SpaceX is accused of illegally firing employees who wrote a letter criticizing Elon Musk

• SpaceX fired employees for criticizing Elon Musk, a US labor board complaint said.
• Rocket firm's workers wrote an open letter slamming Musk's "inappropriate" posts as a "distraction."

Elon Musk is facing yet another headache over his controversial posts on Twitter, now X.

A new complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday accused the billionaire's rocket company SpaceX of illegally firing several employees who wrote an open letter criticizing Musk's "inappropriate" and "sexually charged" posts on the social media platform.

According to the initial NLRB charge, which was filed in 2022, a group of SpaceX employees sent an open letter to the company's leadership the same year protesting "Musk's repeated conduct of issuing inappropriate, disparaging, sexually charged comments on Twitter."

The employees said that Musk's tweets were creating a hostile work environment within SpaceX, and were a violation of the company's "No Asshole" policy.

The complaint and notice of hearing released on Wednesday said that SpaceX responded by interrogating employees involved in the letter, preventing it from being distributed among staff, and ultimately firing several workers in retaliation for drafting or sharing the open letter.

The complaint said that other SpaceX staff were told that the dismissals were due to the letter criticizing Musk, and were invited to quit if they disagreed with the SpaceX founder's behavior.

"At SpaceX the rockets may be reusable but the people who build them are treated as expendable," Paige Holland-Thielen, one of the former SpaceX employees affected, told Bloomberg.

"I am hopeful these charges will hold SpaceX and its leadership accountable for their long history of mistreating workers and stifling discourse," she said.

A trial is set to take place on March 5.

The New York Times reported in 2022 that SpaceX fired nine employees who organized an open letter describing Musk's online behavior "as a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment."

It is not the first time that Musk's companies have been accused of firing employees who criticize the controversial billionaire.

Musk fired several Twitter employees who criticized him on the platform shortly after taking over the company, and two Tesla employees filed complaints with the NLRB in 2022 accusing Tesla of illegally firing them for criticizing Musk's tweets and the automaker's return-to-office policies.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

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