Tesla fires dozens in response to campaign, complaint alleges - The Washington P...
source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/02/16/tesla-buffalo-union/
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Complaint alleges Tesla fired workers in response to a union campaign
The affected employees worked at the company’s Buffalo plant. Tesla denied the allegations on Thursday.
Tesla terminated at least 18 employees who had been involved in an effort to unionize the company’s Buffalo factory, according to a complaint filed Wednesday by organizers to the National Labor Relations Board.
Some employees at the plant, who work in image labeling for Tesla’s Autopilot driver-assistance software, had announced their intention to unionize just a day before. They are affiliated with Workers United, a branch of the Service Employees International Union.
Tesla denied the claims in the complaint on Thursday, issuing a rare public response decrying what it called “false allegations” that the company had fired workers in response to protected activity.
Rather than firing workers for organizing, the company claimed, Tesla had terminated more than two dozen employees as part of a semi-annual performance review cycle.
“We learned in hindsight that one out of the 27 impacted employees officially identified as part of the union campaign,” the company said. “This exercise pre-dated any union campaign.”
In their complaint, however, organizers said the terminations amount to retaliation and were an attempt to discourage union activity. They are seeking an NLRB injunction to “prevent irreparable destruction of employee rights resulting from Tesla’s unlawful conduct.”
In a tweet, the unionvowed to continue with its organizing efforts despite the terminations. “We’re angry. But this won’t slow us down or stop us. They want us to be scared, but they just started a stampede,” they wrote.
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.
In announcing their union drive, employees at the Buffalo plant asked for better wages and job security, as well as more say in company decisions such as staffing and work conditions, according to a website set up by the union. Bloomberg News reported that employees had also complained about the company’s workplace monitoring system, which allegedly tracks employees’ keystrokes.
“The reason there is time monitoring for image labeling is to improve the ease of use of our labeling software,” Tesla said in its blog post.
If the union drive succeeds, it would be a first for Tesla. Chief executive Elon Musk has been openly hostile toward unions in the past, at one point implying in a tweet that employees would lose stock options if they formed a union. A 2021 NLRB decision directed Musk to delete the tweet and reinstate an employee who had been terminated.
Faiz Siddiqui contributed to this report.
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