Tesla employees must either return to work in person or quit their jobs, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has demanded, according to an internal memo circulating on social media.
“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 in an email with the subject line “Remote work is no longer acceptable,” according to Bloomberg News.
The Western Journal cannot independently confirm the authenticity of the email reported to be sent by Musk himself.
However, Musk did not deny its contents when he replied to a tweet that had an image of the widely circulated email attached.
They should pretend to work somewhere else
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 1, 2022
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Musk further clarified that the office workers must report to “a main Tesla office, not a remote branch office unrelated to the job duties, for example being responsible for Fremont factory human relations, but having your office be in another state.”
The billionaire tech entrepreneur added that for “particularly exceptional contributors,” he would review and approve any exceptions to the general rule.
With the recent memo, Tesla joins a growing list of companies requiring their white collar workers to return to their office spaces after about two years of working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The decision to make Tesla employees go back to on-site work suggests that a similar decision might be taken for Twitter once Musk takes over the platform after completing his purchase of the tech giant.
Twitter had recently switched to an optional format where while offices opened, employees were free to decide whether to work from home or in the offices.
“Wherever you feel most productive and creative is where you will work and that includes working from home full-time forever,” Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal had written in a March tweet. However, that could possibly change when Musk takes over.
Musk seems to be very critical of remote work. When a user asked Musk on Wednesday if he had any words for “people who think coming into work is an antiquated concept,” the celebrity businessman replied, “they should pretend to work somewhere else.”
In a May 27 tweet, Musk wrote, “Also, all the Covid stay-at-home stuff has tricked people into thinking that you don’t actually need to work hard. Rude awakening inbound!”
Musk received criticism in 2020 when he opened the company’s plant in Fremont, California, despite county regulations opposing its reopening, Fox Business reported.
Although Musk told employees they could remain at home should they feel “uncomfortable coming back to work at [that] time,” the company allegedly sent termination notices to some employees for a “failure to return to work,” according to the outlet.
“People who shift to working from home can temporarily increase the amount of work they get done in a given day. But over the medium to long term, long-distance employment can’t deliver key benefits — including learning and new friendships — that come from face-to-face contact,” Harvard University Economics Profs. Edward Glaeser and David Cutler wrote in a September 2021 article for The Washington Post.
“In-person work fosters innovation, the effects of which on productivity almost certainly exceed the gains from working harder at home for possibly unsustainable stretches,” the professors noted.
“An even slightly higher growth rate once people return to offices will quickly outpace the one-time gain from saved commuting time.”
