Community Organizers vs Entreprenuers

[abbey1227]

Jun 22, 2022 23:13:56 GMT merh said:

[merh]

Jun 23, 2022 0:04:30 GMT abbey1227 said:

Jun 22, 2022 23:13:56 GMT merh said:

So you compare singular persons to a group setting?

The first is a boss directing workers.
The second is a leader actually participating in the work, showing how it's done.
The 3rd the billionaires are nowhere near the work

[abbey1227]

Jun 23, 2022 5:06:21 GMT merh said:

Jun 23, 2022 0:04:30 GMT abbey1227 said:

So you compare singular persons to a group setting?

The first is a boss directing workers.
The second is a leader actually participating in the work, showing how it's done.
The 3rd the billionaires are nowhere near the work

I'm pointing out the difference between ants and grasshoppers. Aesop was trying to tell people something. Too many grasshoppers and your ant society goes to hell.

A Billionaire has had enough success that they can hire someone to be there in their stead. Funny you don't have a problem with a President sitting isolated from the world and not having to actually succeed or put in any real work themselves. But a person who actually had enough success with selling products or services to others is hated?

[merh]

[merh]

How to Unionize Your Workplace: a step-by-step guide
BySocialist Alternative Editorial Board -June 27, 2022463
So, you’re tired of low wages, abusive bosses, getting too few hours to make ends meet, or forced to work so many hours that you can’t live your life the way you’d like. You’ve realized that it’s not enough to just quit your job and get a slightly less crappy one like millions of workers are doing each month, instead you need to get together with your co-workers to fight for the wages and working conditions that we actually deserve.

You want to unionize your workplace.

Luckily, you’re not alone: Americans approve of unions in record numbers, and a 2017 poll showed that a majority would join one tomorrow if asked, well before the wave of unionization at Amazon and Starbucks catapulted the labor movement into the national spotlight. It’s likely you’re reading this precisely because you were inspired by those struggles, or one of the many other ones happening in workplaces of all types – in fact, there have been 57% more union election petitions filed in 2022 vs 2021.

This is all incredibly exciting, but the labor movement in the U.S. is just starting to emerge from its slumber after several decades of defeat and decline. It’s still a far cry from where it was during the last major upsurges in the 1930s and 70s which saw dozens of times more strikes and unionizing workers than we see today. Forming a union today is a difficult task, and as an organizer you’re stepping out onto hostile terrain where the deck is stacked against working people in favor of your employer – the boss, who will do everything in his power to stop you.

That’s always been the case, however. For as long as capitalism has existed, the bosses have cared about little else other than profit and making sure that they have dictatorial control in the workplace. In response, workers have always formed unions and waged determined and heroic battles to win major gains in the workplace and well beyond using all tools at their disposal: protests, direct action, and strikes. At their best, these struggles had as their goal the transformation of society as a whole. The long and valiant history of labor struggles in the U.S. and around the world is one that anyone organizing should look to, study, and draw inspiration from.

Unions are the strongest tool that working people have to protect ourselves and win what we deserve at work. No one else will do it for us. Forming one is a challenge, but nothing has ever been won without a fight and there’s few more important things that you could be doing right now.

Where do I start?
How do you actually get started though? There’s no shame in not knowing. The vast majority of workers have no experience being in one, and the entire legal process for forming one through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB, the government agency which oversees this process) is purposefully set up in such a way so as to be as intimidating and inaccessible to working people as possible. This guide assumes workers will want to take the most common route to forming a union through the NLRB, although a union at the end of the day is the workers themselves organizing and taking collective action. That’s where our real power lies as workers, it’s not because a government agency “certifies” our union.

If you google “How to Form a Union”, a lot of what you find might just make it more confusing or intimidating: “mapping”, “authorization cards”, “union petition”. It’s a lot to get a handle on, and forming a union is a real challenge, but not only is it possible it’s also the best way for workers to fight for and secure more than what we’re currently handed by the bosses.

Let’s break down the basic steps:

Talk to co-workers
Build a team: the Organizing Committee
Choose a union, collect union cards and file them with the NLRB
Election time: stand up to union busting, respond to retaliation
Fight for a strong contract: bargaining and escalation action
1) Talk to co-workers
It all starts with talking to people! In order to make the most of these conversations you should be a dependable worker, someone trustworthy and knowledgeable about the workplace, and personable with your co-workers.

Ask about what they think could be better at work. Asking about specific issues will often lead to better conversations than keeping things general. Things like wages or break time will of course be the big issues for many workers, but there will often be others, including ones unique to a certain industry. Be sure to ask lots of questions and give them plenty of room to talk, and then agitate around the issues they bring up. For instance, if they say that the latest attendance policy isn’t fair, tell them you agree and talk about what you think it should be instead, and offer concrete examples of how it’s affected workers, maybe a mother who’s struggling to balance picking up children from daycare with her work schedule. No issue is too small to talk about!

It’s not often that a first conversation like this then goes straight to talking about a union, but eventually what you have to do in a second or third one is to get your co-worker to identify that the way to change things would be to organize collectively and take action. Once they get there you should make that more explicit: what we need is a union. These kinds of conversations are always easier to have when not at work, so it can be good to ask someone you’ve been talking to about workplace issues if they’d like to meet up someday soon to talk more.

Finally, be prudent. In most workplaces it will be important to start slow and take care to avoid detection. However, taking it slow is not a hard rule, and in times of a high level of struggle, an organizing wave in a certain industry, or a major attack on workers it may be necessary to move quickly and openly. Regardless, the boss will start union-busting as soon as they catch any whiff of organizing talk, so it’s important to balance being bold and confident in approaching co-workers with being skillful and cautious.

2) Build a team: the Organizing Committee

Once you’ve talked to a few people now who are supportive of unionizing you should start meeting together regularly as a team, which in the labor movement is called an Organizing Committee (OC).

The importance of demands

One of the first things the OC needs to do is to work out a plan to talk to more people and learn what issues are most important in the workplace and for the greatest number of people, being sure to talk to workers of all different genders, ethnic or racial backgrounds, and job categories. Based on this the OC should then democratically discuss and decide on a set of clear demands that speak to immediate workplace issues like wages, benefits, and safety (a $30 an hour minimum wage, two weeks time off, the ability to refuse to serve abusive customers, etc). It’s rarely enough to talk abstractly about the benefits of a union like “respect and dignity” or “a seat at the table”. There are many workers who have little experience with or understanding of what a union is, or who have fallen prey to the steady stream of anti-union propaganda on the job and in U.S. politics, and winning their support requires a strong motivation about how it will concretely change their lives for the better.

Mapping your workplace and assessing support

Mapping is a fancy word for developing an overview of who all the workers at your job are, their names, what hours or shifts they work, and where. At a smaller job like a Starbucks store this is pretty straightforward, whereas at a giant urban hospital with multiple floors, units, and thousands of employees it can be a very tall order which might also involve a literal map of the building and where people are stationed. Regardless, spreadsheets will be one of your best friends, use one like this to keep track of all this information. If you have Gmail you can go to File -> Make a Copy and start making your own spreadsheet for your job, adding any columns or information you think is relevant for your organizing! Part of being a good organizer is taking this kind of consistent and systematic approach to every stage of the work.

It’s common for an Organizing Committee to assess co-workers according to their support for the union on a scale of 1 to 5. This is important for helping get hard numbers on what the support at your job actually looks like, which becomes especially crucial at later stages like collecting cards and holding an election.

1 – A worker who is an OC member: a pro-union activist who can be counted on to attend meetings, talk to other workers, and take action.

2 – Solidly supportive of the union, but passively – not really attending meetings or talking to other workers.

3- Undecided. This can be someone who’s on the fence, has real concerns and questions, or simply someone who doesn’t know much about what a union is.

4 – Opposes unionization, but is not hostile. With effective organizing methods and through the course of struggle, it’s totally possible to change a 4 to a 2 and has happened many times before.

5 – Strongly opposes unionization, is aggressive or hostile about it, or actively organizes workers against the union.

Organizing Committee meetings

At all points the strength and cohesion of the OC is key for building a strong campaign. A big part of building that strength and cohesion is through having well-organized meetings that happen regularly. In these the OC should discuss what demands to use, how conversations with workers are going, how to refine conversations and make them stronger, and all other aspects of the union drive. Democracy is the lifeblood of a strong union drive, and you should begin to develop practices for that early on including debating and voting on all important questions. Debate doesn’t have to be a contentious thing to be avoided, it’s part of how organizers work out the best tactics and strategy!

At the end of each meeting everyone there should have a clear understanding of what their tasks are and the next steps, especially a broader fighting strategy to win Earlier on, it can be good for everyone to have a goal of talking to a certain number of additional workers which can then be reported on at the next meeting, assigning out who talks to who. If there’s someone else who it seems would be good to bring onto the Organizing committee, discuss that!

3) Choose a union, collect authorization cards, file them with the NLRB
Throughout the history of capitalism, and around most of the world today, de facto union recognition elections happened when workers vote to go on strike. If the strike involved an overwhelming majority of workers and was strong enough to stop production – the source of the profits – the boss would be pressured to negotiate with the union. To prevent strikes, the US government set up a department called the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to create a more formal and legally protected process to recognize new unions, which are typically “sponsored” by existing unions.

There are pluses and minuses to organizing through the NLRB. If you have the cohesion and strength to do so without the NLRB, forcing the boss to recognize your union and negotiate a contract, then it will probably be faster and more successful. This will mean organizing directly to get the company to accept your demands though escalating actions, including an effective strike.

Choosing a union: an existing one or a new independent one?

Many other guides on how to unionize a workplace will list choosing a union as one of the earliest steps to take. Socialist Alternative disagrees, and we’ve found through our experience in the labor movement and the many organizing efforts we’ve been a part of that this unnecessarily locks workers into a specific union, one which might not have a strong approach to organizing or be best suited for the job. The most important things are building a worker-led union with a strong Organizing Committee, developing clear demands, and taking a class struggle approach to organizing that recognizes that workers and bosses have irreconcilable differences and that we can’t just appeal to their morality or good sense to win what we want – we have to fight.

The first major thing to decide at this stage is whether to work with an existing union (and if so, which one) or form a new independent one, like the Amazon Labor Union in New York City did.. One route is not necessarily better than the other, and which to choose will depend on the exact situation at the job or the wider industry and should be the product of real discussion and consideration by the workers involved

Most leaders of today’s unions unfortunately take a timid approach to organizing that flows from their “business unionism” politics, and it’s important for organizing workers to be aware of these problems and actively push back against this when necessary. At the end of the day, the union is the workers, and if you’ve built a strong one that’s well-organized and ready to fight you can overcome all sorts of obstacles, including the weak leaderships of many existing unions. If you do decide to affiliate with an existing union, take your time and be sure to meet and discuss with different ones, research their record in the labor movement, and discuss all of this on your Organizing Committee.

Collecting union authorization cards

Once you’ve chosen a union, you start collecting authorization cards. If you’re forming a new independent union you can actually make these yourself! They should be the size of an index card (3×5 inches) and include language along the lines of “I hereby authorize [NAME OF UNION] to represent me for purposes of collective bargaining with my employer.” Beyond that it only needs to include the following fields:

Name
E-mail address
Telephone number
Employer’s name
Date of signing
Signature
(Other fields that could be good to include but aren’t required: address, shift, job title, full or part-time)
The OC will need to go back around to supportive workers with these cards, re-motivate the demands that the union is fighting for and the importance of having one, and how this is the first legally required and protected step to us forming a union. Signed cards are precious objects that need to be guarded and safely stored because it’s not guaranteed you’ll ever have another conversation with or run into that worker again! Managers that can hire or fire people cannot be part of a union, although lower-level supervisors like the “shift supervisors” in many retail stores typically can be and you should collect cards from them. Ultimately the NLRB will determine who is in the bargaining unit or not once you file for an election with them.

Inoculation: anticipating and responding to union-busting

Companies spend enormous amounts on union-busting consultants each year, and even ones which aren’t currently fighting off union drives will subject their employees to anti-union propaganda during the hiring process and long after. As an organizer, part of what you will need to do is respond to these anti-union talking points before the boss starts making them in earnest. In the labor movement this is called inoculation, where your conversation acts as a vaccine against the union-busting lies. This should start from very early on, but especially once you start collecting cards because it won’t be long before the boss catches a whiff of what’s going on and rolls out their union-busting campaign.

Filing the union cards and an official petition with the NLRB

In most situations, it’s important to collect as many cards as possible before submitting them to the regional office of the NLRB that is responsible for your area. Although the legal minimum is only 30% of eligible workers, 70% or higher is ideal because it shows strength and that the campaign has the kind of momentum needed to power through the most heated stages.

4) Election time: stand up to union busting, respond to retaliation
The NLRB will typically schedule a union election anywhere from a few weeks to a few months out from when the cards are filed. In the context of an active struggle this is a huge amount of time, a delay which heavily favors the bosses who have the resources and the time to carry out their union-busting campaign. It’s not uncommon for union drives that file cards from 60% or more workers to end up in defeat during the final vote itself.

Escalating action

When heading into the election, everything talked about above like having a strong organizing committee with democratic structures, inoculation, and responding to retaliation are more important than ever. Escalating actions should happen too: this can be as simple as organizing as many workers as possible to all wear a union t-shirt or button together. This may seem like a simple thing, but it can go a long way towards building cohesion and solidarity among workers and develop a sense of what it looks and feels like to take collective action together. Far from a trivial thing, this kind of action might be the first time for many workers that they’ve ever stuck their neck out before after a lifetime of being trained to keep your head down so you can get your next paycheck. This helps build the kind of confidence which could lead to a successful walkout or strike.

Strikes and walkouts

The bosses only care about one thing: profit. If we stop working, then they stop making it, and if a strike is well-organized enough they will eventually be forced to give in to some or all of its demands.

These are the most powerful tools of workers and can and should happen at any stage of a union struggle if a solid majority of workers are on board with it and properly prepared. Many of the major strikes of the 1930s (like the Minneapolis Teamsters strike) that built the major unions today were battles over simple union recognition, which prompted the establishment of the NLRB election process in 1935 precisely to channel this ferment back into the “safer” avenue of the state and the courts. Ultimately, there will be no serious revival of the labor movement or increase in union membership without the strike once again becoming commonplace.

Standing up to retaliation

While organizing is technically a legally-protected right, retaliation against organizing workers is incredibly common and needs to be responded to immediately. There’s the law, and then there’s reality: employers can simply fabricate a reason for disciplining or firing a workplace activist. The workplace is a dictatorship under capitalism which allows the bosses and a handful of billionaires to get rich off of our work. That same wealth is what allows them to control the supposedly “neutral” state and its government institutions like the courts and the NLRB.

When confronting retaliation, workers have to do much more than file a complaint with the NLRB and wait for the agency to sort it out – that process can take months or even years, and will often side with the bosses. To build the confidence and fighting capacity of workers it’s necessary to escalate the fight right then and there through walkouts, protests, and other actions. When Starbucks fired the ‘Memphis 7’ in February 2022, workers around the country held walkouts and protests in solidarity with them, which ultimately won their reinstatement three months later. In Columbia, South Carolina, Starbucks workers went on strike after a pro-union manager was fired just two weeks before their election – they ended up winning their vote unanimously, in a state which has fewer unionized workers than any other.

5) Fight for a strong contract
Struggle rarely proceeds in a straight line, and a union campaign is no exception. There will be twists and turns, major obstacles, setbacks, and defeats. However, with a class struggle approach to organizing you have a damn good shot at winning your union. You only need a simple majority of workers to vote yes to win, but like with authorization cards it’s important that number is as high as possible.

An election victory is a huge achievement, especially in the U.S. where every step of the process is designed to be an obstacle to working people. However, winning an election is in many ways the easy part, after that comes the fight for a strong contract which puts into writing all of what the workers are demanding. In recent decades, around 30% of new unions never even get to a first contract, and for those that do it takes an average of 409 days, and several years is not uncommon.

This is because the bosses are going to fight you tooth and nail every step of the way to try and stop you from winning better wages, benefits, and working conditions – the things that eat into their profits. The election and bargaining stages shouldn’t be thought of as separate things, and all workers should understand that just because you win an election it doesn’t mean the bosses are going to cooperate – far from it. Winning a strong contract means preparing for bargaining from the very beginning of organizing, emphasizing that what we are fighting for is a contract and it’s going to take a real fight and sustained action to get there.

Organizing in the workplace and beyond
As workers we can win serious gains in the workplace when we use organizing methods that are rooted in class struggle. Ultimately though, capitalism is an economic system that was designed by people like Jeff Bezos and designed to serve them, not people like us. Winning an end to exploitation in the workplace and to oppression and inequality of all kinds will require the socialist transformation of society. Under socialism, the workplace will no longer be a dictatorship under the boss but run democratically by workers ourselves, underpinned by a globally planned economy. This would guarantee that the immense wealth we generate is put back into society and not into the superyachts of the billionaires, raising living standards to a far higher level. This would also allow us to work much fewer hours, freeing up time to indulge in our hobbies and interests, spend time with friends and family, and participate in politics and social life. The aspects of work which are rewarding and socially useful will remain, while the deep exploitation, alienation, and isolation we experience currently will be minimized or eliminated entirely.

Socialists stand against all forms of exploitation and oppression and we’re active in all struggles, big or small. The history of the socialist movement is totally bound up with the history of the labor movement – at all important junctures, socialists have been there and played a key role. Today, you still find socialists in the labor movement whether as workers organizing on the job or as supporters in the community. Socialists know a thing or two about unionizing, so if you’re thinking about unionizing and you see us around, talk to us!

[abbey1227]

Jun 28, 2022 17:55:39 GMT merh said:

Just saw a funny meme that explained "Of course many corporations are willing to pay for abortion travel expenses, it's cheaper than paying for maternity leave."

[merh]

Jun 28, 2022 19:31:29 GMT abbey1227 said:

Jun 28, 2022 17:55:39 GMT merh said:

Just saw a funny meme that explained "Of course many corporations are willing to pay for abortion travel expenses, it's cheaper than paying for maternity leave."

Maternity leave?
Health care for the children.
Sick days...
My job allowed us to use a percentage (40%? 60%? I forget) as "sick leave other" & I used a lot of it on the kid

[abbey1227]

Jun 28, 2022 23:45:37 GMT merh said:

Jun 28, 2022 19:31:29 GMT abbey1227 said:

Just saw a funny meme that explained "Of course many corporations are willing to pay for abortion travel expenses, it's cheaper than paying for maternity leave."

Maternity leave?
Health care for the children.
Sick days...
My job allowed us to use a percentage (40%? 60%? I forget) as "sick leave other" & I used a lot of it on the kid

I think that's a given that women are usually the caregivers for the family and more likely to take time off.

This is a major factor in that nonsense 'wage gap' discussion.

[merh]

Tesla employees had no place to sit, no parking slots when they returned to office
Tesla employees who could not afford to lose their jobs returned to the office only to find occupied desks, no parking slots and crappy wi-fi.
Ankita Chakravarti
New Delhi
June 28, 2022 UPDATED: June 28, 2022
HIGHLIGHTS
Tesla CEO Elon Musk had warned its employees to return to the office or lose their jobs
Tesla employees who returned to Tesla’s Fremont, California facility complained that they did not even have a place to sit when they entered the office complex.
. The situation got so bad that the managers had to ask employees to continue working from home
Tesla CEO Elon Musk had warned its employees to return to the office or lose their jobs. The employees who could not afford to lose their jobs returned to the office only to find occupied desks, no parking slots and crappy wi-fi. Looked like the Musk-led company was not equipped enough to welcome its employees back into office after a hiatus of two years. Due to the raging coronavirus pandemic, employees all across the globe were forced to work from home. With covid cases going down, the offices have opened up again and companies like Tesla have forced employees to return to office.
As per a report published by The Information, Tesla employees who returned to Tesla’s Fremont, California facility complained that they did not even have a place to sit when they entered the office complex. The employees did not get space to park their cars. And some who managed to get a work desk had to deal with crappy wifi, which interfered with their work. The situation got so bad that the managers had to ask employees to continue working from home until the logistics got sorted.

The report further added that the Tesla headcount has doubled in two years. There are currently 99,210 people. Earlier in the Qatar Economic Forum organised by Bloomberg, Musk had said that Tesla will fire around 10 per cent of its workforce in the next three months. The purported layoffs will amount to about 3.5 per cent of the workforce. Excess hiring in Tesla in the past two years had created desk issues.

So he's laying people off because he hired too many during the pandemic?

This is a brilliant manager?

[abbey1227]

Jun 29, 2022 13:16:31 GMT merh said:

Tesla employees had no place to sit, no parking slots when they returned to office
Tesla employees who could not afford to lose their jobs returned to the office only to find occupied desks, no parking slots and crappy wi-fi.
Ankita Chakravarti
New Delhi
June 28, 2022 UPDATED: June 28, 2022
HIGHLIGHTS
Tesla CEO Elon Musk had warned its employees to return to the office or lose their jobs
Tesla employees who returned to Tesla’s Fremont, California facility complained that they did not even have a place to sit when they entered the office complex.
. The situation got so bad that the managers had to ask employees to continue working from home
Tesla CEO Elon Musk had warned its employees to return to the office or lose their jobs. The employees who could not afford to lose their jobs returned to the office only to find occupied desks, no parking slots and crappy wi-fi. Looked like the Musk-led company was not equipped enough to welcome its employees back into office after a hiatus of two years. Due to the raging coronavirus pandemic, employees all across the globe were forced to work from home. With covid cases going down, the offices have opened up again and companies like Tesla have forced employees to return to office.
As per a report published by The Information, Tesla employees who returned to Tesla’s Fremont, California facility complained that they did not even have a place to sit when they entered the office complex. The employees did not get space to park their cars. And some who managed to get a work desk had to deal with crappy wifi, which interfered with their work. The situation got so bad that the managers had to ask employees to continue working from home until the logistics got sorted.

The report further added that the Tesla headcount has doubled in two years. There are currently 99,210 people. Earlier in the Qatar Economic Forum organised by Bloomberg, Musk had said that Tesla will fire around 10 per cent of its workforce in the next three months. The purported layoffs will amount to about 3.5 per cent of the workforce. Excess hiring in Tesla in the past two years had created desk issues.

So he's laying people off because he hired too many during the pandemic?

This is a brilliant manager?

Gee, big surprise.......a Hit Piece in order to discredit an unpopular person. How original. Meanwhile, the cover for the others is a noticeable bias

[merh]

Jun 30, 2022 0:06:42 GMT abbey1227 said:

Jun 29, 2022 13:16:31 GMT merh said:

So he's laying people off because he hired too many during the pandemic?

This is a brilliant manager?

Gee, big surprise.......a Hit Piece in order to discredit an unpopular person. How original. Meanwhile, the cover for the others is a noticeable bias

ELON MUSK ordered his workers who WANTED to continue working from home to return to the office, but there were more employees than desks & it's a HIT PIECE?

Don't you think they should have looked into it BEFORE demanding employees return to the office?

You think a paper in India hates technology?

[abbey1227]

Jun 30, 2022 6:25:32 GMT merh said:

Jun 30, 2022 0:06:42 GMT abbey1227 said:

Gee, big surprise.......a Hit Piece in order to discredit an unpopular person. How original. Meanwhile, the cover for the others is a noticeable bias

ELON MUSK ordered his workers who WANTED to continue working from home to return to the office, but there were more employees than desks & it's a HIT PIECE?

Don't you think they should have looked into it BEFORE demanding employees return to the office?

You think a paper in India hates technology?

It's likely an exaggeration at most.

I think there are but a handful of Media Owners........and they clearly have a bias towards globalism. Remember when the Left used to be all worried about that? Too large of corporations with their fingers in too many pies? But as long as they support Senile Joe, it's all OK now?

[abbey1227]

Jul 7, 2022 6:39:53 GMT merh said:

just heard Tesla just got passed for most electric cars sold.........some Warren Buffet backed Chinese company.

Boy, that election is paying off for some people already

[merh]

Jul 7, 2022 11:46:01 GMT abbey1227 said:

Jul 7, 2022 6:39:53 GMT merh said:

just heard Tesla just got passed for most electric cars sold.........some Warren Buffet backed Chinese company.

Boy, that election is paying off for some people already

Of the 641,350 vehicles sold by BYD during the first half of the year, more than 314,000 were hybrids. Conversely, all of Tesla’s 564,743 cars sold were full battery electric vehicles — meaning Musk still leads the world by that measure.

Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway held a 7.7% stake in BYD as of April that was worth more than $9 billion. The company spent $232 million to acquire its initial stake in the Chinese firm in 2008.

Tensions between Musk and BYD seemed to have cooled as of June. One of the Chinese firm’s top executives described Musk as a “good friend” and said BYD was set to supply the firm with batteries “very soon,” Reuters reported.

[abbey1227]

Jul 9, 2022 11:12:51 GMT merh said:

Jul 7, 2022 11:46:01 GMT abbey1227 said:

just heard Tesla just got passed for most electric cars sold.........some Warren Buffet backed Chinese company.

Boy, that election is paying off for some people already

Of the 641,350 vehicles sold by BYD during the first half of the year, more than 314,000 were hybrids. Conversely, all of Tesla’s 564,743 cars sold were full battery electric vehicles — meaning Musk still leads the world by that measure.

Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway held a 7.7% stake in BYD as of April that was worth more than $9 billion. The company spent $232 million to acquire its initial stake in the Chinese firm in 2008.

Tensions between Musk and BYD seemed to have cooled as of June. One of the Chinese firm’s top executives described Musk as a “good friend” and said BYD was set to supply the firm with batteries “very soon,” Reuters reported.

Very cozy relationships. I've seen more than a few unions for their dwindling accounts bolstered since 2020

[merh]

Uber broke laws, duped police and secretly lobbied governments, leak reveals

More than 124,000 confidential documents leaked to the Guardian
Files expose attempts to lobby Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz and George Osborne
Emmanuel Macron secretly aided Uber lobbying in France, texts reveal
Company used ‘kill switch’ during raids to stop police seeing data
Former Uber CEO told executives ‘violence guarantees success’

Aleaked trove of confidential files has revealed the inside story of how the tech giant Uber flouted laws, duped police, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments during its aggressive global expansion.

The unprecedented leak to the Guardian of more than 124,000 documents – known as the Uber files – lays bare the ethically questionable practices that fuelled the company’s transformation into one of Silicon Valley’s most famous exports.

The leak spans a five-year period when Uber was run by its co-founder Travis Kalanick, who tried to introduce the cab-hailing service into cities around the world by brute force, even if that meant breaching laws and taxi regulations.

During the fierce global backlash, the data shows how Uber tried to shore up support by discreetly courting prime ministers, presidents, billionaires, oligarchs and media barons.

Leaked messages suggest Uber executives were at the same time under no illusions about the company’s law-breaking, with one executive joking they had become “pirates” and another conceding: “We’re just fucking illegal.”

The cache of files, which span 2013 to 2017, includes more than 83,000 emails, iMessages and WhatsApp messages, including often frank and unvarnished communications between Kalanick and his top team of executives.

www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/uber-files-leak-reveals-global-lobbying-campaign


Money, money, money, money

[abbey1227]

Jul 10, 2022 17:14:04 GMT merh said:

Uber broke laws, duped police and secretly lobbied governments, leak reveals

More than 124,000 confidential documents leaked to the Guardian
Files expose attempts to lobby Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz and George Osborne
Emmanuel Macron secretly aided Uber lobbying in France, texts reveal
Company used ‘kill switch’ during raids to stop police seeing data
Former Uber CEO told executives ‘violence guarantees success’

Aleaked trove of confidential files has revealed the inside story of how the tech giant Uber flouted laws, duped police, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments during its aggressive global expansion.

The unprecedented leak to the Guardian of more than 124,000 documents – known as the Uber files – lays bare the ethically questionable practices that fuelled the company’s transformation into one of Silicon Valley’s most famous exports.

The leak spans a five-year period when Uber was run by its co-founder Travis Kalanick, who tried to introduce the cab-hailing service into cities around the world by brute force, even if that meant breaching laws and taxi regulations.

During the fierce global backlash, the data shows how Uber tried to shore up support by discreetly courting prime ministers, presidents, billionaires, oligarchs and media barons.

Leaked messages suggest Uber executives were at the same time under no illusions about the company’s law-breaking, with one executive joking they had become “pirates” and another conceding: “We’re just fucking illegal.”

The cache of files, which span 2013 to 2017, includes more than 83,000 emails, iMessages and WhatsApp messages, including often frank and unvarnished communications between Kalanick and his top team of executives.

www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/uber-files-leak-reveals-global-lobbying-campaign


Money, money, money, money

what is with you? Don't you like or need money?

I know a few people that drove for Uber. They liked the freedom to choose and the extra $Income.

Personally, I loved how it decimated the taxi service in Vegas.

Why act so shocked they had to get down in the mud to deal with dirty politicians?

[merh]

Jul 10, 2022 22:18:28 GMT abbey1227 said:

Jul 10, 2022 17:14:04 GMT merh said:

www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/uber-files-leak-reveals-global-lobbying-campaign


Money, money, money, money

what is with you? Don't you like or need money?

I know a few people that drove for Uber. They liked the freedom to choose and the extra $Income.

Personally, I loved how it decimated the taxi service in Vegas.

Why act so shocked they had to get down in the mud to deal with dirty politicians?

Love of money is the root of all evil.

So lobbying BAD unless you agree with the business doing it?

In one exchange, Kalanick dismissed concerns from other executives that sending Uber drivers to a protest in France put them at risk of violence from angry opponents in the taxi industry. “I think it’s worth it,” he shot back. “Violence guarantee success.”

In a statement, Kalanick’s spokesperson said he “never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of driver safety” and any suggestion he was involved in such activity would be completely false.

The leak also contains texts between Kalanick and Emmanuel Macron, who secretly helped the company in France when he was economy minister, allowing Uber frequent and direct access to him and his staff.

Macron, the French president, appears to have gone to extraordinary lengths to help Uber, even telling the company he had brokered a secret “deal” with its opponents in the French cabinet.

Privately, Uber executives expressed barely disguised disdain for other elected officials who were who were less receptive to the company’s business model.

After the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who was mayor of Hamburg at the time, pushed back against Uber lobbyists and insisted on paying drivers a minimum wage, an executive told colleagues he was “a real comedian”.

When the then US vice-president, Joe Biden, a supporter of Uber at the time, was late to a meeting with the company at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Kalanick texted a colleague: “I’ve had my people let him know that every minute late he is, is one less minute he will have with me.”

After meeting Kalanick, Biden appears to have amended his prepared speech at Davos to refer to a CEO whose company would give millions of workers “freedom to work as many hours as they wish, manage their own lives as they wish”

In a statement responding to the leak, Uber admitted to “mistakes and missteps”, but said it had been transformed since 2017 under the leadership of its current chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi.

“We have not and will not make excuses for past behaviour that is clearly not in line with our present values,” it said. “Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we’ve done over the last five years and what we will do in the years to come.”

Don't worry we acted inappropriately in the past.
Look at us now.

Rapes. 
Bad background checks allowing criminals to drive, putting customers at risk.

From Moscow to Johannesburg, bankrolled with unprecedented venture capital funding, Uber heavily subsidised journeys, seducing drivers and passengers on to the app with incentives and pricing models that would not be sustainable.

Uber undercut established taxi and cab markets and put pressure on governments to rewrite laws to help pave the way for an app-based, gig-economy model of work that has since proliferated across the world.

In a bid to quell the fierce backlash against the company and win changes to taxi and labour laws, Uber planned to spend an extraordinary $90m in 2016 on lobbying and public relations, one document suggests.

Its strategy often involved going over the heads of city mayors and transport authorities and straight to the seat of power.

In addition to meeting Biden at Davos, Uber executives met face-to-face with Macron, the Irish prime minister, Enda Kenny, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and George Osborne, the UK’s chancellor at the time. A note from the meeting portrayed Osborne as a “strong advocate”.

In a statement, Osborne said it was the explicit policy of the government at the time to meet with global tech firms and “persuade them to invest in Britain, and create jobs here”.

While the Davos sitdown with Osborne was declared, the data reveals that six UK Tory cabinet ministers had meetings with Uber that were not disclosed. It is unclear if the meetings should have been declared, exposing confusion around how UK lobbying rules are applied.

The documents indicate Uber was adept at finding unofficial routes to power, applying influence through friends or intermediaries, or seeking out encounters with politicians at which aides and officials were not present.

It enlisted the backing of powerful figures in places such as Russia, Italy and Germany by offering them prized financial stakes in the startup and turning them into “strategic investors”.

And in a bid to shape policy debates, it paid prominent academics hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce research that supported the company’s claims about the benefits of its economic model.

Despite a well-financed and dogged lobbying operation, Uber’s efforts had mixed results. In some places Uber succeeded in persuading governments to rewrite laws, with lasting effects. But elsewhere, the company found itself blocked by entrenched taxi industries, outgunned by local cab-hailing rivals or opposed by leftwing politicians who simply refused to budge.

Don't look at that man behind the curtain 
Studies produced on demand showing the results Uber wanted?

As Uber launched across India, Kalanick’s top executive in Asia urged managers to focus on driving growth, even when “fires start to burn”. “Know this is a normal part of Uber’s business,” he said. “Embrace the chaos. It means you’re doing something meaningful.”

Kalanick appeared to put that ethos into practice in January 2016, when Uber’s attempts to upend markets in Europe led to angry protests in Belgium, Spain, Italy and France from taxi drivers who feared for their livelihoods.

Amid taxi strikes and riots in Paris, Kalanick ordered French executives to retaliate by encouraging Uber drivers to stage a counter-protest with mass civil disobedience.

Warned that doing so risked putting Uber drivers at risk of attacks from “extreme right thugs” who had infiltrated the taxi protests and were “spoiling for a fight”, Kalanick appeared to urge his team to press ahead regardless. “I think it’s worth it,” he said. “Violence guarantee success. And these guys must be resisted, no? Agreed that right place and time must be thought out.”

The decision to send Uber drivers into potentially volatile protests, despite the risks, was consistent with what one senior former executive told the Guardian was a strategy of “weaponising” drivers, and exploiting violence against them to “keep the controversy burning”.

It was a playbook that, leaked emails suggest, was repeated in Italy, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

When masked men, reported to be angry taxi drivers, turned on Uber drivers with knuckle-dusters and a hammer in Amsterdam in March 2015, Uber staffers sought to turn it to their advantage to win concessions from the Dutch government.

Driver victims were encouraged to file police reports, which were shared with De Telegraaf, the leading Dutch daily newspaper. They “will be published without our fingerprint on the front page tomorrow”, one manager wrote. “We keep the violence narrative going for a few days, before we offer the solution.”

Kalanick’s spokesperson questioned the authenticity of some documents. She said Kalanick “never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of driver safety” and any suggestion that he was involved in such activity would be “completely false”.

Uber’s spokesperson also acknowledged past mistakes in the company’s treatment of drivers but said no one, including Kalanick, wanted violence against Uber drivers. “There is much our former CEO said nearly a decade ago that we would certainly not condone today,” she said. “But one thing we do know and feel strongly about is that no one at Uber has ever been happy about violence against a driver.”

Mistakes were made...

Who cares if our drivers get hurt in the name of selling out product?

No one at the company NOW has ever been happy with violence against drivers. Sounds like they were gleeful. 

The ‘kill switch’
Uber drivers were undoubtedly the target of vicious assaults and sometimes murders by furious taxi drivers. And the cab-hailing app, in some countries, found itself battling entrenched and monopolised taxi fleets with cosy relationships with city authorities. Uber often characterised its opponents in the regulated taxi markets as operating a “cartel”.

However, privately, Uber executives and staffers appear to have been in little doubt about the often rogue nature of their own operation.

In internal emails, staff referred to Uber’s “other than legal status”, or other forms of active non-compliance with regulations, in countries including Turkey, South Africa, Spain, the Czech Republic, Sweden, France, Germany, and Russia.

One senior executive wrote in an email: “We are not legal in many countries, we should avoid making antagonistic statements.” Commenting on the tactics the company was prepared to deploy to “avoid enforcement”, another executive wrote: “We have officially become pirates.”

Nairi Hourdajian, Uber’s head of global communications, put it even more bluntly in a message to a colleague in 2014, amid efforts to shut the company down in Thailand and India: “Sometimes we have problems because, well, we’re just fucking illegal.” Contacted by the Guardian, Hourdajian declined to comment.

Gotta break a few eggs, right?
Engage in criminal behavior?

Sort of like those riots you keep bitching about in 2020?

Across the world, police, transport officials and regulatory agencies sought to clamp down on Uber. In some cities, officials downloaded the app and hailed rides so they could crack down on unlicensed taxi journeys, finding Uber drivers and impounding their cars. Uber offices in dozens of countries were repeatedly raided by authorities.

Against this backdrop, Uber developed sophisticated methods to thwart law enforcement. One was known internally at Uber as a “kill switch”. When an Uber office was raided, executives at the company frantically sent out instructions to IT staff to cut off access to the company’s main data systems, preventing authorities from gathering evidence.

The leaked files suggest the technique, signed off by Uber’s lawyers, was deployed at least 12 times during raids in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, India, Hungary and Romania.

Kalanick’s spokesperson said such “kill switch” protocols were common business practice and not designed to obstruct justice. She said the protocols, which did not delete data, were vetted and approved by Uber’s legal department, and the former Uber CEO was never charged in relation to obstruction of justice or a relate offence.

Uber’s spokesperson said its kill switch software “should never have been used to thwart legitimate regulatory action” and it had stopped using the system in 2017, when Khosrowshahi replaced Kalanick as CEO.

Another executive the leaked files suggest was involved in kill switch protocols was Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, who ran Uber’s operations in western Europe. He now runs Uber Eats, and sits on the company’s 11-strong executive team.

Gore-Coty said in a statement he regretted “some of the tactics used to get regulatory reform for ridesharing in the early days”. Looking back, he said: “I was young and inexperienced and too often took direction from superiors with questionable ethics.”

Never charged?
Because he had politicians in his pocket?

Totally innocent
Totally not illegal practice we stopped as soon as we changed the person at the top.

"I was young & naive"?

Politicians now also face questions about whether they took direction from Uber executives.

When a French police official in 2015 appeared to ban one of Uber’s services in Marseille, Mark MacGann, Uber’s chief lobbyist in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, turned to Uber’s ally in the French cabinet.

“I will look at this personally,” Macron texted back. “At this point, let’s stay calm.”

Don't you hate when your back door deals come back to bite you in the ass?

[abbey1227]

Jul 11, 2022 5:41:36 GMT merh said:

Jul 10, 2022 22:18:28 GMT abbey1227 said:

Why act so shocked they had to get down in the mud to deal with dirty politicians?

Love of money is the root of all evil.

So lobbying BAD unless you agree with the business doing it?

Don't worry we acted inappropriately in the past.
Look at us now.

Rapes. 
Bad background checks allowing criminals to drive, putting customers at risk.

Don't look at that man behind the curtain 
Studies produced on demand showing the results Uber wanted?


Mistakes were made...

Who cares if our drivers get hurt in the name of selling out product?

No one at the company NOW has ever been happy with violence against drivers. Sounds like they were gleeful. 


Gotta break a few eggs, right?
Engage in criminal behavior?

Sort of like those riots you keep bitching about in 2020?

Never charged?
Because he had politicians in his pocket?

Totally innocent
Totally not illegal practice we stopped as soon as we changed the person at the top.

"I was young & naive"?

Don't you hate when your back door deals come back to bite you in the ass?

And yet money is needed for everything........especially all the things you want pushed.  

Lobbying has become part of business now......because you've supported so large a Govt that they're the middleman for EVERYTHING.

Rapes? Wow! Sounds like the intern scandals and lawsuit payouts.......y'know, another list we NEVER got to see.

Sorta like all the studies funded with tax dollars that show the same agenda the Govt wants them to show?

Again, look what your party endorsed throughout the last election........riots, violence, arson. They didn't care how many people were hurt or killed. Or how many buildings and businesses got destroyed. But you believe those people are better than business owners? You're still shocked by any of it?

Having politicians in your pocket......or better still BEING a politician is a great way to skirt the laws. Those are only for the little unconnected people anyway.

[merh]