Tesla’s First Strike and Alex Jones’ Return to X

Published Dec 12, 2023, 9:54 PM

For years, Elon Musk has fended off efforts by the United Auto Workers to unionize his factory in Fremont, California, where Tesla Inc. employs roughly 20,000 workers.

But in recent weeks, Musk has struggled to contend with a seemingly less formidable threat: a tiny contingent of Scandinavian mechanics. This determined group is creating serious problems for the company across northern Europe. Bloomberg News editor Craig Trudell joins us this week to talk about a recent strike by employees at Swedish Tesla service centers, one which has led to work stoppages and blockades in neighboring countries.

The strikes may reflect Musk’s increasingly polarizing personal brand, which took an even more right-wing turn this weekend when he participated in a live call-in show with a well-known far-right conspiracy theorist and an accused human trafficker.

Also: the X holiday gift guide.

Well, Elon Musk gives now the richest person on the planet.

More than half the satellites in space are owned and controlled by one man.

Starting his own artificial intelligence company.

Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.

He says.

He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will be different.

He'll vote Republican.

There is a reason the US government is so reliant on him.

Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.

Anything he does is fascinating the people.

Welcome to Elon Inc. Where we discuss Elon Musk's vast corporate empire, his latest gambits and antics, and how to make sense of it all. I'm your host, David Poppadopolis. Tesla has been hit for the first time in its history with the strike. The company's mechanics in Sweden put down their tools October. Now the action is spread across other Nordic countries, with workers involved in Tesla deliveries in Denmark, Finland and Norway jumping in and supporting their striking Swedish counterparts. The showdown could have serious implications for Musk, especially as the United Auto Workers Union sets its sites on Tesla's factories here in the US. Meanwhile, Musk is focused on bringing Alex Jones back to X. No, that's not a joke. More on that later. But to discuss the strike in Europe, we'll talk to Dana Hall, longtime Tesla reporter. Hello, Dana, good morning. And Craig Trudell, our global auto industry editor in London. Thinking then our regulars Max Chafkin, Sarah Fryer and Dana. We'll talk about the latest happenings on X and they'll also give you a very special gift guide made up entirely of ads found on X. Very important. Okay, so, Craig, we're going to start with you. And in Sweden and now Elon and Tesla don't have a factory there, but tell us exactly who is striking and why.

The union we're talking about here is if mattal So. This is Sweden's industrial workers union, and it's really old. It's been around for one hundred and thirty five years. This is a country that, ironically, you know, it has a lot of consumers that you would think would be quite fond of a brand like Tesla, a lot of sort of eco conscious, you know, sustainability minded consumers, and this is a union that has been around an awfully long time.

It's a consumer base that is indeed, you know, environmentally focused, and it's a wealthy consumer base, right.

Yeah, and I think you know, Dannon will know this well. I mean this, this is a region that has been really important to Tesla's history. You know, Norway is you know, very close by, maybe the first country in the world to go electric in terms of new car sales. Sweden, you know, is a relatively small market in the grand scheme of things, but it is Tesla's fifth biggest market in Europe, and so it is not an insignificant market for them, at least in this region.

It is the first strike ever anywhere in the world against Tesla, but it's not a whole lot of workers, right, We're talking about mechanics at a bunch of shops across the country, is that right.

Yeah, this is really small. We're talking about seven repair shops in the country, roughly one hundred and thirty people. And so when we talk about this being the first ever strike at Tesla, I think it's really a function of that more so than anything, the fact that you have this union that itself is pretty big and has been around a long time, but you know this sort of you know, people involved is quite small. It's also a country with really strong protections for organized labor and for unions, where you know, Tesla can't tell workers, sorry, you can't join a union if you want to work here. That's just the way things work in the country. And I think that's kind of where where you know, we're seeing issues here is you know, the way that Sweden works is just very different from the US, where you know, Musk is used to the UAW sort of striking up an advers adversarial relationship between workers and management. He doesn't want that, but I think he misunderstands really how Sweden works. This is a country that doesn't have a you know, minimum wage. You know, this is something that the government sort of leaves up to management and workers to work out for themselves through the collective bargaining process.

So Dana, let's pause there for a second and flesh that that his thinking out there a little bit more for us.

I mean, Elon is not a union guy, and Tesla has never had a union. And what's interesting is that if you look at the history of the Tesla plant in Fremont, California. It did used to be union when it was owned by New me which was this kind of rare, very unique joint venture between General Motors and Toyota, so back in the eighties and then in the nineties, like knew me was a union plant. Then it went bankrupt, all the workers were let go. It was like this sort of desolate crater of a factory. Tesla bought it in twenty ten, and some of the workers that are there at Tesla came.

From nu Mei.

So there's always been like a very small faction within the plant that worked for you know, there were UAW members who wanted to see the UAW come back, and in twenty eighteen, when Tesla was ramping the Model three, there was a really strong effort to try to unionize that plant that ultimately kind of petered out and went nowhere.

We do know that he has a pretty dim view on unions. It's the libertarian in him. Here's what he had to say about unions a couple of weeks ago with the Deal Book conference in New York.

I disagree with the idea of unions. I think the unions naturally try to create negativity in a company and create a sort of lords and peasants situation. There are many people at Tesla who have gone from working on the line to being in senior management. There is no laws and peasants.

And so when he talks about the things and the reasons he's against unions, I mean one of the things, and I believe that actually comes up in the Deal book interview. He says things like, listen, I've got workers who work for me on the line who have become millionaires just working the line and from their stock options, right, stock options that he says they would never get if they were unionized. Yeah.

No, that's a huge part of Musk's thinking that everyone at Tesla has equity in the company, and that if you're in a union, you pay union dues to this sort of parallel management structure that he thinks is basically corrupt. And you know, to his credit, I mean, you know, he's not exactly wrong on some levels. I mean, the former UAW president did go to federal prison, like for embezzling funds from the membership. The whole thing about millionaires, I mean, there are a lot of early Tesla pa who made a lot of money. If there's like actual millionaires, I have not seen any of them come forward, but they do exist. I mean if you got in at a certain time and and and held on to your options and your RSUs and time to the market, right, I mean, that's definitely true. I mean that's that's and there's lore around that within the plant for sure.

Yeah, and something that he definitely sells and and articulates publicly quite a bit. But let's go back to scan Dainavia Craig tell us what exactly do these striking mechanics want?

So I mentioned before that this is a case of a country where there's no way for TESLA to get in the way of these workers unionizing. This is a matter of what that really means, and collective bargaining is the key here. You want to be able to, you know, come together as a group of workers and hammer out an agreement with your employer as to you know, what sort of working conditions are set, you know, minimum wages, hours that are worked, those sorts of things. I think you know when you talk about repair workers, there of course safety implications there. Working on batteries can be a dangerous thing. When you're working on a car, that maybe has been banged up and has a big hunk of rare earth and volatile materials within batteries, and so, you know, this is a case of workers wanting a collective bargaining agreement and TESLA refusing, and not just lately. This is something that goes back to twenty seventeen. This is something that the union has been pushing for for years at this point, Craig.

At some point recently you said to me this struck you as a little bit of a case of Elon being stubborn in the sense that Elon the disruptor, wants to disrupt everything is against unions. And even though the fact that this is the way it's been in Sweden for many, many years and the vast bulk of workers work, you know, under these kind of agreements, he can't get himself to to accept it. And it almost feels like he's he's creating something of a tempest in a teapot here.

Yeah, because I do think that you know, of course, some people are going to say that well, if you you know, agree to a collective bargaining you know, deal with workers in Sweden, well this this sets a precedent, and you know, sort of slippery slope situation. I don't think that that's what actually is at stake here. When you know, you talk about a collective collective agreement for one hundred and thirty workers, is that really going to make a difference in this really difficult, you know fight that unions in the US and Germany are going to try and wage to organize thousands of workers. I don't think it really makes any any difference.

I just want to ask you this, Craig. This strike is spreading to a certain degree, right, other unions sympathetic to the cause of these mechanics have also started taking part. What does that look like exactly? And what's the impact of that, Craig on Tesla's business.

Yeah, just because of the role that unions play in Sweden, the protections for them and sort of the ability for them to maneuver is really sort of open, and so there's an ability, you know, legally for there to be sympathy actions across unions. So we're talking about an industrial workers union that has taken action against Tesla. But as a result of them taking action and striking Tesla, you've seen this, you know, one after another, other unions within Sweden and in some neighboring countries that have similar systems also you know, sort of taking up the cause. And so you have postal workers in Sweden that won't hand over license plates to Tesla and are sort of holding up the delivery of those, which of course is going to complicate Tesla's effort to get new cars registered. You have dock workers that are refusing to you know, unload Tesla's from ships, and you have you know, Finland and Norway and Denmark, these other unions and neighboring countries that are saying, uh, you know, we're not going to help you, Tesla, and getting around the fact that these dock workers in Sweden are trying to you know, sympathize with you know, their their compatriots in the Industrial Workers Union.

Yeah. I even understand right that the garbage pickup isn't happening because of one of these unions acting in sympathies that things are getting smelly there around these repair shops. Okay, so, Dana, that's the scene in Scandinavia and in Germany. Indeed, as Craig was saying here in the US, Shawn Fame, the leader of the UAW, is now targeting Tessel among other automakers, as the place he wants to unionize workers. Those unionization drives I believe Dana are now underway. What's the status at this early stage.

Yeah, so the I mean, the UAW is trying to organize everywhere, and they've had some announcements recently that they've gotten lots of signatures on union cards at different plants. But I'm going to pound this over and over again, like they are gonna they are gonna focus.

On the South.

They are not going to focus on Freemond.

When you say the South, right, we are not talking about Tesla.

We're talking about like the volksbag plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and other auto plants in the South where the UAW has tried to unionize before and actually had votes before. Like you guys, it just doesn't make sense to like go guns blazing at Tesla where they've never even gotten to a vote. They've got They've laid a lot more groundwork at these other plants, and so I just get frustrated personally when it's like like every I get it, everyone wants a shit.

I'm gonna keep asking this question.

Everyone wants the Shawan Fain, Elon Musk cage man.

But if you are Seawan Fain and you you have the views you do, and Shawn Fain is a new kind of labor leader in this country, and he's not messing around, and he's kind of got it out for the billionaire class. And you look at Elon Musk, the richest person in the world. Is he not a juicy target to go after?

He's totally a juicy target. But if you're if you're a union strategist and you've just won these historic contracts in Detroit and you want to keep the momentum going and grow your membership, then you pick the next easiest target, which is not Tesla. You pick where you're going to win. Like that's just like sort of basic organizing one on one. And I think you've seen from the recent UAW commentary that like they're focused. They're not focusing on Fremont, They're focusing on other plants that are largely in the South.

Yeah, I'm and I'm absolutely with Dana in the sense that the UAW has already sort of made big efforts at other factories, whether Volkswagen or Nissan down down in the South in the US and you know, made it to a vote with those companies. It's it's tried and failed, but at least gotten somewhat close. It hasn't come anywhere close with Tesla, but I do think with Tesla, you know, just on the last earnings call, these guys were talking about even taking you know, stickers off of parts uh and doing that to save you know, literally pennies per vehicle. UH. The the sort of you know emphasis that they're putting on cost cutting as their growth has slowed down dramatically. This absolutely poses a threat for them when they're having to you know, whether they like it or not, you know, pivot to a significant degree from you know, being a growth story to sales are slowing down. So you know, you have this situation of slower growth, falling prices uh, and some cost pressures on the part of this union momentum, whether it's really small cases in Sweden, a more powerful union in Germany, and a UAW that is, you know, for all its weaknesses and long history of issues in the US, is you know, at least at the for the moment looking resurgent in Detroit.

Well, was it Craig terrific to have you on.

Thanks guys like looking forward to listening.

Okay, we're back and joining me and Dana is Max lately Max and Sarah Hello, So Sarah as we talk X and Alex Jones and those things, I want to ask you because I'm going to be honest. Over the weekend, I did my best not to pay that much attention to this just a little bit. So for those like me, what exactly do we need to know about what's transpired in the last forty eight to seventy two hours.

Alex Jones, who owes a lot of money to the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting because he denied that it occurred for many years, is restored to X. And I think what happens occasionally on the platform is Elon Musk will try to prove that he has created the network for free speech. He's done this before. He's outsourced controversial decisions to users via via polls, and that's what he did in this case. So he tweeted out, let's see the will of the people, should Alex Jones come back? Same thing he did for Donald Trump, by the way, and a good portion of people of solid majority said yes, And so Alex Jones was restored. Not only that, Elon Musk did a Spaces which is that live audio with Alex Jones and sort of even gave him more of a platform than just restoring him to X.

Yeah. So, now, Max, I know that you see to a certain degree some sort of tie in between that between this kind of thing and the stuff we were just talking about about unionization efforts at Tesla Factors.

Yeah. I mean, so I listened to this two hours and four and Opaces appearance, and you know it's it's Elon Musk talking to Alex Jones, the famous Sandy Hook denier Harasser of the parents of dead school children and so on. Join by Andrew Tait, who is currently under indictment for human trafficking, is a men's rights activist, and Vek Ramaswami, you know, the third or fourth place Republican presidential candidate, all kind of browing down about the awesomeness of free speech. And when you listen to this, it's just very niche. It's like it's like a thing that you would not care about unless you are deep, deep, deep, deep deep down the right wing rabbit hole. And that I think has worked for Musk, But of course it's polarizing.

When you say it's worked for him, How has it worked for him?

I mean, when you listen to this this appearance, right, it's just constant praise.

It's a bunch of guys talking about how amazing it is. Elon Musk has saved the world.

He's built himself a a like credible media following in the same way that Alex Jones is a credible medio following.

But of course it's also created all of this polarization.

And when you see these you know, union actions going on, you know in Nordic countries, and of course the threat of union actions in the United States, having Elon Musk out there doing hard right signaling is working against him.

Makes it more of a target.

Absolutely, These you know organizing efforts, right are partly about like person to person contact, but they're also partly about political context and cultural context. And he's doing himself no favors, right, He's like, most of these union activists are not going to be big men's rights you know, Alex Jones fanatics to say the least, and we're not even talking about the customers.

Well, well, let me also make just one one quick point about polling, which is that it is not the will of the people. If you run a poll on x it doesn't say super scientific. I don't know if this needs to be said, but in case it does. You know, Elon Musk, he he is the most followed person on the platform. But you know, we've found in reporting supported by a nonprofit digital rights group, Accountable Tech, that with less than one hundred dollars you can buy tens of thousands of votes for a Twitter poll easily.

So wow, well that's tempting.

It was, you know, of course, as it always is with with Musk over a weekend. You know, when that that fan base is maybe online and most people are not. And I think that we just need to be careful about you know, when Musk says I did this because it was the will of the people. I did this because this is what people voted for. You know, these things are not at all democratic.

Right right.

I want to say one other thing, which is that during this space is the k Ramaswami audibly peeded, like as.

A way to make a statement or not just accidental like in the Naked Gun.

Okay, it was just an It was just like the like it was.

The Highlight Now Max, there is some chatter out there in some circles that Apple, like it briefly banned Parlor from the App Store for similarly lax content moderation after the Gen sixth insurrection, that there's cheddar that that that they could perhaps do the same to X now thoughts.

Well, yeah, Musk himself has kind of driven that chatter, right. He earlier talked about the prospect that Apple would you know, would ban him from the App Store. There was this kind of summit between Tim Cook and Musk. I think that's an extremely unrealistic possibility. It definitely serves the interests of the kind of right who like the narrative of prosecution by big tech is really important. But the truth is Alex Jones being on X that he's not. That's not the only platform that has allowed Alex Jones. Right now, you can go to the app store and download Rumble, which is the main platform for you know, Jones and Russell brand. The other thing is when when Apple banned Parlor in twenty twenty one, the context was very different. It was right after January sixth. You had Jones, you know, involved into some extent at least in the you know, attempted insurrection, but that is not what's going on right now. The context is very different, and you know, I don't think Apple is going to take action anytime soon, and really that that conversation is mostly happening kind of in right wing corners media.

You know, none of this seems like a great way to lun back advertisers, you know, with Disney and IBM and NBC among others pulling their ads, you know, which leads us to our final little bonus part of the show, where we use the scrappy gang of smaller advertisers that have remained on X. Using them, We've created a challenge for our vaunted muscologists, using only the ads you see there on the platform. You have to select holiday gifts for the other panelists, and Sarah Fryar, you are up first.

So my top gift, and you know, caveat that. I just remember which ads get served to me the most. And for the last month it has been over and over and over those heart shaped pans that Paris Hill is selling. Now unfortunately she has.

Also I'm sorry they're heart shaped?

What pans for cooking? You know, Paris Hilton, maybe she's a great pancakes.

What do you heart their heart shaped?

Wow? And you can you can hunt? And and what what does one fry or cook anything? Anyway?

Well, you just you just have to to, you know, use the pan and say that's so hot, because it literally is hot.

I get it. Okay, so get it, Matt, Max gets it.

You know, maybe you're not as available through X anymore, but I certainly am aware of them because of X.

Wait, Sarah, you Bury the lead though Paris Hilton is no longer working like she's part of the.

Part of the boycott waiting what what?

What?

What? Wait? So you can't get this on X?

So is it is this violating the rules?

Well you already broke the rude. We were thirty seconds into the gift section. They just show you. But what's the track here? You know you we'll go with this era just because we all like you. Who are you going to give this pan to?

I mean, it was going to be a housewarming gift for Max.

Thank you, very thoughtful.

Next moving it to a new apartment.

Can I have a gift for you, David?

Okay? Max? Hit me with it?

Okay, So I know you're you know you're big horse racing guy, you're into the ponies.

And uh, you know one of my favorite ads.

You know, you see a lot of ads for products that seem of questionable value, a lot of junkie kind of I see it on TV type stuff.

But there are also a lot of T shirts.

And and one of my faves that I've seen advertise on Twitter is a T shirt that says sorry, period can't period. Horses period by period. And I think I think it would look well, I think, really it's a woman's shirt, but it looks to me. Check checking it out, and you know, for thirty seven dollars, it looks like you can get you know, unisex sizes, so I think it's a possibility.

Well, that's very that's very nice of you. I would gladly receive the horses T shirt. That's brilliant, Dana Hall, what do you have for our fellow panelists?

So my algorithm is very strange. I just get a lot of very strange ads. My favorite is this ad for a company called Plushy Dreadfuls and it's like stuffed animals.

That's a favorite of all.

I got one A great cuddle buddy when you're off with the fairies, and it's a it's a it's like a stuffed animal that looks like a like a psychedelic mushroom.

And I don't know.

I mean, this could be a gift for Elon Musk himself and his friends.

It could be this is what you hold while you're on mushrooms, ron Kennedy.

Maybe maybe it's like an emotional support stuffy. It's kind of a disturbing looking stuffed animal that.

Yeah, but we barely scratched the service of the like super questionable advertisements that are like on Twitter, what's wrong.

X?

Well?

My favorite was there was this there's this one that was a drain cleaner filam that I got served many times, and it actually had a community note on it saying that it doesn't actually clean drains. Community notes being the crowdsourced platform fact checker.

Just to give you a sense of how bad it gets.

Four or four Media, which is like a tech website, ran a story yesterday headline Twitter is just running ads for stealing semen now. And you look at that headline and you think that could not be true, That could not reflect an actual.

What you're saying.

It is it is there is a company out there that specializes in non consensual sperm collection kits for artificial insemination.

They are advertising on Twitter.

I looks on X excuse me, and it's something like one hundred and twenty nine dollars for the kit. I tried to keep track of the costs here because I think.

Feel like, no, I see it for a gift guide. You want to know, like how much.

You do want to know? And I will to wrap it up the gifts, the gift section of this of this show. I've got gifts for all of you. I'm a big spender like that because at four ninety nine each, I mean, whatever, easy come, easy, go for Max. I got the fly and I read I'm just reading the ad textually here I'm so I flying ball boomerang with lead lights, fly spinning ball throwaway and it comes back to you. I could just see you and the kids out.

I have actually got it last year.

Okay, So now you got another one coming for Sarah and the January baby you're waiting for. I've got the Getnay's shark socks. Now, Sarah, these socks, I mean, you're in San Francisco, Shark great right, Shark Capital the United States of America, I'm a little shark obsessed myself. There are socks that actually look like the shark is eating the baby's legs. So you know, these are these are pretty good. And then for Dana, I know you don't have a car. I figure at some point you'll get a car. Maybe you're a husband a car.

I do have a car, it's just an old subru.

Okay, maybe you could use it for the superw I'm getting you State Farm auto insurance. There's the thing. They just wore me down. They just kept coming with you, and they kept coming into the ad, you know, with the ad in Spanish, and if there's I am, if nothing, a sucker for auto insurance ads in Spanish.

What I love the most about x ads is that if you you keep deleting them, like I don't like this ad, and then they say, we'll try to make your timeline better, and then the ads just get worse and worse and worse.

But Dana, what's wrong with the gifts I just got you? Guys? I mean these are like the fly you don't like the flying ball boomerang. For Max, it's a great gift. He's actually what he has.

I mean, I should say you know the Cheech and Chong goings we have not talked about, but that they are been. They've been one of the big advertise of the year. But I haven't seen their ads for a while, and I sent a request for comment to Cheach and Chong to ask if they're still advertising. They have not responded to my request for comment.

Okay, well, I'll get back.

When when there's an update. When there's a comment from Cheech or Chong, you will let us know. Okay, enough of the silly holiday year. Let's call it quits. Thanks for listening to Elon Inc. And thanks to our panel Dana, Max and Sarah.

Always a pleasure, great to be here.

Thank you as always.

This episode was produced by Stacey Wong, Naomi Shaven and Rayhan Harmansi are senior editors. The idea for this very show also came from Rayhan Blake Maples handles engineering, and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Grocott. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson, thanks a bunch of BusinessWeek editor Joel Weber. The Elon Aim theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Ubiira. Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcast and our executive producer. I am David Papadopoulos. If you have a minute, rate and review our show, it'll help other listeners find us. See you next week.

In 1 playlist(s)

  1. Elon, Inc.

    95 clip(s)

Elon, Inc.

Elon Musk’s sprawling business empire has granted the billionaire a degree of power and global influ 
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 94 clip(s)