> It claims the NLRB’s proceedings, which involve a hearing in front of an NLRB administrative law judge (ALJ), violate SpaceX’s “constitutional right to trial by jury.” The company also accuses NLRB of violating the Constitution’s rules on the separation of powers, stating the agency’s structure “is miles away from the traditional understanding” of the concept.
This is the same argument going against the FTC, SEC, and several other regulatory agencies. If you get charged of a crime by a public prosecutor, you get the ability to argue the facts in front of a court of law. If you get charged of a crime by a regulatory agency - you don't even get to argue the facts.
I... might kinda side with SpaceX on this one? I am not trying to die on a corporate rights hill, and not that I think SpaceX is innocent of the charges, but it does seem like they should at least be able to argue the factualness of the crime they are being charged with? This does seem like something that should be done by the justice department.
Still, it's almost surely going to get thrown out. They are trying to turn a NLRB infraction into a Constitutional law case in a hail-Mary attempt that it would get escalated to the Supreme Court.
SpaceX is not a person, so it should not have constitutional protections. When forming a limited liability arrangement like this, you agree that the entity itself is governed by laws and regulations which may not be applicable to an individual. It’s a mistake for us to allow corporations to be treated as constitutionally protected entities.
So it's a bit of a non-sequitur to say they should not have any constitutional protections. So while I agree they should not have the same level of individual rights as people, corporations are already allowed to sign checks and enter contracts own things and be sued.
I'm just saying it makes more sense to me that we keep our constitutional powers separated. If it's a legal case it seems better for the judicial branch to do it.
Corporations pre-date the Constitution, and exist in many countries without a constitution, so they do not exist because of "constitutional protections."
Corporations are legal constructs. They are not entitled to any legal protections beyond what the governing jurisdictions decides as a matter of regular law, and they are certainly not entitled to Constitutional protections of their own. In the U.S., Constitutions derive their rights from their owners, and their rights are derivative of their owners.
As I understand it, SpaceX has the right to appeal the NLRB ruling in front of a real court if the hearing goes against them. So one can argue that they haven't lost the right to a real court. It's vaguely similar to a traffic ticket, which doesn't go through a full court unless appealed.
Given the current make up of the Supreme Court (particularly Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, IIRC), this hail-Mary isn't necessarily that low probability. Several justices don't like administrative courts being the law-maker, judge, jury, executioner, and tax collector.
I think one's attitude toward this case (independent of Musk / SpaceX) comes down to how much you value separation of powers as a check on government vs consolidation of government power as a check on the power of corporations.
Right, but it would take a lot of steps for it to even make it to the Supreme Court in the first case. As it is this has a huge chance of being instantly dismissed.
> consolidation of government power as a check on the power of corporations
This might be a good way of putting it. But I personally grew up in an ex-soviet country so my experience is that I am way more afraid of governments than corporations. If you think greedy corporations are bad - you should see what an unchecked "government of the people" can do to their own citizens' water supply.
We rarely see unchecked corporations. Even "checked" corporations do some fairly heinous things.
I would say both unchecked corporations and governments are so far into "bad" territory it doesn't matter how bad, both must be prevented from happening.
> Right, but it would take a lot of steps for it to even make it to the Supreme Court in the first case. As it is this has a huge chance of being instantly dismissed.
This is in the 5th Circuit. The 5th Circuit has already ruled that ALJs (administrative law judges) are unconstitutional, [0] a precedent which SpaceX is directly citing in this case–14 times. [1] Indeed, this is basically just copy-pasting the holdings from that judgement against the SEC, and applying them to the NLRB. The only way the NLRB wins given that precedent, is to convince the court that there is some constitutionally significant difference between the SEC's ALJs and its own–and even if the District Court judge were convinced of that, I doubt the 5th Circuit (the most conservative of the federal Courts of Appeal, and with a reputation of being unfriendly to the NLRB) would agree. So no way does this have a "huge chance of being instantly dismissed".
However, that 5th circuit ruling is currently being appealed at SCOTUS (SEC v Jaresky). [2] It was argued in late November, so we should have a ruling by late June / early July, possibly even earlier. If SCOTUS upholds the 5th Circuit's ruling, SpaceX very likely wins. If SCOTUS overturns the 5th Circuit's ruling, SpaceX very likely loses. Both sides will readily agree to drag this out until they get that ruling.
SpaceX's lawyers aren't really doing anything legally original here, just setting themselves up to potentially benefit from an upcoming SCOTUS ruling, if it happens to go their way. This case is unlikely to ever make it to that level, because that level will have already decided it one way or the other.
This is somewhat misleading journalism, trying to make it sound like SpaceX is launching an novel attack on the NLRB, as opposed to just piggy-backing themselves on somebody else's attack on the entire ALJ system.
So you’re in favor of the government being able to kill a company? For instance 3Ms PFAS debacle has resulted in enough death and sickness that any person would face life in prison or death depending on where the trial took place. If we’re giving corporations constitutional protections, we should also give them the punishment we’d give an individual for their actions.
> So you’re in favor of the government being able to kill a company?
Courts regularly order companies to be dissolved all of the time.
But I think you are jumping to conclusions and trying to imply that I am saying something I am not. I just think legal cases should be executed by our judicial system.
Feels like it's really just an attempt to drag out the proceedings further so that any labor law dispute turns into 8 years worth of trials and appeals and is ineffective at remedying problems
Meanwhile, Musk is getting shellacked by Nordic Europe due to his tome-deaf and, frankly, incompetent attempts to bust the strongest and most successful trade unions in the world...
I wouldn't say shellacked, only a few dozen mechanics out of the 130 or so are striking, while the article implies all Tesla workers are striking. So few are striking that the union refuses to reveal the number, and recently expelled members for not striking.
Tesla has found workarounds to most of the sympathy strikes and sold even more cars in Sweden in Nov to Dec 2023 compared to 2022. Not sure how that's incompetent.
And yes, attacking trade unions in nations whose very foundation was built upon trade unions is something only an incompetent businessperson would do. Almost as incompetent as obliterating one of the most established brands in history and replacing it with an x.
It fits the strategy of Republicans to undermine democratic power to regulate business.
One prong of that strategy is to undermine administrative law courts, courts that operate in the executive branch rather than in the judicial branch. Their function is to efficiently and fairly adjudicate, including providing due process, decisions that are within the executive branch's purview (permitted by the Constitution, legislated by Congress, and approved by a President). One way to think of the courts is that the Executive already has this power; the make it's admistration more fair by using a judicial process.
At least some, but possibly all administrative law courts allow appeal to the judicial branch (i.e., federal courts, article III of the Constitution).
Without administrative law courts, it's hard to imagine how to govern fairly or effectively. Either the executive branch can't carry out its duties, or I guess (not being an expert) they carry them out more arbitrarily, without due process, which permits more politicization and corruption - both outcomes are actually sought to at least some people in the conservative movement, to radically reduce the power of government and/or to empower the President.
I very much doubt there is capacity in the judiciary to take on the very many decisions in administrative law.
It's not actually clear that Musk was involved in this at all.
By all accounts, he has not really been present at the day-to-day operations of SpaceX in years. And the open letter was targeting the executive team, not Musk.
While we don't know if Musk was involved in this legal approach, it absolutely reeks of Musk. What corporation, other than an Elon corporation, would make a labor rights case about the constitutionality of a century-old labor rights department?
“Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks,” the employees wrote. The letter, which welcomed other employees’ signatures, called for SpaceX to distance itself from Musk’s controversial online comments.
The United Auto Workers union just a month ago won a 33% raise for GM workers and a 30% raise for Ford workers.
Unifor just won a 25% raise for Stellantis workers 2 months ago.
Just 2 months ago the Writers Union just won raises to compensation, health benefits, pensions, and protections against AI.
Just a few weeks ago SAG-AFTRA reached a tentative deal to secure compensation increases, benefits, improvements to royalties & residuals, and protections against AI.
So literally in the last 3 months we've seen unions win major compensation improvements for nearly 2 million workers.
Yes, however you're not thinking of the bigger picture here. How are the executives and the shareholders supposed to afford their next superyacht if they're forced to pay their underlings more!?!
Nope, it's the early 21st century, and inequality in this country is higher than it's been since the Gilded Age. Not exactly a comparison we should want to be making. And the trajectory is still moving primarily in the wrong direction.
The wealthy nations with the lowest levels of inequality also have the strongest trade unions. If it is not working in the US, we need better unions, not fewer.
If you want to change someone's mind about unions then one-off links to court cases is not going to work. You'll need to really target the idea of unions themselves instead of finding bad PR. For example, I could go find PR of "corporation bad" but it would not turn someone into a communist.
I'll happily get rid of unions once we also get rid of corporations ruled by wannabe-dictators. Until then, unions are a necessary counterbalancing force to keep executive behavior in check.
Exactly. And, just like governments, they themselves need checks and balances more than anything. However groups of people organizing for collective power is difficult to argue with, imo.
Sounds like those Walmart propaganda training videos got to you. I suggest doing your research on what unions are doing in the 21st century to protect employees.
Come on. Don't fall for American brainwashing. Some unions abuse their power. But most don't.
But there aren't any unions here anyway - this is a federal agency that facilitates unions.
Frankly this case seems pretty silly on all sides. Some employees sent an open letter to everyone in SpaceX... what did they expect to happen? I think SpaceX was fully within its rights to fire them, and I also support unions.
But also SpaceX's legal argument here is kind of insane. It's predicated on their assertion that the president would definitely have intervened in this dispute if he could have! The law says he can't and that's apparently unconstitutional. Maybe so but it'll probably get dismissed as irrelevant because how are they going to show that the president would have intervened?
It's not clear to me why the open letter authors are protected under the NRLB at all. They seemed to be criticizing the boss, which is not illegal, but not really a labor action either?
There was a list of demands of the executives. But yeah, there was no call for a labor action. If anything, they were demanding the company take more drastic steps to start removing employees for bad behavior.
> SpaceX’s current systems and culture do not live up to its stated values, as many employees continue to experience unequal enforcement of our oft-repeated “No Asshole” and “Zero Tolerance” policies. This must change. As a starting point, we are putting forth the following categories of action items, the specifics of which we would like to discuss in person with the executive team within a month:
Since they apparently had a "no asshole" policy it would seem that if anything, calling your boss an asshole is officially endorsed.
Not deserving to be fired is not the same as being federally protected from being fired. NRLB says that being fired for what they did is illegal, and that's hard for me to square with how I understand labor law.
Preventing employer retaliation for discussing the conditions of employment are a pretty significant part of the protections around unions. An open letter discussing the conduct of the CEO falls under discussion of the conditions of employment.
There are limits to what companies can do to try and prevent unions from forming. SpaceX is claiming that those restrictions and the way in which they're enforced by the NLRB are unconstitutional. Seems pretty fair to characterize that as something which would bust up some federal union protections.
You're right about the outcome SpaceX is seeking. But the critical thing you're missing is the argument they are making against NLRB. The legal arguments aren't really about the specific facts of the case but, rather, about constitutional issues that go to the heart of how NLRB adjudicates labor disputes. From the article:
> It claims the NLRB’s proceedings, which involve a hearing in front of an NLRB administrative law judge (ALJ), violate SpaceX’s “constitutional right to trial by jury.” The company also accuses NLRB of violating the Constitution’s rules on the separation of powers, stating the agency’s structure “is miles away from the traditional understanding” of the concept.
> Why should companies be forced to employ people who actively work to harm the reputation of said company?
The irony being that the content of the letter is in regards to Elon Musk's work to actively harm the reputation of said company. By this token, why should employees be forced to work under petulant, capricious, myopic executives who undermine the efforts of the people with boots on the ground who do all the actual work?
This is the same argument going against the FTC, SEC, and several other regulatory agencies. If you get charged of a crime by a public prosecutor, you get the ability to argue the facts in front of a court of law. If you get charged of a crime by a regulatory agency - you don't even get to argue the facts.
I... might kinda side with SpaceX on this one? I am not trying to die on a corporate rights hill, and not that I think SpaceX is innocent of the charges, but it does seem like they should at least be able to argue the factualness of the crime they are being charged with? This does seem like something that should be done by the justice department.
Still, it's almost surely going to get thrown out. They are trying to turn a NLRB infraction into a Constitutional law case in a hail-Mary attempt that it would get escalated to the Supreme Court.