Tesla accused of anti-union bluster at Buffalo plant – The Register

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is bringing Tesla back into court, this time to determine whether it interfered with the organizing rights of employees at its Buffalo, New York, factory.

In its complaint (PDF), the NLRB alleges that Tesla’s acceptable use of technology in the workplace policy, put in place shortly before a group of Autopilot workers say they were fired for attempting to form a union, is illegal.

The policy states that workplace technology cannot be used for the purpose of “unauthorized solicitation (sic) or promotion” or “creation of distribution channels and lists.”

“The complaint alleges that Tesla maintains this rule in order to discourage its employees from forming, joining, or assisting the union or engaging in other concerted activities,” said NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado , in a press release concerning the file.

The employees who claim to have been fired were part of a group working on data labeling for Tesla Autopilot, assigning labels to images used to train Autopilot AI – the exact type of tasks Musk had said he wanted to automate at Tesla. Fearing for their jobs, labelers publicly launched a unionization campaign on February 14, 2023.

Two days later, Tesla reportedly laid off at least 18 team members. In its final complaint filed with the NLRB, the group said he was fired because he considered unionizing.

This is not a one-off accusation against an Elon Musk operation. Tesla has been the subject of several labor lawsuits and NLRB complaints in recent years, alleging other instances of Tesla’s suppression of unionization, as well as illegal mass layoffs and discrimination.

Not to mention a similar wrongful termination claim at SpaceX, while allegations of discriminatory termination practices have also dogged Musk at Twitter, now X, since its takeover.

Blado said a complaint to the NLRB is not an indicator of guilt, but “the first step for the NLRB General Counsel to litigate the allegations after investigating the accusations and finding merit.”

Of course, given that this is an NLRB operation, there’s not much that can be done. Among the NLRB’s limited enforcement powers, it wants Tesla to stop preventing workers from organizing and requires notices to be posted in all rest areas about employees’ labor rights and the outcome of the audience.

If the parties fail to reach a settlement, the matter will be brought before an NLRB administrative law judge later this summer. ®