Tesla Hit With Labor Complaint On Behalf of Fired Factory Workers (theverge.com) 76
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.
Many was pro-union? What a surprise! (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of the fired worker because of bad performance were also pro-union? I'm so surprised!
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Tesla has owned the Fremont factory since 2010. It's now late 2017. Funny that in all this time UAW never saw fit to hold a vote on unionization in this supposedly horrible, unfair work environment, and has instead chosen to wage a PR campaign instead.
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Yes, I'm sure people have been abused for 7 1/2 years but are just now "recognizing" it.
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there is a difference between recognizing it and being willing and able to do something about it.
i guess they finally reached their limit.
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Unions are the antipathy of companies like Tesla. While they were hugely beneficial before communication allowed large groups to discuss and share, they're much less useful these days and much more harmful. I know plenty of union workers and even they crack jokes about the ridiculous rules, benefits, and stupidity they deal with. Unions make workers focus on (often) inane rules and not on productivity or achievement.
TBH, I think this whole thing is a huge ploy by the UAW. They had their shills in the fa
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Unions can easily shutdown production indefinitely at numerous sites if they are coordinated and smart. It would be very hard for Tesla not to accept any of their demands. I'm pretty sure that Tesla thinks an ounce of prevention is a lot better than tons of cure.
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It takes a long time for a critical mass of people to experience the shit and get sick enough of it that they take action.
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If corporate overlords treated their workers fairly, unions never would have existed in the first place. Workers who depend on their next paycheck for their standard of living aren't going to start out from Day 1 looking to put those checks in jeopardy by going against the company. Unless they have a reason to.
This isn't rocket science.
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FTFY
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Yeah, that's what people with zero understanding of running a business say. Most executives I've run across are easily worth more than what they're paid, and very few aren't. Just as a case in point:
https://aflcio.org/paywatch/TM... [aflcio.org]
The AFL-CIO thinks it's terrible that John Legere makes 533 times more than the line workers. But here's why he gets paid what he gets paid: He turned that carrier around from hemorrhaging customers to being the fastest growing carrier within three years, overtaking Sprint as the
Re:Many was pro-union? What a surprise! (Score:5, 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.
Re: Many was pro-union? What a surprise! (Score:1)
I work at Tesla. Posting anon for obvious reasons.
I got a raise and a stock award the same week these people were laid off. Nobody I know or work with except for one overpaid and under-effective senior manager were laid off.
I find it to be plausible that the employees that were invited to explore other opportunities were actually ineffective poor performers.
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Stupid Union Shill.
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I recall stories about how Boeing would lay off large numbers of workers, which many suspected was mostly about boosting short term stock prices
Another proof that the stock market is broken. A successful company hires people. A company in trouble fires people.
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That's the easy, short term way. In reality these people asking for 90% of your salary could be 100% untrained.
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True of all unions for the most part. The difference is the rules they must follow should they do that. Usually most significant in terms of severance based on length of employment and that sort of thing. So in the above case, each time they were "laid off" they would get a payout, and if they were hired back, could actually come out on top of the situation.
I found out recently (though fortunately not personally) that indeed, if an organization with unionized labor wants to lay you off, they can and will, o
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If you think "the left" is for Calvanist robber barons, you need to get out more.
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Many of the fired worker because of bad performance were also pro-union? I'm so surprised!
Poor performance? That has to be proven. I would like to see both sides show their evidence before I make my conclusion (or assumption). Pro union? That could be a reason of discrimination from the company, but it could be a double-edged sword for the ex-employee to use against the company though.
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Actually no.
An at-will state allows for termination for no reason at all. You just can't terminate "BECAUSE UNION" specifically but you can surely terminate because, because. It's upon the individual to prove discrimination at that point.
Furthermore, it's pretty damn easy to give someone a poor performance review and terminate them on the spot unless you have specific policies in place for remediation. Since generally at least some aspects of reviews are subjective, there's little stopping an employer fr
Easy to dismiss (Score:2)
Unless Tesla is full of shit
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i am pretty sure tesla is allowed to fire whomever they want to, the issue here seems to be that tesla is trying to hedge the firings as being performance based and not financially based.
oh noes we are totally not having any financial issues trust us we will deliver millions of cars any day now, pre buy more cars now please, not because we need your money to float the scam a bit longer.
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In even right-to-work-for-less states, you can indeed be fired for any reason - unless that reasoning is illegal. Being black, a woman getting pregnant, someone advocating for unions on personal or break time...those reasons are illegal.
Yes we did (Score:2, Troll)
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learn to google...
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
50k? (Score:1)
Raise your asking price to $70-90k, else you won't be taken seriously.
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Re: No sweat (Score:2)
Really? What constitution are you reading?
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Do you realize how many gazillion laws in this country have no constitutional basis? I hate unions for a variety of reasons, but the AC here is correct. You do have the right to organize.
Re: No sweat (Score:1)
So in Bayesian terms . . . (Score:5, 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 . . .
Slashdot factions (Score:1)
It is an odd thing for Ayn Rand disciples with the empathy for workers of the fictional Gordon Gecko to be so stoked to tell us "Nothing to see here, move along" about Tesla. Usually those in the free-market-uber-alles faction are just not that impressed by electric cars. A person has to wonder if a Slashdot faction commenting on this story has an "agenda."
It is also an odd thing that Honda and other multi-national automakers have been able to set up non-union shops here in the U.S. without engaging in
Re:Slashdot factions (Score:5, Interesting)
A person has to wonder if a Slashdot faction commenting on this story has an "agenda."
My only agenda is to hope that Tesla succeeds, because I like the advances they have made in the state of the art. (For example, Tesla "SuperCharger" is a better charging technology than anything else available.) I don't want to see them hurting their employees, but I don't really think they need to hurt their employees to succeed.
Everyone agrees that Tesla's production process had problems and needed to improve. Tesla claims they have improved.
Here's an article about that:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarquet/2017/06/04/elon-musk-safety-autopilot/#5d8a4b9a7a88 [forbes.com]
According to Tesla's official blog post [tesla.com], they went from having a worse-than-average safety record in their factory, to having a better-than-average record. I haven't heard anything about it getting worse again, and I'm pretty sure that would be widely reported news if it happened.
Also, one of their improvements was adding a third shift, so that work would happen 24 hours a day. This greatly reduced overtime, and was welcomed by the line workers. From the blog post: "Last year, we added a third shift to reduce the overtime burden on each team member and to improve safety. We did this because our employees asked for it, and because it was the right thing to do."
Parts were stacked high in contradiction of Lean Manufacturing dogma, and in contrast with the Maryville, Ohio Honda plant he had observed, the Tesla shop floor activity was frenetic. The Honda plant, by contrast, had its assembly line running so smoothly that the workers did not appear to be breaking a sweat.
Honda has been making cars since 1963 (and motorcycles before then). They have had just a bit more time to fine-tune their operations.
Tesla has spent big money on overhauling their production process. They are planning to crank out a very large number of Model 3 cars per year, and they can't do that with a labor-intensive process. Tesla says that the Model 3 has been designed to be easy to manufacture, using lessons learned while manufacturing their other cars.
Recently Tesla shared a video of the robots making Model 3 cars: http://bgr.com/2017/10/09/tesla-model-3-elon-musk-video-production-line/ [bgr.com]
There are over a half-million Model 3 cars on pre-order. If Tesla can sort out their production line and get those cars delivered in a timely fashion, they will be heroes. If not, they will be in huge trouble and possibly will go bankrupt.
The Tesla Model S is an incredible automobile, they tell me
It really is.
and maybe the problem with it is that it is incredible that Tesla is able to sell an automobile of that sophistication for the price they charge without it all being smoke-and-mirrors of burning out its workers and fleecing its investors to contribute the labor and money to in effect give away what are effectively hand-built quarter million-dollar cars?
From what I have read, a Model S costs Tesla about $30K to make, so no, they are not giving away effectively hand-built cars, they are making a solid profit on each car sold.
The stories of 70-hour work weeks of relentless pressure are just sour grapes from slackers who deserved to be cut loose?
Tesla says that since they added the third shift (sometime in 2016) that the average number of hours worked per week is 42. Do you have newer data that contradicts this?
here are just some "bottlenecks" to be worked out? While their "body" line tooling is still being put together in some undisclosed location in Southeast Michigan?
I had no idea what you were talking about here. Google found this for me:
Ramming speed (Score:2)
As I said, Mr. Gassee visits the assembly line as a celebrity Model S purchaser, snarks about what he sees to his fellow celebrity Model S purchasers, and is treated as a social pariah.
I suspect that Tesla may be overworking its employees to square the circle between what they are promising and what is possible. Am I eager to see them fail? Would I have been eager to see the Roman Empire fail, after all, those guys who couldn't keep up with the accelerated rowing tempo deserved to be whipped -- see ht [youtube.com]
All News is Fake News (Score:2)
So you're a temporarily embarrassed millionaire... (Score:2)
...who has nothing but distain [goodreads.com] for his fellow workers. Huh, never seen that in an anti-union story before.
Next Up (Score:2)
Tesla and SolarCity hit with lawsuit concerning their non-existent SolarRoof product.
Shocked (Score:2)