2y ago

Solar employees join UAW, management hires anti-union consultants with "96% success rate" and lays off 40% of workforce - claims not union-busting

www.theguardian.com

New York solar firm accused of union busting after furloughing staff

2y ago

Solar employees join UAW, management hires anti-union consultants with "96% success rate" and lays off 40% of workforce - claims not union-busting

www.theguardian.com /us-news/2024/jan/06/empower-solar-new-york-union-election-workers-furloughed-united-auto-workers

21 comments

In the wake of its decision to furlough workers, EmPower had several job postings on its website, including for solar installers.
- People should mass apply to those postings and waste their time.
  
  is more efficient to make bot
- It would sure be a shame if someone started flooding the job postings with fake applicants. I’ve heard of this happening before and it’s quite disruptive, wouldn’t cha know.
  
  Or even more shamefully, actually going through with it and just not showing up when you're meant to start.
- If the workers were truly "laid off" then they've got first dibs on being re-hired, right?
  (...right?)
  Maybe it's time for the Department of Labor to make sure that gets enforced.
  
  That's commonly in a union contract...
Didn't the NRLB recently make a decision that union-busting behavior validates a potential union?
Would that apply here, or am I being too generous?
Edit because I went back and read the article:
days after a victorious union election
Oh no, it's worse than I thought
Unions aside, how did solar go from the purview of the science hippies to the scam sales off grid prepper vibe it has become?
Do I feel this way just because I live in Texas?
- I've heard of your scam energy grid and hoyging electric prices in Texas. If you're in Texas and don't have solar I'd say you're more of an imbecile than the crazy preppers.
  But to answer your question, no. Solar doesn't have that vibe where I'm at in the Midwest.
  
  It's a financial disincentive to get solar here. It's almost punitive. From a financial standpoint, it would take me approximately forty years to recoup my investment, not taking time value of money into consideration.
  What you heard about prices was related to people who signed up for something that sold electricity at spot price, which surged several thousand percent. Regular people do three year contracts at fixed rates. My highest monthly bill during winter is around $120. It's usually under a hundred otherwise.
  For the grid fuckups, having come to a point where I went to bed accepting my potential fate of not waking up during that 2021 ice storm, I've since installed a whole house generator. Grid would have to stay offline for a very long time to affect me at this point.
  I do, however, appreciate your armchair assessment of my intellect. Always good for me to keep humble, Humble. I'm not even sure what that incredibly difficult polysyllabic word means. We who live in this shithole state are indeed categorically illiterate. One might even say imbeciles.
If their reasoning for the layoffs is because business is slowing down... but they fired 21 workers and now have open applications for those positions on their website...doesnt this display their motive of not wanting to negotiate fair working terms with the union etc...should there be some rules against hiring new people to replace those positions while this is going on?
How is being an anti-union consultant a legal job?
- Because money writes the rules.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Installers and technicians at EmPower Solar, in Bethpage – concerned about poor working conditions and issues they faced on the job – reached out to the United Auto Workers after the gains it won during the “stand up” strikes at the big three automakers.
“If you’re afraid of heights, it’s not the job for you,” said Lozano, who was being paid $18.65 an hour, plus bonuses dependent on the number of solar panel installations he completed monthly.
The union-organizing drive stemmed from Lozano and other workers wanting their concerns and voices to actually be heard by management, he added, and to not have to work under constant pressure to finish jobs and worry about high turnover rates.
In the wake of its decision to furlough workers, EmPower had several job postings on its website, including for solar installers.
He added: “We should all be working together right now to make EmPower the best solar company in the world and a partnership between them and labor, setting an example for the new economy going forward.”
“We were told the green economy had to be a race to the bottom, and there was nothing anyone could do about it,” the UAW’s president, Shawn Fain, said during a US Senate hearing last November.
The original article contains 870 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

21 comments