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Tesla fires union organizers at Buffalo plant [1]

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Date: 2023-02-16  

Elon Musk's brave new world has an awful lot in common with the old world.

On Wednesday, Laura Clawson reported on workers’ efforts to organize a union at Tesla’s Buffalo, N.Y., facility. Today, CNBC reports that 30 of them have been fired:

In a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, Workers United said Tesla fired more than 30 workers from its Autopilot unit at a Buffalo plant as a retaliatory measure and to discourage union activity. The union urged the NLRB for injunctive relief “to prevent irreparable destruction of employee rights resulting from Tesla’s unlawful conduct.” Employees at the Buffalo facility on Tuesday launched organizing efforts under the union Tesla Workers United. Workers said they’re seeking a voice in the workplace, along with better pay and job security. [...] Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have clashed with union proponents for years. In 2017, Tesla fired a union activist named Richard Ortiz, and in 2018, Musk tweeted a comment found to have violated federal labor laws. The NLRB ordered Tesla to reinstate Ortiz and to have Musk delete his tweet, which it said threatened workers’ compensation. Tesla has appealed the administrative court’s ruling and his tweet remains.

So, on top of everything else, Elon Musk is just a union buster and free speech is allowed only when he says so. Definitely not alone in either category. See Jacob Sowers’ A More Perfect Union: Free Speech and a Growing Labor Movement from The Free Speech Project:

According to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that enforces federal labor laws, roughly 18,000 unfair labor practice charges were filed in fiscal year 2022, an increase from 15,000 the year before. And in 2022, union election petitions increased by 53% compared to 2021. “The NLRB is processing the most cases it has seen in years with the lowest staffing levels in the past six decades,” NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo stated, adding that the agency needed “more resources to process petitions and conduct elections, investigate unfair labor practice charges, and obtain full remedies for workers whose labor rights have been violated.” Abruzzo called on Congress to help restore the agency after “years of underfunding.” Some assert that worker retaliation and labor relations complaints have skyrocketed due to illegal methods being deployed to dissuade workers from engaging in collective bargaining. For instance, the NLRB has issued 35 formal complaints against Starbucks, which has received more than 325 unfair labor charges from employees and workers’ rights organizations as of October 2022. The former CEO of this outspoken anti-union company, Howard Schultz, publicly stated that unions were “an adversary that’s threatening the very essence of what [we] believe to be true.” Schultz has since returned to Starbucks as Interim CEO, a move that some union organizers viewed as a direct response to growing union-organizing campaigns in the company. Anti-union propaganda campaigns remain incessant as well. Since 2016, labor officials have accused Amazon of violating federal law by holding anti-union meetings, a routine tactic of the tech giant, and one that critics say never results in penalties.[...]

Sowers’ whole analysis is worth your time.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/16/2153343/-Tesla-fires-union-organizers-at-Buffalo-plant

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