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I wouldn’t be surprised that UAW be behind that. It’s a very powerful organisation having a lot of political power. They see Tesla as a threat to their system

by alfor 4y ago

I wouldn’t be surprised that UAW be behind that. It’s a very powerful organisation having a lot of political power. They see Tesla as a threat to their system as Tesla is the only in the US not part of it and they are doing better than all the other car companies. I know someone who saved companies from bankruptcy, usually heavy industries. When he get hired he install security cameras and other measures and after a few week usually find out that a lot of people are constantly stealing valuable materials from the company. It’s always people in the union with some friends that work on the floor. He confront them, fire them and a few months later the company become viable again. He found out that the most corrupt people are almost always in the Union organisation.

moolcool 4y ago
> they are doing better than all the other car companies By which metric? Their market cap is astronomical, but they, to be frank, don't actually make a lot of cars. Not to mention that virtually every product release is delayed ad nauseum, FSD from Tesla is both a pipe dream and a liability nightmare, and other manufacturers, both foreign and domestic, are rapidly catching up with appealing EVs.
- mc32 4y ago
  Profit per electric car[1]. They beat all competitors by a very large margin. Heh, it looks like people disagree that this is a valid metric parent was asking for or disagree that the data is valid. Oh, goodness. [1]https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-uses-its-profits-weapon-an-ev-price-war-2023-01-19/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    soecifically, tesla profitability per vehicle is 8 times that of toyota (as of Nov 2022).
    - mc32 4y ago
      And Toyota places second, and all others have worse numbers. And Ford a strong contender loses money per electric vehicle sold.
      - dexterdog 4y ago
        Just like Tesla did when their volumes were statistically insignificant.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - moolcool 4y ago
    I suspect that's largely because they have massive sunk costs since they've been doing it for longer than anyone else. I sincerely don't think you can count on that lasting. Especially since some models are getting up in the years, and their shoddy build quality is becoming increasingly evident to consumers.
- brandonagr2 4y ago
  In 2022 Tesla produced 1.3 million vehicles and will produce 1.8 - 2 million this year, how can you quantify that as not a lot of cars? By others rapidly catching up do you mean announcing future models instead of shipping actual EVs? No one is within an order of magnitude of making the number of EVs that Tesla does in their market segment (not counting PHEVs or micro cars in China)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
quadrifoliate 4y ago
> I know someone who saved companies from bankruptcy, usually heavy industries. When he get hired he install security cameras and other measures and after a few week usually find out that a lot of people are constantly stealing valuable materials from the company. It’s always people in the union with some friends that work on the floor. It always strikes me how unions in the US are subject to these kinds of casual stereotyping attacks that would be totally outside the pale anywhere else. Well, that can go both ways. Maybe your friend is an union-busting crook hired by those companies to push out union leaders via fake investigations! It could be that he got caught trying to have a chilling effect on unions via electronic surveillance (a practice that the NLRB is cracking down on [1]), and made up stories about stealing in an effort to justify his snooping. (I don't actually mean that last paragraph, it just demonstrates how you can make up these sorts of stories out of thin air in order to appeal to people's existing prejudices. If you want to have a reasonable conversation, a good starting point would be some statistics about union v/s non-union employee workplace theft.) [1] https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/nlrb-general-counsel-issues-memo-on-unlawful-electronic-surveillance-and https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/nlrb-general-c...
- mc32 4y ago
  The structure of unions is such that it facilitates and encourages seniority as well as corruption including ties to the mob. It's no accident that unions are targets of corruption by the feds for various forms of malfeasance.
  - quadrifoliate 4y ago
    The exact same things could be said about companies themselves. "The structure of companies is such that it facilitates and encourages seniority as well as corruption including ties to the mob. It's no accident that companies are targets of corruption by the feds [1] for various forms of malfeasance." You're basically saying that crime exists among groups of people where there is a power differential. I mean, sure? I still don't understand [2] why unions are so specifically a target of it as compared to, say, insider traders. You don't typically see people saying we should just not have an executive board because some have been caught insider trading -- that would be absurd! [1] https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/white-collar-crime https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/white-collar-crime [2] I suspect though, that it has something to do with the typical judgements of "blue-collar" crime as being more heinous than "white-collar" crime.
FireBeyond 4y ago
That's a pretty big conclusion you're drawing there, and it's not something that's been supported by much evidence. To be clear, the contention is "Most heavy industries go bankrupt because union members are constantly stealing supplies from the company." Consider me skeptical. And I'm not a union member, let alone UAW.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  > To be clear, the contention is "Most heavy industries go bankrupt because union members are constantly stealing supplies from the company." I didn't read it like that, and I'm surprised anyone can read it this way. It seems to me the contention is that someone who steals from a company does other things too that lower the overall productivity of the company. One bad apple and all that. The supporting evidence was that once those people were fired, the company starting performing well. At least that's how I understand the OP's argument.
- alfor 4y ago
  Ok my claim is that if you go into an established unionised company that is going down if you look carefully you will probably find shady things going on and that people from the union will be at the center of it most of the time. Those position of power attract psychopathy personality, people that want to profit from the work of other but have no skin in the game. A bit like politic. What you need to be good in those job is to be good at pretending to care of others while destroying people that get in your way.
AlexandrB 4y ago
> I know someone who saved companies from bankruptcy, usually heavy industries. When he get hired he install security cameras and other measures and after a few week usually find out that a lot of people are constantly stealing valuable materials from the company. It’s always people in the union with some friends that work on the floor. And it's always some capitalist stealing wages from hundreds (or thousands) of people at a time. Incidentally, has Twitter paid the 3 months severance it owes ex-Twitter employees yet?
andsoitis 4y ago
people on the factory floor are able to steal enough valuable materials that a heavy industry company (I mean, multiple companies) approaches bankruptcy? and management doesn’t have sufficient inventory logs to notice something is amiss? that doesn’t sound like a true story.
- alfor 4y ago
  People are not stupid, they steal the valuable things first. I think it was copper wire, specialized tools, etc. Sometime the margin between profit and loss is small. Add a bit of stealing, demotivation, corruption, bad management and you are in the red. I don’t think the money from the thefts made a huge difference in the balance sheets.
RivieraKid 4y ago
Unions are almost always good for employees, at least in theory (assuming the union is making good decisions). More market power is better than less market power.
stefan_ 4y ago
You are talking about Tesla, who will give you a 40h contract, then expect you to work for 60h with no extra pay. Who is the bigger thief?
- srackey 4y ago
  Don’t take the job then.
maxerickson 4y ago
The UAW guide to UAW made vehicles is hardly comprehensive. Lots of automakers building cars in the US in factories not in the UAW. https://region1.uaw.org/member-info-0/2022-uaw-union-built-vehicle-guide https://region1.uaw.org/member-info-0/2022-uaw-union-built-v...

by alfor 4y ago

moolcool 4y ago

> they are doing better than all the other car companies By which metric? Their market cap is astronomical, but they, to be frank, don't actually make a lot of cars. Not to mention that virtually every product release is delayed ad nauseum, FSD from Tesla is both a pipe dream and a liability nightmare, and other manufacturers, both foreign and domestic, are rapidly catching up with appealing EVs.

mc32 4y ago
Profit per electric car[1]. They beat all competitors by a very large margin. Heh, it looks like people disagree that this is a valid metric parent was asking for or disagree that the data is valid. Oh, goodness. [1]https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-uses-its-profits-weapon-an-ev-price-war-2023-01-19/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
- andsoitis 4y ago
  soecifically, tesla profitability per vehicle is 8 times that of toyota (as of Nov 2022).
  - mc32 4y ago
    And Toyota places second, and all others have worse numbers. And Ford a strong contender loses money per electric vehicle sold.
    - dexterdog 4y ago
      Just like Tesla did when their volumes were statistically insignificant.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- moolcool 4y ago
  I suspect that's largely because they have massive sunk costs since they've been doing it for longer than anyone else. I sincerely don't think you can count on that lasting. Especially since some models are getting up in the years, and their shoddy build quality is becoming increasingly evident to consumers.
brandonagr2 4y ago
In 2022 Tesla produced 1.3 million vehicles and will produce 1.8 - 2 million this year, how can you quantify that as not a lot of cars? By others rapidly catching up do you mean announcing future models instead of shipping actual EVs? No one is within an order of magnitude of making the number of EVs that Tesla does in their market segment (not counting PHEVs or micro cars in China)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

quadrifoliate 4y ago

> I know someone who saved companies from bankruptcy, usually heavy industries. When he get hired he install security cameras and other measures and after a few week usually find out that a lot of people are constantly stealing valuable materials from the company. It’s always people in the union with some friends that work on the floor. It always strikes me how unions in the US are subject to these kinds of casual stereotyping attacks that would be totally outside the pale anywhere else. Well, that can go both ways. Maybe your friend is an union-busting crook hired by those companies to push out union leaders via fake investigations! It could be that he got caught trying to have a chilling effect on unions via electronic surveillance (a practice that the NLRB is cracking down on [1]), and made up stories about stealing in an effort to justify his snooping. (I don't actually mean that last paragraph, it just demonstrates how you can make up these sorts of stories out of thin air in order to appeal to people's existing prejudices. If you want to have a reasonable conversation, a good starting point would be some statistics about union v/s non-union employee workplace theft.) [1] https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/nlrb-general-counsel-issues-memo-on-unlawful-electronic-surveillance-and https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/nlrb-general-c...

mc32 4y ago
The structure of unions is such that it facilitates and encourages seniority as well as corruption including ties to the mob. It's no accident that unions are targets of corruption by the feds for various forms of malfeasance.
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  The exact same things could be said about companies themselves. "The structure of companies is such that it facilitates and encourages seniority as well as corruption including ties to the mob. It's no accident that companies are targets of corruption by the feds [1] for various forms of malfeasance." You're basically saying that crime exists among groups of people where there is a power differential. I mean, sure? I still don't understand [2] why unions are so specifically a target of it as compared to, say, insider traders. You don't typically see people saying we should just not have an executive board because some have been caught insider trading -- that would be absurd! [1] https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/white-collar-crime https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/white-collar-crime [2] I suspect though, that it has something to do with the typical judgements of "blue-collar" crime as being more heinous than "white-collar" crime.

FireBeyond 4y ago

That's a pretty big conclusion you're drawing there, and it's not something that's been supported by much evidence. To be clear, the contention is "Most heavy industries go bankrupt because union members are constantly stealing supplies from the company." Consider me skeptical. And I'm not a union member, let alone UAW.

credit_guy 4y ago
> To be clear, the contention is "Most heavy industries go bankrupt because union members are constantly stealing supplies from the company." I didn't read it like that, and I'm surprised anyone can read it this way. It seems to me the contention is that someone who steals from a company does other things too that lower the overall productivity of the company. One bad apple and all that. The supporting evidence was that once those people were fired, the company starting performing well. At least that's how I understand the OP's argument.
alfor 4y ago
Ok my claim is that if you go into an established unionised company that is going down if you look carefully you will probably find shady things going on and that people from the union will be at the center of it most of the time. Those position of power attract psychopathy personality, people that want to profit from the work of other but have no skin in the game. A bit like politic. What you need to be good in those job is to be good at pretending to care of others while destroying people that get in your way.

AlexandrB 4y ago

andsoitis 4y ago

people on the factory floor are able to steal enough valuable materials that a heavy industry company (I mean, multiple companies) approaches bankruptcy? and management doesn’t have sufficient inventory logs to notice something is amiss? that doesn’t sound like a true story.

alfor 4y ago
People are not stupid, they steal the valuable things first. I think it was copper wire, specialized tools, etc. Sometime the margin between profit and loss is small. Add a bit of stealing, demotivation, corruption, bad management and you are in the red. I don’t think the money from the thefts made a huge difference in the balance sheets.

RivieraKid 4y ago

Unions are almost always good for employees, at least in theory (assuming the union is making good decisions). More market power is better than less market power.

stefan_ 4y ago

You are talking about Tesla, who will give you a 40h contract, then expect you to work for 60h with no extra pay. Who is the bigger thief?

srackey 4y ago
Don’t take the job then.

maxerickson 4y ago

The UAW guide to UAW made vehicles is hardly comprehensive. Lots of automakers building cars in the US in factories not in the UAW. https://region1.uaw.org/member-info-0/2022-uaw-union-built-vehicle-guide https://region1.uaw.org/member-info-0/2022-uaw-union-built-v...