Days after being told to get back to the office, Tesla workers could be about to get a message not to bother after all if reports that Elon Musk wants to cut the company’s workforce by 10 percent are true.
In an email sent on Thursday and seen by Reuters, Tesla’s CEO wrote that he has a “super bad feeling” about the economy and wants to get rid of one in ten of the carmaker’s 100,000 employees around the globe. Musk also instructed executives at the firm to “pause all hiring worldwide,” which doesn’t bode well for plans to expand the new Berlin, Germany, plant.
The explosive email revelation comes on the back of Musk’s announcement earlier this week that he expected all Tesla workers to return to the office. In two emails sent on Tuesday, Musk said workers were required to be present in the office for a minimum of 40 hours each week, and those that didn’t attend would be assumed to have resigned.
There was already speculation that the return-to-work mandate was merely presaging a round of job cuts. Some industry watchers believe Musk made the announcement knowing that many workers would not want to return to the office, allowing him to reduce Tesla’s workforce without having to spend on redundancy packages.
Related: Elon Musk Faces Fight With German Union Over Return-To-Office Ultimatum
Tesla shrugged off pandemic- and semiconductor-related production problems to come within a hair’s breadth of toppling BMW in the race to be the best-selling luxury brand in the U.S. last year, something it looks likely to achieve this year. But even as that success has unfolded, Musk has been voicing his concerns about the global economy, warning about the risk of recession in recent weeks. Inflation is at record levels, and although Covid restrictions have mostly been abandoned around the world, Tesla has been hit with pandemic-related production problems at its Shanghai plant.
Musk has previously stated that he believed a recession was actually a positive situation, claiming that “it has been raining money on fools for too long. Some bankruptcies need to happen.”
But it doesn’t look like the financial markets share that sunny outlook. Tesla’s shares fell almost 3 percent in U.S. pre-market trade on Friday, and Frankfurt-listed stock dropped 3.6 percent in the wake of the Reuters story.
