adze CEO Elon Musk sent a bad tweet on May 21, 2018 and this is normal because all tweets are bad. But now, Musk’s tweet has been deemed illegal.
The background story involves a union effort at the Tesla plant in Fremont, California, which Musk mocked at that moment, claiming that Tesla workers were well compensated. “They are the best paid in the industry if you include equity, which you obviously should include“He said in an arranged conference call to discuss the results of Tesla’s fourth quarter for 2017.
Tesla needs to get Musk to delete a tweet. This is the tweet in question:
The National Labor Relations Committee ruled that the part about union dues and stock options was an illegal coercion, because threatening to remove part of someone’s compensation – in this case stock options – if employees form a union is illegal. Written notifications must also be posted informing Tesla employees of their organizational rights.
NLRB also ruled that, due to violations of labor law, Tesla must re-engage an employee named Richard Ortiz and give him back the payment. Ortiz was fired in October 2017.
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UAW, which was behind the organizing effort, issued the following statement:
“This is a great victory for workers who have the courage to stand up and organize in a system that is currently very strong in favor of employers such as Tesla, who have no doubt in violation of the law,” said the vice president. UAW, Cindy Estrada, director of the UAW Organizing Department. “Although we celebrate justice in today’s ruling, it still highlights substantial flaws in US labor law. Here is a company that has clearly broken the law and yet three years have passed before these workers reach a minimum of justice. ”
Two Republicans and a five-member NLRB Democrat voted in favor of the decision, which stopped Musk from reading his own employees’ rights. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
from Bloomberg, published by Automotive News:
NLRB President Lauren McFerran, currently the only Democratic member of the council, supported reading the notification aloud, but was overruled by her fellow Republicans. McFerran’s reasoning was that Tesla committed “numerous” violations of the law, according to the ruling, several of which were committed by top company officials.
Posting a written notification sends a much weaker signal to employees than forcing principals to read it aloud, said Harvard Law School professor Benjamin Sachs, who suggested that forcing Musk to post the notification on his Twitter account would have been also a more appropriate remedy.
When managers have to read the notice to employees, he said, he shows workers “that the boss is not the only authority in the world – that the law is a higher authority than the boss.”
Join your work if you can. And never send a tweet.
Below you can read the full decision of NLRB.