After the UAW won contracts with the Big Three, it's seeking to unionize 150,000 workers across a dozen companies including Tesla.
'Your Turn': United Auto Workers Launches Campaign to Unionize Tesla::After the UAW won contracts with the Big Three, it's seeking to unionize 150,000 workers across a dozen companies including Tesla.
This is a very exciting time. I've been a union guy for 25 years and I will go to my grave not understanding the fierce resistance to unions by my X gen and the boomers. When they would say unions were bad, I'd say let's make ours amazing and... they just refused.
I never thought I would see the resurgence of American labor unions. This is an absolute joy to see.
Depending on where you lived you were plied with anti-union rhetoric. I remember back in the '80s and working at a department store and they had us watch "training" videos about how we were a big family and how unions broke up that family and made us adversaries. I thought it was a bunch of bull, but I'm sure there were plenty of folks that bought into it.
I think the most common explanation for anti union sentiment is this:
Most of the time, our justifications for doing anything are post-hoc: we decide based on gut reasoning, then invent a justification after we've already made up our minds in order to convince ourselves that we're creatures of logic.
When companies show those videos, it does two things: it intimidates, and it provides ready-made arguments for post-hoc justification.
They intimidate workers from organizing, but no one's ego can accept that. If someone says "let's unionize", most people think (subconsciously) 'Fuck!!! That's scary! We're not strong enough, and I'm gonna get totally beaten down if I stick my neck out!!'
And then their brain does it's thing and translates that into justifications, and when it needs words to form justifications, it draws then from the handy dandy premade justifications they were given during their intimation session. It's like, 'You're a bug, and if you fight us we'll step on you! Now here's a balm to soothe this massive wound to your pride. You're welcome. Now get back to work.'
They don't understand or see themselves as workers because of things like this, they see themselves as individuals who will succeed if they just try their best and be their most "authentic" selves or whatever BS they use. Most important message they try to send is your position in the economic system is about you as an individual and not because of your class or relation to capital.
I've been in two, and both of them were this way. Tossed most of us under the bus to protect a small group of older employees. We definitely need more unionization, but we also need to weed out the unions that are counterproductive.
I’ve been a union guy for 25 years and I will go to my grave not understanding the fierce resistance to unions by my X gen and the boomers.
Certain specific professions like IT, and its mercenary culture, don't fit well with the collective bargaining model. For many other professions/careers, a union can be a great tool for workers.
By "IT" do you mean tech? Because as a software engineer, I've seen turnover rates of 1-2 years for some of my favorite people I've worked with. If they actually had bargaining power, we know via studies done on unions and turnover rates that these engineers likely wouldn't dip as quickly and take institutional knowledge and their smart brains with them. Tech is so allergic to unions that it is literally inflicting damage onto itself - managers will tell you how expensive it is to hire new people because it takes months for them to catch up to your codebase, but the higher-up leadership is completely unwilling to listen to the data on how to actually retain people. They don't care if unions increase productivity or that the elasticity between productivity and salary is >1.0 as the unionisation rate grows (per studies done in Norway), because they don't want to lose their complete control over companies to collective bargaining.
I've never been in a union, but there was an era where individuality and meritocratic means seemed like the pathway to unlimited success but this doesn't really map over to blue collar work. Unions were not likely to help because they batch outstanding workers at the same level as the lowest performers on the team.
But unions work a bit like an alternative to minimum wage. All the boats rise with the tide, so if the UAW scores big with some mfgrs, other auto workers are going to want a piece of that too or they'll switch.
This can backfire though because a lot of jobs can still be automated if they aren't economically feasible.
In my union good workers get paid above scale or they get promoted or they move to a different company that will pay them above scale. Also, people have reputations and if you're a complete fuckup of an employee, you will either be fired or laid off and eventually you'll find yourself on the "available for work" list down at the hall, but never getting hired because nobody wants to put up with your bullshit. You will say that it's a kind of informal blacklisting, which is true, but I'm in the union too and they can't make me hire people I know I don't want.
If they were up against a competent c-suite, this would be a failed effort from the start.
"cybertruck" is going to be a massive flop and and an embarassment and that is a perfect opportunity to "downsize" and have a semi-legit reason to fire anyone who doesn't spit with enough vigor at any calls for unionizing.
But acknowledging that glorified SUV is a flop is a step too far and it will be marketed as a success. Which gets rid of the cover.
I have no idea if UAW will succeed. But I think we are looking at a LOT of wrongful termination lawsuits (speaking of, did the twitter ones go anywhere?) and a massive poorly executed social media campaign on a single dying site.
Really love Shawn Fain's attitude of fighting with the corporations. More victories unions to start win, the easier it will be grow unions across of sorts of different industries.
We had Starbucks stores unionize, an Amazon warehouse unionize, and UAW winning major concessions.
I was a little bit worried about Shawn's strategy but he married his big pitch to the tried & true method of pressuring Ford first(more family owned & Detroit/Michigan connection to contend with). Proud to say he got a lot a lot of the strong labor points out there in the public. Glad we are seeing benefit from having more labor friendly president(we can always do better but glad we have something).
When you make your next union contract, get the expiry date the contract to be May Day. If everybody's contracts expire on the same day, it's easier to have a general strike day in the future.
Do you work at Tesla? Do you know more about this union drive? We’d love to hear from you. From a non-work device, you can contact Jules Roscoe at jules.roscoe@vice.com or on Signal at (415) 763-7705 for more security.
They originally over-relied on automation in their factories, to Elon's own admission. There's just some tasks that humans will always be better at, until we see a fundamental change in robotics. And no, the current AI fad is not enough.
They've been working to solve those problems as well so they are more robot friendly. One of the problems was the wiring harness being limp/flexible so they started using a more rigid wiring system.
Probably not good enough to have a robot replace it yet, but I bet a change like that also reduces the people hours required reducing head counts
Edit: I was just thinking about this more, and with the cybertruck now using ethernet in its 48v system, I wonder if this will be as relevant given there's less cabling. I guess even then it'd still be easier to have something rigid around it, but maybe it's not even worth it now.
Unions aren’t always a good thing especially when the workers are able to come to favorable terms on their own. A lot of the time it’s just union heads looking for a cut of the deal.
Favorable terms with no means of legal leverage are just wisps of air. They can and will be rescinded at the earliest convenience of the corporation, which is literally why we're in the current situation we are today. The strongest middle class in the US existed when unions were at their peak. That is not a coincidence.
A formal, legal union gives employees power and leverage to enforce the favorable terms that they negotiate with an employer. You can argue that unions as organizations can be subject to similar corruption as any other organization, but contrary to popular propaganda, there is nothing inherent in the existence of a union that requires or lends itself to corruption any more than any other power structure.
Employees are legally permitted to organize a formal, legal union of their own outside the existing union organizations, but then they're starting from scratch. Existing unions have been through negotiations, have experienced lawyers, know the process and all of its pitfalls. The vast majority of workers are better off joining an existing union because of this.
You’re correct but my issue is with the corruption part. Look at Hollywood and that fiasco of a boycott and how it affected the people at the bottom of the union. Or the teachers union where is the damn near impossible to fire bad teachers and how the school system is suffering for that. Where as private schools pay more in return your job is dependent on how well your students preform.