Elon Musk invites union vote after Biden snub 

On Tuesday, 1 March, President Joe Biden celebrated US electric vehicle producers but excluded one big name: Tesla.  

Biden tweeted:

Ford is investing $11B to build electric vehicles—creating 11,000 jobs across the country.

GM is making the largest investment in its history—$7B to build electric vehicles, creating 4,000 jobs in Michigan.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 2, 2022

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, quickly responded on Twitter: “Tesla has created over 50,000 US jobs building electric vehicles & is investing more than double GM and Ford combined.” Implying Tesla deserves at least some recognition, if not more.  

Musk further addressed his complaints with CNBC: “Biden has pointedly ignored Tesla at every turn and falsely stated to the public that GM leads the electric car industry.”  

The President is conscious of Tesla’s non-unionization of its car factory and allegations of Tesla has repressed unionization, according to administrative judge Amita Tracy.  

In 2019, Tracy found 12 company actions that violated US labor laws, including allowing security guards to harass workers who passed out union pamphlets, banning pro-union T-shirts, and anti-union tweets by Elon Musk. 

Musk wrote in 2018, that if the Tesla team wanted and voted for a union they could, “but why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is two times better than when the plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare.” This implies that Tesla provides the same resources as a union without the extra taxes.  

Recently, Tesla has faced accusations of workplace sexual harassment, workplace assault, and racism from colleagues and supervisors, and a union would have been beneficial for many of its employees as they fight for better workplaces and working conditions without the fear of retaliation. 

On 3 March, Musk challenged the United Autor Worker union to hold a vote in a tweet:

Our real challenge is Bay Area has negative unemployment, so if we don’t treat and compensate our (awesome) people well, they have many other offers and will just leave!

I’d like hereby to invite UAW to hold a union vote at their convenience. Tesla will do nothing to stop them.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 3, 2022

Whether Tesla will help facilitate the vote with the UAW is unclear at this point.  

President Biden and Elon Musk are known to have differing views regarding unionization, but if UAW holds an official vote, will the White House change its position and work with Tesla?