{"id":81938,"date":"2025-04-20T14:10:28","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T18:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=81938"},"modified":"2025-04-20T14:10:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T18:10:28","slug":"tesla-whistleblower-says-musk-wanted-to-deport-her-team-for-raising-brake-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=81938","title":{"rendered":"Tesla whistleblower says Musk wanted to deport her team for raising brake issue"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former Tesla engineer Christina Balan, who was fired in 2014, said in an interview that her entire team was threatened with deportation for taking her side when she brought up a brake safety issue directly to Elon Musk. She\u2019s now succeeded in throwing out Tesla\u2019s arbitration case against her, and hopes to meet Tesla directly in open court in a case that could influence corporate policy nationwide.<\/p>\n

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Christina Balan is a Romanian-born engineer who formerly worked for Tesla on the Model S. Her contributions were significant enough that her initials appeared on the Model S\u2019 battery pack.<\/p>\n

But in 2014, she brought up what she considered a safety issue directly with Elon Musk. She thought that the Model S\u2019 floor mats could cause a brake safety issue, similar to a situation that Toyota had recently gone through<\/a> (though that also led to a media firestorm that blew the issue out of proportion<\/a>). She said that Tesla had chosen suppliers based on friendships, not quality.<\/p>\n

And she brought it up directly to Musk because\u2026 he told her to. Famously, in 2013, Musk sent out an email to the entire company stating:<\/p>\n

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Anyone at Tesla can and should email\/talk to anyone else according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company.\u00a0 You can talk to your manager\u2019s manager without his permission, you can talk directly to a VP in another dept, you can talk to me, you can talk to anyone without anyone else\u2019s permission. Moreover, you should consider yourself obligated to do so until the right thing happens.<\/p>\n

-Elon Musk, email to all Tesla employees, March 21, 2013<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A few days after sending that email, Balan said she was offered a meeting with Musk, but that when she showed up to the meeting, it was instead attended by a lawyer and some large men in uniforms, and with Tesla forcing her to resign her position.<\/p>\n

During that meeting, Balan says that Tesla\u2019s lawyer threatened to deport many members of her team, who were currently waiting on green card applications, if she didn\u2019t sign the resignation, seemingly in response to her team backing her up in raising these concerns. She ended up signing the resignation in protest, writing on it that \u201cI\u2019m resigning for the position that I was put in a month ago bc I dare to speak up to the Sr management, also bc people that had the chance to speak up were threatened\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

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Balan\u2019s initials, \u201cCB,\u201d on a Model S battery pack<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Balan\u2019s case got coverage in Huffington Post in 2017, Tesla sent a statement that Balan had stolen company resources to work on a \u201csecret\u201d personal project (Tesla emails show that Balan was told to work on this project by leadership). After this, Balan says she faced difficulty in finding work as companies feared ending up on Musk\u2019s blacklist.<\/p>\n

Balan filed a defamation suit over the press statement, but Tesla forced her case into arbitration and got the defamation suit thrown out. Forced arbitration is widely used by companies in America to find faster and more corporate-friendly rulings, an approach that has only become more common after endorsement<\/a> by the \u201cSupreme<\/a>\u201d Court.<\/p>\n

Balan then appealed that decision, and after many delays (some related to her fight against breast cancer, which is now in remission), she finally succeeded<\/a> in getting the arbitration thrown out on Monday<\/a> \u2013 even though she represented herself, pro se<\/em>, for most of the proceedings.<\/p>\n

Her win could be significant for corporate policy nationwide, as it could serve to chill the overuse of arbitration which is seen by most observers as giving disproportionate power to companies in labor disputes. However, given the nature of the court\u2019s recent finding, which was found to be a jurisdictional issue, this decision may not be directly applicable to many other arbitration cases.<\/p>\n

Now, Balan wants to face Tesla in open court with her case, and hopes to bring more of her story to the public \u2013 which she says Musk has tried to stop her from doing, despite his claims of being a \u201cfree speech absolutist.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said so in an interview this weekend with The Times UK, a media organization owned by climate denier Rupert Murdoch, who is also the father of James Murdoch, a Tesla boardmember.<\/p>\n

In the interview, Balan describes working conditions under Musk, and that he was a mostly-absent CEO who only showed up to the office twice a month, would threaten or retaliate against those who tried to fix problems. She says that she wants to take her case to open court \u201cto prove how vindictive this monster is. He\u2019s pure evil\u2026 he\u2019s enjoying hurting people\u2026 and you don\u2019t know about them because he\u2019s forcing everybody to give up their freedom of speech and their right to sue.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can watch the whole interview below:<\/p>\n

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