In an election year rife with more than a few unpredictable events, the United Auto Workers (UAW) added to the mix this week by filing unfair labor practice (ULP) charges against former President Donald Trump and the owner of Tesla and the social media platform X, Elon Musk, with whom Trump sat for an interview on August 12. The UAW accused both men of violating the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) because of comments Trump made about discharging workers who go on strike.
More specifically, Trump said to Musk, “You’re the greatest cutter. I look at what you do. You walk in and you just say, ‘You want to quit?’ I won’t mention the name of the company but they go on strike and you say, ’That’s OK. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. So, every one of you is gone.'” Musk replied with a laughing answer, “Yeah.”
That’s it.
How that amounts to an unfair labor practice—as opposed to free speech—is anyone’s guess, but that did not stop the UAW’s Shawn Fain and other labor leaders from melting down about Trump’s purportedly “illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers.” In a statement to POLITICO, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said, “Firing workers for organizing, striking, and exercising their rights as Americans is economic terrorism.”
While that may be labor leaders’ opinion, with which anyone is free to agree or disagree, Fain’s incredulity led him to go the extra step of filing ULP charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which seems rather preposterous. Making observations about Musk’s supposed alacrity as “the greatest cutter” hardly amounts to anything close to a ULP—it was more like idle chatter, which is not illegal.
Unfortunately, Fain’s move underscores the ongoing effort between labor unions and their allies at the NLRB to squelch free speech. In response to the complaint, the NLRB reportedly said that it will investigate—as if it doesn’t have better things to do.
Of course, anyone is also free to file ULP charges—even if they are silly—but it is a little rich coming from a union official who tried to hit a U.S. manufacturer with billions in penalties via an obscure German supply chain law, which would have prevented that employer from hiring thousands more American workers in its facilities.. Is that really pro-worker? As the French moralist François de La Rochefoucauld famously said, “hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue.”
In any event, hopefully the NLRB will dismiss the UAW’s frivolous complaint as efficiently as one imagines Elon Musk would.
About the authors
Sean P. Redmond
Sean P. Redmond is Vice President, Labor Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
