I took that impression from here.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/spacex-illegally-fi...
I tried to find the particular case; according to Reuters' initial coverage (linked in the above article) these charges were filed November 2022, but I couldn't find one from that time on the NLRB website.
https://www.nlrb.gov/search/case/Tesla?sort=desc
As a side note - I don't know what a normal number of NLRB cases is for a large corporation, but this seems like a lot?
ETA: I had a brain fart and thought we were talking about Tesla, but the example is illustrative nonetheless.
You can fire people in retaliation for stealing or screwing up or for wasting everyone's time complaining about Twitter drama instead of doing their job or lots of other reasons. Simply firing in retaliation is not illegal.
I think if, for instance, a group of roof tile workers were discussing how they thought their safety straps needed to be replaced, and were fired for doing so - whether or not the straps needed replacing would be immaterial. The discussion is protected.
In the same way, I don't think it's material whether Twitter is disruptive to their work. NLRB's argument, if I'm understanding correctly, is that they were discussing their conditions, and that such a discussion is protected.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38863726
Musk regularly tweets about his companies. His tweets regularly move the share price, so it makes sense to me that they might regularly impact employees (not to say the share price is the mechanism by which that would happen, just that it stands to reason his tweets are relevant to the operations of the business if they're relevant to its valuation).
Also, if you listen to Musk, he has no regular personal and working hours, they're constantly intermingled.
I think many people in the thread have a misconception that because Twitter is something kinda silly that it couldn't possibly matter. I think it can be helpful to mentally substitute "Twitter" with "public statements."
As a thought experiment, if the CEO of your company went on a drunken bender (not saying this is what Musk did, just a hypothetical) and they started tweeting a bunch of really offensive stuff, do you think that could impact your job? Say, if you were a startup about to do another round of fundraising - they might alienate investors, and you might end up losing your job.
I don't think it means "every conceivable thing in the world that might affect the share price". If the Fed changes the interest rates, that could affect the share price. Does that mean that if I want to email my 13,000 co-workers my thoughts about the Fed's interest rate policy this is a protected discussion of workplace conditions? I don't think so.
The test seems to be "workplace conditions" not "things that impact employees" or "things that can affect the share price" which could be literally anything at all.
> (not to say the share price is the mechanism by which that would happen, just that it stands to reason his tweets are relevant to the operations of the business if they're relevant to its valuation)
Public statements can contribute to a hostile work environment. What is being alleged is that joking about sexual harassment and a lack of clarity around workplace policies have created a hostile work environment. That is directly related to working conditions. (To be clear, they never say the words "hostile work environment," that is my interpretation.)
I invite you to read the open letter for yourself. https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk...
Or the passages quoted here, for the especially relevant parts. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38863726
If something affects the share price, then it is relevant to business operations
Musk's tweets affect the share price
Therefore Musk's tweets are relevant to business operations.
I've read the letter, nowhere does the phrase "hostile work environment" appear. It sounds much more like a small group of employees are demanding that management implement DEI policies, management doesn't want to, the employees wouldn't shut up about it and so they got fired.
Discussing a policy could fall under workplace conditions, I suppose. But they weren't fired for discussing it. They discussed it, they got an answer, they wanted to keep on discussing it. At some point I think management is allowed to make a decision about whether they're going to implement a policy or not. It's not a legal requirement like "fix the safety straps" either, so at what point do you tell the employees to either let it go or get out? Are the required to allow employees to endlessly spam communication channels after management has made the decision about a policy?
I think you're distorting what I said, actually. What I said was that it is reasonable to believe that the tweets are disruptive, not that everything which impacts the stock price or even the operations of the business is relevant to working conditions.
I can understand how that may not have been clear on a first reading, but after I pointed this out and asked you to review what I said, I do think that should have been clear to you.
> I've read the letter, nowhere does the phrase "hostile work environment" appear.
I don't know if you maybe didn't see this edit because of how HN works, but I did clarify that already:
> (To be clear, they never say the words "hostile work environment," that is my interpretation.)
They are pretty clearly describing a work environment which is hostile. They're saying that they don't have clarity about what the policies are, that their work is interrupted, and that the lack of clarity causes rules to be enforced inconsistently. Call that whatever you want and it's still relevant to working conditions.
> It sounds much more like a small group of employees are demanding that management implement DEI policies
That's a complete misreading. Where did you even get that? The document has 3 calls to action and none of them are about DEI. They mention the workplace, as it exists, is diverse. That's all I can see and it's completely tangential. (By the way, the phrase "DEI" doesn't appear in the letter, either.)
> But they weren't fired for discussing it.
They literally were.
> "11. About June 16, 2022, Respondent, by Gwynne Shotwell, in an email to all employees announced that employees had been discharged for their involvement in the Open Letter."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38862605
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/CPT.3...
> At some point I think management is allowed to make a decision about whether they're going to implement a policy or not.
At no point does management get the ability to fire people for protected speech, or does the speech stop being protected. Just because management says "no" doesn't mean employees have to stop advocating for themselves.
From the letter:
> But for all our technical achievements, SpaceX fails to apply these principles to the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion [emphasis added] with equal priority across the company, resulting in a workplace culture that remains firmly rooted in the status quo.
> Individuals and groups of employees at SpaceX have spent significant effort beyond their technical scope to make the company a more inclusive space via conference recruiting, open forums, feedback to leadership, outreach, and more. However, we feel an unequal burden to carry this effort as the company has not applied appropriate urgency and resources to the problem in a manner consistent with our approach to critical path technical projects.
In other words, "nobody asked us to promote DEI throughout the company and it's not part of our job but we're mad that the company doesn't take it as seriously as they do building rockets (the purpose of the company)".
Not every single gripe about your company is protected discussion. I can propose my company implement unlimited PTO. They can say no. I can keep proposing it. I can write open letters demanding it. I can get the media to publish articles about how it's such a tragedy that my company doesn't take my unlimited PTO proposal as seriously as they do making widgets. They can get fed up that I won't shut up about it after they already considered it and said no and fire me. That's not illegal.
> That's not illegal.
I think what you may be discovering is that you have more rights as an employee than you previously thought. Given that both of us have acknowledged we're not lawyers - we should assume the NLRB understands this better than us, right?
Maybe. Maybe they just don't like Musk so they throw everything they can at him regardless of merit. Given Musk's other misadventures in labor relations, it would stand to reason that the people at the NRLB are not fans of his.
Maybe the 8 people who were fired are just hoping for a quick settlement and some extra money. They might have a hard time finding new jobs now that they've outed themselves as insufferable woke scolds. Probably no reference from SpaceX forthcoming...
You can't just assume that since someone filed a lawsuit they're automatically right, especially after hearing only one side. Otherwise we wouldn't have that whole trial thingy, you know? Would you apply the same logic to all the lawsuits where Musk is the plaintiff?
At any rate, I'd give 10:1 odds that 90% of SpaceX employees are relieved these 8 no long work there.
Their knowledge of the law is presumably greater than ours.
So when we find ourselves confused about how the law works, and we think that the case is invalid on it's face - we should take that as an indication that our assumptions are incorrect and we probably don't understand the law as well as we thought. That doesn't imply the case will win at trial or that we don't need to conduct trials.
You seem to be suggesting this isn't and can't be related to working conditions. But it's far more likely you're mistaken than that the NLRB is engaged in a conspiracy. The employees wanting a quick payout doesn't make a difference in that calculus, especially since they aren't the ones making a decision about whether or not this is actionable. It's not like they were the ones who brought the suit, they filed a complaint with a regulator.
> At any rate, I'd give 10:1 odds that 90% of SpaceX employees are relieved these 8 no long work there.
I think it's worth reflecting on whether you are reasoning from the evidence here, or whether you are allowing your biases to contaminate your conclusions. You seem to have identified the employees as people you don't like or are politically or ideologically opposed to.
This the suggestion of a conspiracy, albeit a mild one.
I don't have anything new to say to say regarding the rest of your comment, so I'll spare us both from my repeating myself, you obviously understand what my position is.
My suggestion was that, given we're laypersons, if we're confused how this could be illegal and it conflicts with our understanding of the law, it's probably a safe assumption the regulators understand the law better.
Not commenting at all or passing judgement without trial isn't what I'm advocating for. It was a descriptive statement, not proscriptive one. If you asked what I would suggest as a response to realizing you might not understand the situation, it would be doing some more research into the law.
If that research leads you to the conclusion that this genuinely is an overreach, so much the better - before you had a suspicion, and now you have evidence for it.
Moreover, a little research would have revealed to you that Shot well publicly stated that the employees were fired for their letter. There is no burden of proof here.
The case numbers are in the header of the document linked in this comment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38862605
The reason I didn't find the case was I spaced out and looked for Tesla instead of SpaceX, d'oh.
It doesn't say anything about controlling your employers speech on their personal social media accounts.
How do Musk’s personal statements/opinions outside of work count as work-related issues?
Genuinely asking, I don’t understand how these rules are enforced.
Apple has locked down internal communications about non work-related topics on internal slack and email in the wake of RTO discussions. If this is grounds for a lawsuit, I think other companies are probably open to these kinds of lawsuits too.
For starters, firing someone introduces legitimate damage and liability for those damages if done illegally
But also, firing a group of people who are organizing seems like it will run afoul of union protection laws.
And to your first question, Musk’s social media tantrums have caused a lot of collateral damage for his companies. I believe the Tesla board also raised concerns that his Twitter meltdown had negatively impacted Tesla. It’s not hard to see how.
Are the communications from an account listed as their corporate disclosure account?
When you list a social media account as a disclosure account for a business, it should then be clear that there's liability to all such communications through such account.