The United Auto Workers announced Tuesday that it filed federal labor charges against former President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk over remarks they made about intimidating workers attempting to strike or organize during a livestream on X the previous night.
“When we say Donald Trump is a scab, this is what we mean,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a press release. “When we say Trump stands against everything our union stands for, this is what we mean.”
Fain added that Trump “will always side against workers standing up for themselves, and he will always side with billionaires like Elon Musk.” Both men, he charged, “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.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The union’s unfair labor complaints against the Trump campaign and Tesla Inc. were filed with the National Labor Relations Board after Trump appeared to praise Musk for his union busting tactics.
“Well, you’re the greatest cutter,” Trump told Musk, who chuckled as he spoke. “I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in and you just 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 okay. You're all gone. You’re all gone.’”
Firing or threatening to fire striking workers is a violation of the National Labor Relations Act. It wasn’t immediately clear which workers Trump was referring to; Musk owns X and is the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla.
The NLRB said it would investigate the allegations, according to the Associated Press. In a statement to the wire, Trump campaign senior advisor Brian Hughes called the complaints “frivolous” and a “shameless political stunt.”
Musk, who has endorsed Trump and has said he will donate to his campaign, interviewed the former president for two meandering hours on X Spaces on Monday. After troubleshooting a number of technical issues he later baselessly attributed to hackers, Musk’s interview reached an audience of more than one million people.
The UAW has encouraged its nearly 400,000 automobile, aerospace, and agriculture workers to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris for president, offering her its endorsement late last month.
Fain joined Harris and running mate Gov. Tim Walz at a Michigan rally last week, and released a video on Monday accusing Trump of being “all talk and no action” on labor issues.
“But Kamala Harris has delivered for autoworkers,” he said.
Trump, who blasted Fain for the union’s prior endorsement of President Joe Biden, called the union leader a “stupid person” for his support of Harris over the weekend.
