The union is attacking its political opponents with the force of the state.
The union is attacking its political opponents with the force of the state.
I n his two-hour interview on X with Elon Musk on Monday, Donald Trump was his usual self, covering a wide range of topics in a scattershot fashion. In the middle of the conversation, he and Musk were talking about government efficiency.
Musk said he wants a commission to study and then eliminate waste in the federal government. Trump, offering an example, said he negotiated down the price of replacement Air Force One planes with Boeing to save $1.6 billion. Musk again brought up the idea of an efficiency commission and said he’d be happy to help out on it if it came into being.
Trump accepted his offer by replying, “You, you’re the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in, you say, ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike, I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So, every one of you is gone.’ And you are the greatest. You would be very good. You would love it.” Musk replied, “I’d be happy to help out.”
And the United Auto Workers wants to make a federal case out of that exchange. The union has accused Musk and Trump of committing unfair labor practices under the National Labor Relations Act. It has announced that it will file charges with the National Labor Relations Board against both men.
For speaking.
You can see from the context of the comments that what Trump and Musk said has nothing to do with the UAW. The company that Trump said he wouldn’t mention was Twitter, which Musk bought and renamed. Musk laid off a significant chunk of the workforce after taking control.
The Twitter workforce was not organized with any union, let alone the UAW. They never legally went on strike. It is illegal under federal law to fire legally striking workers. Musk did no such thing.
The case the UAW intends to make, apparently, is that because Trump said “strike” when referring to something that was not a strike, in comments about a commission to cut government waste, he committed an unfair labor practice by threatening workers’ right to strike. And Musk, who never said the word “strike” at all, committed the same unfair labor practice, maybe because he laughed along with Trump’s comments.
“When we say Donald Trump is a scab, this is what we mean. When we say Trump stands against everything our union stands for, this is what we mean,” said UAW president Shawn Fain in a statement announcing the filing. Of course, it’s a free country, and Trump or anyone else is allowed to stand against what the UAW stands for. But Fain thinks that’s illegal in this case.
“Donald Trump will always side against workers standing up for themselves, and he will always side with billionaires like Elon Musk, who is contributing $45 million a month to a Super PAC to get him elected. Both Trump and Musk want working class people to sit down and shut up, and they laugh about it openly. It’s disgusting, illegal, and totally predictable from these two clowns,” Fain said.
“That was illegal union-busting in real time, and they should be held accountable,” AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said, echoing Fain. “Firing workers for organizing, striking, and exercising their rights as Americans is economic terrorism,” said Teamsters president Sean O’Brien.
One might think that if the workers felt threatened, they would be the ones to file the case with the NLRB. But labor-relations law allows basically anyone to file charges of unfair labor practices, whether or not the person or group is directly harmed. So progressive activist groups, such as the UAW, can feel threatened on anyone’s behalf.
Similar situations have happened before, such as when a progressive activist lawyer brought NLRB charges against the Federalist after then-publisher Ben Domenech made a joke on Twitter about staff unionizing in 2019. None of the Federalist’s six employees at the time ever wanted to unionize, and they all clearly knew Domenech was joking. The Federalist and Domenech won on appeal, but only after three years of litigation, first at the NLRB and then in federal court.
The UAW also brought an unfair-labor-practices charge against Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.) for comments he made on the campaign trail in 2023 while running in the GOP presidential primaries. The NLRB ended up dismissing that case, citing lack of cooperation on the part of UAW attorneys.
If the NLRB decides to pursue a case, it gets to adjudicate it in-house with an administrative-law judge, whose decisions can then be appealed to the full NLRB. Only after that process has played out can the accused see the inside of an actual courtroom.
The five-member NLRB currently has a 3–1 majority of Democratic appointees, with one seat vacant. They are likely to rule in favor of unions in any given case. The NLRB general counsel is also a pro-union Biden appointee.
And of course, the UAW and the AFL-CIO have each endorsed Trump’s opponent for president, Kamala Harris. So the UAW’s charges amount to yet another form of left-wing lawfare against Trump, in this case for nothing other than words spoken in an interview.
The UAW also has an axe to grind with Musk, since Tesla, of which Musk is CEO, is not unionized, and Musk has opposed past unionization efforts. Musk has been found guilty of unfair labor practices in the past, including for his posts on social media.
A judge found this 2018 tweet from Musk to be illegal:
Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare.
The UAW likely also probably sees it as beneficial to curry favor with Democrats, given the current and possibly future Democratic presidents who control the law-enforcement arms of the executive branch. Fain and other top UAW officials are currently under investigation for workplace retaliation and financial misconduct by the independent monitor appointed in 2021 to supervise the UAW’s activities.
That monitor was appointed as part of a consent decree that wrapped up a yearslong investigation into UAW criminality that resulted in the fraud conviction of two former UAW presidents and about a dozen other union officials. The monitor has since conducted criminal investigations into five more union officials that have resulted in punishment.
Labor-relations law, as currently constituted, gives progressive activists a tool they can use to get the federal government to punish speech from their political enemies. That Trump and Musk are in the crosshairs should come as no surprise given progressives’ antipathy for both men. This case might get dismissed like the one against Scott, or it might drag on for years like the one against the Federalist. Regardless, it’s an attack on free speech.