31–40 of 112 posts
>Charley Briese said his job involved pulling down a hanging drill three times a minute for 12 to 16 hours a day, causing severe tendinitis 12-16 hrs a day?
Also, yes, poor people work 12-16 hours a day. It was certainly the case when I worked at a grocery store years ago, at least.
There's no defending Tesla's worker rights or saftey record. This is a company that's stood at the brink of failure for years and only survives through the blood, sweat, and tears of its employees. Maybe you believe Elon when he says that it's worth it, but there's no arguing that it's a steep price to pay. It's incredibly frustrating that no one has figured out a way to bring about the kind of transformative change…
But Tesla? A goddamn car company? What the hell is so important about fancy cars for rich people that they have to screw the workers for?
Sure, they call themselves an "energy company", and they have made "amazing advances in energy technology", but both Tesla's fancy solar panel AND battery "advances" are literally just licensed Panasonic tech.
I don't get it.
The Simpsons explained unions many years ago. It's spot on: Waif: You can't treat the working man this way! One of these days we'll form a union, and get the fair and equitable treatment we deserve! Then we'll go too far, and become corrupt and shiftless, and the Japanese will eat us alive!
A union that faces no competition becomes sclerotic just like a monopoly company.
There's no defending Tesla's worker rights or saftey record. This is a company that's stood at the brink of failure for years and only survives through the blood, sweat, and tears of its employees. Maybe you believe Elon when he says that it's worth it, but there's no arguing that it's a steep price to pay. It's incredibly frustrating that no one has figured out a way to bring about the kind of transformative change…
Really? The fact that this article is based on 2015 stats, and the company has improved to be significantly better than the industry average since then is a pretty good defense... Learning from mistakes is one of the key traits of successful people and companies.
Elon himself has said, to stay alive they have had to push harder than imaginable. He tries to put himself in the center of it -- work the longest hours, face the worst of the conditions. Which is admirable but still a glaring symptom.
Elon is the king at the head of the charge. But it's still a bloody charge all the same.
There's no defending Tesla's worker rights or saftey record. This is a company that's stood at the brink of failure for years and only survives through the blood, sweat, and tears of its employees. Maybe you believe Elon when he says that it's worth it, but there's no arguing that it's a steep price to pay. It's incredibly frustrating that no one has figured out a way to bring about the kind of transformative change…
What, exactly, is "worth it", though? SpaceX, sure, that could be worth it. They're actually innovating. But Tesla? A goddamn car company? What the hell is so important about fancy cars for rich people that they have to screw the workers for? Sure, they call themselves an "energy company", and they have made "amazing advances in energy technology", but both Tesla's fancy solar panel AND battery "advances" are literal…
There's no defending Tesla's worker rights or saftey record. This is a company that's stood at the brink of failure for years and only survives through the blood, sweat, and tears of its employees. Maybe you believe Elon when he says that it's worth it, but there's no arguing that it's a steep price to pay. It's incredibly frustrating that no one has figured out a way to bring about the kind of transformative change…
What, exactly, is "worth it", though? SpaceX, sure, that could be worth it. They're actually innovating. But Tesla? A goddamn car company? What the hell is so important about fancy cars for rich people that they have to screw the workers for? Sure, they call themselves an "energy company", and they have made "amazing advances in energy technology", but both Tesla's fancy solar panel AND battery "advances" are literal…
Title here is misleading. Actual title of article at LA Times is "Tesla had worse safety records than slaughterhouses and sawmills" - note "had", past tense. The records in question are from 2015, and as the article says, they are working on improvements.
And even then, the records are for number of incidents rather than severity. The two specific things they mention are tendinitis and carpal tunnel, which suck, but aren't the sort of injuries one associates with sawmills...
Machinery doesn't kill people every day at Tesla nor at sawmills but considering the differences between the workplaces it's impressive that the number of little injuries at an auto manufacturer adds up to the number of little injuries in a sawmill.
There's no defending Tesla's worker rights or saftey record. This is a company that's stood at the brink of failure for years and only survives through the blood, sweat, and tears of its employees. Maybe you believe Elon when he says that it's worth it, but there's no arguing that it's a steep price to pay. It's incredibly frustrating that no one has figured out a way to bring about the kind of transformative change…
I don't think line workers should be asked to sacrifice their health to make the company successful. It is highly unlikely they are getting any meaningful stock options or bonuses associated with their level of sacrifice. It isn't the equivalent of a startup employee working through the holidays to ship code. The benefits of workplace ergonomics, not only to employee health but also to production speed, have been kno…
It's no justification, but IMO you simply can't get where Elon is trying to go without that level of sacrifice from the people carrying the load.
Tesla apparently made a lot of basic mistakes in designing their initial production line, as you say, basic ergonomic failures. Now what we hear as they scale up for Model 3 is that it's people building machines that build cars. If there's a human actually on the Model 3 "line" then by definition it won't run fast enough. My own experience is that automation is asymptotic in that it takes orders of magnitudes more engineering to achieve progressively more "complete" automation. Not everything will be automated, and the whole line will run so hard that the parts which aren't will be absolutely brutal to keep up with. But I have absolutely zero evidence for this, it's just a hunch.
There's no defending Tesla's worker rights or saftey record. This is a company that's stood at the brink of failure for years and only survives through the blood, sweat, and tears of its employees. Maybe you believe Elon when he says that it's worth it, but there's no arguing that it's a steep price to pay. It's incredibly frustrating that no one has figured out a way to bring about the kind of transformative change…
> I think the fact remains there's too much non-linearity in the means of production to get where Elon is trying to go without pushing his people to the limit. What is the basis for that? It is an easy rationalization for an issue with serious consequences.
Or to put it another way, when Jeff Dean pulls an all nighter and commits code at 6am before collapsing under his desk for a few moments rest, for the rest of the day, all of Google is twice as productive.
There's no defending Tesla's worker rights or saftey record. This is a company that's stood at the brink of failure for years and only survives through the blood, sweat, and tears of its employees. Maybe you believe Elon when he says that it's worth it, but there's no arguing that it's a steep price to pay. It's incredibly frustrating that no one has figured out a way to bring about the kind of transformative change…
What, exactly, is "worth it", though? SpaceX, sure, that could be worth it. They're actually innovating. But Tesla? A goddamn car company? What the hell is so important about fancy cars for rich people that they have to screw the workers for? Sure, they call themselves an "energy company", and they have made "amazing advances in energy technology", but both Tesla's fancy solar panel AND battery "advances" are literal…