Fired SpaceX workers who criticized Elon Musk in open letter slamming his ’embarrassing’ tweets are now suing the company for retaliating against them – in suit filed HOURS after he appeared in court over $56B Tesla pay
- Eight former SpaceX employees who were fired for criticizing Elon Musk’s tweeting habits filed a lawsuit against the company on Wednesday
- In the letter, the employees demanded the company distance itself from Musk’s public image after he mocked sexual harassments allegations against him
- The axed employees said after the first five were canned, 20 engineers were invited to a meeting centered around Musk that became heated
- They filed unfair-labor-practice charges against SpaceX, arguing that it violated their right to come together for ‘mutual aid or protection’
Eight SpaceX workers who were fired after criticizing Elon Musk over his ’embarrassing tweets’ are now suing the company for retaliating against them.
According to the sacked employees, who are speaking out for the first time about their abrupt firing, 20 engineers were invited to the rocket manufacturers’ Texas headquarters in June to talk about Musk, the New York Times reported.
The meeting came after the company fired five workers, including Paige Holland-Thielen and Tom Moline, for penning a letter slamming Musk’s ’embarrassing’ and ‘distracting’ tweets poking fun at sexual harassment allegations pointed at him.
Two former employees who attended the June meeting told the Times it quickly became heated, with one of the vice presidents, Jon Edwards, describing the letter as an extremist act.
Following the meeting, four additional people were canned for supporting the letter, bringing the total of workers fired over the incident up to nine.
On Wednesday, eight of the fired employees filed unfair-labor-practice charges against SpaceX to the National Labor Relations Board, arguing that it violated their right to come together for ‘mutual aid or protection’ when they supported the letter criticizing Musk.
It’s the latest lawsuit facing the richest man in the world after he appeared at a Delaware Court on Wednesday in a case brought by a Tesla shareholder who has accused him of ‘unjustified enrichment’.
Eight former SpaceX employees who were fired for criticizing Elon Musk’s tweeting habits filed a lawsuit against the company on Wednesday
Paige Holland-Thielen (above) was among the nine sacked employees and eight suing SpaceX. They filed unfair-labor-practice charges against the company, arguing that it violated their right to come together for ‘mutual aid or protection’
SpaceX did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
During the previously undisclosed June meeting, the fired employees told the Times that Edwards did not answer employees concerns about Musk’s tweeting habits, specifically when discussing sexual harassment.
In December 2021, Ashley Kosak, former Mission Integration engineer at SpaceX, published a damning essay accusing the company have doing little to nothing to combat harassment in the workplace.
SpaceX, which acknowledged that its workforce was predominantly male, launched an internal audit of its harassment policies.
But by May, reports came out that SpaceX had paid $250,000 to a company flight attendant in 2018 who accused Musk of exposing himself and asking her for sex.
Musk, who denied the allegations, appeared to mock the report on Twitter, writing: ‘Finally, we get to use Elongate as scandal name. It’s kinda perfect.’
Following post, the letter criticizing Musk began going around, which garnered 400 signatures from SpaceX employees.
In the letter, the unnamed workers gave the company’s directors ‘one month’ to ‘swiftly and explicitly separate’ from ‘Elon’s personal brand’.
They demanded that the company become more ‘inclusive’, and said its ‘no a**hole’ policy was not enforced clearly.
‘Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks,’ the former employees wrote. ‘As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX—every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company.
‘It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.’
The letter added: ‘SpaceX’s current systems and culture do not live up to its stated values, as many employees continue to experience unequal enforcement of our oft-repeated ‘No [A**hole]’ and ‘Zero Tolerance’ policies. This must change.’
The letter was also posted to the company’s internal communications system Wednesday, hours after Musk revealed publicly that he had voted for a Republican candidate for the first time by voting for Mayra Flores in South Texas.
The employees letter, which circulated in June, took aim at Musk for appearing to mock the sexual harassment allegations levied against him
The letter was also posted as Musk revealed he voted Republican, saying he was leaning towards Ron DeSantis for 2020 and mulling a Super PAC for centrists
SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell confirmed the employees’ firing in June, stunning the axed workers who thought she would have their backs
Holland-Thielen and Moline, who wrote the letter along with three other co-workers, said they were told to stop by Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer.
‘Please stop flooding employee communication channels immediately,’ Ms. Shotwell wrote in her email, on which she copied senior company officials. She added: ‘I will consider your ignoring my email to be insubordination. Instead, please focus on your job.’
The next day, the five workers were told they were fired.
In an internal statement Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX President and COO, said: ‘The letter, solicitations and general process made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their view.
‘We have too much critical work to accomplish and no need for this kind of overreaching activism.’
The move left the employees stunned, claiming that most of the coworkers and even management agreed with many of the ideas on their letter.
‘It was hard for me to believe what was happening, Moline told the Times. ‘It was so brazen. It feels like one of those times employees have protections.’
‘I had so much respect for her at the beginning,’ Holland-Thielen said of Shotwell. ‘I would see myself in what she’s done.’
Wilma Liebman, the former chairwoman of the National Labor Relations Board under President Barack Obama, said the employees likely will not succeed in their case, telling the times SpaceX can argue that their letter created a hostile work environment.
The drama with SpaceX came just as Musk was dealing with legal challenges for his other major company, Tesla.
A courtroom sketch of Elon Musk as he gave testimony in the trial over his $56 billion Tesla pay deal, which a shareholder claims amounted to ‘unjustified enrichment’ based on easy targets
Musk, the world’s richest man, was driven to court on Wednesday in the back of a black Tesla
Speaking on Wednesday, Musk told a trial over his $56 billion Tesla pay packet that the electric car maker was ‘extremely unlikely’ to succeed when the board signed off the huge reward.
Musk began the testimony by answering questions from his own lawyer, Evan Chesler, about his history at Tesla and described how the company was struggling to survive in 2017 as the mammoth pay package was being developed.
Asked whether he believed at the time that Tesla would succeed, he said: ‘I thought it was extremely unlikely.’
The company subsequently boomed to a valuation of $1trillion in December. Despite a rollercoaster year, shares are currently valued at nearly ten times what they were in 2017.
Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta sued Musk and the board in 2018 and hopes to prove that Musk used his dominance over the electric vehicle maker’s board to dictate terms of the package, which did not require him to work at Tesla full-time.
Musk also lashed out at the plaintiff’s attorney, Greg Varallo, for asking ‘complex questions’ that can’t be answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Musk, appearing at a court in Delaware on Wednesday, locked horns with an attorney for the plaintiff who questioned his roles as ‘Technoking’ of Tesla and ‘Chief Twit’ of Twitter
Musk has a history of giving combative testimony. The case is being overseen by The Honorable Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick in Delaware
Varallo spent much of his early cross-examination trying to draw Musk into admitting that he controls Tesla to such an extent that he can sway the board to do his bidding.
Among other things, Varallo questioned Musk about his title of ‘Technoking’, a role that Musk has previously noted comes with ‘panache’ and ‘great dance moves’.
‘I think comedy is legal,’ Musk told Varallo, who had questioned whether Musk was ‘stone-cold sober’ when he came up with the title.
He also used the response ‘comedy is legal’ when asked about his ‘Chief Twit’ title at Twitter, a description he coined after completing the takeover of the company.
Responding to a question about his role at Twitter, Musk fired back: ‘Are we in the Tesla trial or the Twitter trial?’
But the social media firm’s new boss went on to say a ‘fundamental organizational restructuring’ of Twitter will be completed by the end of next week.
The comment comes after he told staff to ‘commit to new hardcore’ work environment and to sign a pledge or be fired.
Transcript of SpaceX staffers’ scathing open letter
An open letter to the Executives of SpaceX,
In light of recent allegations against our CEO and his public disparagement of the situation, we would like to deliver feedback on how these events affect our company’s reputation, and through it, our mission. Employees across the spectra of gender, ethnicity, seniority, and technical roles have collaborated on this letter. We feel it is imperative to maintain honest and open dialogue with each other to effectively reach our company’s primary goals together: making SpaceX a great place to work for all, and making humans a multiplanetary species.
As SpaceX employees we are expected to challenge established processes, rapidly innovate to solve complex problems as a team, and use failures as learning opportunities. Commitment to these ideals is fundamental to our identity and is core to how we have redefined our industry. But for all our technical achievements, SpaceX fails to apply these principles to the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion with equal priority across the company, resulting in a workplace culture that remains firmly rooted in the status quo.
Individuals and groups of employees at SpaceX have spent significant effort beyond their technical scope to make the company a more inclusive space via conference recruiting, open forums, feedback to leadership, outreach, and more. However, we feel an unequal burden to carry this effort as the company has not applied appropriate urgency and resources to the problem in a manner consistent with our approach to critical path technical projects. To be clear: recent events are not isolated incidents; they are emblematic of a wider culture that underserves many of the people who enable SpaceX’s extraordinary accomplishments. As industry leaders, we bear unique responsibility to address this.
Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks. As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX—every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.
SpaceX’s current systems and culture do not live up to its stated values, as many employees continue to experience unequal enforcement of our oft-repeated ‘No Asshole’ and ‘Zero Tolerance’ policies. This must change. As a starting point, we are putting forth the following categories of action items, the specifics of which we would like to discuss in person with the executive team within a month:
Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand.
Hold all leadership equally accountable to making SpaceX a great place to work for everyone. Apply a critical eye to issues that prevent employees from fully performing their jobs and meeting their potential, pursuing specific and enduring actions that are well resourced, transparent, and treated with the same rigor and urgency as establishing flight rationale after a hardware anomaly.
Define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior. Clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s ‘no-asshole’ and ‘zero tolerance’ policies and enforce them consistently. SpaceX must establish safe avenues for reporting and uphold clear repercussions for all unacceptable behavior, whether from the CEO or an employee starting their first day.
We care deeply about SpaceX’s mission to make humanity multiplanetary. But more importantly, we care about each other. The collaboration we need to make life multiplanetary is incompatible with a culture that treats employees as consumable resources. Our unique position requires us to consider how our actions today will shape the experiences of individuals beyond our planet. Is the culture we are fostering now the one which we aim to bring to Mars and beyond?
We have made strides in that direction, but there is so much more to accomplish.
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