Tesla's Employment Agreements: Long and Complex with Lifelong Confidentiality

It has been revealed that employment contracts at Tesla can be extremely lengthy, running up to 70 pages and including lifetime confidentiality clauses. The newspaper has gained access to secret employment contracts that Swedish Tesla employees have to sign, and the length of these contracts varies from 40 to 70 pages. This has raised strong reactions and concerns among labor law experts.

Darko Davidovic, union lawyer at IF Metall, has expressed his surprise at the complex and difficult-to-understand wording of Tesla's employment contracts. He emphasizes that typical employment contracts in Sweden rarely exceed five pages and that it is unrealistic to expect ordinary people to have to review and understand such complicated legal documents. He said: "As a lawyer, I have difficulty understanding the contracts and have to read them several times. It is not reasonable to expect ordinary workers to have to do a legal analysis of their employment contracts."

Dagens Nyheter has also consulted legal experts who have identified several problematic provisions in Tesla's contracts. One of the most controversial provisions requires employees to commit to never revealing any information about the company for the rest of their lives, whether they have terminated their employment or not. In addition, the contracts include terms that require employees to waive their rights to intellectual property, even if it has nothing to do with Tesla's car production.

In a statement to Dagens Nyheter, Tesla defends its agreements, claiming that it follows Swedish labor market rules and that its agreements are either equivalent to or better than collective agreements. However, the discussion about Tesla's employment contracts has triggered a broader debate about the rights and obligations of workers at the company and has raised public interest and concern.