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