Exclusive: Tesla Motors faces $89,000 in fines for incident that injured workers at Fremont facility

[alp227]

Source: San Jose Mercury News

FREMONT -- Tesla Motors has been fined $89,000 by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health for seven safety violations related to a workplace incident that injured and burned three workers last November.

Three employees at Tesla's Fremont factory were injured Nov. 13 when a low-pressure aluminum casting press failed, spilling hot metal on the workers and causing their clothing to catch on fire.

"Molten metal was released splattering the three victims, the victims' clothing caught fire, they stopped and rolled on the floor," reads the Cal-OSHA report. "The safety department called 911. The Fremont Fire Department arrived within 10 minutes approximately."

Tesla employees Jesus Navarro, Kevin Carter and Jorge Terrazas were taken to Valley Medical Center in San Jose with second and third degree burns. Navarro, who had multiple burns on his hands, stomach, hip, lower back and ankles, was hospitalized for 20 days.

Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_25677719/exclusive-tesla-motors-faces-89-000-fines-incident

[randys1]

1. That is what good regulation will do

[hedgehog]

2. Either Tesla doesn't have enough engineers, or it is ignoring the engineers on staff.

Molten aluminum is nothing to fool around with. My boss and his boss spend a good deal of their time figuring out how to keep workers protected from molten metal. If Tesla is this careless about worker safety, I wonder how rigorous it is to ensure that the aluminum is completely dry before it is melted, and to ensure that water never hits the molten metal.

[joshcryer]

6. The fine is for not training the employees correctly.

Seems that they weren't inspecting the machine and understanding fail scenarios. I suspect that the safety interlock was working as designed for the weeks or months that they operated the machine, but it wore down over time and once the safety interlock broke, the machine had no safe mode.

Next time they go to cast a die, it breaks. They never knew what was coming, most likely. The safety interlock breaking should've been noticed, you always inspect your machines before using them.

[pangaia]

3. For what it is worth.

I have a good friend who is an aerospace engineer in CA.
He is 52, has worked for the same company for 25 years.

Lat time I visited he were talking about engineering, engines, liquid fuel, solid fuel, aircraft, rocket, space shuttle--anything I could get him to talk about. Just fascinating.
When SpaceX and Elon Musk's name came up, along with Tesla, he just about went ballistic. He said Musk hires the youngest cheapest engineers he can find. If they don't like the working conditions, have any complaints about anything, suggestions that maybe something in a design isn't safe, they are gone.
He felt Musk is just all about the bottom line, control and power... Etc etc.
My friend says he (my friend) has forgotten more about REAL engineering than these young 'stamped out' engineers, as he calls them, will ever know.

Now, I have no idea if what he says is accurate or not. But I found it eye opening.

[daleo]

4. He may have good points

Or he may just showing the generational anti-beer goggles that many people fall prey to. Hard to say.

[joshcryer]

5. Musk is a tyrant for labor, this is no question.

He hires ideological dreamers who want to get ahead.

But he does pay them well, the working hours and stress of the environment is insane.

[pangaia]

7. That does sort of jive with what he said.

Good pay and unfavorable working conditions..

[joshcryer]

8. Pretty much, he admittedly despises unoins.

But as far as I understand no one gets less than around 90k a year. It's good money, but epically fucked up hours. No overtime. I don't mean to diminish the workers at SpaceX, but you might be able to pull the same wage working in fast food, assuming you weren't salaried and got lots of overtime. I may be exaggerating a wee bit here, mind you, but it's the same level of wage slavery, imho.

I think Musk gets away with it because his workers are extreme idealists who want to see "his dream" realized. To me it's like Apple, workers, working their asses off, to achieve "the dream." Hopefully SpaceX licenses the tech out that the wage slaves discovered / researched / perfected. Then we could have non-wage slave companies providing similar services.

[pangaia]

9. Interesting..

Well, my friend is my ex-wife's husband. We're all very good friends.
They just had a child 1 year ago. He was laid off after all those years and said he wouldn't work for Musk for anything. So he is looking.

I remember him talking about his concern for the quality of what they are building at SpaceX..
Also concerned about the Tesla vehicle.

But, some of what daleo mentions above may also be at play..

Being a musician, I know nothing about aerospace engineering.

[joshcryer]

10. Here's his missive on unions:

http://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-elon-musk-no-need-for-unions-just-fire-the-assholes-2009-6

Dude is seriously out of touch, but I think he comes from an uber-capitalist background.

We agree on many things, he believes in climate change, as do I. He believes the US rocket industry is contained by pork / cost-plus / crony contracts, as do I.

But his views as unions as a "two class system" is shit, especially since he, of all people, has advocated 95% in house manufacturing. I might be able to buy his argument if much else was developed outside of the factory, but he owns or controls 95% of production, thus, to me, a union in his company would be the best thing to happen.

Still, again, he justifies his shitty position by pointing out that he pays way more than anyone else, and it's why he retains so many workers, they get paid. Go to ULA, do the same amount of work, you're not getting paid nearly as much, no question.

[pangaia]

11. I would send this to my friend but,

it would just rile him up.

He mentioned some of this-- the 'everything in house' bit, hating unions, etc..when I visited them over Christmas..

ULA..is that United Launch Alliance? I just looked it up.

[joshcryer]

12. Yeah, ULA = United Launch Alliance.

Which is held by union labor for the most part. With Russian built engines, mind you...

But yeah, your friend wouldn't like it. I think Musk is so anti-union it's pretty crazy. He's literally a union buster, and thanks to NLRB rules he can get away with it.

It's one reason I don't really respect Musk, I admire him, mind you, he's achieved some amazing stuff (especially pertaining to climate change mitigation, which to me is the most important thing humanity faces), and I admire his efforts to reduce spaceflight 100 fold, but man, the dude doesn't care about exploiting the crap out of his employees. I know he's a programmer, but I doubt he spent nearly 1/10th of the time laboring for the stuff that made him successful (Paypal, etc). Admittedly, I think his companies (SpaceX in particular) are on the precipice of failure, so he exploits that "aggressively ideological labor" as much as he can. But it can only last so long.

If the next Tesla product isn't able to be sold with competitive labor practices, it will crash and burn. And I'll sell my stocks immediately.*

*I have some significant investment in Tesla, disclaimer, etc. I am confident they will achieve their goals, but at the first indication they fail, I sell.

[Mother Muckraker]

14. Tesla Factory Worker Wages

No one in management and engineering makes less than $90k. The rest of the workers on the production line putting together the car make a lot less. The starting pay is rumored to be around $14/hr. When the factory was NUMMI, workers made $28/hr with COLA, health, 401k, pension, dental, etc.. We had a collective bargaining agreement.

After NUMMI ended, Tesla hired back many former Group Leaders from NUMMI to keep out the vast majority of production workers. The Group Leaders knew who were "trouble makers" which pretty much included most people. The union busting operation is centered around immediate supervisors because they know the workers best.

Union busting at Tesla is not run by outside consultants like most union busters. It's headed by the Director of Tesla HR, Steven Cooper who specializes in "union avoidance". Check out his "specialties". It includes "union busting" as well as an array of euphemisms which all revolve around union busting.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmcooper1

[hedgehog]

13. The gist of the replies tracks with what I had to say above -

although I left out the option that the people involved just may not have known what they were doing.

It's easy to design for what goes right, it's hard to anticipate all the ways things can go wrong. That's what experience teaches. Often, the information is in people's heads and is handed down by word of mouth. Having only young engineers on board is a recipe for problems. It's not all about engineers, either. Most companies have safety people whose job is to vet equipment for hazards and to train people.

If Tesla had had the proper safety people on board or simply have hired an outside consultant with the right expertise, the press would never have been in operation with missing interlocks, there would have been rigorous training and the workers would have been wearing proper gear for molten metal.

I'm surprised that whoever sold Tesla the press didn't raise a big stink about having proper procedures.

[Mother Muckraker]

15. Lots More OSHA Violations Where That Came From

When NUMMI was open, we could report safety problems and safety reps from the union as well as the company would come out and fix the problem. We start the process by filling out paperwork. Managers would try and discourage us from reporting anything, but they couldn't retaliate because there was a paper trail. If they tried to fire a worker, paperwork as well as work rules from our collective bargaining agreement would get the manager in trouble instead.

At Tesla, workers have no contract and if they do raise a safety issue, they will simply be fired ASAP. One former NUMMI worker that got in only lasted a couple months before he got fired for simply asking about rotating jobs. If you stay on one job for too long, it will cause a repetitive strain injury, so we always rotated. Another ex-Tesla Production Supervisor reported via Facebook that they routinely violate safety rules like dumping toxic waste into the drain and workers are expected to shut up and go along with it. There are lots of OSHA violations that are unreported.

2011 explosion in Tesla factory seen from the highway 880:
http://forums.mtbr.com/california-norcal/smokes-coming-out-tesla-757766.html