Tesla, Elon Musk's electric vehicle company, has denied laying off workers due to the most recent union drive in Buffalo, New York.
The corporation said it fired 27 workers due to poor performance and that these people were identified long before the union campaign was declared.
These individuals had been part of Tesla's Autopilot labeling team of 675 employees, and the company said it announced the layoffs in a blog post earlier this month.
"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," said the firm.
Union Drive
City of Buffalo organizers claimed workers were laid off the day after the union announced its intentions to the public. They said that Tesla fired over 30 workers to silence the participants.
Notably, CEO Elon Musk has a history of vocal anti-union stances, BBC reported.
Arian Berek, a former Tesla employee who has been let go and a member of the union's organizing committee, stated, "I strongly feel this is in retaliation to the committee announcement, and it's shameful."
"We're angry. This won't slow us down. This won't stop us. They want us to be scared, but I think they just started a stampede," Sara Costantino added, a current Tesla employee and part of the organizing committee.
Filed Complaint
Union officials claimed that 18 workers were terminated in retribution for union activities and to deter union participation, according to the complaint filed with National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The organizers said they anticipated having extra names to the complaint based on a corporate conversation that led them to suspect other workers had been sacked. Officials said they were still verifying whether or not all of the terminated workers had actively participated in the campaign, as per BBC's report.
Tesla Workers United, supported by the same union that initiated organizing attempts at Starbucks, claims that the Buffalo operation employs about 2,000 individuals.
A referendum on whether or not to form a union among Tesla employees in Buffalo is now being organized. The party behind it is lobbying for workers' support. On Tuesday, Feb. 14, it wrote to Musk's company to explain its intentions and request that its management establish guidelines for a fair election.
The next day, activists claim that Tesla dismissed more than 30 employees and issued an email to colleagues advising them of a policy that forbids recording workplace discussions without the approval of all involved.
Participants asserted that the regulation infringed their rights guaranteed by federal and state statutes.
Tesla was previously found guilty of breaking labor laws by the NLRB during an assembly campaign at its California automobile production facility.
