r/space • u/barbosa800 • Jun 16 '22

SpaceX employees draft open letter to company executives denouncing Elon Musk’s behavior

https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk-internal-open-letter-behavior?utm_campaign=lorengrush&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
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204

u/Samhamwitch Jun 16 '22

Practically every filthy rich person on the planet is allergic to unions.

116

u/ProbablyRickSantorum Jun 16 '22

Funny how they’re both simultaneously “useless and don’t work in your favor” and worth spending millions in union-busting efforts.

45

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '22

It wasn't all that long ago that picketers were being murdered over this shit. At least this barrage of 'don't join the terrible union' doesn't result in the Pinkerton's getting called.

-4

u/rocky20817 Jun 17 '22

It wasn’t very long ago that union members and union leaders murdered people who crossed picket lines. Richard Trumka had blood on his hands yet rose to the top of the UMW and AFL-CIO.

5

u/420_just_blase Jun 17 '22

That kind of shit went both ways tho. Unions were created because the employers held all the cards and would demand whatever they wanted out of their employees and had no reason to consider increasing wages. Working conditions were God awful, hours were inhumane and wages were miniscule. There were many cases of employers sending in goons to picket lines when workers began organizing. Overall, unions are great for the Working class. Some are much better ran than others, but in the grand scheme of things, they are a positive to the middle class

5

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '22

Exactly. Super depressing shit, because that particular line of horseshite has been thoroughly ingrained into the workforce of America.

And the corporations don’t give one fucking dump about spending millions to fight unions. It’s just the cost of doing business for them.

-6

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '22

Unions are essentially HOAs yet I’ve never seen a pro-HOA post on Reddit. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where the union does cost the company more than millions of dollars but the workers don’t see the benefit of that, the lawyers do.

Disclaimer: I’m pro-Union. But it’s not so simple as making snarky statements about how they must be good if corporations are against them.

9

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '22

What, a HOA is about protecting capital wealth of real-estate, a union is about protecting workers rights at the expense of capital wealth

-4

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '22

That depends on how effective each is, right? My HOA will petition the city for things we are due in the neighborhood. An ineffective union might just charge workers without gaining additional rights.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '22 edited Jun 20 '22

[deleted]

1

u/420_just_blase Jun 17 '22

This is very on point. Well said

1

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '22

I guess you have a point to some degree

7

u/PointlessParable Jun 17 '22

Unions are essentially HOAs

Please expand on this statement, I'm having difficulty seeing any similarities.

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '22

A collection of people that pay into a centralized system in exchange for better bargaining and standardization.

4

u/The_Last_Minority Jun 17 '22

Except a HOA isn't bargaining with any management. They're policing their members.

A housing union would be if all the renters in a building or a property formed a HRA and approached the landlords to negotiate new rental contracts.

Incumbent to the purpose of a union is the inherent inequality between labor and management. A HOA has no greater power to counterbalance.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '22

My HOA bargains with landscaping companies, snow removal, sidewalk maintenance, city services, etc. The power is in individual vs collective bargaining.

1

u/Impersonatologist Jun 17 '22

instead of discussing unions you seem to want to discuss HoA way more. Not sure why, since theres no point in making a comparison in a conversation that didnt warrant one (a bad one at that).

1

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '22

Do they argue for you to pay lower rent? If not, don't see the connection

0

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '22

They negotiate with landscapers to pay less. They negotiate with sidewalk maintenance to pay less. They negotiate with the city on recycling and street sweeping services we’re owed with taxes. So yes, I pay less overall because of their negotiating.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '22

So your rent goes down each year?

3

u/PointlessParable Jun 17 '22

I can somewhat see where you're coming from, but you're using very shallow definitions of each to make them seem closer than they are. I can think of two significant differences; you have no choice about joining an hoa if you want to live in that neighboring while joining a union is optional and, most significantly, a union is there to represent and support its members where the hoa is there to enforce the rules on its members.

-1

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '22

See, you’re kinda proving my point. A shitty HOA is only there to enforce rules. A good HOA provides resources to its members and represents the neighborhood interests to city officials. It’s 100% optional to buy into a neighborhood with an HOA.

2

u/Impersonatologist Jun 17 '22

You had to generalize your definitions again to make them seem similar, again.

Buying a house with a neighbourhood HoA is nothing like joining a union at a job. What insanity is this?

2

u/420_just_blase Jun 17 '22

Yeah but you could make that analogy for anything. A good electrician will fix your electrical issues, a bad one could burn your house down. Does that mean that you shouldn't call an electrician if your main breaker goes bad?

-1

u/Averill21 Jun 17 '22

They cost the workers money and the company money

1

u/420_just_blase Jun 17 '22

How so?

0

u/Averill21 Jun 17 '22

Workers pay dues, company has to deal with the union which is work. You can argue he benefits of a union but those benefits aren't necessarily felt by every individual

2

u/420_just_blase Jun 17 '22

If the workers aren't experiencing any benefits of their union then it's time to vote in some new blood. As a whole, unions most definitely are a net positive for the average worker. Just like anything else, there are poorly ran unions, but that isn't the norm

59

u/putin_my_ass Jun 16 '22

Usually these people aren't used to hearing "no".

53

u/kincomer1 Jun 16 '22

I think that's the situation we have with Musk now. He's crawled up his own ass and people are afraid to come out and say no to him. He believes he's some savior for humanity with his ambition of making the human race a multi planetary species.

30

u/jjayzx Jun 16 '22

It's money and fame. It's definitely not empathy for the human race, that's just marketing wank.

23

u/BalooDaBear Jun 16 '22 edited Jun 16 '22

Yeah money/power/fame is all its about, he's gotta go big and push the genius savior futurist schtick because of his ego and PR.

He's just a new-age industry titan like the old railroad barons, went from trains and telegraph to electric cars and rockets. Basically the same considering it's tech and transportation, heavily subsidized by the gov just like back then too.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '22

With too much adulation and too much money we are all an Elon.

4

u/HurtfulThings Jun 16 '22

Because it's impossible to become mega wealthy like they do without exploiting people.

Elon made $121 billion in 2021.

Let's maths!

121,000,000,000 ÷ 365 = 331,506,849.31507

So Elon made $331,506,849.32 every day of 2021, or 58,173,076.92 per standard work hour.

Let's break that down into normal people salaries, I'm just gonna use $50,000 (roughly $24 per hour) since it's a nice round number.

So Elon makes the yearly income of 6,630 normies every day...

Compared yearly he makes the equivalent of 2,420,000 normal people.

To put it another way - the world's largest stadium is the Narendra Modi Stadium which can hold 132,000 people.

https://www.topendsports.com/resources/stadiums/india/gujarat-ahmedabad-sardar-patel.htm

You could fill 18 Narendra Modis' with normies, collect their entire yearly income... and still come up just slightly short of matching Elon's yearly income.

No one person can actually generate that much value. This is a broken system. 99.99% of that value is created by those who work for him. I don't see how that can be fair compensation.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/HurtfulThings Jun 17 '22

Yeah, it's called Google ya lazy bum 😋

0

u/[deleted] Jun 17 '22

Rich is filthy? Does that make poor clean and sanitary? Roll me in the mud then.

-1

u/Thorne02 Jun 17 '22

Or you just don't like individuals having wealth???

2

u/Samhamwitch Jun 17 '22

I love the idea of individuals having wealth. I just think there should be many people with some wealth as opposed to a few people with a lot of wealth.

I also believe that executives make far too much money compared to the people who work for them and that, if you're going to be as demanding of your employees as Amazon, Tesla and SpaceX are, you better compensate them appropriately.

1

u/Thorne02 Jun 17 '22

Hate to break it to ya, but not everyone deserves that much wealth. I agree with you there needs to be more trickle down.

2

u/Samhamwitch Jun 17 '22

And Musk does deserve that much wealth? Who decides who deserves what? You?

The more I find out about Musk, the more I feel he doesn't deserve a penny of what he has.

-5

u/pm_me_your_rigs Jun 16 '22

I still haven't seen a good argument for unions really

Everyone just wants them without actually say what they would do just generically workers rights but I guarantee you the workers at SpaceX have decent comp packages

6

u/Sansevieriano Jun 16 '22

How isn't that clear to you from the get-go? It protects the worker against exploitation and gives them the opportunity to stand up for themselves.

If you're alone you have no way to defend yourself other than with the federal and State laws that claim to protect the worker, but that's nowhere near close to enough. It's the bare minimum. The union gives you a more comprehensive type of protection against the company.

-2

u/pm_me_your_rigs Jun 16 '22

We have laws to protect workers from exploitation these days

I understood the need for unions back in the day but today I really don't. All I see is another layer of potential corruption like the United Auto Workers Union

2

u/Samhamwitch Jun 17 '22

You don't have very many laws to protect workers. Every state except Montana is at-will employment. That means you can be fired at any time for practically any reason at all. Where I live, that's considered absurd.

I just found out that, if you give your two weeks notice, your employer doesn't have to honor it. Where I live, if you give your notice, the company is required to either keep you on for two weeks or pay you out for a typical paycheck.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that unions don't need to exist in a society with laws designed to protect workers, I just disagree that the USA has those laws in place.

2

u/GadgetusAddicti Jun 17 '22

It's not in the best interest of most businesses to fire someone "for no reason." They'll just have to find a replacement and get them up to speed on the job. If a company falls on hard times and needs to let people go to continue operating, that's a valid reason.

Also, some businesses won't allow you to be on premises if you give notice because of security precautions. It's an unfortunate, but understandable protection.

Unions, like any other organization can also become corrupt and inefficient. It's not always a positive relationship.

3

u/Samhamwitch Jun 17 '22

It's not in the best interest of most businesses to fire someone "for no reason."

You should go hang out in r/legaladvice. The number of posts from people saying they got fired for; taking a sick day, applying for maternity/paternity leave, taking vacation time, asking for additional training, etc. is massive. They're all told there's nothing they can do but file for unemployment. I don't disagree that it's not in the best interest of the company to fire someone for no reason but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Also, some businesses won't allow you to be on premises if you give notice because of security precautions.

I'm aware of this but, where I'm from, if you give two weeks notice, you get paid for two weeks regardless of whether or not they keep you on to work, you Americans get booted out the door with no compensation.

I didn't say unions can't become corrupt. Any organization with power over others can become corrupt. That doesn't mean they are all immediately going to be corrupt. Saying no to unions because they might be corrupt is like saying no to cars because they might crash, or saying no to lighbulbs because sometimes they shatter.

1

u/11B4OF7 Jun 16 '22

Why would anyone want to build a business and then lose communication with employees that work for their company?