A Tesla employee organizing a union was asked
by a supervisor and company security guards to leave the factory after handing
out pro-union flyers, the worker said at a National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) hearing on Monday over whether Tesla had violated federal safeguards for
employee activity.
The NLRB
general counsel brought the case before a board administrative law judge after
receiving complaints from three Tesla workers and the United Automobile,
Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW).
If Tesla
loses, the company could be required to notify its employees that it was found
to be committing unfair labor practices, a victory for union organizers.
The case
comes as Tesla has struggled to ramp up production of the Model 3, a sedan
intended for volume production that is key to the company achieving long-term
profitability.
Edris
Rodriguez Ritchie, an attorney for the NLRB, said Tesla asked workers to sign
confidentiality agreements that were "overly broad" in preventing
them from publicly discussing their working conditions.
Tesla has
denied the allegations and described them as an effort to make Chief Executive
Elon Musk look bad.
Michael
Sanchez, who has worked at Tesla since 2012 and is currently on medical leave,
said he was asked to leave by security guards and a supervisor while handing
out leaflets to colleagues outside a Tesla facility in February 2017.
"What
we see is a very heavy-handed, anti-union campaign that's affected all levels
of workers' everyday lives," said Margo Feinberg, attorney with Schwartz,
Steinsapir, Dohrmann & Sommers in her opening remarks for the UAW, which
supports the NLRB counsel in the case.
Speaking on
behalf of Tesla, Mark Ross of Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP
listed about two dozen other allegations against the company that were found to
be without merit and dismissed.
"The fact
of the matter is that Tesla is a company that values its employees," Ross
said in his opening remarks.
In a series
of tweets in May, Musk said he had not done anything to prevent unionizing
efforts by workers. "Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from
voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted," Musk tweeted on May 20.
Hearings for
the case are scheduled to continue through Thursday and resume in late
September. Judge Amita Tracy is expected to deliver her judgment sometime after
that.
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