The simple reason: The workers at the Fremont plant didn't have much choice. If they didn't return, a Tesla email informed them, they would go on "unpaid leave" status. And they also, Tesla not so subtly threatened, could find themselves losing their state unemployment benefits.
Musk had, in effect, forced Tesla workers into the same lose-lose bind that faces meatpacking workers in states like Nebraska. Return to work, put your health in jeopardy, and make your rich employers richer or shelter in, keep yourself and your family safe, and go hungry.
Elon Musk, meanwhile, now sees nothing but win-win everywhere he looks. America's billionaires, he has demonstrated, can do whatever they want. They stand above the law. Musk himself is facing no apparent consequences for defying public authorities on the reopening of the Fremont plant. His triumph has been complete.
But why did reopening that plant matter so much to Musk? Why did he feel so compelled to directly challenge civil authority in the middle of a pandemic?
We don't have to guess why. We just need to look at the historic and widely celebrated pay deal that Musk brokered with Tesla a bit over two years ago.
This March 2018 agreement lavishes upon Musk a series of stock option awards that will kick in over a decade-long span if Tesla's "market capitalization" the sum value of the company's shares hits a dozen ambitious predetermined targets. That market cap stood at nearly $59 billion when Musk signed his pay deal. To collect on the deal's total enormous incentive jackpot an estimated $55 billion, Musk would have to grow Tesla's market cap by over 10-fold, to $650 billion.
If Musk pulls that off, one auto industry trade journal noted after the pay deal's unveiling, the options Musk would pocket would likely make him "the richest man in the world by a massive margin."
Other observers scoffed at that possibility. The world's seven largest automakers, they pointed out, together held a combined market value of just $575 billion. Musk's pay deal, critics charged, merely amounted to another of his flashy publicity stunts.
Musk and his fanboys didn't see things that way. True, Tesla had never shown an ability to operate profitably, and, yes, the Tesla market value would have to skyrocket in a relatively short amount of time. But Amazon, Domino's Pizza, and Netflix had all registered leaps as proportionately grand as the Tesla pay deal envisioned. Tesla could make that leap, too.
By the end of 2019, some serious leaping had begun, as Tesla registered its first quarterly profits. Then, three weeks into 2020, Musk reached his pay deal's first incentive threshold when Tesla shares closed at over $569 a share. That price nudged the company's total market value over $100 billion.
But Musk, under his pay deal's terms, didn't just have to hit that $100-billion market-cap target. He had to keep Tesla's average market value above $100 billion over a six-month span. That didn't seem to pose any problem until the coronavirus hit and threatened to shut down Tesla's Fremont plant.
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