The livestream on X with former President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk has more issues, and this time it isn’t just technical.
The United Auto Workers union filed federal labor charges against Trump and Musk that allege two men attempted to “threaten and intimidate” workers on the X Spaces livestream who wished to participate in “protected concerted activity, such as strikes.”
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During the conversation, which the UAW called “rambling, disorganized” and “illegal,” Trump advocated for the firing of workers who went on strike.
“I look at what you do, you walk in, you say, ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike,” Trump told Musk via livestream. “I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, That’s OK, you’re all gone.”
The UAW noted in its lawsuit that under federal law in the U.S., employees cannot be fired solely for going on strike and that an employer threatening to let them go for that reason is violating workers’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act.
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“Both Trump and Musk want working class people to sit down and shut up, and they laugh about it openly,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a release for the organization. “It’s disgusting, illegal, and totally predictable from these two clowns.”
In 2022, after Musk took over Twitter (now X), he initiated mass layoffs, letting go of thousands of employees and senior leadership following his acquisition of the company. In May, Musk fired Tesla’s entire Supercharger team after one executive tried to push back against more layoffs.
The UAW, which is based in Michigan, currently represents over 40,000 autoworkers and formally endorsed Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris earlier this month.
Trump and Musk have not yet commented on the charges.