Tesla ends work from home, Elon Musk orders minimum 40-hour week for employees

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has banned work from home, according to an internal memorandum. The tech billionaire has also made it a minimum requirement for employees to work 40 hours a week.

A screenshot of Musk’s purported email to employees has gone viral on Twitter. The email has a subject line that reads “Remote work is no longer acceptable”. Musk appeared to confirm the memo in a Twitter message, saying of employees unwilling to comply with the new rules: “They should pretend to work somewhere else.” However, he did not confirm the authenticity of the screengrab.

The Tesla chief warned employees that they must work in the main office closest to their work and not a “branch office unrelated to their duties”.

“Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla,” Musk wrote.

The email also said exceptional cases where employees did not want to engage in work from office needed clearance from Musk.

Musk’s push for employees to return to office comes as Tesla restored weekly output at its Shanghai “gigafactory”, affected by the city’s severe lockdown measures, to almost 70% of its previous levels.

They should pretend to work somewhere else

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 1, 2022

The US electric automaker added a second shift of workers last week. It is expected to increase output further this week, reports suggest.

Tesla received significant help from the local government to reopen. It also battled several obstacles such as insufficient workers and logistics problems affecting the supplies of parts.

The factory produced 10,757 vehicles by the end of April after reopening on April 19. It sold 1,512 of the vehicles, according to China Passenger Car Association data.

Tesla sold 65,814 cars in March. This was Tesla’s lowest sales tally since April 2020, four months after it started delivering China-made cars.

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz