Donald Trump is already receiving pushback after threatening striking workers in his trainwreck interview with Elon Musk on Monday night.
“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 okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So, every one of you is gone.
In response, the United Auto Workers (UAW) on Tuesday morning filed federal labor charges against Trump and Musk, calling the two “disgraced billionaires.”
The UAW accused the men of “illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who stand up for themselves by engaging in protected concerted activity, such as strikes.”
“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.
Under federal law, workers cannot be fired for going on strike. A boss threatening to do so is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act.
It’s unclear which incident Trump was referring to when he praised Musk for threatening organizing workers on Monday. At Tesla, the billionaire Musk has been accused of violating labor law by tweeting that employees would lose stock options if they unionized. A National Labor Relations Board judge ruled that Tesla violated labor laws when it prevented Florida employees from discussing pay and working conditions. In California, Tesla violated labor laws by failing to provide meal and rest breaks and skirting overtime pay. Tesla has also faced multiple lawsuits brought forward by Black workers alleging a culture of racism on the shop floor.
In 2023, the NLRB charged Musk with violating federal labor law after firing SpaceX workers for circulating a letter describing Musk as “a distraction and embarrassment.” At Twitter, Musk fired workers en masse after his takeover in 2022, including unionized janitors who walked off the job for “pay, benefits, and job protections.”
“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,” said Fain. “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.”
Meanwhile, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz will speak to AFSCME union members in Los Angeles in his first solo campaign stop on Tuesday.
