
Elon Musk to Workers: Violate California's Stay-at-Home Order or Don't Get Paid - doener
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3azzd8/elon-musk-is-offering-tesla-workers-a-deal-violate-californias-stay-at-home-order-or-dont-get-paid
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nscalf
So the factory is opening back up and he is saying that he will not be paying
people who do not show up to work. I understand there is a pandemic but I do
not understand why it is on the company to pay people who are not working. The
whole premise of a company is that individual work is used collectively to get
higher returns than the individuals contribute, if you're not contributing to
that collective you don't deserve your portion of the pay from that company. I
agree the government needs to step in and help, but the company should not be
responsible for paying individuals out of pocket.

The real story here to me is that, depending on your state, you are required
to go to a work environment you believe to be unsafe because you'll be kicked
off unemployment otherwise. Living in a red state, it seems like we are going
to be taking the herd immunity route. Personally, I think we should be
supporting high risk individuals and have them quarantine while the rest of
society goes back to a quasi-normal. This is based off the rate of
asymptomatic individuals being so large that the mortality rate is at least an
order of magnitude smaller than previously believed.

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dragonwriter
> I understand there is a pandemic but I do not understand why it is on the
> company to pay people who are not working.

The issue is not the Tesla is obligated to pay people who are not working, it
is that (1) violating the shelter-in-place order is a crime, and (2) paying
someone to commit a crime is also generally unlawful, and also (3) imposing
adverse employment consequences, including reduced pay, for refusing to commit
a crime is generally also unlawful.

(Of course, Tesla itself is violating the order and committing a crime by
reopening, but #3 particularly is an avenue by which individual workers, as
opposed to just public authorities, may have a claim against Tesla based on
their unlawful acts.)

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nscalf
My understanding was that this is not a law, but a policy. This comment
actually had me read up a bit on this, here's an interesting article[1] (I
have no idea how credible the source is, but at a glance it seems to be
relatively unbiased).

The take away I have is that there is some debate over this, but we don't seem
to have quarantine laws in place to handle large scale quarantine.

[1] [https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/does-gov-newsom-
have-t...](https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/does-gov-newsom-have-the-
power-to-shut-down-private-businesses-because-of-coronavirus/)

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ashtonkem
As I’ve said before, the legal liability of this is pretty problematic. We’re
not sure what the liability for employers is if they follow the rules, but
with Tesla explicitly ignoring a legal order to stay closed, any worker who
gets fired or gets sick surely has even better grounds to sue.

Now is also a good time to point out that Musk is basically uninsurable; Tesla
lost (or cancelled) their director insurance, and is currently being insured
by Musk _personally_.

Edit: Tesla is also continuously fending off pushes by UAW to unionize his
factories. A message of “break the law or don’t get paid” isn’t going to help
his goal of keeping his factories non-union.

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snow_mac
Elon musk is an asshole and he needs to go to jail for this

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rumanator
It isn't news that he is an asshole. The way he decided to handle the "pedo
guy" incident, from the double down to the weaseling out, leaves no room for
doubt.

The news here is the blatant disregard for the law.

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scohesc
The headline is a bit misleading and presumptuous.

While I get Musk is the owner of the company and probably tells the plant
supervisors what to do in this situation, there is literally _nothing_ in this
article that mentions anything about Musk directly telling employees "you work
or no unemployment"...

Pretty bad headline IMO - just used for shock value.

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zimpenfish
> “If you do not feel comfortable coming into work, you can stay home and will
> be on unpaid leave,” Musk wrote in an email

"unpaid leave" is literally the definition of "Don't Get Paid". The headline
itself doesn't say anything about unemployment.

However it does quote from his email a bit further down which says

> Choosing not to report to work may eliminate or reduce your eligibility for
> unemployment

Whilst it's not directly "you work or no unemployment", I think most people
reading it would take that implication, no?

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chrstphrhrt
Can't wait to see what a judge thinks about this.

