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Blast_Furnace_Life t1_j8sigg3 wrote

Allegedly these guys were labelers for autopilot. A position that was always going to be eliminated as the company moved towards machine learning for labeling. Sounds like this group had nothing to lose and now they get to say it's because of their union organization plans instead of planned obsolescence.

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PennName47 t1_j8sws61 wrote

Who has alleged this? Seems like a very convenient story given just how many blatant retaliations to unions there have been in the last few years from multiple companies.

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Blast_Furnace_Life t1_j8t31kk wrote

https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/15/tesla_autopilot_workers_are_launching/

Here's the article referring to them as autopilot labelers wanting to unionize for job security because their boss has been vocal about not wanting humans to do the job.

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PennName47 t1_j8t45nu wrote

Doesn’t this just mean there was retaliation for unionizing? Even if this is true, it sounds like they were fighting for their jobs against machines and were punished for doing so, which is technically illegal.

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DBDude t1_j8tbqdx wrote

Tesla always planned for the human labeling to exist only until it wasn't needed anymore, because at some point you will have done enough labeling and the supercomputers can take it from there. They already announced cuts in labeling last year. These people already knew their jobs had an end date not too far out. It sounds like they may have started unionizing just to put a legal wrench into the plans. I'm okay with unions, but this sounds like an abuse of union laws.

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PennName47 t1_j8tctn1 wrote

Isn’t protecting your human jobs against robotic replacements kind of a known reason for unionization by now though? As much as I like the growth of robotics and AI, I can acknowledge the issue it presents in a world that still requires a job to live. Unless these people are given UBI or helped into new positions by the company, it doesn’t seem abusive at all that they would try to unionize to save their livelihoods.

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DBDude t1_j8wnajw wrote

That might apply to a McDonald's worker, but not here. They only had jobs in the first place because of AI. It's abusive because they knew their jobs were temporary, and they're using a unionization attempt to artificially extend them.

Putting them in other jobs would be a good idea, but these are pretty low-talent jobs. Look at an image on a computer, tell the computer what it is, next image. Google has been using us to tag images through captchas for years.

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Blast_Furnace_Life t1_j8tdor9 wrote

That's the interesting nature of this. The employees knew that their job had an end date. That's what prompted the whole push to be union. That's well documented in their rationale. So now they have to prove that it was retaliation for their efforts to unionize, and not just the end of necessity of their job. It'll be interesting to see how this will shake out at the NLRB because I think we're gonna see this a lot more in other industries soon.

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