Tesla is under fire for underreporting workplace injuries in recent years at its Texas plant. The company's self-reporting already shows on-site injury is higher than industry averages, but a local labour lawyer claims rates of injury are far higher than Tesla lets on. One out of every 21 workers at Tesla’s Giga Texas plant near Austin was injured at work in 2022, with one of every 26 workers inflicted with serious injury, the Daily Mail reported Tuesday. The industry average is one of every 30, or one of 38 for serious injuries, according to The Information.Hannah Alexander, a Workers Defense Project (WDP) attorney who represents workers at the factory told the publication they have seen evidence Tesla unreported workplace injuries to state regulators, with which Tesla has an agreement to provide regular reports in exchange for tax breaks. The claim came as the Daily Mail recovered a November 2021 report from Giga Texas revealing a rogue robot violently attacked a Tesla engineer at the factory, causing a “laceration.” The "cause object” was listed as “robot.” The robot pinned an engineer to a wall and gouged his arms and back with its metal claws in a brutal, bloody attack, according to the report.The robot, designed to move car parts, approached the engineer who was occupied programming two disabled robots nearby, and used its metal arms to restrain him against a wall, piercing the skin on his left hand, leaving an open wound. The engineer fell “a couple of feet down a chute designed to collect scrap aluminum, leaving a trail of blood behind him.”The violent malfunction was witnessed by two other staff, who pulled the emergency shut-down switch. The injured worker did not take time off work to recover, the report shows. There were no other reports of machinery malfunction or robot-inflicted injuries at Giga Texas in 2021 or 2022, despite contrary evidence — including the death of construction worker Antelmo Ramírez on September 28, 2021. He died of heat stroke while working to build the factory. “We've had multiple workers who were injured," Alexander said, “and one worker who died, whose injuries or death are not in these reports that Tesla is supposed to be accurately completing and submitting to the county in order to get tax incentives.” WDP filed a 2022 complaint with the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) on behalf of Giga Texas factory workers alleging Tesla used false safety certificates. “Workers report that when they needed training, they were simply sent PDF files or images of certificates through text or WhatsApp in a matter of days,” Alexander told KXAN News. “There's no conceivable way workers could have even taken the training required.”
