Labor Leaders Fear Elon Musk and DOGE Could Gain Access to Whistleblower Files - Wired

[justaprogressive]

One of the largest federations of unions and several former officials of the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration have raised concerns about the possibility that Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency could potentially gain access to sensitive information shared with OSHA and the Department of Labor by whistleblowers at the centibillionaire’s companies.

While Musk serves as a “special government employee” in the Trump administration, SpaceX, Tesla, and The Boring Company are the subject of more than 50 ongoing workplace health and safety cases opened by OSHA in the past five years, according to a public database maintained by the agency. OSHA sits within the Department of Labor, where DOGE operatives have been working since at least March 18.

In a memo shared exclusively with WIRED, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which is currently suing the Trump administration over DOGE’s access to records at the Department of Labor, says they believe that the news reports and OSHA cases in its memo allegedly illustrate “gross mistreatment and even abuse of workers” at Musk companies in five different states. In the memo, the union federation alleges that as Musk attempts to exert “unilateral control” over the federal government through DOGE, “his record as a boss should be of concern to every worker in America.”

Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, OSHA, and the Department of Labor did not respond to requests for comment.

There’s currently no public evidence to suggest that Musk or DOGE has accessed confidential files at OSHA. But the fact that DOGE has tried to seek access to other potentially sensitive databases at the Department of Labor and a number of other federal agencies worries both the AFL-CIO and former OSHA administrators.

https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-doge-osha-whistleblower-files/

[multigraincracker]

1. Hang the DOGE Bros.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Of course they will. And it likely won't matter what Congress does.

Musk (N-ZA) believes, in a very deep, fundamental, and inalterable way, that he has an inalienable right to access any data he wants, and circumventing the law to do so is little more than an inconvenience, just as Turnip believes he has an inalienable right to acquire and abuse all the power he wants. It is a profound tragedy for our country that deeply immoral, narcissistic sociopaths have risen to power in our richest, radically over-influential companies at the same time that deeply immoral, narcissistic sociopaths have managed to buy and bully their way into the political leadership of this country. The two feed on each other, and push each other to ever more unlawful and utterly unprincipled extremes. This coincidence is not just a coincidence -- it is the outcome of constant, unyielding effort by the wealthy corporocrats to force their belief system into the basic fabric of our major parties, in one case with spectacular success. The result is that our "representative" gov't is infested with agents for the wealthy and their corps, constantly finding or inventing new ways to preserve and strengthen their privileges and to create new ones at every turn. That a Republican House is not resisting the efforts of the White House to claim control of every aspect of gov't should not surprise us -- they share an adherence to an ideology of "might makes right" and would rather work to guarantee that their Party and its Dear Leader remain in power forever than to risk loss of that power, even temporarily, in exchange for greater personal responsibility to their ostensible constituents -- a headache, really, they don't even want, any more than Turnip does. Easier to just salute the Dear Leader and agree with everything he says, knowing that if he can't be defeated, neither can they. After all, their real constituents vote with their checkbooks, not those silly "official" polls, and they're OK with the current trajectory, and, apparently, its final outcome.