United Auto Workers Zeros In On Tesla

Apparently not everyone’s excited for the launch of the Tesla Model 3. To fill all those preorders quickly, the California automaker has been pushing hard, and it seems some employees don’t like it. The result is they may be getting ready to join up with the United Auto Workers.

Among the accusations that have been reported by Fortune and others is that assembly line workers pull off super long shifts and deal with dangerous conditions. To protect themselves, workers reportedly reached out to the union.

CEO Elon Musk thinks the whole thing stinks. He says the Tesla worker who’s been leading the charge to unionize actually works for United Auto Workers, causing trouble instead of helping the common man.

Tesla definitely isn’t the only automaker to face the threat of work unionization under United Auto Workers. But this is coming at a really bad time for the automaker, because Model 3 production is set to launch in July. The company will need to be firing on all cylinders to meet the production goal of 500,000 vehicles a year by 2018. That’s about five times what the company made in 2016.

Depending on who you ask, this is the little guy telling an out-of-control billionaire who’s boss, or this is another example of how unions screw up businesses. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.