CWA Statement on Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO

Claude Cummings Jr., president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union, released the following statement in response to Elon Musk’s SpaceX initial public offering (IPO):

Today, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is officially the largest IPO in stock market history. The company’s whopping $1.7 billion valuation is not a reflection of the company’s actual worth but of Elon Musk’s exaggerations about his AI business and corrupt capture of federal subsidies for his satellite broadband subsidiary. As if that weren’t bad enough, Wall Street’s facilitation of Elon Musk’s financial shell game will force this investment through index funds into the retirement and college savings plans of working Americans everywhere, whether they want to invest in SpaceX or not.

Musk’s Starlink, which is a part of SpaceX, successfully lobbied the federal government to redirect funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act’s $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program to subsidize satellite broadband, an inferior technology compared to fiber-to-the-home, which leaves rural communities behind.

CWA represents workers in the telecommunications industry who know what high-quality broadband looks like. This is why CWA filed a letter with the SEC urging the agency to scrutinize whether low Earth orbit satellite companies like Starlink can fulfill their multimillion-dollar promise to truly provide reliable internet service.

Investors should be wary of billionaires and trillionaires eager to steal infrastructure dollars from the American worker. CWA members will not be fooled by the bosses and billionaires who overpromise and underdeliver.

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About CWA: The Communications Workers of America represents working people in telecommunications, customer service, media, airlines, health care, public service and education, manufacturing, tech, and other fields.

cwa-union.org @cwaunion