The National Labor Relations Board has appointed Tesla Inc. on Thursday ordered to reinstate an employee who fired it in 2017, saying Chief Executive Elon Musk should remove a three-year-old tweet urging unionization.
The NLRB in Washington, DC, agreed to a 2019 ruling from an NLRB judge in California who found that the electric car manufacturer had violated labor laws pertaining to union efforts at its Fremont, California plant.
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must offer to reinstate Richard Ortiz in his former job as a production worker within 14 days and to return his salary and benefits. The company must also compensate him for any resulting tax consequences, the ruling said.
Tesla said in the documents that Ortiz was fired for lying during an investigation into a Facebook post about union activity at the company.
Margo Feinberg, a lawyer at Schwartz, Steinsapir, Dohrmann & Sommers who was held by the United Auto Workers on Ortiz’s behalf, told MarketWatch Thursday that, as far as she knows, Ortiz wanted to return to work at Tesla.
The decision in the Tesla case, first reported by Bloomberg News, comes after the Protect the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, or HR 482, was passed by the House earlier this month. The legislation – which would provide workers with new protections when they attempt to form unions and punish companies that violate workers’ rights – is expected to be passed by the Senate.
See: The PRO Act, referred to as the ‘most important multi-generation labor law’, passes House
“If this were OSHA, there would be fines,” said Feinberg. “The NLRB’s statement is not enough, but it is an important message.”
“Ultimately, we need reform,” she added, saying that in a case like this the PRO law would provide for interim relief and compensation.
The UAW echoed that sentiment.
“While celebrating justice in today’s ruling, it nonetheless highlights the substantial flaws in US labor law,” UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada said in a statement. “Here’s a company that has clearly broken the law and yet it takes three years for these workers to achieve some justice.”
As for Musk’s tweet that must be removed, NLRB found it threatening. In 2018, as the UAW continued to try to organize Tesla employees, the Tesla CEO tweeted, “Nothing stops the Tesla team at our auto plant from voting union. Tmrw can do that if they wanted. But why pay union fees and give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2x better than when the factory was UAW and everyone is already getting health care. “
Tesla should also remove a warning from the file of another employee who was punished when he contacted Ortiz about union activity, the NLRB said in its ruling on Thursday. The company was also ordered to repeal rules prohibiting employees from distributing union-related literature during non-working hours and wearing union badges, and threatening, disciplining, or terminating an employee for union activity. In addition, Tesla must post a notice in its factory that it was found to have violated labor laws.
The company must also strip language from a nondisclosure agreement and ask employees to sign that they cannot speak to the media, because employment law “protects employees when they talk to the media about working conditions, labor disputes or other terms of employment.”
The company, which has reportedly disbanded its PR team, has not returned a request for comment.