When Elon Musk hosted a conversation with Donald Trump on Monday night using X/Twitter’s “spaces” tool, which allows users to broadcast a discussion, the Republican presidential candidate strayed into legally tenuous territory while praising his fellow billionaire.
Calling the tech figure a “great cutter” of jobs — Musk laid off more than half of X/Twitter’s staff after purchasing the social-media platform in 2022 — Trump then expanded on the subject.
“I mean, I look at what you do,” Trump told Musk. “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 OK, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So every one of you is gone.’” Musk laughed before quickly redirecting the conversation.
Those comments are now the basis of an unfair labor practice (ULP) allegation by the United Auto Workers (UAW), which filed the complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) shortly after the conversation. Strikes are legally protected concerted activity, and workers cannot be replaced for engaging in such action. That’s the basis for the union’s filing, which alleges that the comments constitute “illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who stand up for themselves,” per a UAW press release that refers to the duo as “disgraced billionaires.” The union argues that the exchange suggests to workers at his companies that he would fire them should they engage in protected concerted activity, including striking — constituting illegal coercion.
The UAW’s filing is the latest volley in what has become an all-out war between the Republicans’ presidential candidate and one of the country’s most visible and increasingly militant unions. Shawn Fain, the union’s recently elected international leader, has repeatedly referred to Trump as a “scab,” citing the real-estate mogul’s history of crossing picket lines and stiffing workers employed on his development projects.
“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 Fain. “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.”
When Fain announced in January that the union would endorse Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy before the incumbent dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in his stead, he called Trump a “scab.” It wasn’t the first time he has referred to the former president that way, nor would it be the last. In a UAW video posted on social media following Trump’s conversation with Musk this week, the union repeated the descriptor, stating, “He’s for the billionaires. Not for you. Donald Trump is a scab.”
The criticism is getting under Trump’s skin: in recent months, the former president has mentioned Fain in nearly every one of his public speeches. During his speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC) last month, the former president called for Fain to be “fired.” No matter that Fain is an elected leader and thus cannot be fired; that’s beyond the understanding of a man whose catchphrase is that of a boss obsessed with exerting dominance over workers: “You’re fired.”
Fain is a real thorn in the side for Trump. Not only do he and the UAW members he represents support a transition to electric vehicles (EV), a major problem for a GOP that seeks to halt the EV transition; they’ve also endorsed Harris and her VP candidate, former union member and current Minnesota governor Tim Walz, in the election. The union’s members represent a key voter bloc in swing states like Michigan: according to the UAW, its members accounted for a significant portion of Biden’s vote in the state in 2020.
The UAW’s opposition to the Republican ticket isn’t just a problem in raw voter numbers; it’s also a publicity nightmare for a party that is trying to rebrand itself as pro-worker, even as its policy priorities remain as anti-worker and anti-union as ever. Fain’s willingness to challenge that lie is not easily overcome — even if Fain’s counterpart, International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) president Sean O’Brien, has at times been willing to give the party the time of day.
There’s a clear difference in Fain and O’Brien’s approach to political education and action: both union leaders have a sizable number of Trump voters among their membership, but the former has proven far more willing to explain the threat Trump poses to union membership. That difference is rooted in Fain’s membership in a reform caucus focused on greater rank-and-file democracy and control, both in the union and in the hours of one’s life. The UAW leader has described the union’s core issues as a living wage for all, retirement security, taking workers’ time back, and adequate health care for all as a right. Conservatives are inexorably opposed to those aims, which means that if Fain and his fellow reformers want to advance their project — to fight for the entire working class, as he often puts it — they must take on the political figures standing in their way, Trump foremost among them.
However, Trump’s comments on Monday went far enough that O’Brien too denounced them, telling Politico, “Firing workers for organizing, striking, and exercising their rights as Americans is economic terrorism.” The Teamsters’ black caucus has now endorsed Harris’s candidacy, though the union itself has not yet endorsed any candidate. The AFL-CIO too joined in the criticism, writing of Trump’s comments on Monday night, “Scab recognize scab.”
Scab recognize scab. https://t.co/lDDUSp2XF4
— AFL-CIO ✊ (@AFLCIO) August 13, 2024
The UAW also wants to unionize EV plants, including the ones Musk owns. While GOP leaders claim to want to build new factories inside the United States, they are almost uniformly silent as to the quality of the jobs they are proposing, as if such jobs are inherently good — rather than made good, with decent pay and benefits, through unionization.
Musk, for his part, has aggressively opposed unionization efforts among his workforce at Tesla, which has engaged in several attempts to join the UAW in and is now in the early stages of another such campaign. The NLRB filed a complaint against Musk earlier this year, accusing the employer of illegally restricting Tesla workers’ access to technology in a Buffalo, New York, plant (allegations he has denied); while Trump did not specify what he was referring to in his praise for Musk’s retaliation against workers who organize, it’s possible he had the events at the Buffalo plant in mind. (The board also found Musk illegally fired a Tesla worker for organizing in 2021). Anti-union animus appears to be a clear motivating factor in Musk’s decision to build out his future operations in right-to-work states like Texas and Nevada.
That disdain for unionization makes Trump and Musk, despite their differences regarding EVs, comfortable bedfellows. Musk is also leading an attack on the constitutionality of the NLRB itself through a case concerning SpaceX’s firing of nine employees in 2022, which the billionaire hopes to appeal to a sympathetic Supreme Court that will then rule the NLRB’s enforcement structure to be in violation of the Constitution, defanging the regulatory body that is a thorn in the side of employers. Musk has endorsed Trump’s candidacy and is purportedly, as mentioned by Fain, supporting it to the tune of $45 million per month via America PAC, a new super PAC whose other backers include Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale. Trump has long been a fan of the Tesla founder, describing him in 2020 as “one of our great geniuses.”
“They thumb their nose at labor law, and there has got to come a reckoning in this country where the billionaires and the corporate class and employers are held accountable when they break the law,” Fain said when asked on CNN about the union’s decision to file charges against Trump and Musk.
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign called the union’s charges a “shameless political stunt intended to erode” the former president’s support from US workers. Musk took to Twitter to speculate that Fain will end up in prison.
It’s always been clear that Trump, who has promised CEOs that he will lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent if elected — he described a recent meeting with seventy of the country’s most powerful corporate bosses as a “lovefest” — couldn’t care less about working-class people, either at home or abroad. But it’s nice that he offered such an unambiguous reminder to anyone taking in by his party’s desperate attempts to disguise that fact. Whether the charges stick or not — it’s likely the union would have to prove Trump was speaking on Musk’s behalf — it’s about time we had unions fighting back against the most ruthless propagators of America’s class war on the side of capital.
