(Reuters) – Tesla (TSLA.O) has told production workers in the United States that they will get a pay hike, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
Many automakers including Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) and Toyota (7203.T) have raised wages for their non-unionized U.S. workers as the United Auto Workers (UAW) union looked to organize them after signing new labor deals with the Detroit Three.
Material handlers, production associates and quality inspectors are getting a “market adjustment pay increase”, the report, which cited a flyer posted on Tesla’s facility in Fremont, California, said, adding the electric automaker did not specify the magnitude of the hike.
The world’s most valuable automaker, whose shares fell about 2% in early trading, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
CEO Elon Musk has been vocal against the concept of unions and critical of Detroit-based UAW.
“I disagree with the idea of unions,” he said in November at the New York Times DealBook Summit. “If Tesla is unionized, it’ll be because we deserve it and we failed in some way.”
Musk previously opposed an effort by the UAW to organize Tesla’s Fremont factory. He posted a tweet in 2018 warning that workers could lose stock options if they joined the union, an action the National Labor Relations Board later ruled illegal.
Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Sriraj Kalluvila
