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Sources said that HR department representatives told staff in one office they were being let go due to problematic "conduct with peers." When questioned, an ex-

Sources said that HR department representatives told staff in one office they were being let go due to problematic "conduct with peers." When questioned, an ex-employee said, HR declined to specify any details about the alleged poor conduct, which had never been previously discussed. <tin foil hat> Is this pre-empting a union push?

whatok 9y ago
Not clear as to whether those were SolarCity or Tesla (direct) employees.
YurtleTheTurtle 9y ago
No it's preempting going broke. Especially since Elon is one of the combined companies biggest creditors and has his own personal finances deeply entwined with that of the company. (See also Sears / Eddie Lampert)
- lafar6502 9y ago
  Yep they got so much money for nothing and still prefer to rip off their people
jerf 9y ago
"Is this pre-empting a union push?" Honest clarification request: Do you to suggest/worry that they are classifying "agitating for a union" as problematic "conduct with peers"? (If so, I expect we'll hear if that's the case soon, with a chance of hearing that even if it's not the case. That is a storyline the media would be salivating to run.)
- rhizome 9y ago
  Honest clarification request: Do you to suggest/worry that they are classifying "agitating for a union" as problematic "conduct with peers"? That's the way I read it.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Basically yes. Perhaps "problematic conduct with peers" is poor wording or maybe it refers to some harrassment crackdown or maybe it's due to financial problems, really it could be any number of things but because it's Tesla the union connection is what comes to mind. Regardless it's obvious they're firing people for something they don't want to be connected to and using 'performance' as a smoke screen.
- gozur88 9y ago
  That wouldn't make much sense, though. The last thing you'd want to do if you were trying to keep out a union is behave in a way your employees would see as tyrannical.
  - corin_ 9y ago
    Well there's two opposite ways that have historically been tried to avoid unionisation - you can make sure employees are all happy enough not to want it, or make sure they're too scared of losing their jobs should they support it.
MikeTheGreat 9y ago
I remember a while back some .com company laid off a bunch of their employees (more than 40%? 50%?). Firing that many people at once triggered a set of 'lay off' laws, which required certain behavior from the company (such as giving the employees X days notice, etc, etc). This is pure speculation, but I wonder if Telsa is trying to do last-minute layoffs while avoiding whatever 'lay off laws' there are by claiming that each individual is totally being fired for totally legit individual reasons, for sure, yep.
- archildress 9y ago
  The provision you're referring to is called a WARN notice. Employers with 100 or more employees typically are required to give 60 days notice.
- sjg007 9y ago
  The Department of Labor usually investigates these things.
  - brewdad 9y ago
    This is not your father's Department of Labor. I see little chance that any enforcement will happen.
    - turk184 9y ago
      What the hell does that even mean? When my father had trouble with his union doing illegal shit in the 1980s, the Dept. of Labor back then was useless, as was the NLRB, and when the trouble became to violent threats, the FBI was zero help, too! I know you meant that as a veiled criticism of Trump, but here's the reality: The US government under Trump is getting itself turned around after decades of mismanagement. It won't happen overnight, but there are clearly much-needed reforms in progress and a lot of people don't like that. And the rest just take cheap shots because they simply don't know any better.
- gozur88 9y ago
  Companies don't fire for cause very much. It's just asking for a wrongful termination lawsuit.
logfromblammo 9y ago
It certainly is suspicious that people were fired "for performance reasons" when the company is unable or unwilling to provide the performance data that would support that assertion. But, on the other hand, these employees were probably "at will", so the company does not need to give any reason, or even to publicly justify the firings in any way. So it could be that "performance" is the lie that they believe to damage ongoing recruiting efforts the least. Or it could be that they have determined individual performance assessments to be useless in the face of the more objectively measurable department-wide performance numbers. All I know for certain is that I won't be sending them any applications or resumes until they can elucidate their motives behind this. The simplest explanation is that the company isn't making money and investors are getting antsy about bankruptcy.
- YurtleTheTurtle 9y ago
  California is at will but they do have specific laws and procedures for mass firings and layoffs. I think Tesla is trying to skirt these by calling them performance related instead of layoffs. (And to protect their stock price from having to admit they can't afford all their workers.)
- sjg007 9y ago
  The company does have to prove that they didn't fire someone for a restricted reason and basically if there's any hint of that it is viewed poorly by the govt/courts. I imagine a lot of lawyers will gear up here and there will be a lot of eDiscovery.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  You can fire people for any reason, but there are costs involved in laying people off. HR is a cynical business. Requiring stuff like training your outsourced replacement is also a strategy here — the longer you hang on to “undead” employees, the more likelihood they will leave voluntarily.
jmcgough 9y ago
Tesla has been waging an internal war against union formation, so wouldn't surprise me if they were firing people they saw as pushing unionization.
- wbl 9y ago
  That's a surefire way to get hauled up before the NLRB. I'm not surprised companies try it, but they usually get sued for it.
  - twoquestions 9y ago
    NLRB still exists? I honestly thought the new administration got rid of that.
    - gowld 9y ago
      You don't think that would have been announced somewhere in the news, if it had happened?
  - pktgen 9y ago
    The NLRB already filed a complaint against Tesla recently: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/CPT.32-CA-197020-et-al.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/CPT.3....
Bartweiss 9y ago
It doesn't seem impossible on the corporate side, but I'd be surprised if it was true and yet none of the newly-fired employees speaking anonymously to the media raised the point.
dver 9y ago
Your peers were here on weekends and you were not.
- chrisbennet 9y ago
  Your peers drank the coolaid an you did not. “You make the rest of us look bad when you don’t donate your weekend to The Company. Wouldn’t you rather make Our Leader richer instead of being with your family?”
Spooky23 9y ago
For cause terminated employees don’t get unemployment. My guess is that since Musk companies don’t feel constrained by rules, they figure they’ll save money in UI taxes by forcing workers to adjudicate their UI benefits. They get the benefit of cooking their balance sheet as an additional benefit.
- aplusbi 9y ago
  >For cause terminated employees don’t get unemployment. For the most part this isn't true - only intentional misconduct is grounds for not receiving unemployment.

whatok 9y ago

Not clear as to whether those were SolarCity or Tesla (direct) employees.

YurtleTheTurtle 9y ago

No it's preempting going broke. Especially since Elon is one of the combined companies biggest creditors and has his own personal finances deeply entwined with that of the company. (See also Sears / Eddie Lampert)

lafar6502 9y ago
Yep they got so much money for nothing and still prefer to rip off their people

jerf 9y ago

"Is this pre-empting a union push?" Honest clarification request: Do you to suggest/worry that they are classifying "agitating for a union" as problematic "conduct with peers"? (If so, I expect we'll hear if that's the case soon, with a chance of hearing that even if it's not the case. That is a storyline the media would be salivating to run.)

rhizome 9y ago
Honest clarification request: Do you to suggest/worry that they are classifying "agitating for a union" as problematic "conduct with peers"? That's the way I read it.
frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Basically yes. Perhaps "problematic conduct with peers" is poor wording or maybe it refers to some harrassment crackdown or maybe it's due to financial problems, really it could be any number of things but because it's Tesla the union connection is what comes to mind. Regardless it's obvious they're firing people for something they don't want to be connected to and using 'performance' as a smoke screen.
gozur88 9y ago
That wouldn't make much sense, though. The last thing you'd want to do if you were trying to keep out a union is behave in a way your employees would see as tyrannical.
- corin_ 9y ago
  Well there's two opposite ways that have historically been tried to avoid unionisation - you can make sure employees are all happy enough not to want it, or make sure they're too scared of losing their jobs should they support it.

MikeTheGreat 9y ago

I remember a while back some .com company laid off a bunch of their employees (more than 40%? 50%?). Firing that many people at once triggered a set of 'lay off' laws, which required certain behavior from the company (such as giving the employees X days notice, etc, etc). This is pure speculation, but I wonder if Telsa is trying to do last-minute layoffs while avoiding whatever 'lay off laws' there are by claiming that each individual is totally being fired for totally legit individual reasons, for sure, yep.

archildress 9y ago
The provision you're referring to is called a WARN notice. Employers with 100 or more employees typically are required to give 60 days notice.
sjg007 9y ago
The Department of Labor usually investigates these things.
- brewdad 9y ago
  This is not your father's Department of Labor. I see little chance that any enforcement will happen.
  - turk184 9y ago
    What the hell does that even mean? When my father had trouble with his union doing illegal shit in the 1980s, the Dept. of Labor back then was useless, as was the NLRB, and when the trouble became to violent threats, the FBI was zero help, too! I know you meant that as a veiled criticism of Trump, but here's the reality: The US government under Trump is getting itself turned around after decades of mismanagement. It won't happen overnight, but there are clearly much-needed reforms in progress and a lot of people don't like that. And the rest just take cheap shots because they simply don't know any better.
gozur88 9y ago
Companies don't fire for cause very much. It's just asking for a wrongful termination lawsuit.

logfromblammo 9y ago

It certainly is suspicious that people were fired "for performance reasons" when the company is unable or unwilling to provide the performance data that would support that assertion. But, on the other hand, these employees were probably "at will", so the company does not need to give any reason, or even to publicly justify the firings in any way. So it could be that "performance" is the lie that they believe to damage ongoing recruiting efforts the least. Or it could be that they have determined individual performance assessments to be useless in the face of the more objectively measurable department-wide performance numbers. All I know for certain is that I won't be sending them any applications or resumes until they can elucidate their motives behind this. The simplest explanation is that the company isn't making money and investors are getting antsy about bankruptcy.

YurtleTheTurtle 9y ago
California is at will but they do have specific laws and procedures for mass firings and layoffs. I think Tesla is trying to skirt these by calling them performance related instead of layoffs. (And to protect their stock price from having to admit they can't afford all their workers.)
sjg007 9y ago
The company does have to prove that they didn't fire someone for a restricted reason and basically if there's any hint of that it is viewed poorly by the govt/courts. I imagine a lot of lawyers will gear up here and there will be a lot of eDiscovery.
Spooky23 9y ago
You can fire people for any reason, but there are costs involved in laying people off. HR is a cynical business. Requiring stuff like training your outsourced replacement is also a strategy here — the longer you hang on to “undead” employees, the more likelihood they will leave voluntarily.

jmcgough 9y ago

Tesla has been waging an internal war against union formation, so wouldn't surprise me if they were firing people they saw as pushing unionization.

wbl 9y ago
That's a surefire way to get hauled up before the NLRB. I'm not surprised companies try it, but they usually get sued for it.
- twoquestions 9y ago
  NLRB still exists? I honestly thought the new administration got rid of that.
  - gowld 9y ago
    You don't think that would have been announced somewhere in the news, if it had happened?
- pktgen 9y ago
  The NLRB already filed a complaint against Tesla recently: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/CPT.32-CA-197020-et-al.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/CPT.3....

Bartweiss 9y ago

It doesn't seem impossible on the corporate side, but I'd be surprised if it was true and yet none of the newly-fired employees speaking anonymously to the media raised the point.

dver 9y ago

Your peers were here on weekends and you were not.

chrisbennet 9y ago
Your peers drank the coolaid an you did not. “You make the rest of us look bad when you don’t donate your weekend to The Company. Wouldn’t you rather make Our Leader richer instead of being with your family?”

Spooky23 9y ago

For cause terminated employees don’t get unemployment. My guess is that since Musk companies don’t feel constrained by rules, they figure they’ll save money in UI taxes by forcing workers to adjudicate their UI benefits. They get the benefit of cooking their balance sheet as an additional benefit.

aplusbi 9y ago
>For cause terminated employees don’t get unemployment. For the most part this isn't true - only intentional misconduct is grounds for not receiving unemployment.