[ad_1]
“I’ll be online with everyone else,” the CEO said in a tweet Monday. “If someone is arrested, I ask that it be just me.”
After defending himself from a potentially costly defamation lawsuit and emerging with minor consequences from a court battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission last year, Musk, 48, appears emboldened to try his luck with the law again. The lead attorney in Tesla’s lawsuit Saturday against Alameda County in California over his reopening restrictions helped Musk beat the case filed by a cave diver he called a pedophile in 2018.
This time, Musk is fighting over measures to contain a virus that he minimized from January. After claiming that Covid-19 was not such a viral disease, he later called the panic about it “dumb” in March, also theorized that death rates are exaggerated, promoted antimalarial drugs dubiously embraced by President Donald Trump, and predicted erroneously that new cases be close to zero at the end of April.
‘Sad day’
Musk has been furious for weeks at the restrictions that county officials imposed on Tesla’s operations as part of his effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus. On Saturday, he threatened to take the company headquarters out of California and move it along with future projects to Nevada or Texas. Tesla has approximately 20,000 employees in the San Francisco Bay Area, approximately half of which are in Fremont.
California Governor Gavin Newsom tried to ease tensions Monday morning, saying he believed Tesla could start operating as soon as next week.
“It would be a sad day if Fremont police entered Tesla and arrested Elon Musk,” said Scott Haggerty, the county supervisor for the Alameda district where Tesla’s Fremont plant is located. “Tweets coming and going are unfortunate, and we need to get to the table, talk about it, and get people back to work safely.”
Musk’s battle against Calfornia has come to represent the tense debate going on in states and counties across the United States about how quickly companies should be reopened. To Musk’s supporters, he is a hero fighting against unnecessary government intervention. To his detractors, he is a reckless and impulsive leader who encourages dangerous behavior that could delay efforts to calm the pandemic.
“I don’t think Musk can just confront the local health order, which is more restrictive than the state order,” said Haggerty, who has represented the region for 23 years.
Conflicting email
Tesla told production workers before Musk’s tweet that he was returning to work at the Fremont factory. Valerie Capers Workman, Tesla’s director of human resources for North America, emailed the production staff to notify them that their license expired on Sunday and that managers will contact them within 24 hours of their start date and schedule. Those who are not comfortable returning to work may stay home on unpaid leave, but they may no longer be eligible for unemployment benefits, he said.
The email conflicted with comments Newsom made during the governor’s daily press conference, which took place before Musk’s tweet. When asked about Tesla’s reopening of its Fremont plant, regardless of Alameda’s order, Newsom said he was unaware.
“As I understand it, they have had some very constructive conversations,” Newsom said. “My belief, hope and expectation is that as soon as next week, they can resume.”
Tesla sued the county over the weekend after it told the company it did not meet the criteria to reopen. Newsom, who allowed manufacturing in some parts of the state to restart on May 8, said Monday that the county could apply stricter rules around reopening. Health officials in Alameda and six other counties and cities in the San Francisco Bay Area decided late last month to extend their restrictions on business until the end of May.
‘Green light’
Following Musk’s tweet, Alameda County health officials released a statement saying that Tesla’s Fremont plant was operating beyond what was allowed and that they expected the company to “comply without further compliance measures.” The county has been in an ongoing dialogue about employee health monitoring procedures and said it will continue to review Tesla’s plans.
Capers Workman told employees that the state had “given the green light for manufacturing to resume.”
Musk tweeted over the weekend that Alameda’s refusal to allow Tesla to reopen the Fremont factory was “the last straw,” and that it would immediately move Tesla’s headquarters to Nevada or Texas.
Newsom said Monday that the state has a strong relationship with Tesla, calling it “a company that this state has supported substantially for many, many years.” Musk thanked the governor in a tweet.
Despite all his bravado, Musk’s fortune has increased along with Tesla’s actions this year. His personal wealth has grown by $ 12.6 billion in 2020 to more than $ 40 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“We have a culture in our state where these big billionaire-run corporations” move fast and break things, “” Lorena Gonzalez, a California assemblywoman, tweeted Monday. “Rules. Orders. Laws. People. All without consequences.”
.
[ad_2]
