Two former Tesla employees claim they were wrongfully fired from the company after they planned to publicly criticize Elon Musk, Bloomberg reports.
The two California employees filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleging that the firings violated federal employee expression protections regarding working conditions.
The employees are said to have participated in the creation of two letters: one asking a Tesla executive to review the “return to the office” policy after COVID (cancel remote work and stay in the office at least 40 hours per week, or be fired), and the other related to a post by Elon Musk, which “violated the company’s anti-harassment policy.” According to Bloomberg, the letters were never sent to the automaker’s management.
The lawsuit nearly duplicates a similar case involving a group of former SpaceX employees. They claimed they were wrongfully fired after writing a letter urging the company to strengthen its zero-tolerance policy.
Zero tolerance is a policy of imposing the maximum possible legal restrictions and sanctions for even minor offenses or offenses in order to eliminate undesirable behavior. The zero-tolerance policy prohibits law enforcement officers from imposing or modifying punishment at their own discretion.” following allegations of sexual harassment against Musk.
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After the letter was released in June 2022, nine employees were eventually fired, eight of whom filed complaints with the NLRB and hired a San Francisco law firm to represent them. Former Tesla employees turned to the same company.
Over the years, Tesla has been the subject of a series of allegations and lawsuits regarding union practices, sexual harassment, and racial and gender discrimination at the company. Hundreds of SpaceX employees also signed a letter condemning Musk’s behavior.
More than 400 SpaceX employees signed an open letter criticizing Elon Musk’s behavior, many refused, fearing layoffs
About 20 Twitter employees were also fired because of Musk’s criticism. Elon has already cut engineer Eric Fonhoefer, who tried to publicly “correct” his CEO at Twitter, and Sashka Solomon, a Twitter software engineer who wrote a series of tweets criticizing Musk, ending her rant with the phrase Kiss my ass, Elon. Many employees are fired even for non-public criticism of the CEO in the company’s private Slack. Twitter, which has lost its communications department after massive downsizing, had no comment. But Musk confirmed these layoffs in his tweet:
“I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt come in handy somewhere else.”
I have to apologize for supplying these geniuses. Their enormous talent will not be greater than everyone else’s.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2022
Source: The Verge
