SpaceX and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, are being sued by eight former employees who allege they were fired after asking the company to address a toxic work culture they say is rife with sexual harassment and discrimination.
Former employees say Musk fostered an inappropriate work environment at the spacecraft company with his social media posts, where he often announced important company news, including launch dates and milestones, but laced with memes and jokes filled with of sexual innuendos.
In the complaint, former SpaceX engineers say the troubling posts were not just private rantings of their billionaire CEO. SpaceX told employees to consider Musk's posts about X as official statements and company news.
“There was no separation in [Elon] Musk’s statements and the company’s statements,” said Anne Shaver, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. “When employees expressed concerns, they were told, 'We can't do anything. SpaceX is Elon and Elon is SpaceX.'”
A SpaceX representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk, owner of SpaceX and X, is a prolific user of the social media site formerly known as Twitter. He is known for sometimes questionable posts, attacking politicians, personal opponents, and people with whom he disagrees.
In a prominent post in the complaint, Musk wrote to Chad Hurley, the former CEO of YouTube, “if you touch my sausage, you can have a horse.”
In another case, he posted a photo of Bill Gates with a pregnant stomach with the message “in case you need to lose an erection quickly.” In response to SpaceX competitors, he once posted that they “[c]I didn't raise it (to orbit) hahaha.”
In one post, he said he was considering creating a university in Texas similar to MIT and proposed calling it “TITS.”
The online behavior, the lawsuit alleges, seeped into daily work at SpaceX.
“The employees could not avoid seeing or hearing about them,” states the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. “Musk's statements circulated quickly via email, Teams channels and/or word of mouth and were widely discussed.”
The lawsuit claims that SpaceX's handbook instructs employees to view Musk's social media on X as “a company-approved news source” and encourages employees to share it publicly.
Musk's social media activity also had another consequence, the lawsuit states: “Musk's conduct of introducing these grotesque and juvenile sexual jokes into the workplace had the entirely foreseeable and intentional result of encouraging other employees to engage in similar behaviors.”
At SpaceX's offices in Hawthorne, the lawsuit claims, company and employee meetings mimicked Musk's humor.
In meetings, the lawsuit alleged, senior engineers called mechanical parts “chodes” and “schlongs.” A camera that was placed on the bottom of a Falcon second-stage rocket was called the “Upskirt Chamber,” and a structure used by astronauts to transfer from SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station was called the “Fun Tunnel.” . a euphemism for anal sex.
Paige Holland-Thielen, one of the former employees who sued SpaceX, alleged that a senior engineer in December 2021 saw a graph on her computer that pointed downward. The engineer made reference to a penis and asked: “How can we lift it up, up, up?”
Musk, who has been listed by Forbes as one of the richest people on the planet, has long faced accusations of turbulent leadership, including accusations of retaliation against those who speak out against him.
When he bought Twitter in 2022, Musk fired a large number of employees from the social media platform, including those who had criticized him, the New York Times reported.
He has also faced accusations of sexual harassment.
Business Insider reported in 2022 that a SpaceX flight attendant was paid $250,000 to settle a sexual misconduct lawsuit, alleging that Musk exposed himself to her and offered to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage.
On Tuesday, the day the lawsuit was filed, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had a sexual relationship with a SpaceX intern more than 20 years his junior.
The eight employees, four women and four men, were fired in 2022 at Musk's direction, the complaint alleges, after they drafted an internal letter asking SpaceX executives to report Musk's social media posts.
The letter mentioned the allegations against Musk, as well as concerning social media posts that it said included “subtle sexual harassment” and “bullying.” He also called on executives to “condemn Elon's damaging behavior on Twitter.”
According to the complaint, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told Holland-Thielen and Tom Moline to “stop flooding employees.” [sic] communication channels” after they shared the letter on June 15, 2022.
On the same day, the lawsuit alleges, Musk asked a Human Resources representative to fly from Texas to Hawthorne and then ordered officials to fire Holland-Thielen and Moline.
SpaceX continued to investigate the authors of the letter and those involved in drafting the document, the lawsuit claims, and fired more employees as a result.
“Musk believes he is above the law,” said Laurie Burgess, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. “Our eight brave clients stood up to him and were fired for doing so. “We hope to hold Musk accountable for his actions at trial.”
