More of this, please! After a group of woke employees took the initiative of trying to build anti-Musk sentiment — within the company Musk founded and still mostly owns — and issuing a set of tiresome, leftist demands, SpaceX summarily fired them.
This is probably my favorite story this week. I guess no one told these wokelings that the Revolution didn’t happen yet, private ownership of the means of production is still a thing, and the hired help doesn’t get to tell the bosses what to do.
On Wednesday, a group of employees posted “An open letter to the Executives of SpaceX” in an internal chat with more than 2,600 employee members. The letter criticized Elon Musk, whining that he was an embarrassment to their efforts to make SpaceX more “inclusive,” “safe,” a “great place for all,” and whatever other boilerplate diversity platitude came to mind.
I’ve previously mentioned that the end-stage of terminal wokeness is when the infected organization eschews its original purpose to dedicate itself primarily to perpetuating wokeness. The self-appointed diversity directors at SpaceX were clearly attempting to induce this condition at their workplace. The first paragraph of their letter, which The Verge obtained and reported, reads:
In light of recent allegations against our CEO and his public disparagement of the situation, we would like to deliver feedback on how these events affect our company’s reputation, and through it, our mission. Employees across the spectra of gender, ethnicity, seniority, and technical roles have collaborated on this letter. We feel it is imperative to maintain honest and open dialogue with each other to effectively reach our company’s primary goals together: making SpaceX a great place to work for all, and making humans a multiplanetary species. (emphasis added)
Note that they believe SpaceX’s first primary goal is making all leftists, no matter how disturbing, comfortable (“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” in corporatese).
The internal activists leveraged a mere accusation of harassment against Musk to justify their actions, though it was clear their real beef is that he’s embarrassingly unwoke. Check out their breathtaking self-appointed authority to shape and control the culture of a corporation they don’t own or lead, but which is owned by Elon Musk.
Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks. As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX—every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values.
Usually, this is the point at which corporations cave to the woke moblet of employees, trampling on the silent majority who just want to get their work done to waste company time and money on soothing the sensitive hyperventilaters. They then discover too late that it’s never possible to placate these people, and that once in the throes of the cycle, the organization ends up circling the drain. (See Disney Corporation.)
Related: Insufficiently Woke Environmental Group Struggles With Accusations of Transphobia
But this time, for once, something wonderful happened: within 24 hours, the auto-anointed guardians of inclusive corporate culture were fired. CNBC reports:
SpaceX has fired at least five employees who were involved with circulating a letter around the company that was critical of CEO Elon Musk, according to two people familiar with the company who declined to be named and an internal email from President and COO Gwynne Shotwell.
In her email (also available from The Verge), Shotwell wrote — and I apologize for the lengthy quote, but every word is a savory spanking of the joyless prigs who got canned —
You may have received an unsolicited request from a small group of SpaceX employees for your signature on an “open letter” yesterday and your participation in a related survey. Based on diverse employee feedback, this has upset many. That is, the letter, solicitations and general process made employees feel uncomfortable, intimidated and bullied, and/or angry because the letter pressured them to sign onto something that did not reflect their views. Employees also complained that it interfered with their ability to focus on and do their work. We have 3 launches within 37 hours for critical satellites this weekend, we have to support the astronauts we delivered to the ISS and get cargo Dragon back to the flight-ready, and after receiving environmental approval early this week, we are on the cusp of the first orbital launch attempt of Starship. We have too much critical work to accomplish and no need for this kind of overreaching activism — our current leadership team is more dedicated to ensuring we have a great and ever-improving work environment than any I have seen in my 35-year career.
Shotwell then lay down the law:
…blanketing thousands of people across the company with repeated unsolicited emails and asking them to sign letters and fill out unsponsored surveys during the work day is not acceptable, goes against our documented handbook policy, and does not show the strong judgement needed to work in this very challenging space transportation sector. We performed an investigation and have terminated a number of employees involved.
It’s amazing what happens when grownups are in charge.
I am sorry for this distraction. Please stay focused on the SpaceX mission, and use your time at work to do your best work. This is how we will get to Mars.
Sorry, wokesters — looks like SpaceX will stay focused on its actual mission, rather than becoming yet another zombie company that vaguely resembles its namesake but is actually a soulless corpse animated only by Marxism.
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