[btilly]

The letter itself is at the end of https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23170228/spacex-elon-musk....

The bit about Musk's behavior gets quoted because it fits with various agendas. But the letter itself is mostly a plea for making SpaceX a more inclusive workplace for people of different races, genders, and so on. To establish clear HR policies rather than current vague rules like "no assholes".

That's pretty far into the protected category of talking about improving workplace conditions.

[Justin_K]

While they open the letter with statements about inclusion and diversity, their first demand / action item is as follows:

Publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior. SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand.

This is the spirit of their demands and they made it personal.

[oarabbus_]

I had a similar interpretation. I read it very much as being about working conditions (in which case the letter would be protected by labor law), and was surprised to see the twitter behavior as the primary action item, citing working conditions as action items 2 and 3.

Not a lawyer, but the primary action point being about the twitter behavior seems to significantly cast doubt upon what would've otherwise seemingly been a slam dunk labor law/retaliation violation case.

[birdyrooster]

Elon is toxic and is hurting the business and their personal incomes, they have every right to criticize the merging of Elons political ambition with the space mission. Elon is the main thing holding back Tesla and Space-X.

[StanislavPetrov]

They have every right to criticize Musk from the parking lot.

[evandale]

I think you have it the wrong way around. Elon's space mission is a political mission. He wants to be the first to colonize Mars. Heck it's even a personal mission of his. SpaceX is nothing without him - I'd go so far as to say Elon Musk is SpaceX.

[dmix]

Activists calling for more inclusion are not the protected class here regardless, even if the people they want to be hired or promoted may be (under certain circumstances).

[lalaland1125]

Talking about workplace issues in the workplace is a protected class

[neltnerb]

I have the feeling that people like musk or that crypto CEO yesterday are just chomping at the bit for the opportunity to appeal to the supreme court.

Someone will get to have their name attached to the decision declaring any government interference in how a business is run unconstitutional.

Unions, 40 hour work week, desegregation, certainly employment discrimination, OSHA, the ADA? I worry people like Musk know they have the money to take it that far and that the supreme court would love to completely deregulate businesses.

[achenet]

> Someone will get to have their name attached to the decision declaring any government interference in how a business is run unconstitutional.

Congress has the power to regulate commerce.

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commerce_clause

"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;"

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section8

[btilly]

The actual grant to regulate commerce goes as follows.

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

There is a long road of interpretation from there to telling a manager of a restaurant that he has to hire black waiters. And the important bits of it all came in the last century. It is certain that the Founders never INTENDED for Congress to have its current authority.

It seems unlikely that the Supreme Court wants to create the chaos of overturning all of that to go back to the original definition. But it is within their official authority to do so.

[neltnerb]

I'm definitely not saying that the supreme court will be correct or reasonable, but I also look at the decisions they've been making lately and am not so sure they care. We need to abandon the idea that they are neutral at this point, pretending they are will result in wasted time and focus on courts for resolving disputes that could be going to directly supporting the individuals impacted.

We need to be wary because I, for one, totally believe they would make any regulations illegal given a case that gave them the chance.

Preventing chaos is clearly not something they feel responsibility for, they're making extremely high impact decisions against hard fought civil rights in favor of just about any other interested party.

[meatsauce]

Good thing he shed the woke-cancer. Those clowns ruin entire companies and destroy morale for the whole team.

[zozbot234]

> That's pretty far into the protected category of talking about improving workplace conditions.

You can't use "talking about improving workplace conditions" as an excuse for creating a hostile work environment by harassing your coworkers (BTW, sending unsolicited emails can very much be harassment). The NLRB has specifically ruled about this as part of the Google-James Damore case.

[chipotle_coyote]

The NLRB's ruling in that case was, and I'm quoting the NLBR general counsel (as quoted in the reporting by The Verge),

> while some parts of Damore’s memo were legally protected by workplace regulations, “the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected.”

They didn't rule he was creating a hostile work environment by "sending unsolicited emails"; they ruled that the memo contained statements that were "discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment." This just doesn't apply here -- Damore's strongest argument was that he was discussing working conditions, but the arguments in his actual memo about "women's heightened neuroticism and men's prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution" were the problem.

In this SpaceX case, they were very clearly discussing working conditions in a substantial part of the memo, and it's quite possible that is in fact protected speech. What muddies it up is adding the parts about also needing to tell Elon to stop being an ass on Twitter; that's probably not protected.

[zozbot234]

You're of course right that James Damore never sent mass unsolicited emails. However, this doesn't change the fact that unsolicited email is commonly acknowledged as a possible form of harassment and/or cyberbullying. It should go without saying that this might also create a hostile work environment.

[stefan_]

This is bizarre; are you just reciting random terms you picked up somewhere? Of course none of this reaches any level of "harassment" or "cyberbullying".

[zozbot234]

A New York Times article on the matter https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/technology/spacex-employe... seems to imply otherwise: "The letter, solicitations and general process made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views".

[stefan_]

You are citing Shotwell, not the Times!

[oarabbus_]

>In this SpaceX case, they were very clearly discussing working conditions in a substantial part of the memo, and it's quite possible that is in fact protected speech. What muddies it up is adding the parts about also needing to tell Elon to stop being an ass on Twitter; that's probably not protected.

Completely agreed - this reads very much like a protected letter about working conditions, up until the authors made a terrible error by citing the primary action item as addressing Elon's twitter behavior, and putting working conditions as the secondary and tertiary demands. IANAL, but it seems like that will give a lot of ammo to SpaceX's lawyers in what would've otherwise been an open and shut retaliation case.

[btilly]

This is a good point. And it is verified by:

https://www.wired.com/story/labor-board-rules-google-firing-...

You can't be fired for wanting to make your workplace better. You can be fired for making it worse for others. Often the same behavior can be seen as either or both. And courts exist to adjudicate these disagreements.

That said, I hate the example. However discussing that would be a derail, so I won't.