
Tesla workers: To hell and back again - mcone
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/12/tesla-workers-and-the-model-3-to-hell-and-back-again/
======
thsowers
Elon's recent email[0] to employees in response to higher injury claims in the
Fremont factory is probably relevant

[0]: > “No words can express how much I care about your safety and wellbeing.
It breaks my heart when someone is injured building cars and trying their best
to make Tesla successful.

Going forward, I’ve asked that every injury be reported directly to me,
without exception. I’m meeting with the safety team every week and would like
to meet every injured person as soon as they are well, so that I can
understand from them exactly what we need to do to make it better. I will then
go down to the production line and perform the same task that they perform.

This is what all managers at Tesla should do as a matter of course. At Tesla,
we lead from the front line, not from some safe and comfortable ivory tower.
Managers must always put their team’s safety above their own.”

~~~
gist
> and would like to meet every injured person as soon as they are well

It's 'caring theater'. He thinks he is the President meeting with people
getting the purple heart for service. Such utter bullshit. [1] [2]

[1] The fact that he says he wants to be personally involved in the process is
what puts it over the edge. I mean he is running how many companies?

[2] And to front run any legal or PR issues. Create an emotional block for the
harmed to take things a step further. "Keep your friends close and your
enemies closer".

~~~
manmal
I'm quite sure he is doing internal PR, keeping up the team morale. It's not
so much about caring (aka patronizing), but more about giving workers the
feeling that they are all rolling up their sleeves together. IMO it's the only
strategy that keeps teams together in times of high stress. People become very
sensitive to "boss issues" if the work or workload sucks. To prevent burnout,
workers have to feel that they are cared for, and their work appreciated. I'm
sure you were in such a high stress situation yourself before - if team spirit
stays intact, you feel strong and maybe even euphoric. As soon as things go
downhill, you will soon think of bailing out.

~~~
emodendroket
One way of making workers feel unappreciated is to run your factory in such a
way that more of them are injured than in similar facilities run by your
competitors.

------
simonbarker87
When plants like Nissan's in Sunderland (UK) have worked out how to make well
over 500K cars per year incorporating a luxury brand car (Infiniti Q30), a mid
range crossover company cash cow (Qashqai) and an electric car (Leaf) safely
with a strong track record of keeping workers safe there is simply no excuse
for this at all. No worker in modern day manufacturing should be concerned for
their safety at work, ever.

I am a fan of Tesla and Musk but this line in the email pasted in by thsowers
irks me and signals to the underlying issue:

"Managers must always put their team’s safety above their own"

No Elon, every employee's safety is equal and is more important than your TACT
time.

~~~
QuercusMax
I interpreted that sentence differently: managers are not the ones on the
factory floor getting injured. By reporting injuries, they may be concerned
for the safety of their career, and think by covering them up they'll avoid
black marks on their record.

~~~
simonbarker87
Potentially what he meant and probably a fairer interpretation. I run a
(small) factory and my wife works as an engineer at the aforementioned Nissan
plant so I tend to have a less forgiving attitude toward people who seem to
disregard worker safety.

I remember when I toured the BAE submarine plant 10 years ago in Barrow in
Furness being told that 1 death per month was considered standard and kind of
ok in the early days of that plant - terrifying and thankfully not the case
anymore.

------
alkonaut
If you try to get a company off the ground _yourself_ or with a small group of
friends - then you might need some crunch time to not burn through your
funding before you can sustain it.

But if you are a decade old company employing thousands and doing this sort of
startup style crunch time then something is wrong. Don't set deadlines that
will require worker burnout and workplace accidents to meet.

If they meet the production targets with greatly increased burnout and
accidents then there can't be cake and bonuses, heads must roll.

------
Animats
_“We’re building the cars for the future with the work process of the past.”_
\- Tesla employee

Most accidents in manufacturing plants come from repetitive tasks which carry
some small degree of risk each time they're done. Loading a stamping machine
is the classic example. Those have to be engineered out of the production
process. It's about reach limitations and pinch points and guarding, not
"safety awareness". It's about finding the places where a simple error once in
every million times results in someone losing a finger.

Someone using a machine might do a few thousand cycles in a shift. A million
in a year. A "one in a million" accident can be an annual occurrence for _each
employee._ This is why production processes have to be made much safer than
one might expect. It's risk times time that gets you.

Tesla is new at this stuff. It takes a while to find all the sharp points in a
factory and fix them. It also usually takes outside pressure from a union or
OSHA.

------
fullshark
I know Musk likes to take risks and push his companies and employees to the
brink, but given the massive demand for the model 3, Tesla stock price, and
1.8 billion funding they just got, it seems like they can afford to create
better working conditions for their workers.

~~~
valuearb
You mean the massive 18 weeks of funding they got for their capital needs?

~~~
simonbarker87
They don't lose $180m per week though, do they? They have income to offset a
portion of their capex? Or did I misinterpret the article?

~~~
ww520
Income requires vehicle delivery.

~~~
simonbarker87
Model S and Model X are being delivered...?

~~~
valuearb
These capital costs are mostly from Model 3, which for the most part isn't
yet.

------
Waterluvian
I spent two weeks at that plant and therefore went through safety training on
the first day. It was eye opening to see just how serious-not-serious they
treated the whole thing.

The supervisor asked each person to introduce themselves as a way of proving
they could speak and understand English, and therefore the training. When a
few failed, he gave a lecture about how critical safety training is and that
this wasn't the Spanish class, but then simply moved along and eventually
graduated everyone.

The class was also full of not so bright people. I'm sorry, I'm not sure the
politically correct way of talking about this. But the kind of people I
wouldn't trust for a second with my life.

This was my first and only time in a factory so I'm not sure how par that all
is for the course.

~~~
sbierwagen

      The class was also full of not so bright people
    

Welcome to the wonderful world of manufacturing. Remember, half the population
has an IQ under 100. Manufacturing employs these people.

------
sixQuarks
I'd have to think Tesla sees the "human equation" as being the biggest and/or
most unpredictable cost of car manufacturing, and Elon's stated goal of being
the world's best manufacturer - with the focus on "building the machine that
builds the machine", means they are going to try to automate everything.

If I was an auto worker, I'd be very concerned. I'm not saying auto workers
should stop complaining, but the more they complain and try to unionize, the
quicker the automation will come about. They're in a catch-22

~~~
rorykoehler
What kind of world have we created where we fear being liberated from the need
to work?

~~~
brianshaler
"liberated from the need to work" is an interesting way to say "unemployment"

The kind of world we have created is one where one must create value in order
to have food & shelter. Automation simply funnels more and more of the value
created into the pockets of fewer and fewer individuals.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
There is a way to use automation to liberate people. It is my life's work (in
progress) to figure out how to do this.

To me, this comes when we make automated machines whose purpose is to provide
for human survival, and we make those machines open source. Groups of people
purchase the machines, and through ownership they receive the benefits of
automation rather than an elite ownership class.

I've written several essays on the topic on my website, and have a discussion
board where people can discuss the ideas in more detail.

You may enjoy reading The Machine:
[http://tlalexander.com/machine/](http://tlalexander.com/machine/)

Or The Corporation:
[http://tlalexander.com/corporation/](http://tlalexander.com/corporation/)

------
lagadu
> long hours, mandatory overtime

I find it pretty shocking that this is legal at all.

------
throw2016
Elon has a long rope to hang himself with because he is generally not
perceived as a small minded person.

It's sometimes easy for founders to forget while they can take a lot of
pressure on themselves its unfair to expect the same level of performance from
others, who may not be as vested as the founders.

Passion doesn't scale.

------
pmoriarty
This reminds me of a passage from Jack London's _The Iron Heel_ [1], in which
the protagonist tells a man who owned the Sierra Mills about an injured
worker:

 _" He lost his arm in the Sierra Mills, and like a broken-down horse you
turned him out on the highway to die. When I say ‘you,' I mean the
superintendent and the officials that you and the other stockholders pay to
manage the mills for you. It was an accident. It was caused by his trying to
save the company a few dollars. The toothed drum of the picker caught his arm.
He might have let the small flint that he saw in the teeth go through. It
would have smashed out a double row of spikes. But he reached for the flint,
and his arm was picked and clawed to shreds from the finger tips to the
shoulder. It was at night. The mills were working overtime. They paid a fat
dividend that quarter. Jackson had been working many hours, and his muscles
had lost their resiliency and snap. They made his movements a bit slow. That
was why the machine caught him. He had a wife and three children."_

 _" And what did the company do for him?" [the owner's daughter] asked._

 _" Nothing. Oh, yes, they did do something. They successfully fought the
damage suit he brought when he came out of hospital. The company employs very
efficient lawyers, you know."_

The the owner's daughter doesn't believe him, and goes to the injured worker
to see for herself:

 _" How did you happen to get your arm caught in the machine?" I asked._

 _He looked at me in a slow and pondering way, and shook his head. "I don't
know. It just happened."_

 _" Carelessness?" I prompted._

 _" No," he answered, "I ain't for callin' it that. I was workin' overtime,
an' I guess I was tired out some. I worked seventeen years in them mills, an'
I've took notice that most of the accidents happens just before whistle-blow.
I'm willin' to bet that more accidents happens in the hour before whistle-blow
than in all the rest of the day. A man ain't so quick after workin' steady for
hours. I've seen too many of ‘em cut up an' gouged an' chawed not to know."_

...

 _With the exception of the terrible details, Jackson 's story of his accident
was the same as that I had already heard. When I asked him if he had broken
some rule of working the machinery, he shook his head._

 _" I chucked off the belt with my right hand," he said, "an' made a reach for
the flint with my left. I didn't stop to see if the belt was off. I thought my
right hand had done it--only it didn't. I reached quick, and the belt wasn't
all the way off. And then my arm was chewed off."_

...

 _His mind was rather hazy concerning the damage suit. Only one thing was
clear to him, and that was that he had not got any damages. He had a feeling
that the testimony of the foremen and the superintendent had brought about the
adverse decision of the court. Their testimony, as he put it, "wasn't what it
ought to have ben." And to them I resolved to go._

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel)

~~~
Symbiote
If anyone else wants to read, the quoted passage (and the whole book) is
available on Wikisource:
[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel/Chapter_III](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel/Chapter_III)

------
Roboprog
Few people are injured when a software sweatshop screws up, at least until the
software gets out into the wild and fails a critical purpose. Running a
factory with heavy machinery might be a different beast, o ye masters of the
office hell hole :-)

Just sayin'

------
std_throwaway
In many ways Tesla is the China of America.

~~~
dilemma
America's Foxconn. Just not as well run.

~~~
std_throwaway
That's a better analogy, thanks.

------
madars
I admire the knack Musk has for extracting government subsidies.

However, with all that money one could do better than pay $5/hour to your
subcontracted workers in California [1] or have one third higher number of
injuries than industry average (this article).

[1] -- [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/16/elon-
musk...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/16/elon-musk-tesla-
wages-apology)

~~~
valuearb
Don't you mean the german company Eisenmann should pay more than $5/hour?

