JAKARTA - On Friday, June 17, SpaceX fired a group of employees involved in writing an open letter to company leaders criticizing CEO, Elon Musk. Now labor attorneys say the layoffs may have violated US labor laws.
The employee letter circulated Thursday, June 16, calling for a stronger anti-harassment policy at SpaceX and a more restrained Twitter presence from Musk. At least five employees were fired shortly after the letter was published.
It is not clear whether any of the fired employees will seek to file a lawsuit with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). But if they did, the lawyers said they would have a strong case.
“To be covered, an action has to be taken together and it has to relate to working conditions,” said Charlotte Garden, a law professor at the University of Seattle who wrote about employee speech rights for the Economic Policy Institute this year.
The hardest part of retaliation cases is often proving that an employee was actually fired in retaliation for speaking up, but SpaceX has made it easy to pinpoint the connection.
In a note to employees following the layoffs, SpaceX President, Gwynne Shotwell, explained that the employees had been laid off specifically because of their involvement with the letter, which she described as "transgressing activism."
“This could very well be seen as retaliation for them speaking up,” said Mary Inman, a whistleblower attorney at Constantine Cannon. “What does this mean for the workers? Basically saying, we don't want to hear from you. ”
SpaceX did not respond to The Verge's request for comment on the attorneys' statements.
For legal challenges, the main hurdle is to show that the letter itself is an expression of employees coming together to discuss working conditions, but the letter's emphasis is on the company's goals and the "no-asshole" policy seems to fit that model.
There are exceptions where the remark is vulgar, abusive, or customer-directed, but none of these fit the circumstances of SpaceX's case.
"It struck me as a letter that was particularly revealing about working conditions," Garden told The Verge. "I think the NLRB will see it that way too."
If the case is won by the employees, SpaceX could be forced to rehire the fired employee with payback. In particular, the protection will not apply to managers and supervisors, who are not subject to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
The issues raised in the letter also match the longstanding harassment issue within SpaceX.
In December, five former SpaceX employees filed complaints about certain harassment issues they felt had been mishandled. A former intern filed a lawsuit against SpaceX in 2020, claiming the company took revenge on him after he reported an incident of harassment.
The employee letter makes the same point by itself, saying “recent events are not isolated incidents; they are symbols of a wider culture.”
This is not the first time that one of Musk's companies has violated US labor laws. After a heated argument over efforts to unify Tesla's Fremont plant under the United Auto Workers, the NLRB ordered Tesla to rehire a fired employee with payback.
Musk was also ordered to delete a tweet implying that the union would mean the end of stock options in the company, although, more than a year after the order was issued, the tweet remains active.
The American Communications Worker (CWA) also sees the sacking of SpaceX as more fuel for ongoing efforts to regulate tech workers.
"Elon Musk has said he is committed to free speech - except when his employees exercise their legally protected right to speak out about their working conditions," the CWA said in a statement.
"We hope this will be a meeting point for workers at SpaceX, as it is at Google and Activision," added CWA.
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