DETROIT—The United Auto Workers are suing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and billionaire mogul Elon Musk for flagrantly breaking labor law after Trump praised Musk for illegally firing strikers.
The move by the union is significant because the UAW is saying that what is often referred to as “labor law” is not, as corporations would have us believe, just another set of regulations like an EPA policy, for example. Labor law is the law of the land and for any boss to advocate firing of workers if they go on strike violates that law regardless of whether or not they are referring to a specific labor battle now underway.
Trump and Musk are employers so, under the law of the land, they cannot publicly advocate or celebrate the firing of workers who, under U.S. law, have the right to strike. The National Labor Relations Act, which has been the law since the 1930s, says, for example, that it is the policy of the U.S. government to support collective bargaining rights. If a president or a lawmaker or a court does anything to harm collective bargaining rights they are in clear violation of U.S. law. The UAW lawsuit takes this for granted. Corporate America and its backers in government do not.
The UAW lawsuit follows Trump’s praise on social media about how Musk fired workers when they went on strike with Musk chuckling and laughing as he did it.
“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,” union President Shawn Fain said in announcing the charges.
The UAW charges both with law-breaking—formally called unfair labor practices—in its complaint to the National Labor Relations Board. The charges are Trump and Musk engaged in “illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who stand up for themselves by engaging in protected concerted activity, such as strikes.”
“You’re the greatest cutter,” Trump told Musk on a twitter/X podcast. “I mean, I look at what you do. 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 OK, you’re all gone. You’re all gone.’ So, every one of you is gone.”
Musk chuckled throughout Trump’s praise and grinned in response. He didn’t deny it.
“This is the problem in America right now because the rich keep getting richer at the expense of the working class. People like Donald Trump and Elon Musk sneer at labor law because they don’t care about labor law,” Fain told CBS’s Face The Nation. “They don’t care about working-class people.
“They believe in buying off the system and buying off politicians and having their way with people. Employers need to be held accountable in this country when they break the law. It is a federal right when workers go on strike and they cannot be fired for that.
They laugh at the law
“But, you know, people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, they laugh about that. They laugh about firing people. Because they care less about people and about what they do to their careers. All they care about is their billionaire buddies and taking more wealth.
“This is a which-side-are-you-on election. And that’s why working-class people will vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, because they’re one of us, and Donald Trump and Elon Musk represent everything this nation stands against.”
Musk fired SpaceX workers early this year who complained as a group about sexual harassment on the job and threatened to walk out. He terminated eight workers and threatened to fire others. The firings and the threat both broke labor law. The NLRB regional office handling the case determined SpaceX and Musk “are violating workers’ rights to push for better working conditions.”
“When we say Donald Trump is a scab, this is what we mean,” Fain elaborated immediately after announcing the NLRB filings. “When we say Trump stands against everything our union stands for, this is what we mean.
“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. 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.”
Trump’s praise of Musk’s illegal firings didn’t surprise the AFL-CIO. “Scab recognizes scab,” it tweeted.
“Greedy bosses aren’t just laughing at workers in smoke-filled backrooms anymore,” federation President Liz Shuler elaborated in a statement. “They’re broadcasting it for the world to hear.
“It’s no surprise coming from Trump and Elon Musk—two notorious union-busters who boast a combined record of crossing picket lines, underpaying workers, flouting health and safety laws, and retaliating against workers for demanding the rights and fair pay we deserve.”
Shuler noted Musk is suing the NLRB “rather than being held accountable for charges he illegally fired workers.” Musk’s suit, filed in federal court in deep-red rural Texas, says the NLRB is unconstitutional, so it can’t penalize Musk.
“This special breed of arrogant and weird billionaire CEOs just want an America where they can get even richer at workers’ expense,” Shuler added. Trump “doesn’t care about us and has no intention of fighting for us. Trump only cares about his Project 2025 agenda that favors his ultra-wealthy buddies like Musk while stomping on fundamental freedoms of everyone else.”
Trump, now a convicted felon on 34 counts of state election law-breaking and a hush-money cover-up scheme in New York, is the Republican presidential nominee. He also faces other potential federal and state charges, especially related to his ordering and abetting the Trumpite invasion of the U.S. Capitol three and a half years ago.
The Trump-Musk conversation is far from the first time Trump’s broken labor law. He didn’t pay Laborers Union workers who built his Taj Mahal casino in New Jersey, and he crossed a picket line during last year’s SAG-AFTRA strike against the nation’s TV, streaming video, and movie studios.
And at the AFSCME convention in Los Angeles, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz revealed Trump “spent a decade stiffing workers—dishwashers, maids, carpenters—on his own properties, to enrich himself.”
Musk also engaged in an even more recent and larger mass firing at his non-union Tesla electric vehicle complex in Fremont, Calif., which is one target in UAW’s drive to organize non-union auto workers nationally.
Three months ago, Musk unilaterally canned his entire 500-worker electric vehicle charging station development division at Tesla. He said the 15%-20% cuts its director proposed, allegedly due to declining demand, weren’t enough. Then Musk fired her, too.
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