Tesla factory workers who stayed home due to COVID fears face termination

[banned-66611]

Two workers, Carlos Gabriel and Jessica Naro, say that they received termination notices from Tesla last week after taking unpaid time off in an effort to avoid the coronavirus. The San Jose Mercury News first reported Gabriel's termination notice last week.

"If you feel uncomfortable coming back to work at this time, please do not feel obligated to do so," Musk told employees in a May email prior to Tesla re-opening its factory.

Tesla HR boss Valerie Workman spelled out Tesla's policy in more detail. "if you are sick or have concerns with safely coming to work, please stay home," she wrote. "You may use your available PTO or if you have none, may take the time as unpaid without penalty. We respect your decision."

But Gabriel and Naro didn't feel like their decision was being respected when they received official notices from Tesla informing them that they were being terminated for “failure to return to work.”

Tesla factory workers who stayed home due to COVID fears face termination

 

[George Marley]

 

[MXLRplus]

Let's say you have employees on leave of absence in a low skilled non-union job who refuse to give the company a return date.

What does a responsible factory manager do? You must replace them. You cannot run a factory without employees. It's not Congress where showing up isn't a requirement.

This is just the latest in several ploys used by UAW to force the company to unionize. The other US automakers are in operation.

 

[ChrML]

When cases like this are blown into the media, Tesla will loose always. There are always people that seek to take advantage of situations like this, well knowing that they win any argument over it.

One of the guys didn't even respond to the email from Tesla's HR. Failure to even respond to the email, and no info from them, ofcourse that triggers questions and uncertainty from Tesla.

Trust me, Tesla is better off without them ... If you really enjoy working at Tesla, you will wear masks, keep distance and do what you can to make it work. If you're not motivated, then everything will be difficult/impossible and there will be 100 reasons for not showing up for work.

 

[cwerdna]

Trust me, Tesla is better off without them ... If you really enjoy working at Tesla, you will wear masks, keep distance and do what you can to make it work. If you're not motivated, then everything will be difficult/impossible and there will be 100 reasons for not showing up for work.

Not sure if you realize that COVID-19 in quite a few parts of the US is out of control, no doubt to our country's chaotic response at best, with mixed messages all the time.

Per Coronavirus Update (Live): 10,272,143 Cases and 504,965 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer, if you sort by deaths per 1 million population, your country is at 49 deaths per million from COVID-19 whereas the US is at 388. State of California per United States Coronavirus: 2,637,180 Cases and 128,438 Deaths - Worldometer is at 150, which is still 3x worse than your country. SF Bay Area where I and Tesla's Fremont plant are did lock down pretty early.

Alameda County (where Fremont resides) has become a Bay Area hotspot: List of Coronavirus Cases in the Bay Area. It has a 1.67 million population vs. ~2 million in Santa Clara County.

Most Tesla factory workers aren't wealthy due to high Bay Area cost of living and I suspect most live far away in cheaper housing areas. They may live in multi-generational households and if they catch COVID-19, they could kill their elderly relatives.

 

[MXLRplus]

So the Bay Area people are weaker and sickly unlike the Great Lakes and Southern auto workers. Gotcha.

 

[ChrML]

Not sure if you realize that COVID-19 in quite a few parts of the US is out of control, no doubt to our country's chaotic response at best, with mixed messages all the time.

Per Coronavirus Update (Live): 10,272,143 Cases and 504,965 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer, if you sort by deaths per 1 million population, your country is at 49 deaths per million from COVID-19 whereas the US is at 388. State of California per United States Coronavirus: 2,637,180 Cases and 128,438 Deaths - Worldometer is at 150, which is still 3x worse than your country. SF Bay Area where I and Tesla's Fremont plant are did lock down pretty early.

Alameda County (where Fremont resides) has become a Bay Area hotspot: List of Coronavirus Cases in the Bay Area. It has a 1.67 million population vs. ~2 million in Santa Clara County.

Most Tesla factory workers aren't wealthy due to high Bay Area cost of living and I suspect most live far away in cheaper housing areas. They may live in multi-generational households and if they catch COVID-19, they could kill their elderly relatives.

Full respect for wishing to be careful. But when home, and not on work, they should atleast show a little bit interest for their workplace and respond when they email, and give a proper reason for staying home (such as living with elderly).

Preventing spread is more about personal responsibility though. If you go to work, keep social distance, and wash your hands often, you will not get Covid-19.

 

[Uncle Paul]

Most likely that Tesla is letting these people go is because they were known trouble making activists.

"He carried a sign that said "Tesla doesn’t care about human life." Gabriel believes his termination was retaliation for his activism."

What company would want these types of people going around sowing dissent. Not responding to company communications showed additional lack of respect.

 

[cwerdna]

Preventing spread is more about personal responsibility though. If you go to work, keep social distance, and wash your hands often, you will not get Covid-19.

There is no guarantee of that.

You've seen Figure 2 - Coronavirus Disease Outbreak in Call Center, South Korea - Volume 26, Number 8—August 2020 - Emerging Infectious Diseases journal - CDC where all the blue seated people in a call center got COVID-19, right? Goes with Coronavirus Disease Outbreak in Call Center, South Korea.

And, all the red circle people in Figure - COVID-19 Outbreak Associated with Air Conditioning in Restaurant, Guangzhou, China, 2020 - Volume 26, Number 7—July 2020 - Emerging Infectious Diseases journal - CDC got COVID-19, seemingly from A1. That goes with COVID-19 Outbreak Associated with Air Conditioning in Restaurant, Guangzhou, China, 2020. It seems like the HVAC system's airflow is what did it.

When you go into any setting, can you immediately evaluate the airflow and reposition yourself and others permanently to avoid being infected/infecting others?

The issue is that these factory workers (and many workers deemed essential (e.g. food service, police, fire, supermarket workers, etc.) by our local govts) are forced to chose between their health and having $ to sustain themselves.

They cannot work from home, unlike me. I've been forced to (and can) WFH ever since around March 16th ever since my county locked down.

Some of those folks carpool (e.g. Tesla factory co-workers killed by alleged drunk, wrong-way driver, search Charge Time: Electric Car Workers Accuse Tesla of Low Pay and Intimidation for carpool) and may take a public transit coupled with shuttles shuttle to/from work and thus can't socially distance either. I know about Tesla shuttles (e.g. Alameda County Sheriff's Deputy Killed In Highway 580 Tesla Bus Crash) but they might be for their office workers. Tesla Restarts Fremont Factory Despite Shelter Order refers to company bus.

Silicon Valley's new extreme: The 2:30 a.m. tech bus from Salida also alludes to distances

Tesla did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but visits to shuttle stops and interviews on the ground show its network of buses stretches to the eastern limits of a new megaregion. These buses move employees to Tesla's 15,000-person Fremont factory, where pay starts at around $19 an hour — not enough to afford Fremont's average $2,500 rent.

Driving the shuttles pays better. One private bus driver who works for a third-party contractor and picks up Tesla factory workers in the Central Valley said he is paid just shy of $30 an hour, plus benefits including health care and a 4% match on 401(k) contributions. The driver, who also lives in the Central Valley, and asked to remain anonymous since he was not authorized to speak about his company or Tesla, said his company alone transports between 4,000 and 5,000 workers per day from the region. Tesla started picking up workers in the Central Valley in 2016, but the company has more than doubled its fleet in the region and switched to mostly double-decker buses, he said.
...
Take Tracy, a sleepy Central Valley town just east of the Altamont Pass, now a stop along the Tesla shuttle route.

(Tracy, CA to Tesla's Fremont plant is about 43 miles (~69 km) or 47 minutes by car with no traffic.)
How Tesla fought to keep its Fremont factory open despite coronavirus restrictions

Tesla’s plant employs roughly 10,000 people, but many workers commute from elsewhere, including California’s Central Valley. Video recorded by The Times on March 17 showed workers standing shoulder-to-shoulder to pack onto buses in the Tesla parking lot.

I don't know if there are shuttles/shared transport to/from the Fremont plant and Manteca but Tesla workers complain of long hours, low pay refers to Manteca: "He commutes from Manteca, spending three hours a day in his vehicle, and can put in 60-70 hours per week." Manteca is about 56 miles (~90 km) from Tesla's Fremont plant.

 

[cwerdna]

To add to the above, I looked up Salida which I hadn't even heard of. That's 65 miles (~104 km) drive from Tesla's Fremont plant. I'd heard of workers coming from Stockton and Modesto which are similarly far: ~63 miles (~101 km) and ~69 miles (~111 km), respectively.

 

[cwerdna]

Not sure if the folks below are the same people as in the OP.

Tesla Workers Were Fired After Opting to Stay Home Out of Virus Concerns: Report

One of the workers has a 1-year-old son born with respiratory problems; another is responsible for caring for an aging stepfather; and the third worker's fiancee had recent heart surgery and suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the Post reported.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/tech...p_homepage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=rss

But the workers said they thought Musk’s order stood and they could continue at home unpaid. The workers followed the HR guidance, then kept their supervisors updated about their situations starting in June, acknowledging they remained concerned about being exposed. Their managers, they said, were understanding and allowed them to remain home for myriad reasons: fear of exposing a 1-year-old son who was born with respiratory problems in one case, an aging stepfather cared for by the Tesla worker in another and a fiancee who had recent heart surgery and suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

By the end of June, Tesla told the workers they had abandoned their jobs and fired them, they said.

 

[banned-66611]

Not sure if the folks below are the same people as in the OP.

Tesla Workers Were Fired After Opting to Stay Home Out of Virus Concerns: Report

https://www.washingtonpost.com/tech...p_homepage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=rss

Yep, that's the problem right there. Musk and HR both said that it was fine, then changed their minds and fired them. I can see this ending up in court.