NLRB Complaint: Elon Musk broke labor laws by firing critical SpaceX employees
Several SpaceX employees, who were fired after circulating an open letter addressing CEO Elon Musk’s conduct, have filed a complaint accusing the company of violating labor laws.
The complaint, filed with the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday, details the fallout of what allegedly happened inside SpaceX after employees circulated the letter in June, which included urging executives to condemn Musk’s public conduct on Twitter – including dismissing allegations that he sexually harassed a flight attendant – and held everyone accountable for unacceptable behavior.
The letter was sent weeks after a media report surfaced that Musk had paid the flight attendant $250,000 to quash a potential sexual harassment lawsuit against him. The billionaire has denied the allegations.
In their letter, the employees urged SpaceX to consistently enforce its policy against unacceptable behavior and to commit to a transparent process for responding to allegations of misconduct. A day later, Paige Holland-Thielen and four other employees who helped organize the letter were fired, according to Holland-Thielen’s filing with a regional NLRB office in California. Four other employees were fired weeks later for their involvement in the writing.
A company spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk, who is CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and currently runs Twitter, prefers to do things his own way, even if it means breaking rules and regulations. He is currently in a defiant battle with the Civil Rights Department, a California regulator that is suing Tesla over rampant racial discrimination.
Some see Musk’s leadership style as autocratic and demanding, as shown in a recent email he sent to Twitter employees, giving them until Thursday evening to decide whether they want to stay with the company. Musk wrote that to build “a breakthrough Twitter 2.0” employees will need “extreme tenacity” and that it will take long hours of high intensity to succeed.
A number of engineers also said on Twitter that they were fired last week after speaking out critically of Musk, either publicly on Twitter or on an internal messaging board for Twitter employees.
In a statement, Holland-Thielen said as an engineer at SpaceX, she experienced “deep cultural issues” and was comforting to colleagues who faced similar struggles.
“It was clear that this culture was created by the top level,” she said.
Still, she said part of what she liked about the company was that any person could escalate issues to leadership and be taken seriously.
“We designed the letter to communicate to leaders on their terms and to show how their inaction has created concrete impediments to the mission’s long-term success,” Holland-Thielen said. “We never thought SpaceX would fire us for trying to make the company a success.”
The layoffs coincide with Musk’s $44 billion buyout of Twitter. Around the same time, the billionaire used a sexual term to poke fun at Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ stomach and also posted a poop emoji during an online discussion with then-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.
After firing the first batch of employees, SpaceX reportedly interrogated dozens of others in private meetings over the next two months and told them they could not share those conversations with anyone because of attorney-client privilege, the complaint said. Four other employees who helped write or share the letter were fired in July and August, the filing said, resulting in nine layoffs in total.
“Management used this ‘ends justifies the means’ philosophy to close down the ongoing abuse, harassment and abuse reported by my colleagues, many of whom were directly encouraged and inspired by the words and actions of the CEO,” said Tom Moline, who was also fired from SpaceX after organizing the letter.
Jeffery Pfeffer, a professor specializing in organizational behavior at Stanford University Business School, said the allegations are hardly surprising given Musk’s leadership style on Twitter. Musk’s success at companies like Tesla and SpaceX has led to what he calls hubris under the false notion that it’s “all about individual genius.”
“Powerful people are allowed to break the rules. They don’t think they’re bound by the same conventions as other people,” Pfeffer said. He said it showed the arrogance of Musk, one of the richest men in the world: “Why would he think he was just a mortal?”
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Groves reports from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
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