![]() In June, Tesla hired a new company, Access Omnicare, to run its factory health center after the company promised Tesla it could help reduce the number of recordable injuries and emergency room visits, according to records.Ī former high-level Access Omnicare employee said Tesla pressured the clinic’s owner, who then made his staff dismiss injuries as minor or not related to work. The new revelations about the on-site clinic show that even as the company forcefully pushed back against Reveal’s reporting, behind the scenes, it doubled down on its efforts to hide serious injuries from the government and public. CEO Elon Musk’s distaste for the color yellow and beeping forklifts eroded factory safety, former safety team members said. But some employees who needed stitches for a cut instead were given butterfly bandages, said Watson and another former clinic employee. At one point, hard braces were removed from the clinic so they wouldn’t be used, according to Watson and a former medical assistant.Īs Tesla races to revolutionize the automobile industry and build a more sustainable future, it has left its factory workers in the past, still painfully vulnerable to the dangers of manufacturing.Īn investigation by Reveal in April showed that Tesla prioritized style and speed over safety, undercounted injuries and ignored the concerns of its own safety professionals. If a work injury requires certain medical equipment – such as stitches or hard braces – then it has to be counted in legally mandated logs. ![]() And medical assistants, who are supposed to have on-site supervision, say they were left on their own at night, unprepared to deal with a stream of night-shift injuries. ![]() The clinic has turned away temp workers who got hurt on Tesla’s assembly lines, leaving them without on-site care. Workers with chest pain, breathing problems or extreme headaches have been dismissed as having issues unrelated to their work, without being fully evaluated or having workplace exposures considered, former employees said. But I’ve never seen anybody do it at the expense of treating the patient.” “Every company that I’ve worked at is motivated to keep things not recordable. “The way they were implementing it was very out of control,” said Watson, who was fired in August after she raised her concerns. ![]() Credit: Paul Kuroda for Reveal Credit: Paul Kuroda for Reveal She was fired in August after raising concerns. But she said she’s never seen anything like what’s happening at Tesla.Īnna Watson was a physician assistant at the medical clinic inside Tesla’s electric car factory in Fremont, Calif. She’s treated patients at a petroleum refinery, a steel plant, emergency rooms and a trauma center. Watson has nearly 20 years of experience as a medical professional, examining patients, diagnosing ailments and prescribing medications. “The goal of the clinic was to keep as many patients off of the books as possible,” said Anna Watson, a physician assistant who worked at Tesla’s medical clinic for three weeks in August. The clinic’s practices are unsafe and unethical, five former clinic employees said.īut denying medical care and work restrictions to injured workers is good for one thing: making real injuries disappear. The on-site medical clinic serving some 10,000 employees at Tesla Inc.’s California assembly plant has failed to properly care for seriously hurt workers, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found. Injured employees have been systematically sent back to the production line to work through their pain with no modifications, according to former clinic employees, Tesla factory workers and medical records. The electric carmaker’s contract doctors rarely grant it, instead often insisting that seriously injured workers – including one who severed the top of a finger – be sent to the emergency room in a Lyft. When a worker gets smashed by a car part on Tesla’s factory floor, medical staff are forbidden from calling 911 without permission. ![]() Want more? Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigations delivered straight to your inbox. ![]()
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