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