I for one am shocked that Tesla does not approve of an organized extortion cartel among its employees.

One employee quitting means Tesla losing 0.001% of employees.

An employee being fired means losing 100% of their income.

Clearly there's an asymmetry when negotiating with large companies. Therefore unions are fair.

With Sweden Unionen no one could have salary rise without Unionen approval.

This makes Unionen a single point of failure: when bargaining with company, it's almost always the lowest possible rise (usually lower than inflation) for the yearly salary rise (which should by design compensate the inflation).

That means that specific union is up for some disruption.

The whole point of a union is that it is a monopoly. This means they are incredibly hard to disrupt, and it is near impossible to start new ones. Many of the early ones had to use threat of violence.

They're free to work elsewhere and are adults and responsible for their own income. If they're upset with the conditions at Tesla enough to want a union they could just work elsewhere instead.

Yeah! Who do these people think they are demanding bathroom breaks from our precious god king elon musk? How dare they!

Don't want to shit yourself during a shift? Just go work somewhere else and we'll find someone else to exploit into pissing themselves.

Doesn't say anywhere they can't take them just that some are claiming they're skipping them to keep their performance up don't think we should just taking their word on face value. It's just a statement to try and make their work expectations seem unreasonable when we all know the real goal is to lower expectations and raise pay at the threat of halting production.

I'm by no means a Musk fan but its a free country, Tesla shouldn't have to be held hostage to these people, no ones forcing them to work there.

Yes, it's a free country, people are free to unionize.

That's a pretty negative framing of labor unions. What are some good alternatives for gaining and enforcing worker rights?

the law

Who would lobby for worker rights laws if not... workers? And if they do, how are these lobby groups significantly different from unions?

You probably didn't mean it that way, but thinking this through will get you to the conclusion that "Democracy" (which isn't really a thing) is an engine for decline, similar to unions.

get paid more at a competitor is one classic protest technique

Unfortunately many employers use non-competes to prevent this.

Non-competes are evil and should not exist. They used to be unconstitutional until additional legislation was introduced (the details elude me right now).

For a lot of regions, employees are up against the only large employer in their area - be it Tesla, Walmart or Amazon. The latter actually is famous for setting up shop in devastated areas because labor there is cheap and forced by circumstances to accept whatever conditions they are given.

People living in poor areas will be devastated to know that a big employer is opening up shop near them.

The problem is the leverage these big employers have - they are free to deal with their workers as they want, including underpaying, breaking laws like anti-union busting regulations...

The good thing about people is that they have feet to walk away from those areas with.

And cake to eat, no doubt.

The definition of extort is:

>to obtain from a person by force, intimidation, or undue or illegal power

A union is none of those things. (Yes, there are instances where they have done all of those things before, but we seem to have pretty much solved that problem)

I'd say being unable to be fired for striking is undue power.

But Jimmy Hoffa is long gone.

If you look at the broader spectrum and compare US workers rights with most of the EU, Europes fight was worth it and these have been gained by literally dying for the cause before unions appeared. It has gone overboard in places like Italy, but the workers right certainly did not and would have never come from the employers.

The world is not the same everywhere.

EU worker compensation continues to diverge from the US, and not in a good way. Because unions don't create wealth, they simply re-distribute it at great cost for society.

so they have more rights, but earn substantially less than what workers can earn in the USA for the same job.

I for one am not sure I would make that trade.

It is more than just gross pay, though.

Health insurance, paid holidays, sick days paid, the unemployment benefits are vastly superior.

This is a comprehensive and unbiased overview, I think

https://russianvagabond.com/european-vs-us-salaries-why-you-...

Seems a stretch to just assume it was union busting without more evidence.

200+ people doing the exact same job in another facility in CA, that was not trying to unionize, were also let go 6 months ago.

Seems clear that Tesla didn't need as many of these people doing this particular job function anymore.

https://archive.is/i6BCD

I'd argue it is a stretch to assume it's anything but union busting given the timing, as if the goal is not to disrupt the union formation they'd have every reason to delay to prevent the appearance of it.

The timing of press articles was _entirely_ up to the people claiming to want to unionize. They most likely knew layoffs were coming, announced they wanted to unionize, then when layoff happened (which would likely have happened without the unionization announcement) accused Tesla of union busting.

According to this article, Tesla terminated employees one day after the unionisation campaign was announced. As such, even if the layouts had been planned beforehand, it was entirely Tesla's choice to still go ahead, knowing the impression it'd create. If Tesla didn't intend this to be a union-busting move, the smart move would be to delay. For that reason, coupled with the fact they've been found to illegally fire staff over unionisation efforts before [1] it's very hard to give them any benefit of the doubt. Either it's intentional, or Tesla are being idiots. Or both.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/business/musk-labor-board...

The alternative is that anyone can make themselves unfirable by claiming to be making a unionization attempt. That’s a worse outcome than some optics.

The alternative for Tesla would be to not put themselves in a situation where firings like this look inherently suspect because they have a history of attempted union busting, including by illegally firing people.

It's best not to assume. The NLRB is involved and have more information about the situation.

Yup. Project Vacation is in full swing these days.

"Project Vacation"?

Operation Vacation automation

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4305856-tesla-operation-vac...

Solid approach to data; completely wasted on a product they’ll never achieve…

I won’t weigh into the politics of the situation, but anyone who has their head on straight can see by now that “full self driving” isn’t becoming a reality any time soon. Even if the technology works out somehow, the politics of thing will take decades.

More interesting to me is the lessons the engineers learn there and take with them to other efforts, where success is more possible.

>Seems a stretch to just assume it was union busting without more evidence.

LOL you can't actually be serious?

you make a compelling argument

It's better than being facially stupid

please provide the reporting and analytics and data that tesla uses to make these decisions and provide your analysis on why this isn't a legitimate reduced need for certain job functions

I don't have to prove anything, it's called being reasonable. It's a reasonable assumption to make. It's going to be what they have to rebut in court. Past that you are just being unreasonable, obtuse, and argumentative.

Just based on their responses in this article thread, he's a Tesla apologist, if he doesn't work there, it's impressive volunteed work.

If only Elon believed in what he says: "Vox Populi, Vox Dei" and dared them to a vote given his past comments [1].

1. https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/3/22959592/elon-musk-tesla-u...

It’s pretty obvious that Elon does not respect votes as he hasn’t stepped down, and is preoccupied with his tweets’ popularity or better the lack thereof.

> i will abide by the results of this poll

> …is preoccupied with his tweets’ popularity or better the lack thereof.

To a pathological degree, ICYMI. https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-super-bowl-joe-biden-...

"…Musk's cousin, James, sent an internal message on Slack to Twitter's engineers at 2:26AM on Monday morning concerning a "high urgency" situation. The emergency was that Biden's post performed better than Musk's. Around 80 Twitter engineers were brought in to work on the issue. By Monday afternoon, a fix was implemented to the algorithm that allowed Musk's tweets – and only Musk's tweets – to "bypass Twitter’s filters," which in turn "artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000," promoting Musk's content in everyone's feed."

It pays to pay attention to the specific wording of his post. He really doesn't want his workers to unionize, and the reason he dared UAW to hold the vote is because he knows that because of historical reasons UAW is really unpopular in Fremont.

In short, Fremont used to be a GM plant and have their own union. When this union was absorbed into UAW, it was fairly contentious and many in Fremont believed that UAW didn't care about auto workers in California. Then very shortly after, UAW negotiated with GM about downsizing, and the end result was that the Fremont plant was shut down. This was seen in Fremont as a total betrayal. Soon after, Tesla bought the plant.

So UAW really isn't liked, and any vote about organizing under them would be a landslide against. A different union might be a lot more successful.

NUMMI was a union plant. UAW office was right across the street.

Not sure I understand what you're saying - are you disagreeing with something the parent said?

Let me be very careful here for obvious reasons:

Is it reasonable to allow a group of 25 employees who label images to bring Tesla to its knees.

By "bring to its knees," I mean imposing significant changes to the company's organizational structure and procedures.

Please note that Tesla is a multi-faceted enterprise, employing tens of thousands of factory workers, galaxy-brained individuals, and visionaries.

The thing that's alleged here is that Tesla is blatantly breaking the law to fire employees that are engaging in lawful activities. How many employees need to be affected before this becomes "unreasonable"? 26? 50? One hundred? If Teslas structures and procedures are not in line with the law, then they need to change - regardless of the number of affected individuals.

In general people need to work to live dignified lives. To me the natural consequence of this is that you cannot employ people and treat them any way you like. They are not like machines, their dignity has to be preserved.

There are several ways to achieve this (plain old regulation being one of those tools), but allowing people to freely associate without that association being the reason to fire them seems like another pretty obvious and great tool.

I don’t really understand why the vision of companies as empires with absolute monarchs seems so appealing to people. That seems like a disgusting vision to me that we should strive to avoid. Since people aren’t machines.

Some people want to change the world. Others want to go slow and want a life.

Why not leave those who want to go faster and change the world alone? There are other companies.

If Tesla were a startup with a dozen employees, I'd buy your argument. But Tesla is a manufacturing company that hires people that need to compete for a job to make enough money to feed themselves. None of the people categorizing images do so because they believe in a vision. The power dynamics are entirely different here and the one thing that helps workers achieve a semblance of power is unions. That's the reason unions are protected.

Unions want to change the world. They just want to change it in a way that leaves the Musks of the world with less money. Don't be confused, this isn't about "change the world" vs. stagnation, it's about the spoils.

You cannot change the world alone, that’s an infantile Randian fantasy.

You need help from other people to succeed.

You don’t need to be an absolute despot to achieve even the most ambitious goal. Look at NASA and what they manage.

I didn't say alone. I'm saying leave people alone. They have options to go work for a different company.

The only thing of note NASA has done in the last 40 years is outsource to SpaceX

NASA sort of is against your point right? the Apollo program had lots of deaths and accidents and unsafe working conditions but it went to the moon. Maybe NASA now has good working conditions and employees have dignity but they haven't done anything nearly as impressive to the wider public

Fun thing is that Ayn Rand did allegedly heavily rely on other people: "Ayn Rand Was A Needy Parasite (And Why You Should Follow Her Lead)" https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelschein/2019/01/24/ayn-ra...

I don’t see the kind of utopian equilibrium you are describing manifest itself anywhere.

The central question is how do you prevent a race to the bottom? And I just don’t see that manifesting itself if abolish labor rights (which to me seems to be what you are advocating for).

People already don’t have a lot of choice when it comes to their employer. How will you make sure that there are enough jobs for people "want(ing) to go slow"? (Toilet breaks, overtime that is actually paid, parental leave, reasonable limits on work time, ergonomic and safe work places, unlimited and paid sick leave, a reasonable amount of vacation time, i.e. more than a month, etc. This is all standard where I’m from and unions help enforce this.)

What part of moving fast requires treating employees like shit? (Where my definition of treating like shit is not having any of the things listed above in brackets?)

You bring up some interesting points, but I respectfully disagree.

Companies are subject to the scrutiny of customers, shareholders, the stock market and a highly competitive job market. This creates a level of democratic accountability that, in my opinion, exceeds even that of Scandinavian countries.

As a Tesla employee, I have many options regardless of my talent or leverage, unlike when I don't like my country's policies where my choices are limited.

> Companies are subject to the scrutiny of customers, shareholders, the stock market and a highly competitive job market. This creates a level of democratic accountability that, in my opinion, exceeds even that of Scandinavian countries.

Democratic accountability to the investors and owners of capital, sure, but not to the employees (the subject at hand) or society (what a "Scandinavian country" would be focused on).

If a visionary organization is brought to its knees by giving bathroom breaks to workers, then it probably deserves to be replaced by another organization that is more competent at executing on that same vision.

Ya, that keystroke monitoring software that the young lady talked about was rather cringe.

Yes. There is never a situation in which unionization is “unreasonable”. To say otherwise is to allow businesses to have near unchecked leverage over their workers.

Allow me to pose a respectful question: Who holds the unions responsible for their actions?

Is it justifiable to deprive those of us who contribute exceptional value of our right to negotiate?

Your tone is respectful but your questions don't really make any sense to me. The company and the government hold unions responsible, they are not all-powerful and often much less powerful than the company. No, it is not justifiable to deprive you of your rights, and fortunately unions can't do that.

If they are not powerful, why can they shut down schools and the corporations they are a part of?

They are powerful but not unaccountable. Every time a union strikes they use up some of their power, both with the general public and their members (who want to work!).

In the case of many public unions they are legislatively prevented from striking.

The idea that unions are the ones with significant leverage over their employers in this day and age is baffling. Just look at the railroad workers who got manhandled by a Democratic government!

You're trolling. But I'll humour you for a minute.

Because they are employees. if enough employees of any organisation stop working, the organisation shuts down.

And whether you like them or not, they provide a feedback loop. Otherwise bad organisations whither away as good workers leave and bad workers stay.

There are plenty of non-union workers who would gladly replace them but the union wouldn't allow that. Why so?

Because of the power imbalance.

If there are not enough jobs in the area and not enough capital to kickstart businesses, the people in that area are in a situation where something is better than nothing. So a corporation can come in, offer below subsistence wages and the people will feel as if they have no other option. It's not what the labor is technically worth because the value produced by the labor far exceeds the wage given to the laborer.

Individual laborers have no power to fix this. The employer can fire them and exploit the next desperate person. They can even cycle through back to the original person as they get more desperate.

Collectively, the laborers can do something. They can redress the balance between laborer and owner. But only as a collective. The minute the individuals are allowed to operate independently, the old system reasserts itself.

Stop carrying water for people who won't even allow you a drink for your efforts.

You really like sealioning don't you?

Practically every comment you've made on this site is a sealioned question.

For those that don't know what it is, here's a primer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

I don't really see any good faith questioning in your comment history. At all.

They aren't "a part of" schools and corporations, they are the schools and corporations. It is obvious why 90% of an organization can make a decision to shut it down. When unions are smaller and don't constitute such a large portion of an organization, as will be the case with Tesla, they are not able to shut it down.

With all due respect, I'm at a loss of words, so please excuse the term: You appear to be thoroughly brainwashed. A worker's union protects you, as an employee, from overreaching corporations. It is held accountable by laws. They don't deprive you of your rights, but holds corporations accountable for doing so.

A union does not protect you by default. In fact, their actions might endanger you if it runs counter to the continuation of the company's mission.

Companies are already held accountable by law, so you do not need a union to do that, either.

What a union actually is? A competing power structure within a company, and op questions whether such a thing is reasonable in this case.

You did not answer but instead tried to try to brainwash op by shaming them into accepting your essentialization of unions as something good in all cases.

Holding companies accountable via the law does not work, because there is a fundamental imbalance: People compete for good jobs, so they are willing to accept a certain amount of injustice, which gets larger the fewer jobs there are. Employers know this, and use it against you: You can't do anything against it on your own, because they will simply hire someone else.

Unions in turn fight this by representing a lot of employees, so the employer cannot simply ignore them. The have fought bitterly for humane conditions, a 40 hour work week, and abolished child labor. You might call this overly dramatic, but that's where you get if you let corporations run free (remember those news stories about child labor in Texas lately?).

A "company's mission" doesn't mean shit if it doesn't even treat its employees like human beings. If you want to be a good slave, have it your way - but stop characterising unions as somehow evil.

How do unions protect non union members? Tesla could hire non union workers but would the union allow them?

By creating an environment of respect in employment terms. In a word, inertia. There is a reason employment contracts with greater than 40 hours a week are almost unheard of. Union blood was spilled to bring it down to that.

It's unreasonable, (and depending on the jurisdiction, illegal), for corporations to make a difference between unionised and un-unionised workers. So by promoting improvements for their members, they promote improvements for all employees.

Why is it unreasonable? There are plenty of auto manufacturers in right to work states who do just that. Why shouldn't anyone be allowed to work for Tesla in Buffalo regardless if they want to be a part of a union or not?

> Is it justifiable to deprive those of us who contribute exceptional value of our right to negotiate?

I can't think of an explanation for this question that isn't grounded in fantasy.

You should look up either Stockholm Syndrome or Battered Wife Syndrome.

Union members hold the union leadership responsible for the actions of the union through elections.

You hold organizations accountable by "voting with your feet". In this case, you find a different employer.

Thats what happens. And all the good workers leave the organization. Leaving the deadbeats.

Do your employers force you to work for them?

Unless you're addicted to the bloated tech sector, its not real hard to find a well paying job elsewhere.

Generally if it's just a fraction of employees, you're not going to get significant change. Once a union appears, it's no longer just a fraction of employees you're talking about.

More generally: how should employees effect change at their organisation? Especially when treated unreasonably?

> how should employees effect change at their organisation

Vote with your feet: quit

So if your company has a bus factor of one it's perfectly fine if the company takes illegal actions to ensure that employee can't quit or take vacations if it would bring the company to its knees?

Absolutely. Workers are free to boycott just like customers, employers are free to fire and hire. Its a battle, everything is ok.

> Its a battle, everything is ok.

Have you heard of the Geneva Convention?

Sure, in battle it's ok to come to a mutual agreement with your foe about how you'll conduct that battle.

That said, "unionizing" is not battle. Nor does the Geneva convention apply to civil wars.

Regrettably, this is not accurate. The law restricts employers from dismissing employees who seek to unionize and effect change in the company's direction.

I hesitate to elaborate further, as the specifics are likely to attract scrutiny or censure.

Yes. Luckily, the law prevents overreaching employers from firing employees that insist on their rights. The alternative is a return to 18th century factory conditions, and I'm sure even you don't want that.

A company is never on your side.

What do you make of the history of corporate actions that led to unions in the first place?

> Its a battle, everything is ok.

Is it called "free matket"?

Yes, you're absolutely right, it's ridiculous that 25 employees had to try and form a union in order to get toilet breaks. but here we are...

I, personally, don't see how a company full of galaxy-brained individuals and visionaries could stay operating if they had to make such massive changes to working conditions such as... allowing toilet breaks. I personally think you and I should form a union so that we can bargain for better access rights to Elon Musk's boots, they aren't going to lick themselves.

Nobody should give Musk the idea of locking the doors to prevent unauthorised breaks [1] because he might just think it's a good idea.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...

Elon promised a frozen yogurt stand and a roller coaster with a loop through the factory interchange for no unionization. Where are they?

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/musk-s...

Years later he promised them again earnestly in an interview with the Third Row podcast.

> By "bring to its knees," I mean imposing significant changes to the company's organizational structure and procedures.

Yes, indeed. Unionizing has to start somewhere, and people died barely a century ago [1] in their fight to have the right to unionize.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence_in_the_Uni...

Yes. There are no scenarios in which unionisation is not acceptable. Especially when your ultimate boss is the richest human on the planet.

Elon is free to fire these people "at will" thus bringing their ability to pay rent and bills to their knees.

or, find another employer of which, outside the bloated tech sector, there are plenty looking for employees, especially small businesses which have been begging for more help. If you're used to working for megacorp, try a small business where you get to know the owners

A company with galaxy brained individuals and visionaries should be able to allow workers to have bathroom breaks, and not be threatened by a union.

The idea that you really believe this is an issue really shows how tasty the koolaid is.

The siren song of cancel culture is impossible to resist. Imagine had you written that the employees were entitled or that they found out how capitalism and concept of ownership worked, the audacity! I wonder how hard the downvoters invest into mashing the downvote button.

Local news - https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/local/tesla-employees-anno...

These are data labellers... A union would probably not have helped them.

Imagine they all join a union... And they are all very unhappy and vote to go on strike... And they strike for many months...

Tesla will just send their data labelling workload to Mechanical Turk and it'll be done by people in India...

A union only has power if the company is hurt by a strike. And in this case, there is nothing beyond minor inconvenience.

>A union only has power if the company is hurt by a strike. And in this case, there is nothing beyond minor inconvenience.

So they're working in a horrible situation from a job security standpoint, and that should make them less want to organize? What would you suggest they do?

Why are they working at Tesla if they are in a "horrible situation"? There are plenty of other jobs in Buffalo.

Why are they not allowed to try to improve their "horrible" situation.

Corporations are allowed collective action but workers are not, seems kind of untenable.

> Tesla will just send their data labelling workload to Mechanical Turk and it'll be done by people in India...

If this approach is just as good, why not do it in the first place?

At a guess, they were given tax incentives for hiring americans based out of an american office...

This type of work isn't a good fit for being done by americans anyway.

So the workers do have leverage? You're arguing in both directions.

It's still illegal to fire them for unionizing

So give them all self-driving upgrades free of charge. problem solved.

I'm not really sure how to comment on a Union in 2023, to be frank. The history of collective bargaining is such an abstract concept to fight for, when most of the crowd here is all about power-of-one and force multipliers of disruption to create and generate revenue for new markets. By proxy, it's very definition of capitalism is realized almost making Unions irrelevant.

However, if anyone here has listening to https://www.audible.com/pd/Elon-Musk-Audiobook/B00UX8ODPM?qi... (Tesla's book by Ashley Vance), then you know about the Union busting that Elon did at the plant they purchased from Toyota.

I have no dog in this fight, but the way the Tesla plant has drained over $750M in tax payer dollars in breaks by the local IDA, the continued "quota" employment numbers and diversity promises, the Panasonic solar city borderline criminal activity, and lastly the equipment in the plant left unused and sold off at pennies of its worth just burns me.

Tesla feels like an absent landlord in Texas. As a resident of Buffalo - it doesn't surprise me, and frustrates me. However, as a capitalist and watching how Elon worked the state and federal government for loans/grants in the 100s of millions of dollars, makes me look on in awe.

Unions already tried to kill the auto industry once make sense they would try again in EV era

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015

I don't think they intentionally tried to kill the industry, as it was foreign production didn't have this problem of unions. Also the Japanese during the 70s had a lean six sigma type thing going on.

Little more complicated than Unions I think, that lead to the point we were at.

It just makes it that little harder to respond to market disruption.

Wire tap laws in a workplace setting are absolutely bullshit and intended to shield managers and companies from liability.

Should be exempt if you are recording racial/sexual harassment or illegal labor practice

NY is a one party state.

Right, although apparently you can make more restrictive workplace policies. Recording your employer (without sharing) should be a legal right.

California law bans recording without consent and explicitly says such recordings can’t be used as evidence in court. This applies in all settings except a few very narrow carveouts.

Organizers, say, on a zoom call with anyone in one of the 12 states requiring all parties to consent are committing a crime if they record.

This is one of those cases where some people like protections when they protect people they like and don’t like protections when they apply to people they don’t like.

Yes, I don't like sexual/racial harassment or illegal workplace conduct, so I don't think the laws should apply in these cases.

I don't think I get the point you are trying to make unless you are just describing wiretap laws to me.

Ok let’s turn that around, every other crime should get those protections from wiretapping outside of labor laws and sexual harassment? Why are those topics special?

I'm not an ardent socialist, but seeing this stuff happen time after time, makes me want to take everything the capitalist class has.

It's pretty hard to keep seeing major companies with insane pockets work together against their employees easily rid themselves of employees who want to meet them on a more level playing field by working together.

I am an ardent socialist, and seeing this kind of bullshit happen over and over and over again is how you become one.

As I'm not an expert on American Employment and Labour Union laws, does anyone with more experience know: is this not very likely to cause significant problems for Tesla with the NLRB?

It depends. If they were violating an existing corporate policy and got fired, there won’t be any problems for the company. Likewise if they were recording meetings with participants in California or one of the other states which require all parties to consent to recordings as those are explicitly crimes and Tesla could have the employees charged.

If the policy didn’t already exist there might be problems. You have to be squeaky clean in order to defend your job while trying to unionize in a company unfriendly to the idea.

Meanwhile half of HN happily holds indexed funds with TSLA equity, which makes them literally the owners of these actions.

is there a SPY with some bar to meet for ethics to be included?

That's what the whole ESG kerfuffle has been about. There are some funds that are "socially minded" that try to exclude cigarette manufacturers and other bad things. They're smaller and have a higher expense ratio than VTI.

I was going to post yesterday, jokingly, that this was the likely outcome.

And here we are.

Elon Musk is a small, thin skinned pathetic child.

I won't touch a Tesla or anything else associated with that fool.

Did you see something that said Elon directed these firings?

He owns the company, no?

This guy and his companies keep showing us what a terrible person he is yet people keep buying their cars and the government keeps subsidizing musks companies...

The guy is an asshat. The car ticks the right boxes for people, though. And why would you subject yourself to ant other phone app that barely works?

Living around one of Tesla's Gigafactories, I have lots of friends who have worked/do work there.

In the case of our gigafactory, there's horror stories not just inside (machines injuring people), but everyone I talk to specifically talks about the dangers of the commute. It's not super far from town, but the road there is almost entirely used for commuting to and from Tesla, and it's one of those highways where the average speed of traffic is minimum 30mph above the speed limit. Crashes can be seen weekly (daily in the winter) and it affects people. It's a factory, so people are driving there at like 5am and racing there to not be late (they're super strict). Tesla has tried to solve it by providing buses to the factory, but then you'd need to wake up at like 3:30-4am and get home later too.

Here in Sweden we solve that kind of problem with speed cameras that issue automatic speeding tickets…

Where I live they had those but the people running the cameras would snap the photos and stack them so you'd get 60 or 90 days of violations and then they would send them in a big stack so you wouldn't know until the last minute you even did anything wrong, and get all 90 at once. There was also the issue of due process, which means a process server ($$$) had to actually serve the person (who would probably hide and not answer the door) as just sending it in the mail isn't legally considered served.

The other issue is for them to mean anything beyond a civil penalty against the car, you need to show who the driver was and give the public a chance to face their accuser. So people just started driving to work with ski masks, etc and if actually caught would demand a representative from the photo company actually show up in court.

In the off chance you actually were found guilty after all that (process server actually got to you, proved it was your face, accuser actually showed up in court, no technicality was found, and on and on) then the city had to spend practically half the fine money on royalty/maintenance fees to the companies running the camera (the city doesn't have the expertise to do all that on their own). You can imagine the anger and resentment that caused amongst the populace about sending their money away to some for-profit black hole.

It is so abused and fucked up system from so many angles at least where I live it was voted out.

Every single one of these problems is solvable by a society who actually cares to make roads safe.

But fundamentally you just have a bunch of assholes who think arriving literal MINUTES earlier to something is worth putting their own and dozens/hundreds of strangers’ lives at risk.

There are no speed cameras on the highways though. But on principle, Sweden does it best with the cameras. Before the camera, there is warning sign that gives you plenty of time to slow down(unless you are seriously speeding) which makes much more sense than hidden cameras IMHO. It makes people slow down at dangerous spots on the road, which is the whole point with the cameras right?

Why is having to show up to work on time a horror story? I don't get it, especially if Tesla commissioned busses to pick people up.

Serious injuries from machines is much more concerning, however.

Auto accidents are extremely serious. Wasn't that originally one of the arguments for why you should invest in Tesla? Because they will supposedly, one day, have cars that drive themselves safely?

But now that you completely punctured that thought bubble in my head with your incisive comment, I guess they are no big deal. They can all pack it up and liquidate.

What's different about this Tesla factory that people speeding on the highway leading to it are attributable to the factory? I don't see anything different from any other place where people are speeding to get there on time. Put police there. This is not Tesla's fault in any way.

> they're super strict

that's literally every factory ever, I really don't see how commuting is Tesla's problem, and I've never heard of a factory offering a bus service to employees, an amazing employee benefit that's usually reserved to highly paid tech workers who live around their company's HQ city

>I really don't see how commuting is Tesla's problem,

Well, we can clearly see why Tesla is unlikely to pull a Toyota ever in the Quality department then.

Over past year I've watched my partner switch from wanting a Tesla to wanting a Polestar 2. The decision is based entirely on Tesla's brand image and it's things like this and Elon posting on twitter that just keep doing it damage. It's difficult to boycott Amazon but it is not difficult to boycott Tesla, do they not understand their customer base cares about this sort of thing? Or is it not doing actual damage to the brand?

For me, Tesla's brand impression is more favorable than Amazon. I don't give either one of them any money though. I would consider buying from Tesla though. This particular news story doesn't strike me as being particularly significant. At least in a way I understand. I have a pretty loose understanding of what union stuff is all about.

Oh they understand it - you saw the massive price drop right?

Do you also boycott other brands for worse crimes than shitposting on twitter? Is it more important to boycott Tesla because of Elon than it is to boycott Geely, which owns the Polestar brand, which has been linked to forced Uyghur labor in Xinjiang?

https://www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale

I think s***posting on Twitter is a huge undersatement, what Elon has done on Twitter is un-ban right-wing and hate speech people. He has made the world significatly more full of hate. That is not s***posting.

The citation on your post about Geely is a "data is based on supplier lists" so I think we can take it from a different perspective:

So what is worse imo? What are we weighing up here? Tesla vs Polestar. Elon making the world more full of hate vs Geely having suppliers on this list. If I had to pick one of those two, it would still easily be Polestar.

No, I do not think I will boycott Geely based on this, I will contact them and see if they can clear their act up. I hope Nintendo and Nike do too on that list. I cannot forgive or get over the damage Elon has done.

> He has made the world significatly more full of hate

This is demonstrably false. Hate speech impressions and the number of tweets containing slurs are lower than they were pre-acquisition. He has actively reduced it. The TwitterSafety account provides this data.

Also if you're upset at Twitter for not censoring perspectives counter to the typical American left, are you also going to boycott Facebook, Youtube, WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc? Virtually all of these platforms host far-right influencers. Are you going to boycott ISPs for providing service to these people? Boycott Apple for selling them iPhones? These companies all have the same choice and ability to refuse services to these people. Why is only Elon the bad guy here?

Also, good to know where you stand. Letting Ben Shapiro post stupid shit on twitter is worse than literal slavery imposed on a group of people for their religious beliefs. Stay classy, HN.

I'm sorry I've no idea who Ben Shapiro is, could you go into a little detail here please? I'm from the UK so I'm not sure what's going on over there, Elon's reach does come here though because Twitter is global.

Edit - I showed my partner your messages and he said it's a moot point because the Tesla doesn't have Car Play, so even if Elon started acting nice he still wouldn't get the Tesla until Car Play is supported. The Polestar 2 does have Car Play.

Isn't this just blatantly illegal? Not an American, but I was under the impression that it was federally illegal to fire employees for organizing.

That's why you fire them for being 15 seconds late when coming back from break. Or give no reason at all.

It turns out that they weren't as important of employees after all. Tesla was underpaying them anyway so this is ultimately a good thing for people who were working below market rate because they liked the company.

Not being able to unionize is an aberration of capitalism. In my country unions do exist and albeit being soemwhat outdated now on some fronts, they are the main reason behind huge advancements in worker wellbeing.