Tesla’s employee had a brutal face-off with an automated robot at the company’s Giga Texas factory. Reportedly, the engineer was left severely injured with a “trail of blood” after the machine had a barbaric malfunction. The panicked workers immediately pressed the emergency button to stop the bot from further destruction.
View this post on Instagram
Two eyewitnesses detailed the horrific incident where they saw their colleague being dragged by a machine designed to grab and move freshly cast aluminum car parts, per Daily Mail. Apparently, the engineer was fixing the software of two disabled robots when this bot pinned him from behind with its metal claws, leaving his back and arm injured and bloodied.
Although no prior report has been filed regarding a robot attack by Tesla’s Texas factory (in 2021 or 2022), this incident happened after years of concerns over the risks caused by automated machines in the workplace. Travis County and federal regulators will be reviewing this violent attack at Tesla, which left the engineer with an “open wound.”
Fortunately, the engineer managed to break free from the violent robot as his fellow workers pressed the emergency button and didn’t require time off work. However, one attorney representing Tesla’s Giga Texas contract workers has had a conversation with Elon Musk’s company employees, who reportedly said many injury cases are being underreported.
The September 28, 2021, death case of a construction worker who had been contracted to help build the factory itself is part of that underreporting. “My advice would be to read that report with a grain of salt,” said Hannah Alexander of the nonprofit Workers Defense Project.
She continued, “We’ve had multiple workers who were injured 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.”
The construction worker, a contractor named Antelmo Ramírez, who died in 2021, reportedly suffered a heat stroke while building Tesla’s over 2,000-acre long Giga Texas factory, according to a report from the Travis County medical examiner.
Tesla has previously faced criticism over questionable worker safety rules and regulations. In 2022, the Workers Defense Project filed a complaint on behalf of workers at Giga Texas with the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), alleging the company of 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 local NBC affiliate KXAN. “There’s no conceivable way workers could have even taken the training required.”
Meanwhile, Musk spoke highly of his company and claimed, “Tesla is sort of pretty far out there in terms of work ethic anywhere in the world,” per Forbes. “The Tesla work ethic in the US, I think, is substantially greater than any other car company or any large manufacturing company that I’m aware of.”