As Elon Musk continues to face heat over sexual harassment, it looks like there is no end to his troubles, as SpaceX ex-engineers have also accused Musk of creating a hostile work environment in their complaints, to the US’s National Labor Relations Board.
According to their complaints, musk deliberately created a hostile environment of the workplace on the basis of his conduct, where he interrupted the workplace, by spreading disgusting sexual photographs, offensive memes and commentaries, that targeted women and members of LGBTQ+ community.
‘Musk knowingly and purposefully created an unwelcome hostile work environment based upon his conduct of interjecting into the workplace vile sexual photographs, memes, and commentary that demeaned women and/or the LGBTQ+ community’ recounted employees.
In addition, the engineers also used to give offensive names to products at the expense of women and LGBTQ+ community.
Elaborating more on this point, they gave an example of one camera, which was given the name ‘Upskirt Camera’, which was used on the first stage of Falcon rocket to view second stage’s bottom.
‘Employees Complain to the Company’
Later, the employees raised their voices by writing an open letter in 2022, which exposed musk’s ‘problematic behavior.’ When the official of SpaceX HR talked about initiating formal probe into the matter, the SpaceX CEO said, ‘I don’t care — fire them’.
Earlier, this open letter was shared in the SpaceX’s Microsoft internal channel which said, ‘Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks.
The letter further stated that Elon musk is the face of SpaceX company, whatever he comments and tweets, becomes a de-facto public statement offered by the company and they also emphasized, that it is necessary to make the team clear, that musk’s messaging doesn’t reflect their work, mission and values.
Even though, SpaceX and Elon musk have refrained themselves from commenting on the lawsuit, however, the SpaceX CEO had earlier denied all of these allegations and asserted, that musk wasn’t involved in their termination.
Meanwhile, this complaint comes day after wall street journal report recently alleged, musk made sexual advances to women employees at SpaceX, which included company’s ex-intern with whom he had sex.
However, the SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell alleged, that the journal report is full of ‘untruths, mischaracterizations, and revisionist history.’