Enlarge / Tesla CEO Elon Musk at an opening event for Tesla's Gigafactory on March 22, 2022, in Gruenheide, southeast of Berlin. (credit: Getty Images | Patrick Pleul)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk violated US labor law by threatening to take stock options away from employees who join a union, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The appeals court said the US National Labor Relations Board can enforce its order that requires Musk to delete the tweet.
Musk's tweet in May 2018 is still online and said in part, "Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?" Musk issued the tweet amid a union campaign at a Tesla vehicle manufacturing plant in Fremont, California. Tesla factories are still not unionized.
A federal administrative law judge ruled against Tesla and Musk in 2019, finding among other things that Musk violated labor law with the tweet. The NLRB affirmed that and most other portions of the judge's ruling in 2021. Tesla challenged in the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which sided with the NLRB in its ruling on Friday:
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