Tesla lays off 285 workers in Buffalo as job cuts continue

Electric carmaker Tesla is to lay off 14% of its staff across two plants in New York, the company said in a regulatory filing on Thursday, following large-scale job cuts announced earlier in the week.

In an official worker adjustment and retraining notification or WARN notice, required by law, Tesla said it is laying off 280 of its 2,025 workers at the Gigafactory 2, and a further five employees at the nearby retail showroom on South Park Avenue in Buffalo.

The affected employees, who Tesla said were no represented by a union, will be let go from mid-July. The reason given in the document was simply "economic".

The news comes just days after the company said it was cutting a tenth of its global workforce across across sales, tech, and engineering, as it grapples with a worldwide slowdown in EV sales.

In a leaked internal memo to employees on Sunday, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said there had been a "duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas" and that the company had "made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10% globally".

Musk said the move was to enable Tesla to be "lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle".

"Effective now, you will not need to perform any further work and therefore will no longer have access to Tesla systems and physical locations," the memo said.