Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he plans to release the results of an investigation into the Fremont plant in a blog post shortly during Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings call Wednesday.
Musk said he was launching an investigation into the plant after a worker publicly complained of conditions at the plant, alleging that the factory equipment regularly injured employees on site.
Factory worker Jose Moran made those allegations in a Medium post outlining why Tesla employees were looking to unionize. He also said factory workers regularly face “excessive mandatory overtime” to meet production goals.
“Preventable injuries happen often,” Moran wrote in the post. “In addition to long working hours, machinery is often not ergonomically compatible with our bodies. There is too much twisting and turning and extra physical movement to do jobs that could be simplified if workers’ input were welcomed.”
Musk said the investigation findings will show that the Tesla injury rate is less than half the industry average. He also said Tesla factory workers are the highest paid in the industry if you include equity.
Musk said Moran is a “de facto” employee who was hired by the United Auto Workers (UAW) to agitate for a union on the earnings call. Musk has made that claim before, calling Moran’s allegations “morally outrageous.”
The UAW has denied that Moran was paid to agitate for a union.
“Mr. Moran is not and has not been paid by the UAW. We would hope that Tesla would apologize to their employee, Mr. Moran, for spreading fake news about him. We can confirm that Mr. Moran and others at Tesla have approached the UAW, and we welcome them with open arms,” the UAW wrote in a statement at the time.
Tesla released a statement about the unionization efforts earlier in February, which reads:
“As California’s largest manufacturing employer and a company that has created thousands of quality jobs here in the Bay Area, this is not the first time we have been the target of a professional union organizing effort such as this. The safety and job satisfaction of our employees here at Tesla has always been extremely important to us. We have a long history of engaging directly with our employees on the issues that matter to them, and we will continue to do so because it’s the right thing to do.”
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