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- cross-posted to:
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‘Your Turn’: United Auto Workers Launches Campaign to Unionize Tesla::After the UAW won contracts with the Big Three, it’s seeking to unionize 150,000 workers across a dozen companies including Tesla.
I’ve never been in a union, but there was an era where individuality and meritocratic means seemed like the pathway to unlimited success but this doesn’t really map over to blue collar work. Unions were not likely to help because they batch outstanding workers at the same level as the lowest performers on the team.
But unions work a bit like an alternative to minimum wage. All the boats rise with the tide, so if the UAW scores big with some mfgrs, other auto workers are going to want a piece of that too or they’ll switch.
This can backfire though because a lot of jobs can still be automated if they aren’t economically feasible.
In my union good workers get paid above scale or they get promoted or they move to a different company that will pay them above scale. Also, people have reputations and if you’re a complete fuckup of an employee, you will either be fired or laid off and eventually you’ll find yourself on the “available for work” list down at the hall, but never getting hired because nobody wants to put up with your bullshit. You will say that it’s a kind of informal blacklisting, which is true, but I’m in the union too and they can’t make me hire people I know I don’t want.