- Filings in California indicate that 600 more Tesla workers in the Bay Area are losing their jobs.
- The layoffs begin on June 20th and affect employees at Tesla’s Palo Alto and Fremont locations.
- When combined with earlier layoffs, the total of jobs lost in 2024 exceeds 5,500 positions.
Despite backlash, Tesla is continuing on with its plan to drastically cut its workforce. On Monday, it filed paperwork with the State of California indicating that 223 people at its Palo Alto location and 378 from its Freemont factory would be laid off permanently. The layoffs begin taking effect on June 20th, but it’s unclear if affected employees know about their fate just yet.
Palo Alto is one of Tesla’s main development and manufacturing hubs. It designs and builds powertrain equipment and serves as the engineering headquarters for the entire brand. The Freemont factory is a full-time production facility with five assembly lines. Tesla builds every model on sale today save for the Cybertruck there. To put it simply, these locations are vital to the brand’s success.
Read: Laid Off Tesla Supercharger Employee Predicts Network Quality Will “Deteriorate”
Nevertheless, SFChronicle reports that over two weeks in mid-June, 600 workers will say goodbye to the automaker. Combining these cuts with 2,700+ announced in the Bay Area earlier this year and 2,688 axed in Texas, Tesla has removed at least 5,989 jobs this year. That’s in line with the 6,020 employees it predicted it would cut earlier this year.
Granted, it’s reportedly rehiring folks that it previously cut from its Supercharger team, so only Tesla really knows the final number here.
These cuts all come as the result of what Tesla says is a reduction of its workforce by 10 percent. At the time, it employed some 140,000 people worldwide. In effect, we might only be about halfway through the layoffs at this point.
Ultimately, the brand is trying to reduce overhead and increase efficiency across the board. During its first quarter of 2024, it saw huge drops in revenue and in profit so it needs a way to rebound.
The first set of layoffs affecting Bay Area employees begins on June 14th, the second begins on June 20th, and each will take about two weeks to be fully realized. It’s unclear when workers will find out that they’re on the chopping block but some may already know.
