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SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk were sued Wednesday by former employees who claim they were wrongfully fired for raising concerns about gender discrimination and sexual harassment at the rocket company.
The lawsuit, filed by eight employees who were laid off in 2022, alleges that Musk wants to be “the leader of a brave new world of space travel, but is leading his company into the dark ages — treating women as sexual objects to be evaluated according to them. bra size, bombarding the workplace with sexually suggestive jokes and offering repetition to those who challenge the ‘Animal House’ environment that if they don’t like it they can look for work elsewhere,” according to the complaint, filed in state court in California.
Eight former employees were involved in writing a 2022 open letter criticizing Musk and urging SpaceX executives to make the firm’s culture more inclusive. The letter, which was signed by at least 400 other employees, asked SpaceX management to make clear that Musk’s statements — particularly on Twitter — did not reflect the company’s views or values, and asserted that the so-called “No A**” SpaceX’s “hole” policy was unevenly enforced.
After the letter was issued, eight employees were fired. Wednesday’s complaint alleges that “Musk personally ordered Plaintiff’s termination.”
SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. SpaceX does not typically respond to questions from news organizations. In response to the 2022 letter, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell previously said she would enforce SpaceX’s “zero tolerance” standards against employee harassment, but The New York Times reported that she said the employees had been fired for making other staff feel “uncomfortable”.
SpaceX previously faced similar complaints filed with the National Labor Relations Board regarding the firing of employees involved in the letter. Those complaints alleged that the layoffs amounted to firing employees for engaging in “protected concerted activity.”
A former employee who filed an NLRB complaint and is a plaintiff in Wednesday’s lawsuit, Tom Moline, previously told CNN that SpaceX management used an “‘ends justify the means’ philosophy to turn a blind eye to mistreatment, harassment and constant abuse reported by my colleagues, many of whom were directly encouraged and inspired by the CEO’s words and actions.”
Earlier this year, SpaceX responded to a consolidated complaint from the NLRB with its own lawsuit, claiming that the very structure of the NLRB is “unconstitutional.”
Wednesday’s complaint details statements by Musk and actions by other workers that the fired employees allege contributed to a hostile work environment and “pervasive sexist culture” at SpaceX.
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Former employees sue SpaceX, alleging illegal firings
It points to multiple raw tweets from Musk, now called X, as containing a plan “to create an MIT-like University of Texas which he would call ‘TITS’ and where ‘Ds [women’s bra size] would receive a degree,’ accompanied by an altered photo that makes a rocket look like a giant penis,” the complaint states.
“Things like this were widely distributed across all internal chat channels and talked about in meetings and used as fodder in professional settings,” Paige Holland-Thielen, one of the plaintiffs, told CNN’s Laura Coates, adding that employees were “encouraged” to follow. Musk on the social media platform.
As a result, it became “impossible to separate his personal nonsense from the actual day-to-day life of an actual work environment,” she said.
The complaint also refers to a tweet from Musk, shared a day after Business Insider published a report alleging Musk had sexually harassed a flight attendant, in which the billionaire said: “Finally, we can use Elongate as the name of the scandal. It’s kind of perfect,” along with a laughing emoji. (Musk has denied allegations of harassment.)
“Musk’s conduct in interjecting into the workplace this juvenile, grotesque sex joke had the entirely foreseeable and intentional result of encouraging other employees to engage in similar conduct,” Wednesday’s complaint said. .
Former employees claim that engineers routinely applied “crude and derogatory names to products in an attempt at humor, often at the expense of women and LGBTQ+ individuals. For example, the name ‘Upskirt Camera’ was used for a camera on the first stage of the Falcon rocket that looks at the underside of the second stage,” according to the complaint.
In one case, a SpaceX human resources director responded to allegations of inappropriate workplace behavior at an internal event by saying, “I have never been sexually harassed; I must not be hot enough,” the complaint states.
The suit adds that the former employees believe that “SpaceX failed to take action to remedy the harassment, hostile work environment and retaliation.”
The former employees are seeking unspecified monetary damages to account for “lost wages, earnings and other employee benefits, emotional distress.”
This story has been updated with additional details and context.