SpaceX workers fired over letter criticizing Elon Musk’s behavior

A number of workers at personal spaceflight firm SpaceX who circulated a letter this week calling out the habits of Chief Government Elon Musk have been fired, in keeping with studies.

Within the letter, the existence of which was first reported by the Verge, workers complained about Musk’s “dangerous Twitter habits” and accused the Hawthorne firm of not addressing his conduct with a way of urgency.

“Elon’s habits within the public sphere is a frequent supply of distraction and embarrassment for us, significantly in latest weeks,” the letter states.

In response, SpaceX fired a number of the organizers behind the letter, the New York Occasions reported. The paper cited an e-mail wherein SpaceX President and Chief Working Officer Gwynne Shotwell mentioned the corporate had investigated and “terminated a lot of workers” concerned with the letter.

The letter alluded to sexual misconduct allegations in opposition to Musk that got here to gentle in a report by Insider final month. Musk is alleged to have propositioned a flight attendant for an erotic therapeutic massage whereas aboard a SpaceX personal jet in 2016. The corporate paid $250,000 to settled the sexual misconduct declare, in keeping with Insider.

Musk denied the allegations.

The letter writers additionally asserted that workers face unequal enforcement of the corporate’s worker conduct insurance policies, and referred to as on the corporate to create a transparent system for reporting and upholding repercussions for “unacceptable habits.”

They referred to as on the corporate to carry management accountable and “publicly handle and condemn” Musk’s habits on Twitter, in keeping with the letter. The world’s richest man has used his Twitter account, which at the moment has greater than 90 million followers, to publish intercourse jokes, mock fellow billionaires together with Invoice Gates and Jeff Bezos, query the scientific consensus round COVID-19 and voice his growing affinity for conservative politics.

Musk has mentioned that SpaceX’s objectives embody making humanity “multiplanetary” by enabling leisure journeys to area and the colonization of Mars. The letter questions whether or not the corporate’s tradition is match for that take a look at.

“The collaboration we have to make life multiplanetary is incompatible with a tradition that treats workers as consumable assets,” the letter states. “Is the tradition we’re fostering now the one which we goal to carry to Mars and past?”

The letter was reportedly shared on Wednesday on an inside Microsoft Groups channel with 2,600 workers, in keeping with the Verge. An unknown variety of workers signed the letter.

On Thursday, Musk held a video name with workers of Twitter to take questions upfront of his deliberate $43-billion buy of the corporate. Following the decision, the web site Venture Veritas revealed what it mentioned had been personal chat logs exhibiting feedback, lots of them essential of Musk, posted in firm Slack channels in the course of the assembly.

Musk responded to a right-wing activist’s tweet of the Venture Veritas leak, saying, “Fascinating.”