A U.S. labor board official ruled Tuesday that supervisors at Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Florida service center have violated labor law by telling employees that they should not discuss pay and other working conditions, or bring complaints to higher level managers.
Management at the Orlando repair shop illegally silenced workers in 2021 after some of them complained that new hires were being paid more, according to the decision by National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Administrative Law Judge Michael Rosas.
According to the decision, in late 2021 employees became aware that new hires at the collision center were being paid a higher hourly rate than existing workers. Several workers complained, including a technician who contacted a Tesla vice president and had his complaint forwarded to the company's head of human resources, according to the ruling.
Supervisors at the service center held a meeting where they instructed the facility's 25 employees not to discuss their pay and other working conditions and not to file complaints with higher level managers, Rosas said. Weeks later, the technician who had complained was fired, according to the decision.
The judge said that attempting to silence employees violated their fundamental right under U.S. labor law to band together to advocate for better working conditions. Tesla was ordered to cease and desist from violating workers' rights and to post notice of the violations in the service center and email it to employees.
The decision comes about a month after a U.S. appeals court upheld an NLRB ruling that Tesla CEO Elon Musk broke the law by tweeting that employees would lose stock options if they joined a union.
Shares of TSLA are down 2.88% in pre-market trading on Wednesday.