Illegally fired SpaceX employees critical of Musk, the Federal Agency says
Federal labor officials accused the rocket company SpaceX on Wednesday of illegally firing eight employees for distributing a letter criticizing the company’s founder and CEO Elon Musk.
According to a complaint from a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board, the company fired the employees in 2022 for calling on SpaceX to distance itself from Mr. Musk’s social media comments, including one in which he mocked allegations of sexual harassment. .
The letter circulated by employees also called on SpaceX, which has more than 13,000 employees, to clarify its harassment policy and enforce it consistently.
The labor board complaint said the company’s president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, illegally prohibited employees from distributing the letter, and identified similar violations by other executives and managers.
The case will go before the administrative judge in early March unless SpaceX agrees to a settlement in advance.
“At SpaceX, the rockets may be reusable, but the people who build them are treated as expendable,” said Paige Holland-Thielen, one of the laid-off employees. “I am hopeful that these allegations will hold SpaceX and its leadership accountable for their long history of mistreating employees and suppressing discourse.”
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Musk has sometimes been tough on his companies’ employees, such as when he fired roughly half the workforce at Twitter, now known as X, shortly after acquiring the company in 2022. He later fired about two dozen internal critics at Twitter, which has lost about 80 percent of the 7,500 employees who worked there when the billionaire took over.
Tesla, where Mr. Musk is CEO, has spent years litigating a case in which the Labor Board accused it of firing an employee for involvement in union activities. The board ruled in 2021 that the firing was illegal and ordered Tesla to reinstate the employee with back pay, a decision that a federal court upheld. Company is attractive the matter further.
The Ministry of Justice has sued SpaceX in August accused the country of discriminating against asylum seekers and refugees in hiring practices, but a judge has ruled against it issued an order which prevents the matter from going any further.
In December 2021, a former SpaceX employee published an essay which detailed incidents of harassment and groping by colleagues, which she said went largely unnoticed after she reported them.
The essay sparked outrage within the company, which said it would begin an audit of its harassment policies.
The following spring, Business Insider reports this that SpaceX paid $250,000 in 2018 to settle a claim in which an employee accused Mr. Musk of exposing himself and sexually propositioning her. Mr. Musk refused the accusation and joked about it on Twitter.
Not long after, a group of employees began brainstorming ideas to make the company less tolerant of harassment and drafting the letter. Ms. Shotwell was aware of the effort and appeared to be in favor of it, according to comments she left on an internal communications platform at The New York Times.
In mid-June 2022, several employees distributed their letter to colleagues. The letter called Musk’s public comments “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us” and urged the company to “enforce clear repercussions for any unacceptable behavior, whether from the CEO or any employee who starts on the first day.’
Although some managers responded sympathetically, within hours Ms. Shotwell reprimanded two employees involved in writing and distributing the letter, Tom Moline and Ms. Holland-Thielen. “Please stop flooding employee communication channels immediately,” Ms. Shotwell said in an email, adding: “I consider ignoring my email to be insubordination.”
The next day, the company fired Mr. Moline, Ms. Holland-Thielen and three other employees involved in organizing the letter. In July and August 2022, four others were fired in connection with the letter. (The Labor Board considered only eight dismissals because the ninth employee had not filed formal charges.)
The Labor Board complaint said the firings were retaliatory and that Ms. Shotwell and other SpaceX officials had interfered with employees’ rights to engage in coordinated activities that are protected by law.
It also said a company vice president broke the law by criticizing the letter at a meeting with employees a few days after it was distributed and “inviting employees to quit if they disagreed with the behavior from CEO Elon Musk.” The Times previously reported that a company vice president told employees that the letter was an extremist act and that Mr. Musk could do whatever he wanted within the company.
The complaint also alleged that a senior human resources official illegally created the appearance of surveillance when she showed employees involved in drafting screenshots of a letter they conducted through a messaging app.
Ryan Mac reporting contributed.