Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been accused by a U.S. labor agency of requiring employees who were laid off or fired from the rocket and satellite maker to sign unlawful agreements barring them from disparaging the company and joining class-action lawsuits against it.

The complaint, filed late Wednesday by a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional official in Seattle, comes as SpaceX is already facing a separate case before the NLRB and has in turn filed a lawsuit claiming the agency’s structure violates the U.S. Constitution.

SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, California, is accused in the new complaint of requiring separated employees to sign severance agreements with confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses that restrict them from exercising their rights under U.S. labor law, the labor board said in a release on Thursday.

Those provisions are common in severance pacts signed by workers, but the NLRB has said such agreements must make clear that workers cannot waive their rights to advocate for better working conditions or file complaints with the NLRB.

    • Zron@lemmy.world
      15·
      8 months ago

      By people who then go on to get cushy jobs at his companies.

      How Kathy Leuders hasn’t been investigated for corruption is beyond me. She was Associate Administrator at NASA for 2 years, during her first year she told SpaceX how low their proposal needed to be in order to get the contract for Artemis.

      Less than 18 months later, after SpaceX got the contract, she retired from NASA. A month after that, she took a job as general manager at SpaceX’s Starbase.

      She forked over 2 billion dollars in tax payer money to secure a job at SpaceX.

      2 billion dollars that has, so far, only gotten us 3 launches of an experimental rocket, none of which have reached orbit and 2 of which exploded in the atmosphere. Oh and SpaceX is supposed to do their first unmanned moon landing of this vehicle in a month, if they want to stay on track for the contract.