Guardian Op-Ed Urges UAW To Unionize Tesla

Hamilton Nolan purports to be a author whose subjects are labor, politics, and energy. In line with his web site, he has over 8,000 subscribers. Frankly, I’ve by no means heard of him and I’m fairly positive he has by no means heard of me both. In an op-ed for The Guardian on September 21, 2023, he says that Tesla “is now US labor’s most essential goal. If Musk doesn’t like that, he’s welcome to settle it with an auto employee by cage match.”

Shawn Fain vs. Elon Musk. Now, there’s a picture you possibly can’t unsee! On your personal consideration and basic amusement, go forward and skim the full story earlier than shifting on to my takeaway on it.

Picture courtesy of Tesla

The Takeaway

I’ve made my very own pro-union proclivities abundantly clear (the evils of Jimmie Hoffa however). Then again, I’m additionally a type of “cult-like buyers” Hamilton speaks of, so I’m of two minds about his screed op-ed. To me, it comes right down to this: Ought to American employees have the ability to lead a solidly middle-class life-style or are they wage slaves who should work two or generally three jobs whereas residing of their mom’s storage?

The weaponized capitalist system has given us a category of rich plutocrats who, due to the ignorance of John Roberts, can plow limitless quantities of cash into supporting political candidates who will promise to chop taxes on the wealthy. It has additionally given us globalization, a system that outsources jobs to the bottom wage areas of the world the place folks labor in slave-like circumstances to fill the cabinets at Walmart with low-cost imported items.

There are such a lot of shifting items to globalization, not the least of that are the large carbon emissions created when thousands and thousands of containers are despatched throughout oceans to be distributed by thousands and thousands of tractor trailers. Since there isn’t any worldwide worth on carbon, that value by no means will get added to the gross sales worth of these items, which is a gross distortion of the financial system and creates a “Heads we win, tails you lose” scenario.

In fact, these foreign-made items needs to be marked up by 20% or extra to compensate for the environmental hurt related to their manufacture and distribution. As soon as all the prices of manufacture get taken into consideration, these foreign-made items aren’t almost as low-cost as they’re claimed to be.

As well as, what made America nice was a sturdy and thriving center class. Till that comes again, America can by no means reclaim its self-proclaimed mantle of greatness. The nation is properly on its technique to changing into a feudal society primarily based on a plantation mentality that robs employees of their dignity.

So, carry on the cage match between the UAW and Tesla. Simply let me know when it’s going to occur so I can promote my Tesla shares first!

Submit Script

As I used to be scripting this, I used to be listening to Pandora when Johnny Money’s Man In Black got here on. I hadn’t heard it for some time, however I used to be struck by how his phrases spoke so eloquently to the troubled instances we discover ourselves in. There’s a lot knowledge in his track, and so I believed that, since this text is partly about social justice, this is likely to be a great time to share it with you all. Take pleasure in!