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Two workers, Carlos Gabriel and Jessica Naro, say that they received termination notices from Tesla last week after taking unpaid time off in an effort to avoid the coronavirus. The San Jose Mercury News first reported Gabriel's termination notice last week.
Both workers say that they were contacted this week by Tesla's HR department. Naro was given the opportunity to come back to work if she committed to a return date. She declined because her 6-year-old son has a health condition that puts him at heightened risk.
Gabriel ended his call after the Tesla rep refused to allow him to record it. He hasn't heard back since and believes he is no longer on Tesla's payroll
[...] "If you feel uncomfortable coming back to work at this time, please do not feel obligated to do so," Musk told employees in a May email prior to Tesla re-opening its factory.
[...] In its termination email, which Gabriel shared with the Mercury News, Tesla cited Gabriel's failure to respond to emails and voicemails inquiring when Gabriel would return to work. Gabriel said he didn't feel a need to respond because he had been told he could stay home if he felt unsafe. Gabriel and Naro told The Washington Post that they had both been in regular contact with their managers prior to the termination notices.
Tesla didn't respond to a Thursday email seeking comment for this story.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday June 27 2020, @02:14PM (3 children)
> surely it is ridiculous for him to presume that he could wait indefinitely to even contact HR at all
I'm not so sure. Maybe he did talk to HR, and they concocted this story that he did not. Maybe HR called and sent him a letter, with the same message and question, and he replied to only one of them, and now they claim he didn't respond.
I could also see them insisting he come up with a date, as if he's supposed to know when the pandemic will end. And, asserting that an answer like you suggest, "when the pandemic has ended", is the same as no response. They want a date, and they will have a date from him, or their hamfisted machinery will tar him with all kinds of black marks, such as, having the wrong kind of attitude, being unreliable, not a team player, blah, blah, blah, any of which are ample justification for termination.
> Should he be kept on the books for 20 years?
The United States should have good health care. Then questions like that would be moot. Employers are one of the worst interest groups who have actively prevented national health care from being created and implemented.
(Score: 2) by Jiro on Saturday June 27 2020, @05:15PM (2 children)
Huh? He left because he was afraid of catching the virus. Having better health care wouldn't help him--the virus doesn't have a cure. There may be some edge case where health care would help him, but I doubt that having some percentage greater chance of getting a ventilator because of better health care would be enough to keep him from being afraid of catching the virus.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday June 27 2020, @07:18PM (1 child)
If we had better health care, this pandemic would have been nipped in the bud. Instead, many of our politicians didn't want to hear about it, or any other bad news such as Global Warming.
In those critical early days when COVID-19 wold have been easy to stop, they tried to ignore it, and worse. They indulged in shooting the messengers. They shut down the very health programs that had been established to deal with this kind of threat. They tried to deny that it was a problem. They want to cut back on testing, because that will make the numbers look better. That's like dealing with being low on gas by taping a picture of the gas gauge needle pointing to 'F' over the real gauge. While they were screwing around in that fashion, things got worse and worse.
They're still at it. They're making workers choose between going to work and risk catching the disease, or staying home and losing their income. There's no good reason for handing workers such a dilemma. Some will choose work, and that will only make the pandemic worse.
It's not Tesla's fault that they and their workers have been put into this position. When a hurricane strikes or other emergency occurs, the government responds with disaster relief. They also find ways to reduce the damage from disaster. Move people out of floodplains, make buildings more wind and earthquake resistant, things like that. This pandemic is an emergency. But it seems that because an epidemic is a rarer kind of emergency, the current leadership just can't roll with it. And so a lot of people are getting hurt.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday June 28 2020, @07:32PM
Today's correct answer.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].