Tesla Just Fired Hundreds Of Workers (mercurynews.com) 320
An anonymous reader quotes the Bay Area Newsgroup:
Tesla fired hundreds of workers this week, including engineers, managers and factory workers, even as the company struggles to expand its manufacturing and product line... The company said this week's dismissals were the result of a company-wide annual review, and insisted they were not layoffs. Some workers received promotions and bonuses, and the company expects to hire for the "vast majority" of new vacancies, a spokesman said. "As with any company, especially one of over 33,000 employees, performance reviews also occasionally result in employee departures," a spokesman said. "Tesla is continuing to grow and hire new employees around the world."
"Tesla has a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board in November for charges that company supervisors and security guards harassed workers distributing union literature," reports the Bay Area Newsgroup, adding that "Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted."
Tesla denies this, and says that they've generally boosted morale this week -- by rewarding higher-performing employees.
"Tesla has a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board in November for charges that company supervisors and security guards harassed workers distributing union literature," reports the Bay Area Newsgroup, adding that "Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week. Some believe they were targeted."
Tesla denies this, and says that they've generally boosted morale this week -- by rewarding higher-performing employees.
So (Score:5, Insightful)
Are these firings the result of stack ranking? If so, why would anyone want to work there.
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Same reason as SpaceX: people who want to change the world and do something that they find interesting will put up with a lot more than those working just for a paycheck. It's like asking, "Why do people put up with the long hours, low pay, and job instability of the video game industry?" Answer: Because they want to work in the video game industry. Same reason a lot of pilots put up with their situation: they want to fly planes and get paid for it. And same for many other jobs.
Anyway, it feels like we're
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Next up: "Tesla paves new parking lot with asphalt rather than concrete: what's wrong with the stability of the ground at the Gigafactory? Will the foundation collapse and the factory explode in a column of flame that destroys a passing jetliner carrying World's Cutest Child contestants and boxes of extra-snuggly puppies? Stay tuned!"
My god! I hadn't even thought about that possibility! How horrible of Mr Tesla to do that to puppies! That's it, I'm not buying anymore Tesla cars this year!
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Why do people put up with the long hours, low pay, and job instability of the video game industry?" Answer:
Stockholm sydrome!
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
I obviously don't know what Tesla is really up to. However, should be actually be what they say, I applaud them. One of the horrible things about big organizations is seeing useless people kept on, with everyone else having to carry their dead weight through project after project.
If Tesla really is just doing a housecleaning to get rid of people who are not doing their jobs, I applaud them.
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I have a friend who used to work at the factory in Fremont. And she's told me plenty of stories that had my jaw dropping about some of the misogynist shitheads there who should really have never been employed at all anywhere, much less in a state with more stringent worker protections like California, and at a Bay Area tech company no less. What she described was well beyond that alt-right MRA idiot's memo at Google. There was full-up harassment: catcalls, direct comments to individuals about "man's work
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They have tens of thousands of employees. TFS says they fired hundred of workers. That's a 1 percent-ish firing.
After a period of rapid hiring, you need a firing to get rid of the mistakes.
This sounds like corporate house cleaning.
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Why all at once? That sounds like a mandated "get rid of x percent" and of course that's the people who aren't buddies with their manager. May well have nothing to do with how competent they are.
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Why NOT all at once? There are reasons why it could or should happen all at once. There is, of course, the "better to fire people on a Friday" idea that, while I first heard about it from Office Space, does seem to be how companies do operate in real live. If, and the GP and GG suggest, they're correcting the mistaken hires, an annual performance review bay have just been completed and they know now who is the deadweight. If, as the GGP and suggest, they did some post complaint investigation and cleanup
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Workers estimated between 400 and 700 employees have been fired. Tesla refused to say how many employees were let go, although the company expects employee turnover to be similar to last year’s attrition.
So that's around 4%. Not huge - but probably more related to TSLA continuing to lose money.
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Do you know what the term "tone deaf" means?
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you're a good little slave with drive and ambition and you know you're not going to be at the bottom of that ranking, that's why.
Just like you don't need to be able to run particularly fast to run away from the bear that's trying to maul you, you just need to be slightly faster than the next guy.
Do you want coworkers who are there only because they perfected tripping others up when the bear comes? The problem is not just that eventually you'll be at the bottom of the ranking when the bottom gets culled regularly, regardless of how good you are. The problem is that you get a toxic work atmosphere where it becomes important to outmaneuver the others into a position where they'll be gutted next. Of course you can choose not to play that game, but the end game will be among those who do. Even supposing you are always at the top of the ranking even as new people get hired. You'll still end up with colleagues that are better at looking better than they are than the ones who get fired. The decent and good ones will watch this once or twice, then leave on their own accord.
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That's if the company lasts that long. We all hate salescritters, but they can always serve as a bad example. Iimagine that they're all busy sabotaging each other because they've realised it's easier to bugger up an order for someone else than it is to obtain one for themselves. Now imagine that they're all really good at that, and they all succeed completely...
If it's not the tragedy of the commons it's something very similar.
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No that is NOT a problem. An employer generally only fires someone if they either have no need for the person anymore or if they can replace them with a more productive worker who is a better fit. Yes, if most workers they hire to replace workers who are fired or quit on their own are better than you are, then you will eventually end up at the bottom of the ran
Re:So (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. The absolute worst management I ever worked for used stack ranking. The guy who mandated it was a psychopath. He actually said he liked firing people. It ensures the worst possible behavior from your employees, because you know it's all about who can play favorites the best.
Not "Layoff"... (Score:5, Interesting)
... to help prevent potentially having to paying unemployment. Did you know that, at least in Florida, seven out of eight requests for unemployment are denied outright? This is because companies basically are able to set policies that mean unemployment is effectively inaccessible to most workers:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/bu... [sun-sentinel.com]
Posting anonymously because of the massive amounts of mockery piled onto anyone that posts positively about unemployment, even though most folks end up using it to get through a tough spot in their lives. For some reason, we have a continuous cultural movement to shame it.
Re: Not "Layoff"... (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't get ahead through education. You get ahead by being in a union. A week educated wage slave is still a wage slave. A unionized wage slave at least belongs to an organization that can shut down the company. Guess which gets better paid in the long run. Meritocracy works until you have coded yourself out of a job, at which point you are too specialized, too old, too expensive to be a credible wage slave for the next job.
Stick with the union.
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Make better unions. Where I am company executives siphon money to spend on themselves thru expense accounts, discounts and dinners
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The problem is both situations are flawed.
In one case, sucking up to management gets ahead rather than merit. Politics is rewarded over talent, skill, and dedication.
In the other case, someone gets paid more simply by not getting fired for longer. This means there's still not much room for rewarding going above and beyond.
Even in a fundamentally democratic context, you still have politics, but to a different audience. As such, corruption is still quite easily a thing. It seems to be a sad reality of the
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FTFY. You may want to check your auto-correct settings.
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Re:Not "Layoff"... (Score:5, Interesting)
Is that across all states? In California we "terminate with cause" certain employees, which might not be illegal behavior, and we "layoff" others. Terminate with cause is reserved for people that are simply unable to perform their job, and is generally within the 90-day review window. Layoff is for people we want to be able to get unemployment, which covers the vast majority.
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"Layoff" technically covers one case, and one case only: Where there are no short-term plans to replace the terminated employee.
If there are any plans to replace the employee after termination, then the person is considered "Fired". Note that both of these cases can be either with or without cause (although often, the former has a cause of the company wanting to save money, or needing to downsize on account of hitting some harder times).
In general, if you were paying EI benefits, and were involuntar
Re:Not "Layoff"... (Score:5, Informative)
Those who mock unemployment have never been on it. It requires you to report on a weekly basis your job search activities. If you receive an offer and turn it down (because they lowballed you), you need to be able to justify that it wasn't a legitimate offer. Also, what you get is a pittance, hardly enough to live off of. For me, it didn't even pay the bills.
I was glad to have it, since something is better than nothing, but it isn't exactly free money. (And oh yeah, you still need to pay income tax on it.)
It's not a cultural movement (Score:2)
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I don't think people object to the concept of unemployment assistance. As you say, a lot of people lean on it to get through a tough patch.
What people generally object to is using it as a regular crutch and/or a lifestyle.
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Performance reviews (Score:2)
Does your job description include "distributing union literature"?
In $current_century it should be possible to contact employees after work hours via e-mail, text messages, etc. And do so without risking intervention by supervisors or security. The whole face-to-face contact by organizers purportedly to "distribute literature" is at least psychological pressure to acquiesce and at times outright pressure from union thugs.
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Do you show up for work at 9:00, and then work non-stop, w/ no breaks or socializing, no getting up for coffee/tea/water etc, and then leave at 17:00?
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https://www.nolo.com/legal-enc... [nolo.com]
Union busting? Naw, not Tesla! (Score:2)
Well, well, well... Tesla doesn't want to be unionized? Say it isn't so.
Of course I'd take this "they fired the Union organizers" with a grain of salt. I'm sure Tesla has CYA documentation for each and every one of these folks. And it kind of makes sense that the pro-Union folks would be lower in the productivity measures, not because they are pro-Union, but because it would be kind of hard to keep Union organizing and doing their work separated.
In general, Unions have outlived their primary reason to
Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla! (Score:4, Insightful)
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But...but...but...that's communism!
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Whatever they have in China, it ain't communism. It hasn't really even pretended to be for a long time.
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I get paid well and I'm not in a union.... Unions are NOT the only way to be fairly paid...
Also, such "pay us what we define as fair or else" killed every major airline and car maker in the country in the end and dumped hard working people like my father (who was a union guy himself) onto the pension guarantee corporation and the fraction of the pension he was promised though the Union's efforts in the 25 years he worked there.
Personally, I think Unions of late do more harm than good in the long term..
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Agreed, if management played fair you would never need unions. Unfortunately it seems that management almost never plays fair. That's the law of the jungle.
Since less than 7% of private sector employees are in unions [slashdot.org], that must mean management almost always plays fair in the US.
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Measuring "fair" by comparing paychecks? How's that relevant to a discussion about Unions?
So what about my Dad and Mom's pension checks? They worked in union shops for all their lives and got stuck with a fraction of what they were promised. Where is the Union in this? What responsibility does the Union have here?
1. They let the company skate without fully funding the pension plan.... Why? So they could get raises now for their dues paying members. Who cares about the pension plan? The Union should
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You USED to have zero protection, but now we've codified into law a lot of the protections that Unions used to provide.
These days, working conditions are controlled by law, work hours are limited by law, payment of overtime is governed by law as are benefits being required for full time workers. Unions don't provide this, the law does.
Sure, Unions have work rules, minimum staffing rules, who must be called in first rules and (in closed shops) who can and cannot do certain jobs, but I'm not sure how this
Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money.... (Score:3, Informative)
Randian Horseshit. Union workers are entirely dependent on the welfare of the company for their jobs and retirement. As opposed to executives who can drive the company into the ground and collect golden parachu [aviationpros.com]
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So, you don't think the Unions had a duty to my parents and their retirements to demand a fully funded pension fund? I do..
You don't think the Unions didn't make the financial condition of many of the major companies untenable at least partially due to the demands of their Unions? I do.
That management gets paid what they do has little to do with the survival or failure of a business. Usually a CEO's salary amounts to pennies on the dollar to the in the trenches worker, yet your ilk want to make some kin
Re:Steven Spielberg makes WAY more money.... (Score:5, Interesting)
lolwut. So you hate unions and think they are unnecessary, but at the same time hate them for not being more powerful because they couldn't force the company to better fund their pensions?
If the company can't exist without wage slavery, it doesn't deserve to exist. And what part of "unions accept massive cutbacks while executives take golden parachutes" did I stutter on? When was the last time you saw top company executives agree to work for $10 an hour to get the company back on track?
If you think that was an explanation for why CEO's get increased pay even as their decisions drive the company into the ground, you are sadly mistaken.
There it is. You sir, are a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. [goodreads.com]
If you don't have equal outcomes statistically then by definition you do not have equal opportunity.
Otherwise your Starbucks barista would have an equal chance of having a last name of Rockefellar as your Fortune 500 CEO has a chance of growing up in a double-wide. But of course that's not the case.
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Does nothing to change the fact that you wanted the union to have more control in company operations yet now you hate unions. Wh
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The problem is that what we need is for all workers to be represented by one group if we are going to get protection for all workers. As it is, the complacent unions that are entrenched now suck all the air out of the room.
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The only way for anyone to get a better deal is to organize as a group.
We've known this truth for thousands of years too...
Or, maybe, free travel to Mars is another human right?
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You applying that same logic to corporations, Slick? Should IBM dissolve itself for your arbitrary ad hoc reasons? How about JP Morgan?
Re:Union busting? Naw, not Tesla! (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all you, you seem to have missed the primary function of unions which is to make a fair share of the wealth generation go back to the workers, not merely the capitalists. Working conditions, health and safety, working hours and so on have always been secondary struggles where the workers demand some other form of compensation than wages. In that respect unions are failing horribly [wordpress.com] and apart from the minimum wage - that in real dollars is no higher than in the 1950s - the government is not going to fix.
It's no doubt that if you're a struggling business the unions can be a burden but if they were generally driving companies out of business the richest 15% [wordpress.com] wouldn't be making more and more money while everyone else loses. What you're seeing is a system where the money is extracted whenever the business is profitable, then makes everyone else take the burden when it's unprofitable. The US has managed to create something worse than social welfare, it's corporate welfare where you take from the tax payers and give to the corporations.
For example, why was your future retirement income to the company's future? Put that money into a pension fund when you do work, if the company goes tits up or you change jobs or lose your job it stops accumulating but it's yours. Or at least a potential share if you make it to retirement age. I mean they're back in business now aren't they? Making money again, which is extracted until the next crisis when the coffers again will be mysteriously empty. And they've done a great frame job when people like you blame the unions for that, nothing like 1%ers making the other 99% blame each other.
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Ah, but the pension problem WAS a Union failure on two counts.
1. The Union's could have demanded the FULL funding of the pension NOW, not just higher and higher retirement benefits in the future. They failed their membership in this by being short sighted, pay me a "fair" wage now demands. What happened to my parents happened to thousands upon thousands in many industries which were unionized. I've NEVER seen a Union demand that the pension fund be fully funded to cover future liabilities, only that ben
Sucks to be fired, but - (Score:5, Interesting)
From TFA it sounds like about 2 - 3% of the total workforce was fired. The firings were all ranks in the company including managers and engineers, not just the factory laborers.So it may have been nothing more than a pruning of the very lowest performers.
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Fired terrible for parking (Score:3)
Obviously.... [instagram.com]
All they had to do was take a trip out into their parking lot, find the employees responsible for some of the idiotic parking jobs collected on Instagram and other places on the internet, and fire them, because they are simply too stupid to hold a job that pays better than minimum wage.
Yes, that would help with morale, too.
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What's really scary is the people who can't even park their own car are working at a place which builds cars.
If you find this comment funny, insightful or interesting, please donate a few Dogecoins to DNsSKbyNsi7369SGdvbKqLM9h4D5wAvmGD.
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Inadequate parking doesn't cause idiots with BMWs to park across two spots, or make people unable to put their car between lines. There is simply no excuse for most of that nonsense pictured.
Easy solution (Score:2)
Build all US facilities in right-to-work states. Seems to work for BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, and Hyundai.
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Nope. California is not a right-to-work state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law
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Easy the incentive was an existing NUMA factory that was vacant. They got it basically for free. And Elon lives in CA, so convenient for him.
Is Tesla a good company to work for or not? (Score:2)
1. Why was it so abrupt? Usually, there's a process which is followed for non-performance to force someone out. Performance improvement program (PIP) comes to mind. The firings seem abrupt, but we'll probably not know if some procedure was followed or not.
2. Does Tesla use stack ranking? If so, you probably don't want to work there. Any company practicing stack ranking causes employees to compete against each other instead of focusing on the challenges in the business. Stack ranking may work for a few revie
Re:Is Tesla a good company to work for or not? (Score:5, Insightful)
4. If they were indeed slackers, why were they hired in the first place?
They didn’t put “I'm a slacker” on their resume, I guess.
More crap reporting (Score:2)
"Openly pro-union workers were among those fired this week"
Assuming it was an average distribution of bad workers that were dismissed, I'd actually rhink it was a miracle if there were literally no pro-union employees amongst them.
Crap handwaiving (Score:2)
What anti-union company is not going to use general terminations to rid itself of organizers? I think Musk is a latter day Thomas Edison - that is not a compliment [listverse.com] - but I don't think he's an idiot. Anyone in a non-union position can find out very quickly that companies have lots of ways to fire people.
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I agree, and independently came to the very same conclusion a while ago about him being another old-school industrialist (which as you say is not a good thing).
I'm just saying that the report makes a very large accusation that Musk IS firing people just because they are pro-union without zero actual evidence, just on the basis that one or more pro-union people were amongst the hundreds fired.
That said I could totally imagine him doing it.
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Agreed then. The other eyeroll-inducing part of this story is how he's calling this a mass firing instead of layoffs, purely to avoid paying unemployment benefits. Elon, you're really telling us you've been collecting a list of people to be terminated with cause but waited until now to do it, because reasons?
Union Busting (Score:2)
I'm having some trouble here (Score:2)
believing that there isn't SOMETHING going on. I really have trouble believing that they had several hundred under-performing employees, and that they chose to get rid of them all at the same time.
If it were true, it would mean that management is incompetent and should get on the way out as well - because if you let hundreds of folks who aren't up to the task hang around till performance appraisal time, then you suck at management.
So, are they lying about why these folks got the ax? Or are they stupid and s
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Re:Union Shop (Score:5, Interesting)
My dad worked 40 years for a car dealer as a mechanic, and there was no union except for the last 5-8 years or so before he retired. He definitely saw some benefits--more vacation time, better medical coverage, some small amount of money allocated each year so they could expense work boots and a few tools and such--but nothing so fancy that he shouldn't have been able to get those benefits had he been a better negotiator (my dad's never been one to rock the boat, so the speak, much to his own detriment).
If not for those benefits brought in through the union, he would've been against it because--and this agrees with my own perspective--unions promote mediocrity. One of the things that frustrated my dad the most is that this meant kids fresh out of college were now making the same hourly rate as he did with his decades of experience. A lot of his coworkers also started doing the minimum they could get away with because they now had a guaranteed 32-hour/week salary even if they only showed up to sit on the bench all day. To paraphrase him, all incentives to work any harder were removed.
A few years after my dad retired, the union was booted out - which required a majority of employees voting in favor of that. I don't know the details behind that however.
Re:Union Shop (Score:5, Interesting)
40 years ago when your dad started, as a mechanic, that dealership that he worked was one of a few places in his local area that hired such a skill. Even in the 1970's it was rather uncommon for someone to work in a different town then where they lived. So if he was fired from that jobs, he would had needed to either change careers or move to a different area. Today we are more mobile, traveling 20-30 miles to get to work isn't a big deal anymore, and if you get fired from one job, you can find another one in your choice career in some of these other towns.
Unions back then were important, because the end of your job could also be the end of your career, and Unions were needed to protect workers from such drastic actions.
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Re:Union Shop (Score:5, Insightful)
"Back then" companies were happy to exploit workers within an inch of their lives - and beyond - if it made them a few more dollars in profit. That hasn't changed, so neither has the need for unions.
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You point out your dad's contradictions to him? (Score:5, Interesting)
vs
Did the lightbulb flicker a bit before it went out? Your dad would have made far more money if he had been in a union from the start, without having to be a hardball negotiator on top of being a mechanic.
Well, it's you and your dad's choice to be good little Calvinists for corporate benefit, but the "unions promote mediocrity" line is and always has been bullshit. Nothing about unions prevents good workers from making more money or bad workers from being fired for cause. And union workers are far more invested in a company's success than corporate executives, who are happy to give themselves raises while driving the business into the ground.
Also bullshit. This "unions reward the lazy" storyline is built around the idea that the second your dad joined a union, he was happy to do his work plus that of all the people sitting around. Human beings are simply not built that way, unless your dad was George McFly to the young Biff Tannen's in the shop - in which case he'd be doing their work anyway without or without a union.
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> And union workers are far more invested in a company's success than corporate executives, who are happy to give themselves raises while driving the business into the ground.
Too right. Witness YET AGAIN this happening just this week with Sears Canada. The executives looted the employee pension to give out "retention bonuses" to the executive team so they'd stay on and guide the company back to profitability. Instead they took those bonuses and guided the company into full bankruptcy.
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There otta be clawbacks and prison terms for those kind of shenanigans.
People are by and large mediocre (Score:3)
For a concrete example, the iPhone was a break out hit. One of the main things Steve Jobs sited for making that hit possible was the ability to drag his (non-Union) Chinese workforce out of bed at 1 in the morning and work them 16 hours a day with nothing but tea and a biscuit. Sure, the iPhone wasn't mediocre, but we've all kind of swept the cost of th
Re:Union Shop (Score:5, Insightful)
Tech workers are one of the few labor pools where employers have been caught colluding to keep wages down, and yet they are typically against unions because it cuts against their libertarian tendencies and a significant percentage of them fall prey to the Dunning Kruger effect which keeps them from recognizing their mediocrity. So when they get passed over for a promotion, or someone else's project gets greenlighted, they blame diversity efforts, or office politics rather than a union.
So life is not fair, and you're going to blame somenody.
It is commendable that your dad thought doing a good job was more important than getting maxing out his work/pay ratio. But the company he worked for was almost certainly trading as little pay as possible for as much work as possible, and union or no, (if I'm not in management there) I'm not going to hold it against workers for approaching that trade with the same level of self-interest.
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> but nothing so fancy that he shouldn't have been able to get those benefits had he been a better negotiator
And right there is the point. Your dad WASN'T a better negotiator and was taken advantage of for 3 decades.
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Is there any reason why those negative things are inherent to unionizing?
That's debatable. It may be something like asking whether the abuses and poverty seen in every attempt to implement communism are inherent to the system. They're clearly not its aim, but they always seem to accompany it.
Union rules seem always to evolve in favor of either purely seniority-based systems or very flat compensation structures. Either one eliminates motivation to work hard. The problem is that their quest for fairness makes it impossible for employers to exercise any judgement in pay or promot
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Those negative things weren't there before the shop unionized, were there after the shop unionized, and certainly disappeared after the shop kicked out the union. Seems to be something inherently having to do with a union.
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Sure they did - the whole "I'm the only one that works hard around here" syndrome.
If your father had time to keep tabs on how much or little the other guys were working, then he wasn't working very hard himself.
Are you so feeble minded that you can't occasionally take note of the goings on around you without breaking your work stride?
Re:Union Shop (Score:5, Interesting)
I was in a union once. I got nothing and only paid dues to keep corrupt union leaders on the take. Right To Work would've been nice, but I've long since moved to greener pastures.
I feel bad for people being screwed by unions. I don't feel bad at all for unions. They became what they once fought against. I have no sympathy for those who fight corruption only to get a share in the corruption. Those people get what they deserve when the inevitable happens.\
Do I think businesses should be unregulated? Hell no. But I think unions are not the answer. The answer is legally-enforced transparency. First, codify into law the fact that money paid to any political fund by any business or legal entity, directly or indirectly, that would be affected adversely by a law is bribery. Second, don't allow businesses to hide employee pay rates. Third, set a work-hours standard, with the force of law. Fourth, codify and enforce some standardized holiday, family leave, and vacation standards laws. Fifth, codify single-payer healthcare and disallow businesses from paying for employee healthcare.
See? Now unions aren't needed, and squirming around the things unions "guarantee" goes to the courts, not to some arbitration panel. Also, everyone pays the "dues" (taxes), and everyone gets the benefits in equal proportion.
It's not socialism, it's just a level playing field. Everyone must play by those rules and pay the dues to stay in the game. This is no different than requiring seat belts in cars, ground pins on electrical outlets, or an up-to-date health inspection certificate for a restaurant kitchen. A little regulation to level the playing field and crack down on abusive cheaters.
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Cool story bro. How great has it been, working for less money and fewer benefits while being able to be shown the door for reasons that have nothing to do with the work you do?
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You and Harvey should be pals, as you're both a couple of dumb right-wingers. Why don't you go into the locker room of a professional sports team - all of whom are unionized - and tell them about all this dick-sucking they've had to do as a part of their jobs.
Re:Union Shop (Score:5, Insightful)
This would NEVER happen in a UNION shop.
You say that like it's an inherently good thing.
Everyone would get raises.
Including the people who don't deserve them.
Everyone would get promotions.
No. You can't promote everyone.
Only the less experienced people would get terminated due to budget constraints.
Again: This protects the incompetent and the disruptive personnel and brings down the entire workforce. A bad worker--regardless of seniority--is a bad worker, and should be gotten rid of, not rewarded.
I want my car designed by the people with the most time in service, not the most education, knowledge, etc.
Really? You want your car designed by the guy who knows he can't get fired, and has no reason to do any better than "good enough"?
I've been a member of 3 different unions and I've worked with somewhere around 150 different locals in over 50 jurisdictions in the US and Canada. In Washington DC, I had a jouneyman show up drunk. I reported him to the steward, he was sober the next day, but drunk again on the 3rd. I cut him from my crew.... and he was just reassigned to another crew and allowed to keep working (while drunk at 8am).
Protecting all workers at all costs is bad for business, bad for production, and bad for the other workers who watch incompetence be rewarded.
Re:Union Shop (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone gets laid off after the company goes out of business.
I have done work in union shops, and similar companies which are not unionized. I find that employees are generally treated much worse in union jobs, because employees are not allowed to expand grow, or go outside their predefined jobs, thus they are confined to what their title says they are. Also I find a lot more layoffs happen in Union shops than non-unioned ones. Because when it is time to work with a contract for the next period a company has only one shot to try to get rid of some of the workers, so they will use that at the point and get them out in these bulk layoffs, while non-unionized companies tend to fire people when they need too, however being that most employees bring more to the company then what they pay them, means each one is an assert they would prefer to keep, however if it unioned then they are expenses especially if their particular job title is no longer needed for the company.
Now don't get me wrong, Historically Unions have been a good thing, however they haven't changed in a good way to deal with modern business. Positioning themselves as the enemy of the business vs. a partner whos goal is is help the employees prosper and the company to be successful.
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Re: Maybe... (Score:2)
I'm guessing you're in your twenties. I had a similar attitude a decade ago but after being in my chosen profession for a while I've noticed a tendency of the more politically astute employees getting paid better and receiving promotions more often than the higher skilled employees. During layoffs the skilled employees are better protected but the crafty and less competent ones have already repositioned themselves such that they won't get laid off. Business isn't as meritocratic as it seems.
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I can't speak for AC, but I'm considerably older than my 20s, and I agree with his/her perspective. In my experience, unions have only two practical outcomes; they protect the deadwood and they hold back the performers, effectively normalizing everything to the lowest common denominator.
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I wouldn't go that far, but some unions sure feel that way. IBEW would be a counter-example of a union that serves to train and develop its members in an industry that has significant cycles. I might see some hall hires come onto a job that are flat-out bad, but they generally are dealt with.
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I think you are mixing types of people. The Politically astute person knows hows to deal with the organization and gets promoted from it. Normally the guys who are spreading out Union and demanding to be Unionized are often under performers who doesn't realize how much they are under performing, then their actions to try to get the company unionized, is only cutting their productivity down further.
Why did person A get a raise and I didn't, this is unfair I demand more....
Often person A may not have been w
Re: Maybe... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Right. In the same way that the instant you decide to own your own business, it means you'll rip off your lenders and customers while sexually harassing your secretary. It's like Enron!
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Firing people, is getting rid of a person due to poor performance or breaking the rules -- Being fired is a bad thing and you should feel ashamed if you are fired.
Getting Laid off, is not based on you or your performance, it is just that the company doesn't need your skill sets anymore, or they are just too many people with such skill sets. The factors a company may use to determine who will get laid off or not differs all the time. Back in 2008 I got laid off despite having excellent reviews and great