Tesla hit in court over bid to enter union
Tesla repeatedly interfered with the rights of its Fremont factory workers to unionize, labor lawyers said Monday in a National Labor Relations Board trial, while an attorney representing the automaker slammed the entire proceeding as an “infomercial” for union efforts to organize the plant.
The long-delayed trial before one of the board’s administrative law judges in Oakland follows two years of so-far-unsuccessful efforts by the United Auto Workers to unionize Tesla’s plant, which now employs more than 10,000 people. It also comes as Palo Alto’s Tesla struggles to ramp up production of its latest car, the Model 3.
Lawyers representing the union, as well as attorneys working for the labor board’s independent general counsel, accused the company of violating the federal law that protects much organizing activity. Company security guards, they said, tried to prevent workers from handing out leaflets in the factory parking lot, while supervisors tried to block employees from wearing pro-union T-shirts on the factory floor.
“What we see is a very heavy-handed anti-union campaign that’s affecting all levels of workers’
“They’re not anti-Tesla . ... They just want to make sure they’re being treated fairly.” Margo Feinberg, the union’s attorney, of the pro-union workers
lives,” said UAW attorney Margo Feinberg.
She also focused on an updated confidentiality agreement Tesla asked all employees to sign after the organizing drive began, an agreement that barred employees from talking with reporters and other people outside the company about their work.
“They’re not anti-Tesla,” Feinberg said of the prounion workers. “They believe in Tesla, and they want Tesla to succeed. … They just want to make sure they’re being treated fairly.”
Attorney Mark Ross, representing Tesla, called the accusations part of a union smear campaign against Tesla and CEO Elon Musk, who on Twitter last month accused the union of sowing divisiveness and undermining Detroit automakers.
“This entire trial is an infomercial in an attempt to paint Mr. Musk and the company in a negative light,” said Ross, of the law firm Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton.
Michael Sanchez, a production associate who is now on medical leave from the company and suing Tesla, said he was handing out leaflets outside the factory on Feb. 10, 2017, when a security guard approached him.
“He asked me, ‘Are you an employee?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’ve been at Tesla almost five years,’ ” Sanchez said. “He said, ‘You should leave the premises.’ I said ‘I’m here within my legal rights.’ ”
Sanchez said the guard left, then returned several minutes later, demanded to see Sanchez’s badge and photographed it. The guard, again, told him to leave the premises. A second guard asked if the leaflets were for a union. “He said, ‘Unions are worthless — you shouldn’t join one.’ I said, ‘That’s your opinion.’ ”
After similar confrontations with guards at other factory entrances, Sanchez eventually left the premises, he said.
Hearings in the case are scheduled to run through Thursday, then resume on Sept. 24.