(New York) The United Auto Workers union (UAW) filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal labor court against Donald Trump and Elon Musk, accusing the two billionaires of “attempting to intimidate and threaten” workers.
The Republican candidate for the White House and his supporter Elon Musk exchanged a slew of radical theories on X on Monday evening.
“I’m watching what you’re doing,” Trump told his interlocutor. “You come in, you say, ‘Do you want to resign?’ and they go on strike.”
“They go on strike and you say, ‘Okay, you’re all fired. You’re all fired,'” he continued. The two men can be heard chuckling several times during the exchange.
The union said it filed a lawsuit “against dishonorable billionaires Donald Trump and Elon Musk for their illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who mobilize through protected concerted activities, such as strikes.”
“Under federal law, employees cannot be fired for striking, and threatening to do so is illegal,” said the union, which has thrown its support behind Democratic candidate Kamala Harris after previously doing the same for Joe Biden.
“Both Trump and Musk want workers to sit still and shut up, and they are laughing about it,” union president Shawn Fain was quoted as saying in the statement. “This is sickening, illegal, and totally predictable from these two clowns.”
Elon Musk owns, among other things, the social network X, SpaceX and the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla. He has been criticized in the past for obstructing the unionization of his employees around the world.
He carried out massive layoffs after the acquisition of Twitter (now X), finalized in October 2022, and he announced in mid-April, in an internal letter, the layoff of “more than 10%” of Tesla’s global workforce, or at least 14,000 people.
Tesla has been in trouble for several months with unions in Sweden and Norway.
Several complaints have been filed in California by former SpaceX employees, denouncing retaliation against some who tried to protest against working conditions, going as far as dismissal in several cases.