BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — On Tuesday employees at Tesla's Gigafactory in Buffalo announced a committee was formed "in the interest of organizing our coworkers."
According to Tesla Workers United, it partnered with Workers United Rochester Regional Joint Board in its effort which SPoT Coffe, Starbucks, Lexington Co-Op and Remedy House workers have previously announced unionization efforts in partnership with.
Tesla Workers United now says Tesla has fired over 30 employees at the Buffalo Gigafactory in response to unionization efforts. It released a statement that said in part:
"These firings are unacceptable. The expectations required of us are unfair, unattainable, ambiguous and ever changing. For our CEO, Elon Musk, to fire 30 workers and announce his $2 billion charity donation on the same day is despicable. We stand as one."
Cathy Creighton, director of Cornell University's IRL Co-lab, said Tesla said the reason for firing those employees is for 'non-discriminatory reasons.' She said this still seems 'highly suspect' that the company would fire workers just a day after they announced plans for unionizing.
"This is sadly a very common practice in the US where employers try to nip an organizing effort right in the bud and stop it in its tracks, and it's been historically very effective for employers to do that," she said.
Since the termination, Creighton said the employees filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. The complaint is asking for an injunction.
7 News attempted to contact Tesla for comment when the unionization effort was originally announced, but only an email address was available and the following message was received "the recipient's mailbox is full and can't accept messages now. Please try resending your message later, or contact the recipient directly."
We attempted to contact Tesla again for comment on the report that employees were fired over unionization efforts and received the same response that the recipient's mailbox was full and could not accept messages.
**EDITOR'S NOTE**: A statement was posted on the Tesla website later on Thursday which said in part "there is a false allegation that Tesla terminated employees in response to a new union campaign."
It continues on to say the following are the facts behind the event:
- 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.
- This review process takes place globally, including in North America, Europe, China, etc. It is not localized to Buffalo.
- The most recent performance review cycle was from July 2022 through December 2022. On December 13th, 2022, managers across the company received a communication regarding the review schedule. This included information noting that exits for low performers would start the week of February 12, 2023.
- Approximately 4% of the employees on the Autopilot labeling team in Buffalo were exited as a result of this performance review cycle. The employees let go as part of this process received prior feedback on their poor performance from their managers over the course of the review period. Despite feedback, they did not demonstrate sufficient improvement.
- 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.
- The labeling team in Buffalo, NY has been growing over the last several months at an average rate of around 10 employees a week. Over the last 6 months, the department's employee base has grown 54%, from 437 employees to 675 employees as of the beginning of this week.
- 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.
