At the beginning of June, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in an email to executives that the company needed to cut about 10% of jobs. Now, former employees have filed a lawsuit against Tesla for allegedly violating federal law by not providing an advanced notice for the layoffs, according to Reuters.
The lawsuit claimed that Tesla fired more than 500 employees from its factory in Sparks, Nevada. Two former employees filed the lawsuit in Texas on Sunday, Reuters noted.
Under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, companies are required to provide a 60-day notice for mass layoffs, which is defined as 50 or more employees at a single location, according to the lawsuit.
"Tesla has simply notified the employees that their terminations would be effective immediately," the lawsuit said.
According to the Los Angeles Times, John Lynch and Daxton Hartsfield are two of the more than 500 workers that were let go over the past month, and "are seeking class-action status for their lawsuit on behalf of others who were part of mass layoffs in May and June."
Lynch claimed he was terminated immediately on June 10, and Hartsfield was let go on June 15 without any notice either.
"Tesla started laying people off in blatant disregard for the WARN Act," Shannon Liss-Riordan, a Boston employment attorney who is representing the workers, said in an interview on Monday, per the LA Times.
Musk commented on the lawsuit on Tuesday, after mentioning that the mass layoffs would only affect about 3.5% of Tesla's workforce, according to CNBC.
"That is a small lawsuit of minor consequence," Musk said. "Anything that relates to Tesla gets big headlines, whether it is a bicycle accident or something much more serious."
Musk went on to say that he'd consider the lawsuit to be in the "trivial category."
"While two months' pay certainly doesn't matter to him, it matters a lot to the employees who made his company what it is," Liss-Riordan added, per Reuters.
Liss-Riordan noted that Tesla is offering just one week of severance for some of the employees that lost their jobs. However, she is doing all she can to stop Tesla from doing that.
"She is preparing an emergency motion with a court to try to block Tesla from trying to get releases from employees in exchange for just one week of severance," Reuters' Akriti Sharma and Hyunjoo Jin wrote.
The lawsuit against Tesla and Musk comes after the world's richest person told employees that they will be required to work in-person at an office for 40 hours a week, at least, or have to leave the company.
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