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California Opens Investigation into Tesla Workplace Conditions

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Re: California Opens Investigation into Tesla Workplace Conditions

#91

Post by twblalock »

PerryCox wrote: post #77
usaphp wrote: post #62

> It was difficult to find employees to go on the record. Like a lot of tech companies in Silicon Valley, workers signed non-disclosure agreements. NDAs usually are put in place so workers don't share any trade secrets or proprietary technology. So some workers were scared to talk to us because of this NDA they sign for working at Tesla. Damn, so workers were afraid to speak up and spread the injury info because they…

NDAs are out of control everywhere. I understand they have a time and a place where they are useful, but most of the time they are being abused (ie. Stormy Daniels NDA, etc).

No, most of the time they are rather unremarkable and don't cause problems for anybody. You hear about the outliers, not the thousands and thousands of NDAs that are never disputed.

Re: California Opens Investigation into Tesla Workplace Conditions

#92

Post by filoleg »

freeone3000 wrote: post #78
StudentStuff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its horrifying how Musk treats his workers, its very reminiscent of what Amazon does to most of its employees here in Seattle. Unpaid overtime for warehouse workers? Definitely, as long as the worker doesn't squawk to L&I! Work your developers 10 hours a day, then guilt trip them to coming in on Sunday? Amazon does this constantly. Tesla, SpaceX and Blue Origin seem to have the same work culture as Amazon, even Micro…

"even" Microsoft? Microsoft, home of the individual office, 8-hour workday, #7 in Fortune's Best Places to Work? There's a lot to dislike about bigcorps, but the working environment isn't one of them.

Yeah, have to agree here. From personal observations, as well as other people I know who work there, MSFT work/life balance is hard to beat. Ofc it varies by team, so I can only talk about what I have personally encountered

Re: California Opens Investigation into Tesla Workplace Conditions

#93

Post by nerfhammer »

vkou wrote: post #81
idoh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's crazy. What happened, generally speaking? Was he hit by something, or more along the lines of a receptive stress injury?

Which part of this story is crazy? That someone got injured working at an automotive plant, that they were strongly encouraged to do overtime, or that their employer declined to assume any liability?

Denying worker's comp for injury is so obviously illegal and such a brazen civil liability that it would be shocking that a company of Tesla's size would be able to simply refuse to deal with it. This person should be able to sue the pants off of Tesla. If they haven't gotten any compensation for their injuries maybe they haven't even filed a worker's comp claim, or they don't know that's a thing, or something.

Re: California Opens Investigation into Tesla Workplace Conditions

#94

Post by lovich »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #36
api wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're both likely true. Unions, conventional automobile companies, and the oil industry are all terrified of electric cars. EVs mean less jobs, less parts, longer renewal cycles, and of course removing inflexibility from oil demand. EVs threaten industries collectively totaling trillions of dollars and in some cases even double digit percentages of nations' GDPs. It's absurd and naive to think these industries woul…

Yes, I’m seeing a lot of assumptions that unions are purely (or at least mostly) forces of good, but that’s not necessarily true. Auto workers’ unions in particular have a reputation of being bullies, extortionists, and sometimes obstructionists. Unionization of Tesla may improve conditions for the workers (though it’s worth noting that many auto union member companies still have serious unaddressed issues) but it’d…

The company could just improve the situation enough that the workers don't want to unionize. Losing your agility isn't a good enough argument to convince people to not negotiate a better situation for themselves when you are literally destroying their bodies.

It's not even like they are acting the same as the rest of the industry. Directly in the article it says that they have much higher injury rates than the rest of the industry. Either make the environment safer or at least give the workers enough equity that they benefit from pushing the company through as well. It's pretty disenguous for a rich guy like Elon to say that this is losing money now, so everyone has to sacrifice, when he's going to reap the benefits of that sacrifice

Re: California Opens Investigation into Tesla Workplace Conditions

#95

Post by tedunangst »

briandear wrote: post #85
usaphp wrote: post #62

> It was difficult to find employees to go on the record. Like a lot of tech companies in Silicon Valley, workers signed non-disclosure agreements. NDAs usually are put in place so workers don't share any trade secrets or proprietary technology. So some workers were scared to talk to us because of this NDA they sign for working at Tesla. Damn, so workers were afraid to speak up and spread the injury info because they…

Is it possible there wasn’t anything to talk about? We are assuming that they had something to say but didn’t because of an NDA, but are we considering that they might not have anything to say? If something illegal is happening, California law provides that NDAs are not enforceable when in conjunction with some criminal acts. Furthermore, NDAs can’t protect against a witness being subpoenaed or being required to test…

If there's nothing wrong, but the NDA scares people into staying silent instead of saying there's nothing wrong, that's still a problem.

Re: California Opens Investigation into Tesla Workplace Conditions

#96

Post by rgbrenner »

mschuster91 wrote: post #86
rgbrenner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been true across the board at Tesla... they make almost all of the parts in house, even when there are established reliable providers... even when it costs them more and results in lower quality.. even when they are already short staffed. Musk is pro-NIH syndrome. In fairness, Musk says they will eventually be as reliable, and as high quality as others and it'll be cheaper.. one day. That's the common NIH fa…

> even when it costs them more and results in lower quality. The advantage of keeping much knowledge in-house is that you are not subject to extortion campaigns (e.g. the Prevent/VW dispute. In addition you - are always exposing your internal knowledge to the part vendor and have to rely on the vendor protecting your IP from other customers, so "inventing here" works out better. - are not bound to endless rounds of w…

Yes, but that isn't what I'm talking about.. for example, Tesla produces seats in house.. they're low margin and labor intensive. And Tesla runs an assembly line in their factory that makes them cost even more. Other auto companies outsource this part. There's no special IP here.. Not everything that Tesla touches is special. A seat is a seat.

Re: California Opens Investigation into Tesla Workplace Conditions

#97

Post by makecheck »

briandear wrote: post #87
mschuster91 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think somebody needs to do something about this NDA situation, it’s getting out of control in SV Not just in SV, it's all over the world. IMHO the right of protection for whistleblowers should be made a basic human right, in order to protect people worldwide who are afraid to speak out.

California law DOES protect whistleblowers. The law is extremely clear. Those laws even provide for damages due to retailiation.

Even in that situation, if you’re a paycheck-to-paycheck worker, how much boat-rocking can you endure? On some theoretical future date according to the law you can get back at your employer, great: in the meantime, maybe you got fired and now you can’t feed yourself?

We’ve seen plenty of companies that shrug off large fines and such. Whatever the rules, it has to reach the point of being seriously unprofitable to disobey (i.e. investors knocking to demand compliance).

Re: California Opens Investigation into Tesla Workplace Conditions

#98

Post by dragonwriter »

mabufo wrote: post #60
komali2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to you and your friend, I'm automatically skeptical of stories like this. We're on the internet, after all. Has your friend spoken to news agencies about this? Why not, if he/she hasn't? Surely any of the major news agencies would be watering at the mouth for a story like this.

What are you skeptical about? That this person's friend is actually injured? That it happened because of tesla? People get injured at work. Maybe not where YOU work, but it absolutely happens. Also, the subtext of your comment - that this person OF COURSE would have contacted a news organization if their claim was legitimate is frankly very weird.

> What are you skeptical about? That this person's friend is actually injured? That it happened because of tesla?

What I (not the original poster of the comment you are questioning) is that they were injured in the workplace at Tesla as en employee and unable to get anything from Tesla to deal with that, since workers compensation is a bright-line legal requirement for all employers and covers all employees.

Now, bureaucratic difficulties dealing with Tesla’s WC insurer resulting in annoying runarounds, poor doctors in inconvenient locations, and disappointing care quality would be credible. Crickets, though, stretches belief.

Re: California Opens Investigation into Tesla Workplace Conditions

#99

Post by mschuster91 »

briandear wrote: post #87
mschuster91 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think somebody needs to do something about this NDA situation, it’s getting out of control in SV Not just in SV, it's all over the world. IMHO the right of protection for whistleblowers should be made a basic human right, in order to protect people worldwide who are afraid to speak out.

California law DOES protect whistleblowers. The law is extremely clear. Those laws even provide for damages due to retailiation.

So why are people still afraid to talk, then? It's obvious that either the law isn't as crystal clear, the law does not prevent companies from writing FUD into employment contracts or that people are not educated well enough about their rights. Or: that they have economic pressure (e.g. no 3 months of savings, like way too many people have!) to stay in their job and thus cannot afford to lose it by ratting out illegal or immoral practices.

Now, if every company in the world had the legal requirement to add a paragraph like "in the event that you witness illegal behavior at the company, the law explicitly allows you to report such behavior to media, unions, NGOs and public offices, and we are required to pay you for the duration of the investigation", that would be a different story. Everyone who reads his/her contract would know it.

Re: California Opens Investigation into Tesla Workplace Conditions

#100

Post by rdiddly »

rdiddly wrote: post #18

"...an ideologically motivated attack by an extremist organization working directly with union supporters to create a calculated disinformation campaign against Tesla" vs. "...Tesla failed to report serious injuries on legally mandated reports to make its numbers appear better than they actually were." Now use Occam's Razor.

I love the bit about "working directly with union supporters" too. Am I supposed to recoil in horror upon reading that? "Oh no, not the dreaded union supporters!! And being worked with directly no less!"

...is what I would say if I were Montgomery Burns. Tesla's PR people must be thinking it's better to win over the tiny Burns demographic and not the millions of Homer Simpsons out there.

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