Electric vehicle maker, Tesla has laid off 229 annotation employees from its Autopilot team and closed one of its offices in the US.
Tesla laid-off employees from its San Mateo office which has employed 276 workers. The remaining 47 employees may be sent to work in Tesla’s Buffalo Autopilot office.
According to reports, “Most of the workers were in moderately low-skilled, low-wage jobs, such as Autopilot data labeling, which involves determining if Tesla’s algorithm identified an object well or poorly.”
Earlier, Elon Musk said that the company will reduce its salaried workforce by 10 percent over the next three months.
Also, it was reported earlier that Tesla’s former employees have been represented by a team of lawyers to seek emergency protection from a US court for the fired workers.
The main allegations presented on the behalf of the formal employees are that the company did not provide the 60 days of advance notice required by federal law during layoffs.
The company also has another wave of layoffs, including hourly workers instead of just salaried employees. Earlier, Musk told Tesla executives in an email that they need to cut 10 percent of the workforce and pause hiring due to having a “super bad feeling” about the economy.
Musk has also said that he believes the US is headed for a recession. He also told Tesla staff that “remote work is no longer acceptable,” requiring salaried employees to return to the office and work a minimum of 40 hours a week.
Later, Musk decided to clarify the Tesla layoffs in an email to all employees. He even stated that “hourly headcount will increase”.
Tesla employs more than 100,000 people across its facilities and saw over a 40 percent increase in the company’s workforce last year.
