Elon Musk faces several lawsuits from unions and shareholders.
Tesla violated labor laws. She ruled a California administrative law judge did so by threatening employees when they tried to unionize.
According to the ruling, known in the last hours of September 27, Tesla committed multiple violations of the National Labor Relations Law between 2017 and 2018.
Ways Tesla Violated Labor Laws
The company must now hold a meeting to inform workers of their rights, and CEO Elon Musk is required to attend.
In the opinion of the Labor Law Judge Amita Baman Tracy a tweet by Elon Musk from 2018 is quoted In that tweet it was said that:
“Nothing is stopping the Tesla team at our car factory from voting for the union. They could do it if they wanted to. But why pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing? "
At the discretion of the magistrate, the tweet can be equated to "threatening employees" with losing their stock options if they vote in favor of unionization.
Baman Tracy believes that:
"Musk's tweet can only be interpreted by a reasonable employee as an indication that if employees vote to unionize, they will give up stock options"
And in case it was not clear, he also writes:
"Musk threatened to take a benefit from employees for voting for the union."
But the anti-union actions of the friend Musk were not limited to social networks
The ruling also found that Tesla violated labor laws by prohibiting employees from distributing brochures during their off hours in the employee parking lot in Fremont, California; by telling employees that it was useless to vote for the union; and when questioning employees about your union activities.
The judge's resolution
In the operative part of the sentence, the judge orders that Tesla must "Cease and desist" from that behavior y reinstate work and fully indemnify an employee that he had been illegally fired for being involved in union activities. The automaker is also required to inform workers at a meeting that Tesla violated the National Labor Relations Act multiple times.
The ruling was issued in response to allegations of unfair labor practices filed by the United Auto Workers union, including one in 2017 that accused the company of firing union supporters.
Although the union has not yet commented on the ruling, it is known that Tesla workers have not yet agreed to hold a vote on unionization.
Tesla also did not comment on his judicial setback, but we do know his responses when the events that gave rise to it occurred.
In 2017, Tesla said that no employee had been punished for supporting a union, in response to a UAW complaint.
Consulted at the time by the discord tweet, he said the following:
Elon's tweet was simply an acknowledgment of the fact that, unlike Tesla, we are not aware of a single UAW-represented automaker offering stock options or restricted units of shares to its production employees, and UAW organizers have consistently dismissed Tesla's equity value as part of our compensation package. '
This latest claim was denied by the UAW on Saturday. The union claimed that its contracts with General Motors, Ford and Chrysler had profit-sharing plans.
Elon Musk keeps making friends
But it wasn't just the unions who took Musk to court.
Some Tesla shareholders have filed lawsuits against Musk, the company and the rest of its board of directors. In one of them the terms of a compensation package are questioned that could end up paying you shares worth more than $ 50.000 billion in ten years. That could lead to him becoming the richest man in the world. Another of the lawsuits focuses on having made Tesla will buy SolarCity. Solar City was another company in which Musk was the largest shareholder. According to the whistleblowers, Musk made the decision to get rid of that troublesome solar panel production company.