But Tesla could outright refuse under any circumstances to give stock options to unionized employees, no?

That's their prerogative.

Also FWIW Musk clarified that he was talking about the fact that no UAW employees have stock options at any other company.

> But Tesla could outright refuse under any circumstances to give stock options to unionized employees, no?

Not sure what the laws are. There might be laws saying that you can't discriminate against people in unions, so in order not to hand stock options to unionized employees, they might have to withhold stock options from all employees?

(No clue, just speculating.)

> But Tesla could outright refuse under any circumstances to give stock options to unionized employees, no?

I mean yes. And then a union could strike. At which point elon would have a decision to make: is proving a dumb point worth his business?

> Also FWIW Musk clarified

Presumably on lawyers advice.

> no UAW employees have stock options at any other company.

But that,as others have explained, isn't relevant. Nothing stops the Tesla union from maintaining those perks, and options aren't valuable at most auto companies anyway, so aiming for different perks is superior.

Maybe he has no plans to offer stock because such incentives don't really work when your labor supply is captured by a monopoly.

Is the implication here stock options are only offered to labor when its in a weak bargaining position because otherwise they could be demanding something more valuable?

Stock options are offered to people who are ready, willing and able to work harder or smarter in response to potential ownership. These are INDIVIDUAL contributions.

When a direct relationship exists between the parties, this is a possibility. When there is a third party dictating what happens, this is much less realistic.

Tesla is a publicly traded company. It's relatively easy to put a market value on their stock options.

> [...] because otherwise they could be demanding something more valuable?

Like twice as many stock options? I'm a bit confused. Stock options are fungible. You can make granting of stock options worth arbitrary many dollars, by eg increasing the volume or lowering the strike price etc.

Why wouldn’t stock options “work” when labor is unionized?

Just a guess but union contracts typically fix compensation for a given role and seniority. So every role would get the same number of options. Not having control over how many options are granted (linking to performance) may mean the company doesn’t have much incentive to grant them to union members.