On Twitter late Wednesday night, Musk said Tesla could only hire and retain workers in the current, very tight labor market, paying and treating them well, and not worrying about the company’s unions vote.
“I would now like to invite the UAW to hold a union vote when it is convenient for them. “Tesla will do nothing to stop them.” tweet.When a rock legend Gene Simmons In response to Biden’s tweet, which suggested that the president did not mention Tesla because it was not a union and was based in Texas, a state with a “right to work”, Musk said that the company had not closed its plant. in California and is actually considering expanding it. He then proposed that the union hold a vote. Musk followed later tweeting that the compensation of workers in the Tesla plant is the highest in the automotive industry. Most Tesla employees receive stock options, which can be very lucrative given the stock’s performance in recent years. Musk threatened that workers could lose that benefit if they voted for a union, a position that a California labor judge ruled was illegal against employees’ right to freely choose whether to organize or not. Workers on stock options that have already been accumulated cannot be withdrawn if they later vote in favor of unionization.
Workforce worldwide
The company’s dossier shows that Tesla has nearly 100,000 employees worldwide at the end of last year, but does not show the division between its plants in California, Texas, Nevada, West New York, Shanghai and a new plant to open outside Berlin. . .
The UAW has no immediate comment on Musk’s proposal to hold a vote. She has been trying to put the California plant into operation since it began production a decade ago.
The UAW and the National Labor Council, the government agency that monitors union voting, have repeatedly cited Tesla and Musk of illegal or improper anti-union activities, including allegations that the company is firing employees who support and promote the union.
Usually, union voting takes place when at least one third of the employees in a company or a specific workplace sign cards with a request to be presented. And unions do not usually submit cards to demand elections unless they have significantly more support than that, most often from the vast majority of workers.
In some cases, a company will agree to recognize a union without a vote, usually as part of an agreement with a union that already represents its employees in other facilities. The employer may also agree to vote without the union filing cards, but it is unclear whether Musk did so in this case, as offering elections on Twitter is not an official filing with the NLRB.
When organizing polls, employers almost always lobby workers to vote against, arguing that it will be worse for them under the leadership of the union. Even when employers remain neutral, as was the case with the UAW vote at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee eight years ago, outside groups opposing unions can lobby workers to vote against and win the organizing effort.
It is also unclear whether Musk is proposing to remain neutral if the vote is actually scheduled, and whether such a vote will only take place at Tesla’s plants in relatively pro-Union California or Nevada, or involve employees at the newly opened facility outside Austin, Texas.
Great impetus for union efforts
Organizing a high-profile company like Tesla would be one of the biggest victories of the labor movement in the United States in decades, said Alexander Colvin, a professor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
“That would be a decisive success,” Colvin said. “That would be up there with the successful organization of Amazon (AMZN).”
Trade union membership across the country fell to just 10.3 percent of all workers and only 6 percent of private sector workers, down 16.8 percent in 1983 when the Ministry of Labor began tracking data. Organizing campaigns is crucial for unions to regain some of their lost power.
But lately, unions are more likely to lose high-level votes, such as recently at Amazon’s Alabama warehouse. These elections are resumed right now after a finding of misconduct by the leadership during the initial vote. A small, independent union, Starbucks Workers United, has had some success in setting up separate coffee chain stores, winning votes in two locations in Buffalo and one in Mesa, Arizona. But these are just three of the 9,000 American stores owned by Starbucks.