A group of seven former employees at Elon Musk’s SpaceX say the rocket and satellite company discriminated against women while joking about sexual harassment and even firing those who complained, a new civil rights complaint alleges.
According to the complaint, first reported by Bloomberg, the workers were fired by the company in 2022 after letter a circulated through SpaceX that was critical of Musk.
The workers claim that in their time at the company they were subjected to inappropriate behavior and sexual jokes by managers, who would often quote Musk.
‘Basically anything that would make a freshman frat initiate laugh was fair game in large parts of the company,’ said one of the fired employees, Tom Moline.
The group say that SpaceX violated California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, which protects workers who are critical of their management and bans sex-based discrimination.
The California Civil Rights Department first made contact with SpaceX about the allegations in January

SpaceX logo is displayed on a building on May 26, 2020, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral
The California Civil Rights Department first made contact with SpaceX about the allegations in January.
In October, SpaceX was sued by a female former employee who claimed the company pays and promotes women and minorities less than white men.
Engineer Paige Holland-Thielen who is among the complainants in the new civil rights suit, told Bloomberg that from the moment she was hired by SpaceX in 2018 she felt discriminated against as she was considered a ‘level 1’ employee despite having more experience than men who were given senior roles.
Even after getting a promotion, Holland-Thielen claims she was left out of meetings and decisions because of her gender.
When she complained that a male colleague took credit for her work, Holland-Thielen said that she was subjected to a performance review in which she was advised that she was ‘too emotional’ and told to be ‘more humble.’
She claims on one occasion she tried complaining to a manager about a colleague’s inappropriate behavior but the manager made a sexual joke when they saw downward-pointing data on her computer and allegedly said, ‘How can we get it, up, up, up?’

Paige Holland-Thielen (above) is among the complainants who say that she was regularly discriminated against at SpaceX because of her gender
The civil rights complaint also states that Musk posted what the workers considered inappropriate content on Twitter, and they couldn’t easily avoid them because he also used the platform to make important company announcements.
The complainants say the situation reached a boiling point for them when in 2022 Musk was accused of sexually harassing a SpaceX flight attendant. The suit claims the company was dismissive of the claims and that an HR director said something like ‘I’ve never been sexual harassed [sic], I must not be hot enough.’
Disappointed with the company’s handling of the accusation, the employees decided to write the open letter they say got them fired. The letter said Musk’s behavior was ‘a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment.’
Moline alleges he was one of several employees who was then called into a meeting and fired.
‘They told me that my employment was being terminated because they had determined that I was responsible for conceiving, writing, and distributing the open letter,’ Molina said in the complaint.
In October, former SpaceX engineer Ashley Foltz filed a proposed class action in California state last year, saying the company paid her $92,000 per year while men with similar duties and qualifications were paid up to $115,000.
California law prohibits employers from paying workers less than colleagues who perform ‘substantially similar work’ based on their sex, race or ethnicity.
Foltz said she discovered the discrepancy when SpaceX posted job openings for engineering positions with a salary range of $95,000 to $115,000.
A California pay transparency law took effect this year requiring employers to post salary ranges in job postings.
Last November the ex-employees brought the complaints to the National Labor Law and the agency ruled that SpaceX had indeed violated federal labor law by firing the workers, who are mostly engineers.
SpaceX then sued the agency, arguing the ruling will harm its reputation and ability to recruit talent.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk