Tesla gave workers permission to stay home, then sent termination notices

This, to me, is the key sentence:<p>&gt; They believe they received the notifications for speaking up about their concerns with working conditions at the plant.<p>The conversation so far here seems focused on them not showing up after being told they didn&#x27;t have to. But did everybody who did not show up get these notices? Was it just folks who were vocal about working conditions?<p>Is this retribution? Why do the workers say so? It&#x27;s always a danger to take a company&#x27;s stated reasons for termination at face value. It could be true, but it might not. I&#x27;d love to hear more details.

&gt;&gt; Employees, like the broader public, are left to learn of Musk&#x27;s mind-set through his sporadic 280-character posts on Twitter.<p>That&#x27;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&#x2F;managers.<p>I&#x27;ve seen this at small-but-getting-bigger tech companies. The &quot;founders&quot; 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.

I&#x27;m not sure if this is a surprise to anyone when the CEO of Tesla has made it very clear that he doesn&#x27;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.

Literally, 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.

Charitably, 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.

I 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.

&gt; citing their apparent failure to show up and the company&#x27;s inability to reach them. The workers provided evidence of their continuing correspondence with managers.<p>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.

I’m sure someone will bring up “but the Shanghai factory”, the truth is that factory is operating under China COVID protocol.<p>If Tesla isn’t going to be held accountable or penalized for not enforcing strict COVID safety protocol they won’t.<p>I guarantee they wouldn’t get away with this in Shanghai.

Can&#x27;t help but to think Elon Musk is a huge dick and possibly psychotic.

I will continue my personal boycott of Tesla.

Considering their past, I&#x27;m not that surprised to be honest.

Unpopular 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.

I 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?<p>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&#x27;t have any money... and want to stay poor. Go ahead. Spread the bullshit. It increases wealth inequality...