A new report from USA Today on Tesla’s “gargantuan” four-year-old battery factory in Nevada finds that worker injuries at the Gigafactory occur “on a routine basis: at least three a month.” OSHA inspectors were on-site more than 90 times in the facility’s first three years of operation.
The report goes deep inside the facility, which employs approximately 7,000 workers and is a half-mile long by a quarter-mile wide – dimensions that make it difficult for first responders to find and reach incident victims when summoned by calls to 911. Those calls occur, on average, more than once a day.
The report notes that Tesla has been fined $26,900 for workplace safety violations at the Gigafactory since 2017, but has succeeded in getting almost all of the fines reduced or eliminated. Three of the four fines involved amputations.
One such amputation is profiled: the partial loss of a finger by a young worker that was never reported to OSHA, as required by law.
Workplace injuries at the plant have included an electrocution, head injuries from unsecured construction debris blowing off the roof in a windstorm and people falling through holes in the floor.
The report examines the impact the $1.3 billion tax abatement granted to Tesla by the state of Nevada has had on local services, roads and housing availability. “State and local governments were ill-prepared for those consequences and, because of the tax abatements, had limited financial resources to address them,” according to the story.
Read the full report at USA Today.