A U.S. labour agency recently accused Elon Musk’s SpaceX of forcing laid-off or dismissed workers to sign illegal contracts that prevent them from criticising the business and participating in class-action lawsuits against it.

A regional representative of the National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) in Seattle submitted the complaint late on Wednesday. SpaceX has already been involved in another dispute before the NLRB and has responded with a lawsuit alleging that the agency’s organisational structure is unconstitutional.

The labour board said in a release on Thursday that SpaceX, a California company with headquarters in Hawthorne, is accused in the new complaint of pressuring former workers to sign severance agreements that contain non-disparagement and confidentiality clauses that prevent them from exercising their legal rights under US labour law.

These clauses are frequently included in worker-signed severance agreements, but the NLRB has stated that these agreements must explicitly state that employees cannot give up their ability to complain to the NLRB or to fight for improved working conditions.

According to the NLRB, agreements signed by SpaceX employees to take legal problems to arbitration instead of court and to forgo joining class action lawsuits against the firm were unlawful. The complaint, however, was not immediately available.

There were no comments on the issue available from SpaceX.

The matter is set for an initial hearing in October before an administrative judge. The five-member labour board nominated by the U.S. president can review the administrative court’s judgement. Federal court is the appeal venue for board decisions.

The complaint aims to prevent SpaceX from executing agreements that workers have already signed and to compel it to revoke the agreements.

The firm is suing the labour board in a federal court in Texas. This action is related to another case in which the agency alleges that SpaceX unlawfully terminated eight engineers for circulating a letter criticising and accusing the company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, of engaging in sexist behaviour.

In that particular issue, SpaceX has refuted any misconduct and maintained that its constitutional right to a jury trial is being violated by the NLRB’s internal enforcement procedures. Additionally, the business claims that the U.S. Constitution is violated by restrictions on the removal of administrative judges and board members.

Pending lawsuits and board cases include identical claims from Amazon.com, Starbucks, Trader Joe’s, and three Starbucks baristas who oppose unionisation at their respective businesses.

SpaceX has requested that a U.S. appeals court located in New Orleans review its previous ruling that denied the company’s request to continue its lawsuit in Texas. The administrative case involving the sacked engineers is currently underway in California, the state where SpaceX is headquartered, following a judge’s relocation of the matter there.

(Adapted from Fortune.com)