Tesla fired more than 30 employees who were involved in a union organizing effort at its Buffalo NY plant.

TESLA CEO Elon Musk has been open about his opposition to union activity at his workplaces. In 2021 Tesla was ordered by the National Labor Relations Board to make Musk delete a 2018 tweet in which it said that he unlawfully threatened employees with loss of stock options if they chose to be represented by the UAW.

[thehill.com]

This is yet another reason that I will not consider a Tesla, nor reinvest in company stock. My father was a founding member of the United Auto Workers, taking part in the 1937 sitdown strike. I owe it to his memory.

---

“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

The German word for contraceptive is “Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel”. By the time you finished saying that, it’s too late

He's a real life Tony Stank.

---

Ways to improve web conference image and sound quality. [forums.macresource.com]


Phony Stark's Robot



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2023 07:36PM by pRICE cUBE.

Quote
Ombligo
Tesla fired more than 30 employees who were involved in a union organizing effort at its Buffalo NY plant.

TESLA CEO Elon Musk has been open about his opposition to union activity at his workplaces. In 2021 Tesla was ordered by the National Labor Relations Board to make Musk delete a 2018 tweet in which it said that he unlawfully threatened employees with loss of stock options if they chose to be represented by the UAW.

[thehill.com]

This is yet another reason that I will not consider a Tesla, nor reinvest in company stock. My father was a founding member of the United Auto Workers, taking part in the 1937 sitdown strike. I owe it to his memory.

---

=wr=

So I'm pro-union, but at the moment I'm skeptical of both sides in this one. Supposedly these guys were not fired for their union organizing activities:



[twitter.com]

Tesla has released a new blog post in response to the false allegations that it terminated employees in response to a new union campaign.

Tesla conducts performance review cycles every six months (July & December). This included information noting that exits for low performers would start the week of February 12, 2023. Approximately 4% of the employees on the Autopilot labeling team in Buffalo were exited as a result of this performance review cycle. The employees let go as part of this process received prior feedback on their poor performance from their managers over the course of the review period. Despite feedback, they did not demonstrate sufficient improvement. The impacted employees were identified on February 3, 2023, which was well before the union campaign was announced.

[www.tesla.com]

There is a false allegation that Tesla terminated employees in response to a new union campaign. These are the facts behind the event:

-Tesla conducts performance review cycles every six months. Employees receive a performance rating from 1 to 5 in each cycle that helps them calibrate their work with the expectations of their job. In the worst case, if an employee fails to meet their performance expectations they will be let go.

-This review process takes place globally, including in North America, Europe, China, etc. It is not localized to Buffalo.

-The most recent performance review cycle was from July 2022 through December 2022. On December 13th, 2022, managers across the company received a communication regarding the review schedule. This included information noting that exits for low performers would start the week of February 12, 2023.

-Approximately 4% of the employees on the Autopilot labeling team in Buffalo were exited as a result of this performance review cycle. The employees let go as part of this process received prior feedback on their poor performance from their managers over the course of the review period. Despite feedback, they did not demonstrate sufficient improvement.

-The impacted employees were identified on February 3, 2023, which was well before the union campaign was announced. We became aware of organizing activities approximately 10 days later. We learned in hindsight that one out of the 27 impacted employees officially identified as part of the union campaign. This exercise pre-dated any union campaign.

-The labeling team in Buffalo, NY has been growing over the last several months at an average rate of around 10 employees a week. Over the last 6 months, the department's employee base has grown 54%, from 437 employees to 675 employees as of the beginning of this week.

-The reason there is time monitoring for image labeling is to improve the ease of use of our labeling software. Since its purpose is to calculate how long it takes to label an image, there is nothing to be gained by delaying bathroom breaks. The claim that Tesla pressures employees to do so is categorically false.

I take Tesla's post with many grains of salt. Too many corporations have manipulated the review process to eliminate union organizers before, during, and after organizing events. You could do a copy and paste from many previous examples of this and see how they show up in this release.

and the employees claim they had good performance evaluations until they began organizing.

Given Musk's treatment of employees at Twitter, you will forgive me if I'm skeptical of management claims.

---

“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

The German word for contraceptive is “Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel”. By the time you finished saying that, it’s too late

Quote
JoeH
Too many corporations have manipulated the review process to eliminate union organizers before, during, and after organizing events.

Yes, I agree, I've seen this before.

So, am I reading this correctly? The article from The Hill refers to multiple union organizers, but Tesla's blog post only refers to one?

Should have made the Subject line "Tesla cans union organizers."

I got as far as Tesla fires and I thought of something totally different.

---

e pluribus unum

Is that illegal?

Quote
samintx
Is that illegal?

yes, but that never stops companies from doing it.

---

“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

The German word for contraceptive is “Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel”. By the time you finished saying that, it’s too late

Quote
Ombligo

Quote
samintx
Is that illegal?

yes, but that never stops companies from doing it.

Yep, corporate anti-union lobbyists have done a good job over the last 40-50 years weakening the laws and regulations protecting union organizing. The changes have made it very difficult to bring a legal case against a company doing this, and if they do get fined the amount is so low that companies consider it a cost of doing business.

The "performance review" is one of the many dodges companies use. No requirement they be based on verifiable quantitative measures, so they can be subject to misuse to get rid of any persons known to be connected to organizing for a union.

The one thing I've learned is to wait for independent reporting on Tesla. At least the OP declares their bias in the post, which I actually appreciate.

On the other hand, it's not hard to imagine several things being true at the same time.

1) Performance appraisals at Tesla are well-documented. They usually make it clear to the workers that they are not a good fit and encourage them to become self-aware and then leave voluntarily. The work culture at Tesla is not for everyone for sure.

2) Given the clear performance review data, one can imagine some employees on this list being motivated to join a unionization effort. Why not? Not a lot to lose. If the union forms, they will have protection. If not, they can claim being fired under the umbrella of union-busting.

3) Tesla could ALSO be doing union-busting. All they need is one example that is lily-white clean of someone on a poor performance list to provide cover to fire more. Giving them an umbrella AGAINST nefarious allegations.

So there you have it - both sides having mixed motivations, and maybe even more than two. I haven't added in political polarization especially given this is in NY.

On a personal note, I think our country would be better off with more unions in many parts of society. And even eventually with Tesla once they have their manufacturing down to 'standard' jobs that can be celarly defined (that is just not how they operate right now, however). I think the union-busting by Amazon and Apple are actually bad for the country - and actually bad for those companies in the long-run. Could I see Tesla following their methods? Yes.

Finally, as the OP listed their biases, I will share mine - I am an entrepreneur, and I own Tesla stock (and my wife has her favorite car of all time, her Tesla).