Austin company lays off 250 janitorial, maintenance workers after Tesla cancels contract
A facilities services company is cutting more than 250 janitorial and maintenance employees in Austin after automaker Tesla terminated a contract with the firm.
ABM Texas General Services, a building maintenance and facility services company, reported the layoffs in a WARN letter sent to the Texas Workforce Commission. WARN letters, which stands for Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, are federally mandated notices employers must provide state governments when major layoffs occur.
ABM Texas General Services is an affiliate of ABM Industries Incorporated, which has more than 100,000 employees worldwide.
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ABM employees had been providing services to Tesla on the Austin property where the company's corporate headquarters and manufacturing are located. The WARN letter didn't specify whether the company serviced the company's headquarters offices, its manufacturing facility or both.
The WARN letter said that the company would no longer be providing janitorial or maintenance services at the site as of Feb. 16, after Tesla decided to end its contract with ABM. The letter said that the Austin-based electric carmaker terminated the contracted on Jan. 16. It also said that a subsequent janitorial vendor, SBM, will be taking over Tesla's contract.
ABM said the layoffs will affect 255 employees that were working at Tesla, including cleaners, technicians, supervisors, account supervisors, process managers and inventory control personnel. The company said the impacted individuals are not represented by a labor union and have no bumping rights.
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The layoffs are likely not the first to impact Tesla's Austin site. Tesla CEO ELon Musk has increasingly said that he has a "bad feeling" about a potential recession, and last year paused hiring and cut jobs of mostly Tesla office workers. It was not clear how many of the Tesla jobs cut were in Austin, the company's headquarters.
Tesla's manufacturing facility, which the company calls Giga Texas, has been continuing to scale up in recent years, and the carmaker has plans to grow it by millions of square feet in the coming months. The facility is expected to reach 10,000 workers,Musk has said.
Tesla also continues to increase production of its Model Y vehicles at the Austin facility, as the site is moving ahead with production of its long anticipated CyberTruck and battery cell production.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: ABM Austin announces 250 layoffs after Tesla ends maintenance contract
