If you're an auto worker in this country, it's time to stand up. Everywhere you look in the auto industry, corporate profits are soaring and workers wages are falling behind. We've shown the world that this industry is harming workers and consumers [00:00:16] to the benefit of company executives and the rich. And it's time that the working class did something about it. But it's not just the big three. It's across the auto industry. The UAW has announced that they are coming for all the other auto companies. [00:00:34] They want to unionize the entirety of the car industry. Now, the United Auto Workers do intend to organize the following 13 carmakers BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Lucid, which I didn't even know existed Mazda, [00:00:50] Mercedes Benz, Nissan, Rivian, Subaru, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo. Some new car companies pop up and I wasn't paying. - What's Rivian. - Yeah yeah they did. And remember everyone changes their names completely. [00:01:07] That's a good point. Like Stellantis is a rebranding of GM correct? - No. Chrysler. - Oh, and it's not really a rebrand. Chrysler was bought by a European company, which was then bought by another company, which is another thing that happens. There's the rebrand and then the purchase of the purchase. Well, Sean Fein's coming for you, okay. [00:01:24] And mostly coming to basically organize your workers. So combined all of those companies hire and employ 150,000 workers. This is no joke. The UAW has created a website for those employees at those 13 companies so they [00:01:41] can sign a union authorization card. And getting workers to sign that authorization card is typically the first step in organizing the workplace. Once 30% of eligible workers sign, they have a right by law to call an election for whether the workplace wants to unionize. [00:01:58] And that's according to the National Labor Relations Board. In some cases, employers will voluntarily recognize a union without a vote once a majority of workers have signed those cards. Now, what is the pitch that the UAW is making to these workers? Well, let's take a look at the next video and you'll get a sense. [00:02:17] Tesla is set to announce. Their third quarter results, but that they still aim to keep annual target deliveries of 1.8 million vehicles for the full year. Rivian boosting its full year production. The company also second quarter revenue coming in better than the street was looking for. But what about the other automakers? [00:02:34] Let's talk about Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru and Mazda. The Japanese and Korean six made nearly twice as much as the big three in the past decade, a whopping $470 billion in profits, a half $1 trillion [00:02:52] with over 40% of their revenue coming from their North American operations. Don't autoworkers at Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru and Mazda deserve a record cut of those record profits? [00:03:07] And how about the German three Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes? They've made almost the same as the Japanese and Korean companies, $460 billion in the past ten years. The Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes workers not deserve their fair share [00:03:24] of this booming auto industry. I mean, I think they do, and based on some of the comments that we're seeing in news reports about this coming from those workers at the non-unionized automakers, they seem to be into this as well. We'll see how it plays out. But I want to fast forward to the Tesla angle, [00:03:42] because they're coming for Tesla, too. And Elon Musk has been notoriously anti-union. He's been very clear about that. And so Elon Musk, the company's CEO, is pretty notorious for disliking the unions. And yesterday he made his feelings about the UAW and their quest here pretty clear. [00:04:02] Let's watch. I disagree with the idea of unions, but perhaps for a reason that is different than people may expect, which is I just don't like anything which creates kind of a lords and peasants sort of thing. And I think the unions naturally try to create negativity in a company and create [00:04:20] a sort of lords and peasants situation. There are many people at Tesla who have gone from working on the line to being in senior management. There is no lords and peasants. Everyone eats at the same table. - Everyone parks in the same parking lot. - Yeah, but you are worth $230 billion. [00:04:40] And I remember during Covid he like, forced his employees to come back to work. And in some cases they were like sleeping on floors. - And he was like bragging about it. - Yeah. So there's nuance here though. And there's a big caveat. So he mentioned later like, hey, GM has the these elevators [00:04:59] that are just for executives. And yes, but the union didn't create that. The executives created that. It's not like the union was like, please make an elevator just exclusively for you guys. So now, having said that, I think that what he's misunderstanding [00:05:14] and a lot of people, in my opinion, misunderstand is the difference between entrepreneurs and corporate executives. Entrepreneurs, oftentimes, at least to Elon Musk's credit, he slept on the floor with the workers as they churned out things. I remember that story, and it was true. It was true at Twitter, which he destroyed at Tesla, where he has had great success. [00:05:34] And and he and he works maniacally. And he does deal with those like he's in there in the same group with the workers oftentimes. Does he bring him home to his mansion? No. Let's keep it real. Right. So as an entrepreneur, he's a little bit more connected to the people. [00:05:51] He made his company. And here comes the giant caveat he mentioned. And I don't know if this is true or not. That's why this part is very important. He said, look, some of those guys on the assembly line at Tesla became millionaires because of the stock options. Now, if that's true, okay. [00:06:07] And then if they don't want to unionize because of that, that makes sense. Right. And if you're treating your workers great and they don't need a union, terrific. No problem with that. But we have also seen him be very harsh against his workers from time to time. Right. And especially during Covid, including. [00:06:22] Workers who were considering organizing the workplace. - Yes, that's definitely true. - Yeah. So look, Elon Musk, he's he's a CEO. I'm not surprised that he's, you know, anti-union. He's anti I wouldn't say anti-labor, but he's not in favor of labor organizing [00:06:39] and being unionized. And it's precisely because they would have a seat at the table and be able to negotiate not just their pay and benefits, but their working conditions as well. And he doesn't want to be pestered by that. He does want to have to deal with that. He does want to engage in negotiations with the workers, you know, [00:06:58] based on their unionized status, where they can collectively bargain for things. And so, look, the interests of the executives are always going to be when it comes to organizing the workplace. In most cases, they're going to run counter to what the workers want to do. And I'm not surprised that that's the case with Elon Musk and Tesla. [00:07:15] Yeah. And so for entrepreneurs, sometimes they grow up in a company where they really are all fighting together and they're etcetera. But sometimes they lose track. Hey brother, you're not running that company anymore. Now you're running a company that's a behemoth. That's a gigantic company where you're not really eating with the workers anymore. [00:07:31] And the situation on the ground has changed. And if you're still treating them that well, then they won't unionize, right? And, and and sometimes they do. And so but for corporate executives, they never grew up in that. That's not their mindset. [00:07:47] Their mindset is we're here to give orders and you're here to take those orders, and we're here to extract as much money out of this company that we didn't build that we have no, necessarily not any attachment to. We're here to extract wealth for ourselves. That's why a lot of corporate executives will actually destroy a company. [00:08:07] Because their bonus is tied to revenue but not the profits. So it depends on the situation. Sometimes it will happen, and so they'll lose a giant amount of money because their bonus is tied to revenue and they're like, who cares if the company goes under? As long as I extract more wealth for myself. [00:08:23] So they view the workers in an antagonistic way, because the more the workers make, the less they make because they're eating from the same pie. Whereas entrepreneurs think of growing the pie. That doesn't mean entrepreneurs are angels. There's tons of crappy entrepreneurs, but it's important to understand [00:08:39] that division in that context, because the corporate executives, they very, very rarely think about expanding the pie and sharing it with their workers. They have a more adversarial relationship that creates the executive only elevators. The pay packages for most executives involves shares of the company, and [00:09:00] typically the company is publicly traded. And what are the shareholders want? Well, they want to maximize their profits or get a larger return on their investment. And the way that they do that is by encouraging the executives to fire as many employees as humanly possible, because that cuts down on costs. [00:09:18] I know. But it's short term thinking. It is. Short term. Eventually you're going to destroy the company, right? And that's why a lot of private equity guys, they don't mind destroying the company as long as they have extracted enough wealth. So they'll come in and they'll find a way to cut costs and then dump it on someone else. Yes. ET cetera. [00:09:33] So, but as they're doing all these financial shenanigans, they're extracting the wealth and they're screwing over the workers in two different ways. One is they're cutting their jobs and their salaries and not sharing as much of the wealth when they're incredibly profitable. [00:09:49] And number two, they're destroying the company. So eventually they all lose their jobs. But by that time, the private equity guy and the corporate executive is long gone and has built many mansions with his bonus.