Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, waves as he arrives at a discussion at the Satellite 2020 Conference in Washington, DC, on Monday, March 9, 2020.
Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The National Council for Labor Relations decided that Tesla violated labor laws when he fired a union activist and when CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter in 2018: “Nothing prevents the Tesla team at our auto plant from voting for the union. It could do that if it wanted to. But why pay union dues and give up stock options for nothing?”
Among other things, the federal agency instructed Tesla to ask Musk to remove his offensive tweet and to offer a job back to the dismissed employee, Richard Ortiz. Tesla is also expected to compensate Ortiz for the loss of earnings, benefits and adverse tax consequences that resulted from his dismissal.
The employee was part of an organizational campaign, “Fair Future at Tesla”. At the time of the campaign, Tesla said its business should remain without unions. But Musk’s public comments on his Twitter account, where he has tens of millions of followers, were seen as threatening. Tesla considers Elon Musk’s tweets to be an official communication from the company, as disclosed in its financial reports.
News of the decision was previously released by Bloomberg and confirmed by United Auto Workers, which opened the lawsuit. The UAW said it was preparing a statement and Tesla was not immediately available for comment.
Thursday’s decision was in line with a September 2019 decision by an administrative law judge who had reviewed the complaint earlier. Tesla even called for full board.
Read the full NLRB decision and order here.
This story is developing – please check back for updates.
CNBC’s Michael Wayland contributed to this report.