Fremont

By Kris LaGrange - UComm Blog, March 26, 2021

2018, Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter “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?” That tweet began an investigation into the company by the NLRB into union-busting at the company.

Now three years later, the board has found that Musk not only violated federal labor law with that tweet but that he also illegally fired an employee, Richard Ortiz for protected union activity. Ortiz was part of a campaign called “Fair Future at Tesla” which is an ongoing campaign by the UAW to organize the electric car company.

In their decision, the NLRB found that Musk’s tweet went above a typical statement that the company wants to stay union-free and was seen as threatening. This was exacerbated by the fact that Tesla considers communications from Musk, who founded the company, as official company communications. It is illegal to threaten to take away pay or benefits from workers if they are found to be organizing a union.

In their decision, the NLRB ordered Tesla to offer Ortiz his job back and compensate him for lost earnings, benefits, and any adverse tax consequences that resulted from his firing. Tesla is also required to revise their confidentiality agreements that are given to employees to take out a section that bars workers from speaking to the media without explicit written permission from the company. National labor law “protects employees when they speak with the media about working conditions, labor disputes, or other terms and conditions of employment,” the NLRB noted.

The NLRB is also requiring Tesla to post notices nationwide and hold meetings at their main US car plant in Fremont to inform workers of their protected rights. At these meetings, Musk or a “board agent” in the presence of Musk, will have to read the notice to workers, including security guards, managers, and supervisors.

The decision from the NLRB was largely in line with a similar decision against Tesla by an administrative judge in September of 2019. Tesla decided to fight the administrative judge’s decision and bring it all the way to the full board.

“This is a great victory for workers who have the courage to stand up and organize in a system that is currently stacked heavily in favor of employers like Tesla who have no qualms about violating the law,” said UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada, Director of the UAW Organizing Department. “While we celebrate the justice in today’s ruling, it nevertheless highlights the substantial flaws in US labor law. Here is a company that clearly broke the law and yet it is three years down the road before these workers achieved a modicum of justice.”

By David Dayen - American Prospect, April 20, 2017 (article copublished by Capital & Main)

Workers at Tesla’s Fremont, California, electric car factory have filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), accusing the company of illegal surveillance, coercion, intimidation, and prevention of worker communications. The employees, who have been attempting to organize the approximately 7,000 workers at the plant through the United Auto Workers, claim that Tesla violated multiple sections of the National Labor Relations Act, which protects the right to unionize.

“I know my rights, and I know that we acted within them,” said Jonathan Galescu, a body repair technician. Galescu and his colleagues have previously cited low pay, hazardous work conditions, and a culture of intimidation as motivations to unionize the plant.

On February 10, several Tesla employees passed out flyers to their colleagues during a shift change. The literature featured a blog post from Medium written by Jose Moran, a Tesla production associate on the body-line. Moran’s post was the first public acknowledgment that some workers at Tesla were interested in organizing a union.

According to the NLRB complaint obtained by Capital & Main, managers at Tesla “conduct[ed] surveillance” on the workers who passed out the literature, and those who received the flyers. A month later, on March 23, Tesla management held a meeting, telling workers “they were not allowed to pass out any literature unless it was pre-approved by the Employer,” the complaint reads.

“We should have the right to distribute information to our co-workers without intimidation,” said Michael Sanchez, who works on door panels at the factory and has joined the unionizing effort. “You can’t fix problems if you’re not allowed to talk about them.”

Employees also object in the complaint to a confidentiality agreement presented last November, which vowed consequences (including “loss of employment” and “possible criminal prosecution”) for speaking publicly or to the media regarding “everything that you work on, learn about, or observe in your work about Tesla”—including wages and working conditions. Confidentiality agreements are common in auto factories to protect trade secrets, but Tesla’s was so far-reaching that five members of the California legislature wrote to the company, warning that the agreement violated protected employee activity.