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Tesla gave workers permission to stay home, then sent termination notices
- falcolas 6y agoCharitably, this is a mistake in communication. Tesla should fix this immediately though, because it doubles down on the poor impressions formed by breaking county (IIRC) law when restarting their factories.
- coliveira 6y agoIt is very hard to believe that such a decision would be made as a simple communication mistake. It just shows the lack of values from the people running this organization.
- sjwright 6y agoIn a company of ten thousand employees, I have no problem giving benefit of the doubt that two instances of wrongful termination could be done by mistake. It's not unreasonable to imagine that an HR department might screw up at least 0.02% of the time when having to manage ten thousand individuals making ten thousand individual decisions with regards to their response to a pandemic. Besides, it just doesn't ring true to me. Had this been intentional, they would have been far more careful and not set themselves up for the most predictable made-for-media firing scandal you could possibly envisage. Companies deal with firings all the time, they know to avoid this sort of thing. That's basically the point of an HR department.
- jka 6y agoLet's hope that if these were mistakes, that the former employees affected can receive at least an apology and explanation, and perhaps offers to restore their position (it sounds like one of them has a tentative return offer). If accidental, and assuming a continuous-improvement policy within the company, it could also be an opportunity to understand how the wrongful terminations took place.
- coliveira 6y agoIt's you who are being very naive about Tesla. If this was a simple mistake, HR would have just reverted it immediately after the workers pointed out the issue. The article mentions that the workers contacted HR and presented their correspondence with managers concerning their attendance, to no avail.
- sjwright 6y agoIt's you who are being very naive about human nature when presented with evidence of your mistakes.
- plussed_reader 6y agoWhen they double down on the mistake in light of the evidence it becomes intention and not 'miscommunication'.
- sjwright 6y agoI don’t disagree, nor do I think that conflicts with anything I said.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI suspect it's not entirely a mistake. When Tesla offered to let workers take unpaid leave, they probably didn't mean for it to last until "when covid-19 is over" as these workers wanted.
- intopieces 6y agoHm, then Musk, who is notoriously not careful with his words, should have clarified long before it reached this point.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI certainly wouldn't call Musk a careful communicator, but it sounds like the notice these workers received was the clarification. The headline may be a bit misleading: the article says these weren't unconditional pink slips, and HR gave the workers the option of setting a date to return to work.
- intopieces 6y agoYes, upon more careful reading, especially this part, I see what might be the issue: >The workers... said they both received the notices last week from Tesla's human resources department citing their apparent failure to show up and the company's inability to reach them. The workers provided evidence of their continuing correspondence with managers. Communicating directly with managers is not the same as communicating with HR; it seems like HR opened up a big list of people who hadn't clocked in in x days and sent them all termination-unless-you-say-otherwise notices. The question I don't see answered in this article: Did HR communicate an end to the unpaid leave arrangement? I won't contend that that should have been clear from the start, since the situation changes by the day; but at least a little bit of "We're starting to wind down the unpaid leave program based on guidance from county authorities about the safety of ... etc, please arrange to resume your work by $Date,"
- throwaway_jobs 6y ago> I suspect it's not entirely a mistake. Like Tesla calling their driving assistance “auto-pilot”.
- matz1 6y agoIts not a mistake, as a worker you are not obligated to come to work if you don't want to, likewise Tesla is also not obligated to pay you for not working.
- ralmidani 6y agoThe article says the leave was unpaid.
- throwaway_jobs 6y agoDebatable when the CEO publicly makes a statement to that effect that you “detrimentally relied on”. Not to mention the CEO was actually breaking the law by reopening, in practice this worked out to violate the law by coming to work or get fired...
- hirundo 6y agoIn reopening he broke a local order that was preempted by a state law, which is why he got away with it. His lawyers advised him that he had a strong case before he acted.
- throwaway_jobs 6y agoWell when Tesla gets sued and settles, they will never have to admit liability, so we will never know. And it’s not about musk breaking the law...it’s about him telling his employees to break the law and firing those that didn’t...did musks lawyers advise them as well?
- matz1 6y agolaw is not absolute, nothing wrong with challenging the law if you think its unjust.
- throwaway_jobs 6y ago> nothing wrong with challenging the law if you think its unjust. That’s a straw man...the CEO fired people who didn’t break the law at his direction. He didn’t give a damn if the employees felt the law was just or not. Forcing employees to break the law or fire them is absolutely wrong.
- jaybeeayyy 6y agoI'm not sure if this is a surprise to anyone when the CEO of Tesla has made it very clear that he doesn't believe the threat of COVID-19 is real and that a mandated quarantine is fascism. Couple that with the factory conditions that have been reported by workers previously and the result is this.
- sjwright 6y agoThe result is this? A scandal this obvious? This predictable? A scandal this trivially avoidable? Is incompetent goonishness really more likely than an HR department screwing up 0.02% of the time while managing ten thousand individuals making ten thousand individual decisions with regards to their response to a pandemic?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- skellington 6y agoNo, he has said that he believes the threat of COVID does not warrant the extreme response of mandated lockdowns. That's a lot different than saying there is no threat. Every day, people make decisions around risk and people can have wildly different opinions on how much risk to accept in order to live.
- FireBeyond 6y agoAnd he has made that decision on behalf of his employees, too, not just himself. He is deciding how much risk that they need to be willing to take.
- skellington 6y agoWell, without employees showing up there is no more Tesla. So each employee should be able to make the choice to take a very small risk and go to work or to live in irrational fear and quit their job. The only mistake Tesla made was saying they didn't have to come if they were afraid. They should have just made it clear, come to work or be fired. I guess by your logic, CEOs of banks, supermarkets, food processing, farmers, truckers, utility workers, insurance companies, hardware stores, airlines, hotels, hospital workers, etc. are all evil because they are 'forcing' their employees to work too. But I'm sure that your response (in spirit) will be "The only essential businesses that should be allowed to force people to work are the ones THAT I NEED. I don't need a Tesla so it's not an essential business and we can just let it go out of business and layoff 50K people."
- softsound 6y agoConsidering their past, I'm not that surprised to be honest.
- gre 6y agoI will continue my personal boycott of Tesla.
- throwaway_jobs 6y agoMaybe the protestors that riot and loot will burn Tesla down using Musk’s “not a flame thrower” the ultimate of ironies.
- inawarminister 6y agoSuch blood-thirst...
- throwaway_jobs 6y agoI didn’t know property bleeds. And either way I’m not advocating rioting/looting and certainly not arson, just saying maybe it will happen and it would be ironic if Musk’s “not a flamethrower” was used. I’d be the first person to advocate for the people who got fired for refusing to break the law at the direction of their CEO, but not violence or blood.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- almost_usual 6y agoLarry Page will miss your money
- dekhn 6y agoLarry Ellison, not Larry Page.
- almost_usual 6y agoYeah, definitely meant Ellison. I can’t edit my comment but sorry about that.
- rrock 6y agoI wonder how many people are reconsidering Tesla purchases now, and how that compares to the cost of having these workers on unpaid leave. Seems to be the wrong decision from both the ethical and the business perspective.
- dylan604 6y agoI was never in the market for a Tesla car, but I have been very intrigued by their Powerwall units.
- matz1 6y agoI'm not rich enough to own tesla car so I buy tesla stock instead.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoIs this going to be the thing that causes a Tesla implosion? After all of the issues, the magical tents?
- sjwright 6y agoI'm curious, do you think that early information-limited reporting of alleged unethical treatment of two employees is enough to decide to shift your purchase over to Ford, Toyota or Volkswagen? Have you confirmed that the company who wins your vehicle purchase have, statistically speaking, done unethical things to proportionally fewer employees?
- travisporter 6y agoNot to get meta, but both you and the parent are asking leading questions. I do it too, but I don't think we shoudl I think it's because we're trying to be polite but make a point. Maybe it's just an online thing.
- sjwright 6y agoI do understand your concern. Even so, I prefer leading questions over unverified assertions, or opinions masquerading as facts. You know, the online thing.
- sbussard 6y agoUnpopular opinion: articles like this are just designed to shame people who don’t buy into the popular opinion. Not even all medical experts agree on the best course of action regarding herd immunity, sip, etc. For the other 5% of the article, there could be other dynamics at play that got those employees fired, though Tesla has a less than stellar reputation for work life balance.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- almost_usual 6y agoOperate like the Shanghai factory, done. Tesla doesn’t care unless there are steep penalties. They wouldn’t get away with this in their Shanghai factory.
- sbussard 6y agoShanghai, the symbol of freedom
- almost_usual 6y agoA comment that avoids the entire subject of safety and health at work but immediately changes the subject to politics. Constructive! Tesla is a hypocrite company, Larry Page is on the board and donates millions to a climate change denier (Trump). They only care about making money. If they can skirt protocol to save cash in the US they will.
- dekhn 6y agoYou confused Larry Page with Larry Ellison.
- almost_usual 6y agoYou are completely right, I had Larry Ellison in my mind but Page came out instead. Unfortunately I cannot edit my comment.
- sandworm101 6y ago>> Employees, like the broader public, are left to learn of Musk's mind-set through his sporadic 280-character posts on Twitter. That's the real crux of the problem. That is not evidence of a mature corporate environment. Broad policy statements and occasional emergency directives can come directly from the top, but day-to-day HR policy should come in writing after being signed off by appropriate directors/managers. I've seen this at small-but-getting-bigger tech companies. The "founders" still act like they are running a business out of a garage. Once you have hundreds of employees you need to stop barking orders over a phone and comit all important policy decisions to paper.
- hartator 6y ago> That's the real crux of the problem. That is not evidence of a mature corporate environment. Broad policy statements and occasional emergency directives can come directly from the top, but day-to-day HR policy should come in writing after being signed off by appropriate directors/managers. Funny that we give local govs way more power with way less accountability.
- linksnapzz 6y agoRight. Let me know when Tesla employees can vote for a new CEO.
- sjwright 6y agoLet me know when a vote of employees of any publicly traded company can overrule a vote of shareholders on anything half as consequential as the appointment of a CEO.
- ericmay 6y agoI mean... they don't exactly have a vote unless they own shares of the company. They could unionize, etc. deride the culture of the company, or quit though,
- 6y ago
- almost_usual 6y agoI’m sure someone will bring up “but the Shanghai factory”, the truth is that factory is operating under China COVID protocol. If Tesla isn’t going to be held accountable or penalized for not enforcing strict COVID safety protocol they won’t. I guarantee they wouldn’t get away with this in Shanghai.
- LMYahooTFY 6y agoSeems like a fairly accurate speculation, but like your dismissal of a derisive comment about Shanghai in another post, I think you're omitting the next logical topic to address: that of China's authority and governance. I say omit because your posts seem to strongly imply that their compliance in Shanghai is the more desirable outcome.
- just_steve_h 6y agoI'm just gonna put the popcorn on the stove, because I'm looking forward to watching the contortions of Elon's many fans as they deny/rationalize/whatabout this latest news!
- unnouinceput 6y agoI'm a fan of Elon. Also in this regard he's plain stupid. You know you can be a fan of somebody and don't 100% agree with him, no?
- api 6y agoI'll contort like this. Elon clearly has a history of some very bad and capricious behavior toward employees and others. Yet at the same time he's almost single handedly led efforts to revolutionize both space flight and electric vehicles and these efforts have been largely successful. The EV one is probably the most impactful here on Earth. I highly doubt we would be seeing the EV revolution if it weren't for Tesla. Tesla doesn't make the majority of EVs globally and there's a chance Tesla may even fail, but they validated the market and pushed all the older car companies into it. Before Tesla EVs were dismissed as un-marketable and the discourse around transport centered on how we would lose mobility once we ran out of oil (remember The Oil Drum?). Steve Jobs was similar to Elon in many ways: apparently very capricious and critical and hard to work with, the sort of leader who is prone to firing people in elevators over throw-away comments. Yet Steve Jobs put Apple on a path to becoming for a time the most valuable company in the world and almost single handedly led a revolution in personal computing design, computer hardware industrial design, and of course mobile computing. Similar personality allegations have even been made against Martin Luther King including infidelity and aggression toward inferiors. Frank Lloyd Wright was so abusive to his staff one of them committed mass murder. It seems to hold in other fields too. If you think these people are horrible narcissistic assholes, the question that must be asked is: why do we need a narcissist asshole to drive progress? It's clear to me at least when looking at both business and larger human history that we as a species do not progress without someone like this leading the charge. I have my own pet hypothesis on this that I've posted before. Human beings are wired for hunter gatherer or very simple agricultural existence. We are wired for a vastly slower pace of life with few large opportunities for advancement. Most of the people who lived all the way up until very recently never encountered a large opportunity in their environment. This environment selected for patience, slow thinking, and eusociality. The modern world is fast and full of large opportunities for advancement both individually and as a group or species. From the perspective of this world we are all wired for a state of low-grade depression and anhedonia. Compared to our modern environment the average human being is practically catatonic. But there are freaks. There are people who are wired for this level of speed and abundance. These are manics, bipolars (in their mania state), high-functioning non-violent psychopaths, some high-functioning autistics, etc. Unfortunately these freaks are outliers and as such are not broadly well-adapted. This often includes being socially maladapted. Most of the ones I'm familiar with are either borderline asocial ("autists" in modern pop psychology slang) or are narcissistic abusive personalities who compensate for their social mal-adaptation by wielding a battering ram. Sometimes these people do teach themselves to be socially more well adjusted, but these are outliers among the outliers. These people tend to be freakishly effective in the modern world as long as they don't go mad or end up dead or in jail. As evidence for this hypothesis I submit Donald Trump. He does not seem particularly intelligent, is not educated, and alienates and angers almost everyone around him, yet he's executed the "become rich" maneuver multiple times and has vaulted himself into the Presidency. By executing the get rich maneuver multiple times I mean he went bankrupt multiple times and then got at least somewhat rich (though how rich is up for debate) again. How is he able to do this? He's hyper-motivated. I think that's the beginning and end of the explanation. You don't need to be smart, or graceful, or socially skilled, only to have a dopamine system cranked to eleven. Elon and Steve Jobs have the added benefits of actually being very good at something. This helps, but it's not the qualifier. The necessary condition is sustainable dopamine overdrive, a "stable genius" in Trumpspeak. You can be an idiot and succeed with that... again provided you avoid madness, death, or jail. I'll give you another data point. A therapist once told me a story of someone who went into an extreme manic episode, moved to Detroit, recruited a group of hip hop artists, and founded a record label. This man was a white guy from the suburbs with no experience in either hip hop or the record industry and didn't even sing or play a musical instrument. I doubt this label was successful, but even getting that far with zero expertise in a short period of time is astounding. If he managed to find a great artist there is some chance he could have been successful. Let that sink in. Since most human beings today exist in (by modern standards) low-grade depression, we sort of use these freaks and outliers to drive us forward. We also borrow some of their freakish hyper-motivation via the mirror neuron effect. The alternative to being led by and mirroring a hyper-driven freak seems to be stimulants. There's the ever-popular caffeine, both legal and illegal sources of amphetamine, ritalin, and SSRIs which are really a special type of stimulant. I propose that so many people are on these drugs because they are attempting to function in an environment that moves at a pace far beyond what evolution tuned us to cope with. Unfortunately many of these have negative side effects, especially the really strong ones. Heavy amphetamine use can temporarily adapt one to modernity, but it doesn't last long and leaves one with addiction and burn-out. The freaks seem permanently tuned to this pace at the expense of their social and emotional sanity. They can operate in the modern world at their full potential without drugs, but in so doing they often alienate virtually everyone around them and sometimes go insane. In Elon's case (and judging from his Twitter feed) I hope Starlink comes up and Starship flies before he ends up like Howard Hughes. I can't take full credit for this. I originally encountered a version of this hypothesis in the writings of Robert Anton Wilson, and I believe he was referencing either Timothy Leary or Aldous Huxley.
- andrewtbham 6y agoI am long term Apple and Tesla shareholder. I have in the past freaked out over stories in the media... remember antenna gate? What about when all Teslas caught on fire? My advice to anyone with any money, or any ambition to have any money. Is to ignore these stories in the short term and take a long term view. They are mostly bullshit. And for the fools that don't have any money... and want to stay poor. Go ahead. Spread the bullshit. It increases wealth inequality...
- Tepix 6y agoTake your own advice then: This is just one of many stories about Tesla not treating its employees well. That should be your long term view by now. If all you care about is money on the other hand don‘t pretend not to be.
- andrewtbham 6y agoThe general understanding is that if you're at Tesla, you're choosing to be at the equivalent of Special Forces. ... That has pluses and minuses. It's cool to be Special Forces, but it also means you're working your ass off. It's not for everyone.
- andrewtbham 6y agothere are many stories... but they were debunked and you remember the headline. You never see the retractions or the debunking. Whatever happened to Martin Tripp?
- Tepix 6y agoThere's the USA Today report that workers at Tesla factories have suffered more injuries than average. I haven't seen it being debunked. Have you? https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/12/tesla-gigafactory-safety-problems-detailed-by-usa-today.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/12/tesla-gigafactory-safety-pro... https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/11/12/tesla-gigafactory-brings-nevada-jobs-and-housing-woes-worker-injuries-strained-ems/2452396001/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/1... (the second link doesn't work in the EU)
- elicash 6y agoThis, to me, is the key sentence: > They believe they received the notifications for speaking up about their concerns with working conditions at the plant. The conversation so far here seems focused on them not showing up after being told they didn't have to. But did everybody who did not show up get these notices? Was it just folks who were vocal about working conditions? Is this retribution? Why do the workers say so? It's always a danger to take a company's stated reasons for termination at face value. It could be true, but it might not. I'd love to hear more details.
- jdxcode 6y agoEven though we might not like the idea, Californians can be fired simply for complaining though—correct?
- elicash 6y agoNLRA covers protected concerted activity at the national level. Whether this speech falls into that, or whether these employees are covered under the NLRA, I don't think we have the specifics for. But there are more worker protections than people realize. The biggest problem with them is enforcement and lack of penalties.
- paulcole 6y agoIf there's hardly any consequences then you're not protected at all.
- elicash 6y agoI agree with the general point, but I'd add that there's additional power in collective action, but that's of course harder to organize than a legal challenge. And also that people (both management and not) are also just unaware of the laws. But yes, to just name one example, I believe there should be punitive damages when a company is found to be in violation of these labor laws.
- peroporque 6y agoThere have been too many lies about Tesla and how "evil" they supposedly are. Sorry, Mr/s journalist, I don't believe you anymore.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rhacker 6y agoLiterally, if every single person starting today, wears a mask when they are within 15 feet of another person, and all the time indoors, this virus would be gone from the entire United States in 2 months. No additional shutdown needed.
- eloff 6y agoYou're probably right. It worked in Japan. It's a lot harder for the virus to make it through two masks (the one on the sick person is the especially important one) and it seems if you don't get a exposed to a high enough viral load at the start, you don't get it nearly as bad. I think universal mask wearing would bring R0 below 1, and the pandemic would end. Costco requires a mask to shop in their stores (at least where I am.) If you don't have one, they will give you one (and an admonition to save it for the next visit.) I feel safer shopping there than any other store right now.
- Someone1234 6y agoI agree on Costco, on top of that I am also selective at where I shop based on other customer behavior. For example, I am avoiding Walmart and hardware stores because almost nobody wears a mask, including even the staff, whereas in Target and Kroger it is 50% or higher. Recently McDonald's actually removed the sneeze guards they had installed for some inexplicable reason and their staff stopped wearing masks, and in a related note due to increasing numbers we're likely to re-enter lock-down soon (per the state health board). I cannot imagine any justification for EVER removing the sneeze guards, it isn't like flu and the common cold are disappearing. Let alone now.
- goatforce5 6y ago> Costco requires a mask to shop in their stores (at least where I am.) We went to a Costco in Toronto, Canada a couple of days ago. If you didn't have a mask on, they pointed you at a table off to the side where they had free masks, hand sanitizer, etc. Some people would accept the free mask, but others went in maskless. A staffer at the front door appeared to be keeping tally of people without masks using a sheet of paper (as opposed to the standard front door person who counts everyone going in with a little clicker thing). I'd say about 15-20% of people in the store weren't wearing masks.
- devalgo 6y agoThe consistent amount of bootlicking of Ayn Rand type assholes like Musk on HN always surprises me.
- chrshawkes 6y agoCan't help but to think Elon Musk is a huge dick and possibly psychotic.
- drcongo 6y agoThis should really be the top comment on here, but it's getting downvoted. Possibly because the diagnosis of mental illnesses at a distance is frowned upon by the psychiatric community. The bit about him being a huge dick is indisputable fact though.
- rojcyk 6y agoI bet that if you two would have a conversation, and you would discuss all the nuances of the situation, and you would actually get through the whole reasonig, you would write a different comment.
- drcongo 6y agoMe and the poster I was replying to? Or me and Elon Musk? The former I'd love to have a conversation with, over a pint in a nice sunny pub garden. The latter is a huge dick.
- Macumbapotatos 6y agoPeople can be fired for not working, that is new. I think society should follow the model of never being able to fire someone, I am sure many countries and organizations were successful in implementing and ensuring that it survived.
- codingdave 6y ago> citing their apparent failure to show up and the company's inability to reach them. The workers provided evidence of their continuing correspondence with managers. This sounds like a communication failure between the managers and the HR department. Absolutely a problem, and people are right to be angered. But it also sounds like one that could be quickly resolved, and their job status restored.