Workers who built one of Tesla's massive Gigafactories intend to submit a complaint and case referral with the federal Department of Labor on Tuesday, Nov. 15.
The lawsuit will describe the exploitative working conditions they endured throughout the plant's construction.
According to a report by The Guardian, whistleblowers came out to accuse major labor and employment breaches that left them exposed to injuries and wage theft while building the enormous new facility for the electric vehicle maker in Austin, Texas.
Dangerous Work
One employee, Victor, said that his supervisors at an unidentified subcontractor forged his credentials rather than genuinely giving him and others the mandatory job training that included teaching about health, safety, and workers' rights, including the right to reject hazardous work.
Victor will file a formal complaint with the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) on what he claims are fraudulent training completion certificates.
He told The Guardian that his crew had been placed in danger by being instructed to operate on the metal factory roof in the dark without lighting and climb on top of turbines emitting smoke without masks. They were asked to do other things without basic safety training.
Victor added that there was an incident when he and his coworkers were asked to continue working on a flooded first floor, despite seeing live wire and cables floating around.
Unpaid Overtime
Others who have come forward to expose wrongdoing have accused the company of wage theft. They claim that they were either not paid or given enough overtime pay for their work in the high-tech facility.
Reportedly, they sacrificed time with their families to construct the facility during Thanksgiving last year, but they never got the promised double-pay incentives.
In an exclusive interview with The Guardian, a worker who requested that his name be omitted for fear of retaliation pointed out that nobody deserves what occurred in the Gigafactory, even their family members.
The Texas Gigafactory
Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and now Twitter, is a multi-billionaire entrepreneur who, in 2020, began ground on a 2,500-acre Austin Gigafactory to serve as the company's principal US location.
Speculating from the outside, The Guardian stated that the new facility seemed like a dream workplace for any constructor.
As Musk has said, the company will produce the long-awaited electric pick-up Cybertruck at a facility along the Colorado River close to Austin's airport. This project was expected to create thousands of jobs.
In April, when the facility first opened, Musk attended a "Cyber Rodeo" while wearing sunglasses and a black cowboy hat.
Construction employees, on the other hand, have given a far less rosy picture of the new facility, saying that a position meant to be a dream job turned out to be a nightmare instead.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Trisha Kae Andrada
