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Gigafactory workers protest, walk off the job
- Thread starter yobigd20
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The union workers walked off because the non-union workers at Brycon are being paid a much lower wage. According to the local union official quoted by ThisisReno (a source article within one of OP's links), Brycon is paying $12-14/hour; doing some research, I see Local 169's prevailing wage is in the neighborhood of $20-25/hour, because of the significant portion deducted for retirement and medical plans. Allowing Brycon to operate at a lower wage scale will be long-term harmful for the local union workers, by making it difficult to uphold and build upon the prevailing wage which supports the strong benefit plans that many of these workers will unfortunately not live long enough to fully enjoy.
The out of state worker rhetoric coming from the regional multi-union President is intended to help with solidarity among the Local unions and members, who lost pay by walking out; personally i'm not a fan of this 'foreigner' rhetoric (we see it in our other Politics too often), but it has a proven track record of success (see our other Politics).
About 350 Union Workers Strike at Tesla Gigafactory - This is Reno
RobStark
Well-Known Member
Protesting workers return to Tesla job site
http://www.reviewjournal.com/business/organized-labor/protesting-workers-return-tesla-job-site
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Bovine feces.
Tesla and partners promised to invest a minimum of $3.4B at the GF site by 2024.
Tesla promised at least half of the jobs would go to Nevada residents.
According to the last Nevada government audit Tesla is complying with agreement.
And Tesla has qualified for $9.1M of the total $195M in transferable tax credits agreed upon.
Tesla made projections that they could hire up to 6500 people but never made a binding agreement to do so.
Gov Sandoval's office also made projections but those were not a binding agreement with Tesla either.
MassModel3
Member
For the aforementioned 6500 employees, I don't think I ever heard the work "concurrently" mentioned, nor do I recall a time by which the numbers would be hit. My understanding was that as the Gigafactory progresses, more and more people would be needed, to include construction workers, engineers, janitors, etc. Until the Gigafactory is fully operational, that number is a projection of final totals over time.
As for the fact that union workers make more money than non-union workers -- Yeah, they do! Why complain that other people make less? I don't go to work and complain that there's people there who make half what I make. That seems like a pretty stupid argument. As long as the number of union workers from Nevada far outnumber the number of lesser paid employees from outside Nevada, union or not, what the heck are they complaining about???!!!
Man, I hate unions! Unfortunately, union management can be, shall we say, fanatical about a company's use of union or non-union employees. The factory contractors could take out an ad for construction workers who don't have any union affiliations, but there might be some firebombs in that contractors future.
It's just crazy. :cursing:
As for the fact that union workers make more money than non-union workers -- Yeah, they do! Why complain that other people make less? I don't go to work and complain that there's people there who make half what I make. That seems like a pretty stupid argument. As long as the number of union workers from Nevada far outnumber the number of lesser paid employees from outside Nevada, union or not, what the heck are they complaining about???!!!
Man, I hate unions! Unfortunately, union management can be, shall we say, fanatical about a company's use of union or non-union employees. The factory contractors could take out an ad for construction workers who don't have any union affiliations, but there might be some firebombs in that contractors future.
It's just crazy. :cursing:
The logic goes something like this...
1. JimmyUnion gets paid X.
2. JohnnySolo gets paid Y.
3. X < Y.
4. Employer uses basic math and decides to hire more of JohnnySolo than JimmyUnion.
The unions fear 4 so they jump the gun and cry armaggeddon after seeing 1, 2, 3.
Ulmo
Active Member
If Union management was soooooo good, they would start companies and have their own Union problems
Exactly my thought. At some level, most of the workers and administrators are aware that good business and good work go hand in hand. A lot of this is jurisdictional positioning. Silicon Valley is on fire, so they sucked up Nevada workers and now the scraggly band of next-state-over crowds (Arizona, New Mexico) are coming in and everyone is like "oh my god, look at those guys reach for the sky from their low down spot". It's a chore to get them up to speed, on safety standards, ways of doing business, etc., but they seem up to the task, bit by bit, fall by fall, but it's their unsafe acts that scare local workers and competition is lurking right behind that as a reason.
The nuclear option is: if the unions want to stop working for Tesla, and make their own electric car company, then they can. Take their pick here in the West: (A) Tesla, (B) ??? (i.e.: no one.). Musk knows this and has both a business and a monopolistic attitude about it. At some level I think everyone knows that the big bosses can cool their heels and come to terms in a way that is good for everyone. All that's really happening I think is the continual process of redefining what those terms are every day. Everyone else posting above got pretty much the whole competition angle of it, which is a serious angle.
Some ways to fail as a business:
* Product price too high for its quality level (too much cost, overpaid something/someone, unintelligent technique)
* Product quality too low for its price level (inferior work quality, underpaid something/someone or overpaid for the quality of work performed, unintelligent technique)
Notice that the "unintelligent technique" will get you every time. Be more intelligent, win that way, and you have a pro-business effect. The rest is just accounting and market seeking. Both the unions and the businesses have to understand all of that, and the good businesses and the good unions do. (The calculus for government worker unions is that they are all bad and a failure for society; I am solely targeting my discussion toward private employer unions.)
I'm predicting a shift to happen at some random point in the future: some electrician will smell some pollution on a construction site, will complain to his safety officer, and then the general contractor won't be able to find a spot to put their generator in a way that doesn't pollute, but at this random point, some company makes available an electric battery for construction sites (many hundreds of KVA, thousands in aggregate), and that general contractor uses them. After that, the electrician will notice the smell got better, the toxic effects went away, and the generator was suddenly a lot quieter and had a different model # stamped on it. Then, once a new technique is available, people will start asking for it, then bosses will start to require it in new contracts, and suddenly, before you know it, a whole new market for batteries has been opened up. That market will open up quickly if the coordination and working comfort between big unions and big battery generator makers is amicable enough. It might even open up quickly if they are bitter enemies, but that's not a given, and often that's when it would open up slowly.
In all of this, deals will be made, money will flow, and each will take their stance. Right or wrong, good or bad.
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