Musk Invites UAW to Hold Union Vote at Tesla’s California Plant
(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk continued his months-long effort to get U.S. President Joe Biden to credit Tesla Inc. for its electric vehicle leadership by sending a message to the United Auto Workers union.
The Tesla chief executive officer tweeted Thursday that the UAW was welcome to hold a vote at the company's San Francisco Bay area factory. The company “will do nothing to stop them,” Musk said of the union.
Musk isn't so much offering a concession to the UAW as he is trying to make a point. U.S. labor law encourages collective bargaining and protects private-sector employees from being retaliated against for organizing. But the world's richest man is betting a vote held by the union -- a key ally of Biden's -- would fail because of how Tesla treats and compensates its workers.
Biden has repeatedly left Tesla off the the guest lists and out of the prepared remarks he's made promoting America's EV industry. He's instead praised General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co., which make and sell fewer electric cars but employ tens of thousands of UAW workers. Bloomberg News reported last month that the president's antipathy toward Tesla mainly has to do with Musk's hostility toward unions.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled last year that Tesla had repeatedly violated U.S. labor law, including by firing a union activist, and needed to make Musk delete a May 2018 tweet that suggested workers would give up company-paid stock if they chose to unionize. Tesla appealed and has argued Musk's tweet was protected by the First Amendment.
Read more: Tesla, Who? Biden Can't Bring Himself to Say It, Irking Musk
Musk tweeted that Tesla's biggest challenge in the Bay area is fierce competition for workers. He also wrote that Tesla's compensation is the highest in the auto industry, citing a Reddit post.
Musk was responding to a tweet by Gene Simmons, the co-lead singer of rock band Kiss, who criticized Biden for not mentioning Tesla during his State of the Union speech Tuesday.
“Give Elon Musk/Tesla its due,” Simmons wrote. “They are game changers and should be heralded.”
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
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