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Tesla workers say they pay the price for Elon Musk’s big promises

It was “a master class in emotional intelligence”, raved the business magazine Inc, and “a powerful lesson in authentic, heartfelt leadership”.

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, had emailed his entire staff following the May 2017 publications of separate investigations by the Guardian and a workplace safety organization showing high injury rates at the company’s northern California electric car factory.

“No words can express how much I care about your safety and wellbeing,” Musk wrote. “Going forward, I’ve asked that every injury be reported directly to me, without exception. I’m meeting with the safety team every week and would like to meet every injured person as soon as they are well, so that I can understand from them exactly what we need to do to make it better. I will then go down to the production line and perform the same task that they perform.”

Musk, an accountability Houdini, had turned the fact that some of his employees were dealing with life-changing injuries into glowing press about his leadership. If only his promises were true.

A Tesla spokesman said that Musk had met with injured workers “many times” and worked on the assembly line “many times” and provided the names of 10 workers that they said could attest to this. “Elon is in the factory, on the production line, nearly every day,” the spokesman said of Musk, who is also the CEO of two companies, SpaceX and the Boring Company, that are based in southern California. “A significant part of his time is spent talking directly with production employees about what improvements they would like to see or concerns they have.”

“I’ve only been here for five months, and I’ve seen [Musk] four or five times,” said Jimmy Guajardo, who works on the Model 3 and is employed by a subcontracted temp agency. “It felt really good seeing him on the line.”

Of the 10 workers whose names Tesla provided, the Guardian was able to reach four, including Guajardo. None of the four had ever been injured, but they all praised Musk and said they had seen him at the factory.

You have to do it like we do it, 12 hours a day, six days a week … That’s where the wear and tear comes from

Ortiz, an outspoken supporter of a unionization drive at the factory, argued that even if Musk had performed every injured worker’s job, it’s unlikely the experience would have helped the CEO truly understand the challenges and dangers of the work.

“Anyone can do anything for an hour,” Ortiz said. “You have to do it like we do it, 12 hours a day, six days a week … Live the life we live. That’s where the wear and tear comes from.”

Musk’s pledge to meet with every injured worker is by no means the only example of his over-promising. The CEO is notorious for making exaggerated claims about his businesses, whether he was announcing that he had received government approval for a New York to Washington DC hyperloop (he hadn’t), promising to test-drive a fully autonomous Tesla coast-to-coast by the end of 2017 (he didn’t), or claiming that the Model 3 production would reach 5,000 cars per week by the end of 2017 (it still hasn’t).

To one worker, an immigrant who started at Tesla in 2017, the contrast between what Musk promises and what he does is indicative of a lack of “principles”.

“In my country we have a saying, ‘Even if your enemy is a rabbit, you should at least recognize that he has big ears,” he said. “I like Elon Musk … I like people who dream big.”

But, he added, “I’m always really surprised how he keeps giving numbers that we have never been able to respect. He would say we would produce such and such cars by such date, and we are never able to hit it. For me, a responsible person should stick to his word.

“As a Tesla employee, I am really ashamed when my CEO is lying to the public.”

‘I couldn’t believe he said that’

Though Tesla factory employees may have learned to take Musk’s words with a grain of salt, the billionaire’s pronouncements – whether issued by company email, investor earnings call, the press, or Twitter – still loom large over the workplace.

In May 2017, Musk emailed the entire company a message about “doing the right thing” – ie being considerate of minorities and “not being a huge jerk”.

The email resurfaced later that year, as Tesla was hit with a number of lawsuits from employees alleging sexual harassment, gender discrimination, racism and homophobia in the workplace. (Tesla has denied wrongdoing.) One of the lawsuits took particular issue with one line in the Musk email that read: “In fairness, if someone is a jerk to you, but sincerely apologizes, it is important to be thick-skinned and accept that apology.”

Tesla defended the email in a blogpost, arguing that the “counterpoint” to not having a thick skin and accepting an apology “would be a cold world with no forgiveness and no heart”.

But to some Tesla workers, the email was perceived as a green light for harassment and discrimination.

“I couldn’t believe he said that,” said one Tesla worker, who is black and has worked for the company since October 2014. “That’s like he opened the door for his HR and management teams to act accordingly.”

The worker, who asked not to be identified because he fears being fired, said that he feels he is treated like “a dummy” because he is black.

“Things said have made me feel like I was being called a nigger,” he said. “I don’t think people of color should have to have thick skin when it comes to racial issues in the workplace, as Elon’s email suggested.”

Another Tesla factory worker, Branton Phillips, also said that Musk’s “thick skin” line has been adopted as an excuse for bad behavior.

“I would never have my daughter work in there,” the 55-year-old materials handler said. “It’s like a nightclub attitude; it’s wrong. The leads and supervisors that see [harassment], they don’t want to make a big deal. They all say, ‘Have a thick skin … Hey girl, have a thick skin.’”

A third Tesla worker, a US army veteran, concurred that telling people to have a “thick skin” had become the “dismissive philosophy” of Tesla’s management, adding that he had heard workers “outright call people the N-word with little to no repercussions”.

“Tesla is absolutely against any form of discrimination, harassment, or unfair treatment of any kind,” the company spokesman said. The spokesman denied that the email was a signal to anyone not to take harassment seriously.

Racial slurs aren’t the only language that the army veteran objected to. This spring, in two emails to company staff, and on an earnings call with investors, Musk debuted new language to describe a problem weighing down the good-ship Tesla: “barnacles”.

When the big alpha dog of the factory uses that word, it allows others to start thinking about people like that

“The number of … third-party contracting companies that we’re using has really gotten out of control, so we’re going to scrub the barnacles on that front,” he said on the investor call. “We’ve got barnacles on barnacles. So there’s going to be a lot of barnacle removal.”

A Tesla spokesperson said that Musk was referring to contractor companies, not subcontracted employees. But whatever Musk’s intent, the words were interpreted as an insult by some of the hundreds of factory workers Tesla hires through subcontracted staffing agencies.

“When the big alpha dog of the factory uses that word to describe people, it allows other people in the factory to start thinking about people like that and acting that way,” said the veteran, who worked for Tesla through a contracted staffing agency for eight months before being hired directly. He compared the rhetorical tactic to Donald Trump calling certain countries “shitholes” or the US military dehumanizing enemy soldiers with slurs.

“When Elon calls lower-paid workers barnacles, then you have managers saying, ‘Get out of here barnacle,’” he told the Guardian a few days after Musk’s earnings call. “I’ve heard that word more in the last week than in the rest of my life.”

‘The main export is injuries, not cars’

When an engineer with extensive experience in the military and private sector went to work for Tesla in 2016, it didn’t take long for him to start to feel uneasy about his new job as a program manager.

“They were trying to drive home that if you want to go work for a company that will give you enough time to do your job, then this isn’t the place,” the engineer, who has since left the company, said of his orientation. “I came from a background where process was a good thing. At Tesla, the time it took to say the word ‘process’ was too long.”

For the engineer and many of the rank and file factory workers, there was a direct link between Musk’s aggressive production projections and their own working conditions. For some employees, like the engineer, the high stress and long hours interfered with having any kind of family life. For others, however, working at Tesla has left them with life-altering injuries.

“Just that one day at Tesla, holy moly it changed my life,” said Mark Vasquez, 40, of the day in 2015 when he permanently injured his back while working at Tesla. He lost his apartment when he was assigned “light duty” work that paid a significantly lower wage, had to sell many of his belongings to make ends meet, and still deals with pain and numbness in his legs.

“I don’t go out,” he said. “I hardly see my friends. It’s depressing to have them see me like this. I can’t walk for 10 minutes without getting winded and having to stop and sit down … When I have to go to the stores, I have to use one of those electric scooter carts, and I don’t want to do that.”

Another factory worker detailed having two surgeries to address carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis in both hands – injuries he attributes to working 12-hour shifts, six days a week, on suspended vehicles with his arms above his head.

“If I were a lazier person, I probably wouldn’t be injured at all,” said the worker, who said he is still in constant pain. While he is still employed by Tesla, he finds the “light duty” tasks that he gets assigned to be humiliating, like “standing in front of the class with a dunce cap”.

But the worker, who is 41 and started at Tesla in 2014, doesn’t see many other options. “The problem is that everything that I know how to do is with my hands,” he said. “Everything that I ever heard of doing is with my hands, and I can’t do it.”

The Tesla spokesman defended the company, saying: “Production will never take precedence over safety – and the numbers demonstrate this. Last year, when production increased 20%, our injury rate declined more than 20%.”

A major investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal has cast serious doubt over Tesla’s claims about its injury rates, which must be reported to workplace safety regulators. Reveal found that Tesla had kept injuries off its books, making the company’s safety record look better than it was, and the government has opened an investigation.

In recent months, three lawsuits have been filed against Tesla alleging that the company is violating California labor laws by, among other things, failing to provide workers with legally mandated breaks. Tesla said that it “goes above and beyond the requirements of California and federal law in providing all workers with meal and rest breaks and appropriate overtime pay.”

15 Tesla Employee Facts You Should Know (Explained)

Tesla is a renowned vehicle manufacturer that specializes in producing electric vehicles and it currently employs more than 11,000 employees across its branches worldwide.

These are the following employee facts you should know if you have the ambition of working with Tesla. Meanwhile, there are some Tesla employee perks you should know.

Table of Contents

Are Tesla Employees Paid Well or Underpaid?

Based on a survey conducted by Indeed, more than half of the 4,000 employees that participated confirm that they are fairly paid for their services.

These employees include current and previous workers in the company. On the other hand, Glassdoor confirmed that the average pay is slightly higher than the national average pay.

Only big brands such as Microsoft, Apple, and Google pay higher than Tesla based on a Glassdoor survey.

What Are the Lowest and Highest Salaries at Tesla?

The average salary of Tesla is around $108,037 per annum or $51.94 hourly.

Employees in the lower cadre at Tesla receive around $75,000 per annum while the higher-ranking officials earn over $154,000.

For instance, IT specialists earn an average salary of $119,489 per annum while engineering staff members earn at least $112,443 per year.

One crucial factor that determines the earnings of workers at Tesla is location.

It has been confirmed that employees in Fremont, CA, Sparks, NV, and Austin, TX are the highest paid of the lot.

The highest-earning officer at Tesla is the Director of Sales, and the person earns $225,480 per annum. The receptionist’s annual income is around $38,015.

The yearly average salary of the design department members is around $85,484, while a sales department member earns around $136,615.

A Communications department member has an annual salary of $102,520, while the Legal team members earn a yearly salary of $196,224.

How Long Are the Breaks at Tesla?

Tesla employees who work more than five hours per day are entitled to take a 30-minute lunch break.

You can also choose to skip your meal period minutes.

However, if you are working on a long shift and have taken 60 minutes of mealtime, you can waive 30 minutes of mealtime in a shift.

How Many Hours Do Tesla Employees Work?

Tesla employees work an average of 40 to 45 hours every week. This is higher compared to the industry average of 40 hours weekly.

On the other hand, Tesla employees have a sporadic schedule of 3-4-4-3 working days and work at least ten to twelve hours daily.

There are some periods when employees work five or six days weekly, and sometimes on weekends and public holidays.

Several employees working in the Tesla Fremont factory confirmed that they work for at least 10-12 hours.

In other Tesla factories, the issue is not different as workers are mandated to work for long hours.

Most Tesla factory employees do not follow the normal 8-hour shifts, and only get overtime after working for ten hours.

Though the number of hours vary, some employees have confirmed working from 30 to 80 hours a week.

Are Tesla Employees Unionized?

Tesla is the only automaker in the United States without a union of workers.

However, in the fall of 2016, one Tesla employee, Jose Moran, contacted the United Auto Worker, going public with a “Fair Future at Tesla” campaign in 2017.

He cited factors such as long hours at work, a high rate of injuries among employees, and lower remuneration packages.

Are Tesla Employees Allowed to Work From Home?

Tesla used to have remote workers. However, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, sent an email to Tesla employees that executives are no longer allowed to work from home.

In the email, Elon Musk stated that whoever wants to do remote work must be on site for at least 40 hours weekly.

In the email sent from Elon Musk, he would consider any request personally.

Do Tesla Offices Have Gyms?

According to one commenter, there is an on-site gym at Tesla.

Other facilities on the Tesla site are a cafeteria with pay-for-lunch options, pool tables, ping-pong tables, an onsite gym, and showers at the Fremont and Palo Alto factories.

Do Tesla Employees Typically Drive Teslas?

Tesla employees can drive Teslas by test-driving, leasing, borrowing, renting, and purchasing a Tesla.

It is important to note that Tesla employees do not receive free Teslas as part of their contract.

They only take their Tesla vehicles to get familiar. We explained in greater detail in our article do Tesla employees get to drive Teslas?

Do Top-level Tesla Employees Get Free Teslas?

No. Tesla does not give free Teslas to its employees. Giving vehicles to top-level employees was against the principle of equality postulated by the Tesla CEO.

Does Tesla Have a Flat Organizational Structure?

Tesla is distinguished by its practical organizational structure that depicts a lack of delegation.

Musk’s preference to avoid delegation means the company embodies characteristics of a flat structure with a higher ratio of subordinates to managers.

In certain scenarios, Tesla may exhibit flexible or very little structure whatsoever.

How Are Tesla Employees Motivated and Rewarded?

Tesla motivates its employees by providing comprehensive medical coverage, 401 (k), stock discounts, grants, and more perks.

Other benefits include a confidential mental wellness program, full medical, dental, and vision coverage, and maternity and paternity leave.

Tesla employees are also motivated by infertility benefits, as well as assisted reproductive technology, financial assistance for unplanned hardships, generous paid time off, and flexible scheduling.

Other perks include a free full self-driving capability option package, discounted accessories, free shuttles, monthly carpool subsidies, free electric vehicle charging, and discounts on travel and cell phone plans.

Do Tesla Employees Get Stock?

Tesla offers stock options as a portion of the compensation packages for all employees, including sales and production staff.

Based on the survey from Electrek, new employees are given between $20,000 and $40,000 of restricted stocks vested more than three years, starting a year after their employment confirmation at Tesla.

Employees used to be offered performance-based equity bonuses, but it has been suspended.

Do Tesla Employees Get Holidays Off?

Tesla offers a liberal paid-time-off program for its employees. The female staff gets twelve weeks of maternity leave and male staff members are entitled to seven weeks of paternity leave.

Tesla employees also get five weeks of vacation annually and close their offices for ten holidays yearly.

These holidays include Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas seasons.

These are also paid holidays and Tesla uses this to motivate its workers. Unfortunately, there is no publicly available schedule for Tesla’s annual paid holidays.

Based on reports on employment websites such as Indeed, these holidays are optional.

In some cases, some workers choose to work on these holidays to increase their wages instead of taking the day off.

How Many Employees Does Tesla Have?

Zippia utilized a database of 30 million profiles, and the entire number of staff at Tesla is around 99,290 employees.

At least 22% of Tesla employees are women, and 78% are men. A large percentage of the employees are white, and it stands around 52% while 24% of Tesla employees are Latino or Hispanic.

On the other hand, 11% of the employees at Tesla are from Asia. Find out whom Tesla hires.

Do Tesla Employees Get Discounts on Teslas?

Tesla is renowned for taking care of the workforce. The brand offers a challenging workplace for its staff members.

Its aim is to build a future of clean energy with sophisticated products and technology.

There are numerous benefits attached to being an employee of Tesla. These include discounts on their vehicles after spending six months at Tesla.

Other discounts also cover items such as phone cases, apparel, and other products.