Tesla Motors Slapped With Lawsuit For Firing Hundreds Of Employees

Tesla Motors has a serious lawsuit to deal with now, for firing hundreds of its employees after the annual performance reviews.

After the recent incident involving Tesla Motors firing a huge number of its employees, claiming it to be a part of the usual round of annual performance reviews, the company is now at the receiving end of a lawsuit. Filed by an ex-employee who got terminated recently, the lawsuit claims that the company has violated a California state law by laying off hundreds of workers without giving the required advance notice.

As per the law, the company must have given a 60-day notice when terminating more than 50 employees. Tesla Motors on the other hand laid off around 400 to 700 of its workforce marking it as a part of the annual reviews. The company played down the incident as normal for a company which has around 33,000 employees. Tesla also ensured that the terminations were not phrased as “layoffs” in any of its press statements and releases.

Abraham Duarte, the aforementioned ex-employee has filed a six-page complaint in Alameda County Superior Court, which states that the company didn’t follow California’s WARN Act when ordering the mass termination which happened earlier this month.

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Speaking to Jalopnik, Duarte’s attorney Nick Rosenthal said,

"We understand that Tesla’s, presumably, going to say, ‘No, this isn’t a layoff, it wasn’t due to a lack of work, it was because they were bad employees’. We know that, in the case of our client, that certainly wasn’t true. He was an excellent employee. That’s why we believe they’re just using this excuse, ‘Oh, these employees are underperforming."

The company is already facing a handful of issues, including the failure to meet Model 3 production targets and separate lawsuits for racial discrimination and anti-LGBT threats at the workplace. There are also reports of Elon Musk being not too happy about the unionization efforts at Tesla’s Fremont, California factory. Adding to these are the worker complaints of pay, safety and workers rights violations.

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Meanwhile, Tesla spokespersons continue to stand by their statement that what has transpired is the result of annual performance reviews and are not to be taken as layoffs.

Source: Jalopnik