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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: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 02 2019, @02:12AM
So what? The initial premise was that there wasn't a right to free speech, not that a CEO would have a bunch of constraints - most which don't come from state or federal law (and hence aren't relevant to a discussion of the US First Amendment). I think the present story mentions the absurdity of labor law which is an unconstitutional infringement of the speech of the CEO. For example, so what if the CEO speaks in a threatening manner about attempts to unionize? It's one thing to air the vague concern that stock options might go away and another to threaten criminal acts against union supporters. The first simply is a standard negotiation tactic, the second is already a crime. That this got in front of a judge and was ruled against Musk indicates there is something deeply wrong with the law and/or the judge's interpretation of it.
In fact, we have rulings like Citizen United that confirm the First Amendment applies to CEOs as it should.