Slashdot Mirror
Tesla Just Fired Hundreds Of Workers (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Bay Area Newsgroup:
Tesla fired hundreds of workers this week, including engineers, managers and factory workers, even as the company struggles to expand its manufacturing and product line... The company said this week's dismissals were the result of a company-wide annual review, and insisted they were not layoffs. Some workers received promotions and bonuses, and the company expects to hire for the "vast majority" of new vacancies, a spokesman said. "As with any company, especially one of over 33,000 employees, performance reviews also occasionally result in employee departures," a spokesman said. "Tesla is continuing to grow and hire new employees around the world."
"Tesla has a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board in November for charges that company supervisors and security guards harassed workers distributing union literature," reports the Bay Area Newsgroup, adding that "Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted."
Tesla denies this, and says that they've generally boosted morale this week -- by rewarding higher-performing employees.
"Tesla has a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board in November for charges that company supervisors and security guards harassed workers distributing union literature," reports the Bay Area Newsgroup, adding that "Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted."
Tesla denies this, and says that they've generally boosted morale this week -- by rewarding higher-performing employees.
Are these firings the result of stack ranking? If so, why would anyone want to work there.
Stop treating them like it.
... to help prevent potentially having to paying unemployment. Did you know that, at least in Florida, seven out of eight requests for unemployment are denied outright? This is because companies basically are able to set policies that mean unemployment is effectively inaccessible to most workers:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/bu...
Posting anonymously because of the massive amounts of mockery piled onto anyone that posts positively about unemployment, even though most folks end up using it to get through a tough spot in their lives. For some reason, we have a continuous cultural movement to shame it.
When your as cool as them
Maybe many of the pro-union workers were the lowest performing. As a worker unions do nothing good except demand dues. It's like a mafia shakedown.
Fire them now before they unionize otherwise you'll never be able to
Does your job description include "distributing union literature"?
In $current_century it should be possible to contact employees after work hours via e-mail, text messages, etc. And do so without risking intervention by supervisors or security. The whole face-to-face contact by organizers purportedly to "distribute literature" is at least psychological pressure to acquiesce and at times outright pressure from union thugs.
Have gnu, will travel.
My dad worked 40 years for a car dealer as a mechanic, and there was no union except for the last 5-8 years or so before he retired. He definitely saw some benefits--more vacation time, better medical coverage, some small amount of money allocated each year so they could expense work boots and a few tools and such--but nothing so fancy that he shouldn't have been able to get those benefits had he been a better negotiator (my dad's never been one to rock the boat, so the speak, much to his own detriment).
If not for those benefits brought in through the union, he would've been against it because--and this agrees with my own perspective--unions promote mediocrity. One of the things that frustrated my dad the most is that this meant kids fresh out of college were now making the same hourly rate as he did with his decades of experience. A lot of his coworkers also started doing the minimum they could get away with because they now had a guaranteed 32-hour/week salary even if they only showed up to sit on the bench all day. To paraphrase him, all incentives to work any harder were removed.
A few years after my dad retired, the union was booted out - which required a majority of employees voting in favor of that. I don't know the details behind that however.
Well, well, well... Tesla doesn't want to be unionized? Say it isn't so.
Of course I'd take this "they fired the Union organizers" with a grain of salt. I'm sure Tesla has CYA documentation for each and every one of these folks. And it kind of makes sense that the pro-Union folks would be lower in the productivity measures, not because they are pro-Union, but because it would be kind of hard to keep Union organizing and doing their work separated.
In general, Unions have outlived their primary reason to exist in this country. The big ones have become too powerful and self serving to care about the common worker anymore. Unions drove every major airline and car company in this country though bankruptcy by not seeing the long term implications of their demands and a load of loyal retired union folks lost the majority of their retirement income. I blame the unions for a lot of this.
Now that we have federal oversight on employment that governs things like hours, minimum wages, working conditions and safety, the union has less and less to negotiate with management over, yet they remain huge political and financial operations. Unions succeeded in their primary mission, and then proceeded to become the very thing they were designed to combat. I think they should go.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
From TFA it sounds like about 2 - 3% of the total workforce was fired. The firings were all ranks in the company including managers and engineers, not just the factory laborers.So it may have been nothing more than a pruning of the very lowest performers.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Obviously....
All they had to do was take a trip out into their parking lot, find the employees responsible for some of the idiotic parking jobs collected on Instagram and other places on the internet, and fire them, because they are simply too stupid to hold a job that pays better than minimum wage.
Yes, that would help with morale, too.
Build all US facilities in right-to-work states. Seems to work for BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, and Hyundai.
I was in a union once. I got nothing and only paid dues to keep corrupt union leaders on the take. Right To Work would've been nice, but I've long since moved to greener pastures.
I feel bad for people being screwed by unions. I don't feel bad at all for unions. They became what they once fought against. I have no sympathy for those who fight corruption only to get a share in the corruption. Those people get what they deserve when the inevitable happens.\
Do I think businesses should be unregulated? Hell no. But I think unions are not the answer. The answer is legally-enforced transparency. First, codify into law the fact that money paid to any political fund by any business or legal entity, directly or indirectly, that would be affected adversely by a law is bribery. Second, don't allow businesses to hide employee pay rates. Third, set a work-hours standard, with the force of law. Fourth, codify and enforce some standardized holiday, family leave, and vacation standards laws. Fifth, codify single-payer healthcare and disallow businesses from paying for employee healthcare.
See? Now unions aren't needed, and squirming around the things unions "guarantee" goes to the courts, not to some arbitration panel. Also, everyone pays the "dues" (taxes), and everyone gets the benefits in equal proportion.
It's not socialism, it's just a level playing field. Everyone must play by those rules and pay the dues to stay in the game. This is no different than requiring seat belts in cars, ground pins on electrical outlets, or an up-to-date health inspection certificate for a restaurant kitchen. A little regulation to level the playing field and crack down on abusive cheaters.
It was true 100 years ago and it's true today, the only way for workers to get a fair deal is to organize as a group. Let's see how Elon Musk deals with this earth bound reality. Maybe he can get Mars declared a "right to work" state.
Franky, a lot of companies could benefit from this attitude. Now, I won't argue that there isn't the possibility that Tesla has taken on more than it can chew and has to cut spending. This is certainly the most likely reason and in that case, as a stock holder, you should be worried. However, another possibility is that they really are just cutting cruft. This is something modern large companies are afraid to do but they could sorely use. At the large behemoth companies I have worked at and seen so much waste it's not even funny and most of it is because a large percentage of their employees are just useless wastes of space. In those cases, cutting the waste is a good thing.
Now I agree there is the whole separate issue of whether workers should be burning their life away inching out the last penny of profit for their corporate overloads and these people might as well not exist because they give everything to profit someone else. That is a thing that should be addressed. Good luck in America.
This would NEVER happen in a UNION shop.
You say that like it's an inherently good thing.
Everyone would get raises.
Including the people who don't deserve them.
Everyone would get promotions.
No. You can't promote everyone.
Only the less experienced people would get terminated due to budget constraints.
Again: This protects the incompetent and the disruptive personnel and brings down the entire workforce. A bad worker--regardless of seniority--is a bad worker, and should be gotten rid of, not rewarded.
I want my car designed by the people with the most time in service, not the most education, knowledge, etc.
Really? You want your car designed by the guy who knows he can't get fired, and has no reason to do any better than "good enough"?
I've been a member of 3 different unions and I've worked with somewhere around 150 different locals in over 50 jurisdictions in the US and Canada. In Washington DC, I had a jouneyman show up drunk. I reported him to the steward, he was sober the next day, but drunk again on the 3rd. I cut him from my crew.... and he was just reassigned to another crew and allowed to keep working (while drunk at 8am).
Protecting all workers at all costs is bad for business, bad for production, and bad for the other workers who watch incompetence be rewarded.
"Franky, a lot of companies could benefit from this attitude. "
Who the fuck is "Franky"? He sounds like a fucking douche.
"At the large behemoth companies I have worked at and seen so much waste it's not even funny and most of it is because a large percentage of their employees are just useless wastes of space. "
Well guess what Franky? They thought the same OF YOU, you fucking monkey.
" for their corporate overloads"
There's an overload here, an overload of bullshit from you, Franky.
Last time I checked, firing people was 'laying them off'. Elon Musk is a con man, to be sure, though it's entirely possible he's so certifiably unstable that he believes in his delusions and is unaware of it. That anyone ever compared that fool to someone like Steve Jobs is a bad, bad joke.
You don't have much IQ, do you? Maybe a Trump or Clinton supporter? Thought so.
I work for a company that does this. It is done very covertly but if you've been around long enough you are bound to notice. You are given a choice of severance to leave or get your performance up and risk outright firing if you don't. This is dubbed "performance management" by the company execs and gets only minimal air play.
1. Why was it so abrupt? Usually, there's a process which is followed for non-performance to force someone out. Performance improvement program (PIP) comes to mind. The firings seem abrupt, but we'll probably not know if some procedure was followed or not.
2. Does Tesla use stack ranking? If so, you probably don't want to work there. Any company practicing stack ranking causes employees to compete against each other instead of focusing on the challenges in the business. Stack ranking may work for a few review cycles, but then the best employees have left and all you have is a bunch of back-stabbers left.
3. Did the affected people have everything they needed to perform their jobs, or were they sabotaged by their managers?
4. If they were indeed slackers, why were they hired in the first place?
But...but...but...that's communism!
So you could be right, but only if Musk is good.
Everyone gets laid off after the company goes out of business.
I have done work in union shops, and similar companies which are not unionized. I find that employees are generally treated much worse in union jobs, because employees are not allowed to expand grow, or go outside their predefined jobs, thus they are confined to what their title says they are. Also I find a lot more layoffs happen in Union shops than non-unioned ones. Because when it is time to work with a contract for the next period a company has only one shot to try to get rid of some of the workers, so they will use that at the point and get them out in these bulk layoffs, while non-unionized companies tend to fire people when they need too, however being that most employees bring more to the company then what they pay them, means each one is an assert they would prefer to keep, however if it unioned then they are expenses especially if their particular job title is no longer needed for the company.
Now don't get me wrong, Historically Unions have been a good thing, however they haven't changed in a good way to deal with modern business. Positioning themselves as the enemy of the business vs. a partner whos goal is is help the employees prosper and the company to be successful.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I get paid well and I'm not in a union.... Unions are NOT the only way to be fairly paid...
Also, such "pay us what we define as fair or else" killed every major airline and car maker in the country in the end and dumped hard working people like my father (who was a union guy himself) onto the pension guarantee corporation and the fraction of the pension he was promised though the Union's efforts in the 25 years he worked there.
Personally, I think Unions of late do more harm than good in the long term... Certainly, watching my parents struggle to make ends meet on only portion of their Union retirement didn't make me like the unions who killed the airline they both worked for causing them to lose most of the benefits they earned including medical, flight privileges and a good portion of their income. The unions did that to them really, Management really had no choice but to play along and keep kicking the liability for Union benefits down the road if they wanted to stay in business now. The guys at the Union didn't care about tomorrow or the continued existence of the company, just about exacting their promises today. They ended up killing the goose that laid the golden eggs and EVERYBODY lost in the end.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
40 years ago when your dad started, as a mechanic, that dealership that he worked was one of a few places in his local area that hired such a skill. Even in the 1970's it was rather uncommon for someone to work in a different town then where they lived. So if he was fired from that jobs, he would had needed to either change careers or move to a different area. Today we are more mobile, traveling 20-30 miles to get to work isn't a big deal anymore, and if you get fired from one job, you can find another one in your choice career in some of these other towns.
Unions back then were important, because the end of your job could also be the end of your career, and Unions were needed to protect workers from such drastic actions.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Is there any reason why those negative things are inherent to unionizing?
The answer is no, no they're not.
There's a shortage of STEM employees, the universities told me so! And the universities are just here to teach us to think, they would never try to extract a profit from naive kids.
Oh, wait.
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/archit...
Oh yeah, it's a dead end.
It was true 100 years ago and it's true today, the only way for workers to get a fair deal is to organize as a group
A union that has been around 100 years has a good chance of having accumulated enough cruft that it's basically just another exploitive management structure feeding off of the workers productivity for little real benefit.
Unions should dissolve when they've achieved their goals and re-form when the are needed again.
For some people a job is a meant to living and pursue their very personal happiness, is not the life itself.
In all comapnies (specailly the ones based in manual labour) experience is not valued, they do prefer cheap and easy manipulate people, and at last they preffer loyal workers, so for most comapnies new younger workers are better, they will work more for less and will have less health issues, I have seen this also happening in engineering, seems like only high management rewards experience (and oddly enough mediocrity seems to be a norm for them).
There are different kinds of people and some have different kinds of ambition, maybe for them work is just a mean to get what they want, work is not everything in life and we can't assume everyone should do as we do, those workers that made the minimum also were paid the minimum so everything should be balanced, the problem might appear when things are not balanced, I was in a company where I met the most valued employee, he was the one that didn't have a family and kept doing all the odd jobs, helping others with their job problems and he was rewarded the same as everyone else, I think that things would have been different if he had married or if he had been studying a carrer.
Maybe the union helped those people to still get a minimum job and still pursue their own ambitions like have more time with their families.
No, communism would be what they have in China. When the people there tried to organize as a group, as I remember it, they ran them over with tanks.
First of all you, you seem to have missed the primary function of unions which is to make a fair share of the wealth generation go back to the workers, not merely the capitalists. Working conditions, health and safety, working hours and so on have always been secondary struggles where the workers demand some other form of compensation than wages. In that respect unions are failing horribly and apart from the minimum wage - that in real dollars is no higher than in the 1950s - the government is not going to fix.
It's no doubt that if you're a struggling business the unions can be a burden but if they were generally driving companies out of business the richest 15% wouldn't be making more and more money while everyone else loses. What you're seeing is a system where the money is extracted whenever the business is profitable, then makes everyone else take the burden when it's unprofitable. The US has managed to create something worse than social welfare, it's corporate welfare where you take from the tax payers and give to the corporations.
For example, why was your future retirement income to the company's future? Put that money into a pension fund when you do work, if the company goes tits up or you change jobs or lose your job it stops accumulating but it's yours. Or at least a potential share if you make it to retirement age. I mean they're back in business now aren't they? Making money again, which is extracted until the next crisis when the coffers again will be mysteriously empty. And they've done a great frame job when people like you blame the unions for that, nothing like 1%ers making the other 99% blame each other.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week"
Assuming it was an average distribution of bad workers that were dismissed, I'd actually rhink it was a miracle if there were literally no pro-union employees amongst them.
Agreed, if management played fair you would never need unions. Unfortunately it seems that management almost never plays fair. That's the law of the jungle.
What anti-union company is not going to use general terminations to rid itself of organizers? I think Musk is a latter day Thomas Edison - that is not a compliment - but I don't think he's an idiot. Anyone in a non-union position can find out very quickly that companies have lots of ways to fire people.
You applying that same logic to corporations, Slick? Should IBM dissolve itself for your arbitrary ad hoc reasons? How about JP Morgan?
The problem is that what we need is for all workers to be represented by one group if we are going to get protection for all workers. As it is, the complacent unions that are entrenched now suck all the air out of the room.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
All this "fire the bottom 10%," started with GE's Jack Welch. Now, GE's stock is in the toilet. You can't attract good employees by giving a continual example of how you mistreat your employees.
A lot of his coworkers also started doing the minimum they could get away with because they now had a guaranteed 32-hour/week salary even if they only showed up to sit on the bench all day.
Sure they did - the whole "I'm the only one that works hard around here" syndrome.
If your father had time to keep tabs on how much or little the other guys were working, then he wasn't working very hard himself.
Whatever they have in China, it ain't communism. It hasn't really even pretended to be for a long time.
I have a feeling those fired will be getting their jobs back; after Tesla Motors unionizes.
Randian Horseshit. Union workers are entirely dependent on the welfare of the company for their jobs and retirement. As opposed to executives who can drive the company into the ground and collect golden parachutes even in bankruptcy. Like when airline unions accepted massive pay and benefit cuts for US Airways to stay afloat, only for executives to get large severance packages when the company went under.
I'm pretty sure the whole post was sarcastic.
vs
Did the lightbulb flicker a bit before it went out? Your dad would have made far more money if he had been in a union from the start, without having to be a hardball negotiator on top of being a mechanic.
Well, it's you and your dad's choice to be good little Calvinists for corporate benefit, but the "unions promote mediocrity" line is and always has been bullshit. Nothing about unions prevents good workers from making more money or bad workers from being fired for cause. And union workers are far more invested in a company's success than corporate executives, who are happy to give themselves raises while driving the business into the ground.
Also bullshit. This "unions reward the lazy" storyline is built around the idea that the second your dad joined a union, he was happy to do his work plus that of all the people sitting around. Human beings are simply not built that way, unless your dad was George McFly to the young Biff Tannen's in the shop - in which case he'd be doing their work anyway without or without a union.
especially when things are running smoothly. Sure, Unions promote mediocrity, but they also promote safety, security and the humane treatment of workers.
For a concrete example, the iPhone was a break out hit. One of the main things Steve Jobs sited for making that hit possible was the ability to drag his (non-Union) Chinese workforce out of bed at 1 in the morning and work them 16 hours a day with nothing but tea and a biscuit. Sure, the iPhone wasn't mediocre, but we've all kind of swept the cost of that under the rug.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
the billionaire class attacks it because they want desperate workers who have to take the first job that comes along or starve. Billionaires own the media because we stopped enforcing anti-trust in the name of cutting red tape. Simple as that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Not sure if anyone's called this out, but it's pretty clear this is just union busting. Pretty common stuff Musk couldn't get away with if the working class would just stop fighting among themselves...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"Back then" companies were happy to exploit workers within an inch of their lives - and beyond - if it made them a few more dollars in profit. That hasn't changed, so neither has the need for unions.
Cool story bro. How great has it been, working for less money and fewer benefits while being able to be shown the door for reasons that have nothing to do with the work you do?
So you engage in the same sort of magical thinking that has you wanting to do your work plus Steve's and Bob's down the hall (so they can slack off) the second you join a union.
As much as you'd want to drive the company into the ground the second you landed a management position, just so you can collect that golden parachute when the company goes under. Makes as much sense.
Tech workers are one of the few labor pools where employers have been caught colluding to keep wages down, and yet they are typically against unions because it cuts against their libertarian tendencies and a significant percentage of them fall prey to the Dunning Kruger effect which keeps them from recognizing their mediocrity. So when they get passed over for a promotion, or someone else's project gets greenlighted, they blame diversity efforts, or office politics rather than a union.
So life is not fair, and you're going to blame somenody.
It is commendable that your dad thought doing a good job was more important than getting maxing out his work/pay ratio. But the company he worked for was almost certainly trading as little pay as possible for as much work as possible, and union or no, (if I'm not in management there) I'm not going to hold it against workers for approaching that trade with the same level of self-interest.
believing that there isn't SOMETHING going on. I really have trouble believing that they had several hundred under-performing employees, and that they chose to get rid of them all at the same time.
If it were true, it would mean that management is incompetent and should get on the way out as well - because if you let hundreds of folks who aren't up to the task hang around till performance appraisal time, then you suck at management.
So, are they lying about why these folks got the ax? Or are they stupid and should have fired them all long ago?
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
For those that have studied businesses, and a subset titled "Unions," Elan Musk has taken a predictably typical Anti-Union solution. Lets consider you're not blowing smoke up our collective asses; and your observations are accurate. Your observations are only accurate, to a point. They are not reflective of Businesses in general, nor are they reflective of Unions. Elan Musk has taken his first step along a long path toward Unionization. The next step is the law suits for firing employees trying to unionize. What I find amazing is that no one has died, yet.
What I find interesting is that someone of the likes of Elan Musk slowing himself down with the minor distraction of Unions. Elan Musk has bigger problems that only his foresight can solve. I really expected this union noise would be brushed aside as a self solving problem.
Sure this is trolling, but it's also true.
Agreed, if management played fair you would never need unions. Unfortunately it seems that management almost never plays fair. That's the law of the jungle.
Since less than 7% of private sector employees are in unions, that must mean management almost always plays fair in the US.
Magical thinking that removing the motivation to do something and people will still want to do it.
One of the things that frustrated my dad the most is that this meant kids fresh out of college were now making the same hourly rate as he did with his decades of experience.
Troll alert! Troll alert!
If unions are so unnecessary today why is Musk fighting so hard to keep a union out of Tesla? Without unions managers can arbitrarily increase the speed of assembly lines, demand sexual favors from women under threat of loss of job (Weinstein write small), fire minorities at whim, changes rules for payment of overtime or flat out steal wages from employees. All these things are constantly happening today in un-unionized businesses.
There are also federal laws regarding mass layoffs requiring community notification. Musk seems to be skirting these laws by claiming these lay-offs were because of low performance reviews.
Ah, but the pension problem WAS a Union failure on two counts.
1. The Union's could have demanded the FULL funding of the pension NOW, not just higher and higher retirement benefits in the future. They failed their membership in this by being short sighted, pay me a "fair" wage now demands. What happened to my parents happened to thousands upon thousands in many industries which were unionized. I've NEVER seen a Union demand that the pension fund be fully funded to cover future liabilities, only that benefits and wages be increased NOW. They gave no thought about the sustainability of what they demanded and didn't look out for their retired member's interests.
2. ALL of the major airlines and automobile manufacturers in this country where Unionized way before I was born. ALL of them have gone through bankruptcy and all of them that I know of dumped their Union demanded pensions onto the federal government UNDER funded. I don't think this is a coincidence. I believe that Unions, which once had a valid purpose, lost sight of their primary goals and ended up strangling their own individual golden egg laying geese. Similar non-unionized companies fared better overall, as did their pensioners. This is plain to see if you look.
Finally, I'm not discounting the past good that unions have done. They served their purpose at the dawn of the industrialized age where labor was powerless as the individual and management didn't care because there was always another willing laborer to take the job. However, we no longer live in the same world, and the individual has rights by law that they didn't have before. Unions are not as necessary as they were before.
In summary... Unions lacked foresight, hurt their members by not working with management to seek sustainable benefits and wages and now we have largely replaced the function of Unions with codified laws about employment, safety and other things Unions used to protect. In my view, they are doing more damage than they do overall good for the workers they represent and therefore should go.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
In a team full of Michael Jordans, one of them will still be last.
By then, Tesla Motors will have found a better location in a southern state unfriendly to unions. After all, that's what all the other auto manufacturers have done.
Measuring "fair" by comparing paychecks? How's that relevant to a discussion about Unions?
So what about my Dad and Mom's pension checks? They worked in union shops for all their lives and got stuck with a fraction of what they were promised. Where is the Union in this? What responsibility does the Union have here?
1. They let the company skate without fully funding the pension plan.... Why? So they could get raises now for their dues paying members. Who cares about the pension plan? The Union should have, but they chose to ignore the issue and let the company kick the can down the road. Yea, that's looking out for labor...
2. Where was the Union when the company was obviously on an unsustainable path to bankruptcy? Where they trying to negotiate with the company to keep it afloat? Heck no, they were insisting on maintaining the shop rules, preventing layoffs and protecting today's wages. Why wasn't the Union looking at the company's condition YEARS in advance and demanding the right things get done to keep it afloat and keep their membership working? Because that would mean giving up something. So they let the goose die and cut the retirees adrift to their own devices. How fair was that?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It ain't freedom either.
Much more effective headline than "Tesla just fired between one and two percent of it's workers". Is this really news for nerds or just sensationalism?
The only way for anyone to get a better deal is to organize as a group.
We've known this truth for thousands of years too...
Or, maybe, free travel to Mars is another human right?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Is there any reason why those negative things are inherent to unionizing?
That's debatable. It may be something like asking whether the abuses and poverty seen in every attempt to implement communism are inherent to the system. They're clearly not its aim, but they always seem to accompany it.
Union rules seem always to evolve in favor of either purely seniority-based systems or very flat compensation structures. Either one eliminates motivation to work hard. The problem is that their quest for fairness makes it impossible for employers to exercise any judgement in pay or promotions, because there's always at least a little subjectivity in such decisions. Attempts to document and justify everything to remove subjectivity results in a complex maze of rules and a great deal of overhead, so the rules are made very simple and in the process most motivation for hard work and efficiency is removed.
Unions are great when they focus on things like benefits and median pay. But even if they start there, they never stop there, because they have to justify their continued existence and expense.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Those negative things weren't there before the shop unionized, were there after the shop unionized, and certainly disappeared after the shop kicked out the union. Seems to be something inherently having to do with a union.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
> ...the only way for workers to get a fair deal is to organize as a group.
Firing the bottom 2->3% of your workforce -across the board, not just factory workers- and giving promotions and bonuses to high performers is usually a sign of a fair deal. RTFA for once:
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11233849&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=55368159
Better than having to suck Harvey Weinstein's dick for a living. And by "suck Harvey Weinstein's dick", I meant "being in a union".
Cool theory, but let me blow it away by pointing out that he *has* travelled those 20-30 miles to get to work since the 60s, day in, day out, for 40 years. What's the point you were trying to make there?
"It's not socialism"'
This is exactly what socialism is.
You want to out-source all the things a union does to the Federal government. That;s not going to fly with the Reaganauts who think the federal government has too much influence in our lives. And passing laws is not enough. You'll need bureaucrats to administer the law, and inspectors to check that the laws are being followed and lawyers to prosecute violators.
And of course a lot of the laws you're proposing, like clear language on wages and overtime, are already the law, and are regularly violated by management because Congress never authorized inspector to check every restaurants books. Unions are better at this because they are localized. They know exactly what's happening to them.
The first best step to better working conditions is to revise Right-to-Work laws. These say that you don't have to belong to a union. Which ...OK. But they also say that unions can't charge people for negotiating contracts they benefit from. This is clearly theft of services. You don't have ti belong to a union. You don't have to pay for their political activities (I'd like to see companies forbidden from spending money on political activities without stockholder approval, too) But you won't get union support against grievances either. What could be fairer. You pay for what you get, and nothing more.
Yes, the United States is known all over the world for it's fair play. What was I thinking??
If you hate unions so much don't work for a company that has unions. Free market etc.
Unions don't protect bad workers. They insist everyone gets due process before termination. One point of the annual performance evaluation is to build up a record of ability so that when the time comes to get rid of a bad apple there will be a record of their incompetency.
You make it sound like I kicked your parent's door in and took their pension checks. My only point is that without a union you have zero protection. Not that with a union you have 100% protection from all eventualities.
Back on the 8th, there was an earler Slashdot story: GM Exec Says Elon Musk's Self-Driving Car Claims Are 'Full of Crap'
In which I asked: "Speaking of credit, how is their accounts payble, and do they pay their bills?"
I'm guessing they simply couldn't make payroll, and this also solved the problem.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
You and Harvey should be pals, as you're both a couple of dumb right-wingers. Why don't you go into the locker room of a professional sports team - all of whom are unionized - and tell them about all this dick-sucking they've had to do as a part of their jobs.
You USED to have zero protection, but now we've codified into law a lot of the protections that Unions used to provide.
These days, working conditions are controlled by law, work hours are limited by law, payment of overtime is governed by law as are benefits being required for full time workers. Unions don't provide this, the law does.
Sure, Unions have work rules, minimum staffing rules, who must be called in first rules and (in closed shops) who can and cannot do certain jobs, but I'm not sure how this is a good thing for labor. Unions may negotiate benefits and wages as a group, but I don't know if that it is always necessary for a Union to do that. I get paid fairly and have good benefits but I'm not in a Union or work in a place where Unions are.
So, I don't agree that you have zero protections or that Unions are necessary to represent labor's interests. For me, the good doesn't outweigh the bad in Unons.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Unions don't really have much to do with anything you write about.
The government brought in anti-harassment laws, not the unions. In fact, union workers and union shops have a reputation as being the most misogynistic workplaces even today. Union bosses are famous for demanding all sorts of favors in exchange for employment at union shops. Also, once the seal was broken on bringing women into the workplace, old-school quid-pro-quo sexual harassment was quickly under threat from that evil scourge of the "invisible hand" of the market. Any company that allowed that sort of behavior would be at a distinct disadvantage, even if they were not facing federal charges.
Far from "all of these things are constantly happening today in un-unionized businesses", these things are much, much rarer today than they were in the heyday of unions. The world has changed a lot in the last 60 years.
A lot of positive change was brought by unions, but not really much of it has anything to do with what you are claiming.
Because unions have literally put businesses into banckruptcy?
love is just extroverted narcissism
What was I thinking??
Whatever it was, it seems to not be based on facts.
Socialism is when the government pays the paycheck, but the private enterprises reap the profits.
Communism shifts the profits to the government.
Capitalism instead shifts the paycheck to the private entities.
Nothing more.
What was described above was captialism, but with proper regulations to guarantee basic worker protection and preempt at-all-costs profit optimization. Basically, bubble-wrapping capitalism against short-sightedness that will ultimately starve out an otherwise workable system.
I stated that it was uncommon for someone to travel that distance, not unheard of. Your father wasn't a big fan of the union either. However for other people in different conditions this would be career killer. Many rules and norms, are based on what the general population values, not the exceptions.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The law is supposed to prevent people coming from other countries and working here illegally, yet millions are doing it. And yes there are rules in place. So let's say John gets a job where there's unsafe conditions. John reports said problem to boss who does nothing. Then John reports it to the authorities. Then John gets fired for not being a team player. That's how it works. We can both probably agree that for good or ill, the Unions are on their way out and have been for over 30 years.
Woosh!
Facts? What is this the American Journal of Science? No, I based my thinking that most management types are born liars on years of experience. The fact that only 7% of private industry jobs are unionized means nothing more than the rich have been sticking it to the poor since Ronald Reagan. And now we have more of the same. Oh, and your link didn't work, it's 404.
Ah.
Time to check the batteries in my sarcasometer, I guess.
I've heard those exact things said seriously enough that it sounded (read) as legit.
So?
There is no right for a business to exist.
If a business is so poorly run that it can't treat its works with decency and respect (ie. pay a reasonable wage and benefits) then let it go under and a better run company replace it.
What you are basically trying to claim is we need to eliminate unions to the incompetent management can keep their excessively compensated jobs?
Sears Canada, who just decided it can't exit from bankruptcy protection and instead will shut down, gave the very same managers who ran the company into the ground bonuses averaging $176,000 to encourage them to stay while the company tried to save itself.
Note they didn't offer the low paid employees anything, and yet you think unions are the problem.
That's why they call it the Red Planet, comrade.
Protecting all workers at all costs is bad for business, bad for production, and bad for the other workers who watch incompetence be rewarded.
Such protectionism is bad, but it was policy in the 1970s. It's why the union movement failed, it's why 'union' is a dirty word in US politics and why Republicans despise and destroy unions. As you've seen, such protectionism still exists but the attempts to eliminate it, via union-busting, destroys the right of all workers to arrange a better deal.
Paradoxically, the unions that enforce this protectionism the most, are those for civil servants; such as police officers and prison guards.
It's obvious you care so much about the workers you don't want them to have any job at all.
love is just extroverted narcissism
The law is supposed to prevent people coming from other countries and working here illegally, yet millions are doing it. And yes there are rules in place. So let's say John gets a job where there's unsafe conditions. John reports said problem to boss who does nothing. Then John reports it to the authorities. Then John gets fired for not being a team player. That's how it works.
In your example, if John reports the problem to authorities and gets fired for doing so, he should contact OSHA. Retaliation against whistleblowers is not allowed and there is a literal army of OSHA bureaucrats just itching to drop the boom on employers in cases like this. So John's employer *should* get a OSHA visit about this and a comprehensive safety inspection, at their earliest inconvenience. If John is right about conditions and why he got fired, you can bet OSHA will rip his former employer a new one. What's a Union going to do? Process a grievance? Nope, likely just turn the company over to OSHA anyway.
Unions don't stop illegal activity or employment by the way. Undocumented, illegals work all the time and there isn't much Unions can do about it but report it when they see it. But I don't see Unions out doing this myself.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Unions were a grass-root movement that formed precisely because powerful business interests prevented politicians from codifying into law things like 1 day a week off, maximum required daily hours and minimum safety standards. Now the are still needed precisely because powerful business interests prevent politicians from codifying into law all those things you mentioned.
> but nothing so fancy that he shouldn't have been able to get those benefits had he been a better negotiator
And right there is the point. Your dad WASN'T a better negotiator and was taken advantage of for 3 decades.
legally enforced transparency?
like say from a contract?
an employment contract?
negotiated by lawyers whom youve hired?
or maybe pooled resources with other employees to hire ?
kinda like a union?
dumbass.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
"Back then" companies were happy to exploit workers within an inch of their lives - and beyond - if it made them a few more dollars in profit. That hasn't changed, so neither has the need for unions.
You have that happening right now in China (In the first half of 2016 there were 23,534 production accidents claimed 14,136 lives in the coal mining industry alone.) with the Government's refusal to enforce safety and labor law and its open hostility to unionization. Unions could at the very least bring to light systemic abuse and take action to ensure these already minimal laws are being followed.
The solution our globalists want for us to compete with China's horrible labor practices is to destroy our unions and weaken our labor and safety laws
Tesla fires hundreds of misogynists" is a hilarious headline.
It's obvious that you are just a stupid fuck as your reply has nothing to do with the fact-based post written by the GP
And this is one way to go about it. Unions are an extortion racket. Everyone know it. Especially the union thugs who actively seek that kind of power. So I wouldn't cry much if a bunch of core union people were dismissed.
Money comes into the company. It has to be distributed somehow. The guys at the top do the distributing. They are few and typically good negotiators so they get the lions share. The farther down the food chain you go, the more people there are and can be negotiated with individually and they typically have quite limited information, much less than management. Unions just put professionals in charge of negotiating for the worker's cut of the profit. There are costs and benefits. Would it be possible to organize unions so that they are efficient in allocating productive capacity? Perhaps.
Yes, their pension funds were distributed to shareholders, and then the companies went through bankruptcies to get rid of the debt. It's not rocket science or prima facia impossible. It's all about the ability to not fully offset long term liabilities.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Wait, what?
Now all the sudden Weinstein is a right winger? The dude has been at the center of progressive politics for like 4 decades, and suddenly when he's in trouble your feeble mind slips him into the "right wing" category?
I've noticed your posts as being particularly partisan and not all that bright in the past, but holy crap, does this one take the cake!
Corporate Democrat politics. Which are inherently right-wing.
Any more water-is-wet questions?
In most western nations the ability to grow in a role is down to the company and the individual. The USA seems fairly unique in retaining a model of unionisation that was mostly abandoned everywhere else over 35 years ago, apart from some weak vestiges here and there.
Because unions have literally put businesses into banckruptcy?
What union and when? Where is this "Union" that held a gun to management's head and forced them to sign such a one sided contract ?
Or maybe you mean executives signed an agreement promising things in the future that the executives had no ability to deliver, then pushed the debts onto the employees in bankruptcy while they pocketed the companies resources as golden parachutes?
When most of them workers are replaced by machines, you can be represented by whomever you want, you will still be out of a job and in the gutter. UBI won't happen, ever: the vast majority of first-world nations aren't even equipped to handle retirement properly. It's all going to hell and you know it.
Being powerful is orthogonal to serving the membership as opposed to the leadership. A union that is effectively in control of the membership - as opposed to some easily-corruptible leadership - can be extremely powerful.
1. Workers can get significantly less acting as individuals vis-a-vis their employers relative to collective action, in almost all cases. This is obvious and also borne by statistics.
2. A (non-corrupt) union is, first and foremost, a framework for the workers in a certain workplace to exchange experiences, ideas and thoughts - and act together to try to put them into practice. Getting better pay/vacation/health-care is an important consequence of this, but unionizing is a much more fundamental need.
3. The fact that your father's decades of experience were not recognized in salary are a failure of the union, not of there _being_ a union. In innumerably many unionized workplace salary does rise with experience. However, one could also make the argument that workers should want money to be disbursed according to need rather than only according to contribution, in which case a younger worker with no savings and young children should perhaps get more than an older worker with his children grown and owning his own house/apartment.
4. I rather doubt the claim that your father, his coworkers and management actually tolerated people coming in to slack off. These people's activities are typically contrary to the interests of everybody, including the union: If your collective bargaining gains were to go to support this kind of intransigent behavior, they would likely be lost over time, not to mention it being much more difficult to make other gains. Indeed, as you suggest, this could also lead to loss of support and membership for the union in general.
5. When people say that the "union was booted out" that means it was external to the body of employees - which is really wrong. "The union" (or "the union local") should be "the employees", or at least the large majority of them. Otherwise it's a problem.
So are you betting on the killbots, or just mass chaos?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, their pension funds were distributed to shareholders, and then the companies went through bankruptcies to get rid of the debt. It's not rocket science or prima facia impossible. It's all about the ability to not fully offset long term liabilities.
Really, so? Where were the Unions when this was going on? Why were they not *demanding* that the pension funds be kept in sync with the liabilities being incurred?
My complaint about the Unions in this is they chose to ignore the problem right along with management. Unions kept asking for more benefits, but kept accepting that the company could fund the pension funds later, somehow. In fact, this raiding of the pension fund was a regular occurrence right up to the point in the late 80's when it became illegal to put money into them, then later take it out for cash. Treat it like a bank account. Of course the Unions just sat there and watched while the pension funding source was strangled, even participated in the death of their golden goose while their members lost their pensions, benefits, and eventually their jobs. The Union bosses should have seen what was coming and if they cared a bit about their members, at least tried to head off the inevitable, but that's not how Unions work... Nobody is there looking at the long term.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
person with inside info. the work culture was horrible, lots of goofing off, marijuana use on the premises. if the firings reflect a realization of that by management, this is likely an entirely good thing. maybe they are now addressing work culture, esp. male work culture there. maybe elon can grow up.
In the past, I never asked a prospective employer if they did stack ranking (aka forced distribution aka totem pole). Maybe I will, next time around.
This is probably a good thing for workplace rating sites to routinely report, but so fare I haven't seen it
There was a "Dilbert" cartoon about interviewing someone to discover if they would be a bad employee, but a good candidate for the bottom of the heap ranking.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Is this the first year they've had mass firings after reviews?
If so, this might provide an opportunity for a clever and/or optimistic lawyer to file a class-action suit that contended this was just a layoff in disguise.
The suit might have a better chance if the annual reviews happened at various times throughout the year, sometimes more than once in a year.
Did I mention that the lawyer would have to be optimistic?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Socialism is when there is some democratic say in what workers get paid.
Capitalism is when the capitalists have all the say. They pay the bill either way.
So the OP's scheme where the government lays down basic ground rules on behalf of workers is one form of socialism. It would not preclude the need for unions however; they are still needed to negotiate the details in each workplace.
Wow, that is incredibly delusional.
If you buy that hook, line, and sinker.. fuck, do not promote this as acceptable.
Unionize? Your solution is to fire your entire staff; how fast do you think your clients can hire someone else to mow their lawn?
Not hiring Americans is a good idea? Fantastic, lets build it in your country; and when folks call their inner bred Tesla Model 3 a shit car? Everyone will know where it came from. But lets face it, who wants a car that can go 200 miles a day for 10 years and still work; and is affordable by a young adult on their own? Then you're buying American.
Once again, someone who believes in private property cannot be left wing. Despite the other 99% of their beliefs, this one thing precludes them from being on the left.
Cronyism, Nepotism, Tribalism. All these "isms" come into play. Here in Chicago many well paying jobs that don't require a higher education degree, are allocated to those who are a certain ethnic background (Irish) or live in a certain region (southwest suburbs, northwest side), belong to a certain religion (Catholic, Evangelical), love certain sports (baseball, football, golf), or have a certain sexual preference (gay). Most city and state workers along with the trade workers (plumbers, electricians, painters, etc.) are hired on the basis of what "ism" they embrace or told to embrace by their tribe.
Oh, I forgot. One politician here in Chicago, would say: "Don't send nobody (for a job), that nobody sent."
Bizarre non-sequitur is bizarre. You DO know that Corporate Democrats frequently run to the right of Republicans, yes? Who gutted welfare - Reagan or Clinton? Who repealed habeas corpus - Bush or Obama?
Who's been a huge donor to those Corporate Democrats? Harvey Weinstein.
So Tesla is NOT filing IPO
Casteism
No, they don't. At least not where I am. Disclaimer: I live in Belgium.
Here every company with 50 or more employees has to have a union representative. So EVERY company with more that 50 people is a union company. That are however the companies that have representation at the company.
That does not mean if you work in such a company that you must join a union or if you do not work in such a company that you can't join a union. The union can be joined from when you start working or are able to legally work. So 18 at least, perhaps even 16, but that I do not know.
You can also join almost any union that you desire. Only some are limited to specific companies. Those for me are more like a guild that a union.
The difference for me is that a union looks after the people and the guild looks after the jobs.
Now if they can show up and do nothing, you have a situation that was created by people who where clueless. Just as clueless as the people who let others work for 64 hours and only pay 32.
I am a union member, but that is irrelevant to where I work, what I do or how my evaluations goes. If I am a slacker, I get fired, regardless if I am in a union or not or if I work in a company where there is a representation or not.
The thing that the unions do is even the playing field and see that I am not alone against a huge company. It means I work my hours and not more. It means they can't ask me to do overtime, even if they pay for it, just like that. OTOH it also means you can't do overtime and think you are a better person if you do not ask money for it.
Yes, some people will do that. Yes, some companies will ask that. And if they get found out, the company will pay a lot extra,
So no, it is not unions that caused it. It was weak management that gave in to it every and each demand, making it trip over to the other wrong side.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Yes, unfortunately it was scarily close to real life.
Unions always manage to create an atmosphere that pits management against the worker. I'm not talking about the C level here. In most companies low level salary workers, the so-call supervisor levels, most who don't have hire/fire authority, are the people who have to deal with 80% of the union crap. It creates a poisoned environment where no one is really worried about what the company is suppose to be doing. "We" aren't working together to make the company a success. "We're" busy fighting each other while the company goes down in ruins.
Unions are one reason small shops are going. A union would rather deal with a corporation. It can negotiate one contract for a large number of members. A small shop only has a few workers and the big union bosses, who make more than the business owner, don't care if the business is successful. More they don't really care if the workers are successful. They get more money from the large company so are happy to help them put the small guy out of business.
"Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted. . . "
Were they targeted or did their "Union attitude" also result in poor performance?
Never been part of a union, but have worked with a few union workers before. My limited anecdotal personal experience is that union workers are slow. Have an attitude where you should never sweat on work time and never poop on your own time. They do about 1/4th the work as non-union laborers.
I believe unions were critical to move the US forward during the early to mid 1900s. However, are unions still solving major problems? Or have the problems unions were needed for been mostly solved and now are unions mostly just creating new problems?
Show me a union that inspires workers to excel instead of inspiring them to slack off and hide behind the union to avoid being fired for poor performance and then I might consider unions useful again.
Companies usually have a strategy of hiring more people than needed. This ensures that there is local competition between two and more workers doing the same sort of job. This pressurizes employees to find ways to work harder to keep their jobs.
Even if you have been the top performer in a company for many years, they will try to find the next cheapest replacement who can do your job. So you'd usually have upgraded yourself to working 5x-10x what you were set out to do earlier at the same pay (adjusted for inflation, maybe) until you burn out and leave;
So, for those of you who think you can't get fired - you're wrong. You're as dispensable as that roll of toilet paper. It only depends on how much shit you are willing to take till you run out.