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Tesla Factory Workers Reveal Pain, Injury and Stress: 'Everything Feels Like the Future But Us' (theguardian.com)
Workers at Tesla's California car factory have been passing out and requiring rides in ambulances, the Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday. The conditions at the factory suggest the lengths the company is going to in order to meet its extremely ambitious production goals, and the tension employees feel between their pride in being part of the company and the stress and exhaustion the company's goals are causing them, according to the report. From the article: 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. Hundreds more were called for injuries and other medical issues. 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. His company says its factory safety record has significantly improved over the last year. Musk also said that Tesla should not be compared to major US carmakers and that its market capitalization, now more than $50bn, is unwarranted. "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. "We're a money-losing company," Musk added. "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. It's just a question of how much money we lose. And how do we survive? How do we not die and have everyone lose their jobs?" The article also sheds light on the kind of manager Musk is. In early 2016, Musk slept on the factory floor in a sleeping bag "to make it the most painful thing possible. I knew people were having a hard time, working long hours, and on hard jobs. I wanted to work harder than they did, to put even more hours in," he was quoted as saying. "Because that's what I think a manager should do."
Robots don't complain.
Overvalued flash in the pan company is running at a loss and grinding its employees to a pulp.
Tell me a new one.
Instead of sleeping on the factory floor to show solidarity, perhaps he should have spent his time better analyzing production lines for improvement. A good manager doesn't work harder, a good manager works smarter. Add a person here, add a person there, lighten the individual load. Cross train and move multidiscipline employees to various stations based on demand, then move elsewhere when demand lowers.
On top of all that, his vehicles are shit, but that's another story altogether.
...for similarily priced cars the workers seem to be doing fine (although there seem to be only a few left): https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
...Elon Musk, Bill gates...
If you want to perform for these guys, you gotta give it all. Sometimes - that price is just too high.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Suffer as I have suffered
for I am Elon Musk
your savior
worship me
for i care about your health and safety
Let's call it 120 time. In 3.5 years for 10,000 workers.
How far is that from the normal number of times that people in a modest sized city will call for ambulances?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
It's no wonder that California Tesla employees are considering joining the UAW. If you don't treat your employees right one at a time, they're going to ask that you do so all at once.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Show me the baby!
DEATH TO TESLA
Pick latest successful company and run clickbait article about how bad conditions. They do this time and time again with every successful company, yet their brainless readers just keep clicking.
A good question would be, what is Tesla's labour turnover rate? If they're losing a large chunk of their workforce every year, then clearly conditions are very bad. If they're retaining most of their employees, then the employees are largely satisfied and the article is exaggerated bullshit.
The summary mentions nothing about labour turnover. Does the article itself (I never read clickbait so I don't know)?
I worked in an Aircraft Depot for the F15 Fighter as a civilian. Many times during periods like the Gulf Wars we would often work 12 hour shifts 7 days a week. They usually tried to limit that to 2 or 3 weeks because eventually it took a toll on people. After two weeks it's like time starts to blur. You make more mistakes and people get very stressed. Several times people almost came to blows on the job. I remember one guy walking down the back of a fighter and he stepped over an air duct and almost went off the side to the concrete floor. I watched helpless as another guy reached up and grabbed his shirt and snatched him back. We all felt energized by the emergency and the overtime was great but I was glad for some time off. Damn I wish I was 30 again. 100 degree summer heat in a hanger climbing over and inside jets. It would kill me now.
Which is why the workers at all the auto plants are in unions.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Read that again. 200 times for dizziness and nausia, etc. those things typically coming from environmental exposure to toxins and poorly ventilated chemical vapors. Hundreds more for physical medical problems coming from manufacturing work. If you are to compare numbers on a population and activity basis, make sure you understand what they include first. Compare that number not just to civil population in various work, but to the industry cohort. That's what courts do to find managerial negligence, and may be required here.
People don't want cars that take hours to refill. Stopping for gas is a pain in the ass, and it's quick. It's why hybrid gas sell better. How about swappable batteries standardized for all cars? These folks are sweating for something that won't fly.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
another skill that's also part talent. Only in this case the talent portion seems to be taken up with the ability for public performance and not so much with the ability to manage.
Look, common suffering only goes so far when you don't do anything to alleviate the conditions which lead to the suffering. So sleeping on the concrete is easily seen as nothing but a show for the workers not solidarity with them. Solidarity with them would to open examine why they're having to work so many extra hours and to find some way to reduce them. But I'm willing to bet that solution would have been along the lines of reducing hours which would have put the factory behind the artificial targets that were arrived at in order to influence the market-makers on Wall Street. And we can't disappoint Wall Street now can we?
For as much as a maverick Musk puts himself out there as, he sure is as tied to the hip to Wall Street as everyone else is these days. If he was actually interested in making his worker's lives better he'd be the first one to proclaim that the quality of the work is far important than the number of hours dedicated to it.
Well, we've had ambulances called to the office complex that I work from probably three times in the last year. If I look at the map of the parking lot there are about 400 numbered parking spaces, so assuming that some workers carpool or use some other form of transportation I'd guess there are around 450 employees.
So, for my workplace for one year is 3/450 = .667%
By contrast Tesla's workplace with your numbers is (120/3.5)/10000 = .343%
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
the stories are much, much worse than tesla.
"For 2009, there were an estimated 36,698,670 EMS events (responses) in the U.S., resulting in approximately 28,004,624 transports."
http://www.jems.com/articles/2011/11/nasemso-survey-provides-snapshot-ems-ind.html
Around 871 / 10,000 people / year. Assuming they are there only 1/3 of the time and that calls are evenly distributed throughout the day that would be about 290 / 10,000 ppl / year
10^348 is larger than 100, but when people read "more than 100", it's designed to make people think "a little more than 100". If The Guardian meant 500, they should have written it.
That's still a rate of 0.017 ambulance calls per worker per year, which isn't much, compared to how many times that ambulances get called in cities of 10,000.
Did TFA compare that to GM, Ford & Chrysler?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
. . . did a segment on Tesla a few years ago. Looked very laid back - not like this claim at all. No grease monkeys, clean uniforms (uh, maybe that's a clue it was staged?), and every was spotless.
Not the Dream Cars branch, but the regular How It's Made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
...UAW
I actually did work at an old economy factory producing cars in the medium price range. Never heard any stories compared to Tesla. But the unions were strong at our company, maybe that's why.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
This requires cities to be called into action and OSHA inspections. Tesla specifically opened its plants in the locations they're at now because of the known lack of local inspections or inspectors that are complete idiots that sign everything off. Believe me, companies actually look for places like this, because they think inspections are a waste of time and it allows them to hire the cheapest lousiest contractor to do the job. This situation is going to go beyond Tesla and hit the city as well for being negligent on inspections. The whole Oakland warehouse fire already has every jurisdiction freaking out.
I quite despise companies that do this and also despise the cities for allowing this crap to continue. I do work for FM and constantly see this nonsense go on in many facilities around the country. Then when something happens, they call us and hope that the insurers will pay, if not, they threaten to sue everyone. Plants that constantly have the same accidents over and over and they are still allowed to operate with the same problems, because OSHA gives them leeway or they find some lousier insurance company that will still insure them.
I couldn't get numbers just on workers, but I did find that in 2009 there were 28,004,624 medical transports resulting from 911 calls. Population that year was 306,800,000. That's one medical transport per year per 11 people.
120 transports in 3.5 years for 10,000 people is one transport per 23 people.
While workers are more healthy than the average person, they're also a lot more likely to accept a medical transport for things like dizziness where a person at home would likely just stop painting for the day and get some fresh air.
In the 90s I worked at a plywood mill, and we did have a lot less transports than that, but we also didn't call medics for things like dizziness. I had a head injury with lots of blood, enough blood that some of co-workers were freaked out, and I didn't get transported. I stopped the bleeding with a paper towel, and they checked my eyes for signs of concussion, and let me go back to work with the instructions to call if I started acting "weird." From the sounds of it they bought fancy insurance that includes medical transport and they just transport anybody with a problem.
If you can find numbers that specific please do provide them. In my experience it is hard to get public numbers that specific; managers that need those numbers pay consultants for them!
For a few years I was annoyed about the uniform adoration Mr. Musk was getting on Slashdot and in other circles. Then hit-pieces like this one started appearing...
Would the insufferable conditions described in TFA have been described at all — or described using the same terms — if he were still the Progressives' darling for championing "green" causes?
Or has the tone switched, because Musk is a Trump-administration supporter (sort of) — and there is a well-organized smear and boycott campaign against him as a result?
There is a lively discussion on whether or not Musk is a "Trump enabler" — but people, who've already concluded, that he is, will stop at, literally, nothing. Even poisoning the "haters" is becoming a thing — online smears are child's play...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
ALL his companies are run like this. Space-x is known for grinding people 60-80 hours a week as the expected minimum, salary or not. and if you don't then you won't have a job for long. To him people are an expendable resource to be burned out and tossed aside.. I for one would never work for Elon.
My company HQ with around 1700 people has around one ambulance call per year, and that is all desk jobs.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Manager Musk Must Mean More Money!
No doubt there will be plenty of comments about "stopping for an hour to charge on a long trip is OK" I could be wrong, but I suspect these may come from European posters. "Long trip" doesn't have quite the same meaning here. I can drive from Dallas to El Paso in about 9 hours with no stops and STILL be in Texas. That's Paris to Berlin distance (640 miles or so). In reality, there will be bathroom breaks, at least one meal, so add another 2 hours. Now, add two hours for recharge stops, assuming you can find one in the wasteland of west Texas. It adds up. I drove to Tucson Arizona a few years ago and El Paso was only HALF WAY there. I assure you even gas stations were scarce between El Paso and Tucson.
"to make it the most painful thing possible. I knew people were having a hard time, working long hours, and on hard jobs. I wanted to work harder than they did, to put even more hours in," he was quoted as saying. "Because that's what I think a manager should do."
Sure, that is how it works. Instead of organizing stuff, manager is supposed to be uncomfortable. Because what helps the employees the most is nice feeling related to managers sleeping habits.
Otherwise said, you are no father to your children and your wife is about to divorce you, but hey, manager sleeps in a bad. That should help you.
>...from the normal number of times that people in a modest sized city...
A city will have every age, health condition, and demographic within it.
A factory or business will have healthy employable people within a certain hirable age range.
So no there is no comparison. Unless the factory employees also include elderly folks with oxygen tanks & Alzheimer's wandering the production floor, in addition to curious children poking around the offices & assembly line, oh and don't forget the average thirty year old who's texting & driving their forklift as if they're in a city car, and last but not least- the occasional transient who's skitzed out on something and needing medical attention while they took a break from working the company cafe. Then you can match true comparisons.
My guess from the descriptions is that most of these people were suffering panic attacks... thats a lot of panic attacks for a workplace.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
True, but there probably aren't a bunch of pensioners working at tesla, you would want to look at the number of transports of people within a reasonable working age range.
Also you want to eliminate hospital to hospital transfers which may or may not be in your original data set.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
This sudden media push against Tesla couldn't be part of a United Autoworker's Propaganda campaign to unionize Tesla. The UAW has nothing to lose when Tesla becomes the first company to fully automate car assembly (including the interior and wiring). Other automaker's would never copy Tesla's new automated assembly lines, reducing the number of autoworkers by a large percentage. Unionized Tesla employees would never go on strike to prevent increases in automated assembly. Nothing to see here. Move along.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I thought Tesla bought many of its facilities from failed companies on the cheap? Hence they didn't build those based on local regulations...but maybe their previous car-making owners did?
Ezekiel 23:20
This is what happens when you have a bunch of snowflakes working for you.
I don't think many people just stumble into a Musk company. For the most part, you know what you're getting into, you believe that what you're doing is the future as much as Musk does, and you put in the hours to make it happen. I don't think someone who didn't actually believe in the goals would last long in any of his companies.
You're treating a symptom while the disease rages on. The fish rots from the head. Why not cut off the head?
They want to be paid well for showing up, doing what they are told and not having to think.
Instead of repeating the story of being in pain by Friday, why not figure out a better way.
If a worker had a practical solution, it would be in Tesla's interest to do it.
It isn't a sustainable system for workers to expect others to make good jobs for them.
They have to take part in the process and find a smarter way to get the job done, that is a win win path.
The other path is to take what is available.
The path that doesn't work is to let a union make the job dumber and then have it go away.
The only place where a union could make sense is if the company is not able to see a good, practical idea.
I find it hard to believe that that is the case here.
Tesla is a big factory and 100 or 200 people are below the average injuries, so you can say Tesla is one of the safest factory out there to work for. Again, nice try on FUD
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Probably. Non-union company: union says Horrors, there are injurys, management doesn't care about you, unionize! Union company: union says Horrors, there are injuries, management doesn't care about us, strike!
Basically making software MISRAble for everyone involved in automotive software since 1998...
I worked a few months of 16 hour days, 7 days per week, at the Tesla factory (installing robots). I can vouch that this article is spot on the money from my experience.
I've worked in other auto plants, and I saw many things that raised my eyebrows at Tesla; including safety related issues. It is a 100% different experience at a Japanese factory. At a Japanese auto factory, you can't even cross an isle without stopping and pointing the direction you will take. At Tesla, I've seen people driving hi-lows way too fast, drinking coffee, and talking on a cellphone all at once. That kind of stuff gets you kicked out of a Japanese plant immediately.
Tesla really needs the UAW.
Tesla has quite a few veterans on the payroll. I wonder how many of those suffer PTSD events on the job.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
What's wrong with your office complex? My office has 350 employees. I've worked there nearly 7 years. We've had 1 ambulance call in that time.
The organization's main vehicle maintenance facility is based here, so the fleet vehicles are serviced there. At least one of the calls was because of a workplace injury, I think an employee fell off a ladder that was being used to get to a vehicle that was positioned up on a lift.
I know that another one was a heart attack.
Not sure about the third one.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You say it in jest.. But where i work i have witnessed texting and driving flts as well as floor scrubbers
At my place they just call the hearse. Had a few people drop over dead from heart attacks. Same scenario; long walk from the parking lot in the morning. One guy had been dead 15 minutes before found in a hallway.
TFA says
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. It's just a question of how much money we lose.
Losing money to win later is called investment. The profit increases as the losing phase shortens, hence we are exactly in the situation where greedy capitalists decided to skimp on safety to increase profits.
It could be that Tesla is over-cautious when it comes to work-place injuries, and therefore calls an ambulance in cases where, really, a co-worker could just drive them to the hospital.
Long ago, hurt cooking as a teenager, the boss had a co-worker drive me to get treated for a bad grease burn. Today, I see why. It kept their "reportable accidents" down.
What this proves is that no matter what happens, conservatards like you are not gonna be happy and are gonna bitch and bitch and bitch regardless of the outcome. You think you're being cute but you only look pathetic.
"A factory or business will have healthy employable people within a certain hirable age range."
Lol, yeah nah. They won't all be healthy. Not nearly.
It's supposed to be about the employees having problems, not Elon sound bites. The article is 50% Muskoil, 50% everyone else.
I know what it's like to have a CEO pushing too hard. I worked at Miniscribe in the QT Wiles days. It was a do-anything-to-hit-the-numbers environment. Don't know nothing 'bout no bricks though.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
A manager or CEO sleeping on the factory floor in a sleeping bag is not what a manager "should do", it's something made just for show that is usually irked by workers that are not in for the cult-like fanatic ride.
This is basically the same crap some game and software development companies say about crunch time. If problems were solved by managers and CEOs putting up little shows, there would be no need for labor laws. People need to understand that even if management gets sick when employees also get sick due to poor work conditions, that's never enough for businesses to avoid liability. Tesla is basically risking a stream of future, justifiable lawsuits there.
What good management does is finding ways to keep the company profitable while not endangering workers' health because they can't pay or find more workers, diversify shifts, improve the line, among others.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ra...
http://investingnews.com/daily...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Despite their name, rare earth elements are â" with the exception of the radioactive promethium â" relatively plentiful in Earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element at 68 parts per million, or as abundant as copper."
And batteries can be recycled...
If production processes pollute, that is a matter for regulations and subsidies or taxes to adjust for externalities.
Fossil fuels, for example, should have a huge tax on them to account for all the environmental and health problems they cause (including mercury pollution) and risks (like the need for a big military to defend long supply lines) with the tax money redistributed as a basic income. You just pay those costs in health insurance premiums, lower productivity from health issues, higher taxes for the military, groundwater pollution cleanup tax costs, and so on -- instead of at the pump or wall outlet -- and thus distorting market forces.
https://www.pri.org/stories/20...
http://www.environmentamerica....
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Don't like the job? Quit. I'm sure in this economy you will find another one quickly (snicker). This friendly security guard will escort you out. What did you say? Changed your mind? Sorry, we do not allow unmotivated and negative individuals in our workforce. I would refrain from any additional commentary that could be interpreted as a threat or be used as grounds for legal action against you. Dismissed and good luck on your next professional challenge.
Not like anyone is breaking rocks or digging ditches all day at tesla ffs. People are so soft nowadays
Could well be. Unfortunately given the differences in company policy and attitude it may not really be possible to compare Tesla to other automakers in this regard.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
look. 13 years of loss. 50 bn market cap.
that is the zenith of overvalued.
at least musk is admitting that it's overvalued and making a loss :D. unlike his last years book shenigans.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"The article also sheds light on the kind of manager Musk is. In early 2016, Musk slept on the factory floor in a sleeping bag "to make it the most painful thing possible. I knew people were having a hard time, working long hours, and on hard jobs. I wanted to work harder than they did, to put even more hours in," he was quoted as saying. "Because that's what I think a manager should do.""
The best thing a boss can do is ensure he hires enough resources to do the work without pushing everyone over the brink. Occasionally, perhaps, in extraordinary circumstances, people might have to work all hours for a specific goal, but the normal state of things should be to give people acceptable working hours. I was in the military and you accept that when the balloon goes up you may be up and working non-stop, getting kip where you can, but even there it's not the norm. Aside from the brief bursts of action, there are long periods of fairly normal working conditions.
The best boss isn't the one who stays working till midnight to show that he can work harder than everybody else. Nobody feels entirely comfortable knocking off before the boss, so that kind of behaviour drives people to stay longer, work too hard and make themselves stressed, unhappy and unhealthy. The best boss is the one that leaves on the dot, every day, and expects his workers to do the same. That boss might have to take his laptop home and carry on working till midnight, that's just the breaks if you run a company. But he should not be making his employees feel uncomfortable about routinely going home at the end of their standard working hours. Perhaps Musk means well and really is trying to lead from the front, but it's quite likely he's just leading his workforce into exhaustion if he is unable to provide adequate resources to do the required work in the allotted working time.
I'm pretty sure that you do already feel how the future will be for those of us who actually do the work.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
you will read that Tesla's workplace safety is actually 32% better than the industry average.
From TFA: [Tesla's] record of safety incidents went from slightly above the industry average in late 2016, to a performance in the first few months of 2017 that was 32% better than average.
That was exactly what I was going to ask :
how do these numbers compare with the rest of the industry ?
It's good that they are both :
- making progress (as mentioned in the summary)
- already better than the average.
i.e.: they are making good efforts.
(Compare the situation with Apple's Foxconn reports. They were within the industry average. So on one hand, this wasn't as dramatic as the news wanted to make it seem, on the other hand Apple wasn't putting any effort back then to make things better)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Woker union / Database Unions / C union :
Too bad I've already commented and can't "+1 Funny".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You tend to have more cases of exhaustion and fatigue when people actually work instead of sitting benched doing the least amount of work their contract allows them to get away with.
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I work in an oil refinery with around 2,000 employees, and we had 4 ambulance calls in the 3 years I've worked there. All were very big deals, with incident investigations, even though 2 of the 4 were medical problems unrelated to the work environment. When one employee had a heart attack at work, AEDs were installed in every building within 2 weeks, and every member of the emergency response brigade (approx. 10% of employees), were trained on their use within the month.
As our safety department will remind everyone on a regular basis "We're not making chocolate milk here". having a TRIR above zero in today's United States is, and should be seen as, completely unacceptable. Even slips, trips, and falls can be prevented through proper design. The attitude of injuries in the name of "whatever" are OK is what gets people hurt, and needs to be stopped.
One way to bring down the popularity of something good is to smear it's reputation.
I don't think many people just stumble into a Musk company. For the most part, you know what you're getting into, you believe that what you're doing is the future as much as Musk does, and you put in the hours to make it happen. I don't think someone who didn't actually believe in the goals would last long in any of his companies.
Anyone who went to work on a production line in a factory thinking they were part of some mission to change the world would be deluded. In reality, the only people who believe or say things like that are the owners. It's good business to get workers to put in extra unpaid hours.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it