Posts tagged Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Tesla is facing more union problems
November 21, 2023 // Swedish dockworkers joined the strike Nov. 7. As of Friday, the dockworker strike expanded to all ports in the country, preventing the off-loading of new Teslas in Sweden. Swedish postal workers have stopped delivering mail to Tesla's offices, and cleaners have refused to clean the company's buildings.
AI: Jobs and Regulation
November 13, 2023 // Despite that, while there are some basic safety precautions that should be taken, for example, to limit the extent to which AI is integrated into nuclear weapon systems, it is hard to see how, short of adopting economic autarky, the U.S. could renounce or even slow down the broader advance of AI. A technology cannot be uninvented, and, if the U.S. applied the brakes, its geopolitical or economic competitors would do their best to take advantage, by pressing on with AI, probably recruiting American experts to help in their efforts to do so. Thus it’s interesting to see that a number of European countries have been pushing back against the EU’s efforts to regulate AI development (with the harshest regulation, naturally, being reserved, EurAktiv reports, for “leading providers that currently are non-European companies”). The regulation would be “risk-based,” which, as typically interpreted in Brussels, a place where the precautionary principle is taken to absurd levels, would be bleak news for innovators.
Some Tesla workers say they’d never join a union, even as Ford and GM workers get big raises
November 7, 2023 // The United Auto Workers might have set its sights on Tesla, but some workers at the EV company told Insider they'd be hard-pressed to join a union. After reaching tentative agreements with Detroit automakers, the union's president, Shawn Fain, said last week that the UAW aims to expand its reach. And what better target than the most valuable car company in the world?
‘Battle royale’: Tesla and anti-union Musk make enticing targets for UAW’s next push
November 5, 2023 // Some current UAW members are already fired up to take on Tesla. “Go out west to California? Absolutely, I would go,” said John Jake Kincaid, a Stellantis employee in Michigan. “Show them our strength.” Still, fighting for a contract at companies with established relationships with union workers is a far different effort than starting from scratch. Several workers who were key to Tesla’s earlier union effort are no longer at the company. The Fremont plant’s history with the UAW predates the electric vehicle maker. For about 25 years, Toyota and GM operated the facility together in an unusual joint venture. It was a union shop. In 2009, GM pulled out of the partnership as part of its bankruptcy proceedings and in 2010 Toyota shut the operation down, throwing 4,700 people out of work. A month later, Tesla bought the sprawling 5.3 million square foot factory; the union didn’t come with the purchase.
Bad vibes are sending shudders through Tesla, GM and Ford
October 30, 2023 // EV-specific factors include higher average costs than gas-powered models and many consumers lack of familiarity with the tech. "I see EV sales plateauing and even falling over the next 6 months," Brauer predicts. Threat level: "Investors have been too optimistic about EV demand growth . . . slowing demand growth is coming sooner than expected, especially in the high-end EV market," said Lee Hang-koo of Korea Automotive Technology Institute tells the Financial Times.
Tesla Workers Are Union “Members Of The Future,” UAW President Says
October 19, 2023 // Tesla is likely the most "problematic" carmaker for the UAW as CEO Elon Musk strongly opposes unionization at the company's plants. The United Auto Workers and Workers United trade unions have sought to unionize Tesla's workers in California and New York, respectively, but Elon Musk has thwarted all attempts so far. In addition, as Teslarati points out, numerous Tesla workers have become millionaires in the past despite being non-unionized, thanks to the company's stock-based compensation programs. In an infamous tweet from May 2018, Musk seemed to threaten Tesla workers with the loss of stock options if they formed a union. "Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?" read the tweet. The National Labor Relations Board ordered Musk to delete the tweet, but the billionaire appealed the court order.
Newsom vetoes bill to expand worker layoff protections to contract labor
October 10, 2023 // The bill would have extended the WARN-required notice period of impending layoffs, closure or relocation — which applies to companies of a certain size — to 75 days from 60 days. For the rules to apply to employees of labor contractors, they would have been required to work at least six of the 12 months and at least 60 hours preceding the date on which a mass layoff notice is required. Employees of a labor contractor completing a temporary project with a defined end date would have been exempt. Newsom also questioned the bill’s expansion of the kinds of companies that would be subject to the WARN Act to include chain businesses, even when such layoffs might be geographically far apart and unrelated.
Musk May Face Someone Else Who’s Ready for a Cage Fight
October 10, 2023 // The long-running decline in union membership mirrors the decline in Detroit’s share of the US vehicle market. That was 90% during the industry’s, and organized labor’s, 1960s heyday. By the time of the debacle of 2009, it had fallen to about 50%. Now it’s closer to 40%. As Kevin Tynan, automotive analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, points out, the Big Three have effectively downsized by ditching cheaper models and focusing on higher-priced trucks and SUVs to chase profits. As they attempt to open up a new avenue of growth, EVs, they are confronted with big near-term costs that higher pay settlements will exacerbate. “The UAW must broaden its view if it is going to increase its membership,” says Tynan, adding “they have to stop only going back to GM, Ford and Stellantis. There is no more blood in those stones.” The UAW has been aware of this for some time, which is why it targeted foreign automakers’ factories — so called “transplants” — and Tesla itself at various points over the past decade. Such effort has been largely in vain. Tesla, meanwhile, has become profitable at scale only recently. The company’s identity as a disruptive newcomer, with plants far from the UAW’s heartland around the Great Lakes, is another barrier. It is harder to entice workers into a union when their employer is hiring at breakneck speed rather than shedding thousands of jobs. Tesla has also pushed back aggressively against unionization, as those NLRB rulings attest (Tesla is appealing several of these).
Sean O’Brien’s summer of the strike
June 26, 2023 // It’s the spark for the combative spirit that permeates Teamsters headquarters, where a whiteboard charts a long-term battle plan on a timeline — “practice picketing,” “CAT trainings” (for “contract action teams”), “identify strike teams” … and finally, on the July 31 spot that marks the end of the current contract: “STRIKE.” Why strike now? As O’Brien himself acknowledged in his Senate testimony, UPS already offers the most plum jobs in the logistics industry, with driver salaries starting at $93,000. But O’Brien argues that the pandemic gave UPS workers the greatest leverage they’ve had in decades. In 2020, union members risked their health to keep packages moving. UPS’s profits surged and have remained high, with customers still hooked on the online shopping habits they adopted during the lockdowns. “Our members are fed up” and remain convinced, he said, that “the only concern that was being addressed was UPS’s bottom line and their balance sheet.” No better time, O’Brien reasons, for workers to go to the mat to demand wages beginning at $20 an hour, tighter safety provisions and an end to the two-tier employment system ushered in by the last contract.
Commute no more: US employees embrace telework
June 12, 2023 // Teleworking has become "part of a cluster of benefits and options that companies can choose to offer workers," said Nela Richardson from ADP. For potential employees, "it's a choice of whether or not you are willing to negotiate that or look for that in your job search," she added. But what employees really want, according to Richardson, is the flexibility to choose when they work. "It's not necessarily (that) I want to work from home, I want to be surrounded by dirty dishes and unmade beds,"she said. "It's the fact that I can choose what hours I work."