A day ahead of Tesla's quarterly earnings report, a coalition of unions and corporate watchdogs wants investors to focus their attention on matters of governance.
On Tuesday, a group that includes the American Federation of Teachers and Public Citizen launched a website for Take Back Tesla, a campaign urging shareholders to vote against a new pay package for CEO Elon Musk that would net him nearly $1 trillion worth of stock and expand his control over the company.
Tesla's board floated the pay proposal in September, saying the largest ever CEO pay plan was appropriate and necessary to lock Musk in for a decade. The plan is up for a shareholder vote at the company's annual meeting next month.
On the Take Back Tesla website, the group calls the outsized package "outrageous," in part because Musk's "political activities have damaged Tesla's brand and distracted him from leadership at Tesla." The site says the plan doesn't require Musk to focus more on the automaker than his political interests or other business endeavors.
The site also encourages the general population to petition state treasurers and other financial officers, who oversee funds on behalf of workers and retirees, to reject the plan. The coalition plans to share materials online that teach investors how to vote their shares or influence fund managers who vote on their behalf.
"Public pension funds are significant shareholders in Tesla, and the asset managers who invest those funds have even larger holdings," the site says. "That's our money and we should tell the people who invest it for us that we want them to vote to hold Musk and Tesla Board members accountable."
Additional groups in the coalition include Americans for Financial Reform, the Communication Workers of America, corporate watchdog group Ekō, People's Action and Stop the Money Pipeline.
Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Top proxy firms ISS and Glass Lewis have recommended against authorizing the $1 trillion pay plan, which was disclosed amid a tense battle over Musk's previous 2018 pay package, which amounted to about $56 billion in stock when it vested.
Following those firms' suggestions, Tesla wrote in a post that, "ISS and Glass Lewis have recommended against Tesla's proposals time and time again since the 2018 CEO Performance Award was introduced." The company added that shareholders who sold would "have missed out on our market capitalization soaring by 20x from March 2018 to August 2025."