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:So

[Anonymous Coward]

My employer uses stack ranking, although they don't call it that or advertise how it works.

It's absolutely toxic and demoralizing. Performance reviews have almost nothing to do with your performance; it's a political game between managers who are competing for a fixed quantity of high rankings to be handed out to favored employees.

But I guess I have to admit that stack ranking works -- it definitely pushed my performance to the mean, I don't bother making any extra effort since I know it won't be rewarded.

Re:So

[Rei]

Same reason as SpaceX: people who want to change the world and do something that they find interesting will put up with a lot more than those working just for a paycheck. It's like asking, "Why do people put up with the long hours, low pay, and job instability of the video game industry?" Answer: Because they want to work in the video game industry. Same reason a lot of pilots put up with their situation: they want to fly planes and get paid for it. And same for many other jobs.

Anyway, it feels like we're hitting Peak TSLA-Shorter with "news" like this. "Company fires 2% of workers after performance reviews, starts looking for their replacements!" Next up: "Tesla paves new parking lot with asphalt rather than concrete: what's wrong with the stability of the ground at the Gigafactory? Will the foundation collapse and the factory explode in a column of flame that destroys a passing jetliner carrying World's Cutest Child contestants and boxes of extra-snuggly puppies? Stay tuned!"

Re:So

[bradley13]

I obviously don't know what Tesla is really up to. However, should be actually be what they say, I applaud them. One of the horrible things about big organizations is seeing useless people kept on, with everyone else having to carry their dead weight through project after project.

If Tesla really is just doing a housecleaning to get rid of people who are not doing their jobs, I applaud them.

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a friend who used to work at the factory in Fremont. And she's told me plenty of stories that had my jaw dropping about some of the misogynist shitheads there who should really have never been employed at all anywhere, much less in a state with more stringent worker protections like California, and at a Bay Area tech company no less. What she described was well beyond that alt-right MRA idiot's memo at Google. There was full-up harassment: catcalls, direct comments to individuals about "man's work", discrepancies in treatment of women vs. men, classic... and very, very, actionable... "hostile work environment" stuff.

I encouraged her many times to file complaints and have those people removed. She never got around to doing so before she left. Stock vested, she moved on to greener and friendlier pastures. Perhaps someone else finally did complain, and in the wake of the Google twat, Tesla's HR engaged in a long-overdue housecleaning.

Re:So

[TechyImmigrant]

They have tens of thousands of employees. TFS says they fired hundred of workers. That's a 1 percent-ish firing.

After a period of rapid hiring, you need a firing to get rid of the mistakes.

This sounds like corporate house cleaning.

Re:So

[I'm New Around Here]

Next up: "Tesla paves new parking lot with asphalt rather than concrete: what's wrong with the stability of the ground at the Gigafactory? Will the foundation collapse and the factory explode in a column of flame that destroys a passing jetliner carrying World's Cutest Child contestants and boxes of extra-snuggly puppies? Stay tuned!"

My god! I hadn't even thought about that possibility! How horrible of Mr Tesla to do that to puppies! That's it, I'm not buying anymore Tesla cars this year!

Re:So

[I'm New Around Here]

Do you know what the term "tone deaf" means?

Re:So

[murdocj]

Yep. The absolute worst management I ever worked for used stack ranking. The guy who mandated it was a psychopath. He actually said he liked firing people. It ensures the worst possible behavior from your employees, because you know it's all about who can play favorites the best.

Re:So

[murdocj]

Why all at once? That sounds like a mandated "get rid of x percent" and of course that's the people who aren't buddies with their manager. May well have nothing to do with how competent they are.

Re:So

[Hognoxious]

That's if the company lasts that long. We all hate salescritters, but they can always serve as a bad example. Iimagine that they're all busy sabotaging each other because they've realised it's easier to bugger up an order for someone else than it is to obtain one for themselves. Now imagine that they're all really good at that, and they all succeed completely...

If it's not the tragedy of the commons it's something very similar.

Re: So

[Anonymous Coward]

Applaud Tesla and SpaceX. Both are cleaning house before Xmas so as to the dead weight a chance to find other work.

Re:So

[serviscope_minor]

Why do people put up with the long hours, low pay, and job instability of the video game industry?" Answer:

Stockholm sydrome!

Re:So

[Anonymous Coward]

In theory, competition is healthy. Competition for survival/mates keeps the species healthy and strong; competition for business keeps the economy healthy and strong, and competition for salary keeps a business healthy and strong.

In practice, something like stack ranking just changes what one is competing for. The ostensible goal is to create a meritocracy and eliminate toxic employees, but the actual effect is the creation of a politocracy...people win through social manipulation and backstabbing rather than being productive for the company.

The human attitude towards meritocracy is mixed. People want there to be a meritocracy in all cases where other people are serving my needs. But when it comes to earning rewards, most people prefer the security of a steady reward over the risk of being beaten-out by a superior contender. There is a lot of political force behind this desire for security, and so it cannot be eliminated and winds up causing quite a lot of trouble in all domains of life.

Re:So

[SvnLyrBrto]

Why NOT all at once? There are reasons why it could or should happen all at once. There is, of course, the "better to fire people on a Friday" idea that, while I first heard about it from Office Space, does seem to be how companies do operate in real live. If, and the GP and GG suggest, they're correcting the mistaken hires, an annual performance review bay have just been completed and they know now who is the deadweight. If, as the GGP and suggest, they did some post complaint investigation and cleanup prompted by some HR violation; the investigation may be have ended and they have their list of names. Or if, as you and the thread originator believe, this is a "stacked ranking" thing, that would occur just after a performance review as well.

Or, it could be a purely practical matter. Perhaps they chose to handle the matter once summer ended and no one in HR or legal was scheduled to go on vacation for a while. Or maybe processing the paperwork is easier in batches than piecemeal. And while stacked ranking has been shown to be pretty stupid and ineffective, "What is the performance review process" is one of those questions that you always ask of your employer during the interview process. So without additional data, it's hard to conclude that anything sinister was going on.

And at the end of the day, "Tesla" looks pretty damn good on a resume. In most cases, you can salvage an involuntary termination in your job history. Car companies have a long and known history for mass-firings any time the quarterly has a blip. And its very much a job-seeker's market, especially in the Bay Area. For anyone who wasn't a total screw-up, this was an inconvenience, not a catastrophe. They'll have jobs elsewhere in the valley in short order; probably at a higher salary than what they left behind.

Re:So

[LynnwoodRooster]

You need to learn to read better. TFS says "hundreds", not "hundred", and in the article it states:

Workers estimated between 400 and 700 employees have been fired. Tesla refused to say how many employees were let go, although the company expects employee turnover to be similar to last year’s attrition.

So that's around 4%. Not huge - but probably more related to TSLA continuing to lose money.

Re:So

[Hognoxious]

If Tesla really is just doing a housecleaning to get rid of people who are not doing their jobs, I applaud them.

I'd ask how they managed to hire so many incompetents in the first place.

Re:So

[Aighearach]

Why all at once? That sounds like a mandated "get rid of x percent" and of course that's the people who aren't buddies with their manager. May well have nothing to do with how competent they are.

No, don't jump to silly conclusions. It only implies that they have a multi-step firing process, and that after getting the bad review then there is another review step that is done in batches. Also, because firing people has costs, it saves money and eases the logistic burden to do them in batches; you can increase security on 1 day, for example, more cheaply than you can increase security on 50 days.

Re: So

[Zero__Kelvin]

Scaramucci! Welcome to Slashdot!

Re: So

[TechyImmigrant]

We don't define freedom the same in the US as they do in Europe. To the US freedom is not having the government restrict you. To Europeans, it means the freedom from having to worry about their economic status (socialism, basically.) Please don't try to equate the two.

I've lived in both places. I assure you the US government restricts its subjects just as much, and in many cases more than European governments restrict theirs.

Re:So

[rtb61]

We know it's nature but they are people, they are citizens, you do not clean them out like rubbish. They are taking corrective measures for poor performance outcomes, result from poor interactions between employees, employees and management and company goals. Keep in mind some of the employees might will perform very well, the next time around, at another company ;).

Re:So

[Cederic]

I once left a company after falling foul of their forced stack ranking system. Worked out well for me, due to UK employment law and their inability to defend the rating they assigned, but after I left two colleagues demanded a demotion, one of their senior managers quit in disgust and the company had to change its system.

I feel great that I helped fix the company, but it was shitty at the time.

Re:So

[MrL0G1C]

Because companies outright hate whisteblowers and will try to make their life hell in every way possible, they can also afford better lawyers. Law is not easy.

Re: So

[murdocj]

Hmm... no, the guy I worked actually did fire people. Apparently trumpsky has difficulty doing the firing. They said on the Apprentice they had to coach him on how to fire people.

Re: So

[Zero__Kelvin]

I take it you haven't been watching the news over the course of, oh let's say ... the last 6 months?

Re: So

[murdocj]

I have. Which is why I'm not shocked by the concept that what trump does is different from what trump says.

Read this and be educated: http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/26/...

Re:So

[Hylandr]

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.

Having been a contractor on a new project with Amazon.com, I testify the above quote is 100% accurate, and yes, crying at desks *does* happen and is laughingly referred to internally as 'an activity', and brought up during interviews that I overheard.

That said I purchase almost exclusively from Amazon when I shop online. Go figure.

Re:So

[uncqual]

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.

No that is NOT a problem. An employer generally only fires someone if they either have no need for the person anymore or if they can replace them with a more productive worker who is a better fit. Yes, if most workers they hire to replace workers who are fired or quit on their own are better than you are, then you will eventually end up at the bottom of the rankings and be sent on your way (or, just enticed to leave because you don't get raises and bonuses) but that is typically a good thing for the company's success. Those that are more productive than the substantial majority of the industry pool from which a growing company hires workers is at little risk of dropping to the bottom of the stack rankings and getting culled. Why should an employer keep you around if, in their judgement, they can replace you with someone who will be more productive per unit of input (compensation, training, overhead etc)?

Typically routine mass "culling" for the sake of improving productivity is done at companies that are growing fairly rapidly and it's a technique to get rid of the hiring mistakes. Workers are, by necessity, usually hired with very incomplete information about their capabilities. A few hours of interviewing/screening/ref checks, even if done very well, doesn't reveal nearly as much about a worker's skills and, very importantly, "fit" as a few months on the job does.

Of course, this technique can be abused and misused, but I've worked at rapidly growing companies (in one case, about 20+% annual employee headcount growth - plus some attrition replacements so more than 1 in 5 of the employees on December 31 were not there on the previous January 1) where this technique was used to good purpose and improved the quality of the staff over time rather than degrade the quality of the staff (as is likely to happen if mishires are kept around -- they rarely leave because they have fewer options but they can result in annoying and frustrating the better workers who DO have many options in the industry). These mass cullings help avoid a death spiral of degrading worker talent in a rapidly growing company.

Individual managers, without incentives to do so, will often keep their mishires as long as they are not causing more harm than good -- if nothing else, in a growing company, they are usually perpetually shorthanded and don't want to spend yet more of their time in the screening/interview process. I've always tried to avoid this temptation when I've made a hiring mistake, but it is difficult to discipline oneself to do this in marginal cases.

Re:So

[uncqual]

If a salescritter spends too much time sabotaging other salescritter's orders, they are not spending as much time selling and will drop to the bottom of rankings and be gone - in sales, about the only question is "what have you done for me lately?" and that answer is measured in sales (and in quota achievement that is sometimes fine tuned to encourage sales of certain products).

(And, no, we don't "all hate salescritters". Without them, many of us wouldn't have jobs because there would not be enough revenue to keep the company going and paychecks coming.)

Re:So

[uncqual]

The problem you describe is not a problem with stack rankings, it is a problem with those individuals and processes that create the stack rankings. If management is so bad in a technical field as to be fooled by good politicians on a regular basis, the company is going to fail anyway.

Most engineers (actually, most people) are pretty bad judges of their own skills and tend to think they are better than they are -- if you ask 1000 engineers in the SV if they are "better at their job than the median engineer in their company", I'll bet that 70% or more will say they are and many of the ones that don't think they are are actually wrong because they are underestimating themselves and/or are fooled by politics.

See "Illusory superiority" and "Downing effect".

As Charles Darwin supposedly stated: "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge".

Re: Tesla isn't the "Apple" of car companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Buick is the 'Apple' of car companies.

Not much better. Overpriced. Owners with an attitude.

Not "Layoff"...

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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.

Re: Not "Layoff"...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get ahead through education. You get ahead by being in a union. A week educated wage slave is still a wage slave. A unionized wage slave at least belongs to an organization that can shut down the company. Guess which gets better paid in the long run. Meritocracy works until you have coded yourself out of a job, at which point you are too specialized, too old, too expensive to be a credible wage slave for the next job.

Stick with the union.

Re: Not "Layoff"...

[Anonymous Coward]

where I am unions siphon money to spend on themselves thru expense accounts, discounts and dinners

Re:Not "Layoff"...

[Bruinwar]

7 outa 8 unemployment insurance applications are denied? That is INSANE. The only reason to treat workers like this is to assure lower wages. Firing & denying unemployment for good reasons is one thing... good reasons like stealing, assault, absenteeism, sexual harassment, etc.. Incompetence? I suppose but you better have solid proof. Even with proof, I don't see cutting someone loose with nothing. My employers regularly hire competent people but then give them no training or guidance, no leadership at all, then get rid of them for "incompetence". However, they pay the unemployment, you can bet on it. In my state they deny the first application, then the appeal, but if it goes to a hearing on the second appeal, the employee usually wins. I would think it's rare for some moron to take it that far if they don't actually deserve it.

Re: Not "Layoff"...

[JonnyCalcutta]

Make better unions. Where I am company executives siphon money to spend on themselves thru expense accounts, discounts and dinners

Re:Not "Layoff"...

[mark-t]

Actually, being terminated for poor performance, even though you are being terminated for just cause, is not generally a reason to disallow EI benefits. It may delay them by a week or two, because there can be a small investigation to determine if it was motivated by any kind of ethical misconduct (which disqualifies a person from EI benefits completely), but in the case of being terminated for poor performance where there was no such misconduct, one is still eligible for exactly the same EI benefits they would have had as if they had been fired for absolutely no good reason at all.

Re:Not "Layoff"...

[mark-t]

You should have appealed.... if you were fired and were paying your insurance premiums, but you did nothing that was actually wrong (ie, coming to work late, taking a day off without telling anyone, etc), you should generally still be able to collect the benefits.

Re: Not "Layoff"...

[Uberbah]

where I am management siphon money to spend on themselves thru expense accounts, discounts and dinners

FTFY. You may want to check your auto-correct settings.

Re:Not "Layoff"...

[TheLongshot]

Those who mock unemployment have never been on it. It requires you to report on a weekly basis your job search activities. If you receive an offer and turn it down (because they lowballed you), you need to be able to justify that it wasn't a legitimate offer. Also, what you get is a pittance, hardly enough to live off of. For me, it didn't even pay the bills.

I was glad to have it, since something is better than nothing, but it isn't exactly free money. (And oh yeah, you still need to pay income tax on it.)

Re:Not "Layoff"...

[aaarrrgggh]

Is that across all states? In California we "terminate with cause" certain employees, which might not be illegal behavior, and we "layoff" others. Terminate with cause is reserved for people that are simply unable to perform their job, and is generally within the 90-day review window. Layoff is for people we want to be able to get unemployment, which covers the vast majority.

Re: Not "Layoff"...

[Grimpen]

Thanks for this. SO much anti-union bias here. If you are in a Union and don't like how it's doing things you can get involved. Go to Union meetings, become a Shop Steward. Unions are fundamentally democratic. As to "merit", typically merit is determined by whoever pleases the manager above them the most. At least with seniority there is an objective measure, how long you've been doing a job. I've seen lots of idiots promoted on merit because they say the right things to the right people (which is arguably maybe the most important skill for getting ahead in life so maybe that's as it should be). I've seen idiots based promoted based on seniority as well, but at least they have lots of experience. Even under a Union you can be fired, it just has to be justified, it can't be arbitrary. In my experience there is typically some form of graduated discipline: verbal reprimand, written reprimand, suspension, termination. I expect the Union to grieve each step since it is the Union's responsibility to advocate for all members, but if management documents all infractions, it's entirely possible to accomplish.

Re:Not "Layoff"...

[argStyopa]

I don't think people object to the concept of unemployment assistance. As you say, a lot of people lean on it to get through a tough patch.

What people generally object to is using it as a regular crutch and/or a lifestyle.

Re:Not "Layoff"...

[mark-t]

"Layoff" technically covers one case, and one case only: Where there are no short-term plans to replace the terminated employee.

If there are any plans to replace the employee after termination, then the person is considered "Fired". Note that both of these cases can be either with or without cause (although often, the former has a cause of the company wanting to save money, or needing to downsize on account of hitting some harder times).

In general, if you were paying EI benefits, and were involuntarily terminated, the only disqualifying factor that precludes you from collecting any EI benefits you would have otherwise received is if you were terminated for unethical or unprofessional behavior (coming to work late, skipping shifts, etc).

If you are terminated because of poor job performance, that alone is not sufficient reason to deny a person EI benefits unless there was reasonable evidence to show that the poor performance was intentional (ie, you weren't actually doing the job you were being paid to do). If there is all reasonable evidence to suggest that you at least were attempting to meet company requirements, even if not meeting them, you would surely be eligible for EI benefits, assuming you had been at the job long enough for such benefits to be available (which typically means right after the probationary period has ended). It may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but where I live, the maximum duration allowed for a probationary period is 1000 hours (which is about 6 months of full time work), and the minimum is 480 hours. After the probationary period expires, a person is eligible for receiving EI benefits if they are involuntarily terminated as long as the reason for termination is not because of unethical or unprofessional behavior.

Gawd.... It occurs to me with all I've been saying about this in some comments I've made on this story so far that I could probably write a book about matters of employment, unemployment, and all the various nuances to being fired or laid off.

Re: Not "Layoff"...

[Junta]

The problem is both situations are flawed.

In one case, sucking up to management gets ahead rather than merit. Politics is rewarded over talent, skill, and dedication.

In the other case, someone gets paid more simply by not getting fired for longer. This means there's still not much room for rewarding going above and beyond.

Even in a fundamentally democratic context, you still have politics, but to a different audience. As such, corruption is still quite easily a thing. It seems to be a sad reality of the human condition that folks will get empowered and empowered folks can be corrupt.

In a large business, sadly both business leaders and labor leaders can get in a situation where they would rather bleed the endeavor dry rather than do what's right by the company.

Re:Not "Layoff"...

[Aighearach]

In Oregon you absolutely do NOT get benefits if you were fired "for cause."

There are only a few boxes that can be checked for the cause... lay-off (benefits), no cause (benefits), with cause (no benefits), quit (usually no benefits), quit without completing exit paperwork (no benefits)

In order to get benefits you have to get the State to hold a hearing and the hearing officer has to reclassify what happened to you to be one of the categories with benefits; if you're fired for no cause but your employer checks "with cause," then if the hearing officer finds in your favor it gets changed to "no cause." If it is still listed as "for cause," you're still not getting benefits!

Re:Not "Layoff"...

[Aighearach]

In Oregon it all depends on the paperwork; if you were hired as a temporary employee for the purpose of evaluation to determine whether or not to extend a job offer, then you can't become eligible for unemployment based on that job because it isn't a job, although the hours worked do count towards your benefit amount if you're eligible based on another job.

But that's only if the employer gave you paperwork at the start that said you're not an employee. And then at the end of the 90 days you automatically become an employee if you're still there. But if they didn't say that, if instead they offered you a job with a title and didn't tell you that you'd only be a temp, then you're an employee on day 1.

Here to be eligible, you had to lose your most recent job for a valid reason (layoff, fired no cause, or quit because your pay was cut or your rights violated) and then they measure your pay for an 18 month period starting 6 months before you lost the job. As long as you earned a minimum amount of money during that period, then you get benefits. So if you just got laid off, and are eligible, you can do the temp work and not screw up your eligibility because you're not actually employed, so it won't become your most recent job if you quit after a month. OTOH, if you were fired from your last job for cause, and you start a new job as a normal employee, and manage to get fired "no cause" in the first week, now suddenly you're eligible and your pay from the old job will count!

It varies from State to State, but a large number do it as I described.

Re: Not "Layoff"...

[Cederic]

Guess which gets better paid in the long run. Meritocracy works until you have coded yourself out of a job, at which point you are too specialized, too old, too expensive to be a credible wage slave for the next job.

The person that develops themselves, improves their skills and demonstrates the value the company is paying for gets paid better in the long run.

I'd get paid less if I was held back by a union, and have union fees on top. Fuck that.

Re: Not "Layoff"...

[MrL0G1C]

My union got me a roughly 28% pay rise and I'm still very much paid in a performance related manner.

"I'd get paid less if I was held back by a union"

Except unions don't hold people back, do they, quite the opposite, they are likely to encourage employee training, employers are more likely to want to fire less skilled and hire more skilled.

Re:Not "Layoff"...

[houghi]

And that is why companies should not have the right to decide those things. And I do not care if people mock me for having been unemployed for 2 years and getting money from the state.

I do no even care if the company wanted to me to have it or not, because they knew I would get it. The ONLY way they could prevent it would be to fire me because of "urgent reasons" and that would be e.g., theft, violence or not coming to work for a longer period without a legal excuse.

If they would do that with a few people too many, then it would most likely be clear that it was not due to a legal reason and they would pay through their nose. And it does not even matter if I am in a union or not as I can (and have) joined a union AFTER I got fired and then let them sort it out if there would have been issues.

Whenever I hear about the legal work situation in the US I must think about my history lessons from when they talked about early 1900 when the unions in Europe started to get more power because the workers where abused.

Understand that there is a difference between a union as they exist in Europe and the Guilds that are called unions in the US.

About that 2 period of unemployment: Yes, I have looked and was overqualified all the time. I have also seen people thrown out of unemployment benefits, because they where abusing the system. (20 year old carpenter who said he could not get a job, but refused to work in a factory)

Maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Maybe...

[locketine]

I'm guessing you're in your twenties. I had a similar attitude a decade ago but after being in my chosen profession for a while I've noticed a tendency of the more politically astute employees getting paid better and receiving promotions more often than the higher skilled employees. During layoffs the skilled employees are better protected but the crafty and less competent ones have already repositioned themselves such that they won't get laid off. Business isn't as meritocratic as it seems.

Re: Maybe...

[grasshoppa]

I can't speak for AC, but I'm considerably older than my 20s, and I agree with his/her perspective. In my experience, unions have only two practical outcomes; they protect the deadwood and they hold back the performers, effectively normalizing everything to the lowest common denominator.

Re: Maybe...

[jellomizer]

I think you are mixing types of people. The Politically astute person knows hows to deal with the organization and gets promoted from it. Normally the guys who are spreading out Union and demanding to be Unionized are often under performers who doesn't realize how much they are under performing, then their actions to try to get the company unionized, is only cutting their productivity down further.

Why did person A get a raise and I didn't, this is unfair I demand more....
Often person A may not have been working as many hours, but the hours they do work are more productive, their personally may not have gotten in the way of the productivity of other workers, and the extra money they will give him, will entice him to stay and be an asset to the company. While the guy complaining usually is getting in the way of other employees (otherwise why would he know about person A raise), spending time comparing what others do vs focusing on doing the best job himself.

Also oddly enough the top performer isn't the one that gets promoted, because the under performer may be better suited at the different job. So the guy who is good at dealing with the internal politics, knowing when to push and when to hold back and deal with it, may just be the right type of person to be a manager, whos job isn't to create output, but protect those who do from having to deal with the red tape.

Re: Maybe...

[avandesande]

Political astuteness does actually have some value to the company if the person has some ethics.

Re:Maybe...

[Uberbah]

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.

Right. In the same way that the instant you decide to own your own business, it means you'll rip off your lenders and customers while sexually harassing your secretary. It's like Enron!

Re: Maybe...

[aaarrrgggh]

I wouldn't go that far, but some unions sure feel that way. IBEW would be a counter-example of a union that serves to train and develop its members in an industry that has significant cycles. I might see some hall hires come onto a job that are flat-out bad, but they generally are dealt with.

Re: Maybe...

[Cederic]

It's all people and politics; technology's the easy bit.

Took me a while to learn that, even longer to gain the skills to get good at it. Then management started loving me and made me management. Oh well..

Re: Maybe...

[locketine]

I think you kind of glossed over my point to start and then realized that with your last sentence. Even then, you're being optimistic about the kind of politics that plays out in management. Management is responsible for putting up the red tape in most cases, not taking it down. I personally take care of it myself because I have experience knowing when to ignore it to get my and my team's work done. Managers even respect me for it despite it sometimes being their own red tape.

I've only ever considered unionizing one shop, and the people who talked about it were the top performers. The reason we were talking about unionizing is because management was making bad decisions, lying and giving themselves bonuses while refusing to give us raises. People who did the "smart thing" by getting outside bids for their talent ended up leaving the company. Maybe you have a different experience? One that reflects your perspective?

Maybe my experience isn't typical, and what your taking about is the norm. But I'm wondering if you're speaking from experience and insight into the game like myself... or something else.

Re: Maybe...

[locketine]

Yeah, all that happens in non-union shops too. Kiss up to management, get a promotion. Bad at your job? Blame someone else and get a promotion. What the union adds, are advocates for the workers, whereas management is looking out for the company. There is crossover of course, with great managers looking out for their people, and union reps caring more about keeping the company profitable than providing for their workers. The important part is the incentives are different between a union rep and a manager, and you're paying both of them to manage relationships.

Re:Tesla isn't the "Apple" of car companies

[PoopJuggler]

I don't see the word "Apple" anywhere in the summary or TFA.

Performance reviews

[PPH]

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.

Re:Performance reviews

[GNious]

Do you show up for work at 9:00, and then work non-stop, w/ no breaks or socializing, no getting up for coffee/tea/water etc, and then leave at 17:00?

Re:Performance reviews

[mark-t]

Generally, the employer is required by law to give an employee at least a half hour break for lunch with hours like that. The lunch break does not, however, have to be paid. Requiring an employee to work through their lunch break is actually legitimate grounds for an employee to leave voluntarily and still be eligible for EI benefits, and can even sometimes (although rarely, if ever, by itself) be used as evidence of a case for constructive dismissal, which can be heavily penalized in many jurisdictions when it is discovered (because of the unjust delays that it creates for dealing with EI benefits).

Re:Performance reviews

[avandesande]

Depends on what you mean by 'forced'...

https://www.nolo.com/legal-enc...

Re:Performance reviews

[mark-t]

The negative consequences would typically just include being liable for an amount equivalent to lost wages for some possibly quite extended amount of time for an employee who was so constructively dismissed... up to a year's worth of wages, in some cases. The penalty is paid to the employee who won the case against them. it is not a legal penalty.

Re:Union Shop

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[bobbied]

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.

Sucks to be fired, but -

[onkelonkel]

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.

Re:Sucks to be fired, but -

[ichimunki]

So the company can't figure out how to trim its workforce of the 2-3% dead weight except once a year through some sort of rank and yank? Shit, that's terrible. No wonder they're floundering. Perhaps they ought to try getting employees the help they need to become great workers or find them roles where they can actually contribute appropriately, instead of pulling this "the beatings will continue until morale improves" bullshit.

Re:Sucks to be fired, but -

[avandesande]

That's called ripping the bandaid off. Firing people is bad for morale so why spread it around over time.

Re:Sucks to be fired, but -

[Kohath]

Perhaps they ought to try getting employees the help they need to become great workers or find them roles where they can actually contribute appropriately...

You think that will work 100% of the time? Maybe they tried it and it worked in 98% of the cases and then they got rid of the remaining 2%.

Also, why does the company owe its worst performing workers so many favors and so much benevolent attention? How will the poor performers return the favor?

Fired terrible for parking

[BenJeremy]

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.

Re:Fired terrible for parking

[BenJeremy]

Inadequate parking doesn't cause idiots with BMWs to park across two spots, or make people unable to put their car between lines. There is simply no excuse for most of that nonsense pictured.

Re:Fired terrible for parking

[DontBeAMoran]

What's really scary is the people who can't even park their own car are working at a place which builds cars.

If you find this comment funny, insightful or interesting, please donate a few Dogecoins to DNsSKbyNsi7369SGdvbKqLM9h4D5wAvmGD.

Easy solution

[dcavanaugh]

Build all US facilities in right-to-work states. Seems to work for BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, and Hyundai.

Re:Easy solution

[hwstar]

Nope. California is not a right-to-work state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law

Re:Easy solution

[stabiesoft]

Easy the incentive was an existing NUMA factory that was vacant. They got it basically for free. And Elon lives in CA, so convenient for him.

Re:Easy solution

[dcavanaugh]

Precisely the reason for avoiding union nonsense by moving the work elsewhere.

Re:Easy solution

[dcavanaugh]

I figured it had to be a free factory. Nobody in their right mind would build or lease an unsubsidized factory in California today, given the high cost of taxes and labor. Elon would not have taken the bait without some plan to prevent unions from making the venture unprofitable. Looks like part of that plan is on display.

Re:Union Shop

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[boudie2]

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.

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.

Is Tesla a good company to work for or not?

[hwstar]

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?

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

[thegarbz]

2. Does Tesla use stack ranking? If so, you probably don't want to work there.

Working for a company or not working for a company does not depend on a single factor. I hate the idea of stack ranking, but I can be bought. If working for some up and coming company with other great benefits means I need to put up with it, so be it. It's a job. There will be others. If the company faceplants due to its own toxic setup the only question is how much redundancy I end up with before I move on to something else.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[JonnyCalcutta]

But...but...but...that's communism!

Re:Union Shop

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Union Shop

[jellomizer]

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.

But don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[boudie2]

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.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[Kjella]

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.

More crap reporting

[JustNiz]

"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.

Re:Sure, 'not layoffs'

[jellomizer]

Firing people, is getting rid of a person due to poor performance or breaking the rules -- Being fired is a bad thing and you should feel ashamed if you are fired.

Getting Laid off, is not based on you or your performance, it is just that the company doesn't need your skill sets anymore, or they are just too many people with such skill sets. The factors a company may use to determine who will get laid off or not differs all the time. Back in 2008 I got laid off despite having excellent reviews and great standing at the company, because the company lost a lot of its funding, so they Laid off half the staff. The Half they laid off were all the employees who they had hired for the expansion which they had this funding from. The company that laid me off actually did a lot to help get me an other job rather quickly, I actually didn't miss a paycheck because the CEO recommended me to the CEO of an other company.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[boudie2]

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.

Crap handwaiving

[Uberbah]

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.

Re:Crap handwaiving

[JustNiz]

I agree, and independently came to the very same conclusion a while ago about him being another old-school industrialist (which as you say is not a good thing).
I'm just saying that the report makes a very large accusation that Musk IS firing people just because they are pro-union without zero actual evidence, just on the basis that one or more pro-union people were amongst the hundreds fired.
That said I could totally imagine him doing it.

Re:Crap handwaiving

[Uberbah]

Agreed then. The other eyeroll-inducing part of this story is how he's calling this a mass firing instead of layoffs, purely to avoid paying unemployment benefits. Elon, you're really telling us you've been collecting a list of people to be terminated with cause but waited until now to do it, because reasons?

Re:Crap handwaiving

[speedlaw]

That is almost Trumpian in the evil quotient

Re:Crap handwaiving

[onkelonkel]

Words have meanings. Around here a layoff is when you have too many workers and you let some go to adjust the size of your workforce. A layoff means that if the company is going to add staff, they will call the laid off workers first and offer them the jobs. If they want you gone and they don't ever want you back they use the word fired. Seems to fit.

Re:Crap handwaiving

[StevenMaurer]

What anti-union company is not going to use general terminations to rid itself of organizers?

Ones that don't want to be sued out of existence. Selectively firing pro-union workers is a major illegal act, something akin to stock fraud. This is why companies try to do their best to keep records on everything so they can show they're not just targeting like this

Re:Crap handwaiving

[Uberbah]

Ones that don't want to be sued out of existence. Selectively firing pro-union workers is a major illegal act, something akin to stock fraud. This is why companies try to do their best to keep records on everything so they can show they're not just targeting like this

Which is why they're firing more workers than those trying to unionize. That way when Bob, union organizer, tries to make a case to the NLRB, Tesla says it was because he clocked in 45 seconds late on the second Tuesday in September. Or Bob forgot to turn the lights on his way out, or he held the door open for someone carrying something instead of making them use their key card for access to the plant.

Non-union companies have lots of ways to fire people. And this way Musk gets to try and deny what are really laid-off workers their unemployment benefits.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[Uberbah]

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.

You applying that same logic to corporations, Slick? Should IBM dissolve itself for your arbitrary ad hoc reasons? How about JP Morgan?

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[Chris Mattern]

Whatever they have in China, it ain't communism. It hasn't really even pretended to be for a long time.

Re:Union Shop

[LifesABeach]

I have a feeling those fired will be getting their jobs back; after Tesla Motors unionizes.

Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[Uberbah]

I get paid well and I'm not in a union.... Unions are NOT the only way to be fairly paid...

...than your unique snowflake ass and he's in a union. So does every professional athlete.

Also, such "pay us what we define as fair or else" killed every major airline and car maker in the country in the end

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.

Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[bobbied]

So, you don't think the Unions had a duty to my parents and their retirements to demand a fully funded pension fund? I do..

You don't think the Unions didn't make the financial condition of many of the major companies untenable at least partially due to the demands of their Unions? I do.

That management gets paid what they do has little to do with the survival or failure of a business. Usually a CEO's salary amounts to pennies on the dollar to the in the trenches worker, yet your ilk want to make some kind of moral argument about how unfair it is that one person gets so much and the new guy gets so little of the company's revenue.

Personally I'm tired of the arguments born out of class envy, socialistic politics and anti capitalist clap trap. Like it or not, this country has EQUAL opportunity codified in our laws but we DON'T have equal outcome guarantees. You cannot measure opportunity by measuring outcome and you cannot measure what's fair by outcome either.

Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[Uberbah]

So, you don't think the Unions had a duty to my parents and their retirements to demand a fully funded pension fund? I do..

lolwut. So you hate unions and think they are unnecessary, but at the same time hate them for not being more powerful because they couldn't force the company to better fund their pensions?

You don't think the Unions didn't make the financial condition of many of the major companies untenable at least partially due to the demands of their Unions? I do.

If the company can't exist without wage slavery, it doesn't deserve to exist. And what part of "unions accept massive cutbacks while executives take golden parachutes" did I stutter on? When was the last time you saw top company executives agree to work for $10 an hour to get the company back on track?

That management gets paid what they do has little to do with the survival or failure of a business. Usually a CEO's salary amounts to pennies on the dollar to the in the trenches worker, yet your ilk want to make some kind of moral argument about how unfair it is that one person gets so much and the new guy gets so little of the company's revenue.

If you think that was an explanation for why CEO's get increased pay even as their decisions drive the company into the ground, you are sadly mistaken.

Personally I'm tired of the arguments born out of class envy

There it is. You sir, are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.

Like it or not, this country has EQUAL opportunity codified in our laws but we DON'T have equal outcome guarantees.

If you don't have equal outcomes statistically then by definition you do not have equal opportunity.

Otherwise your Starbucks barista would have an equal chance of having a last name of Rockefellar as your Fortune 500 CEO has a chance of growing up in a double-wide. But of course that's not the case.

Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[bobbied]

So, you don't think the Unions had a duty to my parents and their retirements to demand a fully funded pension fund? I do..

lolwut. So you hate unions and think they are unnecessary, but at the same time hate them for not being more powerful because they couldn't force the company to better fund their pensions?

No, I'm faulting them because they didn't TRY. The focus wasn't on funding the pension fund, but garnering more retirement benefits that the company obviously couldn't' afford. Don't try and tell me otherwise, I went to the union meetings with my parents, I remember what the Union bosses were telling the crowds and I remember my Dad complaining about this very thing way back then.

You don't think the Unions didn't make the financial condition of many of the major companies untenable at least partially due to the demands of their Unions? I do.

If the company can't exist without wage slavery, it doesn't deserve to exist. And what part of "unions accept massive cutbacks while executives take golden parachutes" did I stutter on? When was the last time you saw top company executives agree to work for $10 an hour to get the company back on track?

How's this relevant to what the Unions did or didn't do? Why is this class envy thing always seen as justification for making people who get paid more somehow bad actors? But to answer your question, I've heard of CEO's taking huge pay cuts in struggling companies, but this is all PR with zero substance anyway. I've not seen a company go bankrupt because they paid a CEO too much money. Have you? Citation please?

Personally I'm tired of the arguments born out of class envy

There it is. You sir, are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.

Wow, that's a leap! So now I'm embarrassed by rich people? Seriously? I'm not embarrassed by them, I don't envy them and I would like to be rich like them. I have some very wealthy friends, they got their money by working hard for it, most rich people do just that. There is NOTHING to be ashamed about if you are rich and you didn't cheat or steal your way into the money. If you think I'm embarrassed by rich people, or would be embarrassed to be one of them is stupid.

Like it or not, this country has EQUAL opportunity codified in our laws but we DON'T have equal outcome guarantees.

If you don't have equal opportunity.

And there it is, marxism in all it's glory. Having an equal chance, equal opportunity does NOT produce equal outcomes.

Have you ever watched the 100 yard dash? All the runners start at the same distance from the finish line, run on the same track and must start at the same time. Only one wins. They all run the same distance, the one that gets to the finish line first, wins. Why does only one win when all were afforded the same opportunity? Because each runner had varying skills, training drive and ability and so one could run faster. It's the same in life. Opportunity is by law, equal, skill, drive and ability vary, so outcome varies.

In your world, you think equal opportunity means everybody should get a participation trophy, just for entering the race. They don't have to run a step, train, have any ability or develop any skills, they get the same trophy as everybody else. I ask you, why run? Why Train? Why try? If you get the same thing as everybody else, who cares. But that's what Marx says we should do, that's what socialism says should happen.... AND exactly why those systems fail... Nobody tries..

Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[thegarbz]

Union workers are entirely dependent on the welfare of the company for their jobs and retirement

Union workers are hardly the people who decide mutual best interest. Unions are typically driven by key people with an axe to grind, are old and have nice fat pensions to fall back on. Hell when the last plant I worked at shut and made everyone redundant the union rep opened a $10k bar tab at the local pub and everyone drank for free. He was on a fucking windfall so big that made me wonder if he had been trying to drive the company into ground before his retirement.

Don't assume only management can be arseholes.

Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[Uberbah]

No, I'm faulting them because they didn't TRY. The focus wasn't on funding the pension fund, but garnering more retirement benefits that the company obviously couldn't' afford. Don't try and tell me otherwise, I went to the union meetings with my parents, I remember what the Union bosses were telling the crowds and I remember my Dad complaining about this very thing way back then.

Does nothing to change the fact that you wanted the union to have more control in company operations yet now you hate unions. While simultaneously holding the company completely blameless - is this about the time time you picked up a copy of Atlas Wanked when you were 13?

And what part of "unions accept massive cutbacks while executives take golden parachutes" did I stutter on? When was the last time you saw top company executives agree to work for $10 an hour to get the company back on track?

How's this relevant to what the Unions did or didn't do?

Only the fantasy you keep repeating, that unions have driven companies into the ground with their extravagant wage demands, while ignoring the cutbacks they have accepted.

I've not seen a company go bankrupt because they paid a CEO too much money. Have you? Citation please?

"Because of" - attempted shifting of goalposts noted, and your continued attempts to hand waive away corporate executives securing golden parachutes for themselves while steering their companies straight into the iceberg of Chapter 11.

Wow, that's a leap! So now I'm embarrassed by rich people? Seriously?

So you didn't read the quote. Seriously.

Having an equal chance, equal opportunity does NOT produce equal outcomes.

That's exactly what it means, statistically, or you do not have equal opportunity. Since you skipped it the first time, I'll just copy and paste:

Otherwise your Starbucks barista would have an equal chance of having a last name of Rockefellar as your Fortune 500 CEO has a chance of growing up in a double-wide. But of course that's not the case.

Have you ever watched the 100 yard dash? In your world, you think equal opportunity means everybody should get a participation trophy, just blah blah blather blather blah blah.

What part of the word statistically are you having a hard time with? Your entire tangent on 100 yard dashes is a non sequitur. We're not randomly grabbing the case of Bob who grew up in a double wide and comparing him to Steve who grew up with the last name of Rockefeller. It's comparing all Bob's to all Steve's - and the #1 factor in how far you go in life remains how much money your daddy had.

Which means we do not have equal opportunity.

Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[Uberbah]

Union workers are hardly the people who decide mutual best interest.

Oh, but they are. To repeat myself:

Union workers are entirely dependent on the welfare of the company for their jobs and retirement

A corporate executive DGAF if the company is going to under in five years if he can make bank in the meantime and move onto the next executive position before chapter 11 hits, or arrange a golden parachute for himself.

As opposed to union workers, who depend on the company being profitable now and well into the future.

Hell when the last plant I worked at shut and made everyone redundant the union rep opened a $10k bar tab at the local pub and everyone drank for free. He was on a fucking windfall so big that made me wonder if he had been trying to drive the company into ground before his retirement.

Anecdote + confirmation bias, how original in an anti-union story. But lets go ahead and say this guy was a soak who was free with other people's money - you could vote him out. Good luck doing that as a worker to a vice president of the company.

Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[thegarbz]

No you missed my point. Union WORKERS don't decide jack shit, much less what is in their mutual interest. Kind of like *you* don't decide at all if you're going to war with North Korea. Unions are highly political. "vote him out"? Good luck. Better still, who to replace him with, typically that ends up being some other old person with great people skills, good at promises and mistruths.

You the worker controls the union as much as you the citizen controls the country, which is pretty much equal to how much you the employee controls the company.

Anecdote + confirmation bias, how original in an anti-union story

Well I've got one from every union place I worked at. To me they are turning into "data". The best one ended in jail time after the union rep dropped a construction scaffold on a government inspector. He was joined by several of his union thugs when they looked back at a history of "coincidences" involving people who questioned or investigated the union.

Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[bobbied]

Your attempt at adding in statistically is also telling.. You are admitting that equal outcome is not a way to measure opportunity..

My father had a saying, two actually.. The first one here is "There are lies, damn lies and statistics." And the other "Figures never lie, but liars figure."

Why do I bring up these two bad jokes? Because, you have jumped off of your original position of "equal outcome" (everybody gets a participation trophy) and jumped straight into the pool of figuring statistics to perpetuate the lie that things are not fair. You cannot prove your view without cooking up some very suspicious looking numbers that obviously cannot take into account all manor of unmeasurable things that mean far more to the outcome than opportunity.. Good luck with that.

Also, this whole question of equal opportunity started with YOUR complaint about CEO pay. Obviously you think that getting paid millions is somehow unfair to the employees below these CEO's. But all you have is an argument based on envy and not liking people who are rich. You want to bash folks for being wealthy because (in your view) it's not fair and they obviously got rich unfairly. THIS view is basicly what Marx sold his whole theory on. It appeals to envy and greed, paints the wealthy as bad people when most of them are hardworking folks who earned what they have. CEO's are usually such folks and I've not seen many who didn't get where they are by working, by getting education, skills, and experience and proving they can do the job.

But you Marxists want to paint everything as unfair, the rich as bad people who take advantage of you, who own everything because they unfairly took it from you. That's a lie! A lie designed to inflame passion in the poor, a lie that condemns the less wealthy who believe it to a iief of poverty by making it seem like effort and hard work are not worth it, the "man" has it in for you and no matter how hard you try you cannot get ahead. That's a LIE and all the statistics you can come up with are just folks doing figuring to mislead you.

Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[Gussington]

So, you don't think the Unions had a duty to my parents and their retirements to demand a fully funded pension fund? I do..

Don't know how it works there, but in my socialist hell, the law requires ~10% of your gross pay to be paid to an authorised superannuation fund which you own, but can't touch until you are 65. No Union required...

Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[bobbied]

We pay 14+% here, but Social Security is going bankrupt because our politicians spent the money in the trust fund and left a pile of IOU's. The problem with this whole scheme is that it's a horrible investment. They literally take 14% of your income, but if you took 5% and actually invested it in almost anything (CD's, bonds, some mutual fund) you'd have more money when you retired.

But, alas, that's how government works when it does this socialism thing. You pay through the nose and get horrible returns because the government is absolutely the least efficient and least cost effective way to do anything.

Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[Gussington]

but if you took 5% and actually invested it in almost anything (CD's, bonds, some mutual fund) you'd have more money when you retired.

Our system is exactly that. The govt only mandates the figure to be invested, what you do with it is up to you. eg I can chose to put it an index fund, or commercial fund such as Blackrock etc. It's mine, I control it, the only catch is I can't withdraw until retirement.

But, alas, that's how government works when it does this socialism thing. You pay through the nose and get horrible returns because the government is absolutely the least efficient and least cost effective way to do anything.

You seem to be confusing socialism with corruption. We are relatively socialist and our system works quite well.

Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[bobbied]

LOL.. If you like it, great for you. I do contend though that government is not a good manager of anything it controls nor does it provide services efficency. Kind of the nature of the beast. The less government you can have, the better, the less government has control of the individual, the better. There are few exceptions to this.

Personally, I prefer to be in control of my own destiny and be responsible for myself over having government in my business all the time... but that's kind of what the whole revolutionary war and how the colonies in America were founded.

Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money....

[Gussington]

LOL.. If you like it, great for you.

I didn't say I like it, I said it works well.

I do contend though that government is not a good manager of anything it controls

Government just mean governance. So you're implying that anarchy works better? The solution to bad governance is better governance, not no governance.

nor does it provide services efficency.

More efficient than you. If you think otherwise why don't you tender for the many govt contracts worth billions each year and get rich?

Kind of the nature of the beast.

Yes with size comes complexity, but you can't avoid complexity by simply wishing it away.

The less government you can have, the better,

Quite provably false by every example or war of uprising that results in suffering for millions of people. Quality of life is directly correlated to quality of governance.

the less government has control of the individual, the better.

See above. The whole 'small government' philosophy is logically flawed. How do you quantify small? Less than what number? Is there a magic umber that is considered small, or do you apply the "less government" logic all the way?
Should the USA be run by a million public servants, or 1? I'd love to see your model of how the USA being run and managed by only 1 person results in a better outcome than now.

There are few exceptions to this.

Personally, I prefer to be in control of my own destiny and be responsible for myself over having government in my business all the time... but that's kind of what the whole revolutionary war and how the colonies in America were founded.

Also known as the Free Settler myth. It's a myth and it's time to grow up.

You point out your dad's contradictions to him?

[Uberbah]

but nothing so fancy that he shouldn't have been able to get those benefits had he been a better negotiator

vs

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.

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.

and this agrees with my own perspective--unions promote mediocrity

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.

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.

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.

Re:You point out your dad's contradictions to him?

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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.

He would be quick to point out that a few years into his job *is* exactly when he actually made the most money, decades before anyone was even *thinking* about a union. He was paid by the job, was racking up the experience, and could do in 40 minutes some jobs that paid one hour. That was his incentive to put in the effort during his best years, producing the work and getting a paycheck for 55-80 hours over the course of a 40-45 hour work week. Golden years, he called them. He was buying a brand new car every year back then while paying off his mortgage and raising a family with 2 kids - with my mom staying at home raising me and my sister.

At one point they started doing reviews every year so once it's known that some mechanics can do a job that pays 1 hour in 40 minutes, the books were adjusted so that same job the following year would now only pay 40 minutes - but that didn't take into account a mechanic's experience, which is vital to achieve that. Of course that's *totally* an argument in favor of unions. But the point is, what started happening in reality is that once the union was in, my dad started seeing coworkers and new hires slacking off because it was getting harder and harder just to achieve parity (hours worked vs hours paid), so a bunch of them were perfectly happy to live off of what their guaranteed minimum salary would provide. *That's* what I mean by "unions promote mediocrity". It's no coincidence that those in *that* boat are those who fought tooth and nail to bring in the union.

> And union workers are far more invested in a company's success than corporate executives

See above. I would argue that a good, motivated worker becomes de-incentivized to achieve more when you bring in a union.

> Nothing about unions prevents good workers from making more money

Then his union was doing a downright shitty job, because at the time it was brought in, he's the one who was making the most money amongst all his coworkers, and didn't get any sort of hourly raise. However just about everybody around him got a healthy raise (some started making an extra 5$/hour overnight).

> or bad workers from being fired for cause

It's *a lot* more difficult to get rid of a bad employee once you're unionized than if you're not. After it was brought in, the dealer had been wanting to get rid of its shop foreman for *8 years* before they managed to do so, and had to put together a file about half as thick as a phone book before they had enough paperwork against him to (much deservedly) put him out to the curb. We're all familiar with the reputation dealers get - that's just the part *you* know about, now imagine what happens in the back of the shops. My dad could write an interesting book.

Say what you want about how you think "human beings are built" - I'm not sure how you can claim anything I wrote is "bullshit" when my dad has lived through it and has decades worth of stories. And no, him being motivated to do more than his minimum guaranteed salary would bring in anyway doesn't mean he's picking up the slack others are creating. If they're happy being there 40 hours a week but being paid for 32, that's their problem. He didn't own the place.

All that said: I would never claim that "many anecdotes" = "data". I'm just relating what I know from a first-hand witness. Needless to say, YMMV.

Re:You point out your dad's contradictions to him?

[mlyle]

> 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.

Hey, there's plenty of good things about unions, but... contract negotiations with a union are always about what will keep the majority of the people in the union happy. Provisions to allow the best 10% to be paid a bunch more (presumably at the expense of the other 90%) are not likely to be it.

Likewise, provisions that improve job stability that are somewhat at the expense of the average quality of the workforce are likely to be popular.

Re:You point out your dad's contradictions to him?

[barc0001]

> 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.

Too right. Witness YET AGAIN this happening just this week with Sears Canada. The executives looted the employee pension to give out "retention bonuses" to the executive team so they'd stay on and guide the company back to profitability. Instead they took those bonuses and guided the company into full bankruptcy.

Re:You point out your dad's contradictions to him?

[Uberbah]

There otta be clawbacks and prison terms for those kind of shenanigans.

Re:You point out your dad's contradictions to him?

[Uberbah]

contract negotiations with a union are always about what will keep the majority of the people in the union happy

Democracy is neat that way. It even applies to shareholder votes for the corporation - though I doubt the sort of conservatives that rail against unions have also been railing against shareholder rights.

Re:You point out your dad's contradictions to him?

[Uberbah]

Uh, yes it does. Unions very precisely prevent bad workers from being fired for cause. For the easiest examples, see public sector unions like police unions and teachers unions.

With the exception of police unions, that's just more stupid bullshit that doesn't survive two seconds of scrutiny. Lets go a head and say that Bob is a 2nd grade teacher, but totally incompetent at his job. That means that every 3rd grade teacher that gets Bob's students are going to have to try and make up for his incompetence. Which means they're going to be the first ones asking that Bob's dumb ass be fired.

Fired. For. Cause. Happens at union shops all the time.

And they absolutely prevent good workers from making more money.

Right. Because Tom Brady (union member) makes the same amount of money as a backbencher who started on the same date he did. Know what does prevent good workers from making more money? Corporate HR pay scales.

Tell that to GM, who pays thousands of workers not to work, even after the bankruptcy avoiding government takeover.

Due to executive decisions. Executives that took golden parachutes. WYP again?

Re:You point out your dad's contradictions to him?

[Uberbah]

He would be quick to point out that a few years into his job *is* exactly when he actually made the most money

snip

At one point they started doing reviews every year so once it's known that some mechanics can do a job that pays 1 hour in 40 minutes, the books were adjusted so that same job the following year would now only pay 40 minutes

So, before the union came in. Did your dad make sure to thank his corporate overlords for this adjustment? He did know it was the company charging the motorist three hours of labor for 40 minutes of your dad's time, yes?

It's *a lot* more difficult to get rid of a bad employee once you're unionized than if you're not.

Which again, is predicated on the idea that the rest of the workers are happy to step in and do the "bad" employees work for him, the second they join a union. Which, again, is complete nonsense on its face, as his fellow workers would be the first ones asking that the slacker be fired.

ut the point is, what started happening in reality is that once the union was in, my dad started seeing coworkers and new hires slacking off because it was getting harder and harder just to achieve parity (hours worked vs hours paid), so a bunch of them were perfectly happy to live off of what their guaranteed minimum salary would provide.

Remember how I said union workers were invested in the company's operations? More auto maintenance completed == more earnings for the mechanics. Unless the company wasn't sharing the rewards of higher productivity with it's mechanics, in which case why are you complaining about the union instead of the company - which according to your own story started paying your dad for 40 minutes of work instead of an hour?

Re:You point out your dad's contradictions to him?

[volmtech]

Lazy workers do not do nothing, just enough to not get fired. I never worked a union job but my father in law was senior employee for over a decade at a paper mill. The output from his machine dropped in half when he went off shift. He was a union man but those lazy guys did bother him. The union pay and benefits were great though. Before he retired he helped the programmer set up a new computer controlled paper towel machine. His son still works there and now they are putting in an even more sophisticated machine that eliminates five human operators. The union was eliminated when the plant was bought by a private company.

Re:You point out your dad's contradictions to him?

[mlyle]

Sure, it's bad at protecting minority interests-- and this is just another instance of it. Anyways, it seems you've completely failed to defend your original point.

Unions are great at screwing the best employees, the newest employees, and anyone notably different from the "typical" worker protected by the union whenever their interests diverge. It can be considerably better than a single powerful employer, but when there's many employers and the union becomes more powerful than any of them the union becomes the tyranny to be scared of.

Re:You point out your dad's contradictions to him?

[barc0001]

At the very least there should be significant milestones that have to be met before any retention bonuses are paid. The argument is that they need to pay these bonuses to keep top talent working to guide the company. Fine. If they're really the best surely they'll be able to hit those milestones... If not, I'm sure there are others waiting in the wings to try.

Re:You point out your dad's contradictions to him?

[Uberbah]

I never worked a union job but my father in law was senior employee for over a decade at a paper mill.

Well that's fewer degrees of Kevin Bacon than the usual my-exgirlfriends-brother's-roomates-godfather didn't like unions because of XYZ annecdote from 1973.

Re:You point out your dad's contradictions to him?

[Uberbah]

Sure, it's bad at protecting minority interests

Compared to corporate oligarchies or corporate dictatorships? You think through these talking points before posting them?

Anyways, it seems you've completely failed to defend your original point.

Says the person engaging in hand waiving and non sequiturs.

Corporate HR departments are great at screwing the best employees, the newest employees, and anyone notably different from the "typical" worker protected by being the boss's buddy

Fixed your nonsense for you. All these anti-union canards are pulled out of Ayn Rand's zombified ass - just as Steven Spielberg and Kevin Smith, who are both members of the same union, and not compensated in the same way.

People are by and large mediocre

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:People are by and large mediocre

[Hognoxious]

nothing but tea and a biscuit.

Would that be cold tea, without milk or sugar - or tea?

Luxury!

It's not a cultural movement

[rsilvergun]

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.

Union Busting

[rsilvergun]

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...

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.

Re:Union Shop

[Uberbah]

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?

Re:Union Shop

[Frank Burly]

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.

I'm having some trouble here

[mhkohne]

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?

Re:Union Shop

[LifesABeach]

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.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[Kohath]

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.

Re:Union Shop

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[bobbied]

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?

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[boudie2]

It ain't freedom either.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[mi]

the only way for workers to get a fair deal is to organize as a group

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...

Maybe he can get Mars declared a "right to work" state.

Or, maybe, free travel to Mars is another human right?

Re:Union Shop

[swillden]

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.

Re:Union Shop

[I'm New Around Here]

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.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[boudie2]

Yes, the United States is known all over the world for it's fair play. What was I thinking??

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[boudie2]

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.

As I Said Earlier

[tmjva]

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.

Re:Everyone doesn't work as hard as me!

[Scarletdown]

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.

Are you so feeble minded that you can't occasionally take note of the goings on around you without breaking your work stride?

Re:Union Shop

[Uberbah]

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".

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.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Union Shop

[avandesande]

Because unions have literally put businesses into banckruptcy?

Re: Tesla isn't the "Apple" of car companies

[avandesande]

For some reason Buick is huge in China, not sure why.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[Kohath]

What was I thinking??

Whatever it was, it seems to not be based on facts.

Re:Union Shop

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[boudie2]

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.

Re:Union Shop

[Kohath]

Woosh!

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[boudie2]

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.

Re:Union Shop

[BlazeMiskulin]

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.

Re:Union Shop

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Union Shop

[avandesande]

It's obvious you care so much about the workers you don't want them to have any job at all.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[bobbied]

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.

Re:Union Shop

[Dorianny]

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.

Re:Union Shop

[barc0001]

> 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.

Re:Union Shop

[dywolf]

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.

Re: Tesla isn't the "Apple" of car companies

[Bing Tsher E]

It's interesting to explore why Buick is a popular brand in China. There is a historical reason for the cultural popularity.

The last emperor of China before the Communists took power had a Buick. When the Communists took over, a prominent Communist leader, Chou Enlai, took over the Emperor's Buick and continued to use it. The Buick brand caught on because of this.

Another factor is that the Chinese do not like the Japanese for historical reasons (the Japanese in WWII experimented with biological and chemical warfare on civilians in China, among other things), so if they want a foreign car, it will be an American, not a Japanese car.

I remember reading a few years ago in the automotive industry trade press about the reasoning behind the brands that General Motors retired. Anybody in the US would have thought that they should retire Buick and retain the Pontiac brand. But Buick is so strong in the Chinese market that they kept Buick and retired Pontiac.

I'm rattling this off all from memory, but it's pretty easy for anybody who wants to research it.

Re:Union Shop

[Dorianny]

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.

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

Teams fires hundreds of misogynists!

[Jesus H Rolle]

Tesla fires hundreds of misogynists" is a hilarious headline.

Union is just a negotiating tool

[Beeftopia]

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.

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[Actually, I do RTFA]

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.

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.

Re:Union Shop

[Uberbah]

Now all the sudden Weinstein is a right winger? The dude has been at the center of progressive politics for like 4 decades

Corporate Democrat politics. Which are inherently right-wing.

Any more water-is-wet questions?

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[drinkypoo]

So are you betting on the killbots, or just mass chaos?

Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla!

[bobbied]

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.

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.

Stack ranking / forced distribution / totem pole

[eric_harris_76]

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.

Firings versus layoffs

[eric_harris_76]

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?

Re:Union Shop

[smugfunt]

Socialism is when the government pays the paycheck, but the private enterprises reap the profits.

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.

Re:Union Shop

[LifesABeach]

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.

Re:Is this up or out?

[uncqual]

A team full of Michael Jordans will be so successful (assuming that there are not "leadership" clashes), no players will be dismissed.

A sports team does not trade or release their least promising player if they don't think they can acquire a more promising one (of course, factors like a player's position matters - a team might trade away their worst linebacker who is actually very good as part of a deal to get a really great running back because that's what they need the most).

Re:Union Shop

[Uberbah]

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.

IPO

[NewYork]

So Tesla is NOT filing IPO

Re:Union Shop

[houghi]

unions promote mediocrity

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.

Re:Union Shop

[Paradise Pete]

Yes, unfortunately it was scarily close to real life.

Are unions still useful?

[rhyous]

"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.