NLRB complaint alleges Lucid fired employees for union effort

A federal labor regulator has filed a complaint against electric vehicle maker Lucid, accusing the company of firing two employees who supported a United Auto Workers union organizing effort at the company.

A federal labor regulator has filed a complaint against electric vehicle maker Lucid, accusing the company of firing two employees who supported a United Auto Workers union organizing effort at the company. The complaint was filed Tuesday by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board in Arizona, who investigated the claim about the firings early last year. It was disclosed by the agency late Thursday. Lucid has about 2,000 hourly US workers, according to the United Auto Workers union. It is still a niche automaker with a target of making between 8,000 to 8,500 luxury electric vehicles this year. It also lost $2 billion in the first nine months of last year but is backed with money from and is majority-owned by Saudi Arabia. In a statement Lucid said it respects employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act to choose whether or not to organize. “We are confident that there is no factual basis for the complaint,” it said. The UAW announced an effort to organize 13 nonunion automakers with plants in the United States, including both foreign automakers such as Toyota, Honda and Volkswagen, as well as domestic electric vehicle makers like Tesla, Rivian and Lucid. But the complaints about the firing at Lucid was made back in February of 2023, well before the organizing effort was first publicized by the union in November. That organizing campaign was announced in the wake of its lucrative new contracts with unionized automakers General Motors, Ford and Stellantis that followed a six-week plus strike.