Elon Musk, founder and chief engineer of SpaceX, speaks during the Satellite 2020 Conference in Washington, DC, United States, on March 9, 2020.
Yasin Ozturk | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Tesla is asking an appeals court to overturn a federal agency’s order that a Twitter post that discourages the union organization be deleted from CEO Elon Musk’s account.
The National Labor Relations Board concluded that a May 2018 tweet by Musk illegally threatened employees with loss of stock options if they decided to be represented by a union. The board ordered the post to be deleted.
Among other things, the long-running decision of the March 25 board also orders Tesla to reinstate an employee who was fired for union activity and return the payment to him. The decision also says that Tesla should post a notice addressing unfair labor practices at the Fremont, Calif., Factory, where United Auto Workers was trying to organize 10,000 workers.
Tesla’s appeal was filed on Friday at the US Circuit’s 5th Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
Musk tweeted on May 20, 2018: “Nothing prevents the Tesla team in our factory from voting for the union. It could do that if it wanted to. But why pay union dues and give up stock options in exchange for nothing? Our Safety history is twice as good as when the plant was UAW and everyone already has health care. “