'Your Turn': United Auto Workers Launches Campaign to Unionize 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 one union and it was a corrupt joke. That said, it was still the best unskilled job I've had by a large margin.
  
  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.
- McCarthyism and the decades of fear mongering and misinformation about communism and red scare tricked generations of Americans into thinking that the most patriotic thing you could do is die in your work boots for minimum wage.
- 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.

Good luck to them.
- 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).
- Starbucks organizing still blows my mind. Young people working in restaurants have traditionally been the most difficult nut to crack, as they mostly see it as a short term thing. I guess times change and perception of economies with it!
  
  People are getting tired of watching the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else. The fact that are people who the drive and skill to organize is something we should be celebrating.
- Man is gonna fuck around and get ass-assinated.
  EDIT: That means he is doing a bang up job for those not paying attention

I can’t believe this. You will ruin the company and make it go away. Earth will remember this! Fuck off!
Muskrat— probably.

Now if only they had the same support that unions do in Sweden
- Solodarity strikes are illegal in the US, the UK, Australia, and the Netherlands
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act
  Truman vetoed it and railed against it hard, but of course a corrupt and fiercly communist-paranoid congress overrode his veto.
  
  Never knew it was illegal in the UK. Didn't surprise me though to learn it was Margaret Thatcher who outlawed it again in the 80s.
  
  Man fuck Taft. All my homies hate Taft.
  
  Repealing that act should be one of the largest priorities of leftists in the United States. I wish people talked about it more.
  
  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.
  
  This might be a stupid question, but how does this law apply to non-union laborers looking to unionize, but aren't technically union yet?
  
  Fuck em. How much illegal shit have megacorps gotten away with?
- Now if only they had the same support that unions do in Sweden
  More people believe in unions than you may realize.
  Don't just focus in on the shills/bots and what they're saying.

Fine, don't work here then. Fuck you.
Workers will kill Tesla and the whole world will see it. They'll judge
Musk in a year.
- The Earth will judge
  
  I'd be so happy if this wording meant he was officially launching himself into space and leaving earth behind

Oh this should be good.

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.
On Signal? Wow, I like that.
- https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1347165127036977153?lang=en
  "Wait... Not like that!"
  Elon probably
- Fuck the GAAFM.
  
  GAAFM ?

Can't wait.

Go go you! Most people in Sweden expect those that drive Tesla want a union to! It should be the default on all bigger companies!

Elon: “Fuck off”
- "Son of slavery-driven diamond mine owner refuses union talks!", "how to eat dogshit", and much more, coming up after the break.
  
  I’m sure Elon Musk believes that dog shit is very nutritious and all of us at the bottom should be glad to have some

Elon: more robots on order
- That'll go about as well as the full self-driving capability of tesla vehicles.
  
  Luckily there is no children working in Tesla's factories .......yet.
- 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.
- Elon: more ~~robots~~ guys in gray body suits on order.
  
  I had forgotten all about that!
- For every job you replace with a robot, you generally have to hire 3 robot technicians, 1 per shift.

More blackmail!?
- How is it blackmail?
  
  It's not, that's the joke, based on Elon's rant about losing advertisers the other day.

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.
- Yep. All tesla has to do is pay better than a union, provide decent benefits, treat people like humans, and fire the garbage employees.

Tesla will allow a union the same time mcdonalds or starbucks allows a union.
We can pretend unions will solve the problems but the reality is regardless of what any worker wants their jobs are going to be automated so it needs to be a group effort to force the allowance of free re-education/re-training into a different profession (i.e. UBI with stipulations that you must retrain into a new job until all jobs are automated).
There are no other options and you can't expect a company to keep a position open for a human that needs breaks, sleep and to eat when their competition is automating fully and saving more money than they are because they were forced to or chose to keep humans on staff.
This is not the age where unions have any effective impact, especially when almost every job available today will be eliminated in the next decade through direct mechanical automation or AI automation.
The only thing unions can do is push protectionism and that will kill the economy by killing companies and then we lose the companies, the tax revenue AND the jobs.
- Right, because there famously aren't any Starbucks unions....
  Fuck off bot.
  
  You should go complete some elementary school literature tests.
  It's clear you didn't understand what was written.
  Thanks for the laugh though.
- Well that was a whole bunch of bullshit. I hope you are at least getting paid by a company for that take because otherwise you are just spouting propaganda for nothing.
  
  No counter argument or point to make, just a few insults and the typical air of incompetence surrounding someone who just assumes they're right without understanding economics, the current state of technology both software and hardware, the impact unions have, how unions work, how unions preserve jobs, the ramifications of those preserved jobs to market competition in an era of advancements, and apparently the written word of their native language.
  An impressive display of intellect, truly.
- This is not the age where unions have any effective impact
  I don't know, the UAW looks like it's having plenty of impact to me. As a matter of fact, unions are looking pretty strong at the moment. But to be honest, you weren't here to argue in good faith, you made that especially clear with your last sentence.