High profile billionaire in the news again – for all the wrong reasons
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has been found to have violated federal labor law by the New Orleans-based 5th US circuit court of appeals, after tweeting that employees would lose stock options if they joined a union.
The judgment upheld the US National Labor Relations Board, which ruled that the tweet amounted to an unlawful threat that could discourage unionizing and ordered Musk to delete it.
The tweet was sent in 2018 during an organizing campaign at Tesla’s Fremont, California, plant by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
Musk tweeted: “Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union … but why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?”
Tesla had argued that the tweet about unionizing was not a threat, but a reflection of the fact that union workers at other auto companies did not receive stock options. However, a three-judge panel disagreed. “Substantial evidence supports the NLRB’s conclusion that the tweet is an implied threat to end stock options as retaliation for unionization,” the panel said in its decision.
Data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics earlier this year shows that the union membership rate, which represents the percentage of wage and salary workers who belong to unions in the United States, reached an all-time low last year. The rate declined from 10.3% in 2021 to 10.1% in 2022.
Despite the decrease in the union membership rate, the data...
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