After an earlier report on Thursday that claimed Tesla had fired employees behind a union organizing effort, the electric automaker has responded in a company blog post.
Tesla detailed the “facts behind the event”, which essentially says the employees let go had poor performance reviews, that were determined well before the union campaign was announced.
“Tesla conducts performance review cycles every six months. Employees receive a performance rating from 1 to 5 in each cycle that helps them calibrate their work with the expectations of their job. In the worst case, if an employee fails to meet their performance expectations they will be let go,” said the automaker.
The company said roughly 4% of the Buffalo team employees on the Autopilot labeling team were let go, due to poor performance reviews. These employees were notified of their performance but did not get better, resulting in their termination, said Tesla.
“The impacted employees were identified on February 3, 2023, which was well before the union campaign was announced. We became aware of organizing activities approximately 10 days later. We learned in hindsight that one out of the 27 impacted employees officially identified as part of the union campaign. This exercise pre-dated any union campaign,” said Tesla.
The company added the labeling team in Buffalo, New York, has been growing over the past few months at about 10 employees per week. In the past 6 months alone, employee numbers have increased 54% to 675 as of the beginning of this week, up from the previous 437.
As for allegations employees were being monitored and thus being forced to skip bathroom breaks? Tesla says, “the reason there is time monitoring for image labeling is to improve the ease of use of our labeling software. Since its purpose is to calculate how long it takes to label an image, there is nothing to be gained by delaying bathroom breaks. The claim that Tesla pressures employees to do so is categorically false.”
“Our employees in Buffalo are core to our mission of accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy, helping to build Superchargers, Solar Roof and power electronics for many applications,” concluded Tesla.
Tesla rarely responds to false allegations as it has disbanded its public relations team, and most clarifications have come from the company’s Twitter account or from CEO Elon Musk. But this time these allegations have resulted in Tesla clarifying the matter in a company blog post.
