Technology

They'll say the work is not needed. That's because the workload gets pushed to whoever is left. Is there a way you go from 110k employees to 20k and have no workload increase at all without some suffering some deficiencies somewhere in the product. Doubt it.

Another thing is who decides what the employees work on. "Industry hasn't innovated in x years" okay that's on CEO/management they decide what products to invest time in. It seems all that's left are barbarians in these companies. Possibly the visionaries have long been layed off it seems?

First, unions don’t prevent mass layoffs. They might help make things more manageable and help some individuals in need but layoffs are entirely at the discretion of the business.

"There are several ways that unionization’s impact on wages goes beyond the workers covered by collec- tive bargaining to affect nonunion wages and labor practices. For example, in industries and occupations where a strong core of workplaces are unionized, nonunion employers will frequently meet union standards or, at least, improve their compensation and labor practices beyond what they would have provided if there were no union presence. This dynamic is sometimes called the “union threat effect,” the degree to which nonunion workers get paid more because their employers are trying to forestall unionization.

There is a more general mechanism (without any specific “threat”) in which unions have affected nonunion pay and practices: unions have set norms and established practices that become more generalized throughout the economy, thereby improving pay and working conditions for the entire workforce. This has been especially true for the 75% of workers who are not college educated. Many “fringe” benefits, such as pensions and health insurance, were first provided in the union sector and then became more generalized—though, as we have seen, not universal. Union grievance procedures, which provide “due process” in the workplace, have been mimicked in many nonunion workplaces. Union wage- setting, which has gained exposure through media coverage, has frequently established standards of what workers generally, including many nonunion workers, expect from their employers. Until, the mid-1980s, in fact, many sectors of the economy followed the “pattern” set in collective bargaining agreements. As unions weakened, especially in the manufacturing sector, their ability to set broader patterns has diminished. However, unions remain a source of innovation in work practices (e.g., training, worker participation) and in benefits (e.g., child care, work-time flexibility, sick leave)."

https://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp143/

https://files.epi.org/page/-/old/briefingpapers/143/bp143.pdf

i can guarantee that nothing can stop a business from maximizing profits.

You are not a union, you cannot stop a business from doing anything, together with your fellow workers however you can dictate anything about the behavior of your company that you and your fellow workers feel sufficiently passionate about enough to fight for.

And second, the industry is contracting because it hasn’t innovated in more than 5 years now.

Why should an industry bother innovating to increase dividends to shareholders with expensive and risky new technological ventures when it can just keep slashing labor costs and crushing employees under their foot? There is no economic incentive to innovate when unions don't have the power to make executives think about choosing other less difficult paths than trying to directly reduce the quality of life of the companies employees.

Layoffs really need to trigger instant strikes. It boggles my mind that it's not something they negotiate and protect. "No layoffs without prior negotiation and approval of severance terms by vote." Break the terms... instant strike.

i can guarantee that nothing can stop a business from maximizing profits.

Sure, it can, because I'm going to blow your mind: businesses aren't about maximizing profits. It is ultimately about power, and money is a path to power. There are sometimes conflicts between power and money, though, and when there are, you can tell what they actually care about.

None of the recent layoffs at Tesla make any sense what so ever. The Supercharger network may be the company's best long term asset--they just got most of the industry to adopt their plug, and they have the largest existing network to support all those new EVs--yet they just canned the entire Supercharger team. The Cybertuck may be a dumb vehicle, but it's still sold out for the next year, and shrinking the production line isn't going to help anything. Nor would it help sell more of any other models. A $25k Tesla would be a game changer in a market that the rest of the industry hasn't really entered yet, but they just canned development on new models.

All while the company is still churning some kind of profit, even if it's not as high as it was. These layoffs will absolutely have a long term impact on Tesla's ability to compete at exactly the time when the rest of the industry is catching up with them.

Does it even improve stock price? Maybe a one day jump or one week jump, but TSLA has been mostly flat for the last year and doesn't look like it's going to return to growth. Only bright side is that its P/E ratio now looks almost reasonable.

None of this makes sense in terms of money. Barely does anything in the short term, and the long term damage is huge. This might be the beginning of the end of Tesla.

If it doesn't make sense in terms of money, then what else would work in that slot? Power.

Most programming (simple tasks, scripting data analysis, most common web apps, basic automation) is about as difficult as doing your own plumbing (which likely includes fixing a faucet or doing other minor tasks around the house). But just like in any profession, the "professionals" are able to handle the complex tasks that others can't/don't want to do. For plumbers that means building the whole home systems to maintain proper pressure/temperature at every outlet, suitable for whatever climate the home is built in, or in commercial settings where the systems are much larger and more complicated.

Ask a professional plumber which they find more taxing: being bent into awkward spaces on their hands and knees all day, or sitting at a desk thinking hard about a problem someone has likely already solved.

Ceo pay is advertised and used against each other to get top dollar. Lowers like us have out pay hidden so companies can low ball without us knowing. That's what needs to change. It should be law to be advertised pay rate so the lowballers get exposed and no one applies, forcing pay to go up.

but somehow not for CEOs?

Workers do the actual work. CEOs just make decisions that anyone can make and they have a board of people usually backing them up.

Availability of talent used to be the traditional issue. Judging from the current trend of growing teams in these areas, either the talent pool has been growing there or the outsourced jobs are not the talent seeking ones. India, especially, has a low reputation as an outsourcing target.