Employees from Tesla, Rivian, Lucid and seven other automakers recently met with the United Auto Workers (UAW) about how to organize unions at their respective factories.
UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada confirmed with the Detroit News that more than 60 employees gathered for a meeting late last month in Birmingham, Alabama.
According to a recording of a post-meeting roundtable obtained by the publication, workers from Tesla, Rivian, Honda, Volkswagen, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Rivian, Lucid Motors, and others were in attendance.
The workers represented factories in nine different states across the country.
“They decided this is a moment right now in the country for them, too, as non-union workers, for them to be able to form their unions and make sure that there’s a sectoral standard in the industry. They’ve all come together to say ‘we’re going to do this together,” Estrada said.
Currently Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis are the only North American automakers with unionized workforces.
The meeting comes just a few months after Tesla CEO Elon Musk invited the UAW to hold a vote at their Fremont factory on whether to organize a union for its workers.
In a series of tweets in reply to President Joe Biden praising Ford and General Motors for creating 15,000 combined jobs to build EVs in the country, Musk said he would “do nothing” to stop a vote from happening.
Musk also pointed out the Tesla has created over 50,000 jobs and invested more than Ford and GM combined to build EVs in the US.
The Tesla CEO however has previously been found guilty of sabotaging union efforts in California back in 2018. Additional, the National Labor Relations Board ordered Musk to delete tweets earlier this year that constituted threats to unionizing workers. Tesla is currently appealing the order from the board.
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Source: Detroit News
