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Tesla Employee Calls For Unionization, Musk Says That's 'Morally Outrageous' (arstechnica.com)
"In a Medium post published today, Tesla employee Jose Moran detailed working conditions at the company's Freemont factory and called for the factory workers to unionize with United Auto Workers (UAW)," reports Ars Technica. In response, Elon Musk told Gizmodo via Twitter Direct Messages: "Our understanding is that this guy was paid by the UAW to join Tesla and agitate for a union. Frankly, I find this attack to be morally outrageous. Tesla is the last car company left in California, because costs are so high." Musk went on to blame the UAW for killing the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc (NUMMI), which sold the Fremont factory to Musk in 2010. Ars Technica reports: Tesla currently employs more than 5,000 non-union workers at its Fremont, CA-based factory. Moran wrote that the workers are often faced with "excessive mandatory overtime" and earn between $17 and $21 hourly, compared with the national average of $25.58 hourly for most autoworkers in the U.S. The Tesla employee noted that the astronomical cost of living in the Bay Area makes $21 an hour difficult to live on. Moran also claimed that the factory's "machinery is often not ergonomically compatible with our bodies," and requires "too much twisting and turning and extra physical movement to do jobs that could be simplified if workers' input were welcomed." He added that at one point, six out of eight people on his team were out on medical leave "due to various work-related injuries."
You lost me when you became incomprehensible toward the end there...
Exactly he's complaint is not against Unions per se but against someone who purposely got hired by Tesla for the expressed purpose of instigating Unionization.
Yes. Additionally, the guy was being paid by the union for doing this.
and a Tesla factory job probably comes with more benefits than other employers who don't require a collegiate-level education.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
If unions go away, those laws will go away so fast it will make your head spin.... especially with the current crowd that's in power.
Not fishy at all. The Toyota plants in Woodstock, Ontario and Cambridge, Ontario have had multiple cases of this. People would get hired on usually by having a sterling resume, or qualifications that put them above the average worker to get hired on. Then after several years start agitating for unionization and so on. It's why the unionization vote at the Woodstock plant has failed at least 4 times that I know of.
Om, nomnomnom...
Except unions have been going away and that has not happened. Unionization (not counting public service employees) is less than 10%. (AFAIR)
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
We do have worker safety laws. If they're not worded strongly enough they should be improved. (Not implement more unions with all the problems they bring).
I agree that minimum wage should be raised substantially. (But not implement more unions).
All citizens should have their basic rights and needs looked after, not just unionized ones. Unions introduce a problem for each one they solve. Unions built western economies- and also almost destroyed them.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Yes, it is morally outrageous for the UAW to try to come and unionize his employees, to the point that they send a paid agitator in.
I don't have a problem with Tesla employees unionizing. The UAW coming in and extracting money from them in exchange for "helping" them isn't the same thing - not by a long shot.
I worked at Indiana University years ago and something similar happened with the clerical workers there. AFSCME was able to get enough of a foothold to get a vote and win. The benefits provided by the university were already far and above what you would get elsewhere. During the first round of "negotiations", which lasted for nearly a year, the new union workers had their wages frozen. When it was finalized, they ended up getting the annual raises they would have received, anyway. But with union dues taken out.
You see, AFSCME didn't give a damn about the workers. They cared about AFSCME. So, AFSCME was able to capture an income stream from IU while effectively doing nothing.
Don't be fooled - this is about the UAW, not Tesla workers.
Do you have ESP?
The factory wasn't built by Tesla.
The building was formerly a joint venture between GM and Toyota (NUMMI). GM pulled out of the site as part of its bankruptcy. Toyota invested $50M in Tesla and then Tesla bought the site from Toyota for $50M.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Yes. Additionally, the guy was being paid by the union for doing this.
Why do you believe Musk when he said this? Especially when he inserted weasel words in his statement?
FTA (updates):
In a statement this morning UAW categorically denied that Moran had ever been paid by their organization. “Mr. Moran is not and has not been paid by the UAW,” the statement claims. “We would hope that Tesla would apologize to their employee.” UAW goes on to confirm reporting done by Bloomberg yesterday that “Mr. Moran and others at Tesla, have approached the UAW.”
Tesla sells premium priced cars. Part of why people are willing to pay such prices are they think with a factory in California Tesla's costs are higher . The other assumption is that with workers paid more than in the rest of the country the quality must be higher. If Tesla is actually paying even the same as in other car companies in other parts of the country Tesla is cheating its customers.
**Life is too short to be serious**
The unions in the USA are incredibly weak compared with those in Germany and do not have anything like the power you suggest to stop modernization.
Those other countries that produce more, better cars, faster have unions with more of a say in workplace than in the USA, so I really don't get why you push that line unless it's to say what The Party says you should say in Amerika. Nyet?
"The hard, manual labor we put in to make Tesla successful is done at great risk to our bodies."
Tesla's plant is heavily automated so I find this unlikely. I also find it unlikely that OSHA has not inspected a 5,000 employee plant for safety and health hazardous issues given how OSHA operates, so this is a questionable statement.
Actually Tesla has failed inspections.
http://insideevs.com/tesla-mot...
Tesla Motors Fined $89,000 For 7 Safety Violations Linked To Fremont Factory Incident
“Tesla employees Jesus Navarro, Kevin Carter and Jorge Terrazas were taken to Valley Medical Center in San Jose with second- and third-degree burns. Carter and Terrazas have returned to work. Navarro, who had burns on his hands, stomach, hip, lower back and ankles, was hospitalized for 20 days and continues to recuperate at home.”
“Cal-OSHA’s investigation found that Tesla failed to ensure that the low-pressure die casting machine was maintained in a safe operating condition and allowed its employees to operate the machine while the safety interlock was broken. It also found that the employees had not been properly trained regarding the hazards of the machine, and were not wearing the required eye and face protection.”
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dosh/cit...
4/25/2014 Tesla Motors, Inc. Fremont Fremont District Office
Serious – 6
General – 1
Total
Violations - 7
Citations were issued to Tesla Motors, Inc. for six Serious and one General violation. The employer did not conduct periodic inspections of use of a low pressure die casting machine, and allowed employees to continue using the machine after a safety interlock had been damaged, which resulted in injuries to three employees who were sprayed with molten metal. The employer failed to release the air pressure used to inject molten aluminum into molds before servicing, did not maintain the machine in safe operating condition and did not use a protective shield. The employer did not ensure that employees were trained in the hazards of using the machine, and did not ensure that employees used eye and face protection.
Where to start?
"Most of my 5,000-plus coworkers work well over 40 hours a week, including excessive mandatory overtime." This is extremely illegal under California state law; then penalties for companies for this are really harsh. Musk can't even get away with it by making his employees salaried exempt, the CLC takes a very hard stance on classifying employees of a particular job differently than another company. And they do inspect.
From the State of California's Department of Industrial Relations: "Q. Can an employer require an employee to work overtime? A. Yes, an employer may dictate the employee's work schedule and hours. Additionally, under most circumstances the employer may discipline an employee, up to and including termination, if the employee refuses to work scheduled overtime."
(your disbelief that the work is risky)
I'm sure your opinion of whether the work is prone to injury at a place you've never been on a job you've never held, as well as your idea of how much risk that worker should willingly bear, is very much valued. Please give me details of your work situation so that I may tell you what it's really like.
I'm sorry buddy, but labor is a market.
You're clearly not sorry, and you're ignoring what is a fundamental justification of unionizing. If there were 30,000 employers involved in making a car, I'd say the 30,000 employees of Tesla should indeed go out and negotiate on their own.
Work related injuries must be reported to OSHA on an ongoing basis. If a whole team is down due to people out due to medical injuries, even if the management is a cold-hearted I would think they'd be concerned about the efficiency of this team and try to make fixes, because this would shut down an entire functional group in the plant. Not only that, if 6 out of 8 on a team were out and those were reported to OSHA, then OSHA would be sending inspectors in almost next day. So for this to be true, Tesla would have to be breaking Federal employment law by not reporting injuries to OSHA, so he's either claiming that Tesla is acting in an extremely illegal way by not reporting injuries, or he's lying.
Yes, whenever an employee is killed on the job or suffers a work-related hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye, that must be reported. He's neither lying, nor is Tesla operating illegally- it's that you're wrong about the law.
Nevermind, I'm tired of typing. Do I need to bother to tell you there's a difference between whistleblowing and speaking? To question whether "the last 30 years" is a relevant time period to measure unionized vs. non-unionized efficiency when the power of unions has been declining during that entire period, and wasn't particularly strong at the start of that period? You've made up your mind- there's simply no other reason you'd make claims about stuff you're clearly legally wrong about if you hadn't already decided you hate unions.