How must/can those rights be paid for?

So, I wish I had something more substantive, but that's kinda hard to do in this format. My experience in the workforce has been that the impact of someone taking leave is greatly exaggerated. Busybodies, workaholics, and managers act like it's the end of the world, yet somehow the sun rises the next day, and everything is fine.

Usually, a few people are minorly inconvenienced, but overall everything is perfectly fine. Meanwhile, the benefit to the individual is enormous. Arguably, it can actually improve productivity; people are more rested and mentally healthy. Either way, it's pretty clear to me that we can afford to give people more leeway.

There are jobs that make this more difficult, especially ones that aren't 9-5 desk gigs: Doctors, critical engineers/trades (needed to be on call for emergencies), even service jobs can be more challenging to schedule. I still think it's worth the effort to try to protect people's personal life; both from a cost/benefit perspective and an ethical one. Elon likes to talk about changing the world, but I don't think it's for the better if people have to work in hostile environments, can't raise their children, travel the world, or pursue their hobbies.

I think he's referring to union dues. One of the jobs of a union is to advocate for their workers. But that requires paying somebody to do it, preferably without having them on the corporate payroll (and thus subject to management's orders).