By Hyun Joo Jin
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Two fired Tesla employees filed an emergency motion on Tuesday to arrest the electric car maker for allegedly seeking severance deals for compensation well below what is required by law.
As part of Tesla’s ongoing layoffs, he’s asked employees to agree to release him from all claims, in exchange for just one or two weeks’ pay and benefits, according to the petition filed. in a Texas court.
This is a small portion of the actual 60 days pay and benefits that employees would be entitled to under one labor law – the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, a he added.
The two workers were among more than 500 workers laid off at Tesla’s massive factory in Sparks, Nevada, in May and June.
“Employees who have lost their jobs are generally eager for any additional pay they can get and have no reason to know they are entitled to more due to Tesla’s violations of the WARN Act,” says the motion.
“In short, Tesla hopes to redeem the claims of these class members for pennies on the dollar.”
Tesla immediately responded to an email seeking comment.
The two former employees also filed a lawsuit in June alleging Tesla violated the law by carrying out a “mass layoff” without providing the required 60-day notice.
Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk told senior executives last month that he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy and that the company needed to cut its workforce by about 10%.
Later, the billionaire said that the 10% cuts would only apply to salaried employees and that the number of hourly employees was expected to increase further.
Tesla closed its office in San Mateo, Calif., and laid off about 200 employees working on its Autopilot driver assistance system. Most of those laid off were hourly workers.
Tesla faces a range of hurdles from production issues to rising inflation that could hurt profits, Wall Street analysts said on Tuesday, as it reported lower deliveries for the first time in two years.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
