Tesla gave workers permission to stay home, then sent termination notices | Hacker News Reader

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

sfgate.com

162 pointsjoering2153 comments

This, 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.

How many workers didn't get fired for not showing up during the pandemic?

How many workers didn't get fired after speaking up over concerns over working conditions?

If we don't have denominator, it's difficult to evaluate assertions of causation.

Even though we might not like the idea, Californians can be fired simply for complaining though—correct?

NLRA 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.

If there's hardly any consequences then you're not protected at all.

I 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.

An individual can’t take part in a collective action unless they have some kind of personal safety net in place.

Get fired for speaking up about something illegal? Better hope you have a new job lined up or you have plenty of savings. Because it’s gonna be a long time before you either get your job back or see any kind of settlement.

I work in labor. I've seen incredible things happen when workers bravely take risks in collective action. These are some of the most underpaid workers in America.

Can you share an example of some of the most underpaid workers in America bravely taking risks in collective action that you’ve personally seen?

Nursing home workers organizing during the coronavirus to get the PPE they needed.

Do you think they would’ve taken the same actions if not for the safety net of the most generous unemployment benefits in a generation (if not longer)?

Yes

Thanks wasn’t sure.

The NLRB hasn't done any enforcement for decades at this point and is currently engaged in eliminating the paper protections that still exist.

I would say the opposite: the USA has much less in the way of worker protections than people generally realize. There are many unjust things that occur where the public and workers think "that shouldn't be allowed" but it is.

I'm certainly not a lawyer, just a software engineer trying to understand the world a little better. That said, does the NLRA actually protect against this? Reading about it talks a lot about collective action and forming unions, but what if it's a single individual complaining? Is that protected?

I'm also not a lawyer, but as somebody who works in labor -- no, it doesn't have to be about "unions." It can absolutely be about working conditions, if they're in discussions with their coworkers. You're going to be on safer ground when there's a call for concerted action of some kind. You asked about "this" situation specifically, and I don't know enough about what happened to offer an opinion here.

A bit unrelated, but one of my favorite cases on the concept involved Triple Play Sports Bar & Grille, where somebody was fired for a Facebook "like."

https://lizerbramlaw.com/2014/09/09/can-employee-fired-faceb...

I think that's totally related for what I was getting at—great example. Of course you're right that there is almost certainly some level of collaboration here too.

>> where somebody was fired for a Facebook "like."

At what point does a person at a company digging through someones social media posts constitute stalking?

I think this would be your best bet to make an argument against this type of behavior:

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/does-creating-impressio...

Just because something is legal doesn't make it right.

I'm trying to answer the question "Is this retribution?" Which has legal consequences.

Yea, I thought the same when I read retribution. I think this could be retaliation but not retribution but IANAL.

wow. I actually read and rewrote that word literally thinking it was "retaliation". I think that's what @elicash meant.

Yep, my mistake.

>> 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.

> 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.

Right. Let me know when Tesla employees can vote for a new CEO.

That is a thing. Some employees do have imediate and direct representation on boards, boards who could hire/fire leaders like Musk. Any US corporation could choose to adopt these practices, although not once it has gone public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany

>> Known as Mitbestimmung, the modern law on codetermination is found principally in the Mitbestimmungsgesetz of 1976. The law allows workers to elect representatives ... for almost half of the supervisory board of directors. [...] It applies to public and private companies, so long as there are over 2,000 employees. For companies with 500–2,000 employees, one third of the supervisory board must be elected.

>> The Prussian state aimed for a conciliatory policy between capital and labour, and worker committees were one way to involve and bind workers into a system, and avoid conflict. In return unions conceded objectives on the establishment of a socialist state.

Let 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.

I 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,

I'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.

No, 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.

And 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.

Well, 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."

> 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.

You call it a "mistake". I call it lying. It wasn't an accident or a run of the mill bad phrasing, it was trying to placate the government and the press with one message while punishing everyone who didn't read between the lines of it.

And you're right about there not being a Tesla without employees showing up. That's why Elon fires anyone who he suspects recognizes the power of a strike.

You say potato, I say politics.

What startup company could survive unionization and striking workers?

Tesla was formed nearly 20 years ago and has a market cap of $190B.

It is not in any way, shape or form, a "startup".

One whose competitive advantage is due to tehcnological innovation and not circumventing labor laws. Or was that rhetorical?

Oh, I dunno, maybe a company that doesn't exploit and abuse its workers.

> 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."

I appreciate your presumptions. As someone who has worked as a paramedic, first responder, who has been a participant in County Public Health meetings, as someone who has supervised a quarantine and isolation facility, you'd apparently be surprised by how conservative my perspective of things is, whether or not I "need" them, and how willing I am to accept the inconveniences therewith.

> 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.

There's a rather vast middle ground there. How about expressing alarm at the conditions being entirely suboptimal for minimizing risk? Despite Elon's claims, there is apparently significant concern about social distancing, opaque issues at Tesla's facilities.

> I guess by your logic ... are all evil

Please don't put words in my mouth. I never stated or implied that Elon/Tesla were "evil", or anything approximating that.

I have an understanding that in order for society to continue to function certain things have to keep happening. I also understand that there is non-zero risk in this. I also know that given some care and flexibility, there are ways to significantly mitigate these unavoidable cases.

I've also not had a haircut for a few months (actually, I lie, my girlfriend used a trimmer, once). It may be that my definition of "essential/necessary" differs from others. I don't overly have much sympathy for the people claiming that they are being "tread on" because they're not able to easily access a nail salon, etc.

> 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.

I get the feeling that this will not age well[1].

[1] https://update.covid19.ca.gov/#top

Elon is nearly criminally bad at risk management, then. He claimed that based on 'current trends' (in March?), the US would have close to 0 new virus cases per day by the end of April. I have no idea what trends he was looking at, because there was no public evidence of a declining US case count at the time he was referencing. I don't think the US ever got much below 20,000 new cases per day, at any point since we rose to those levels in the first place.

> That's a lot different than saying there is no threat.

He has downplayed the threat so significantly and in such frequent error - proved as error as time passes and his virus predictions do not come to pass - that he is effectively suggesting that indeed, "there is no threat" even if he does not use those direct words.

That was based on China's super aggressive approach to COVID management. I agree, he didn't take into account how s--- the US would be at managing COVID. But also, you can't be against lockdowns and then be surprised at viral spread continuing.

The ONLY way the US would have minimized COVID death was hyper-aggressive contact tracing. That didn't happen and still continues to not happen, so COVID will not be controlled and by the time any vaccine is developed we will reach herd immunity anyway so it won't matter.

The math says (and has always said) that the US will need to reach 400K-600K deaths before herd immunity is reached. And there is NOTHING that can change that number given the current state of COVID management. The recent protests/riots plus various easing measures guarantee another exponential spike in cases.

The vaccine won't happen in time to make a big dent in the numbers. Novel treatments (remdesivir, etc.) that reduce mortality can make a difference, but it's unclear how much of a difference and when.

It's unclear if masks and social distancing while largely re-opening the economy can keep R0 below one. So far it doesn't look like it, but we don't have enough data.

> That was based on China's super aggressive approach to COVID management

Elon made specific predictions about the US. If he was using China's data to make predictions about US laws and American behavior, then I repeat and stand by my words that Musk is therefore extremely bad at risk management.

China and the US are extremely different countries. There is no logic to basing American response predictions on China's actions; it is obviously flawed to the point of not being useful and also being harmful.

I agree. I think he made a bad prediction.

But I don't think your statement about 'risk management' makes any sense since there is no risk to be managed in this case. What exactly do you expect Tesla to do about a global pandemic?

Risk management implies risk mitigation. Tesla's greatest risk in all of this is economic slowdown which I'm sure they are addressing internally as prudently as possible given their situation and their predictions about the future economy.

With communicable diseases, your risk taking implicates those around you. Your rights end where other's begin, and people around you have a right to not be exposed to a life-threatening illness.

That's wildly simplistic.

There are many other deadly communicable diseases than just COVID, like the average flu for example.

COVID is worse than the average flu, but not radically worse by SUBJECTIVE OPINION.

Why exactly is COVID the HARD LINE for you while the flu is totally ok?

Do you not see there is a very large grey zone between:

    [the regular flu] <---> [hypothetical plaque that kills 50% of everyone]
    [totally accepted,      [totally rejected,
     society doesn't do      society implements
     anything]               extreme measures]

As we head towards the right side of the grey zone, you would get very high consensus that extreme measures are worth it. But COVID is much closer to the left side of the grey zone which is why we see much less consensus.

> Why exactly is COVID the HARD LINE for you while the flu is totally ok?

The US has had 122,550 COVID deaths so far and daily case numbers are spiking again:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

That figure may well rise to 200,000 deaths by the end of the year.

Alameda County (where Tesla's Fremont plant is located) has had more COVID deaths than all of Australia:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/california/

Ah, I didn't think there were still many who believed that there wasn't much difference between the flu and COVID, or was at least willing to expose themselves to ridicule.

That's not my reading of the grandparent - instead my reading was that COVID was closer to the (normal) flu than to the Spanish Flu, Bubonic Plague, or other such calamities - or at least that many people would feel that way.

The thing is, I've seen quite a few of those death graphs for 2020. Covid isn't the 1919 flu, but it's beaten all other causes of death for 2020 so far, with the whole world trying to stop it. Something that could kill 1-2% of the world's population in 6 months is a calamity!

A calamity, but not something that would cause the collapse of civilizations, or meaningfully impact military strength a century ago.

The real issue is that's it's a silent killer. You don't bleed out of your eyes, there's nothing "exciting" about it (say, being an STD), it's not cool television.

If an earthquake would kill 1% of the world's population, it would be the event of the century. Instead, here we are, debating Covid's significance and conspiracy theories...

At the same time, if 1-2% of the planet's population had died over the course of a day, with deaths more common among the old and unheard of in children, it would be in the news for years - but life would have gone on with minimal interruption, and I think it would have been almost entirely forgotten within a few generations. It's only because there's a chance of stopping COVID that everyone cares so much.

Among the old, the obese, the smokers, the asthmatics, the diabetics...

You're also grossly underestimating the real impact of 1% of the population dying in a short time span.

Maybe people in the US should actually start wearing facemasks then.

The vast majority of people in the US do.

Maybe in California. Certainly not in the Midwest. I would say here in Kansas/Missouri we are at about 10%

I am in favor of masks, but it's not clear if they are effective. If they don't reduce R0 to less than one, then they are just prolonging the inevitable.

The 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?

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.

You'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.

I 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.

> 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.

Well that's rather pointless then.

What's wrong with Western culture where people are making a political thing out of wearing a mask, I.e. Not being a dick and looking out for the health of the people around you.

What's wrong is people have lost faith in our institutions (academia, media) because they lost that trust. Now half the population believes they're total liars and do the opposite. We brought this on ourselves.

A mask is no substitute for distance. It does help, but in hospitals, where people know how to use masks properly, a lot of people still got infected. Many people do not know how to use masks properly.

What you want is masks + distance. The mask is really a stop-gap measure when keeping distance fails.

Also: gloves.

There's early evidence to suggest that masks do more to prevent the spread of the virus than physical distancing.

Of course, yes, it would be easy to say, "just never get in range and the mask doesn't matter," but we live in urban environments and need to do the best we can in light of that.

What is your source for that information?

I find it really unfair to downvote this comment because it is right. A lot of people don't know how to use masks. A lot of people don't know that they need to cover their nose, a lot of people remove them incorrectly and end up touching the front with their fingers.

That being said, even used incorrectly they would definitely drastically help.

Substandard usage would be a huge problem in a hospital setting where you get extreme exposure and even a single-digit percentage loss in protection effectivity means sure infection. For day to day civilians however, even if they lose half the protection, if everybody has that other half it's almost enough to stop the wave.

Losing ten percent of three nines is huge, losing ten percent of coin flip reliability is negligible. (but a coin flip reduction in everyday infection rates would still be huge). I strongly believe that unnecessary fretting over clinical hygiene rules of mask handling is responsible for a massive adoption delay, or adoption gap even today.

I do agree there was too much discouragement about using masks early on. Of course that was also because authorities wanted to prevent a mask shortage for hospitals, but encouraging people to make their own (as people did later) could still have helped. A mask does not make you immune, and other measures remain important, but a mask is still likely to help at least a bit.

That’s because many of the patients refuse to wear masks as well.

It's hard to wear a mask when you have a tube down your throat and/or have trouble breathing.

Unfortunately, there are a significant amount of Americans it seems that have bought into the narrative that wearing masks is fascism. So here we are, dealing with the fallout of people demanding that we end the shutdown while doing nothing to mitigate the disease. Or worse, they're openly antagonizing people who wear masks or stores that ask them to wear one because they're psychotic in their ideals.

> Americans [...] have bought into the narrative that wearing masks is fascism

They're not wrong. Enacting pro-social policies that restrict most individuals in small ways—but benefit society-as-a-whole in large ways—is one of the core things Fascists did that was actually effective at improving lives—just like forcing everyone to wear masks in the United States would also be effective at improving lives.

So yeah, Fascists would absolutely have forced individuals to wear masks for the good of everyone—but that doesn't make the policy "bad", it's just one of the rare policy areas where Fascists tend to get good results.

The actual problem is that people today believe literally anything Fascists would have done is, by definition, "bad/wrong/evil." That kind of simplistic thinking is all too common.

Yes, they are.

Societies of all stripes and sorts restrict individuals in small ways. Just because fascism restricts individual freedoms doesn't mean that all restrictions are a symptom of fascism.

Conflating mask requirements with fascism is to ignore the real history and motivations behind fascist movements.

You seem to be confusing the idea that something "is a Fascist policy" with the idea that something "is ONLY a Fascist policy."

Lots of similar policies are promoted by seemingly different forms of government. Even the most cursory inspection of our world today (or history) is sufficient to demonstrate this point.

Forcing individuals to wear masks is absolutely something Fascists would do, and they would do so for 100% ideological reasons, so the statement "forcing people to wear masks is a Fascist policy" is 100% accurate. It's also a current US policy, a current communist policy, etc. etc. so it's clearly not limited just to Fascists.

Your "explanation" is complete nonsense. If a policy (mask wearing) is widely mandated by Socialist, Communist, Fascist, Liberal Democrats etc, then calling it 'fascist' has no value or meaning as an adjective or identifier. The reason people of intelligence come up with different terms is to differentiate between political movements.

And no, it isn't "current US policy" whatever that would mean. There's no Federal law requiring it, and many states explicitly prohibit requiring it; for example, Nebraska blocks cities and counties from receiving funds if they refuse to provide service to people who refuse masks.

And how do you know Fascists would do so for 100% ideological reasons? You have this simplistic boogeyman idea of fascism. Fascists don't want to die from COVID-19 any more than anyone else does.

The mask issue really shows both how anti-science people are, and how easy it is for people to politicize a simple method for fighting disease.

Do you object to laws preventing you from dumping your raw sewage in the street? Fascism at work!

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.

It 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.

In 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.

Let'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.

It'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.

I 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.

> I suspect it's not entirely a mistake.

Like Tesla calling their driving assistance “auto-pilot”.

You mean full self driving?

“ All new Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today, and full self-driving capabilities in the future...”

https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

You’re right Tesla is guilty of marketing features that don’t exist today but will “in the future”.

But hey they disclose the truth in the fine print (Autopilot is not autonomous), so nothing to see and god forbid we accurately call it what it is “driver assist“ instead of autopilot or even the as of yet non-existent “full self driving”:

“Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.”

Hm, then Musk, who is notoriously not careful with his words, should have clarified long before it reached this point.

I 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.

Yes, 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,"

Its 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.

The article says the leave was unpaid.

Debatable 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...

In 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.

Well 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?

law is not absolute, nothing wrong with challenging the law if you think its unjust.

> 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.

Company should be able to fire people at any reason any time, nothing wrong with that.

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.

I'm going to guess nobody is reconsidering over this if they haven't reconsidered the last hundred times they've been shown what kind of person Musk is.

I'm going to guess that the vast majority of people who bought Teslas knew little to nothing about Elon Musk.

With all the bad publicity he's generating for himself in the midst of a huge crisis, where the media exposure of his actions is greater than it's ever been, that is going to change. And it probably won't be good for Tesla.

I'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?

Not 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.

I do understand your concern. Even so, I prefer leading questions over unverified assertions, or opinions masquerading as facts. You know, the online thing.

Hm, yeah. I do shudder when I think about how many times i've said "I read online that... [HN comment]".

I was never in the market for a Tesla car, but I have been very intrigued by their Powerwall units.

Is this going to be the thing that causes a Tesla implosion?

After all of the issues, the magical tents?

I'm not rich enough to own tesla car so I buy tesla stock instead.

> 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.

I’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.

Seems 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.

Can't help but to think Elon Musk is a huge dick and possibly psychotic.

This 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.

I 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.

Me 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.

I will continue my personal boycott of Tesla.

Maybe the protestors that riot and loot will burn Tesla down using Musk’s “not a flame thrower” the ultimate of ironies.

Such blood-thirst...

I 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.

Larry Page will miss your money

Larry Ellison, not Larry Page.

Yeah, definitely meant Ellison. I can’t edit my comment but sorry about that.

Considering their past, I'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 disagree. While this could still be an honest mistake, if done intentionally it definitely goes beyond civil disobedience. Given the decision to reopen the factory and terminate employees that do not show up, there's no justification for misleading them about their options.

Agreed. But the main content of the article was more about Covid 19 than the employees, and it seems more like a piece to shape thoughts by reinforcing ideas about public health policy than to discuss the employees’ welfare. More shame than substance.

>Not even all medical experts agree on the best course of action regarding herd immunity...

This is a dubious claim at best. That being said the real problem is that Musk made the decision about how much risk is acceptable for his employees without their input and seems to be retaliating against those who disagreed.

That’s the secondary issue at best. The primary issue is that the government has done exactly that to the people and media has taken it upon themselves to shape and enforce sociological norms. Shelter in place causes major health risks to a subset of the population. Shelter in place is a tradeoff of public health. But when the economy, rights, and other major factors are considered, it looks less like a tradeoff and more like a betrayal.

> This is a dubious claim at best

Ask any microbiologist.

>But when the economy, rights, and other major factors are considered, it looks less like a tradeoff and more like a betrayal.

This is just crazy. Every other major country in the world has essentially beaten the virus with mask wearing and lockdowns and the US is about to have another devastating wave of cases in almost every major city outside the Notheast because people like you that are astonishingly selfish and arrogant have flouted the process and actively oppose it. You're cutting off your head to spite your face.

The economic considerations are secondary, we are probably looking at 500K deaths by 2021. That's World War level of deaths and your complaining about lockdowns and masks? Wtf is wrong with you, seriously. Learn empathy. People are dying.

>Ask any microbiologist.

So you've gone from "not all experts agree" to "all microbiologists agree". This is very poor form.

Here’s another comment for you to downvote - thank you very much. Next time you think you know what’s best for the country, consider people who don’t have the privilege of keeping a job and staying at home. Not everyone is a tech worker, and some are devastated right now, not because of a virus that is statistically quite similar yet slightly worse than the seasonal FLU!

>because of a virus that is statistically quite similar yet slightly worse than the seasonal FLU

I'm sorry but you must be a troll. The numbers couldn't be more obvious, last year there were 39M - 56M flu cases in the US with 24K-62K deaths. We are at 2.3M confirmed Covid-19 cases and 120K deaths in roughly 3-4 Months. So a fraction of the cases and already 2-6 TIMES as many deaths and we aren't near finished. How do you see those numbers and say this is basically the flu?? Next I suppose you'll say states are falsifying their numbers to hurt Trump? Truly deluded.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/case...

Now we’re resorting to name calling are we? Let’s consider first principles, like microbiology, before jumping on the bandwagon of “everyone else is doing it” because circumstances vary widely. What is selfish is to ignore other factors that play an even more significant role than coronavirus, which has an extremely low mortality rate. I have not gone to “all microbiologists agree”, but rather that you ought to listen to what they have to say over a journalist or government official. It is a good time to learn empathy, and statistics, to avoid the kind of narrow thinking your last post vividly illustrated.

>What is selfish is to ignore other factors that play an even more significant role than coronavirus, which has an extremely low mortality rate

You are just flat wrong, dangerously so. The actual numbers show that Covid-19 is 10s to 100s of times more deadly than the flu. You are just wildly uninformed and your confidence in your ignorance is astonishing.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

Operate 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.

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?

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...

Take 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.

The 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.

there 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?

There'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-pro...

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/1...

(the second link doesn't work in the EU)

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