4 ms·

I would have guessed the opposite. Germany is known for having all sorts of restrictions

mantap 7y ago
Cars are high-price, low-volume goods, and Tesla loves automating their factories. If you're making a car you don't want low regulation, you want highly qualified labor, and stable and predictable regulation.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  I know that's how Elon Musk sells his factories. But in reality, people are moving around boxes with their bare hands and getting their fingers crushed. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/11/12/tesla-gigafactory-brings-nevada-jobs-and-housing-woes-worker-injuries-strained-ems/2452396001/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/1... > Lane Dillon, an engineering student, lost the tip of his finger in a workplace accident at the Tesla Gigafactory that was never reported to OSHA.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    Whenever I’ve looked into the news reports on Tesla worker safety, it always is just a handful of scattered reports, largely unadjudicated. Do you have any reason to think there’s a pattern there? Or are you just using that language for effect?
    - dragontamer 7y ago
      Tesla fails to report OSHA violations, or even workplace injuries (such as Dillon's missing finger). As such, their statistics are fully bunk. We're blind to the issue, outside of scattered reports. Tesla needs to fix their reporting problem before we can even have hope at measuring the incidence rate at their factory.
      - boardwaalk 7y ago
        Unless you have numbers about their numbers it’s just anecdotal and will come across as FUD, so you know.
        xedeon 7y ago
        Exactly.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    From the article you linked, a man had his fingertip severed when a shelf he was helping install was lowered too soon. I cut the tip of my finger off with a chefs knife last year, luckily just took off about 1-2mm. The man in the story looks to have lost a bit more than that - but still has a fingernail on his right index finger. I’m not sure where the official line is drawn between cut and amputation when talking about fingertips. Once you’re cutting through fingernail though I would say it’s around there. The fork lifts are automated. The wages are an average of 4x minimum wage, they hire at-risk college dropouts and train then to become techs while paying their tuition at community college, and they even housed a homeless employee at a local hotel while he worked there. All from the same article. Property assessments are up 80% but TFA claims there’s no new tax revenue to cover the cost of services which a factory that large requires. It’s a typical hit-job piece against an incredible factory which employs 7,000 in an extremely safe environment which is unfortunately not a utopia, but involves on average 1 emergency call per day for anything from fighting, DUI, chest pains, pregnancy related, and yes, occasionally workplace injury.
    - dragontamer 7y ago
      > Several hours into his shift, Dillon was helping guide a rack into place so it could be bolted into the factory floor. The racks are so heavy it takes a team of four people to maneuver them. The issue is that these guys are moving very heavy shelves by hand, instead of using forklifts. I would assume that moving heavy equipment around is a pretty standard case in a car factory. It probably shouldn't be lifted by human muscle, which is prone to failure and coordination issues.

Cars are high-price, low-volume goods, and Tesla loves automating their factories. If you're making a car you don't want low regulation, you want highly qualified labor, and stable and predictable regulation.

dragontamer 7y ago
I know that's how Elon Musk sells his factories. But in reality, people are moving around boxes with their bare hands and getting their fingers crushed. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/11/12/tesla-gigafactory-brings-nevada-jobs-and-housing-woes-worker-injuries-strained-ems/2452396001/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/1... > Lane Dillon, an engineering student, lost the tip of his finger in a workplace accident at the Tesla Gigafactory that was never reported to OSHA.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  Whenever I’ve looked into the news reports on Tesla worker safety, it always is just a handful of scattered reports, largely unadjudicated. Do you have any reason to think there’s a pattern there? Or are you just using that language for effect?
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    Tesla fails to report OSHA violations, or even workplace injuries (such as Dillon's missing finger). As such, their statistics are fully bunk. We're blind to the issue, outside of scattered reports. Tesla needs to fix their reporting problem before we can even have hope at measuring the incidence rate at their factory.
    - boardwaalk 7y ago
      Unless you have numbers about their numbers it’s just anecdotal and will come across as FUD, so you know.
      - xedeon 7y ago
        Exactly.
- zaroth 7y ago
  From the article you linked, a man had his fingertip severed when a shelf he was helping install was lowered too soon. I cut the tip of my finger off with a chefs knife last year, luckily just took off about 1-2mm. The man in the story looks to have lost a bit more than that - but still has a fingernail on his right index finger. I’m not sure where the official line is drawn between cut and amputation when talking about fingertips. Once you’re cutting through fingernail though I would say it’s around there. The fork lifts are automated. The wages are an average of 4x minimum wage, they hire at-risk college dropouts and train then to become techs while paying their tuition at community college, and they even housed a homeless employee at a local hotel while he worked there. All from the same article. Property assessments are up 80% but TFA claims there’s no new tax revenue to cover the cost of services which a factory that large requires. It’s a typical hit-job piece against an incredible factory which employs 7,000 in an extremely safe environment which is unfortunately not a utopia, but involves on average 1 emergency call per day for anything from fighting, DUI, chest pains, pregnancy related, and yes, occasionally workplace injury.
  - dragontamer 7y ago
    > Several hours into his shift, Dillon was helping guide a rack into place so it could be bolted into the factory floor. The racks are so heavy it takes a team of four people to maneuver them. The issue is that these guys are moving very heavy shelves by hand, instead of using forklifts. I would assume that moving heavy equipment around is a pretty standard case in a car factory. It probably shouldn't be lifted by human muscle, which is prone to failure and coordination issues.