Tesla employees reportedly say crowding and slow WiFi is roiling Elon Musk's return-to-office mandate
Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
- Tesla workers have reportedly said there isn't enough space for Elon Musk's office mandate.
- Staff told The Information desk space and parking spots were in short supply at Tesla's Fremont site.
- On May 31, Musk told executives they must return to the office or resign.
Tesla workers say Elon Musk's plans for staff to return to the office have been complicated by a lack of space at the company's Fremont Factory, according to a report from The Information.
Several workers who prefer to remain anonymous told the publication that they couldn't find desk space at the corporate offices in Tesla's Fremont complex. Some also said the WiFi was too weak for them to work at the office, the publication reported.
Parking was also in short supply as more workers returned, according to The Information. Workers at the plant had been known to take shuttles into the Fremont factory before the pandemic.
Since the pandemic, Tesla's workforce has more than doubled from about 48,000 employees in 2019 to nearly 100,000 last year. But, Musk said earlier this month that he plans to cut Tesla's salaried workforce by 10% amid recession concerns in the US.
Some workers told The Information that managers at the facility told them to come in fewer than five days a week due to space - a direct conflict to Musk's mandate on May 31.
In a companywide email, the Tesla CEO reportedly told executives that they must come into the office for a minimum of 40 hours a week or resign.
"They should pretend to work somewhere else," Musk wrote on Twitter at the time.
The billionaire has said the move is part of an effort to promote equality between factory workers — who were required to work in person throughout the pandemic — and executives.
At a meeting at the factory on June 8, The Information reported that Musk said he planned to come into the office at least six days per week.
The billionaire has claimed he spent exorbitant amounts of time at the facility in the past. In 2018, Musk said on the podcast Recode Decode that his work at Tesla and SpaceX sometimes drove him to sleep on the Tesla factory's floor and work more than 120 hours a week. The CEO said later that year that he scaled back to 80- to 90-hour work weeks.
Read The Information's full report on its website.
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