Tesla plans to lay off 2,688 employees at its Gigafactory in Texas, as outlined in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) sent to the Texas Workforce Commission and Austin Mayor Kirk Watson. The layoffs will take effect starting June 14, following a notice issued under the WARN Act, which mandates companies with over 100 employees to provide 60 days’ notice for mass layoffs.
The layoffs, which employees were informed of via early morning emails on April 15, took many by surprise. “Just out of the blue, they laid me off,” said Bradley Olson, a former employee, to FOX 7 Austin. He shared that he received an email stating his last working day was April 14, but the formal termination would occur two months later. “They gave me an entire three-paragraph condolence letter about me being laid off,” Olson added, expressing disappointment at the lack of prior notice.
The email cited cost reductions and the need for increased productivity as the reasons behind the layoffs. Employees were informed that access to their work accounts had been disabled, causing confusion for those who showed up for their shifts. “At 2 a.m., which is the middle of the day for me, I just looked at my phone and my Microsoft Teams logged me out. I thought I just needed to reset my password, but it said my account was blocked,” Olson recounted.
This announcement comes on the heels of other significant job cuts at Tesla, including reductions in the team responsible for the Supercharger network in the U.S. The company disclosed plans in its annual filing for 2023 to optimize its charging infrastructure, aiming to meet growing customer demand and maintain cost-effectiveness.
In an unexpected twist, Tesla has begun to rehire some of the staff it previously laid off, echoing a similar pattern observed after Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Musk indicated last year that he wished to bring back some of the employees he had let go.