Still More Job cuts at Tesla’s Buffalo Factory

Another week brings with it more notifications of lost jobs at Tesla’s Gigafactory in South Buffalo.

On Monday, the company submitted a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice (WARN) letter,

published Wednesday, indicating another 27 workers will lose their jobs this summer, effective August 11.

This latest cut comes a week after the company announced it was cutting five jobs; in total, there have now been three WARN letters submitted to New York State in the past few weeks alone resulting in the loss of 345 jobs altogether. Layoffs for the first round of cuts announced three weeks ago are set to begin August 1.

The company now says a total of 2,032 people are employed at the Riverbend facility; oddly, that is a slight increase from the 2,025 workers the company claimed in the last two WARN letters filed with the state.

As with the previous letters, the company states the workers who will lose their jobs are not part of a union, and the reason given for the losses is “economic,” with no additional details provided.

In April, Tesla announced it was cutting an estimated 10% of its global workforce.

The plant was originally developed to produce solar panels but the scope of work has changed considerably. Now the plant is said to manufacture charging stations for Tesla’s electric vehicles, in addition to vehicle wiring and as a data collection and analysis center for self-driving vehicles.

In an interview last month, Ken Girardin, research director for the Empire Center for Public Policy, said the losses are not all that surprising, saying “this project was doomed from the beginning.”

Tesla has announced layoffs on April 17 (285 workers); May 1 (26); May 7 (4), May 9 (3) and May 14 (27).

Before the layoffs started rolling out,  two executives announced they were leaving Tesla: Andrew Baglino, a senior vice president of the company’s powertrain and energy engineering branch, and Rohan Patel, vice president of public policy and business development. Both had been with the company for several years -- Baglino for 18, Patel for 8 -- and it was not immediately clear whether their departure was connected with the company’s layoffs.

The company is obligated, under the terms of its tax breaks with New York State as part of the Buffalo Billions project, to maintain a workforce of at least 1,460 jobs at the Riverbend plant until 2027.

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