Elon Musk and Tesla Are Not Very Nice. Space X, Too.

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Elon Musk and Tesla Are Not Very Nice. Space X, Too.

#1 Post by PHXPhlyer » Tue Jun 21, 2022 3:22 pm

Tesla sued by former employees over 'mass layoff'
The lawsuit was filed late Sunday in Texas by two workers who said they were terminated from Tesla’s gigafactory plant in Sparks, Nevada, in June.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/corpor ... -rcna34541

Former Tesla employees have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. electric car company alleging its decision to carry out a “mass layoff” violated federal law as the company did not provide advance notice of the job cuts.

The lawsuit was filed late Sunday in Texas by two workers who said they were terminated from Tesla’s gigafactory plant in Sparks, Nevada, in June.

According to the suit, more than 500 employees were terminated at the Nevada factory.

The workers allege the company failed to adhere to federal laws on mass layoffs that require a 60-day notification period under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, according to the lawsuit.

They are seeking class action status for all former Tesla employees throughout the United States who were laid off in May or June without advance notice.

“Tesla has simply notified the employees that their terminations would be effective immediately,” the complaint said.

Tesla, which has not commented on numbers of layoffs, did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the lawsuit.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, said earlier this month he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy and that Tesla needed to cut staff by about 10%, according to an email seen by Reuters.

More than 20 people identifying themselves as Tesla employees said they were laid off, let go or had positions terminated this month, according to online postings and interviews with Reuters.

The action filed by John Lynch and Daxton Hartsfield, who were fired on June 10 and June 15 respectively, seeks pay and benefits for the 60-day notification period.

“It’s pretty shocking that Tesla would just blatantly violate federal labor law by laying off so many workers without providing the required notice,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney representing the workers told Reuters.

She said Tesla is offering some employees only one week of severance, adding that she is preparing an emergency motion with a court to try to block Tesla from trying to get releases from employees in exchange for just one week of severance.

Musk played down the lawsuit as “trivial”.

“Let’s not read too much into a pre-emptive lawsuit that has no standing,” he said at the Qatar Economic Forum organised by Bloomberg.

“It seems like anything related to Tesla gets a lot of clicks, whether it is trivial or significant. I would put that lawsuit you’re referring to in the trivial category.”

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas.

Elon Musk’s child seeks name change to reflect gender identity and sever ties with father
“I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form," Musk's daughter said. A petition for a name change and new birth certificate reflecting her gender identity was filed in April.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/el ... -rcna34479
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/21/busi ... index.html

Elon Musk’s transgender daughter has filed a request to change her name in accordance with her gender identity and because “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.”

The petition for both a name change and a new birth certificate reflecting her gender identity was filed with the Los Angeles County Superior Court in Santa Monica in April. It came to light recently in some online media reports.

Musk's daughter, who recently turned 18, the age of consent in California, has asked the court to change her gender recognition from male to female and to register her new name, according to court documents available online through PlainSite.org.


There was no further explanation of the rift between Musk’s daughter and her father, the Tesla and SpaceX chief who is attempting a $44 billion takeover of social media platform Twitter.

Neither a lawyer who represents Musk nor the Tesla media office immediately responded to emails requesting comment on Monday.

In May, about a month after the name and gender change document was filed, Musk declared his support for the Republican Party, whose elected representatives support a raft of legislation that would limit transgender rights in states across the country.

Musk has weighed in on the issue of transgender people choosing their preferred pronouns, tweeting in 2020, “I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare.”

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Re: Elon Musk and Tesla Are Not Very Nice. Space X, Too.

#2 Post by PHXPhlyer » Tue Jun 21, 2022 3:25 pm

SpaceX fires at least five for letter criticizing Elon Musk

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/17/tech/spa ... index.html

Private rocket company SpaceX fired at least five employees after it found they had drafted and circulated a letter criticizing founder Elon Musk and urging executives to make the firm’s culture more inclusive, two people familiar with the matter said.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that SpaceX had fired employees associated with the letter, citing three employees with knowledge of the situation. It had not detailed the number of employees who had been dismissed.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell sent an email saying the company had investigated and “terminated a number of employees involved” with the letter, the New York Times said.

The newspaper said Shotwell’s email said employees involved with circulating the letter had been fired for making other staff feel “uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views”.

Reuters could not independently confirm that report.

Billionaire Musk is pursuing a $44-billion bid for Twitter and has made clear his support of freer controls on speech on the site. On Thursday, he told Twitter employees the platform should allow “pretty outrageous things” as long as the content is not illegal.

The SpaceX letter, headed “an open letter to the Executives of SpaceX,” seen by Reuters, called Musk a “distraction and embarrassment” to the company he founded.

In a list of three demands, it said “SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand,” “hold all leadership equally accountable to making SpaceX a great place to work for everyone” and “define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior”.

Musk, also head of electric automaker Tesla Inc., has been in the headlines and featured in late-night comedy monologues in recent months, including over his quest to take over Twitter, his criticism of Democrats and a reported allegation of sexual harassment, which Musk has denied in a Twitter post.

The open letter at SpaceX, first reported by The Verge, was drafted by SpaceX employees in recent weeks and shared as an attachment in an internal “Morale Boosters” group chat that brings together thousands of employees, a person familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named.

Musk, also the company’s chief engineer, has been viewed as a central figure in many of SpaceX’s high-profile successes, such as pioneering the re-use of orbital rocket boosters and bringing back routine human spaceflight from U.S. soil after a nine-year hiatus.

Shotwell, who leads much of the company’s day-to-day business, has said she will enforce SpaceX’s “zero tolerance” standards against employee harassment.

Founded by Musk in 2002, SpaceX has played a central role in the U.S. space program, becoming the only company capable of launching NASA astronauts into space from U.S. soil and planning to send humans to the moon for the space agency within the next decade.

SpaceX is also one of two companies on which the Pentagon depends to launch into space the bulk of U.S. military and spy satellites.

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Re: Elon Musk and Tesla Are Not Very Nice. Space X, Too.

#3 Post by PHXPhlyer » Tue Jun 21, 2022 10:32 pm

Tesla worker rejects $15 million payout in race bias lawsuit
A judge slashed the original award of $137 million. Lawyers for Owen Diaz said the reduced award was unjust and would not deter future misconduct by Tesla.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/busine ... -rcna34655

A Black former elevator operator at Tesla’s flagship California assembly plant on Tuesday rejected a $15 million award in his lawsuit alleging racial abuse by coworkers, opening the door for a new trial after a judge slashed a $137 million jury verdict.

Lawyers for Owen Diaz, who had sued Tesla in 2017, turned down the judge’s award in a brief filing in federal court in San Francisco. They said in a statement that the award was unjust and would not deter future misconduct by Tesla.

“In rejecting the court’s excessive reduction by asking for a new trial, Mr. Diaz is again asking a jury of his peers to evaluate what Tesla did to him and to provide just compensation for the torrent of racist slurs that was directed at him,” his lawyers said.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick lowered the jury award, which was one of the largest of its kind in a discrimination lawsuit, to $15 million in April. He had also denied Tesla’s motion for a new trial, conditioned on Diaz’s acceptance of the lower award.

Earlier this month the judge denied Diaz’s motion for permission to appeal that ruling and gave him two weeks to accept the lower award or agree to a new trial. L1N2XU232

Tesla is facing a series of lawsuits involving alleged widespread race discrimination and sexual harassment at its Fremont, California factory, including one by a California civil rights agency.

Last week, a Tesla shareholder filed a lawsuit accusing the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, and board of directors of neglecting worker complaints and fostering a toxic workplace culture.

Tesla has denied wrongdoing and says it has policies in place to prevent and address workplace misconduct.

Diaz alleged that his colleagues and a supervisor subjected him to a hostile work environment that included slurs, caricatures and swastikas in his nine months working at the Fremont plant in 2015 and 2016.

A jury had awarded Diaz $6.9 million of compensatory damages and $130 million of punitive damages last October, but Orrick in April said those numbers were excessive.

Diaz’s lawyers in their statement on Tuesday said Orrick’s decision highlighted systemic bias that federal judges have against juries, which in turn violates the constitutional rights plaintiffs have to a trial by jury.

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Re: Elon Musk and Tesla Are Not Very Nice. Space X, Too.

#4 Post by prospector » Tue Jun 21, 2022 11:23 pm

"Diaz alleged that his colleagues and a supervisor subjected him to a hostile work environment that included slurs, caricatures and swastikas in his nine months working at the Fremont plant in 2015 and 2016."

Of course people always do that if you are doing your job efficiently, and are a likeable person.


"Diaz’s lawyers in their statement on Tuesday said Orrick’s decision highlighted systemic bias that federal judges have against juries, which in turn violates the constitutional rights plaintiffs have to a trial by jury."

And it would appear he has lawyers who fall into the same category, useless pricks.

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