Grimes said she tried to encourage union vote at Tesla

Grimes is dating Tesla CEO Elon
Musk.
Charles
Sykes/AP

• The Canadian musician Grimes,
  who is dating Tesla CEO
  Elon
  Musk, tried to encourage a union vote among Tesla
  employees, she said on Tuesday in a since-deleted
  tweet.
• A February 2017 Medium post
  from a Tesla
  employee describing challenging work conditions at the Fremont,
  California, plant where Tesla makes its cars led
  to a unionization effort from some employees at the
  factory.
• Tesla employees have alleged that the company has
  disturbed their efforts to organize a union.
• In May, Musk said Tesla employees hadn’t unionized
  because
  “they just don’t want to.” 

The Canadian musician Grimes, who is dating Tesla CEO Elon Musk,
tried to encourage a union vote among Tesla employees, she said
on Tuesday in a since-deleted tweet.

“literally tried to instigate union vote so y’all wud lay
off but UAW can’t get enough signatures cuz they abandoned
fremont plant in the last crash. bc of this tesla doin third
party polling to make sure employees r in a good space since
majority don’t want union,
” she
said.

The tweet is visible in an
archived version of her Twitter account.

Tesla declined to comment on the matter. Representatives
for Grimes did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.

A February 2017 Medium post
from a Tesla employee describing challenging work conditions at
the Fremont, California, plant where Tesla makes its
cars led
to a unionization effort from some employees at the
factory. In October, the United Auto Workers (UAW) filed
a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board claiming
Tesla fired employees who had attempted to
unionize. 
Tesla denied the UAW’s
accusations.

A Tesla employee said at a National Labor Relations Board
hearing in June that he was asked by a supervisor and security
guards to
leave a Tesla factory while distributing pro-union
literature.

In May, Musk said Tesla employees hadn’t unionized because

“they just don’t want to.” 
Grimes later
said Musk had never stopped Tesla employees from organizing a
union and said she had
investigated the matter “heavily” and visited the company’s
factories.

Grimes
later deleted this tweet.

Wayback
Machine

In April, the Center for Investigative
Reporting published
an investigative report saying Tesla
had misreported
workplace injuries and failed to take some
safety measures at the Fremont factory. The report said Tesla
failed to report injuries employees incurred while at work or
mislabeled them, avoided some safety markings for aesthetic
reasons, and insufficiently trained some employees for dangerous
work.

Tesla denied
the allegations in the report, calling it “a completely false
picture of Tesla and what it is actually like to work here” and
“an ideologically motivated attack by an extremist organization
working directly with union supporters to create a calculated
disinformation campaign against Tesla.”

Two days after the article was published, California’s Division
of Occupational Safety and Health
confirmed it
was investigating workplace conditions for
Tesla employees. The agency currently has
three open investigations into the company.

If you’ve worked for Tesla and have a story to share, you can
contact this reporter at
mmatousek@businessinsider.com.