NEW YORK — A U.S. labor company has accused SpaceX of unlawfully firing workers who penned an open letter essential of CEO Elon Musk and creating an impression that employee actions had been beneath surveillance by the rocket ship firm.
A Los Angeles-based regional director for the Nationwide Labor Relations Board on Wednesday filed a grievance that consolidates eight unfair labor apply expenses towards SpaceX. The instances stem from the corporate’s alleged actions following the circulation of the workers’ letter again in June 2022.
The letter, amongst different office considerations, referred to as on executives to sentence Musk’s public conduct on X — the platform then-known as Twitter — and maintain everybody accountable for unacceptable conduct. Musk’s actions included making gentle of sexual harassment allegations towards him, which the billionaire denied.
“As our CEO and most distinguished spokesperson, Elon is seen because the face of SpaceX — each tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public assertion by the corporate,” the open letter mentioned on the time. The letter additionally referred to Musk’s actions as a ”frequent supply of distraction and embarrassment.”
A complete of 9 workers had been quickly terminated for his or her involvement within the letter, in keeping with a November 2022 submitting made on behalf of one of many workers to the NLRB.
Along with the firings, Wednesday’s grievance (which once more covers eight instances) accuses SpaceX of interrogating different staff in regards to the letter, saying that workers had been terminated for his or her participation within the letter and “inviting workers to give up in the event that they disagreed with the conduct of Chief Govt Officer Elon Musk.”
The grievance additionally alleges that some had been proven display screen pictures of communications between workers in regards to the letter, which “created an impression amongst (SpaceX’s) workers that their protected concerted actions had been beneath surveillance.”
SpaceX didn’t instantly reply to The Related Press’ requests for remark Thursday.
The Hawthorne, California firm has till mid-January to reply to the grievance, in keeping with Wednesday’s submitting. The grievance marks the NLRB’s first step in the direction of litigating these allegations and looking for a settlement. If a settlement is not reached, a listening to is scheduled to start on March 5 in Los Angeles.