REPORT: TESLA USED ILLEGAL FOREIGN LABOR TO EXPAND SILICON VALLEY PLANT:
In 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy in loaned Tesla Motors $465 million to open a plant for its all-electric Model S vehicle. Despite the $1 billion traditional automakers were paying to build and equip new auto plants, Tesla acquired the bankrupt General Motors “New United Motor Manufacturing Inc.” plant in Fremont California for $42 million.
In 2010, the company received another $20 million worth of saleable California corporate income tax credits to acquire the plant’s factory presses and other machinery for $17 million, and buy other equipment at a “fraction” of the original cost.
Although Tesla Motors has been unprofitable since opening the Fremont plant, it has collected $517 million selling government-mandated environmental credits to competing automakers and others. The cash has been used to fund operating losses, build out sales distribution, and add to the manufacturing facility.
Many Californians are shocked to learn that Tesla has been able to accomplish all of this this without being forced to sign contracts with the United Auto Workers’ Union.
But a lawsuit from an injured construction worker on the Fremont plant has exposed Tesla as hiring a foreign contractor in 2015 to ship 140 workers from impoverished Croatia and Slovenia to build a new paint shop at Tesla’s Fremont plant.
The Bay Area News Group, after dozens of employee interviews and extensive review of the contractor’s payroll, visa and court documents, concluded that the Eastern European contract employees “work long hours for low wages, in apparent violation of immigration and labor laws.”
Related: The San Jose Mercury on the “The Hidden Workforce Expanding Tesla’s Factory:” Here’s a sample: “Gregor Lesnik, an electrician from Slovenia, was among scores of Eastern European workers who worked on a multimillion dollar expansion of Tesla’s Fremont factory in 2015. At the plant, Lesnik lifted heavy pipes, and installed them into the ceiling and through the roof of the paint shop. A typical workday was 10 hours at least six days a week. On May 16, 2015, he climbed atop the paint shop roof and onto an unsecured tile, then fell nearly three stories to the factory floor. He broke both legs, some ribs, tore ligaments in his knee and sustained a concussion. Lesnik filed a lawsuit saying workers were paid as little as $5 an hour.”
Flashback: The Giant Papier-Mâché Puppet of Death Versus Tesla, my Insta-post last August on UAW protesting the Tesla dealership at tony Santana Row in San Jose.
