Elon Musk violated US labor law in 2018 when Tesla factory workers would give up stock options if they chose to unionize, according to a federal appeals court. On Friday, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in a decision detected by upheld a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling that found Musk made unlawful threats about employee compensation.
In May 2018, a Twitter user asked Musk about his stance on unions. “There is nothing stopping the Tesla team at our auto plant from voting union. They could do it tmrw if they wanted to,” he said. . “But why pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2x better than when the plant was a UAW and everyone is already receiving medical attention.”
The Tesla factory literally has thousands of yellow lines and tape painted on it. Reporting forklifts not beeping is also bs. Both are demonstrably false, but were reported as “facts” by Reveal.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2018
The tweet immediately caught the attention of labor activists, and in 2021, the NLRB, in response to a complaint from the United Auto Workers union, found that Musk had threatened employees. Tesla has argued that the tweet was Musk’s way of pointing out that workers at other automakers do not receive stock options. NLRB President Wilma Liebman saw it differently. “The employee will hear it as ‘if I vote to unionize, stock options will no longer be an option,'” she said. .
After reviewing the decision, the Fifth Circuit Court sided with the NLRB. “Because stock options are part of Tesla’s employee compensation, and nothing in the tweet suggests that Tesla would be forced to end stock options or that the UAW would be the cause of giving up stock options. , substantial evidence supports the NLRB’s conclusion that the tweet is an implied threat to terminate stock options in retaliation for unionization,” the panel said. .
The court ordered Musk to delete the tweet. As of the writing of this article, the message lives on. The Fifth Circuit Court also upheld an NLRB order that Tesla reinstated Richard Ortiz, a worker the automaker fired for organizing employees at its Fremont, California, factory.
