Tesla fires Giga New York employees involved in unionizing attempt

According to a complaint filed with the US National Labor Relations Board, Tesla just fired dozens of workers from its Giga New York plant, only a day after they announced their union campaign. If the complaint is upheld, Tesla can be found illegally terminating employment in retaliation of unionizing attempts.

It’s not the first time Tesla lands itself in hot water when it comes to unions. Back in 2021 the company was found to have violated labor laws when it fired an employee in what was seen as retaliation for supporting unionizing efforts.

Workers at the Buffalo plant, where Tesla employs nearly 1,000 staff responsible mainly for data annotation for the Autopilot software, announced on Tuesday they were to begin a campaign in order to establish unions and demanded better pay and better working conditions. The campaign is supported by Workers United.

It didn’t take long before reports of people being fired started flooding social media. Apparently on Wednesday Tesla took aggressive steps and fired dozens of people who claim the only reason was their support of the union campaign.

In the complaint filed with the US NLRB, workers accuse Tesla of illegally terminating employees over the unionizing efforts and to discourage any further union activity. The group of workers is asking the NLRB to seek a federal court injunction to stop the firings.

If this is indeed the case and Tesla is taking a heavy-handed approach to union activities at its factory, it wasn’t the brightest move. It appears to have completely backfired as the necessity of unions have been clearly highlighted by Tesla’s move and in fact the efforts to establish unions at Giga New York have gained support since the firings.

According to the employees, Tesla constantly monitors their activities, the keystrokes are tracked as well as time spent on assigned tasks. Workers are being tracked how much time they spend actively working which apparently results in many of them avoiding taking any breaks.

This will obviously play out in full public view and we will be watching. Elon Musk is known for his own working ethics and he expects everyone to follow, especially his employees. Although Tesla no longer has a PR department to answer any questions, it has bolstered up its legal team. Despite the complaint pointing out the retaliatory nature of the firings, the company’s extremely well paid lawyers made sure it has done it in a squeaky clean way by utilizing every possible loophole. It will be interesting what’s next.

Via