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.

Comments

So

[Anonymous Coward]

Are these firings the result of stack ranking? If so, why would anyone want to work there.

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you're a good little slave with drive and ambition and you know you're not going to be at the bottom of that ranking, that's why.

Just like you don't need to be able to run particularly fast to run away from the bear that's trying to maul you, you just need to be slightly faster than the next guy.

Do you want coworkers who are there only because they perfected tripping others up when the bear comes? The problem is not just that eventually you'll be at the bottom of the ranking when the bottom gets culled regularly, regardless of how good you are. The problem is that you get a toxic work atmosphere where it becomes important to outmaneuver the others into a position where they'll be gutted next. Of course you can choose not to play that game, but the end game will be among those who do. Even supposing you are always at the top of the ranking even as new people get hired. You'll still end up with colleagues that are better at looking better than they are than the ones who get fired. The decent and good ones will watch this once or twice, then leave on their own accord.

Re:Union Shop

[BlazeMiskulin]

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.

Re:Is Tesla a good company to work for or not?

[Kohath]

4. If they were indeed slackers, why were they hired in the first place?

They didn’t put “I'm a slacker” on their resume, I guess.

Re:Union Shop

[Uberbah]

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.

"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.