Lords and Peasants. Remember that quote from Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla? He was sharing his thoughts on unions with “I disagree with the idea of unions … I just don’t like anything which creates a lords and peasants sort of thing.”
Of course it wasn’t unions that fired eighty percent of the workers at Twitter or made folks sleep on the factory floor to keep their jobs. The Gurardian story Elon Musk says letting workers unionize creates lords and peasants, offers many more examples of his lordship.
If you pay your workers 30% less than UAW members, insult your workers, fire workers for merely criticizing you, seek to suppress workers from exercising their federally guaranteed right to discuss pay and working conditions, there’s no denying, that you definitely “failed in some way”.
Despite his desdain toward workers, company performance justifies it, right? Today’s story from CNN News, Tesla cuts prices in US, China, and Germany as competition heats up reveals how well his highness is performing.
The flurry of cuts comes during a tough time forTesla. Its stock has plunged more than 40% year-to-date, after it reported a drop in quarterly deliveries for the first time in nearly four years and announced job cuts equivalent to more than 10% of its global staff.
No worries. In fact, Lord Musk has asked shareholders to reinstate his $56 BILLION compensation package that a judge so rudely ruled was excessive. The details are in this piece from PBS NewsHour….
In January, Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick ruled that Musk is not entitled to a landmark compensation package awarded by Tesla’s board of directors that is potentially worth about $55.8 billion over 10 years starting in 2018.
Five years ago, a Tesla shareholder lawsuit alleged that the pay package should be voided because it was dictated by Musk and was the product of sham negotiations with directors who were not independent of him.
Sham negotiations? Obviously, Mr. Musk feels negotiations are appropriate to discuss his compensation while at the same time doing all he can to avoid negotations with his workers regarding their pay and benefits. I guess it’s not that surprising that he can speak like a Lord from one side of his mouth while bad-mouthing peasants from the other side of his contorted piehole.
