June 1 (Reuters) – Ela Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc. (TSLA.O), asked employees to return to the office or leave the company, according to an email sent to employees Tuesday night and seen by Reuters.
“Everyone at Tesla should spend at least 40 hours a week in the office,” Musk said in an email.
“If you do not show up, we will assume that you have resigned.
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Two sources confirmed the authenticity of the email, reviewed by Reuters. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Large technology companies in Silicon Valley do not require workers to return to the office full-time, facing resistance from some workers and the resurgence of coronavirus cases.
Tesla has relocated to Austin, Texas, but has one of its factories and an engineering base in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Sure, there are companies that don’t require it, but when was the last time they shipped a great new product? It’s been a while, “Musk said in an email.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the opening ceremony of the Gigafactory in Shanghai, Shanghai, China, January 7, 2019. REUTERS / Aly Song
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“Tesla has and will create and actually produce the most exciting and significant products of any company on Earth. This will not happen when you call it.”
One of Musk’s followers posted another email on Twitter, which Musk apparently sent to executives asking them to work in the office for at least 40 hours a week or “leave Tesla.”
In response to this tweet, the billionaire, who agreed to make Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) private in a $ 44 billion deal, said: “They have to pretend to work elsewhere.”
In May 2020, Musk reopened a Tesla plant in Fremont, California, opposing measures to block Alameda County to curb the spread of coronavirus. Tesla reported 440 cases at the plant from May to December 2020, according to county data obtained from the legal information site Plainsite.
Last year, the Musk space company SpaceX reported 132 cases of COVID-19 at its headquarters in Hawthorne, Los Angeles, according to county figures.
While some large employers have adopted home volunteering policies on a permanent basis, others, including Google’s Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL.O), have argued that it is best to encourage personal interactions between colleagues.
Twitter CEO Parag Agraval tweeted in March that Twitter’s offices would reopen, but employees could still work from home if they preferred.
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Report by Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco and Tiyashi Datta in Bengaluru and; Edited by Anil D’Silva, Howard Goller and Jonathan Oatis
Our standards: Thomson Reuters’ principles of trust.
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