The workers aren't risking any criminal consequences. It's much more effective for CA to go after the company.

The email is just trying to intimidate people into coming in or not filing for unemployment.

The normal process is that an unemployed person files for unemployment and also reports earned income and rejected job offers. Both can negatively impact their unemployment claims. Unemployment actually costs companies money.

Normally turning down the same job with the same pay you were laid off from would disqualify you from receiving unemployment. You'd need a great reason. A pandemic, and a shelter in place order are both great reasons. I'm assuming not showing up the factory would not disqualify you.

But CA's unemployment system is overloaded right now. I really wouldn't want to be dealing with it, let alone have my claim be a special case.

You're not missing anything. The local county has already said they won't prosecute the workers for violating the health order since Elon Musk is making them choose between their health or their livelihoods.

It's also unlikely the local county or state will prosecute Elon Musk since it's difficult to pinpoint the actual criminal violation he could be charged with.

However, it's very likely that Musk will be sued in civil court by one or more of his (ex) employees. There are a variety of different legal claims they could make, so it's hard to say what the outcome would be.

> it's difficult to pinpoint the actual criminal violation he could be charged with.

Doesn't seem to be. These businesses in LA county have been charged:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-03/coronavi...

https://www.dailynews.com/2020/05/12/60-nonessential-l-a-bus...

Alameda county could do the same.

The articles and their references don't quote any statute (the LADN has a list of defendants but no reference to criminal charges; the article specifies only that they are pursuing cutoff of utilities to those properties).

> the article specifies only that they are pursuing cutoff of utilities to those properties

No, it doesn't. Here are some case numbers:

https://www.lacityattorney.org/post/feuer-charges-10-more-al...

Look up the criminal case summary using the case number:

http://www.lacourt.org/criminalcasesummary/ui/index.aspx

  No, it doesn't. Here are some case numbers:

You say "No", as if the article says otherwise, then quote a different source altogether. I was addressing specifically what the article did and didn't reference.

Anyway, this confirms my earlier point about these articles not identifying a related state criminal statute.

These charges are from the L.A. Administrative Code, and there is a statute specific to Los Angeles:

"Sec. 8.77. Punishment of Violations. It shall be a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine not to exceed $1,000.00 or by imprisonment not to exceed six months, or both, for any person, during a local emergency declared pursuant to this chapter, to: ... 8.77(b). Do any act forbidden by any lawful rule, regulation, order or directive issued pursuant to this chapter, if such act is of a nature as to give, or be likely to give, assistance to any national enemy, or imperil the lives or property of other inhabitants of this City, or to prevent, hinder or delay the defense or protection thereof."

> You say "No", as if the article says otherwise

Yes, because the article says otherwise.

> then quote a different source altogether

Yes, it's additional information because you're still not getting it.

I wonder what kind of lawsuit payoff employees would get if they went to work and caught coronavirus?

They can catch it at home just as easily, so it would be difficult to prove their claim. So I would think it would be a non-starter.

I agree it would be difficult to prove that they caught it at work, but saying they can catch it as easily at home just sounds like 'reopen' rhetoric to me.

I think it's best to look at individual facts and claims as they are, without reference to their attachment to some political side or movement. It frees your mind so you can more easily think for yourself.

Alright, without any evidence to back it up there is no reason to believe that you are likely to catch covid at home as anywhere else.

Edit: I don't even understand why there are 'political sides or movements' to this in the US. I am in Australia where there has been broad cooperation between politicians and people of different political beliefs. It hasn't been perfect of course but for the most part we have been listening to the medical and scientific experts.

The evidence to back it up is there though. The majority (in fact 66%) of new COVID-19 hospitalizations in New York state recently have been people who have been staying inside their home. Based on data from a sample of 1,000 patients at 100 hospitals.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocki...

Interesting, but it's not enough to come to a general conclusion. Without understanding what the mechanism of infection was you can't say that's how it works for everyone, everywhere. Are we seeing this anywhere else? We're not seeing it here in Australia.

You don’t need to prove you contracted it at work, you just need to prove that being compelled go to work including traveling was the most likely cause and was against the directive of the local government and medical experts which will be very easy to do so.

Civil court has very different burden of proof and if it goes to trial the jury would nearly certainly vote in favor of the plaintiffs.

If they will get sued they will settle and settle fast.

You've missed some news:

>If Tesla’s Prevention & Control Plan includes these updates, and the public health indicators remain stable or improve, we have agreed that Tesla can begin to augment their Minimum Basic Operations this week in preparation for possible reopening as soon as next week

https://twitter.com/Dare2BWell/status/1260430367061876736

There's no scenario in which the workers get charged with anything as they are not breaking any laws.

If a health department finds that a restaurant is too dirty to operate, they don't jail the workers or the workers but fine or shutdown the restaurant.

This is a similar kind of an order - the best county could do is to fine Tesla or shut them down.

It's really not a similar situation. Refusing to social distance is illegal as it puts other people's lives in danger but working for a dirty restaurant is not and is not analogous this is in any way.

However the same sanitary law can be applied if Tesla violates distancing. It's exactly like a restaurant without a sink to wash hands or gloves.

To make his analogy more accurate, it would be the restaurant gets shutdown for being too dirty, at which point the owners continue to open and the workers continue making food there.

And then the owner is supposed to be slapped with a reasonable fine. Or jailed if they're continuing to defy the court order.

Smoking and obesity put other people's lives in danger as well, whether it be due to second hand smoke or being a burden on the healthcare system and diverting resources.

There have been countless discussions already about at risk groups and potential spread to them, QALY's, etc. What I want to get at is "social distancing" is arbitrary (6 feet?) and should not be forced. (I am unsure of your statement "Refusing to social distance is illegal...")

> What I want to get at is "social distancing" is arbitrary (6 feet?)

There do exist concrete studies on what distance makes sense; see for example https://medium.com/@jurgenthoelen/belgian-dutch-study-why-in...

Illegal, as in not allowed and punishable by law in the state.

But the state is willing to make some exceptions, making it legal for this.

"potentially unsafe"

Thanks for putting in the word "potentially" because it recognizes an inescapable reality: the world is unsafe. We have to live in this world. That's just life.

I would however take another step and say some people disagree about opening the factory being more unsafe than other options.

There absolutely will be COVID cases at the factory. But there will also be cases outside the factory.

It's really difficult to say wether opening is safer (because employees are in a pretty safe environment with respect to COVID, relative to their homes or other places they can travel to, and because they have health insurance) or whether it's more dangerous and somehow the factory will be a hot spot of viruses, even though it's a super dry place full of metal and sparks.

Let's just recognize, on your point 4, not everyone agrees that keeping the factory closed is the safer option here.

You've missed that Tesla was already negotiating to open up one week from now. This is a 7-day advancement of a plan that was already likely to happen with complete legal support.

We could still debate the moral wisdom of resuming production with significant additional safety procedures. Tesla is communicating that they've managed to do this successfully and safely at a similar factory in Shanghai.

There's really three aspects to this:

(1) The wisdom and timing of resuming normal activities with sufficient precautions (and if not now, then when?)

(2) The specific legal problems of doing this after the state has allowed re-opening, but before the county has done so, and one week before it would otherwise be allowed

(3) Musk's seemingly-irrational and spastic way of communicating his intents and opinions on Twitter

The US debate on the quarantine measures is so polarized it's ridiculous. I personally disagree that all nonessential economic activity involving face-to-face contact should be shut down for >12 months until a vaccine might be ready. So it follows that a return to workplaces that can mostly be made safe must happen at some point. Should this happen when it's safe, or at some predetermined point in time? Who decides? How should companies behave if their competitors choose a specific strategy?

I was the first person in my area to call out for social distancing, shutdowns and quarantines, even before any official response was in the cards, so please don't write me off as a right-wing parrot for pointing this out. The US response was atrocious, cost hundreds of billions and tens of thousands of lives already. But now it's the reality we have.

Musk's apparent Twitter insanity is its own story. I think it's mostly relevant for the court of public opinion. He obviously has other motivations for his tweets than seeking the truth, but his plays are quite rational. He has a history of framing reality in ways that aren't compatible with the most objective interpretation. Calling it lying would generally be an overstatement, but some of it has been very dishonest.

In this case, the most likely explanation is a strong wish to not lose the competitive position of Tesla, along with playing an existing political divide to build support with the right-voting population that would previously dismiss him and Tesla as liberal tree-huggers.

This is actually a decent marketing strategy in the social media, Twitter-fuelled post-truth world. But as many other things Musk has done over the years, both in public and out of it, it's a balancing act on the edge of the abyss.

  The US debate on the quarantine measures is so polarized it's ridiculous. 

That's aggravated by the inequities of application in many areas, often rooted in underlying politics.

To me, it's ridiculous to (true examples in my city) close the dog parks but allow the skateboard parks to operate... or allow hand to hand delivery of hard liquor while banning haircuts.

Really? Since we probably shouldn’t open everything at once, you can’t see putting the welfare of youth barely impacted by the virus over dogs? Or allowing brief contact over prolonged? Of course government wants those liquor taxes but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

  youth barely impacted by the virus 

Symptomatic youth are still at risk of serious complications[0], even more than adults are well into the forties. Youth are also far less likely to conform to distancing rules.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23187934

Well said.