Edited by: TJVNews.com
The world’s richest man is once again making demands. Perhaps he believes that it is precisely because of issuing ultimatums to people that he arrived at the position that he currently finds himself in.
Such is the case of Elon Musk, the recent would-be owner of Twitter and the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.
According to published reports on Thursday, Musk demanded that Tesla employees must return to the office for in-person work at least 40 hours per week. Should they refuse to comply with his directive, they will do so at the risk of being terminated from their positions.
According to electric car news site, Electrek, news of the Musk employee policy was disclosed in a series of leaked emails that he sent on Tuesday.
“Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. This is less than we ask of factory workers,” Musk wrote, according to a report on the NPR web site.
Electrek also reported that Musk added that employees’ offices must be a “main Tesla office;, not a remote branch office unrelated to the job duties.”
“The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence,” Mr. Musk said, according to the New York Times report. “That is why I spent so much time in the factory — so that those on the line could see me working alongside them. If I had not done that, SpaceX would long ago have gone bankrupt.”
NPR reported that in an email, Musk said he would directly review and approve any requests for exemption from the company’s return-to-work policy, but emphasized to his staff: “If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.”
“Tesla has and will create and actually manufacture the most exciting and meaningful products of any company on Earth. This will not happen by phoning it in,” Musk added, as was reported by NPR.
The report also indicated that in a reply to one user on Twitter who asked Musk about the leaked emails, he responded back saying, “They should pretend to work somewhere else.”
In the past, Musk has harshly critiqued Americans for what he perceives as their poor work ethic and has issued statements lambasting those who work from home.
NPR reported that during an interview with Financial Times, Musk said that Americans are trying to “avoid going to work at all,” making the comparison to Chinese factory workers who work hard and “won’t even leave the factory.”
Since the advent of the coronavirus, remote work has become the norm as a safety measure against unwanted Covid infections. The NYT reported that such mega-companies as Apple, Meta, Microsoft and others of that ilk have announced and then delayed return-to-office dates as coronavirus surges have complicated plans.
Last month, Apple suspended its requirement that employees return to the office in May for at least three days a week because of a resurgence of Covid-19 cases. Airbnb recently told its employees that they never had to return to the office, as was reported by the NYT.
A number of Musk’s employees at both Tesla and SpaceX have been working from their offices to a certain extent. In 2020, when most companies shuttered their doors due to the increase of Covid cases, SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California used its exemption as a government contractor to remain open, as was reported by the NYT.
Having been reported earlier by BuzzFeed News, in an e-mail that Musk sent out to SpaceX employees in March of 2020, he told them that “they had a higher risk of being killed in a car crash than dying from the coronavirus,” according to the NYT report.