Some Tesla factory workers learned they were laid off when security scanned their badges

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent employees a memo about the layoffs late Sunday evening.Nathan Howard and Justin Sullivan via Getty Images

Tesla laid off over 10% of its workforce on Sunday night.
Some factory employees only realized they were laid off when their badges didn’t work, sources told BI.
At the Nevada factory, the process of weeding out laid-off staff in line to enter caused around a 2-hour backup, one source said.

Tesla told staff it was laying off more than 10% of its workforce on Sunday night, but some workers didn’t realize they were laid off until they showed up at the company’s facilities, five current or former workers told Business Insider.

The cuts impacted engineers and production associates alike. At Tesla’s factory in Sparks, Nevada, workers faced about a two-hour line Monday morning in order to get into the facility as a result of badge checks, one worker said.

At the factory, the security team was scanning the badges of workers coming out of the shuttles that ferry people between the factory and nearby parking lots, said two current Tesla workers who requested anonymity since they weren’t authorized to speak about the matter. Typically, security guards inspect workers’ badges at the site, but don’t usually scan them directly, the two workers said. On Monday morning, the officials picked out the workers who had been laid off and sent them back on separate vans, the two workers said.

Three other former Tesla employees said workers at the Fremont factory were told by security that if their badges didn’t work they were no longer employed.

Tesla employees who were terminated received notice via their personal emails on Sunday night and their access to Tesla systems was revoked, four workers said. The company-wide email that Elon Musk sent announcing the cuts was delivered shortly before midnight on Sunday, according to a timestamp on the memo viewed by BI.

“We have done a thorough review of the organization and made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount globally. Unfortunately as a result, your position has been eliminated by this restructuring,” a separate email notifying impacted employees they’d been laid off reads, according to a copy viewed by Business Insider.

The email sent directly to laid-off staff said the cuts would be effective immediately and workers would receive information regarding their severance within 48 hours.

The same day Tesla announced layoffs at least two executives resigned from the company. SVP of powertrain and electrical engineering Drew Baglino and VP of public policy and business development Rohan Patel said on X they had left Tesla as of Sunday.

A spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. Ahead of the layoffs, Tesla employed over 140,000 workers globally, including over 3,000 at its factory in Nevada.

Tesla workers aren’t the first to unceremoniously discover they’ve been terminated while trying to access their former place of work. Last year, some former Google employees told BI they learned they’d been laid off when they couldn’t badge into the office.

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