{"id":178929,"date":"2018-07-17T18:29:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T23:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/07\/17\/clueless-rich-and-narcissistic\/"},"modified":"2018-07-17T18:29:00","modified_gmt":"2018-07-17T23:29:00","slug":"clueless-rich-and-narcissistic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/07\/17\/clueless-rich-and-narcissistic\/","title":{"rendered":"Clueless, Rich, and Narcissistic"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am referring to Elon Musk, who met with workers and said that he, “Would Allow<\/span><\/b>” them to unionize if he did not personally resolve their issues<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr. Musk, you are not the person who makes that decision. Your workers make that decision, period, full stop.<\/p>\n

That’s how the system works, no matter how much you want to “disrupt” it.<\/p>\n

What’s more, you are not allowed to threaten loss of benefits to employees if they choose to unionize:<\/p>\n

In a June 2017 meeting with Tesla employees, CEO Elon Musk solicited their complaints about safety issues and promised to address their concerns, so long as they refrained from trying to organize a union, the National Labor Relations Board alleges.<\/span>

<\/span> The new claims emerged last month as a trial got underway over a complaint filed against Tesla<\/a> by the NLRB, a government agency tasked with enforcing U.S. labor laws.<\/span>

<\/span> During the June 7, 2017, meeting, Musk allegedly solicited employees complaints about safety issues, and \u201cimpliedly promised to remedy their safety complaints if they refrained from their union organizational activity,\u201d the NLRB said. <\/span>

<\/span> <\/a><\/span>
\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Musk has made his disdain toward the United Auto Workers\u2019 two-year union campaign at Fremont well known<\/a>, but publicly he\u2019s even gone so far as to call for workers <\/b>to hold a unionization vote. The NLRB\u2019s latest allegation appears to be the first documented claim of the CEO directly appealing to workers to refrain from organizing activity.  <\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> In its filing, the agency said Musk\u2019s statements violated sections 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act, which says<\/a> \u201cIt shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed\u201d to organize a union. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, employers may not respond to a union organizing drive by threatening, interrogating, or spying on pro-union employees, or by promising benefits if they forget about the union,\u201d according to the NLRB\u2019s website<\/a>. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, BTW, he also tweeted that if they voted to unionize, that the would lose their stock options<\/a>, which is a violation of black letter labor law.<\/p>\n

But he’s a Silicon Valley big wig, and laws are for little people.<\/p>\n

Here is hoping that the judge will disabuse him of this notion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am referring to Elon Musk, who met with workers and said that he, “Would Allow” them to unionize if he did not personally resolve their issues. Mr. Musk, you are not the person who makes that decision. Your workers make that decision, period, full stop. That’s how the system works, no matter how much …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[473,365,407,465,406,442,403],"class_list":["post-178929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-auto-industry","tag-business","tag-justice","tag-labor","tag-stupid","tag-union","tag-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178929"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}