Tesla Inc on Thursday asked a U.S. court to dismiss a lawsuit claiming the electric car maker violated federal law by laying off hundreds of workers without advance notice.
Tesla in a filing in federal court in Austin, Texas, where
the company is based, said the workers who were terminated signed valid
agreements to bring employment-related legal disputes in arbitration and to
refrain from participating in class-action lawsuits.
Even if the case remained in court, it should be dismissed
because the company was merely "right-sizing" by firing poorly
performing workers and not engaging in layoffs that require advance notice,
Tesla said.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a
request for comment.
The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification
(WARN) Act requires businesses to notify workers of mass layoffs at least 60
days in advance unless they are caused by natural disasters or
"unforeseeable business circumstances."
The lawsuit filed in June by two former Tesla employees
accuses the company of violating the law by abruptly laying off more than 500
workers at its Sparks, Nevada gigafactory as part of a nationwide purge of its
workforce.
The plaintiffs are seeking class action status for all
former Tesla employees throughout the United States who were laid off in May or
June without notice.
Last week, the plaintiffs moved to stop Tesla from allegedly
asking workers to sign severance agreements waiving their ability to sue the
company in exchange for one or two weeks' pay.
The company in Thursday's filing said it routinely asks
terminated workers to sign waivers, and that the agreements are proper because
no worker was asked to sign one after the lawsuit was filed. Some courts have
found that waivers signed by workers while a lawsuit is pending are invalid.
The case is Lynch v. Tesla Inc, U.S. District Court for the
Western District of Texas, No. 1:22-cv-00597. -Reuters