Rally At Tesla: Jail Musk! Workers Health & Safety First & Lives Over Profit

Jail Musk-Workers Health & Safety First/Lives Over Profit Equal Justice For ALL

On Saturday, May 16, the United Public Workers For Action (UPWA), Workers Solidarity Action Network (WSAN) and others will be having a rally and press conference at the Tesla plant in Fremont, California calling for the arrest and jailing of the owner Elon Musk for violating the law and putting the workers of the plant in danger of their lives.

Although Alameda has a shelter in place order, Musk has said that he is not bound by the law, and has already opened up the plant violating the law. He has also called on the police to arrest him for this flagrant violation of a rule put in place to pro- tect workers and public.

Tesla workers are being coerced to return to work without proper PPE protection. Billionaire Musk has a long history of illegally covering up injuries in the plant and union busting to prevent the workers having a collective voice.

The Governor of California Gavin Newsom apparently is OK with Musk violating the law, and of course, Trump has welcomed Musk’s fascistic actions that he is above the law. If Musk is able to get away with this, other employers will do the same and put their workers and the public in deadly danger.

Governor Gavin Newsom has also destroyed Cal-OSHA which is making no physical inspections to protect California workers. They refuse to step foot on the Tesla plant and apparently the Fremont Police is now deciding whether workers are protected? There are less than 200 OSHA inspectors for California’s 18 million workers and only1 doctor & 1 nurse on the staff in this emergency.

Former Cal/OSHA Medical Director Larry Rose in a statement has said:
Using a local police force to decide whether or not this Musk plant has an adequate health and safety written and implemented program when a local police force has no professional Industrial Hygienists, and no Public Health Medical Officers in their staffing is tantamount to no enforceable oversight at all. There should be legal action charging Musk with criminally breaking the California Labor Laws. This legal demand should be put forth by organized labor in California. This is a full out health and safety assault on all of the 19 million workers in California.
Larry Rose M.D., M.P.H.: former Cal/OSHA Chief of the Medical Unit for 28 years, as a Public Health Medical Officer III.
Larry Rose
This has to stop NOW!

We demand that 1,000 OSHA inspectors be hired and Elon Musk be jailed and charged with harming the workers at the plant and the people of California.

Equal Justice For All / No Slave Labor for Billionaire Musk

Initiated by:
United Public Workers For Action (UPWA.info)
Workers Solidarity Action Network (facebook.com/workerssolidarityactionnetwork) Endorsed by AIW - Essential Workers Unite

Statement of Workers Solidarity Action Network

Life Before Profits-Stop The Murder Of Workers!
No Slave Labor For The Workers Of The US, Mexico & Canada!

In the drive for profits, the US big three Ford, GM and Chrysler with the collusion of the UAW top leadership have said that they are ordering workers
back to the factories on May 18th. The UAW union officials Rory Gamblel and Ray Curry even want the UAW staff tested before they return to work but refuse
to fight for the same guidelines for all UAW auto workers.

Rank and file auto workers at Chrysler and other plants led walk-outs as they saw their plants contaminated and workers were being carried or
walked out of the plants. They were shut down not by the UAW but rank and file action of auto workers.

GM has even retaliated against UAW 167 Bargaining Chairman Travis Watkins in Wyoming, MI. Although the UAW International has a health and safety
department they have not been in the plants educating the members about Covid-19 and fighting for masks and PPE to protect the lives of the workers and their
families.

At the same time OSHA in the United States has been captured by the companies. They refuse to even have physical inspections at hospitals, the meat
packing plants, agricultural farms, transit Agencies and the entire transportation chain to protect frontline workers.

Trump has criminally ordered meat plant workers at Smithfield, Tyson and other plants to go back to work without requiring the companies to
provide full health and safety protection so they will not get further contaminated and sickness.

What’s even more outrageous is the fact that these workers who fear dying if they continue to work at the plants, are being forced to stay because if they don’t , they will be denied unemployment insurance and healthcare benefits. They are being asked to choose between death by covid or death by starvation. These bosses are criminals and they use their hired henchmen, namely the politicians to carry out the dirty work.

This is the same situation at Amazon, Wal-Mart, MTA, CTA and the UPS. Workers in North America are being treated as slaves with no worker or human rights. Chris Smalls was illegally fired because he dared to demand health and safety for workers in the NY Staten Island Amazon warehouse. Marge Harvey, a 33 year IBT worker at UPS in St. Johnsburry, Vermont was also fired for fighting for protection against Covid-19. In Oakland, SEIU 1021 worker nurse Saber Alaoui was fired for putting up on facebook a picture of him using plastic garbage bags because there was no PPE.

The same tactics are being used in Mexico to order workers to go back to work in contaminated factories at GM Silao, Tecate and Montomoros. The U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Christopher Landau, has also called for restarting work there, to coincide with the United States and Canada.
“I am doing everything I can to save the supply chains that were built over the past decades,” he said on Twitter in late April.
“It’s possible and essential to take care of workers’ health without destroying these chains.
The economic integration of North America demands coordination.” This is the direct result of USMCA or NAFTA 2.0 supported by Trump and Obrador.

Mexican parts plant workers who even have less health and safety benefits than US workers are being ordered to go to work or starve. The state governors are supporting these back to work orders and the Obrador government has not demanded that the plants stay closed until they have proper health and safety conditions enforced by his health and safety department. These US and other multi-nationals both are demanding re-opening without protecting their own workers.

This will lead to the expansion of the epidemic and more deaths of workers and their families so the billionaires and bosses can continue to make profits. They see workers as disposable who have no value and thus are not afforded any human rights.

US, Mexican & Canadian workers must unite together to fight for full PPE and health and safety protections. We NEED union worker health and health and safety committees with the power to shutdown jobs. We need to fight the destruction of the post office, all public services and education. No going. back to work unless our jobs are safe!

We demand that these companies provide full pay so they can support our families. These companies have conspired to keep the plants and work locations open knowing that workers were being contaminated and would likely die rather than dispense with their profits, even at the cost of workers’ lives. but their greed was more important than workers’s lives.

Billionaire union buster and international bully Elon Musk who owns Tesla is starting his factory in Fremont violating the stay in shelter rule for industrial plants but California governor Newsom has no problem with this and Trump is congratulating him. He has called California fascist but his actions to cover-up worker injuries and fire union supporters is the action of a union buster and corrupt capitalist yet California governor Gavin Newsom allows him to get away. with these crimes.

The bosses and billionaires’ hypocrisy knows no bounds: it is a criminal decision that will put at risk the two million workers as well as their families in Mexico who work in this productive circuit, They have announced that they will open the plants on May 17.

We need united action of all US, Canadian and Mexican workers to stop the death drive back to the contaminated factories.

We face the same bosses and multi-multi-nationals.

Only internationalism and working class solidarity can really defend our interests and lives. It is clear that the union bureaucrats will not protect us, we need to protect ourselves.

We need to build organizations that we can rely on to fight for our interests. Those organizations will be built by and be run by the workers themselves.

This has been initiated by Worker Solidarity Action Network WSAN

Additional media:
A user’s guide to Tesla’s worker safety problems
https://www.revealnews.org/blog/a-users-guide-to-teslas-worker-safety-problems/
Tesla to continue production at Fremont plant for days after shelter in place rule
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Inside-Tesla-s-Fremont-factory-car-production-15143877.php
Tesla reportedly failed to tell regulators about dozens of factory injuries, then claimed without evidence that regulators praised its record-keeping
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-factory-injuries-incomplete-records-osha-california-2020-3
How Tesla and its doctor made sure injured employees didn’t get workers’ comp,
https://www.revealnews.org/article/how-tesla-and-its-doctor-made-sure-injured-employees-didnt-get-workers-comp/?fbclid=IwAR0oyUjcA5sGI0RfBiD6CYrFjuNdsopW6wE1wblKfSGvP207xooxe7rvWQc
Tesla, Elon Musk found to have engaged in unfair labor practices with rules and tweet
Judge finds that Tesla improperly attempted to hamper union organizing efforts
Musk must read notice to workers in Fremont
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-elon-musk-found-to-have-engaged-in-unfair-labor-practices-with-rules-and-tweet-2019-09-27