The UAW "Charges" Story Gets Weirder [UPDATED, WITH COMPLAINTS]

A brief update.

On Tuesday, dozens of media organizations reported that the United Auto Workers had filed labor intimidation charges with the National Labor Relations Board against Elon Musk and Donald Trump — after Trump said, in a discussion on the website I still call Twitter, that he thinks striking workers should be fired. I wrote yesterday that the complaints haven’t been listed on the regularly updated NLRB “cases” website, and neither complaint appears there this morning. I’ve hit the “refresh” button roughly one trillion times, so.

But a Reuters “Standards and Ethics” official told me by email yesterday that they have copies of the complaints, though they regard them as unpublished documents and they won’t share them, and both the Associated Press and New York Times report that the NLRB has confirmed receipt of the complaints. (I’ve asked the UAW to email copies of the complaints to me, but they haven’t responded.) So the complaints aren’t fake. They exist, although I can’t find evidence that any news agency has posted them or quoted from them regarding their precise legal claims.

However. The New York Times story says this, and read this sentence carefully: “The N.L.R.B. said it had received unfair labor practice allegations against Mr. Trump’s campaign and Tesla.”

If this is accurate — and we won’t be sure until we see the complaints, or at least see the complaints listed on the NLRB website — then the UAW is claiming that the National Labor Relations Act controls the political speech of candidates for public office. A union has apparently filed labor charges against a presidential campaign over an interview.

The NLRB intake process is uniform and bureaucratic, using standard forms that are filed electronically. See this form: FORM NLRB-501: CHARGE AGAINST EMPLOYER. Did the UAW use a “charge against employer” form to file a complaint against the Trump campaign?

Note also that the president of the UAW has endorsed Kamala Harris, so the union appears to be trying to use government to regulate the political speech of a candidate it opposes.

This is all very strange. To be continued.

UPDATED:

Full complaints here, as PDF files, courtesy of a UAW representative:

Uaw Nlrb Charge Against Trump

137KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Uaw Nlrb Charge Against Musk

136KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Screenshot:

Highly unlikely to be a successful labor complaint, but I give them credit for a successful media campaign. They got the national media to write serious stories about this.