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Tesla Flags Over 500 Job Cuts at California Headquarters, Plant

Tesla’s notices shed light on the workers being dismissed. 

Tesla Flags Over 500 Job Cuts at California Headquarters, Plant
An employee looks inside a Tesla Model X sports utility vehicle (SUV) following assembly for the European market at the Tesla Motors Inc. factory in Tilburg, Netherlands (Photographer: Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg)  

(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. filed notices with its home state that shed light on which workers are being dismissed from several key California facilities as part of Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk’s profit-motivated reorganization.

In letters to state and local officials, the Tesla said it will part with at least 420 employees in Fremont, where it has its vehicle assembly plant, as well as 86 workers at its Palo Alto headquarters. The most common roles being cut are process technicians in Fremont and mechanical design engineers in Palo Alto, though the company lists dozens of different job titles in each notice.

It’s unclear whether these are the first of several notices Tesla is filing with the state under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, known as WARN. The California Development Department and a company spokesman both declined to comment beyond the notices, which are dated Friday.

Musk, 46, announced last week that Tesla would let go of 9 percent of employees across the company. He said the cuts would almost entirely affect salaried workers and wouldn’t affect the carmaker’s ability to meet production targets for its Model 3 sedan.

California’s WARN Act applies to employers who are laying off 50 or more employees at one location. Tesla has sales and service centers across the state, so the WARN notices for Fremont and Palo Alto aren’t an exhaustive list.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dana Hull in San Francisco at dhull12@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Craig Trudell at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net, Kevin Miller

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