Federal labor charges against Elon Musk and Donald Trump have been launched by a significant US labor organization representing the automobile sector. The union claims the billionaires improperly intimidated workers during a convoluted and widely reported discussion on X.
As they conversed on the social media platform on Monday night, the Republican presidential candidate and Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and has endorsed him, shared a laundry list of extreme conspiracy theories.
The topic of Musk’s tenure as CEO of his several businesses came up at one point in the talk.
“I mean, look at what you do,” Trump remarked to Musk. “You say, ‘You want to quit?’ as you enter the room. They go on strike, “said Trump.
“They go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s OK, you’re all gone.’” I won’t name the company. All of you have left. Thus, all of you have left.”
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Following the completion of his acquisition of Twitter (now X) in October 2022, Musk said in April that he would be letting go of over 10,000 employees, or more than 10% of Tesla’s global workforce.
“Under federal law, workers cannot be fired for going on strike, and threatening to do so is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act,” said the United Auto Workers (UAW), which has endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris after previously backing Joe Biden.
“When we say Donald Trump is a scab, this is what we mean. When we say Trump stands against everything our union stands for, this is what we mean,” said UAW President Shawn Fain.
“Both Trump and Musk want working class people to sit down and shut up, and they laugh about it openly,” Fain said. “It’s disgusting, illegal, and totally predictable from these two clowns.”
Musk owns the social network X, SpaceX and electric vehicle maker Tesla, among other companies. He has been criticised in the past for obstructing the unionisation of his employees around the world.
Tesla has been at odds with unions in Sweden and Norway for a few months.
Several complaints have also been filed in California by former SpaceX workers who say employees who tried to protest job conditions were retaliated against.
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