SpaceX is suing to bust up federal union protections
theverge.com
theverge.com
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juridical_person
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 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
[0] https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/20/20-61007-CV0.pd...
[1] https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/sp...
[2] https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/securities-and-e...
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2015/08/02/water-privatiza...
You can’t have it both ways.
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.
...
"on an unrelated topic"
https://www.politico.eu/article/elon-musk-x-pace-x-faces-new...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/former-international-ua...
How does that differ from business owners? Such as private equity?
This is not an appropriate hacker news tone.
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?
Here is their own page on "Jurisdictional Standards"...
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/ju...
Do you have a link to a full copy of the open letter or a screenshot where it called him an asshole?
The version of it here doesn't look like it deserves to be tone-policed in this way: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk...
To cite a small portion of it:
> 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.
Sounds like a strong case. Why should companies be forced to employ people who actively work to harm the reputation of said company?
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.
But however you slice it, is is absolutely one-hundred percent a labor rights issue.
> 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.
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?
An employee has one job: to help their employer make money. That's it.
If they aren't doing their job (by harming the reputation of their employer), then they shouldn't be employed.