[telaelit]

I wish the NRLB would be much harsher against business owners and executives who engage in anti-union rhetoric and behaviors. People have the right to form unions, lying about losing benefits and lowering pay should be handled much more harshly, there should be actual penalties instead of just having to read a statement and delete a tweet.

[cwhiz]

I disagree. It should be a free market. If the employees don’t like their treatment they should leave and take a different job. I am sure there is a UAW job out there to be had.

The most likely outcome from this is that Tesla moves more and more production out of a California and into a more business friendly state, such as Texas.

[ausbah]

calling it a free market is laughable naive. the market is lopsided in favor of businesses because many laws at the state and federal are explicitly pro-business and anti-union; see "right to work laws", the 1947 Taft-Harley act, etc. - especially over the past 20 years

and saying workers should just go and join a union backed job is even sillier when <15% of all full time workers are apart of a union [1]

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

[lukejduncan]

Right to work is pro employee. If unions want membership they shouldn’t be able to coerce it. They should have to earn it and compete for it. If a union can’t survive based on voluntary membership then that tells you something.

[ausbah]

it is the state infringing in the market on the side of business and capital by restricting the ability of workers to collectively bargain with employers

workers are less well off but it's ok because "individualism"

[lukejduncan]

No one is being restricted from bargaining collectively. They’re just being given the choice to opt out. Unions just get upset because they lose their monopoly status to police workers voices who disagree with their position and politics.

[cwhiz]

Right to work is only anti union because it allows employees to choose whether or not to join a union. Forcing an employee to join a union is absolutely not pro-employee.

[CryptoPunk]

Right to work is not pro-business. It simply reduces some of the extra-contractual powers that labor laws give unions.

These laws are violating the right of business to freely contract, while reducing the opportunity for those who don't have unionized jobs to compete for those jobs. So Right to Work is anti-'exploitation of businesses and outside workers'.

[joppy]

So in a "free" market, one side has all the bargaining power and the other side has none of it? What does a free market mean to you?

[cwhiz]

It means the employees can choose to leave and choose whether they want to join a union.

[whimsicalism]

In the free market, should businesses not be able to freely agree to a contract? Most anti-union laws limit the types of contracts private actors are able to voluntarily consent to, which seems less of a "free market."

[jmjanzen]

Spreading democracy to the workforce does not make the market less "free." It just makes it easier to manipulate by the few.

[cwhiz]

Democracy in the workforce would be giving employees an option to join a union, or not.

[anoncake]

No, that is not democracy. Democratic decisions, by definition, are made by multiple people together.

[cwhiz]

What you’re describing is much closer to tyranny.

[anoncake]

The hell? Any decisions that involve more than one person involve tyranny?

[joshuamorton]

Or Alabama? Which would never get a union...

Unions are an aspect of a free market. They're an organization of individuals with a common goal in exactly the same way corporations are.

[missedthecue]

Unions are anti-free market. They are monopoly cartels protected by the federal government. If people who sell peanut butter joined together to sell their products at a higher price, the DOJ would bust them up. If people who sell labor join together to do the same type of rent seeking, congress sets up the NLRB to protect them.

[joshuamorton]

A company is, last I checked, free to reject the union entirely and fire everyone (if they strike).

Not to mention your argument should be that cartels should be legal, not that unions should not be.

[missedthecue]

You may want to check again. A company cannot refuse to bargain with the union, and strikers cannot be fired while on strike.

[joshuamorton]

They can however be replaced, in which case the company doesn't need to rehire the striking workers. Potato/potato.

That's not true if the company is in violation of an existing contract though, then the company is breaking the law and must rehire everyone, but I'll reiterate: they're breaking the law to begin with.

[Ericson2314]

This free market you speak of is in fact fairly sensitive to initial conditions, and will never reconcile the interests of the rich and poor on its own.

[jellicle]

I'm glad to hear you are calling for employees to be able to freely form a union and strike (which employees are mostly banned from doing today).

[kevinmchugh]

The NLRB has jurisdiction in Texas

[URSpider94]

Where, exactly, are people who live in the SF Bay Area going to find a UAW job?

[londons_explore]

I mean the quote about options is probably true. It just means employees won't be given any more options.

Unionised workers typically get no or very few stock options compared to industries with no unionisation.

[oivey]

Unionized workers get what they negotiate for. Given how tech works, a Tesla union very well could demand options. It is absolutely false that unionization precludes employees getting options.

[londons_explore]

Except they usually don't... Unionized industries tend to be adversarial - if the employees get a better deal, then the employer does less well. Therefore receiving options is a poor negotiation tactic.

[astrange]

Only in the US setup. Europe uses codetermination and other systems that align them with their employers. Although they tend to get paid less than US tech companies, but so does everyone.

[weyland108]

What ? Seems like I am better of without a union if I am getting more pay?. Also where is the conversation around building a better product to add more value in this union debate?

[sofixa]

You're getting more pay for a wild variety of reasons ( VC inflation, a lot of things that pay has to compensate for, etc.), nothing to do with unions.

In France, it's mandatory for companies with more than 50 employees to have workers council and that has to be consulted on serious decisions ( changing offices, firing people, layoffs, etc.) and has some limited negotiation power. They negotiate company-wide policies (accord) on behalf of the employees that have to be at least as good as the branch-wide policies ( convention collective) - e.g. all workers in media companies get 20 days extra vacation because that's what the branch collective bargaining agreement says.

Furthermore, oftentimes ( sometimes it's mandatory), there are profit sharing schemes, e.g in my company 1% of the profits is shared among the employees, so your incentives are directly aligned with the company ( it comes to around a salary's worth of a bonus, so it's decent).

[DaedPsyker]

We are all paid less than in the US, union or not. In the UK, its mostly older industries that are covered by unions these days.

I think the google and microsoft staff have been trying to create the first tech oriented one though.

[astrange]

> Seems like I am better of without a union if I am getting more pay?

Correlation is not causation (they are in different industries.)

> Also where is the conversation around building a better product to add more value in this union debate?

That's what "codetermination" is. European branches of US tech companies do have works councils, which are like mini-codetermination.

[dnautics]

for behaviours, yes, but for rhetoric, you're toeing a very dangerous line up against the 1st amendment.

[ear7h]

The 1st amendment does not and should not apply to business matters. You don't even need to look far from the subject matter, Musk has gotten in trouble before over misleading tweets. I don't see anyone bring up the first amendment when discussing corporate fraud. Why is it that executives can be accountable to shareholders but not workers?

[dnautics]

"does not and should not apply to business matters" The problem is this: At what point does something become a "business matter"? And yes, I have opined that the SEC is playing with fire and possibly sowing the seeds of its own irrelevance with it's threats to musk.

[emteycz]

Because the workers don't own the company. Accountability to shareholders is built upon ownership.

[eecc]

Hey let’s not make it a freedom of speech issue. If you speak the words “if you what I dislike I’ll beat you up” you’re not asserting a 1A right, you’re just a bully

[cma]

In the end I think courts will say the promised anti-union rollercoaster and yogurt complexes must be built. Fraudulent promises as part of commerce and labor negotiation are excluded from protection under pretty much every interpretation of the 1st amendment out there.

https://elonmusk.today/#frozen-yogurt-rollercoasters

[dnautics]

IANAL, but if it's not in writing, I believe you have to prove that musk never intended to deliver, and that's gonna be hard to prove. Otherwise you can nail people down to a few hundred prosecutable offenses a year and that is not a recipe for social success when there are sufficient numbers of vindictive jerks around.

[pseudalopex]

The article said it was in an email.

[whimsicalism]

? Not at all. I'm not quite sure why people on HN think the 1st amendment is such a golden bullet, but it is not. There are lots of exceptions, including threatened retaliation, to what might be permissibly said in the workplace.

If, for instance, as you were hiring people, you told them "we don't hire black people", even if you did hire black people, you would still be opening yourself up to suit, even with freedom of speech.

[pmiller2]

It's not "free" speech when the audience is being coerced into hearing it.

Before you say it, yes, the workers are being coerced. The implicit threat is that they will lose their jobs if they don't listen to the employer's anti-union rhetoric.

"Oh, but they can just quit and not be forced to listen to it," you say? Well, no, the average American worker can't afford to just walk away from a job. Thus, it's coercion.

[pmiller2]

Would somebody like to explain how a job is a "free association" for people who may not be able to cover a $400 expense without borrowing money? Or are we just interested in hitting that down arrow hard enough to make it all go away?

[fastball]

Isn't the entire point of a union to give you negotiating leverage?

If you need the government to effectively do the negotiating for you by levying fines and such whenever the company goes against the union, what exactly is the point of the union?

[kelnos]

The problem is that collective action is difficult before you have the union, and companies/executives have a lot of power to dissuade people from forming unions. In the past that's involved physical threats and actual violence. Nowadays I expect it's more posturing and economic threats, but they can still have the desired effect.

The point of these sorts of laws is to give unions a fighting chance to take hold in places where employees want them, but are afraid of retaliation if they tried to form one.

[foerbert]

Huh?

Don't roads exist to facilitate vehicle transportation? If you need to do construction in order to make roads, what exactly is the point of them?

I don't understand what your thinking here is. You're comparing the expected results of a thing existing with possible actions to facilitate conditions for that thing to exist. Why are these supposed to be somehow equivalent or comparable?

[s1artibartfast]

I think their point is that the American form of unionization is bunk. If you look to Europe workers are free to choose between many associations of voluntary unions which advocate for their specific interests. They are not forced to have a single representative for negotiations with their employer and are free to abstain from of participation as well.Much like the American voting system and American Congress, unions are winner take all majority rule. If you are in the minority of a union it may not advocate for your interest and you have no option to turn to.

[mola]

American mentality embraces zero sum game as the only possibilty, so the end game is usually bad but stable results.

[pjc50]

The term for this is "closed shop".

I've no idea why the US unions tend to be closed-shop, possibly because the high antagonism from employers makes it the only stable solution.

[Frondo]

The Taft-Hartley Act banned closed shops in 1947:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_shop#United_States

It's literally the first line of that section.

[pjc50]

So why are so many people in this thread complaining about "having" to join a union?

[foerbert]

I don't see how that could be their point. They said nothing about multiple unions, nor is the article in any way related to it.

[fastball]

I guess I don't understand the bad behavior here. Tesla is allowed to not give anything they want to unionized workers.

If you want to force companies to capitulate to unions, cut out the middleman and just force companies to give things directly to workers.

[foerbert]

This isn't about any actual negotiation though. This is about a public statement aimed at discouraging even attempting to unionize. This is well before the point where the union and company would be negotiating.

I think it makes a lot of sense to regulate this kind of activity. It's not about forcing companies to 'give in' or not to unions, but about helping to protect the ability for the union to form in the first place.

We can argue forever about how much company statements might influence the ability for unions to form, but at the end of the day the actual regulation here is basically just stopping the company from setting up their own strawmen in hopes of influencing workers. Naturally, it's very easy to talk tough when you're just pretending to negotiate against yourself. Not doing this seems like a pretty mild restriction, so I don't think it's a particularly onerous regulation.

[URSpider94]

The workers aren’t unionized yet. What the law is clear about, is that you’re not allowed to threaten workers for the act of trying to unionize the workplace.

[sokoloff]

“We give our workers stock options now. We do not expect to do so under a union contract.”

I don’t see that as “threatening workers”, but as a reasonable communication between employer and employees and a proper counterbalance against union claims that the workers will be better off if they unionize.

“We give our workers stock options now. No other automaker working under a union contract does so.” is something that I don't think anyone could reasonably find as threatening (even I don't think the first one is either, some may).

As an employee, I benefit from more information from both sides of the issue rather than having the union organizers be able to communicate unfettered and the company communications be restricted from pointing out any possible or foreseeable downsides.

[foerbert]

That's real easy to say when there isn't a union yet. And the company has zero incentive to give any kind of realistic and useful information in this situation. They can say whatever they want, and it doesn't mean anything. They don't even know what the non-existent union will want or care about later, so how they can have any accurate expectations even if they are perfectly rational and honest. The only purpose these statements serve is to try to prevent unionization.

Part of why this is not a simple "both sides" issue is because we're talking about one side that exists and one side that might one day exist. The non-extant union can't weigh in on company statements or make any statements of their own.

So these rules exist to help ensure the workers are not unduly influenced by the company when they consider making that union finally exist. I don't see a problem with this.

[URSpider94]

First of all, that’s not what Elon said. He said something to the effect of “why do you want to join a union and lose stock options?” Just like someone who approaches you on a dark street and says “nice car, wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.” Of course, when you call the police, he’s going to explain that he genuinely appreciates a fine automobile and was expressing his concern given the troubles in the neighborhood.

Musk has a significant say in whether employees continue to receive options, and I can’t see why the union would ask to take that away, given that options are presumably very popular with their members.

Saying that life will get worse with a union is one thing. Saying that it will get worse because I will make it worse is another.

[mola]

They're not allowed to threaten employees who want to unionize. They may refuse to give options.

[URSpider94]

Actually, they can’t. The judge ruled that saying so represented an illegal threat, and the NLRB concurred. It’s been decided by law.

[URSpider94]

The union doesn’t exist yet at their site. The government provides the guarantee of a fair election on whether to unionize, free of threats from either management or the union. Once the site is unionized, the union can indeed defend itself by negotiating with management.

[cma]

I guess businesses don't need the government laws enforcing shareholder voting rights and minority shareholder protections then right?

[fastball]

No absolutely the government should enforce legal agreements via the legal system.

But that's not what this is suggesting, right? This is suggesting the government should treat unions preferentially, not equitably.

[tsimionescu]

No, this is suggesting that government should enforce workers' rights to decide freely if they want to unionize. Companies routinely skirt this right by taking explicit anti-unionization efforts, and there are many firms specializing in this.

[fastball]

What is required for "free" decision-making?

[tsimionescu]

Making sure no one is strong arming or threatening, harassing, or bribing the ones who have to make that decision, nor thought leaders among them.

[whimsicalism]

> This is suggesting the government should treat unions preferentially, not equitably.

Equity is in the eye of the beholder. I don't see how this law is treating unions preferentially, and am interested in how you distinguish it with the aforementioned minority shareholder protections.

[fastball]

The idea here seems to be that unions can interfere with the running of a business however they want (strikes, etc), but businesses should not be allowed to "interfere" with the formation of union, where "interfere" seems to be a very low bar in terms of what is unacceptable.

When I say equitable treatment, I'm looking for symmetry, and I'm not seeing it here.

[cma]

Seems like you are saying owners of small businesses can get together and collude under a combined business, with shares and voting, but individual workers must be atomized or if they do try to coordinate to bargain against the businesses, they get no similar help to do so as the shareholders get.

[alkonaut]

The governments role should be to ensure a level playing field between employers and labor. That means the government at a minimum needs to protect those who want to organize.