> Speaking to Gizmodo through Twitter Direct Messages, Elon Musk said, “Our understanding is that this guy was paid by the UAW to join Tesla and agitate for a union,”
I guess he got this tactic from Trump, claiming that any dissent comes from paid protesters. While offering no evidence that it's actually the case.
> Update 10/2/17 9:20am EST: In a statement this morning UAW categorically denied that Moran had ever been paid by their organization.
Ugh, this is just a terrible conflation. And it ignores very real and well-understood union tactics like this. You can be pro- or anti- union all you want but if you don't think unions seek out individuals to use as essentially "seeds" for a union - including paying them - you're woefully naive.
If you don't think we've entered an era where "facts" are invented from thin air without fear of repercussion because the media portrays opposite sides of a demonstrable fact the way it portrays differences in opinion, you're woefully naive.
Recent events may have had a side effect of making honest people need to work harder to prove their claims. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, we could have used more discipline and scrutiny there before the era of fake news anyway.
I want to start with Trump's lies. It's now a commonplace that Trump and his underlings tell whoppers. Fact-checkers have never had it so good. But all politicians lie. Bill Clinton could barely go a day without some shading or parsing of the truth. Richard Nixon was famously tricky. But all the traditional political fibbers nonetheless paid some deference to the truth — even as they were dodging it. They acknowledged a shared reality and bowed to it. They acknowledged the need for a common set of facts in order for a liberal democracy to function at all. Trump's lies are different. They are direct refutations of reality — and their propagation and repetition is about enforcing his power rather than wriggling out of a political conundrum. They are attacks on the very possibility of a reasoned discourse, the kind of bald-faced lies that authoritarians issue as a way to test loyalty and force their subjects into submission. That first press conference when Sean Spicer was sent out to lie and fulminate to the press about the inauguration crowd reminded me of some Soviet apparatchik having his loyalty tested to see if he could repeat in public what he knew to be false. It was comical, but also faintly chilling.
From Andrew Sullivan, a conservative blogger, here:
I feel like there's a burden of proof that you're putting on Elon Musk that you're not also putting on Morgan here. All we have is his personal testimony without any other evidence either.
Wow this article looks like it was written using Gizmodo as the only source. Not only that, it is almost a verbatim copy. Generally Ars has great coverage but this is horrible. Also fun fact the title had to be updated due to being misleading.
Update: This story went up with two headlines. One of them, "Tesla employee calls for unionization, Musk says that’s 'morally outrageous,'" could have been construed as Musk claiming that unionization itself is morally outrageous, which was not the case. We have replaced that headline with the other.
I'd agree with that, but I think when we're down to naming individuals and their merits, my point about the organization as a whole not being good is supported.
If that's your image of working, you should consider working for different companies. This would not describe my workplace, or most of the ones I've worked for.
This isn't anything new; apparently SpaceX is the same way. It's why I don't want to go work for an Elon Musk company. I have respect for myself, and it seems like you have to be willing to undercut yourself to work there.
I was looking at SpaceX software engineering jobs and the listings said that the position would be expected to work overtime and weekends "as needed". Yeah, no thanks. I guess at least they're up front about it.
Hey know it all, what about you go work for Tesla and find out for yourself? I have first hand info about what goes on there and I would say the dude is definitely holding back.
Yes but one "unreasonable" person complaining on Gizmodo about a company doesn't mean there is some systemic problem at the company or the culture.
It's a confirmation bias problem. If Gizmodo posted a bunch of stories about "People at company X say things are awesome!!!" it would probably be deadpanned.
I reject the encroachment of post-truth tactics into further areas of discourse. If and when real evidence of paid protest is submitted, it can be discussed freely.
I would consider hired protesters in the same class of scumminess as what I assume you're referring to by post-truth tactics, and I see no more evidence being presented from their side.
The original claims are as hypothetical at this point - that's what I'm saying. Do poor working conditions sometimes exist? Yes. But so do disgruntled employees. Do hired protesters exist? Yes. I've had 2 employers get protested and on both occasions I've walked up to the protesters and asked them for more details on their quarrel than "SHAME ON <ENTITY NAME>" and they haven't been able to give me any. Yes, there's no evidence given that they're hired protesters, but it's not like these writings have much more substance behind them either. None of it's worth much consideration as-is.
I agree that the original claims can't be taken as absolute truth either without further proof.
The claim of paid protest only happens to be more suspect because of Trump's recent pattern of writing off dissent as inauthentic when in aggregate it's clearly grassroots and sincere. The link between Musk and Trump reinforces this, but it may be only a coincidence. It's context worth noting but it's not absolute proof that Musk is lying.
I'm not talking about proof of not being paid - I'm talking about proof of the original claims, or at least more detail than you see in the sources here. When stuff like this gets picked up and shared on popular websites because of one disgruntled employee, I'm inclined to dismiss it similarly.
Seriously? Did you not watch the Trump campaign or what he's done in office at all? Have you not seen the reports from the press briefings in which his advisors go on TV and claim things that are demonstrably false?
I reject the prominence that most people place on them. I reject the idea that they're as common as some people want to make it seem. And I reject the use of them as an excuse while offering no evidence at all that it happened.
That Tesla pays poor wages is well known. But this is expected since they are more a startup and do not have that much cash to go by. I guess the sad part is they don't hand out much shares either
Being a startup in the automotive manufacturing business is not the same as being a startup in the software business. A software company with 1000 employees is huge, an automotive manufacturing company with 1000 employees is tiny.
So is Tesla compensating its factory workers with stock options?
If you're working for a startup and they expect you to work long hours for pay below the industry standard and they don't give you stock or stock options, they don't get to play the "startup!" card.
We debate endlessly the risk/reward for stock options in a startup versus good pay and benefits at an established company, but if they aren't even giving you stock--
Out of curiosity I checked the number of employees of a small car manufacturer no too far from my hometown: Bugatti. 91 employees for an output of about 40 cars a year. I'm actually surprised that is possible at all to be so small in the automotive industry (though to be fair they belong to Volkswagen Group). Of course not trying to compare that to Tesla, the goal/scope/market is just too different.
Telsa is publicly traded on the US stock market. Surely it has graduated to "real company" by now. If not, when would you mark that point for a company?
I guess he got this tactic from Trump, claiming that any dissent comes from paid protesters. While offering no evidence that it's actually the case.
> Update 10/2/17 9:20am EST: In a statement this morning UAW categorically denied that Moran had ever been paid by their organization.
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-responds-to-claims-of-low-pay-...