The United Auto Workers announced Tuesday that the union has filed federal labor charges against Donald Trump and X CEO Elon Musk, citing their pubic conversation Monday in which the former president argued that striking employees should be fired.
“They go on strike, I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say,’ That’s OK, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. So, every one of you is gone,’” Trump said to Musk. The conversation was broadcast on X to over a million listeners.
Threatening to fire workers who go on strike is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act, the UAW noted Tuesday. The union has lodged complaints against both men with the National Labor Relations Board.
“Donald Trump will always side against workers standing up for themselves, and he will always side with billionaires like Elon Musk, who is contributing $45 million a month to a Super PAC to get him elected,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement. “Both Trump and Musk want working class people to sit down and shut up, and they laugh about it openly. It’s disgusting, illegal, and totally predictable from these two clowns.”
Trump’s Republican Party has recently tried to rebrand as a “working man’s” party, claiming the GOP is “pro-labor’ and “pro-union.”
“We need a leader who’s not in the pocket of big business but answers to the working man, union and non-union alike,” Trump running mate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, said at the Republican National Convention.
Despite this attempt to rebrand, however, Trump’s record in office is markedly anti-labor. He weakened federal labor regulations, refused to increase the federal minimum wage and appointed members to the NLRB who opposed union organizing drives.