Being laid off is one thing, but discovering you’ve been fired because you can’t enter the building where you work is quite another. Several current and former Tesla employees who talked with Business Insider claimed that some of the staff let go during this week’s major layoffs were unaware of their dismissals until they arrived at work on Monday morning.
At Tesla’s Sparks, Nevada factory, security took to scanning employee badges for folks coming out of vans that shuttle workers between parking lots and facilities. Those who had been laid off were singled out and sent back on separate vans, current employees who spoke to BI on condition of anonymity said. At Tesla’s now-infamous Fremont facility, security told workers that if their badges didn’t work, it meant they were no longer employed.
While lockouts are by no means an anomaly in the tech industry or even at Elon Musk-owned companies specifically, it’s an especially cruel way to treat one’s employees on their way out the door. In interviews with Fox 7 in Austin, workers at Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory described the shock and hurt they felt upon learning they’d been laid off, some of whom were informed when they were unable to get into the building on Monday morning.
Although the email sent to the Austin Gigafactory workers seemingly included a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice, which is required by federal law in the case of plant closures and mass layoffs at most companies of over 100 employees, the Texas Workforce Commission told Fox 7 that it does not have any such notice on file for Tesla.
If WARN notices are in fact in place for the newly-laid off Tesla workers, they should be paid up through at least June 14 by law and if not, the company could be subject to federal violations, which is the last thing it needs amid its massive stock drop and dwindling sales.
