Tesla chief Elon Musk admitted in an internal email sent Wednesday that some of the staffers affected by the electric automaker’s 10% headcount reduction earlier this week had received “incorrectly low” severance packages.
“As we reorganize Tesla it has come to my attention that some severance packages are incorrectly low,” Musk wrote in the brief email obtained by CNBC. “My apologies for this mistake. It is being corrected immediately.”
The actual terms of the axed Tesla workers’ severance pay weren’t immediately clear.
And though it was unclear how many laid-off staffers got caught in the mix-up, Tesla reportedly chopped roughly 10% of its global workforce of 140,000.
Representatives for Tesla did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
On Monday, Musk argued that the reduction was necessary as he prepares Tesla “for our next phase of growth,” according to an internal memo.
The dismissals were effective immediately.
In response to comments on Musk-owned X, the mogul posted: “About every five years, we need to reorganize and streamline the company for the next phase of growth.”
Also on Monday, Tesla’s senior vice president Drew Baglino, in charge of battery development, and Rohan Patel, vice-president for public policy and business development, both announced their exits from the company on X.
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Baglino was one of four members in Tesla’s leadership team listed on the company’s investor relations website that includes Musk.
Musk thanked both executives for their work in a response to their respective notes on X.
However, the 52-year-old billionaire didn’t confirm whether this means Tesla will stick to its CEO’s “master plan,” which was laid out in 2023 and included “a proposed path to reach a sustainable global energy economy through end-use electrification and sustainable electricity generation and storage.”
“It is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity,” added Musk, who has since asked the Austin, Texas-based automaker’s shareholders to vote again on his $56 billion pay package.
The compensation — the largest of its kind in corporate America — was approved by investors in 2018, but was voided by a Delaware’s Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick early this year, who called the sum “unfathomable.”
In a proxy filing Wednesday, Tesla also said it will have shareholders vote on whether the EV giant should move its state of incorporation from Delaware to business-friendly Texas, where the company is based.
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Tesla stakeholders are expected to convene on the topics at its annual meeting on June 13, according to Bloomberg.
Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm has already sided with Musk, writing in the proxy that the Delaware court’s decision amounted to a “judicial second guessing of fiduciary conduct.”
“Because the Delaware Court second-guessed your decision, Elon has not been paid for any of his work for Tesla for the past six years that has helped to generate significant growth and stockholder value,” Denholm said.
“That strikes us – and the many stockholders from whom we already have heard – as fundamentally unfair, and inconsistent with the will of the stockholders who voted for it.”
