My father is a shop floor worker at a major car manufacturer.
Stopping a production line during a ramp up for days is a normal part of the business.
When the line is already running, it is not the best of all news, because something malfunctioned -- like a big press putting errors into some bigger parts -- and needs to be reworked. Sometimes, however, they are reworking the line. So these stops are planned and there usually also exists a very detailed plan how to approach this. This is usually a high-stress situation due to a standing production line causing a loss to the company, and a separate specifically for this trained team is doing the rework with the workers being concerned with the parts of the production line being the 'consultants' to this other team. Resp., helping operationally. During the setup of the production line for a new model it is standing for weeks. Hence, no one is having unpaid enforced vacation whatsoever. At least in Germany.
It doesn’t seem like your dad’s experience applies. Tesla workers are being asked to take vacation days or to stay home. It’s also the second stoppage in 2 months.
BuzzFeed, which first reported the news, said
workers were expected to use vacation days or
stay home without pay during the four- to five-day
production pause.
The thing is, during a ramp-up there are incentives to get the workers working seven days a week, because they want to minimize the time the line stands still. So usually he's taking that extra cash (and that's also how I found out, as I was wondering why he's gone for the weekends, too).
OK, so, I showed the article to my dad. He wasn't surprised at all and told me quite some stuff. Here is the summary of the interesting points:
* It is normal that people have (paid!) vacation when there is stuff to be done where maintenance only works. It is called 'Werksurlaub' (roughly: 'factory vacation') and this you-have-to-take-vacation-period is announced in the beginning of the year and it has been like that since 30 years him working there.
* When they need to retool, if possible (most of the time) the new tool is put in line behind the to-be-replaced tool without stopping the production line and then they run-in the new tool with taking over cycles gradually.
* When there are 'incidents' or the production line has to be stopped, this is announced ahead of time and the production workers have to take a so-called 'Kollektivfreischicht' (roughly: 'collective non-working shift'), where the whole line works overtime prior to the incident and then take time in lieu collectively. There is also a funny German word for this 'taking time in lieu', it is called '[Überstunden] abfeiern' (lit: 'to party down [overtime]').
Also, he told me some not very nice things about the automotive industry. Especially when final assembly is standing still (unforeseen incident in production line) - that is, hundreds of people unable to work and costing money.
I interpret this, however, as general property of the (automotive) industry and you can read about it elsewhere.
You're talking about a German, highly regulated situation, which, while interesting, might not really apply to the situation in the US and more specifically at Tesla.
It's apparently quite sudden and unpaid, very different from your father's situation.
I agree. Nevertheless, considering the topic of being pushed/forced to take vacation because of maintenance: Same thing in 'traditional automotive industry' in Germany is my impression.
In American English, "Überstunden" is often called "comp time" - comp for compensation - you worked really hard overtime/to meet a deadline, take some paid days off (usually not officially vacation etc.) to make up for the time you spent...
I'm not but I know a few people, I spoke to my friend Tom who works in assembly with a machine that spits fire, if his machine breaks down while working, he goes home and they pay him the rest of the shift, maybe the UK is more reasonable about these kinds of things, how many days in a row would you turn up at work to not be able to do your job as a result of some cause you have no control over, I'm sticking with lousy, some very knowledgeable people over at the FT do a great deep dive on this story https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/04/18/1524069066000/Elon-s-...
Especially as they are still in the process of "debugging" the production line to achieve the planned production speeds, it should be no surprise that they might want to do some changes to the production line which would require stopping it while applying those changes. So these stops could be actually quite good news as the production should be boosted long term.
Stopping a production line during a ramp up for days is a normal part of the business. When the line is already running, it is not the best of all news, because something malfunctioned -- like a big press putting errors into some bigger parts -- and needs to be reworked. Sometimes, however, they are reworking the line. So these stops are planned and there usually also exists a very detailed plan how to approach this. This is usually a high-stress situation due to a standing production line causing a loss to the company, and a separate specifically for this trained team is doing the rework with the workers being concerned with the parts of the production line being the 'consultants' to this other team. Resp., helping operationally. During the setup of the production line for a new model it is standing for weeks. Hence, no one is having unpaid enforced vacation whatsoever. At least in Germany.
Smells like clickbait here.