Tesla is held up by many as the poster child for environmentally motoring – but is the company actually evil?
Perhaps not ‘evil, but at least bad for democracy, because that’s the charge levelled at it by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). It recently released a report that accused some of the world’s biggest companies, including Amazon, ExxonMobil and Meta (parent company of Facebook) of undermining democracy.
According to the ITUC report Tesla has “aggressively violated” the right to organise, refused to engage in collective bargaining and provoked strike action through its behaviour. The organisation claims Tesla is hostile towards unions and allows for unsafe work practices, claiming that Tesla factories have reported safety violations up to 10 times greater than other car makers.
The ITUC took aim at Tesla chief, Elon Musk, accusing the world’s richest man of being openly opposed to trade unions, not only at Tesla but across his other business, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter).
Musk’s political affiliations were also questioned by the report, with Musk publicly committing to support US presidential candidate Donald Trump to the tune of US$45 million per month until the November election.
However, none of this appears to have dented Tesla’s image with customers, with the American brand releasing its latest production and deliveries data, which shows a slight uptick in both categories after six months of decline. The company reportedly built 469,796 new vehicles in the third quarter and delivered 462,890.
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