5 ms·

They weren’t criticizing the product direction. The letter was about Elon’s tweets and sexual harassment.

by comex 3y ago

wharvle 3y ago
https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk-internal-open-letter-behavior https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk... The whole (internal! Until leaked) open letter is near the bottom of that article. Wasn’t paywalled for me. Reading it cleared up the noise in this thread pretty neatly. Sure looks like this has a great shot of counting as protected discussion of work conditions. I now know posts in this thread dismissing the letter as just “politics” or just “criticizing the CEO” have no connection to reality. It’s very restrained and focused. Primary sources are cool.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - wharvle 3y ago
    I guess primary sources are less cool if you aren’t going to read them and go in with a made-up mind. I was prepared to see a hysterical and inappropriate letter that at the very least didn’t fit the spirit of discussion of improving work conditions, even if it did fit the strict definition. Looks like it’s well within the spirit, though. Oh well, it’s there for all to read. No need to rely on me or “criminal crew running the government” here. And thank god for that. We might be nuts with wildly bad information.
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - John23832 3y ago
    >It is critical that the shareholders, the board, and the CEO make this determination about messages and mission, and values They did by creating the rules of conduct that all employees must abide by. "Rules for the but not for me" is bad corporate leadership. >not a mutiny by a subset of employees with an agenda (the same agenda as all the people here who think Musk is the devil) and who make unsupportable claims that they magically know better than managment what the PR should look like. Asking your company to hold another employee accountable to the rule of conduct we all agreed to abide by is not mutiny. >I'm not going to read the rest of this stupid letter, it's a smarmy politcal sneer motivated by the ideological imperatives of a tiny minority of shareholders, who support a Whitehouse that has politicized the Justice Department more than has been seen in a long long time. Not even LBJ behaved like the criminal crew running the govt, this is 19th century bare knuckled politics. It's is clear you just have a political bent here rather than a calm and considered idea.
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - piva00 3y ago
        > bad corporate leadership does not require govt oversight and intervention. And employees don't decide who is breaking the rules, just like crime victims don't actually run our courtrooms: it's not a good idea, noble as it sounds in a childish sort of way. So who does? Not the government, not the employees, who decides the corporate leadership is acting in bad faith and needs to be accountable? Stop the boring soapboxing, for Christ's sake...
        fsckboy 3y ago
        define acting in bad faith, you can't just soapbox it, then get your way. After you've defined it, then point out who is the counterparty in that transaction. that person/entity has the recourse they have, it can vary. Once you decide you don't like transacting with a person, you can stop. Everything doesn't necessarily work out the way you want, we all take lumps. "Society" and "limited liability corporations" didn't just get invented, we have a system that works fine. People who own things ultimately get to decide what happens to them, within the strictures of their ownership (for example, shareholders, contracts, etc.)
        piva00 3y ago
        Acting in bad faith in this case is pretty clear, no? Going against the agreed code of conduct that all members of the organisation should follow is pretty much in bad faith. Some (or even most) of the employees speaking up are also shareholders, so even in your very narrow definition of whom should have the power to criticise actions in bad faith of leadership would grant those employees that power. > "Society" and "limited liability corporations" didn't just get invented, we have a system that works fine. People who own things ultimately get to decide what happens to them, within the strictures of their ownership (for example, shareholders, contracts, etc.) You are basically giving carte blanche to the owners of capital to do whatever they want, even if that would negatively impact a whole organisation and the workers producing the value for such organisation. That's a very corporate-centric worldview which I don't abide to. Capitalism is an amoral system, we humans need to instill some morality into it so it can function in a way that's more beneficial than damaging, employees speaking up against leadership in a very clear case of such leadership breaking their own agreed code of conduct is well within bounds of what should be acceptable. Bosses are not slave masters, the employment relationship can be economically viewed as a transaction for market modeling, but as a societal relationship we should strive to lessen the intrinsic power imbalance of it, employees generate value, no company would exist without them, reducing that to "owners can do whatever they want under the bounds of contract/civil/criminal law" transfers more of the power to employers since those have much more capital to deploy on lobbying, lawyering and so on. The system doesn't work "fine", it works but it can always be better. And in this specific case the actions taken were even illegal, so the employees had the right to speak up. I don't understand what you are defending.
- junofan 3y ago
  I dunno, it more or less calls Elon an asshole. I dunno if blasting that to the whole company is protected. Seems like disruptive behavior which the employer may lawfully regulate.
- tim333 3y ago
  >Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. >SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand. If you had a company in which you were the majority shareholder and CEO would you put up with the people you hire circulating letters to condemn your behaviour?
  - TheCoelacanth 3y ago
    Yes, because that is a legal requirement if you want to employ people in the United States.
- leereeves 3y ago
  Elon's tweets certainly aren't work conditions.
  - wharvle 3y ago
    The letter lays out succinctly and plainly how they matter for workers and the company, and offers fairly measured steps that might be taken to mitigate that, which include simple stuff that doesn’t ask to muzzle Elon like just making it clearer that his tweets aren’t connected to and don’t reflect the positions of the company. The letter may be incorrect but sure reads like a good faith effort to discuss work conditions, not some kind of anti-Elon polemic. It’s not even close to the line that I fully expected to see it crossing, based on posts in this thread.
    - leereeves 3y ago
      The letter goes beyond asking to make it clear that his tweets aren’t connected to and don’t reflect the positions of the company" and calls on SpaceX to "Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior". Merriam-Webster defines polemic as "an aggressive attack on or refutation of the opinions or principles of another", so that demand is clearly an anti-Elon polemic.

They weren’t criticizing the product direction. The letter was about Elon’s tweets and sexual harassment.

by comex 3y ago

They weren’t criticizing the product direction. The letter was about Elon’s tweets and sexual harassment.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk-internal-open-letter-behavior https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk... The whole (internal! Until leaked) open letter is near the bottom of that article. Wasn’t paywalled for me. Reading it cleared up the noise in this thread pretty neatly. Sure looks like this has a great shot of counting as protected discussion of work conditions. I now know posts in this thread dismissing the letter as just “politics” or just “criticizing the CEO” have no connection to reality. It’s very restrained and focused. Primary sources are cool.

fsckboy 3y ago
[flagged]
- wharvle 3y ago
  I guess primary sources are less cool if you aren’t going to read them and go in with a made-up mind. I was prepared to see a hysterical and inappropriate letter that at the very least didn’t fit the spirit of discussion of improving work conditions, even if it did fit the strict definition. Looks like it’s well within the spirit, though. Oh well, it’s there for all to read. No need to rely on me or “criminal crew running the government” here. And thank god for that. We might be nuts with wildly bad information.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    [flagged]
- John23832 3y ago
  >It is critical that the shareholders, the board, and the CEO make this determination about messages and mission, and values They did by creating the rules of conduct that all employees must abide by. "Rules for the but not for me" is bad corporate leadership. >not a mutiny by a subset of employees with an agenda (the same agenda as all the people here who think Musk is the devil) and who make unsupportable claims that they magically know better than managment what the PR should look like. Asking your company to hold another employee accountable to the rule of conduct we all agreed to abide by is not mutiny. >I'm not going to read the rest of this stupid letter, it's a smarmy politcal sneer motivated by the ideological imperatives of a tiny minority of shareholders, who support a Whitehouse that has politicized the Justice Department more than has been seen in a long long time. Not even LBJ behaved like the criminal crew running the govt, this is 19th century bare knuckled politics. It's is clear you just have a political bent here rather than a calm and considered idea.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - piva00 3y ago
      > bad corporate leadership does not require govt oversight and intervention. And employees don't decide who is breaking the rules, just like crime victims don't actually run our courtrooms: it's not a good idea, noble as it sounds in a childish sort of way. So who does? Not the government, not the employees, who decides the corporate leadership is acting in bad faith and needs to be accountable? Stop the boring soapboxing, for Christ's sake...
      - fsckboy 3y ago
        define acting in bad faith, you can't just soapbox it, then get your way. After you've defined it, then point out who is the counterparty in that transaction. that person/entity has the recourse they have, it can vary. Once you decide you don't like transacting with a person, you can stop. Everything doesn't necessarily work out the way you want, we all take lumps. "Society" and "limited liability corporations" didn't just get invented, we have a system that works fine. People who own things ultimately get to decide what happens to them, within the strictures of their ownership (for example, shareholders, contracts, etc.)
        piva00 3y ago
        Acting in bad faith in this case is pretty clear, no? Going against the agreed code of conduct that all members of the organisation should follow is pretty much in bad faith. Some (or even most) of the employees speaking up are also shareholders, so even in your very narrow definition of whom should have the power to criticise actions in bad faith of leadership would grant those employees that power. > "Society" and "limited liability corporations" didn't just get invented, we have a system that works fine. People who own things ultimately get to decide what happens to them, within the strictures of their ownership (for example, shareholders, contracts, etc.) You are basically giving carte blanche to the owners of capital to do whatever they want, even if that would negatively impact a whole organisation and the workers producing the value for such organisation. That's a very corporate-centric worldview which I don't abide to. Capitalism is an amoral system, we humans need to instill some morality into it so it can function in a way that's more beneficial than damaging, employees speaking up against leadership in a very clear case of such leadership breaking their own agreed code of conduct is well within bounds of what should be acceptable. Bosses are not slave masters, the employment relationship can be economically viewed as a transaction for market modeling, but as a societal relationship we should strive to lessen the intrinsic power imbalance of it, employees generate value, no company would exist without them, reducing that to "owners can do whatever they want under the bounds of contract/civil/criminal law" transfers more of the power to employers since those have much more capital to deploy on lobbying, lawyering and so on. The system doesn't work "fine", it works but it can always be better. And in this specific case the actions taken were even illegal, so the employees had the right to speak up. I don't understand what you are defending.
junofan 3y ago
I dunno, it more or less calls Elon an asshole. I dunno if blasting that to the whole company is protected. Seems like disruptive behavior which the employer may lawfully regulate.
tim333 3y ago
>Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. >SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand. If you had a company in which you were the majority shareholder and CEO would you put up with the people you hire circulating letters to condemn your behaviour?
- TheCoelacanth 3y ago
  Yes, because that is a legal requirement if you want to employ people in the United States.
leereeves 3y ago
Elon's tweets certainly aren't work conditions.
- wharvle 3y ago
  The letter lays out succinctly and plainly how they matter for workers and the company, and offers fairly measured steps that might be taken to mitigate that, which include simple stuff that doesn’t ask to muzzle Elon like just making it clearer that his tweets aren’t connected to and don’t reflect the positions of the company. The letter may be incorrect but sure reads like a good faith effort to discuss work conditions, not some kind of anti-Elon polemic. It’s not even close to the line that I fully expected to see it crossing, based on posts in this thread.
  - leereeves 3y ago
    The letter goes beyond asking to make it clear that his tweets aren’t connected to and don’t reflect the positions of the company" and calls on SpaceX to "Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior". Merriam-Webster defines polemic as "an aggressive attack on or refutation of the opinions or principles of another", so that demand is clearly an anti-Elon polemic.