{"id":180465,"date":"2017-04-12T20:16:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-13T01:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/04\/12\/so-not-a-surprise-21\/"},"modified":"2017-04-12T20:16:00","modified_gmt":"2017-04-13T01:16:00","slug":"so-not-a-surprise-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/04\/12\/so-not-a-surprise-21\/","title":{"rendered":"So not a Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tesla is facing a unionization effort from employees who say that their manufacturing facility is abusive and dangerous<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Along Silicon Valley\u2019s interlocking freeways, low-slung tech offices with obscure names like Way.com or Oorja are populated by fresh-faced technologists in badges and pleated slacks, striving to create the next great app. But off the I-880 in Fremont, a white colossus rises from the landscape, a 5.3-million-square-foot monster that stretches across two interchanges. The gray lettering is a full story high: TESLA.<\/span>

<\/span>Here, the company makes high-end, zero-emission vehicles, luxury cruisers for a climate emergency. Chief executive officer Elon Musk has cultivated a reputation as an economic visionary and has been hailed for solving the world\u2019s great challenges with panache. Tesla\u2019s Fremont factory brought hope to a blue-collar, racially diverse town with a manufacturing tradition. And this week, after reports of a 69 percent increase<\/a> in first-quarter sales, the automaker passed Ford<\/a> in market value. But though its products epitomize the future, workers like Richard Ortiz say Tesla\u2019s labor conditions are mired in the past. Ortiz is a production associate in the closures department, assembling hoods, doors\u2014\u201canything that opens or closes\u201d\u2014on Model S sedans and Model X SUVs. Though videos<\/a> of the Tesla factory<\/a> emphasize robotic automation, over 6,000 workers engage in intense manual labor to build the cars.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cI have an eight-pound rivnut gun,\u201d Ortiz said, referring to a tool that installs rivet nuts. \u201cI\u2019m doing that all day long. I\u2019m to the point where, if I pick something up with any weight, within 30 seconds I have to drop it. That scares me; I want to be able to use my arm when I retire.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>Tesla workers say circumstances like Ortiz\u2019s are commonplace at a factory that prioritizes production goals over health and safety. Now they\u2019re fighting back against low pay, hazardous conditions, and a culture of intimidation, seeking to unionize through the United Auto Workers. Tesla is the only U.S. automaker using nonunion workers at a stateside plant, and breaking through would give organized labor a foothold in the tech industry as well. Until then, the Tesla experience reveals that green jobs aren\u2019t necessarily good jobs without worker power. \u201cThey want to make sustainable cars,\u201d says Ortiz. \u201cWe need sustainable employment.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>
<\/span>But after originally describing Tesla<\/a> as \u201cunion neutral,\u201d Musk said on an earnings call<\/a> in February that \u201cthere are really only disadvantages to someone to want the UAW here.\u201d In a later email to workers, Musk delivered a point-by-point rebuttal to Moran\u2019s Medium post, arguing that overtime had decreased and incident rates were below average. Instead of offering workers better wages and input on production, Musk promised \u201ca really amazing party\u201d for the launch of the Model 3, \u201cfree frozen yogurt stands\u201d at the factory, and \u201ca Tesla electric pod roller coaster\u201d connecting the parking lots. \u201cIt\u2019s going to get crazy good,\u201d Musk concluded.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein expressed horror at Musk\u2019s rhetoric. \u201cIt was the worst kind of caricature of a capitalist, like it\u2019s 1898,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have these sophisticated systems of production and distribution, but their social arrangements are utterly retrograde.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr. Lichtenstein may not know it, but his categorization of Musk’s rhetoric can be more broadly applied to the tech industry.<\/p>\n

Until the drones at places like Tesla, Facebook, Uber, and Google come to understand that providing free frozen yogurt is not a sign of respect from their employers, but rather an indicator that management thinks that the employees are easily manipulated rubes, this situation will not improve.<\/p>\n

The autoworkers are sharper than the Stanford educated programmers when they say about this attidude is that, “It\u2019s insulting, it shows you what he thinks of us.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tesla is facing a unionization effort from employees who say that their manufacturing facility is abusive and dangerous: Along Silicon Valley\u2019s interlocking freeways, low-slung tech offices with obscure names like Way.com or Oorja are populated by fresh-faced technologists in badges and pleated slacks, striving to create the next great app. But off the I-880 in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[473,365,364,442],"class_list":["post-180465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-auto-industry","tag-business","tag-evil","tag-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180465"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}