The eight former employees, who were fired in June, helped the workers’ organization draft the open letter condemning Musk’s online behavior, according to the New York Times. The letter, in part, addressed a joke Musk tweeted about a report suggesting he paid a company flight attendant who accused him of sexual harassment a $250,000 settlement. Musk has denied the allegations. “Elon’s behavior in the public sphere has been a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks,” said the letter, first released in June and obtained by The Verge. After the letter was written, a group of 20 employees met with a top SpaceX executive and were reportedly told by Jon Edwards, vice president of Falcon Launch Vehicles at SpaceX, that they were distracting the company and that the letter was “extremist. act,” the New York Times reported. Nine employees were fired for questioning Musk, the complaint alleges. The workers argued in the letter that the company was not following its own “no bullshit” policy and asked SpaceX to “publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful behavior on Twitter.” SpaceX’s complaint coincides with Musk’s public retaliation against employees who corrected him or openly criticized him at another company he now leads. In addition to firing Twitter employees who publicly criticized Musk in tweets, the New York Times reported that Musk had also assigned subordinates to comb through internal communications to weed out naysayers. Musk’s companies have previously faced challenges from the National Labor Relations Board, which protects workers’ right to seek better working conditions without fear of retaliation. In March 2021, the NLRB upheld a ruling that found Tesla engaged in unfair labor practices for firing a worker for trying to unionize and for a tweet by Musk that discouraged unionization. Additionally, in response to the leaks, Tesla asked employees to “renew their vows” and sign a new confidentiality agreement. But the non-disclosure agreement prohibited employees from speaking to the media and was also ruled illegal. SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In addition to condemning Musk’s public behavior, SpaceX employees asked the company to reaffirm its commitment to its zero-tolerance policy around sexual harassment in the June letter. While the letter addresses Musk’s tweets referring to the allegations against him detailed in the Business Insider report, some SpaceX employees have also spoken out in the past about a culture of sexism and rampant harassment. A former engineer, Ashley Kosak, wrote that her reports of harassment were often ignored at the company where she started as an intern. Other interns echoed her complaints, saying they faced unwanted advances from other interns and men in senior positions. “To be clear: the recent events are not isolated incidents,” the workers wrote in the June open letter. “They are emblematic of a larger culture that does not serve many of the people who enable SpaceX’s extraordinary achievements.”
