Over May Day weekend, workers and activists are taking on the epitome of exploitative capitalism: far-right billionaire ‘broligarch’ Elon Musk.
May Day weekend: taking down Musk one Tesla site at a time
On Saturday 3 May, Tesla Takedown UK, anti-Trump organisation Indivisible London, and the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union will bring the fight for workers and against billionaires to nine separate locations across the UK. They plan to take action in Bristol, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester, Nottingham, and Winchester.
Elon Musk has become the world’s richest man due partly to his talent for stock pumping. But largely, his vast fortune comes from squeezing profits out of workers. In short, he has amassed his mega profits through his spectacular disregard for unions, workers’ rights, and workplace safety.
In 2022, one out of every 21 workers at Tesla’s Austin gigafactory was injured badly enough to require reporting to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. And this only got worse in 2023: with one in 13 workers injured on the job there. This April, a California judge found Tesla liable for “serious and wilful misconduct”. This was after a California worker was badly hurt performing a maintenance task colleagues had identified as dangerous.
Billionaire fortunes: built off the backs of workers
It’s Musk’s work at DOGE, the government office named for a meme, that has brought his attitude to workers into the spotlight. During his time heading it, his team – which included literal teenagers – fired public servants at a whim. The Tesla Takedown movement aims to finish Musk as a political force in the US and worldwide. It plans to do so by tanking Tesla’s stock price, the main source of his liquidity.
Tesla Takedown UK organiser Theodora Sutcliffe said:
From union-busting in Sweden to supporting Tommy Robinson and Germany’s AfD, Musk is meddling in politics around the globe.
But Tesla shares are down more than 40% from their December peak, showing that protests work.
This May Day weekend, Tesla Takedown UK, PCS, and Indivisible London want to highlight the fact that billionaires’ wealth doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s built off the backs of workers. From Jeff Bezos sending Katy Perry to space while timing Amazon staff’s toilet breaks, to Mark Zuckerberg building an underground bunker in Hawaii while Facebook content moderators struggle with PTSD, billionaires need to respect their workers.
Indivisible London organiser Alyssa Elliot said:
Musk is an unelected billionaire who has been allowed to completely dismantle government institutions that are vital for workers in the United States and around the globe.
But labour movements have shown over and over again that the people have more than the people in power, and now workers everywhere are uniting against the tech broligarchy.
Featured image via the Canary
