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Tesla Hit With Labor Complaint On Behalf of Fired Factory Workers (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the di dept.

On behalf of the hundreds of Tesla workers that were fired last week from the company's assembly plant, the United Auto Workers filed a complaint today to the National Relations Board. The UAW posted a copy of the complaint on its website, which alleges that pro-union workers were unfairly targeted. The Verge reports: The UAW says the complaint was made on Wednesday to the Oakland offices of the National Relations Board. The union claims the recent culling of several hundred Tesla employees included many who were involved in a pro-union movement at the Fremont assembly plant, and included those who wore pro-union shirts and stickers. The Fremont factory site has roots in the UAW. It was once a former joint manufacturing facility owned by GM and Toyota, until it closed in 2010. Despite ongoing efforts, under Tesla's ownership, the factory is not unionized. A pro-union rally was held Tuesday in front of the plant, which was documented in a Facebook post by the pro-union group A Fair Future at Tesla.

4 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Many was pro-union? What a surprise! by Eloking · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Many of the fired worker because of bad performance were also pro-union? I'm so surprised!

    --
    Elok
    1. Re:Many was pro-union? What a surprise! by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Also, just for the record, being in a union doesn't prevent a company from laying off workers by the thousands. My uncle worked for Boeing as a union machinist a few decades ago, and I recall stories about how Boeing would lay off large numbers of workers, which many suspected was mostly about boosting short term stock prices or price-earning ratios (which, completely co-incidentally, could make executives a lot in bonuses). Only they actually needed those workers to meet production demands, so a few months later, most of them would be quietly hired back.

      I'm not sure if that's what's happening at Tesla, but it's hard to say when you're just looking in from the outside. The UAW isn't exactly a disinterested party without an agenda either. Unions are as much a business as anything else.

      It will be interesting to see if Tesla can demonstrate that these were indeed poorly-performing employees via documentation, reviews, complaints, etc.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    2. Re: Many was pro-union? What a surprise! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So how is anyone going to be able to give an honest insider view of what is really happening if they are automatically shills if they don't bash the employer?

      Stupid Union Shill.

  2. So in Bayesian terms . . . by Wrath0fb0b · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If Tesla fired a bunch of workers for being pro-union, the union would file a complaint.

    If Tesla fired a bunch of workers that were low performers, the union would file a complaint.

    If Tesla fired a bunch of workers that were low performers but the reviews were {1%, 10%, 50%, 90%, 99%} biased against unionizers, the union would file a complaint.

    There is literally no information to go on here besides our own biases. Of course, actually digging through hundreds of personnel files with dozens of performance reviews, correlating it with what the company thought, seeing if there are emails of improper motives, that would take a while and be fought. Best to stick to your gut instinct about evil companies or slacker workers or . . .