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Tesla factory employees describe grueling work conditions

95 points by SirLJ 9y ago

rawland 9y ago
It is not like the other car companies behave differently. My father is working on the shop-floor of a large carmaker and they are setting up the line for a new model right now. Normally, when something happens -- usually "something" is something you puke from and get PTSD from witnessing it -- the whole hall gets a security briefing. Not now. No time. There is also a lot of pressure to get people working 7 days a week. Luckily they get a bunch of days off after the new model is going...
- Aloha 9y ago
  You're echoing my base question.. as I read this, I was thinking: "How is this any different than GM?" One of my best friends worked to open the Saturn plant in Spring Hill - and after 30 years with GM, his body is worn out and broken from the experience. The reason factory work has traditionally paid so well is to compensate you for the wear and tear on your body - and to entice people to do a repetitive, boring job.
  - mhermher 9y ago
    GM's factory workers are represented by a union. That's the difference. If there are abuses, then there is an avenue for redress.
    - Aloha 9y ago
      Yes, they are, they fought for and won that right for representation, the Tesla workers are welcome to do the same. However, being unionized is not a forgone conclusion, generally (but not universally) companies EARN a union thru systemic long term mistreatment of employees.
    - greglindahl 9y ago
      Doesn't that make it doubly interesting to compare Tesla's injury rates to a US, unionized plant? Not to mention all of the non-union, non-Tesla auto plants?
bhhaskin 9y ago
I often wonder how factual articles like this are. Under modern labor laws it would be difficult to create the kind of situations described. Especially in California. Unions have been trying infiltrate Tesla for awhile now. They have the most to gain by disseminating false information. On the other hand if the information is factual then Tesla really needs to improve working conditions.
- vkou 9y ago
  > They have the most to gain by disseminating false information. To be fair, management has just as much to gain by disseminating false information. (That everything is hunky-dory.) Also, workers trying to organize is not 'infiltration by unions'. It's their lawful right, in a society which allows free association. Management bargains collectively - why can't employees?
  - bhhaskin 9y ago
    That's true. An independent investigation is really the only way to know for sure.
    - vkou 9y ago
      This will never happen. More likely, employees will unionize, and come to some agreement with management, or, they will fail to, and anyone attempting to unionize will be fired. (Illegally, but in at-will states, employees have almost zero recourse for that kind of termination.)
      - pktgen 9y ago
        > More likely, employees will unionize, and come to some agreement with management, or, they will fail to, and anyone attempting to unionize will be fired. (Illegally, but in at-will states, employees have almost zero recourse for that kind of termination.) Actually, private-sector employees have recourse for that in all states under the federal National Labor Relations Act -- they can file a charge with the NLRB. The NLRB staff are very helpful and understand that most people are not lawyers, so they will even help you draft the charge form and walk you through the process.
vkou 9y ago
> In February, Tesla worker Jose Moran published a blog post 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. This could have a very serious impact on their expenses.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Union organizer runs blog claiming work force unhappiness. News at 11.
SirLJ 9y ago
sad
jarpschop 9y ago
All those Silicon Valley startup bros would be loving capitalism. It gives you the highest standard of living in history!
- crpatino 9y ago
  That's factually correct but, paraphrasing Orwell's Animal Farm, some "yous" are more equal than others.
Danihan 9y ago
Try working in any restaurant for a couple years.
kilroy123 9y ago
I'm a huge Elon Musk fan and I deeply share his vision for getting humans on mars, being more environmentally friendly, etc. However, I'm starting to lose faith in him. First of all, the guy is stretched way too thin. He runs two huge companies. Now he is starting some other company to be even more distracted. (Boring company) It sounds like he really pushes his workers way too hard. I wouldn't want to work at one of his companies. Long hours, a lot of stress, and you're underpaid! He rushes too damn much. I understand wanting to be first and beat the competition, but Telsa is moving way too fast with the Model 3. Rushing this car to production. With software, when has this ever played out well? They are building cars that real people will drive. You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. I really fear if he doesn't step back and change his ways a bit, he just won't be able to hire and retain the talent needed to change the world.
- vkou 9y ago
  > You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. Do you have reason to believe that safety-critical features of the Model 3 will not be up to par? Tesla has a history of mechanical problems with their vehicles, but AFAIK, safety-critical stuff* works just fine. Your door might not open, but your brakes are pretty much guaranteed to work. * I'm exempting autopilot from this.
  - atempthrow 9y ago
    > > You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. I worked in Detroit for an automotive company on their software. I assure you, they rush and cut corners. They iron out the wrinkles in QA and rewrite parts of software a few times. It's not uncommon to have teams (outsourced, the actual employees seem to have reasonable workloads) working 60+ hour weeks regularly on software.
    - unprepare 9y ago
      I just declined an offer from Ford on an in house team where everyone is averaging 70 hour weeks; so its not /only/ contractors, but its true, the big 3 use contracting very heavily
justina1 9y ago
Tesla's preemptive response: https://www.tesla.com/blog/creating-the-safest-car-factory-in-the-world https://www.tesla.com/blog/creating-the-safest-car-factory-i...
- accountyaccount 9y ago
  This is spinning so hard that I'm having a hard time reading it. It sounds like they're increasing efficiency and improving safety but not actually sharing efficiency gains with employees who are being force to work "eager college grad at a startup" hours.
  - toddmorey 9y ago
    If that's true, how has "the average amount of hours worked by production team members dropped to about 42 hours per week"?
    - accountyaccount 9y ago
      I wonder what the median is though
    - crpatino 9y ago
      They introduced a third shift recently, but have been working around the clock since the very beginning. 5 years is way too much time for a management team to notice that working 12x6 with your body is way different than working the same amount of time behind a desk. That's what happens when Silicon Valley ethos meets the real world. I guess nobody told the nerds that back-breaking work was not really a metaphore in the good old days.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - vivekd 9y ago
    Are we reading the same blog post, Tesla is saying that the allegations about their work conditions are not accurate but rather an effort by the UAW to spread negative publicity about their work environment in a push for unionization. Now this may be true or false, but it isnt spin.
6stringmerc 9y ago
So here's the setup: >Watch for these articles to downplay or ignore our actual 2017 safety data and to instead focus on a small number of complaints and anecdotes that are not representative of what is actually occurring in our factory of over 10,000 workers. ...and a citation to drive the point of Safety home: >In addition, through the end of Q1 2017, the factory’s total recordable incident rate (TRIR), the leading metric for workplace safety, is 4.6, which is 32% better than the industry average of 6.7. ...and then we get to the whole "Can Elon Musk really scale Tesla to the heights he likes to claim are possible" notion of context: >Ford had 50,703 U.S. hourly workers as of Feb. 1, according to a report from the UAW's Ford department. A GM spokesman said the company has about 50,300 U.S. hourly workers.[1] So a 32% better safety record with 1/5 the workforce. Hm. Got it. [1] http://www.autonews.com/article/20150215/OEM/302169970/ford-tops-gm-in-u.s.-factory-jobs http://www.autonews.com/article/20150215/OEM/302169970/ford-...
- scott00 9y ago
  TRIR = (Number of OSHA recordable incidents)*200,000 / (total number of hours worked) It's already normalized for workforce size. Source: https://www.csmgroup.com/trir-a-key-safety-performance-indicator-you-should-know/ https://www.csmgroup.com/trir-a-key-safety-performance-indic...
  - mhermher 9y ago
    Maybe he's implying that it doesn't scale linearly.
Pica_soO 9y ago
> The supervisor came screaming because you guys cant get it done Every car company ever. A relative works at BMW, one of the "Zeitarbeiter" hired fordisassembly work on a old production line cut the power-cord that supplied the whole new assembly line drive unit in the other part of the hall. Suddenly - lights out (Guy wasn't hurt). Then those faces starting to search for the source. Then the usual choir showing up, including if you delay long enough - factory management. Always the same tune. Funny thing is also i you get the inter-weeks repair gap time to replace a stations robot. They are still producing at the line going out - when you rip the robot out, and replace it, measuring in, teaching - its all with the big stop-watch in the background. Program changes are usually prepared ahead of time in this scenario- but when the unexpected hits, you get "Visitors"- i guess supposed to improve the "productivity" by applying "pressure". Usually you play as a team then, one "Catcher" keeps the "Suits" busy and away from disrupting the guy who has to code as if his life depends on it. My boss would have to tell you more funny storys.. TL,DR; Yes, Tesla makes Cars
- rawland 9y ago
  Applying caveman-tactics to programmers? When did that work out the last time? I'm glad you have some counter-strike tactics.
- gthtjtkt 9y ago
  I put this whole post into Google.com/translate but I'm still completely lost.
  - Pica_soO 9y ago
    > The supervisor came screaming because you guys cant get it done Every car company ever. A relative works at BMW, and had a nice story. One of the "Zeitarbeiter" hired for disassembly-work on a old production line cut the main power-cord - that supplied the new assembly line drive unit in the other part of the hall. Suddenly - lights out (Zeitarbeiter wasn't hurt). Then those faces starting to search for the origin of the trouble. Guys like my brother are called to fix it, the clock starts ticking. If the clock ticks too long the usual choir shows up, including if the delay is long enough - factory management. And they chant exactly what was in the text. Funny thing is also if you get a task in the inter-production-weeks repair gap. They are still producing at the line going out - while your team rips the robot out, and replaces it, measuring in, teaching and - its all with the big stop-watch in the back of your mind. Program changes are usually prepared ahead of time in this scenario- but when the unexpected Situation hits, you get a constant stream of "Visitors"- i guess supposed to improve the "productivity" by applying "pressure". Usually you play as a team then, one "Catcher" keeps the "Suits" busy and away from disrupting the guy who has to code as if his life depends on it. My boss would have to tell you more funny storys.. TL,DR; Yes, Tesla makes Cars
classicsnoot 9y ago
Breaking News: some jobs are in fact hard.
legulere 9y ago
> How do we not die and have everyone lose their jobs? So he is effectively telling workers that if they do not work until they collapse, not only they will lose their job but all the other workers will as well and that they are responsible for the destruction of Elon's company.
- valuearb 9y ago
  How is 42 hours a week working to collapse?
  - eric_h 9y ago
    42 hours a week in a physically demanding job is very, very different from 42 hours in a chair. I did a temp job ages ago at a warehouse for 3 weeks, the first of which I was required to pack and move boxes, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (2 15 minute breaks and 20 minutes for lunch, complete with a bell telling you when these things were happening). That first week was brutal. Fortunately at the end of the first week I demonstrated that I was an order of magnitude faster at operating the computer for that packing line than the guy who was running it (also a temp) and I got to stop doing the physical labor so the remaining time was less terrible.
    - Inconel 9y ago
      I don't want to discount the toll that physically demanding jobs can take on your body, but I think it's important to note that you can't really extrapolate much from the first week on the job. Just as you wouldn't after the first week of a new exercise routine. I've worked some pretty physically demanding jobs before, warehouse/fulfillment center, construction, farm labor, landscaping, and assuming you have proper protocols in place for safety, your body gets much stronger after a period of a few weeks. Edit: I've also worked customer service jobs were I sat in a chair for 8 hours a day and tbh I think that had a worse impact on my overall health than even the more grueling and unsafe construction jobs I've worked. Edit#2: Just to be clear, I'm not trying to excuse any unsafe working conditions at Tesla or elsewhere. I do however believe a job can be both physically demanding while also following proper health and safety guidelines to ensure employees aren't being hurt.
sschueller 9y ago
How is that even legal to cut pay from 22 am hour to 10 when you get insured and need to do some lighter work?
sschueller 9y ago
Tesla already has a quality issues. Pushing your employees to these limits leads to fatigue and loss of quality is guaranteed.
- tripzilch 9y ago
  Cold. Discompassionate.
Animats 9y ago
That's why workers need a union. If there's an assembly line station that's too hard, that's a union grievance. There's a way to work out a solution, with the worker being in a strong position. Happens all the time in a union plant. Expecting someone to lift tires overhead for mounting on a production line is way out of date. Here's how it's done in a Ford plant. First, they show the old way, where they had a platform at just the right height to roll the wheel into position. The worker then pushes it onto the lugs and hub. Then, they show the fully robotized operation.[1] Here's an older, manual system, but with a counterbalanced lifting aid to do the heavy part.[2] Simple setups like that are routine. If anybody is lifting anything heavy on an assembly line, you're doing it wrong. There are many simple ways to fix that. To see tires lifted entirely by hand in an auto plant, you have to go back to this famous Chevy film from 1936.[3] That was before the big GM strike. Tesla is still learning how to run an auto plant. Tesla isn't as good at this as they pretend to be. Their head count in Fremont is quite high for the number of vehicles produced. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imnAYcF05Yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imnAYcF05Yo [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpeONe1qX-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpeONe1qX-c [3] https://youtu.be/8bT6txm4RpA?t=1516 https://youtu.be/8bT6txm4RpA?t=1516
- djrogers 9y ago
  The article didn't say he was lifting a tire overhead, it pointed out that there was a difference between Tesla's claim that he was injured installing a tire, and the employee's claim that it was a cumulative injury from working on an overhead assembly station. 2 different stories, not one.
- kzisme 9y ago
  While unions are a great thing I wish they they responded and did what they were created to do more efficiently. More than a few times in the past year (probably 5-10 grivances have been sent in, and nothing has been done to solve the issue. (This is the USPS - not me but a relative)
  - acover 9y ago
    Could a union be run as a direct democracy? Instead of a strike fund just verified segregated savings? There are much better tools for group discussion and voting. I feel like most employees would benefit from some form of collective bargaining as most employers present boiler plate agreements where your only choice are yes or no. Edit: on second thought you'd probably get a lot of protectionist, xenophobic policies. Bye bye h1b, hello arbitrary certification requirements. The incentives of those in the union are for anticompetitive policies. I'm not sure how this can be avoided.
crush-n-spread 9y ago
Well, I am huge fan of Elon and the companies, but I guess that Michael Sanchez's situation of working with his hands above his head all day, resulting in two herniated disks, is really sad. But how else can the work get done? I guess most people here are going to say that he's pushing his workers too hard, and that they're losing faith. I think it's just much more difficult than people appreciate to build a successful car company, and some people will have their lives spent building it. I think that even if 1 in 100 employees flat out died because of Tesla, the company and Elon should carry on without slowing down anything. It's just too important that we transition out of a carbon economy. Besides, I don't think conditions are really that bad. This is obviously a smear piece indicated by mentioning the Model X delays in TFA - What does that have to do with workplace injuries? Nothing, but they're trying to bring down Elon and his companies. Workplace injuries are bad, but Elon is a poppy that's 100 times taller than the rest. I think they're trying to cut him down more than anything. May the old-school unions be perpetually denied any access to his factories.
- stijnstijn 9y ago
  Tesla could design their factory so that people don't have to work with their hands above their head all day. There's a video further up in this thread showing how a production line in a Ford factory where they clearly took care to make the workers handle things right in front of them as much as possible. It just requires you to have the worker's comfort (or, actually, health) in mind when designing the production line. Or if that's not possible, assign shifts so people don't have to work in an unhealthy position for too long. Apparently that didn't happen at Tesla, which I personally think is a fair thing to blame them for.
- tripzilch 9y ago
  > I think that even if 1 in 100 employees flat out died because of Tesla, the company and Elon should carry on without slowing down anything. It's just too important that we transition out of a carbon economy. That is how we built cathedrals in medieval times. We like to think we're doing better now. We liked to think we had very good reasons back then as well. Now don't get me wrong, I believe we need to save ourselves from global warming and I believe this need is much more real than the belief that we need to save our immortal souls from the wrath of a Christian god if we don't sacrifice enough peasants stacking rocks in aesthetically pleasing ways. And I really would like to believe we're doing better now. > I guess most people here are going to say that he's pushing his workers too hard, and that they're losing faith. Except that "faith" has been the excuse to commit the worst atrocities in human history and it's terrible that you even try to bring it up to defend a good thing. Look at some other comments, some people saying that he's improved working conditions recently. THAT is the good thing. > I think that even if 1 in 100 employees flat out died because of Tesla You mean "died for our sins", right? Would you sacrifice any 1 in 100 employees of Tesla to save our selv--souls or just the lowly peasants on the factory floor? Will you roll the dice if rolling a one kicks Elon's bucket? He's too important? Will you roll for yourself for every factory worker you deem unimportant?
valuearb 9y ago
I'm not sure how the ambulance count is pertinent in this article. In such a huge workforce you will have events that need ambulances regularly. And sending for one can actually bee a pro-active measure that actual evidences care for their workers. For example if someone has shortness of breath, or faints, etc.
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  Those numbers are also pretty meaningless without a reference. Having never worked in a 10K+-employee facility, I have no idea how many ambulances should be called per year. I would imagine that with that many people, even under idyllic working conditions, the number of medical emergencies/year would be non-zero, but I'm having trouble picking up an intuitive expectation for what it should be.
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    The "magic number" you are looking for is AFAICT between 0,05 and 0,07, i.e. it is reasonable to expect 5-7 events needing an ambulance intervention every 100 people per year. Of course this is a reference for general population, and since the workers in a factory are by definition younger and healthier than the average population and hopefully road accidents don't happen in a factory, must be reduced but 1/12 or 1/10 of that wouldn't surprise me, that would be 0.4-0.7/100 per year. As a reference a minimal requirement for ambulance service (with M.D. on board) here in Italy is to have an ambulance every 60,000 people, that would mean, with 3-4 interventions per 8 hours shift on average (2-3 hours/intervention), 365x3x8/3.5=2,502 interventions per year in theory, reducing this by 10% to consider maintenance, lost/idle time, etc. we have 2,250/60,000=0,0375 or 4 interventions every 100 people, and the number of vehicles roughly doubles considering the "simpler" ambulances without M.D. on board, fulfilling the needs. A reference data point (old) is roughly 4,000,000 interventions in the year 2005 on a population of around 60,000,000, that comes out as 0.66... So, on a "population" of 10,000 workers 40-50 ambulance calls per year wouldn't be unexpected at all, but it greatly depends on local organization, and on actually when (depending on seriousness of event) the ambulance is called, this may vary with local (state) policies and local-local (industry) ones. At least here factories of that or comparable size have an internal medical service (and almost completely equipped infirmary) and ambulance for at least first aid/first responder chores and external ambulances are usually called only in the (much more rare) cases when the worker/patient needs to be hospitalized or however transferred to a hospital for further exams or the like.
djrogers 9y ago
Sounds the the 'system' is working and things have improved dramatically: "The company did release more recent data, which indicates its 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. The company said that its decision to add a third shift, introduce a dedicated team of ergonomics experts, and improvements to the factory’s "safety teams" account for the significant reduction in incidents since last year." Of course the focus of the article is going to be the most inflammatory version possible because that's where the eyeballs come from.
ensiferum 9y ago
And this is the guy who ppl compare to the modern age Jesus and applaud him for making the world better place and ecological. Such bs. He's personally responsible for more co2 emissions than millions of other ppl put together. The real heros are the ppl who don't have a car in the first place but use other transportation. Seriously the only ecological car is the one that isn't built.
bobbington 9y ago
Musk has the right idea - automate everything. I don't know why people complain about automation and robots. It's a much better job building or fixing robots than acting like one all day. That way you don't have a boring rote job that is likely to cause repetitive motion injuries.
ben_jones 9y ago
Just wait until one of us disrupts factories with the gig economy.
icanhackit 9y ago
A consideration when reading this article: the author Julia Carrie Wong was also the author of the Guardian article that posited the low number of females followed by the Twitter accounts of Elon and other tech CEOs like Tim Cook were indicative of their and their company's attitude towards employing females and female perspectives in general [1]. The Tesla CEO reacted to the report defensively, accusing the publication of engaging in “phoney PC police axe-grinding”. But his choices do provide a certain amount of insight into what he, as an individual, finds interesting, and perhaps it isn’t surprising that a leader in an industry notoriously averse to hiring women also appears to be uninterested in the views of women as expressed on Twitter. [...] So Elon, Tim, Bill, Brian, Eric, et al: here is a list of a few women in or around the tech industry you might want to try following on Twitter. They are not all CEOs, but they are all interesting tweeters who can help make your timeline look a little more like the world outside your companies. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/04/twitter-women-gender-elon-musk-tim-cook https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/04/twitter-w...?
jdietrich 9y ago
Buried lede, from the article: > The company did release more recent data, which indicates its 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. The company said that its decision to add a third shift, introduce a dedicated team of ergonomics experts, and improvements to the factory’s "safety teams" account for the significant reduction in incidents since last year. Tesla's safety record is now significantly better than average for the auto industry.

95 points by SirLJ 9y ago

It is not like the other car companies behave differently. My father is working on the shop-floor of a large carmaker and they are setting up the line for a new model right now. Normally, when something happens -- usually "something" is something you puke from and get PTSD from witnessing it -- the whole hall gets a security briefing. Not now. No time. There is also a lot of pressure to get people working 7 days a week. Luckily they get a bunch of days off after the new model is going...

Aloha 9y ago
You're echoing my base question.. as I read this, I was thinking: "How is this any different than GM?" One of my best friends worked to open the Saturn plant in Spring Hill - and after 30 years with GM, his body is worn out and broken from the experience. The reason factory work has traditionally paid so well is to compensate you for the wear and tear on your body - and to entice people to do a repetitive, boring job.
- mhermher 9y ago
  GM's factory workers are represented by a union. That's the difference. If there are abuses, then there is an avenue for redress.
  - Aloha 9y ago
    Yes, they are, they fought for and won that right for representation, the Tesla workers are welcome to do the same. However, being unionized is not a forgone conclusion, generally (but not universally) companies EARN a union thru systemic long term mistreatment of employees.
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    Doesn't that make it doubly interesting to compare Tesla's injury rates to a US, unionized plant? Not to mention all of the non-union, non-Tesla auto plants?

bhhaskin 9y ago

I often wonder how factual articles like this are. Under modern labor laws it would be difficult to create the kind of situations described. Especially in California. Unions have been trying infiltrate Tesla for awhile now. They have the most to gain by disseminating false information. On the other hand if the information is factual then Tesla really needs to improve working conditions.

vkou 9y ago
> They have the most to gain by disseminating false information. To be fair, management has just as much to gain by disseminating false information. (That everything is hunky-dory.) Also, workers trying to organize is not 'infiltration by unions'. It's their lawful right, in a society which allows free association. Management bargains collectively - why can't employees?
- bhhaskin 9y ago
  That's true. An independent investigation is really the only way to know for sure.
  - vkou 9y ago
    This will never happen. More likely, employees will unionize, and come to some agreement with management, or, they will fail to, and anyone attempting to unionize will be fired. (Illegally, but in at-will states, employees have almost zero recourse for that kind of termination.)
    - pktgen 9y ago
      > More likely, employees will unionize, and come to some agreement with management, or, they will fail to, and anyone attempting to unionize will be fired. (Illegally, but in at-will states, employees have almost zero recourse for that kind of termination.) Actually, private-sector employees have recourse for that in all states under the federal National Labor Relations Act -- they can file a charge with the NLRB. The NLRB staff are very helpful and understand that most people are not lawyers, so they will even help you draft the charge form and walk you through the process.

vkou 9y ago

> In February, Tesla worker Jose Moran published a blog post 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. This could have a very serious impact on their expenses.

valuearb 9y ago
Union organizer runs blog claiming work force unhappiness. News at 11.

SirLJ 9y ago

sad

jarpschop 9y ago

All those Silicon Valley startup bros would be loving capitalism. It gives you the highest standard of living in history!

crpatino 9y ago
That's factually correct but, paraphrasing Orwell's Animal Farm, some "yous" are more equal than others.

Danihan 9y ago

Try working in any restaurant for a couple years.

kilroy123 9y ago

I'm a huge Elon Musk fan and I deeply share his vision for getting humans on mars, being more environmentally friendly, etc. However, I'm starting to lose faith in him. First of all, the guy is stretched way too thin. He runs two huge companies. Now he is starting some other company to be even more distracted. (Boring company) It sounds like he really pushes his workers way too hard. I wouldn't want to work at one of his companies. Long hours, a lot of stress, and you're underpaid! He rushes too damn much. I understand wanting to be first and beat the competition, but Telsa is moving way too fast with the Model 3. Rushing this car to production. With software, when has this ever played out well? They are building cars that real people will drive. You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. I really fear if he doesn't step back and change his ways a bit, he just won't be able to hire and retain the talent needed to change the world.

vkou 9y ago
> You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. Do you have reason to believe that safety-critical features of the Model 3 will not be up to par? Tesla has a history of mechanical problems with their vehicles, but AFAIK, safety-critical stuff* works just fine. Your door might not open, but your brakes are pretty much guaranteed to work. * I'm exempting autopilot from this.
- atempthrow 9y ago
  > > You can't rush or cut corners with something that will kill people. I worked in Detroit for an automotive company on their software. I assure you, they rush and cut corners. They iron out the wrinkles in QA and rewrite parts of software a few times. It's not uncommon to have teams (outsourced, the actual employees seem to have reasonable workloads) working 60+ hour weeks regularly on software.
  - unprepare 9y ago
    I just declined an offer from Ford on an in house team where everyone is averaging 70 hour weeks; so its not /only/ contractors, but its true, the big 3 use contracting very heavily

justina1 9y ago

Tesla's preemptive response: https://www.tesla.com/blog/creating-the-safest-car-factory-in-the-world https://www.tesla.com/blog/creating-the-safest-car-factory-i...

accountyaccount 9y ago
This is spinning so hard that I'm having a hard time reading it. It sounds like they're increasing efficiency and improving safety but not actually sharing efficiency gains with employees who are being force to work "eager college grad at a startup" hours.
- toddmorey 9y ago
  If that's true, how has "the average amount of hours worked by production team members dropped to about 42 hours per week"?
  - accountyaccount 9y ago
    I wonder what the median is though
  - crpatino 9y ago
    They introduced a third shift recently, but have been working around the clock since the very beginning. 5 years is way too much time for a management team to notice that working 12x6 with your body is way different than working the same amount of time behind a desk. That's what happens when Silicon Valley ethos meets the real world. I guess nobody told the nerds that back-breaking work was not really a metaphore in the good old days.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- vivekd 9y ago
  Are we reading the same blog post, Tesla is saying that the allegations about their work conditions are not accurate but rather an effort by the UAW to spread negative publicity about their work environment in a push for unionization. Now this may be true or false, but it isnt spin.

6stringmerc 9y ago

So here's the setup: >Watch for these articles to downplay or ignore our actual 2017 safety data and to instead focus on a small number of complaints and anecdotes that are not representative of what is actually occurring in our factory of over 10,000 workers. ...and a citation to drive the point of Safety home: >In addition, through the end of Q1 2017, the factory’s total recordable incident rate (TRIR), the leading metric for workplace safety, is 4.6, which is 32% better than the industry average of 6.7. ...and then we get to the whole "Can Elon Musk really scale Tesla to the heights he likes to claim are possible" notion of context: >Ford had 50,703 U.S. hourly workers as of Feb. 1, according to a report from the UAW's Ford department. A GM spokesman said the company has about 50,300 U.S. hourly workers.[1] So a 32% better safety record with 1/5 the workforce. Hm. Got it. [1] http://www.autonews.com/article/20150215/OEM/302169970/ford-tops-gm-in-u.s.-factory-jobs http://www.autonews.com/article/20150215/OEM/302169970/ford-...

scott00 9y ago
TRIR = (Number of OSHA recordable incidents)*200,000 / (total number of hours worked) It's already normalized for workforce size. Source: https://www.csmgroup.com/trir-a-key-safety-performance-indicator-you-should-know/ https://www.csmgroup.com/trir-a-key-safety-performance-indic...
- mhermher 9y ago
  Maybe he's implying that it doesn't scale linearly.

Pica_soO 9y ago

> The supervisor came screaming because you guys cant get it done Every car company ever. A relative works at BMW, one of the "Zeitarbeiter" hired fordisassembly work on a old production line cut the power-cord that supplied the whole new assembly line drive unit in the other part of the hall. Suddenly - lights out (Guy wasn't hurt). Then those faces starting to search for the source. Then the usual choir showing up, including if you delay long enough - factory management. Always the same tune. Funny thing is also i you get the inter-weeks repair gap time to replace a stations robot. They are still producing at the line going out - when you rip the robot out, and replace it, measuring in, teaching - its all with the big stop-watch in the background. Program changes are usually prepared ahead of time in this scenario- but when the unexpected hits, you get "Visitors"- i guess supposed to improve the "productivity" by applying "pressure". Usually you play as a team then, one "Catcher" keeps the "Suits" busy and away from disrupting the guy who has to code as if his life depends on it. My boss would have to tell you more funny storys.. TL,DR; Yes, Tesla makes Cars

rawland 9y ago
Applying caveman-tactics to programmers? When did that work out the last time? I'm glad you have some counter-strike tactics.
gthtjtkt 9y ago
I put this whole post into Google.com/translate but I'm still completely lost.
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  > The supervisor came screaming because you guys cant get it done Every car company ever. A relative works at BMW, and had a nice story. One of the "Zeitarbeiter" hired for disassembly-work on a old production line cut the main power-cord - that supplied the new assembly line drive unit in the other part of the hall. Suddenly - lights out (Zeitarbeiter wasn't hurt). Then those faces starting to search for the origin of the trouble. Guys like my brother are called to fix it, the clock starts ticking. If the clock ticks too long the usual choir shows up, including if the delay is long enough - factory management. And they chant exactly what was in the text. Funny thing is also if you get a task in the inter-production-weeks repair gap. They are still producing at the line going out - while your team rips the robot out, and replaces it, measuring in, teaching and - its all with the big stop-watch in the back of your mind. Program changes are usually prepared ahead of time in this scenario- but when the unexpected Situation hits, you get a constant stream of "Visitors"- i guess supposed to improve the "productivity" by applying "pressure". Usually you play as a team then, one "Catcher" keeps the "Suits" busy and away from disrupting the guy who has to code as if his life depends on it. My boss would have to tell you more funny storys.. TL,DR; Yes, Tesla makes Cars

classicsnoot 9y ago

Breaking News: some jobs are in fact hard.

legulere 9y ago

> How do we not die and have everyone lose their jobs? So he is effectively telling workers that if they do not work until they collapse, not only they will lose their job but all the other workers will as well and that they are responsible for the destruction of Elon's company.

valuearb 9y ago
How is 42 hours a week working to collapse?
- eric_h 9y ago
  42 hours a week in a physically demanding job is very, very different from 42 hours in a chair. I did a temp job ages ago at a warehouse for 3 weeks, the first of which I was required to pack and move boxes, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (2 15 minute breaks and 20 minutes for lunch, complete with a bell telling you when these things were happening). That first week was brutal. Fortunately at the end of the first week I demonstrated that I was an order of magnitude faster at operating the computer for that packing line than the guy who was running it (also a temp) and I got to stop doing the physical labor so the remaining time was less terrible.
  - Inconel 9y ago
    I don't want to discount the toll that physically demanding jobs can take on your body, but I think it's important to note that you can't really extrapolate much from the first week on the job. Just as you wouldn't after the first week of a new exercise routine. I've worked some pretty physically demanding jobs before, warehouse/fulfillment center, construction, farm labor, landscaping, and assuming you have proper protocols in place for safety, your body gets much stronger after a period of a few weeks. Edit: I've also worked customer service jobs were I sat in a chair for 8 hours a day and tbh I think that had a worse impact on my overall health than even the more grueling and unsafe construction jobs I've worked. Edit#2: Just to be clear, I'm not trying to excuse any unsafe working conditions at Tesla or elsewhere. I do however believe a job can be both physically demanding while also following proper health and safety guidelines to ensure employees aren't being hurt.

sschueller 9y ago

How is that even legal to cut pay from 22 am hour to 10 when you get insured and need to do some lighter work?

sschueller 9y ago

Tesla already has a quality issues. Pushing your employees to these limits leads to fatigue and loss of quality is guaranteed.

tripzilch 9y ago
Cold. Discompassionate.

Animats 9y ago

That's why workers need a union. If there's an assembly line station that's too hard, that's a union grievance. There's a way to work out a solution, with the worker being in a strong position. Happens all the time in a union plant. Expecting someone to lift tires overhead for mounting on a production line is way out of date. Here's how it's done in a Ford plant. First, they show the old way, where they had a platform at just the right height to roll the wheel into position. The worker then pushes it onto the lugs and hub. Then, they show the fully robotized operation.[1] Here's an older, manual system, but with a counterbalanced lifting aid to do the heavy part.[2] Simple setups like that are routine. If anybody is lifting anything heavy on an assembly line, you're doing it wrong. There are many simple ways to fix that. To see tires lifted entirely by hand in an auto plant, you have to go back to this famous Chevy film from 1936.[3] That was before the big GM strike. Tesla is still learning how to run an auto plant. Tesla isn't as good at this as they pretend to be. Their head count in Fremont is quite high for the number of vehicles produced. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imnAYcF05Yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imnAYcF05Yo [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpeONe1qX-c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpeONe1qX-c [3] https://youtu.be/8bT6txm4RpA?t=1516 https://youtu.be/8bT6txm4RpA?t=1516

djrogers 9y ago
The article didn't say he was lifting a tire overhead, it pointed out that there was a difference between Tesla's claim that he was injured installing a tire, and the employee's claim that it was a cumulative injury from working on an overhead assembly station. 2 different stories, not one.
kzisme 9y ago
While unions are a great thing I wish they they responded and did what they were created to do more efficiently. More than a few times in the past year (probably 5-10 grivances have been sent in, and nothing has been done to solve the issue. (This is the USPS - not me but a relative)
- acover 9y ago
  Could a union be run as a direct democracy? Instead of a strike fund just verified segregated savings? There are much better tools for group discussion and voting. I feel like most employees would benefit from some form of collective bargaining as most employers present boiler plate agreements where your only choice are yes or no. Edit: on second thought you'd probably get a lot of protectionist, xenophobic policies. Bye bye h1b, hello arbitrary certification requirements. The incentives of those in the union are for anticompetitive policies. I'm not sure how this can be avoided.

crush-n-spread 9y ago

Well, I am huge fan of Elon and the companies, but I guess that Michael Sanchez's situation of working with his hands above his head all day, resulting in two herniated disks, is really sad. But how else can the work get done? I guess most people here are going to say that he's pushing his workers too hard, and that they're losing faith. I think it's just much more difficult than people appreciate to build a successful car company, and some people will have their lives spent building it. I think that even if 1 in 100 employees flat out died because of Tesla, the company and Elon should carry on without slowing down anything. It's just too important that we transition out of a carbon economy. Besides, I don't think conditions are really that bad. This is obviously a smear piece indicated by mentioning the Model X delays in TFA - What does that have to do with workplace injuries? Nothing, but they're trying to bring down Elon and his companies. Workplace injuries are bad, but Elon is a poppy that's 100 times taller than the rest. I think they're trying to cut him down more than anything. May the old-school unions be perpetually denied any access to his factories.

stijnstijn 9y ago
Tesla could design their factory so that people don't have to work with their hands above their head all day. There's a video further up in this thread showing how a production line in a Ford factory where they clearly took care to make the workers handle things right in front of them as much as possible. It just requires you to have the worker's comfort (or, actually, health) in mind when designing the production line. Or if that's not possible, assign shifts so people don't have to work in an unhealthy position for too long. Apparently that didn't happen at Tesla, which I personally think is a fair thing to blame them for.
tripzilch 9y ago
> I think that even if 1 in 100 employees flat out died because of Tesla, the company and Elon should carry on without slowing down anything. It's just too important that we transition out of a carbon economy. That is how we built cathedrals in medieval times. We like to think we're doing better now. We liked to think we had very good reasons back then as well. Now don't get me wrong, I believe we need to save ourselves from global warming and I believe this need is much more real than the belief that we need to save our immortal souls from the wrath of a Christian god if we don't sacrifice enough peasants stacking rocks in aesthetically pleasing ways. And I really would like to believe we're doing better now. > I guess most people here are going to say that he's pushing his workers too hard, and that they're losing faith. Except that "faith" has been the excuse to commit the worst atrocities in human history and it's terrible that you even try to bring it up to defend a good thing. Look at some other comments, some people saying that he's improved working conditions recently. THAT is the good thing. > I think that even if 1 in 100 employees flat out died because of Tesla You mean "died for our sins", right? Would you sacrifice any 1 in 100 employees of Tesla to save our selv--souls or just the lowly peasants on the factory floor? Will you roll the dice if rolling a one kicks Elon's bucket? He's too important? Will you roll for yourself for every factory worker you deem unimportant?

valuearb 9y ago

I'm not sure how the ambulance count is pertinent in this article. In such a huge workforce you will have events that need ambulances regularly. And sending for one can actually bee a pro-active measure that actual evidences care for their workers. For example if someone has shortness of breath, or faints, etc.

InitialLastName 9y ago
Those numbers are also pretty meaningless without a reference. Having never worked in a 10K+-employee facility, I have no idea how many ambulances should be called per year. I would imagine that with that many people, even under idyllic working conditions, the number of medical emergencies/year would be non-zero, but I'm having trouble picking up an intuitive expectation for what it should be.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  The "magic number" you are looking for is AFAICT between 0,05 and 0,07, i.e. it is reasonable to expect 5-7 events needing an ambulance intervention every 100 people per year. Of course this is a reference for general population, and since the workers in a factory are by definition younger and healthier than the average population and hopefully road accidents don't happen in a factory, must be reduced but 1/12 or 1/10 of that wouldn't surprise me, that would be 0.4-0.7/100 per year. As a reference a minimal requirement for ambulance service (with M.D. on board) here in Italy is to have an ambulance every 60,000 people, that would mean, with 3-4 interventions per 8 hours shift on average (2-3 hours/intervention), 365x3x8/3.5=2,502 interventions per year in theory, reducing this by 10% to consider maintenance, lost/idle time, etc. we have 2,250/60,000=0,0375 or 4 interventions every 100 people, and the number of vehicles roughly doubles considering the "simpler" ambulances without M.D. on board, fulfilling the needs. A reference data point (old) is roughly 4,000,000 interventions in the year 2005 on a population of around 60,000,000, that comes out as 0.66... So, on a "population" of 10,000 workers 40-50 ambulance calls per year wouldn't be unexpected at all, but it greatly depends on local organization, and on actually when (depending on seriousness of event) the ambulance is called, this may vary with local (state) policies and local-local (industry) ones. At least here factories of that or comparable size have an internal medical service (and almost completely equipped infirmary) and ambulance for at least first aid/first responder chores and external ambulances are usually called only in the (much more rare) cases when the worker/patient needs to be hospitalized or however transferred to a hospital for further exams or the like.

djrogers 9y ago

Sounds the the 'system' is working and things have improved dramatically: "The company did release more recent data, which indicates its 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. The company said that its decision to add a third shift, introduce a dedicated team of ergonomics experts, and improvements to the factory’s "safety teams" account for the significant reduction in incidents since last year." Of course the focus of the article is going to be the most inflammatory version possible because that's where the eyeballs come from.

ensiferum 9y ago

And this is the guy who ppl compare to the modern age Jesus and applaud him for making the world better place and ecological. Such bs. He's personally responsible for more co2 emissions than millions of other ppl put together. The real heros are the ppl who don't have a car in the first place but use other transportation. Seriously the only ecological car is the one that isn't built.

bobbington 9y ago

Musk has the right idea - automate everything. I don't know why people complain about automation and robots. It's a much better job building or fixing robots than acting like one all day. That way you don't have a boring rote job that is likely to cause repetitive motion injuries.

ben_jones 9y ago

Just wait until one of us disrupts factories with the gig economy.

icanhackit 9y ago

A consideration when reading this article: the author Julia Carrie Wong was also the author of the Guardian article that posited the low number of females followed by the Twitter accounts of Elon and other tech CEOs like Tim Cook were indicative of their and their company's attitude towards employing females and female perspectives in general [1]. The Tesla CEO reacted to the report defensively, accusing the publication of engaging in “phoney PC police axe-grinding”. But his choices do provide a certain amount of insight into what he, as an individual, finds interesting, and perhaps it isn’t surprising that a leader in an industry notoriously averse to hiring women also appears to be uninterested in the views of women as expressed on Twitter. [...] So Elon, Tim, Bill, Brian, Eric, et al: here is a list of a few women in or around the tech industry you might want to try following on Twitter. They are not all CEOs, but they are all interesting tweeters who can help make your timeline look a little more like the world outside your companies. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/04/twitter-women-gender-elon-musk-tim-cook https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/04/twitter-w...?

jdietrich 9y ago

Buried lede, from the article: > The company did release more recent data, which indicates its 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. The company said that its decision to add a third shift, introduce a dedicated team of ergonomics experts, and improvements to the factory’s "safety teams" account for the significant reduction in incidents since last year. Tesla's safety record is now significantly better than average for the auto industry.