Tesla Staff Didn’t Know They Were Laid Off Until They Tried to Enter the Building

"Just a heads-up would have been nice."

Lock It

Getting laid off is bad enough, but finding out that you've been sacked by being denied entry to the building where you work is another thing entirely.

According to multiple former and current Tesla workers who spoke to Business Insider, some employees sacked in Tesla's mass layoffs this week didn't learn about their terminations until they showed up to work Monday morning.

At Tesla's Sparks, Nevada factory, security took to scanning employee badges — an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence, apparently — 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, meanwhile, security told workers that if their badges didn't work, it meant they were no longer employed.

Cruel and Unusual

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, like their fellow workers at other facilities, informed when they were unable to get into the building on Monday morning.

"I was literally standing outside trying to figure out why my badge wasn't working. Why is it that I can't log in?" one now-ex Gigafactory employee, a single mother of three who spoke to the local broadcaster anonymously, said. "Come to find out I was laid off."

Another, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said they wished they'd had some sort of forewarning.

"It's ridiculous — the bomb just dropped on me and who knows how many other people," the ex-Tesla worker told Fox 7. "Just a heads-up would have been nice."

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.

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