In February, Tesla worker Jose Moran published a blogpost that detailed allegations of mandatory overtime, high rates of injury and low wages at the factory, and revealed that workers were seeking to unionize with the United Auto Workers. “You really start losing the startup feel when you have thousands of people doing physical labor.” “From what I’ve gathered, Elon Musk started Tesla kind of like an app startup, and didn’t realize that it isn’t just nerds at a computer desk typing,” said one production worker, one of several who asked not to be identified by name. ![]() Inside Tesla’s car-production center in Fremont, California. Nowhere is that contradiction more apparent than at the Tesla factory, where Musk’s bombastic projection that his company will make 500,000 cars in 2018 (a 495% increase from 2016) relies as much on the sweat and muscle of thousands of human workers as it does on futuristic robots. ![]() Tesla sits at the juncture between a tech startup, untethered from the rules of the old economy, and a manufacturer that needs to produce physical goods. “It’s like you died and went to auto-worker heaven.” But he added: “Everything feels like the future but us.” Richard Ortiz, another production worker, spoke admiringly of the high-tech shop floor. “We had an associate on my line, he just kept working, kept working, kept working, next thing you know – he just fell on the ground,” said Mikey Catura, a worker on the battery pack line. He was one of several workers who said they had seen co-workers collapse or be taken away in ambulances. “They just send us to work around him while he’s still lying on the floor.” “I’ve seen people pass out, hit the floor like a pancake and smash their face open,” said Jonathan Galescu, a production technician at Tesla. And how do we survive? How do we not die and have everyone lose their jobs?” It’s just a question of how much money we lose. “This is not some situation where, for example, we are just greedy capitalists who decided to skimp on safety in order to have more profits and dividends and that kind of thing. “We’re a money-losing company,” Musk added. “I do believe this market cap is higher than we have any right to deserve,” he said, pointing out his company produces just 1% of GM’s total output. Musk also said that Tesla should not be compared to major US carmakers and that its market capitalization, now more than $50bn, is unwarranted. His company says its factory safety record has significantly improved over the last year. In a phone interview about the conditions at the factory, which employs about 10,000 workers, the Tesla CEO conceded his workers had been “having a hard time, working long hours, and on hard jobs”, but said he cared deeply about their health and wellbeing. Hundreds more were called for injuries and other medical issues. Ambulances have been called more than 100 times since 2014 for workers experiencing fainting spells, dizziness, seizures, abnormal breathing and chest pains, according to incident reports obtained by the Guardian.
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