| in the last few decades on the list. My argument is that
| the German economy is mostly sustaining itself on the
| back of its economic achievements prior to the
| institution of its modern labor policies. Economic
| dynamism has been hamstrung.
| Xylakant wrote:
| You are very much ignoring a lot of historical
| developments that lead to the situation that Berlin is
| in. Berlin used to be an industrial powerhouse, many
| well-known companies were founded there - Siemens for
| example. Borsig, Varta, Osram, ... had large factories in
| the city. However, after WW2, Berlin was divided and the
| western part hard to reach, so most companies relocated,
| most industries disappeared. Siemens moved headquarters
| to Bavaria. Despite all the self-inflicted problems that
| slow economic growth, the expectation that Berlin could
| or should be on par with other capitals is problematic.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Most of my favorite audio software comes from Germany.
|
| You make great points about Berlin and about GDP per
| capita.
|
| It remains true that Europe doesn't have nearly the
| number of startups that the United States does, and this
| is notable.
| Xylakant wrote:
| It's notable, but the question of why that is so and
| whether that's problematic is not as clear cut as it
| seems to be. For example, germany has a traditional
| industrial base that consists of mid-size, often family-
| owned businesses. We even have a word for it -
| Mittelstand. Quite some are world-leaders in their field.
| Whether that's a good or a bad thing is certainly open
| for debate, but it's not as simple as "no unicorn
| startups in germany - fail."
|
| TL;DR: it's complicated.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| GDP is weird. For instance, private healthcare pushes GDP
| up, but I'm not sure Germans would like to have a higher
| GDP and pay a bunch more for healthcare in a market like
| situation.
|
| More generally, if you look at Europe there are actually
| far more startups. They generally have much lower
| valuations though, because there isn't as much capital
| going into VC.
|
| And probably you should look at Sweden as it does better
| than the US on a per capita basis in terms of startups.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Actually Germanys economy is very differently structured
| than the US. A significantly larger portion the GDP is
| coming from relatively small companies (called
| Mittelstand in German). Those companies also often invest
| very large percentages of their revenue into R&D
| (typically much more than the big cooperations). For
| example a significant portion of worldwide advanced
| manufacturing is powered by relatively small German
| companies that nobody ever heard about,
| trepatudo wrote:
| You are fully ignoring that a lot of unions and
| government labor laws in EU actually focus on a better
| life for the worker.
|
| It's really not always about the money...
| davedx wrote:
| An issue dear to my heart (lived in EU most of my life).
|
| I think it's more complex than you state. The EU is
| indeed one economic block, but the tech industry is quite
| varied within that block. Amsterdam has a relatively
| small but growing tech scene and the Dutch gov has been
| entrepreneur friendly for as long as I've been here. I
| just saw in the news a couple of days ago:
|
| "Dutch cleantech startup Sympower raises EUR5.2 million
| to boost the European energy transition".
|
| Berlin has quite a lot of fintech startups. I know
| because I worked with one. Yes the red tape and German
| regs are a PITA and slow things down. But I don't think
| unions or regulations are the only reason we have less
| tech startups here. It's also a lack of drive and vision
| within the population, a cultural thing.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| GDP per capita has very little to do with it. The main
| differences between the US and Europe,when it comes to
| tech are these: 1) VC sector in Europe is where the US
| one was 20 years ago. 2) The US, even though it has
| states, it's still pretty much one market,while
| Europe,even when talking EU, is a collection of counties
| with very different cultures, languages,and attitudes
| towards innovation (e.g. Scandinavia is almost cashless
| society by now,while Germans are obsessed with cash).
|
| In Germany, there are a lot of so called 'hidden
| champions' - companies that are small but focus on some
| higher end, niche products, e.g. oil filters,special
| purpose ball bearings,etc. The same is the case in many
| other European countries. This stay small approach is
| hard understand from the US,or Chinese perspective,where
| if you don't make $1B in revenue, nobody's going to put
| you on a map.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| > _In Germany, there are a lot of so called 'hidden
| champions' - companies that are small but focus on some
| higher end, niche products, e.g. oil filters,special
| purpose ball bearings,etc. _
|
| Which is great, but manufacturing those products doesn't
| generate the kind of cashflow or global influence that US
| tech companies generate.
|
| Curious how many people here praising these hidden
| champions has worked for or wishes to work for one. I
| worked for a couple and it was eye-opening on never doing
| it again and avoiding them like the plague since they
| provide no high paying jobs and generate nearly no
| innovation as they simply survive on having cornered a
| niche market where neither US nor Chinese companies
| bother to compete because either the margins or volumes
| are too low and the decades-long relations with their
| customers are more valued in those businesses rather than
| cheaper price or better products.
| foepys wrote:
| Not everybody can rake in billions each year. It's
| perfectly fine for a company to make a few good quality
| wares that sell well in a niche. Somebody has to make air
| filters, lighting, brake pads, ropes, etc., you know?
|
| By your logic everybody should just try to become a tech
| mega corp and use VC until they set the latest trend or
| die.
|
| There is a lot of arrogance here on HN.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> By your logic everybody should just try to become a
| tech mega corp and use VC until they set the latest trend
| or die._
|
| Except that's not what I said. I said, competing in a
| market making widgets is not as desirable for a modern
| country/economy/company/employee vs one that exports
| software and innovation, like the US, as manufacturing,
| more often than not turns into a race to the bottom of
| reducing costs and I don't want to work in such an
| industry anymore since I saw how the sausage is made and
| I have goals in life that are not compatible with working
| in manufacturing.
|
| _> There is a lot of arrogance here on HN._ _> Somebody
| has to make air filters, lighting, brake pads, ropes,
| etc., you know?_
|
| Would you like to be this 'somebody' working in a factory
| making oil-filters or would you rather be in a a high
| demand, high paying job?
|
| This is what's funny to me about the HN crowd. Saying
| they won't take jobs in Embedded Software/Hardware or the
| Video-Games industry because WLB is poor and it "pays
| peanuts" but at the same time preaching that 'someone'
| should work making stuff in factories, where salaries and
| WLB is actually poor. Not them of course, but 'someone'
| should do it.
| sgift wrote:
| > This is what's funny to me about the HN crowd. Saying
| they won't take jobs in Embedded Software/Hardware or the
| Video-Games industry because WLB is poor and it "pays
| peanuts" but at the same time preaching that 'someone'
| should work making stuff in factories, where salaries and
| WLB is actually poor. Not them of course, but 'someone'
| should do it.
|
| Nice straw man you set up there. A company can make these
| things by building machines to do it. Funny thing:
| European companies are really good at making machines to
| do such things.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> A company can make these things by building machines
| to do it. Funny thing: European companies are really good
| at making machines to do such things._
|
| Did you have any experience in this sector or it just an
| amrchair argument from an ivory tower of an white collar
| worker? Because I have first hand experience and
| factories, even in Europe still need quiet a few
| personnel.
|
| And not all industries are automated, just ask people
| working in the meat packing industry or in Amazon
| warehouses, how their jobs are. Yes, in Europe.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I'm curious which companies you talk about, because there
| are a lot of statistics that many of these companies have
| significant higher R&D spending than most big
| corporations (certainly more than many famous SV
| companies). I also know of two people who joined one of
| these companies one came from a research postdoc position
| and made it to head of R&D (like a vice president I
| guess) within 5 years, another came from a slightly
| higher level, but also quickly made it to a similar
| position.
| Someone wrote:
| _"German GDP per capita is about 45k [...] Germany 's
| most productive city is Berlin. Berlin's GDP per capita
| is....45k"_
|
| That can't be both true. If the average is 45k, there
| must be higher ones, unless GDP per capita is a flat 45k
| across all its cities.
| therouwboat wrote:
| >That's fine for companies in industries that are
| reasonably mature. But if you want to start a new company
| in a dynamic industry, Germany is very much not where you
| want to be.
|
| This reminds me about the time we wanted better safety
| gear to our milling machine and boss basically told us
| that if we focus on safety too much, we might aswell shut
| the shop down.
|
| Sure, I work with the risk of injuring myself, so that
| you can make 10x my income.
| sgift wrote:
| > That isn't an accident. Germany and most of Europe have
| no tech sector to speak of as a direct consequence of
| their labor and regulatory policies. The EU is a huge
| economic block, comparable in scale collectively to the
| US or China, and it has a highly educated population. And
| yet, it has near zero presence in the most important
| industry of the 21st century. That's a staggering
| indictment of their economic policy. 2nd and 3rd tier US
| cities have more tech than Europe does.
|
| If I have to choose between having one of the two
| relevant industrial robot companies in the world (Kuka,
| the other would be Yaskawa, also not from the US or
| China), the market leader in automation systems,
| pneumatic systems, etc. (Festo) and "companies making
| money by systematic privacy violations" (Hello Facebook,
| Google et. al.) I know which I'd rather have. And which
| industry is more important.
|
| I think the EU is doing just fine here. But thanks for
| the concern.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > Germany and most of Europe have no tech sector to speak
| of as a direct consequence of their labor and regulatory
| policies.
|
| So what about a food delivery company with EUR1.238
| billion (2019) in revenue per year? Good or bad?
|
| For comparison Deliveroo is PS476 million (2018) and
| DoorDash is $2.886 billion (2020)
|
| That company was founded in Berlin (Delivery Hero).
|
| > it has near zero presence in the most important
| industry of the 21st century
|
| I guess most people never heard about them, because they
| target the local/European market. But they exist
| mlindner wrote:
| European unions are completely different from US unions
| in how they act. UAW is the only car union in the US and
| recently had federal probes and they arrested like 15
| people in the leadership (they were using union dues to
| buy ferraris, backyard pools, and other such things).
| They currently have a federal monitor making sure they
| reform.
|
| UAW is the union trying to organize Tesla's plant.
|
| I should also note that almost all Japanese auto
| companies in the US are non-union and it's been that way
| for many decades.
| runarberg wrote:
| Another thing worth noting is that European nations have
| mostly nationalized labor laws. Worker's rights which
| unions are bargaining for in the USA are national laws in
| countries like Germany and--to a much greater degree--
| Sweden. In Europe if you want more paternity leave, you
| don't ask your union, you vote for a labor friendly
| party. Worth noting is that corruption also exists in
| unions in Europe. So corrupt union leaders is not enough
| on its own to spin a narrative where unions in America
| are uniquely bad.
|
| If the narrative that unions hinder business growth was
| true, you have to provide with some mechanism for which
| that would be the case. An easy one is that businesses
| have to spend more per workers and hence cannot afford
| bigger investment. This sounds right, but it is anything
| but. If that were the case you wouldn't see Volvo
| factories still operating in Sweden.
|
| What is it precisely that unions in America are doing
| which is not a national law in Europe, and European
| unions aren't doing which causes businesses _"to wither
| and stagnate for the gain of a privileged few"_?
| onion2k wrote:
| Suggesting a union is bad because it'd be good "for the
| benefit of a privileged few" is a bit ironic when the
| company is mamaged by a man who is in the running for the
| title of Richest Man in the World.
| sjwright wrote:
| He's only the near-richest man in theory. If he tried to
| convert all of his company ownership into cash, the
| company value would crash so fast that he would probably
| be lucky to actually recover one fifth of his theoretical
| wealth.
| cycomanic wrote:
| That's a stupid argument, because none of the people on
| the richest people lists have any significant portion of
| wealth in liquid assets. Wealth for good reason is not
| defined as amount of cash you own.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| The richest people list do not include those who are good
| at hiding their wealth
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Who is richer than Bezos because they have so much cash
| stashed away, pray tell?
| sjwright wrote:
| It's not an argument, just an observation that you can't
| eat Tesla shares.
|
| You seem to be replying as though I'm saying he's not
| wealthy? Obviously he's extremely wealthy by any
| definition. But most ultra-wealthy people are a LOT more
| diversified in their portfolio than Musk is. Someone with
| a diverse portfolio stands more chance of being able to
| functionally realise their wealth--if, say, they wanted
| to donate a large chunk of it to some charitable cause.
|
| An argument could be made that Buffet is far and away the
| richest person (in terms of realisable wealth) due to his
| highly diverse holdings.
| kova12 wrote:
| Unions are inherently evil, as is any organization which
| forces you to join. I lived in USSR until late teens and I
| remember how hard I was pressured to join into Komsomol. And
| that was when system was already collapsing. Unions are even
| worse than that - you join them or you have to give up your
| career. They only help mediocre lazy donkeys, and if I was
| Musk I would want them nowhere near my business
| neolog wrote:
| > if I was Musk I would want them nowhere near my business
|
| Unions advocate for workers, not management. It's normal
| for management to not want unions.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| I think comparing workers wanting collective representation
| is a bit of a reach to the authoritarian disaster that was
| the USSR
| dundarious wrote:
| At the very least a comparison to Germany or other highly
| industrialized wealthy Western countries might be more
| apt.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| When I was working 48 to 72 hours a week as an EMT, I
| didn't find many of my coworkers to be "mediocre lazy
| donkeys." Far from it. They were kind and hardworking
| people. They were also frequently subjected to incompetent
| or inattentive managers who didn't both knowing the company
| policies and had to be constantly reminded to see employees
| as people. As a union steward I had to call managers
| several times _per week_ to straighten out issues that
| should have required nothing more than common sense.
|
| The reality of things isn't generally dramatic and
| hyperbolic, like you make out. Managers weren't _looking_
| for opportunities to screw people, and I wasn 't looking
| for opportunities to make it harder to do business. They
| wanted to get on with their day, and I wanted to help my
| coworkers have good jobs. Evil? Come on.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Some ambulance companies out here are so understaffed
| that employees regularly work 48 to 72 hours STRAIGHT.
| Still only get paid $13/hr though.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Fortunately it wasn't regular, but my record was 84 hours
| straight. (And for $11/hr!)
| sangnoir wrote:
| Did that include some power-naps? I don't know if the
| human mind can stay alert for that long without visual
| hallucinations and/or episodes of microsleep. My personal
| experience was that rhigs got weird after 36 hours of no
| sleep, then again I had no practice
| emptysongglass wrote:
| My Danish engineers union helps me look over employment
| contracts before I sign so I fully understand my rights and
| unenforceable terms, they tell me if I'm asking for too
| little in salary, and they give me great insurance rates
| (like USAA in the states) for home, salary, and dental.
| They're also there for me if I just want to talk about my
| career or need guidance. I'm not forced into being a member
| but I really value them. It's nice to feel taken care of.
|
| Employers work with unions here. It's not antagonistic like
| in the US. I don't know where it went wrong but to me it's
| very much like the antagonism between drivers and cyclists
| in the US: cyclists and drivers _hate_ each other there and
| both sides frequently try to provoke the other (Critical
| Mass is the most obnoxious thing I 've ever experienced and
| I'm not even a driver). There's none of that here. We have
| a lot of public infrastructure to support cyclists here but
| even in cities with relatively poor cycling infra like
| Berlin that antagonism is missing.
|
| If I had to guess it's that there's a culture of seeing-
| only-from-your-side of things in the States: you're black,
| I'm white, you're male, I'm female, you're an elite, I'm
| blue-collar and you'll never know how it feels to be me.
| And because you'll never know, you are my enemy.
|
| What a wrongheaded way of approaching the world.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Personally, I feel that a lot of this is driven by
| inequality. If you feel that nothing you do makes things
| any better, then you'll look to take out your frustration
| on other people, preferably people who don't have enough
| power to fight back (i.e. your fellow citizens).
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Unions are inherently evil, as is any organization which
| forces you to join._
|
| Nobody is forcing you to work a union job. You're free to
| apply and work wherever you want.
| upbeat_general wrote:
| I don't understand this logic at all.
|
| Just because one company is partially unionized that does not
| mean that all workers who wish to be part of a union try to
| work at that company. Maybe the working conditions changed (for
| the worse), or maybe the worker doesn't want to move to another
| state just to work for a company that is unionized. Either way,
| it's not like there's a 1 company quota in every industry that
| can be unionized and then bam problem solved.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| Or Tesla's workers can collectively decide for what's best for
| themselves?
| meddlepal wrote:
| And Tesla should be allowed every opportunity to stop them.
|
| I guess Tesla broke the law in this case, but I do not really
| agree with the ruling and the law. Musk should be allowed to
| present the possible downsides.
| slumpt_ wrote:
| Sounds like you should crack a history book open.
| eru wrote:
| Depending on your biases, you pick a book that'll confirm
| them.
| viraptor wrote:
| > allowed every opportunity
|
| Unless you're also happy about shooting people starting a
| union or striking, you should read this article to learn
| why this is a really bad idea.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_t
| h...
| kova12 wrote:
| didn't that happen when joining union was voluntary?
| eru wrote:
| Compare and contrast
| https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/
| viraptor wrote:
| I'm curious what you wanted to point out? (It's a really
| interesting read either way)
| joshuamorton wrote:
| The downside musk presented was a lie though: a union could
| absolutely bargain for stock options.
| fastball wrote:
| But Tesla could outright refuse under any circumstances
| to give stock options to unionized employees, no?
|
| That's their prerogative.
|
| Also FWIW Musk clarified that he was talking about the
| fact that no UAW employees have stock options at any
| other company.
| eru wrote:
| > But Tesla could outright refuse under any circumstances
| to give stock options to unionized employees, no?
|
| Not sure what the laws are. There might be laws saying
| that you can't discriminate against people in unions, so
| in order not to hand stock options to unionized
| employees, they might have to withhold stock options from
| all employees?
|
| (No clue, just speculating.)
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > But Tesla could outright refuse under any circumstances
| to give stock options to unionized employees, no?
|
| I mean yes. And then a union could strike. At which point
| elon would have a decision to make: is proving a dumb
| point worth his business?
|
| > Also FWIW Musk clarified
|
| Presumably on lawyers advice.
|
| > no UAW employees have stock options at any other
| company.
|
| But that,as others have explained, isn't relevant.
| Nothing stops the Tesla union from maintaining those
| perks, and options aren't valuable at most auto companies
| anyway, so aiming for different perks is superior.
| stretchwithme wrote:
| Maybe he has no plans to offer stock because such
| incentives don't really work when your labor supply is
| captured by a monopoly.
| [deleted]
| zja wrote:
| Why wouldn't stock options "work" when labor is
| unionized?
| refurb wrote:
| Just a guess but union contracts typically fix
| compensation for a given role and seniority. So every
| role would get the same number of options. Not having
| control over how many options are granted (linking to
| performance) may mean the company doesn't have much
| incentive to grant them to union members.
| [deleted]
| spamizbad wrote:
| Is the implication here stock options are only offered to
| labor when its in a weak bargaining position because
| otherwise they could be demanding something more
| valuable?
| eru wrote:
| Tesla is a publicly traded company. It's relatively easy
| to put a market value on their stock options.
|
| > [...] because otherwise they could be demanding
| something more valuable?
|
| Like twice as many stock options? I'm a bit confused.
| Stock options are fungible. You can make granting of
| stock options worth arbitrary many dollars, by eg
| increasing the volume or lowering the strike price etc.
| boustrophedon wrote:
| > And Tesla should be allowed every opportunity to stop
| them.
|
| We've tried this. People died over it. We enacted laws to
| prevent it from happening, so that labor can stand on equal
| ground with capital.
| kova12 wrote:
| Labor, Capital - jeez there's plenty of countries built
| on Marxist ideology you are advocating. Go live there.
| China, Venezuella, North Korea - check them out see if
| you like it. USA was not built on that ideology, can we
| please keep it that way thank you very much? I would much
| rather see a single place not destroyed by a mob of
| parasites
| colinmhayes wrote:
| All economies consist of labor and capital vying for
| resources.
| eru wrote:
| There's also land.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > All economies consist of labor and capital vying for
| resources
|
| Economies without property rights in capital do not. They
| may have other (and even more significant) problems, but
| they don't have that one.
| mrkstu wrote:
| An example of such an economy IRL?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Lots of small-community, low-tech societies (very much
| "pre-capitalist" in the view of either capitalist or
| Marxist teleogical economic descriptions).
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Low tech societies still have capital. I was looking at
| givedirectly recipient stories, https://live.givedirectly
| .org/newsfeed/search?search=Kenya+C.... Almost everyone
| uses their money to invest in their home, livestock, or
| children's education. The push and pull between capital
| and labor absolutely exists here.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Low tech societies still have capital. I was looking at
| givedirectly recipient stories,
|
| I was referring to _historical_ low tech, small community
| societies, not any places integrated enough with the
| modern global economic to have "givedirectly recipient
| stories". But, that aside:
|
| > Almost everyone uses their money to invest in their
| home, livestock, or children's education
|
| Neither a home nor children's education is capital.
| Livestock is, but plenty of historical societies didn't
| feature private ownership of livestock (though it's
| probably one of the oldest forms of private capital.)
| colinmhayes wrote:
| There aren't really any communities large enough to be
| considered societies and are so cut off from technology
| that they couldn't be the recipients of givedirectly.
| Homes and human capital are absolutely capital.
| darawk wrote:
| NK essentially operates this way, at least nominally.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| "Economies without property rights in capital" is a
| convoluted way of saying "economies without capital", and
| so of course those economies do not have to worry about
| any conflict between labor and capital, just as societies
| without higher education don't need to worry about SAT
| scores declining.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I don't believe in the practice of Marxism, however I do
| believe that Marxism broadly calls correctly the issues
| society has.
| eru wrote:
| Not really. That guy didn't even understand comparative
| advantage.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Identifying the issues is much less difficult than
| articulating effective solutions.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Still difficult though.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Labor, Capital - jeez there's plenty of countries built
| on Marxist ideology you are advocating.
|
| No, there aren't. There are plenty of countries built on
| _Leninist_ (and it 's descendants, including Maoist)
| ideology, which advertise themselves as being Marxist as
| well, but Leninism sharply deviates from Marxism on a
| number of key points largely because Marxism is grounded
| in the necessity of starting with mature capitalism, and
| Lenin wanted a shortcut for the USSR (and later movements
| following Lenin likewise sought to bypass, rather than
| develope through and from, mature capitalism.)
|
| Also, recognition of the existence of the conflict within
| capitalism that Marx's proposals sought to address isn't
| the same thing as advocating Marxism.
| fakename11 wrote:
| "That Wasn't Real Socialism"
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Whether or not Leninism is real _Socialism_ is a
| different question (there 's a reason, though, why other
| socialists, including Marxists, have called it State
| Capitalism, though.)!
|
| What is undisputable is that these are three different
| things:
|
| 1. Recognizing the conflict between labor and capital as
| a real and significant factor in capitalist society, and
|
| 2. Advocating Marxism, and
|
| 3. Advocating Leninism.
|
| The societies in which _Marxism_ has been most broadly
| applied are the developed "capitalist" societies, which
| have generally evolved from what Marx described as
| capitalism to what has been called (among other things)
| as "the modern mixed economy", by adopting both elements
| of programs of various (in many cases, Marxist) critics
| of capitalism, or compromise positions.
|
| There are also societies, which never were mature
| capitalist societies, that have tried to bypass mature
| capitalism and apply the Leninist course. Advocates
| laissez-faire capitalism like to point to these as a
| broad argument against _socialism_ , while advocates of
| non-Leninist socialism tend to point to them as as
| arguments against the Leninism as a _useful_ approach to
| socialism, whether or not they accept it as a _genuine_
| socialism.
| eru wrote:
| > Recognizing the conflict between labor and capital as a
| real and significant factor in capitalist society, and
| [...]
|
| Nah, the real conflict, if any, is labor and capital vs
| land.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| That was certainly true under feudalism, which is
| probably why the modern capitalist center-to-right and
| pro-labor/socialist left all have roots in classical
| liberalism.
|
| But as capital has matured, capital as a class has
| effectively subsumed the landed class, largely by driving
| land into fee-simple ownership.
| darawk wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to call a modern mixed economy
| "Marxist". Marx didn't really advocate anything in
| particular in terms of economic organization. He had no
| clear idea of how his world would operate, and that's why
| Leninism was able to fill the void in the way that it
| did.
|
| Marx's ideas were fundamentally negative in nature. He
| was opposed to things, and had sharp and perceptive
| critiques of capitalism, but he didn't really present an
| alternative. To the extent that he did articulate a
| vision, it doesn't really seem like, e.g. Sweden would
| really fit the bill, though.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't think it's fair to call a modern mixed economy
| "Marxist".
|
| It's at least as fair as it is to call Leninism Marxist.
|
| > Marx didn't really advocate anything in particular in
| terms of economic organization.
|
| Yes, he did.
|
| > Leninism was able to fill the void in the way that it
| did.
|
| Leninism didn't fill a void, it made deliberate changes
| to apply to very different conditions those addresses by
| Marx's writing (which addressed mature capitalist
| societies and where he saw that they should go next to
| resolve problems he saw as inherent to their system.)
|
| > but he didn't really present an alternative.
|
| Yes, he did, though Marx was very big on path dependency,
| so his recommendations were more specific when directed
| at more specific conditions. _Capital_ is pretty pure
| critique of the then-status-quo, _The Communist
| Manifesto_ has a fairly broad program, but narrower and
| less-well-known works like the _Demands of the Communist
| Party in Germany_ , _Programme of the French Workers
| Party_ have quite specific policy proposals.
| darawk wrote:
| It seems like we disagree about what it means to actually
| propose policy.
|
| > Capital is pretty pure critique of the then-status-quo
|
| Yep.
|
| > The Communist Manifesto has a fairly broad program
|
| The Communist Manifesto doesn't do much policy proposing.
| Workers owning the means of production is about as far as
| it goes, and to the extent that that his Marx's
| proposal...that isn't realized anywhere in Europe.
|
| > but narrower and less-well-known works like the Demands
| of the Communist Party in Germany
|
| https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/03/24.ht
| m https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/par
| ti-ou...
|
| These are both pretty short and vague, but they are
| policy proposals. However, they are both pretty clearly
| not an articulation of his vision for the post-revolution
| society he describes in The Communist Manifesto. They are
| pragmatic demands for political parties to make of their
| governments.
|
| Let's compare. The Communist Manifesto:
|
| > In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be
| summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private
| property.
|
| Demands of the communist party in Germany:
|
| > 15. Introduction of strongly progressive taxes and
| abolition of taxes on consumption.
|
| So, here's the fundamental issue: When Marx is specific,
| he's mild. His specific ideas are totally bland, and not
| at all unique to him. He would be a footnote of history
| if his specific ideas were all he said. When we refer to
| "Marxism", we refer to the actually novel idea: Abolition
| of private property. But of course, it is here that he is
| vague. He gives no indication of how a society without
| private property might _actually_ function. And it is
| into exactly that void that Leninism stepped. It did so
| because it had no choice.
|
| Lenin understood that they didn't have a revolution to
| institute a minimum wage. They had a revolution to
| abolish private property. But Marx had no clue how to
| manage such a society, and as it turns out, neither did
| Lenin.
| fastball wrote:
| Yeah, pretty sure shooting people is not what GC meant by
| "every opportunity".
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure these days
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| >>We've tried this. People died over it. We enacted laws
| to prevent it from happening, so that labor can stand on
| equal ground with capital.
|
| This is simply not true, except in the most pedantic and
| disingenuous sense.
|
| There were violent strikes by some groups of unionized
| workers, that broke the law, and that resulted in some
| deaths, if that's what you're referring to. There is
| absolutely no reason this thuggery should have been
| rewarded by giving the strikers what they demanded, which
| was the abrogation of the company owners' private
| property and contracting rights.
|
| As it happened, US industry, and with it US wages, grew
| much faster before society gave into the unions, when the
| US was still a free market where people had a sacred
| right to freely contract.
| eru wrote:
| Or individually?
| sjwright wrote:
| I have no problem with unions so long as membership is
| entirely voluntary for every employee. The problem I have is
| coercive collectivism.
|
| Also, is there any evidence that collective action returns a
| _sustainably_ larger slice of corporate revenues?
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Tesla's CEO is the richest human on the planet and we're
| worried about _workers_ taking too much? If Elon's
| stressing over sustainability, let _him_ take the pay cut.
| pmichaud wrote:
| This comment seems really confused. It seems like you
| think Musk is "the richest human" in terms of liquid
| cash, and that that abundance of liquidity came from
| Tesla profits that could have been divvied up among the
| employees. Is that right?
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| No, I assume a significant amount is Tesla stock. Which
| could be used as compensation for workers, if Elon
| weren't threatening to withhold it to prevent them from
| unionizing.
| eru wrote:
| Well, Tesla's CEO is just one of the workers of Tesla,
| too.
| wtfrmyinitials wrote:
| I may be confused, but your comment appears to be a bit
| of a non sequitur.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| GGP asked whether collective action returns a sustainable
| slice of corporate revenues, i.e. do unions demand so
| much that it harms the company. I'm saying that they
| should look at executive compensation through the same
| lens.
| optimiz3 wrote:
| Elon isn't hired management. He built the company, and
| risked all of his personal assets in doing so.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| From what I understand, Musk as an already wealthy man
| would be able to easily protect his personal assets if
| Tesla were to declare bankruptcy. He would be fine,
| employees, living paycheck to paycheck, would not be.
| mlindner wrote:
| He gets no salary already. He's paid only in stock.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Workers can also be compensated with stock.
| neolog wrote:
| It's a commons problem; voluntary membership means free-
| riders will destroy the collective resource.
| sjwright wrote:
| Is that sufficient reason to coerce others to
| participate? Why should people who want to collectively
| bargain have a veto over the people who don't want that?
| r0p3 wrote:
| Why is it coercive to have to join a union to work
| somewhere? Work somewhere else. If that sounds coercive
| then so should having to work at tesla to begin with. I
| think wage labor is always a bit coercive but I don't see
| how having to join a union to work somewhere is worse.
| And it solves the free rider problem.
| neolog wrote:
| The other side of the coin is why should people who don't
| want to collectively bargain have a veto over the people
| who do? (Since that's what happens when management can
| circumvent the union -- the union loses its bargaining
| power.)
|
| As for how to choose, I'm not sure.
| fastball wrote:
| Except "my labor" is not a collective resource, so it's
| not really a tragedy of the commons situation.
| neolog wrote:
| The labor isn't the collective resource. It's the
| negotiating power.
| fastball wrote:
| The negotiating power only exists _because_ of my
| participation. I am not destroying something that would
| exist anyway by my lack of participation.
| neolog wrote:
| Workers are weaker when scabs undermine their collective
| bargaining power.
| fastball wrote:
| Yes, when someone doesn't join your cause, you are
| generally going to be weaker. That's kinda how it works.
| Doesn't make it a tragedy of the commons though.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
| religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging
| the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the
| people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for
| a redress of grievances.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| dang, can we change the link/title to
| https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL4N2LN4L0 ?
|
| Snippet below:
|
| > Tesla CEO Musk's anti-union tweet from 2018 must be deleted:
| U.S. labor board
|
| > Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk's 2018 tweet
| threatening employees would lose their stock options if they
| formed a union was illegal and should be deleted, the U.S.
| National Labor Relations Board said on Thursday.
| Black101 wrote:
| Why don't you just make a new post with the article that you
| like? maybe it will take-off...
| avs733 wrote:
| Completely agree, the use of watchdog here as opposed to
| "federal labor law board" is problematic vagueness
| pferde wrote:
| The action desribed in that tweet would be illegal, but is the
| tweet itself illegal? Why should the tweet be deleted? I'd
| rather keep it for posterity.
| evgen wrote:
| If I happen to mention to you that it would be a shame if my
| associates and I were to decide to burn your nice little
| business down in the night, but maybe if you pay us that
| won't happen I would assume that you would know that a threat
| was being made. The arson is illegal, but so is the threat to
| commit it unless you do something that is to my material
| benefit.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| It's very often illegal to threaten illegal retribution.
| Employees may not know their rights, and such a threat could
| discourage them from exercising those rights.
|
| Deleting the tweet is maybe not ideal. Any future viewers of
| it should have the context added that it's an illegal threat.
| nightpool wrote:
| I would say what happens to the tweet itself is almost an
| afterthought--it was one of only many violations addressed by
| the report, along with more mundane stuff, like contract
| provisions about employees speaking to the press (ruling:
| it's unlawful to prevent employees from speaking with the
| press as long as they make it clear they don't represent the
| company). The NLRB also required them to post notices
| addressing the tweet at all factories, and it was
| immortalized in a 55 page public document--not to mention all
| of the contemporaneous news reports. I think it's very safe
| to say that posterity is not going to have a hard time
| finding this tweet
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Threatening retaliation is also very much illegal, ergo yes
| the tweet is illegal.
| arnath wrote:
| Aside from "watchdog" as opposed to NLRB, what's wrong with the
| title? The article describes a bunch of required actions
| besides just deleting the tweet.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I thought the register article was written in a clickbait
| way.
|
| Reuters actually had the scoop over 24 hours before the
| register.
| vinay427 wrote:
| Not the original commenter, but personally, omitting NLRB
| would be my main concern with the title. A "watchdog" seems
| needlessly vague as it could imply any range of organizations
| that report on this, but the NLRB is the specific agency
| tasked with overseeing and enforcing these union
| representation laws on a federal level.
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