‘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.
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.
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.
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.
I can’t believe this. You will ruin the company and make it go away. Earth will remember this! Fuck off!
Muskrat— probably.
Oh this should be good.
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
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–Hartley_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.
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?
In a right to work state, you’d get shit canned.
Fuck em. How much illegal shit have megacorps gotten away with?
Everything they could, every moment of their existence.
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.
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 ?
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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.
Elon: more
robotsguys 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.
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More blackmail!?
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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.
