Sean Penn sent a 2,200 internal letter to his CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort) employees, the L.A. Times reports, berating them for remarks made by anonymous workers about the operation online.
The Oscar-winner has received high praise for the mass center at Dodgers Stadium supported by his CORE nonprofit and the work it has done responding to COVID and providing test and vaccination centers.
The 60-year-old sent the fiery missive Friday, and the L.A. Times published a copy of the email. One of the anonymous workers claimed they were overworked by L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti. They said they were working “18 hour days, six days per week,” and “without the opportunity to take breaks.” The commenter also claimed Garcetti “more or less ordered” a violation of Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules.
Another worker claimed CORE employees “usually DON'T get breakfast, just coffee,” in contrast to a NYTimes story claiming they got Krispy Kreme breakfasts and Subway lunches.
In his email to staff, Penn spoke of his “grave concern” for the “broad-based cyber whining.” He chalked up the “highly visible” complaints as a “broad betrayal of all.”
“Those comments, which claimed to be revealing of inaccuracies about our vaccine effort at Dodger Stadium in a news report, were in themselves not only a propagation of deeper inaccuracies, but also indulged the personal opinions of those alleged CORE staffers in a way that violates everything that keeps us whole,” Penn wrote.
He encouraged unhappy workers to quit.
“It's called quitting. Quit for CORE. Quit for your colleagues who won't quit. Quit for your fellow human beings who deeply recognize that this is a moment in time. A moment of service that we must all embody sometimes to the point of collapse. That's my job. And that's your job,” he added.