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It’s nearly impossible to fight defamation like this. Only defense against it is to be as careful choosing your employer as possible. The amount of power they h
by Threeve303 6y ago
It’s nearly impossible to fight defamation like this. Only defense against it is to be as careful choosing your employer as possible. The amount of power they have over your future is insane and in certain situations, like the one in the article, you basically have no recourse.
- minikites 6y ago>Only defense against it is to be as careful choosing your employer as possible. That's not the only defense, this is example #25360432 showing how necessary labor unions are.
- fouldiplomacy 6y ago"showing how necessary labor unions are" Chicago is a great example of labor unions and how well they work out.
- soperj 6y agoChicago is also a great example of democracy and how well it works out, along with Russia. Maybe don't make a place with massive corruption your example.
- hpoe 6y agoYou're right I mean the teamsters union is such an upstanding example of the positive effects of unions.
- tptacek 6y agoWhat the hell do you people think Chicago is? It's not 1929 anymore.
- soperj 6y ago4 of the last 10 Governors of Illinois have gone to prison.
- jjoonathan 6y agoOnly the biggest, nastiest unions were able to survive the purge.
- rhacker 6y agoThe claim that unions are horrible may be true for some large, high profile unions, but what everyone seems to ignore are all the small, totally unknown unions that get shit done.
- dleslie 6y agoA good rule of thumb: if the union is so large that it has enough bureaucrats that they have their own Union, then it's likely most of your dues are spent on propagating the Union bureaucracy and not necessarily on aiding the employees the Union represents.
- hh3k0 6y ago> Chicago is a great example of labor unions and how well they work out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
- zmix 6y agoChicago ain't the world! Here, in Germany, labor unions are not perfect either, but pretty effective. It's a question of culture: if something never can grow up, into a solid state, it will cease to succeed. In the US unions get constantly hated and attacked. It's difficult to develop a healthy personality under such circumstances.
- fouldiplomacy 6y agoI loooove me some fallacies and biases. I work diligently everyday at work to avoid them. However; I think this is misplaced as a quick search of Chicago news will inform the reader that Ms. Lightfoot has her hands full trying to balance a budget while not crippling the city because of unions. There is no fallacy here, only truth that is uncomfortable to some.
- hh3k0 6y ago> There is no fallacy here, only truth that is uncomfortable to some. There is, though. And it is an association fallacy. You wrote: > Chicago is a great example of labor unions and how well they work out. The error in your logic: Premise: Chicago's labor unions are labor unions. Premise: Chicago's labor unions are bad. Your conclusion: Therefore, all labor unions are bad.
- EliRivers 6y agoWhat are some other examples of how well they work out? Paid holiday? Days off? Working environments that weren't deathtraps? Sounds pretty good to me.
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoYou don’t have those in your non-union job? Everyone I know in tech already gets paid time off, and safe work environments.
- EliRivers 6y agoOf course I do. Don't be a childish, passive-aggressive dickhead [0]. You know as well as everyone else here that these were fought for and won by unions. [0] I make no apology. I really don't like that kind of phony bullshit pretend question. Its dishonesty is corrosive to discourse.
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoThat seems like an inappropriate overreaction. Also, no, they were not. Companies who have never had unions offer these things, because we would not work there if they didn’t. Even if they were, the fact that they are ubiquitous today without unions would mean that this is historical trivia, and not an argument that supports having a union today.
- dang 6y ago"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The GP comment stepped a foot over that line but this is crashing right through it. Please don't. We're trying for curious conversation here, not repetitive bashing.
- fouldiplomacy 6y agoI’ll attempt to “not flamewar” but you are being rather sensitive about this. A decent moderation is necessary but i fail to see any reason for the watchdogs to hate on my post. Fact is Chicago is very much underwater because unions have gripped the city’s pension to the point that they cannot pass meaningful budget resolutions. Unions had a place at the beginning of the industrial age for worker safety and reasonable wages. With OSHA and a long list of other laws, unions are largely outdated. Please contribute something useful and not rules that are hardly being bent otherwise you are cluttering “curious conversations.”
- dang 6y agoIt was a cliché one-liner on a divisive theme that was far off topic. That certainly counts as flamebait. This is not a borderline call! Sometimes people make a more substantive comment in response to a moderation scolding—sort of explaining the background that was in their mind but which they didn't say earlier. I'd say your second and third paragraphs here count as that. If you had included that in your original post, it would at least have been not a one-liner and less of a cliché, and I probably wouldn't have replied.
- giantg2 6y agoUnions can be useful for industry specific protections or benefits. This would provide different protections specific to a type of work. I think arbitration protections and restrictions on employment contracts to preserve employee rights should be handled through legislation since it should be universally applicable to all workers. This would remove the variance in protections from one union to another.
- elihu 6y agoLegislation would be ideal, but in the absence of such legislation (such as the bill mentioned in the article to limit mandatory arbitration that was attempted in 2019 and passed the House but was never voted on in the Senate) unions still might be the best option in the short term.
- giantg2 6y agoMaybe. Unions can become corrupt or politically influenced too. In fact, organized labor is one of the main money makers for organized crime. I'm not saying all unions are bad, just that some can be. Just as any power structure like governments or company management can be too. I wonder if the major unions have banned together to get that bill introduced and voted on? It could be possible that they wouldn't support legislation like that because more legislative protections can make the union seem less useful. If the unions don't have incentive to push the bill and more workers are covered by unions and don't see the benefit of the bill because they are already protected, then could that delay or even prevent the passage of those protections? It may end up as a long term fix that leaves non-uninonized groups and groups that seem unlikely to organize, like IT. Of course with widespread existing adoption, a counter point could be less opposition to it.
- elihu 6y agoI suspect the reason it didn't pass the Senate is that Republicans are in the majority there, and I can't imagine any union having much influence or leverage with Mitch McConnell to even convince him to hold a vote.
- 6y ago
- bko 6y agoThe article suggests she was fired because she asked for a meeting with Musk about floor mats after failing to get the proper response from the regular chain of command. In my experience, everywhere I worked had a chain of command and consistently stepping outside the chain of command and going over your managers heads rarely leads to good results. From an article mentioned in the LA Times article > She considered leaving Tesla, but fellow engineers convinced her to stay. “I promised them I [would] get to Elon one way or the other,” she wrote, “even if I [had to go] to the Supreme Court.” I would understand from a corporate perspective Tesla wanting to remove this person. A company, especially one on the brink of bankruptcy as Tesla was in 2014 has to have a high degree of cohesion and minimal dissent from employees. > Instead, Balan said, she was forced to resign, an event that launched a six-year legal journey leading to where she is today: about to face off against Tesla — on her own, without an attorney — in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. I can't understand how someone can be let go from a company and make it their life's work over the next 6 years to grieve and fight publicly. Right or wrong, it seems like an utterly destructive process on the personal level. > Balan says her professional reputation suffered damage so severe she can’t find a company willing to hire her. “They tell me, ‘We’d like to hire you, but we can’t afford to be on Musk’s blacklist,’” she said. Employers aversion to hiring Balan may have to do with her lawsuit, at least a little bit
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoDid you miss the part where Musk announced that employees are to disregard hierarchy and go directly up the chain if it solves problems faster, including all the way to the top? Weeks earlier, in a companywide email, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk had dumped on the concept of corporate hierarchy. Find “the fastest way to solve a problem to the benefit of the whole company” and don’t worry about your boss, he told them. Go straight to the top, if need be. Balan took him up on it.
- giantg2 6y agoTypical CEO double speak. Senior management at my company says similar things. Then if you look at the HR policy you find the fine print that greatly restricts what was said. I had a department head tell us his door is always open and to contact him about stuff (company policy supports the open door policy). I took him up on it. When I showed up, he had another manager there in addition to himself (it was supposed to be a scheduled meeting with just me and him). I was later rated poorly, both in an interview and at year end, for a lack of leadership (following the hierarchy).
- rmrfstar 6y agoProbably the biggest takeaway is, in jurisdictions that permit it, "record all your conversations at work, encrypt them, and hope you never need them." She would be in a totally different situation if she had a tape of Tesla's AGC threatening her friends through their immigration status. That is straight up mafia tactics. Brings to mind this case [1]. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-29388019 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-29388019
- frereubu 6y agoThat presumes you're in a legal jurisdiction where one-party consent is allowed for recording conversations doesn't it? Otherwise it would be inadmissible.
- giantg2 6y agoYep. Based on the article, it sounds like the criminal act that Tesla is accusing her of is unlawful recording.
- rmrfstar 6y agoIt's a solid point, and I've updated my comment accordingly.
- bambax 6y agoInadmissible in court, but you can always leak to the press and see what happens.
- vmception 6y agoNot only inadmissible, but can incur criminal liability as well, such as in California. With criminal statutes, it significantly raises the bar about how to "leak" something to the press, the press who needs to verify the source and can be subpoena'd for records.
- 6y ago
- harlanji 6y agoVery true. I unwisely chose an employer and my life has been increasingly harsh and lately scary, and the snowball of problems grows and rolls down the hill. OpenTable, don’t work or them.