And Tesla should be allowed every opportunity to stop them.
I guess Tesla broke the law in this case, but I do not really agree with the ruling and the law. Musk should be allowed to present the possible downsides.
>>We've tried this. People died over it. We enacted laws to prevent it from happening, so that labor can stand on equal ground with capital.
This is simply not true, except in the most pedantic and disingenuous sense.
There were violent strikes by some groups of unionized workers, that broke the law, and that resulted in some deaths, if that's what you're referring to. There is absolutely no reason this thuggery should have been rewarded by giving the strikers what they demanded, which was the abrogation of the company owners' private property and contracting rights.
As it happened, US industry, and with it US wages, grew much faster before society gave into the unions, when the US was still a free market where people had a sacred right to freely contract.
Mostly I wanted to give a bit more historic context. Japan is arguably a more productive economy and a better place to live than India, and Pseudoerasmus suggests that this is at least partly because labour was not able to mount as effective a defense as in India.
India's GDP per capita is about 1.9k USD. The number for Japan is about 40k USD.
So even in the hypothetical world where Indian labour would somehow be so strong it would capture 100% of GDP, that would still be only about 10% of what Japanese workers get.
Now, of course, any nuanced argument will take into account that labour suppression wasn't the only difference between Japan and India.
But the important thing is that this shifts the context of the argument: instead of a knee-jerk attitude of 'unions are obviously good for workers in the long run', we have some more explaining to do.
(With sufficient mental gymnastics, you might stil be able to argue that unions and strong labour in general is good for standard of living. But at least now you have to engage in that gymnastics.)
> But Tesla could outright refuse under any circumstances to give stock options to unionized employees, no?
Not sure what the laws are. There might be laws saying that you can't discriminate against people in unions, so in order not to hand stock options to unionized employees, they might have to withhold stock options from all employees?
> But Tesla could outright refuse under any circumstances to give stock options to unionized employees, no?
I mean yes. And then a union could strike. At which point elon would have a decision to make: is proving a dumb point worth his business?
> Also FWIW Musk clarified
Presumably on lawyers advice.
> no UAW employees have stock options at any other company.
But that,as others have explained, isn't relevant. Nothing stops the Tesla union from maintaining those perks, and options aren't valuable at most auto companies anyway, so aiming for different perks is superior.
Is the implication here stock options are only offered to labor when its in a weak bargaining position because otherwise they could be demanding something more valuable?
Stock options are offered to people who are ready, willing and able to work harder or smarter in response to potential ownership. These are INDIVIDUAL contributions.
When a direct relationship exists between the parties, this is a possibility. When there is a third party dictating what happens, this is much less realistic.
Tesla is a publicly traded company. It's relatively easy to put a market value on their stock options.
> [...] because otherwise they could be demanding something more valuable?
Like twice as many stock options? I'm a bit confused. Stock options are fungible. You can make granting of stock options worth arbitrary many dollars, by eg increasing the volume or lowering the strike price etc.
Just a guess but union contracts typically fix compensation for a given role and seniority. So every role would get the same number of options. Not having control over how many options are granted (linking to performance) may mean the company doesn’t have much incentive to grant them to union members.
We've tried this. People died over it. We enacted laws to prevent it from happening, so that labor can stand on equal ground with capital.