Canuck
Well-Known Member
A major part of my job has been working in management jobs with union and non-union workforces (including negotiation of labor agreements), as well as working on union campaigns on behalf of management. A couple of points on this interesting discussion:
1. It is unlikely that Tesla will be organized.
As others have noted, Elon (and Tesla) would be foolish to say anything negative about unions or unionization. That said, there is no individual employer that would prefer a unionized workforce in this day and age -- it reduces an employer's ability to manage his workforce as he wishes, and every dime that goes towards union dues has to be made up to employees somehow, so at a minimum it will cost a little bit of money (and often a lot more than that). So, as an employer you are basically guaranteed to lose at least some (and perhaps a lot) of flexibility, and increase your labor costs without any net benefit (such as additional hours worked or employees). Not a recipe for success.
Tesla, like most Silicon Valley companies, treats its employees like a resource, not an expense, and tries to keep them (generally) happy. This is important -- almost all successful unionization efforts occur when employees are dissatisfied with management, are treated unfairly, are fired capriciously and arbitrarily, and do not buy into management's strategy (surprisingly, low pay is generally not a reason that people want to vote in a union). Treating employees with respect, and being consistent with ones words and actions as management, is the easiest way to avoid a union campaign. This is among the main reasons the Valley has stayed union free for so long.
Everything we have seen and heard about Tesla is that it's a great place to work, and does all of the "right" things for its employees. I expect that they have fairly low turnover, relative to many other similar workplaces. In those circumstances, most employees are going to wonder why they would benefit from paying union dues -- what exactly are they expecting to get from management with a (paid) third party representing them that they aren't getting today? Is there a cheaper alternative for them to pursue to get those things, and is it realistic that management would listen to them if they came forward with such requests? These are generally the issues that drive a union campaign, and I think Tesla is probably doing what it needs to from a management perspective to win such a campaign, if one were ever to occur.
2. It would be much better overall for the economy, and US society as a whole, if a much higher percentage of private sector employees were unionized.
Many of the arguments here, especially between the European model vs. US, have to do with policy issues around unionization as a whole. The percentage of unionized workers in the private sector in the US has steadily declined from the 1960s to today, and is now less than 10% (public sector unions are a completely different animal, as explained by many others before). This is one of many reasons that income inequality has risen dramatically in the US in the last thirty years. As a matter of public policy, it is hard to unionize and stay unionized, and individual employers would be foolish to willingly become union while their competitors in whatever industry they are in stay union free. However, if an entire industry is union, then that advantage disappears, and with all things being equal, we'd be better off as a society (and economy) as a whole if workers on the bottom rung of many industries were paid more and got better benefits such that they could spend more and drive our economy forward.
This is a tragedy of the commons situation, because no employer (or industry, for that matter) would or should voluntarily come forward to increase its costs and reduce its flexibility. But if it were to happen across the board, most companies could see the obvious advantage to the overall economy of having increased unionization throughout the country. Unfortunately, it is not remotely possible that the labor laws will change in the foreseeable future -- the unions made a fairly strong push in 2009 with overwhelming Democratic majorities in Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have made it much easier to unionize workplaces, and it never even got close to a vote. So we are now probably stuck where we are, but unionizing a relatively small employer like Tesla isn't going to change all of the societal issues with the loss of union jobs in the US, and I would strongly encourage Tesla to stay union free until/unless conditions change dramatically in the US in the next several years, and to continue to treat its employees as valuable resources and maintain an excellent and consistent corporate culture that encourage collaboration and collegiality such that there is no incentive for employees to seek third party representation.
That's interesting and well reasoned. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. But your post should be here:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/show...e-with-Tesla-(SFGate-com)?p=542992#post542992
I, along with some other culprits, hijacked this thread.