Elon Musk invites UAW to hold unionization vote at Tesla

Tesla founder Elon Musk has invited United Auto Workers (UAW) to hold a unionization vote at the company’s California headquarters. 

In a Twitter thread on Tuesday, Musk brought up the potential vote as he and other Tesla supporters complained that President Biden did not mention the company during a section of his State of the Union address about electric vehicles.

“Tesla has created over 50,000 US jobs building electric vehicles & is investing more than double GM + Ford combined,” Musk wrote in response to a tweet from Biden’s official Twitter account. 

Biden mentioned the electric pivot of those traditional auto giants in his speech, leading KISS frontman Gene Simmons to speculate that Tesla was left out because it isn’t unionized. 

“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!” Musk wrote in a tweet. 

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

This comes after the National Labor Relations Board found last year that Tesla violated labor law in the past, ordering Musk to give a fired employee their jobs back and demanding that he delete a tweet discouraging unionization, according to The Washington Post.

Tesla has faced numerous lawsuits stemming from allegations of racist treatment, discrimination and sexual harassment at its facilities, with the company noting that it has conducted efforts to improve its workplace environment. 

Unlike its rival competitors General Motors and Ford, Tesla’s productions facilities are not unionized and UAW’s past efforts to unionize the company has been unsuccessful.