The UAW Distraction Operation Was Real
The UAW complaints against Tesla and Trump for President 2024 have been listed on the NLRB website. They really did it, and I got it wrong. The delay in listing the complaints, and the lunacy of the charges, led me to the wrong conclusion. The complaints are real: there are forms with vague and obviously ridiculous complaints on them, and they filed the things.
But they’re still functionally fake, and they’ll die quickly. Anti-Trump organizations have been doing this for years, without success; this is the third complaint filed with the NLRB against Trump campaign organizations.
In the first of those previous cases, the NLRB raised the obvious question about jurisdiction, expressing doubt (“without deciding”) that they can police presidential campaigns using labor law:
The NLRB has previously declined to pursue labor complaints against Trump for President, and the UAW has filed a labor complaint against Trump for President. We can make educated guesses about what happens next. I’ve emailed professors who teach labor law to ask them if the National Labor Relations Act governs the political speech of presidential candidates, but they haven’t responded.
As for the complaint against Tesla, Elon Musk had a livestreamed discussion with Donald Trump in which Trump said that striking workers should be fired; Musk laughed, but didn’t say anything in response. This news report includes audio of that exchange. The complaint alleges that Musk therefore made coercive statements:
He’s charged with coercive chuckling, a legal first.
These charges will die the bureaucratic equivalent of a quick death, which means that they’ll die in a few months. If you read the complaints, which will take several seconds, you’ll see the deep seriousness with which the UAW’s lawyers filled them out:
But the political point of the exercise, the national foregrounding of Trump’s statement about union labor and strikes, has been achieved. The complaints, despite being lazy and silly, have been widely covered by the national news media.
My personal failure here, finding no evidence on the NLRB website and construing absence of evidence as evidence of absence, has forced me to do some self-examination. I start with the assumption that political stories in the mainstream press are horseshit all the way down, and I need to be more careful with that assumption. But when I’m wrong, I’ll tell you that I’m wrong, and I’ll show you the trail of evidence to explain.
2024 is starting to feel like it’s five years long.
If Musk is under suspicion of nefarious chuckling, Kamala's laughter must be a crime fit for the Hague?
Silly unions, this will in no way endear them to anyone.
Maybe they should have stood up for worker's rights to not be fired for refusing an experimental injection instead.
Good on you. Actually, having you correct your mistakes makes me trust you even more. Just like gold is refined by going through the fire, your integrity has been tested and now proven. BTW, You are right to start with the assumption that the news is full of lies.