given the scrutiny around Tesla, it’s interesting this story doesn’t seem to have come out sooner since this is a fairly novel workplace accident
Almost one in 21 workers at Tesla’s Giga Texas factory was injured on the job in 2022, according to The Information, compared to the industry average of one in 30.
It’s almost like they have some systemic issue with safety and procedures or something…
Average is one in 30? Wild. The P&G plant near my house was at a few hundred days with no incidents recently. For Tesla to be doing even worse than 1/30 tho? Yikes
It could also be that they are better about reporting incidents than other employers. I’m also curious what they mean by “the industry” if they mean automotive manufacturers or manufacturing in general. I work at a plant that makes parts for heavy equipment, which is similar to automotive, but obviously not automotive. We’ve had 2 recordable incidents this year. One of which was due to someone not wearing their issued cut resistant gloves while handling metal scraps and then needing stitches. There wasn’t any reason for them not to wear their gloves except for laziness or complacency.
Over here in Aus we like to have a “as few maiming’s as possible” policy. You say laziness and complacency, I call it a national disregard for worker safety, an underfunded & toothless OSHA and union-busting, all caused by unchecked capitalistic greed.
But let’s get back to this particular incident. For a start, here’s an article from 2021 about a system to allow robotic arms (and others) to sense human presence and not cause injury to them. So what, Mr. Elon “Autopilot” Musk couldn’t have designed a similar system for his factory? Hah, no, he just doesn’t give a fuck. This article goes into it in more depth. The Fremont Tesla factory had an even higher 1 in 12 injury rate last year. Also, yeah nah, they failed to disclose dozens of injuries. And these two rates don’t account for them. Still don’t believe me? Here’s a paper comparing Tesla to the automotive industry average. It cites it’s source as the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But you should absolutely congratulate your colleagues. Assuming there’s more than 41 of them, you did better than Tesla! 👏
CW: first four links contain fake gore
