The United Auto Staff introduced yesterday that employees at greater than a dozen automakers have launched simultaneous campaigns throughout the U.S. to affix the union.
Automakers focused by the UAW embody Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Subaru, Mazda, Hyundai, Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid.
In the event you’re accustomed to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s stand on unions, you realize he didn’t take that nicely. Requested in regards to the UAW’s plans at a New York Instances occasion, Tesla’s CEO mentioned the EV maker treats staff nicely, which is why he does not see the necessity for the UAW at its vegetation.
“If Tesla will get unionized, it will likely be as a result of we deserve it, and we failed indirectly,” Musk mentioned in response to Automotive Information. He added that Tesla is giving its employees the chance to grow to be millionaires by inventory choices and advance of their careers to administration positions.
“However we definitely attempt laborious to make sure the prosperity of everybody. We give everybody inventory choices. We have made many individuals who had been simply working the road, who did not even know what shares had been, we have made them millionaires,” he mentioned.
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Musk famous that unions typically convey “an adversarial relationship” between one group on the firm and one other group. “The unions naturally attempt to create negativity in an organization and create a form of lords and peasants state of affairs,” he mentioned.
At Tesla factories there’s much less of a divide than at UAW vegetation, Musk prompt, with employees and administration consuming on the similar desk and parking in the identical parking zone.
Musk has opposed unionization at Tesla vegetation within the U.S. previously, together with on the firm’s first car meeting website in Fremont, California.
In 2018, he tweeted that Tesla employees in Fremont had been free to affix a union however appeared to recommend that those that will must quit inventory choices. Consequently, the Nationwide Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dominated the remark violated labor legal guidelines, however Tesla appealed the choice in courtroom.
Earlier this yr, Tesla terminated a team of workers at its Buffalo, New York website a day after they launched a unionization marketing campaign. Final week, NLRB dismissed claims that Tesla illegally fired the staff to convey an finish to unionization efforts, Reuters reported.
After a historic strike that lasted 40 days and affected Detroit Three vegetation concurrently for the primary time, UAW members at Ford, Common Motors, and Stellantis have voted to ratify their new contracts earlier this month, locking in file raises starting from at the least 33% to over 160% for a few of the lowest-paid employees.