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- Tesla will require employees in a Reno-area factory to wear masks, The Wall Street Journal reports.
- The decision comes ahead of a threatened mask mandate from the Nevada state government.
- As the Delta variant spreads, other car manufacturers have also required masks, regardless of vaccination status.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Tesla will require all employees in a Nevada battery-manufacturing plant to wear masks indoors regardless of their vaccination status due to the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant, The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend.
The company's decision, which goes into effect Monday, came ahead of a potential mask mandate from the Nevada government for the county where Tesla's factory is located if transmission rates continued to increase, according to The Journal.
As the Delta variant continues to circulate and case numbers across the country rise, other car-manufacturing rivals, including GM and Ford, as well as other tech companies, like Amazon, have instituted mask mandates for employees, even if they're vaccinated.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk was often outspoken, and at times defiant, in the face of coronavirus-related restrictions earlier in the pandemic. He called shelter-in-place orders "fascist" and filed a lawsuit against a California county that had shut down one of the company's factories as part of the county's social-distancing measures. In May of last year, he defied local orders and restarted production, tweeting that "if anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me." Some former Tesla employees in its Fremont, California, factory also claimed they were fired for staying home out of fear of contracting COVID-19.
Tesla did not immediately respond to The Wall Street Journal's or Business Insider's requests for comment.
Read the full story about Tesla's masking requirements in The Wall Street Journal.