Tesla’s Toxic Culture Has Spread to Its New Plant in Austin
- by The Nation
- Sep 27, 2024
- 0 Comments
- 0 Likes Flag 0 Of 5
Tesla’s “gigafactory” in Austin, Texas. The plant was opened in 2022.
(Jordan Vonderhaar / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
JoAn Rogers started working at Tesla’s Gigafactory plant in Austin, Texas, two years ago. “It sounded interesting. It was something different,” the 59-year-old said, and Tesla paid her $18.50 an hour to start out, which Rogers felt was decent pay. Rogers commuted an hour by car each way from her house to the plant, but she still arrived on time. She worked hard, getting good evaluations. “I gave those people 100 percent of me,” she said.
At first, she liked the job. But this past March, her area in a part of the plant called the general store, where workers received package deliveries, got a new, male supervisor. Soon Rogers noticed that any time he was near her—whether walking toward her or standing next to her—he touched and adjusted his penis in her sightline. It happened daily.
Rogers had never experienced sexual harassment from a coworker or supervisor, not even when she worked in a prison. So she asked her lead—a staff member who oversaw her team—to say something so that the supervisor would stop. As far as she could tell, the lead didn’t address the issue with the supervisor. Instead, she started getting threatened with write-ups for things that weren’t her fault. So she escalated the situation, first up the chain of command and then to human resources. But human resources “sent me right back around to the same people giving me problems,” she said. “They direct you to go back to your abuser. They won’t fix anything.” People in charge of her team took her aside to tell her that it was only going to hurt her if she talked to anyone other than them about what was happening.
Related Article Kate Wagner
“A lot of people have gotten hurt in that plant,” Rogers said; she knows others who have gotten hit by forklifts. It’s “very dangerous.” OSHA has inspected the plant four times since it officially opened in 2022, although none of the inspections include details about the complaints or what the agency found; two inspections are open, while two have been closed with seemingly no fines. Victor Gomez was working as an electrician at the plant in August when he was fatally electrocuted by an electrified panel. His family, including his widow and three children, have brought a lawsuit against the company and the contractors he had been hired by, accusing them of gross negligence and seeking $1 million in damages.
“It’s not a safe environment,” Simpson said. “You really have to watch out.”
Despite the sexual harassment and safety concerns, Rogers was able to hold out at Tesla until June of this year, but then she got a write up from her abuser that blocked a raise she was expecting. When she got the e-mail informing her, she got so upset that she could feel her blood pressure spike and the room started spinning. “I started feeling sick,” she said. When another employee came to talk to her, she lashed out, telling her that if the company kept messing with people they were going to “make somebody go upside the head,” she said. She was accused of making threats and fired that afternoon. She lost her temper, she admits, but denies making a threat to anyone. Her abuser, meanwhile, is still employed.
Tesla may feel that it’s done with Rogers, but the experience is not done with her. After her termination she locked herself in her room and cried. She’s lost weight. She struggles to sleep. Her depression and anxiety have worsened. “I’m so depressed and so miserable that my body hurts,” she said.
She’s been looking for work ever since she was fired, applying for “pretty much everything,” but she hasn’t gotten any responses except for one job that paid just $8 an hour—nothing like what she made at Tesla, which was close to $25 an hour by the time she was fired. She suspects it’s because of her age. She’s surviving on unemployment benefits and help from family. Even if she were to find a new job, she feels like she’s lost the ability to trust a new working environment “because I don’t know what I’m walking into,” she said.
“They have really messed me up. I am really damaged,” she said. “I would not wish it on my worst enemy.”
Please first to comment
Related Post
Stay Connected
Tweets by elonmuskTo get the latest tweets please make sure you are logged in on X on this browser.
Sponsored
Popular Post
Tesla: Buy This Dip, Energy Growth And Margin Recovery Are Vastly Underappreciated
28 ViewsJul 29 ,2024