Tesla has launched a weblog put up defending itself towards allegations that it fired staff at Gigafactory New York over a push to unionize.

As we reported earlier this week, employees doing Autopilot information annotation at Gigafactory New York introduced their intent to unionize.

Yesterday, the organizers behind the unionization effort filed a grievance with the US Nationwide Labor Relations Board (NLRB) claiming that Tesla fired dozens of staff on the plant in retaliation for the union push.

Tesla didn’t touch upon the tales popping out primarily based on the NLRB grievance this morning, however the automaker has now put collectively a weblog put up claiming that the layoffs have been deliberate earlier than the corporate was made conscious of the unionization effort.

The automaker laid out the next chronology of occasions main as much as the layoffs:

• Tesla conducts efficiency assessment cycles each six months. Staff obtain a efficiency ranking from 1 to five in every cycle that helps them calibrate their work with the expectations of their job. Within the worst case, if an worker fails to fulfill their efficiency expectations they are going to be let go.
• This assessment course of takes place globally, together with in North America, Europe, China, and so on. It’s not localized to Buffalo.
• The newest efficiency assessment cycle was from July 2022 by December 2022. On December thirteenth, 2022, managers throughout the corporate acquired a communication concerning the assessment schedule. This included info noting that exits for low performers would begin the week of February 12, 2023.
• Roughly 4% of the workers on the Autopilot labeling workforce in Buffalo have been exited because of this efficiency assessment cycle. The staff let go as a part of this course of acquired prior suggestions on their poor efficiency from their managers over the course of the assessment interval. Regardless of suggestions, they didn’t show enough enchancment.
• The impacted staff have been recognized on February 3, 2023, which was nicely earlier than the union marketing campaign was introduced. We grew to become conscious of organizing actions roughly 10 days later. We realized in hindsight that one out of the 27 impacted staff formally recognized as a part of the union marketing campaign. This train pre-dated any union marketing campaign.
• The labeling workforce in Buffalo, NY has been rising over the past a number of months at a median charge of round 10 staff per week. During the last 6 months, the division’s worker base has grown 54%, from 437 staff to 675 staff as of the start of this week.
• The explanation there may be time monitoring for picture labeling is to enhance the convenience of use of our labeling software program. Since its goal is to calculate how lengthy it takes to label and picture, there may be nothing to be gained by delaying toilet breaks. The declare that Tesla pressures staff to take action is categorically false.

Electrek’s Take

Whereas the automaker definitely has an anti-union historical past and the timing seems horrible, I are inclined to imagine Tesla on this one.

In December, we reported that Tesla was planning a brand new wave of layoffs in Q1. This matches Tesla’s timeline of occasions right here.

It definitely doesn’t look good, however I feel all of it provides up. What do you assume? Tell us within the remark part under.