This week's Donald Trump interview with Elon Musk on X is getting pushback from auto workers.
The United Auto Workers union filed unfair labor practice charges after the two talked about firing striking workers during their Monday conversation.
"You're the greatest cutter, they go on strike and you say, 'That's OK. You're all gone," Trump said about Elon.
UAW filed separate charges against Trump and Musk with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that the men interfered with workers who may want to join a union. In a statement, the UAW wrote, "Under federal law, workers cannot be fired for going on strike, and threatening to do so is illegal."
The NLRB is looking into the charges. The AP reported that a senior advisor from the Trump campaign called the allegations "frivolous" and a "shameless political stunt."
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For many politicians courting the labor vote, getting on the wrong side of unions doesn't help their cause.
"Workers are seeing the extent to which unions that are willing to fight for them can be a positive force in their lives," said Hayley Brown, research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
The U.S. Department of Labor says about 14.4 million Americans are in unions. That's about 10% of the workforce.
That's about the same rate as the year before, but it's down considerably from 1983, when about one in five workers were in unions.
Unions have regained some high-profile ground recently.
"Then these victories that happened, the strike and organizing victories, really inspired but also the anger that built up over the years of the concessions during the recession, the risk that workers took during COVID, it's just an enormous amount of anger, and particularly among young people who feel like they don't have a future," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of Labor Education Research at Cornell's ILR School.
Support for unions is relatively high. The latest Gallup polling shows about 67% of those surveyed approve of unions. Three in four sided with the UAW in their latest negotiation, when they signed agreements with automakers that raised pay by 33%.
Bronfenbrenner says strikes and labor movements are contagious.
"Workers are seeing the extent to which unions that are willing to fight for them can be a positive force in their lives, and that having agency in your workplace is really important as a quality of life thing and also as an economic thing," she said.
More recent unions wins include a new contract for 28,000 flight attendants with American Airlines and a new contract for California Disneyland Resort workers that includes the biggest wage increase ever after a historic strike.
In Massachusetts, Uber and Lyft drivers could win union representation if a ballot measure is approved by voters in November.
There have also been some losses. Workers at two Alabama Mercedes factories rejected joining the UAW.
But that came after Volkswagen workers in Tennessee joined — which was a key win in the South.
"That's sort of new territory for them," Brown said. "But we've also seen it with them getting these major contract wins. And when workers see unions having those types of successes, it makes them sort of think about how that might benefit them in their workplaces as well."
Amid the wins and losses, the political power of unions is being recognized by both Republicans and Democrats.
In a first for the GOP, a Teamsters president, Sean O'Brien, was invited to speak at the Republican National Convention.
The AFL-CIO, representing 60 unions and 12.5 million workers, has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.
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