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Tesla Employee Calls For Unionization, Musk Says That's 'Morally Outrageous' (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the morally-outrageous dept.

"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."

2 of 594 comments (clear)

  1. Elon Musk by kkoo · · Score: 1, Troll

    Is beginning to sound more and more like Trump.

  2. Unionization worked in the past, kill it now. by alphad0g · · Score: 0, Troll

    Sorry, this guy should quit and find another job.
    Assembling a car is unskilled labor. Unionization just drives the cost of production up. If the work is to hard, then quit.

    Is framing a house, pouring/finishing concrete or laying brick/tile ergonomic? People do it every day in bad weather.

    Unions served a purpose when workers were exploited. There was a large pool of unskilled workers, and if one got hurt, you just got another one because the job required little skill. But the unions also artificially inflated wages for many of these jobs. OSHA and many local and federal laws now exist to protect workers that didn't exist many years ago.

    All this guy is doing is highlighting why a company will eventually get rid of his job an use a robot to do the same repetitive task.