>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,"