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Tesla Just Fired Hundreds Of Workers (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Bay Area Newsgroup:
Tesla fired hundreds of workers this week, including engineers, managers and factory workers, even as the company struggles to expand its manufacturing and product line... The company said this week's dismissals were the result of a company-wide annual review, and insisted they were not layoffs. Some workers received promotions and bonuses, and the company expects to hire for the "vast majority" of new vacancies, a spokesman said. "As with any company, especially one of over 33,000 employees, performance reviews also occasionally result in employee departures," a spokesman said. "Tesla is continuing to grow and hire new employees around the world."
"Tesla has a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board in November for charges that company supervisors and security guards harassed workers distributing union literature," reports the Bay Area Newsgroup, adding that "Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted."
Tesla denies this, and says that they've generally boosted morale this week -- by rewarding higher-performing employees.
"Tesla has a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board in November for charges that company supervisors and security guards harassed workers distributing union literature," reports the Bay Area Newsgroup, adding that "Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted."
Tesla denies this, and says that they've generally boosted morale this week -- by rewarding higher-performing employees.
Are these firings the result of stack ranking? If so, why would anyone want to work there.
... 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.
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.
From TFA it sounds like about 2 - 3% of the total workforce was fired. The firings were all ranks in the company including managers and engineers, not just the factory laborers.So it may have been nothing more than a pruning of the very lowest performers.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Obviously....
All they had to do was take a trip out into their parking lot, find the employees responsible for some of the idiotic parking jobs collected on Instagram and other places on the internet, and fire them, because they are simply too stupid to hold a job that pays better than minimum wage.
Yes, that would help with morale, too.
I was in a union once. I got nothing and only paid dues to keep corrupt union leaders on the take. Right To Work would've been nice, but I've long since moved to greener pastures.
I feel bad for people being screwed by unions. I don't feel bad at all for unions. They became what they once fought against. I have no sympathy for those who fight corruption only to get a share in the corruption. Those people get what they deserve when the inevitable happens.\
Do I think businesses should be unregulated? Hell no. But I think unions are not the answer. The answer is legally-enforced transparency. First, codify into law the fact that money paid to any political fund by any business or legal entity, directly or indirectly, that would be affected adversely by a law is bribery. Second, don't allow businesses to hide employee pay rates. Third, set a work-hours standard, with the force of law. Fourth, codify and enforce some standardized holiday, family leave, and vacation standards laws. Fifth, codify single-payer healthcare and disallow businesses from paying for employee healthcare.
See? Now unions aren't needed, and squirming around the things unions "guarantee" goes to the courts, not to some arbitration panel. Also, everyone pays the "dues" (taxes), and everyone gets the benefits in equal proportion.
It's not socialism, it's just a level playing field. Everyone must play by those rules and pay the dues to stay in the game. This is no different than requiring seat belts in cars, ground pins on electrical outlets, or an up-to-date health inspection certificate for a restaurant kitchen. A little regulation to level the playing field and crack down on abusive cheaters.
It was true 100 years ago and it's true today, the only way for workers to get a fair deal is to organize as a group. Let's see how Elon Musk deals with this earth bound reality. Maybe he can get Mars declared a "right to work" state.
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.
Think globally but act within local variable scope.
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.
Everyone gets laid off after the company goes out of business.
I have done work in union shops, and similar companies which are not unionized. I find that employees are generally treated much worse in union jobs, because employees are not allowed to expand grow, or go outside their predefined jobs, thus they are confined to what their title says they are. Also I find a lot more layoffs happen in Union shops than non-unioned ones. Because when it is time to work with a contract for the next period a company has only one shot to try to get rid of some of the workers, so they will use that at the point and get them out in these bulk layoffs, while non-unionized companies tend to fire people when they need too, however being that most employees bring more to the company then what they pay them, means each one is an assert they would prefer to keep, however if it unioned then they are expenses especially if their particular job title is no longer needed for the company.
Now don't get me wrong, Historically Unions have been a good thing, however they haven't changed in a good way to deal with modern business. Positioning themselves as the enemy of the business vs. a partner whos goal is is help the employees prosper and the company to be successful.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I get paid well and I'm not in a union.... Unions are NOT the only way to be fairly paid...
Also, such "pay us what we define as fair or else" killed every major airline and car maker in the country in the end and dumped hard working people like my father (who was a union guy himself) onto the pension guarantee corporation and the fraction of the pension he was promised though the Union's efforts in the 25 years he worked there.
Personally, I think Unions of late do more harm than good in the long term... Certainly, watching my parents struggle to make ends meet on only portion of their Union retirement didn't make me like the unions who killed the airline they both worked for causing them to lose most of the benefits they earned including medical, flight privileges and a good portion of their income. The unions did that to them really, Management really had no choice but to play along and keep kicking the liability for Union benefits down the road if they wanted to stay in business now. The guys at the Union didn't care about tomorrow or the continued existence of the company, just about exacting their promises today. They ended up killing the goose that laid the golden eggs and EVERYBODY lost in the end.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
40 years ago when your dad started, as a mechanic, that dealership that he worked was one of a few places in his local area that hired such a skill. Even in the 1970's it was rather uncommon for someone to work in a different town then where they lived. So if he was fired from that jobs, he would had needed to either change careers or move to a different area. Today we are more mobile, traveling 20-30 miles to get to work isn't a big deal anymore, and if you get fired from one job, you can find another one in your choice career in some of these other towns.
Unions back then were important, because the end of your job could also be the end of your career, and Unions were needed to protect workers from such drastic actions.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
First of all you, you seem to have missed the primary function of unions which is to make a fair share of the wealth generation go back to the workers, not merely the capitalists. Working conditions, health and safety, working hours and so on have always been secondary struggles where the workers demand some other form of compensation than wages. In that respect unions are failing horribly and apart from the minimum wage - that in real dollars is no higher than in the 1950s - the government is not going to fix.
It's no doubt that if you're a struggling business the unions can be a burden but if they were generally driving companies out of business the richest 15% wouldn't be making more and more money while everyone else loses. What you're seeing is a system where the money is extracted whenever the business is profitable, then makes everyone else take the burden when it's unprofitable. The US has managed to create something worse than social welfare, it's corporate welfare where you take from the tax payers and give to the corporations.
For example, why was your future retirement income to the company's future? Put that money into a pension fund when you do work, if the company goes tits up or you change jobs or lose your job it stops accumulating but it's yours. Or at least a potential share if you make it to retirement age. I mean they're back in business now aren't they? Making money again, which is extracted until the next crisis when the coffers again will be mysteriously empty. And they've done a great frame job when people like you blame the unions for that, nothing like 1%ers making the other 99% blame each other.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Political astuteness does actually have some value to the company if the person has some ethics.
love is just extroverted narcissism
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.
vs
Did the lightbulb flicker a bit before it went out? Your dad would have made far more money if he had been in a union from the start, without having to be a hardball negotiator on top of being a mechanic.
Well, it's you and your dad's choice to be good little Calvinists for corporate benefit, but the "unions promote mediocrity" line is and always has been bullshit. Nothing about unions prevents good workers from making more money or bad workers from being fired for cause. And union workers are far more invested in a company's success than corporate executives, who are happy to give themselves raises while driving the business into the ground.
Also bullshit. This "unions reward the lazy" storyline is built around the idea that the second your dad joined a union, he was happy to do his work plus that of all the people sitting around. Human beings are simply not built that way, unless your dad was George McFly to the young Biff Tannen's in the shop - in which case he'd be doing their work anyway without or without a union.
especially when things are running smoothly. Sure, Unions promote mediocrity, but they also promote safety, security and the humane treatment of workers.
For a concrete example, the iPhone was a break out hit. One of the main things Steve Jobs sited for making that hit possible was the ability to drag his (non-Union) Chinese workforce out of bed at 1 in the morning and work them 16 hours a day with nothing but tea and a biscuit. Sure, the iPhone wasn't mediocre, but we've all kind of swept the cost of that under the rug.
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"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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.