Reports claim that Tesla employees will hold a protest in honour of Juneteenth (19th June) as the company’s CEO Elon Musk has said nothing about the event. Musk has also not been as vocal as other tech CEOs in the wake of recent support for the Black community facing systemic racism.

Juneteenth is a Texas state holiday celebrated every year on 19th June and it is known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, and Liberation Day. United States residents have always commemorated this date as the day that Union army general, Gordon Granger, gave an executive order in the city of Galveston, Texas, that all slaves are free.

Protests surrounding the killing of George Floyd and other racist occurrences coincide with 2020’s Juneteeth celebration. Tech companies have shown support for the oppressed Black community by recognising the celebration.

Jack Dorsey had announced that Juneteenth would now be a holiday for both Twitter and Square. Microsoft also said that it will dedicate the day to listening to black employees speaking about racism. Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos instructed employees to cancel all meetings today as well.

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However, there has been no statement on what Tesla would do on the day. CNet reports that a group of Tesla’s Fremont factory employees will stage a protest to mark the day.

A sign posted on Twitter calls on people to join the employees in protest. It also directs those willing to join to bring “signs” and “wear black”. Additionally, they are to call musicians, dancers, and artists as well. Despite this plan to protest and other criticisms on social media, neither Tesla nor Elon Musk has made any statement about Juneteenth as of when this article was published.

[Update: Including Elon Musk’s response to the protest plans]

Following the story of the planned protest, Tesla CEO Elon Musk finally broke his silence over the #BlackLivesMatter Protest from his Twitter page. He posted:

Juneteenth is henceforth considered a US holiday at Tesla & SpaceX

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 19, 2020

However, other details regarding this announcement surfaced. One is that the mail announcing the holiday came very late while most of the company’s employees were already at work. Also, it will not be a paid leave, unlike many other national holidays. A source on Twitter disclosed this in a post.

Musk himself had responded to questions about if it is an unpaid holiday by saying: “It does require use of a paid-time-off day, which is true of many other holidays.” He, however, seemed to change his stance later and added, “We will add one more PTO day after the annual review next quarter.”

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