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Court says Tesla and Musk's tweet violated labor laws
Tesla broke labor laws by interfering with legitimate union organizing, among other things, California administrative law judge Amita Baman Tracy has ruled. The automaker apparently committed a number of violations against the National Labor Relations Act in 2017 and 2018, the court decided regarding the complaints filed by the United Auto Workers union. According to Bloomberg and Reuters, one of the violations cited in the filing is a tweet by company chief Elon Musk. In the tweet, he said that there's nothing stopping its car plant employees from organizing, but he also asked: "[W]hy pay union dues [and] give up stock options for nothing[?]"
Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2018
Musk's statement was a response to someone asking about the reports that came out last year accusing Tesla of having poor workplace safety and of having an anti-union management. The court said the tweet amounts to threatening employees that they'd be giving up company-paid stock options if they join a union.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 01 2019, @02:08PM
You go, girl! You and Arik can file a lawsuit together!
I couldn't find anything directly on point, but here are some resources to get you started:
https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-01/13-particular-governmental-regulations.html [justia.com]
https://corporate.findlaw.com/law-library/freedom-of-speech-in-the-workplace-the-first-amendment-revisited.html [findlaw.com]
https://www.employerslawyersblog.com/2017/08/only-certain-types-of-speech-are-protected-in-the-workplace-nlra-concerted-activities.html [employerslawyersblog.com]
https://www.wlf.org/case/in-n-out-burger-inc-v-national-labor-relations-board/ [wlf.org]
I couldn't find a case that addressed the issue of employer speech WRT labor negotiations, but I don't have access to Lexis/Nexis, so there may well be/have been similar cases.
As I said to Arik. Good luck with that.