According to an email written to staff on Tuesday night and reviewed by Reuters, Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk has ordered them to return to work or leave the firm.
The email stated, “Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week.”
“We’ll think you’ve resigned if you don’t show up.”
The validity of the email examined by Reuters was confirmed by two Tesla sources. A request for comment from Tesla was not returned.
One of Musk’s Twitter followers shared another email that Musk allegedly addressed to executives, requesting that they work at least 40 hours per week at the office or “depart Tesla.”
“They should pretend to work somewhere else,” the billionaire, who has agreed to take Twitter Inc private in a $44 billion deal, remarked in reaction to this post. Musk himself was unavailable for comment.
In the face of a rise of coronavirus cases, some tech workers have been opposing efforts to get them back to work in California, which is home to one of Tesla’s factories and engineering headquarters.
Musk defied the county’s lockdown procedures to stop the spread of the coronavirus by reopening a Tesla facility in Fremont in May 2020. According to Alameda County data collected by legal information portal Plainsite, Tesla reported 440 cases at the factory from May to December 2020.
According to county records, Musk’s rocket company SpaceX reported 132 Covid-19 instances at its California headquarters last year.
Tesla has joined a growing list of companies that have made it mandatory for employees to return to work.
While some large companies have made voluntary work-from-home arrangements permanent, others, such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google, believe it is ideal to encourage in-person contact between coworkers.
In March, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said that the company’s headquarters will reopen, but that workers could still work from home if they so desired.
In a tweet dated March 3, Agrawal added, “Wherever you feel most productive and creative is where you will work, and that includes working from home full-time forever.”
