The technophiles are busy building a shiny high-tech future...for themselves Don't expect them to take you along

[Razer]

>
> “From what I’ve gathered, Elon Musk started Tesla kind of like an app
> startup, and didn’t realize that it isn’t just nerds at a computer
> desk typing,” said one production worker, one of several who asked not
> to be identified by name.
>
>
The nasty little weasel "thinks"...

"It’s incredibly hurtful and I think false for anyone to claim that I
don’t care ~Elon Musk, Tesla CEO

With links
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/18/tesla-workers-factory-conditions-elon-musk

> Tesla factory workers reveal pain, injury and stress: 'Everything
> feels like the future but us'
>
> When Tesla bought a decommissioned car factory in Fremont, California,
> Elon Musk transformed the old-fashioned, unionized plant into a
> much-vaunted “factory of the future”, where giant robots named after
> X-Men shape and fold sheets of metal inside a gleaming white mecca of
> advanced manufacturing.
>
> The appetite for Musk’s electric cars, and his promise to disrupt the
> carbon-reliant automobile industry, has helped Tesla’s value exceed
> that of both Ford and, briefly, General Motors (GM). But some of the
> human workers who share the factory with their robotic counterparts
> complain of grueling pressure – which they attribute to Musk’s
> aggressive production goals – and sometimes life-changing injuries.
>
> Ambulances have been called more than 100 times since 2014 for workers
> experiencing fainting spells, dizziness, seizures, abnormal breathing
> and chest pains, according to incident reports obtained by the
> Guardian. Hundreds more were called for injuries and other medical issues.
>
> In a phone interview about the conditions at the factory, which
> employs about 10,000 workers, the Tesla CEO conceded his workers had
> been “having a hard time, working long hours, and on hard jobs”, but
> said he cared deeply about their health and wellbeing. His company
> says its factory safety record has significantly improved over the
> last year.
>
> Musk also said that Tesla should not be compared to major US carmakers
> and that its market capitalization, now more than $50bn, is
> unwarranted. “I do believe this market cap is higher than we have any
> right to deserve,” he said, pointing out his company produces just 1%
> of GM’s total output.
>
> “We’re a money-losing company,” Musk added. “This is not some
> situation where, for example, we are just greedy capitalists who
> decided to skimp on safety in order to have more profits and dividends
> and that kind of thing. It’s just a question of how much money we
> lose. And how do we survive? How do we not die and have everyone lose
> their jobs?”
> Tesla worker Jonathan Galescu says he has seen co-workers collapse or
> be taken away by ambulances.
>
> Musk’s account of the company’s approach differs from that of the 15
> current and former factory workers who told the Guardian of a culture
> of long hours under intense pressure, sometimes through pain and
> injury, in order to fulfill the CEO’s ambitious production goals.
>
> “I’ve seen people pass out, hit the floor like a pancake and smash
> their face open,” said Jonathan Galescu, a production technician at
> Tesla. “They just send us to work around him while he’s still lying on
> the floor.”
>
> He was one of several workers who said they had seen co-workers
> collapse or be taken away in ambulances. “We had an associate on my
> line, he just kept working, kept working, kept working, next thing you
> know – he just fell on the ground,” said Mikey Catura, a worker on the
> battery pack line.
>
> Richard Ortiz, another production worker, spoke admiringly of the
> high-tech shop floor. “It’s like you died and went to auto-worker
> heaven.” But he added: “Everything feels like the future but us.”
>
> Tesla sits at the juncture between a tech startup, untethered from the
> rules of the old economy, and a manufacturer that needs to produce
> physical goods. Nowhere is that contradiction more apparent than at
> the Tesla factory, where Musk’s bombastic projection that his company
> will make 500,000 cars in 2018 (a 495% increase from 2016) relies as
> much on the sweat and muscle of thousands of human workers as it does
> on futuristic robots.
>
> “From what I’ve gathered, Elon Musk started Tesla kind of like an app
> startup, and didn’t realize that it isn’t just nerds at a computer
> desk typing,” said one production worker, one of several who asked not
> to be identified by name. “You really start losing the startup feel
> when you have thousands of people doing physical labor.”
>
> In February, Tesla worker Jose Moran published a blogpost that
> detailed allegations of mandatory overtime, high rates of injury and
> low wages at the factory, and revealed that workers were seeking to
> unionize with the United Auto Workers.
>
> Moran’s post shone a spotlight on a workforce that is almost entirely
> absent from Tesla’s official images of the factory.
>
> Michael Sanchez once had two dreams: to be an artist and a car service
> technician. He said he was “ecstatic” when he was recruited five years
> ago to work at Tesla, a company he believed was “part of the future”.
>
> Now Sanchez has two herniated discs in his neck, is on disability
> leave from work, and can no longer grip a pencil without pain.
>
> Tesla said that the employee’s injury occurred while he was installing
> a wheel, but Sanchez said it was caused by the years he spent working
> on Tesla’s assembly line. The cars he worked on were suspended above
> the line, and his job required looking up and working with his hands
> above his head all day.
>
> “You can make it through Monday,” Sanchez said. “You can make it
> through Tuesday. Come Wednesday, you start to feel something. Thursday
> is pain. Friday is agonizing. Saturday you’re just making it through
> the day.”
>
> Tesla’s manufacturing practices appear to have been most dangerous in
> its earliest years of operations. The company does not dispute that
> its recordable incident rate (TRIR), an official measure of injuries
> and illnesses that is reported to workplace safety regulators, was
> above the industry average between 2013 and 2016.
>
> Tesla declined to release data over those four years, saying such
> information “doesn’t reflect how the factory operates today”.
>
> The company did release more recent data, which indicates its record
> of safety incidents went from slightly above the industry average in
> late 2016, to a performance in the first few months of 2017 that was
> 32% better than average. The company said that its decision to add a
> third shift, introduce a dedicated team of ergonomics experts, and
> improvements to the factory’s “safety teams” account for the
> significant reduction in incidents since last year.
>
> Musk said safety was paramount at the company. “It’s incredibly
> hurtful, and, I think, false for anyone to claim that I don’t care.”
> The CEO said his desk was “in the worst place in the factory, the most
> painful place”, in keeping with his management philosophy. “It’s not
> some comfortable corner office.”
>
> In early 2016, he said, he slept on the factory floor in a sleeping
> bag “to make it the most painful thing possible”. “I knew people were
> having a hard time, working long hours, and on hard jobs. I wanted to
> work harder than they did, to put even more hours in,” he said.
> “Because that’s what I think a manager should do.”
>
> He added: “We’re doing this because we believe in a sustainable energy
> future, trying to accelerate the advent of clean transport and clean
> energy production, not because we think this is a way to get rich.”
>
> Tesla workers who spoke to the Guardian echoed this sense of pride and
> enthusiasm for the company’s mission. “We’re changing the world,”
> enthused Ortiz. “I can’t wait for my granddaughter to one day go to
> class and say, ‘My grandfather was in there.’”
>
> But that pride did not erase what Ortiz described as a prevailing mood
> of “mass disappointment” over working conditions and what he alleged
> were avoidable work-related injuries.
>
> He recently lost the strength in his right arm, a situation he said
> was “scaring” him. “I want to use my arm when I’m retired,” he added.
>
> Others described repetitive stress injuries they linked to working
> long hours. Before the company reduced the average time of a workday
> in October 2016, workers said they routinely worked 12-hour shifts,
> six days a week. Tesla said the change had been “a success”, and
> resulted in a 50% decline in overtime hours.
>
> Sanchez and other workers said they believed more injuries occurred
> because, for years, the company did not take worker safety seriously,
> with some managers belittling their complaints and pressuring them to
> work through pain.
>
> When workers told managers about pain, Sanchez said they responded:
> “We all hurt. You can’t man up?” Alan Ochoa, another Tesla worker who
> is currently on a medical leave with an injury, alleged that superiors
> “put the production numbers ahead of the safety and wellbeing of the
> employees”.
>
> The company said that Ochoa and Sanchez are especially outspoken
> workers whose views do not represent the wider workforce. However, the
> Tesla spokesperson added: “In a factory of more than 10,000 employees,
> there will always be isolated incidents that we would like to avoid.”
>
> Complaints about working conditions at Tesla are not universal. “I’ve
> got benefits, I’ve got stocks, I’ve got [paid time off],” said a
> worker who has been at the company for about a year. “I thoroughly
> enjoy my work and I feel I’m treated fairly.”
>
> Another worker, a temporary employee, said that he sees some teams in
> the factory doing group stretches in the morning to prevent injuries.
>
>     When workers told managers about pain, they responded: 'We all
> hurt. You can’t man up?'
>
> However, some Tesla workers argue the company’s treatment of injured
> workers discourages them from reporting their injuries. If workers are
> assigned to “light duty” work because of an injury, they are paid a
> lower wage as well as supplemental benefits from workers’ compensation
> insurance, a practice that Tesla said was in line with other employers
> and California law.
>
> “I went from making $22 an hour to $10 an hour,” said a production
> worker, who injured his back twice while working at Tesla. “It kind of
> forces people to go back to work.”
>
> “No one wants to get a pay cut because they’re injured, so everyone
> just forces themselves to work through it,” added Adam Suarez, who has
> worked at the factory for about three years.
>
> Tesla said it was determined to further improve its safety standards.
> “While some amount of injuries is inevitable, our goal at Tesla is to
> have as close to zero injuries as possible and to become the safest
> factory in the auto industry worldwide,” the spokesperson said.
>
> Musk has a well-documented tendency to promise Mars and deliver the
> moon. His electric car company was, by his own admission, a gamble.
> Musk said starting a car manufacturer from scratch was likely “the
> worst way to earn money, honestly”, though he caveated that “maybe
> rockets are a bit worse”. He said: “On a risk-adjusted return basis,
> an auto company has to be the dumbest thing you could possibly start.”
>
> The company has succeeded at increasing its production rate every
> quarter. In the first three months of 2017, the factory produced more
> than 25,000 cars – a Tesla record. To meet Musk’s goal for 2018, they
> will have to quintuple that rate.
>
> “I think one of the major problems is that people at the top are
> making unrealistic quarterly goals,” said a worker on the battery pack
> line.
>
> Three workers described a management tactic of assigning a monetary
> value to every delay on the assembly line. “One time the robot came
> down and [the supervisor] came back screaming at us, ‘That’s $18,000,
> $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 because you guys can’t get this done,’”
> Gelascu recalled.
>
> Tesla argues the challenge in building vehicles from scratch with new
> production and manufacturing methods should not be underestimated, but
> that “nothing is more important” than protecting the health and safety
> of its workers.
>
> “We’re trying to do good for the world and we believe in doing the
> right thing,” Musk said. “And that extends to caring about the health
> and safety of everyone at the company.”
>
> It’s a more humanistic tone than the one he strikes with investors.
> “You really can’t have people in the production line itself. Otherwise
> you’ll automatically drop to people speed,” he told investors in an
> earnings call last year. “There’s still a lot of people at the
> factory, but what they’re doing is maintaining the machines, upgrading
> them, dealing with anomalies. But in the production process itself
> there essentially would be no people.”
>