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The struggling U.S. economy under Joe Biden is leading to significant layoffs for some companies.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, admitted that he personally has a “super bad feeling” about the U.S. economy. The Tesla CEO and his executives have laid off about 10% of employees.
In response, two former Tesla employees have filed a lawsuit against the company because they believe they should have received 60 days written notice.
They claim Tesla allegedly violated federal law with the layoffs by not providing a longer notice.
The suit alleges that Tesla violated the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act by not providing 60 days of advance written notice.
Musk brushed off the lawsuit by claiming it has “no standing.”
“That is a small lawsuit of minor consequence,” Musk commented. “Anything that relates to Tesla gets big headlines, whether it is a bicycle accident or something much more serious.”
The class-action lawsuit was filed by John Lynch and Daxton Hartsfield, who worked at Tesla’s Gigafactory 2 plant in Sparks, Nevada.
A lawyer representing the employees, Shannon Liss-Riordan, said, “It’s pretty shocking that Tesla would just blatantly violate federal labor law by laying off so many workers without providing the required notice.”
Lynch and Hartsfield say that they were allegedly informed of their layoff on June 10 and 15, and laid off on the same days.
“Plaintiffs and all similarly situated employees have been damaged by Tesla’s conduct constituting violations of the WARN Act,” the lawsuit argues, “and are entitled to damages for their back pay and associated benefits for each day of the violation because Tesla has not acted in good faith nor with reasonable grounds to believe their acts and omissions were not a violation of the WARN Act.”
The former employees think there are “more than 500” coworkers who were placed in the same situation.
More on this story via Daily Wire:
The Nevada employees are not the only ones affected by the layoffs. A Monday report from electric vehicle news outlet Electrek showed that two employees involved in volunteer LGBTQ and diversity roles at the automaker also lost their jobs. Electrek made clear that both separations were part of the “broader wave of layoffs,” but repeated that both employees had received multiple promotions in their relatively short tenures, seemingly indicating that their performance was not a cause for concern.
Regarding Tesla’s overall layoff plans, Musk has since clarified that he intends to decrease salaried headcount by 10% while increasing hourly staffing — ultimately affecting 3.5% of the overall workforce. “A year from now, I think our head count will be higher in both salaried and obviously in hourly,” Musk said at a Bloomberg conference on Tuesday, per CNBC…
Meanwhile, at SpaceX — which Musk also leads — multiple employees were fired for drafting and circulating a letter blasting the billionaire for his “behavior” and “values.”
“Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks,” the letter asserted. “As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX — every tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company.”
SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in an email that the employees had been fired. “We have too much critical work to accomplish and no need for this kind of overreaching activism,” she wrote.
