Tesla won't block union vote, says CEO Musk, despite past union retaliation

Tesla CEO Elon Musk invited United Auto Workers called for a union vote to be held at the Tesla factory, saying Tesla would “do nothing to stop” the voting process.

It is the latest in a year-long saga between the UAW and Tesla, in which Tesla has been found violating labor law by unfairly cracking down on the union organization.

Unlike the “Big Three” American automakers – GM, Ford and Chrysler (now part of Stelantis), Tesla’s workforce is non-union. But Tesla’s main plant in Fremont, California, was previously the “NUMMI” plant, a joint venture between GM and Toyota that used UAW union labor.

The UAW has wanted to unionize Tesla for some time, especially given the plant’s union past. There was a significant push from the UAW in 2017–2018, but the union’s efforts have yet to take off notably.

Today’s invitation from Musk sounds like a change of tune, but he has extended similar invitations in the past. In 2018, he said Tesla employees could “vote the union tomorrow if they wanted to”, but that it would consequently require them to give up stock options and pay union dues for “nothing.”

The communication was found to be in violation of US labor law, and the National Labor Relations Board ordered Musk to remove it. He also ordered Tesla to offer compensation for lost wages to Richard Ortiz, a union organizer who had been illegally fired by the company. A federal judge noted the company’s 12 actions violated US labor law.

Most recently, Tesla has faced criticism from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing for its alleged systemic mistreatment of factory workers, and last year’s $137 million judgment against a former worker due to a pattern of racial abuse. Payment was ordered. working there. In each of these cases, management was found to be insensitive to the concerns of individual employees – whereas a union representative may have given those concerns a second chance to be heard.

Musk suggested today that the real reason unionization efforts haven’t gone away is because of Tesla’s high levels of employee compensation — a natural consequence of the heated job market in the San Francisco Bay Area:

Our real challenge is negative unemployment in the Bay Area, so if we don’t treat and compensate our (awful) people well, they have tons of other offers and they’ll just walk away!

I hereby invite the UAVs to organize the Union Vote at their convenience. Tesla will do nothing to stop them.

Musk also claimed that “Tesla factory compensation is among the highest in the industry.” His source for this statement is an Andrew Sorkin interview with GM CEO Mary Barra, where Sorkin says, “It appears from my math that, on average, Tesla employees who are non-federal … on an hourly basis.” But you can make more money. Unionized workers at GM.” Barra disagreed with this analysis, saying, “[M]y last look at it, it wasn’t. ,

Tesla’s high pay comes largely from their stock compensation program, which provides stock options to most employees, as is common in Silicon Valley. The rise of TSLA stock has made those options very valuable, meaning that total compensation for Tesla workers will result in a higher price of TSLA stock — which is relevant to the aforementioned threat to remove options from union employees.

Federalization efforts are ongoing at Tesla facilities outside the US as well. Germany’s largest union IG Metal is trying to organize workers at Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin. Germany has a relatively high labor organization rate, with about half of the total workforce covered by some sort of collective bargaining agreement. In the United States, only one-tenth of employees work under collective bargaining agreements.

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