Former Tesla employees claimed the company has breached labor laws after announcing mass layoffs.
John Lynch and Daxton Hartsfield, two former Tesla employees, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas against the electric car company on Sunday, arguing that the company fired them improperly. The suit arrives weeks after Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced plans to lay off 10% of the company’s salaried staff due to his “bad feeling” about the economy.
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The lawsuit specifically claimed that Tesla violated the WARN Act, according to documents reviewed by the Washington Examiner. This law requires employers with 100 or more employees to provide those employees a written notice 60 days before the date of a mass layoff or else be liable for damages to the affected employees.
Lynch and Hartsfield were employees at Tesla’s Nevada-based Giga Nevada factory and were notified that their employment was “being terminated effective immediately,” rather than giving them the required 60 days’ notice. Because of this, they seek damages in the amount of 60 days’ compensation.
Musk announced his plan for mass layoffs over the next three months on June 3, which quickly began to affect the company’s 100,000 employees. Musk walked his numbers back on Tuesday, claiming the layoffs would only affect an estimated 3.5% of Tesla’s salaried workforce and that things would improve after the layoffs, according to CNBC. “A year from now, I think our head count will be higher in both salaried and obviously in hourly,” Musk added.
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Musk’s companies are facing other lawsuits from outside parties. The billionaire has been sued for $258 billion over his promotion of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin. The lawsuit accused Musk of being involved in an alleged “crypto pyramid scheme.”
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment from the Washington Examiner, partly due to its lack of a public relations department.
