The United Auto Workers filed federal labor charges against the former president with the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk for publicly applauding the practice of firing workers who threatened to strike.
X “I look at what you’re doing,” Trump told Musk during a two-hour interview Monday night.
“You go in, you say, ‘Do you want to get out?’ They’re going on vacation,” Trump said of Musk, CEO of EV maker Tesla and SpaceX. Musk also owns X, formerly Twitter.
“I won’t name the company, but they go on vacation and you say it’s okay, you’re all gone. You are all gone. So you’re all gone,” Trump said.
Trump envisioned firing Twitter employees in 2022 after Musk took over the social media business and renamed it X.
it is so Illegal to fire employees Those who threaten to strike because the right to strike protected by federal labor law.
“When we say Donald Trump is an itch, we mean it,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement Tuesday about the new charges. “When we say Trump is against everything our union stands for, we mean it.”
Neither the Trump campaign nor Musk responded to CNBC’s request for comment on the UAW action.
Trump’s praise of the union bust is notable as the Republican presidential nominee is currently struggling to win support from organized labor in a tight race against Vice President Kamala Harris.
The UAW, which represents more than 400,000 auto workers, has already endorsed Harris. But another major US union, the Teamsters, has yet to endorse.
A spokeswoman for the Teamsters did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s support for union busting.
In July, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention.
His presence was intended to underscore that strong union political support still exists for candidates who pledge to defend workers’ interests.
“Companies are firing workers who try to join unions and hide behind toothless laws that are meant to protect working people but are manipulated to benefit corporations,” O’Brien said at the RNC in Milwaukee.
“This is economic terrorism at its best,” O’Brien said.
Musk is no stranger to labor battles. Tesla has clashed with union supporters for years, and Tesla workers remain without a union.
In 2021, the NLRB found that Tesla violated labor laws when firing a union activist.
Three years ago, the board signed the same finding after Musk He wrote on Twitter: “Nothing prevents the Tesla team at our car plant from participating in the vote. They could do that if they wanted to. So why pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing?”
SpaceX was also accused by the US labor board of illegally firing eight employees, this time in response to an internal, open letter from them criticizing Musk and his public behavior.
In response, SpaceX filed suit, claiming the NLRB’s powers and administrative procedures were unconstitutional.