Tesla workers: To hell and back again
mercurynews.com
mercurynews.com
[0]: > “No words can express how much I care about your safety and wellbeing. It breaks my heart when someone is injured building cars and trying their best to make Tesla successful.
Going forward, I’ve asked that every injury be reported directly to me, without exception. I’m meeting with the safety team every week and would like to meet every injured person as soon as they are well, so that I can understand from them exactly what we need to do to make it better. I will then go down to the production line and perform the same task that they perform.
This is what all managers at Tesla should do as a matter of course. At Tesla, we lead from the front line, not from some safe and comfortable ivory tower. Managers must always put their team’s safety above their own.”
Or is this just going to be a news blip that's forgotten as Tesla's stock surges and Musk makes other sensational news?
Are there any consequences for failure here?
As for Musk? Well, considering that he's spent time in the past sleeping at the assembly lines to make sure stuff is going well, I don't see him reneging on this.
Managers may know how to manage, but the best people who know how to do the technical job, and how to do it best are always the folks on the production line.
1) The article is BS and Musk's statement reflects the real state of Tesla manufacturing-labor principles. 2) Musk's statement and the article are both accurate and work habits will change, which means Tesla will voluntarily reduce output. No worries, they have lots of capital and can afford to slow the rollout. 3) Musk's statement and the article are both accurate but Musk is being undermined by mid-level managers he can't control. Poor hapless ineffectual Elon. 4) Musk's statement is deceptive PR. He is in control and forced to choose between hitting ship targets (widely reported as crucial to Tesla's survival) and reducing worker injuries, he is choosing the former.
Does no one else see how this is an intimidation tactic?
A CEO of Alcoa famously required any injury to be on his desk within 24 hours and some high level executives were fired for not taking it seriously when the information emerged through indirect channels. The ultimate result was dramatically improved safety for ~10,000 employees. Elon Musk is certainly taking a page from Alcoa's playbook here.
In Alcoa's case, the safety record improved because the CEO made safety the number one priority over even profits, and this led to a culture shift that examined small inefficiencies and led to improved quality as well as improved safety practices.
Reducing harm requires actually implementing a harm reduction strategy. Informing the CEO of every single injury can tell them when the plan isn't working [as they receive each report], but it also fails to tell them it is working, because they don't necessarily know why they aren't hearing reports.
You don't need to personally receive these reports as a CEO. This is just Musk being a control freak. Usually, CEOs implement policies like "inform me immediately every time X happens" because they don't want to get caught off guard when something bad happens.
I dealt with a similar thing at a previous job, and it definitely instilled fear in a lot of people, but it never addressed the cause of the concern. Churning on injuries to reduce specific causes of specific injuries is not a culture shift, it's reactionary.
1. "Going forward, I’ve asked that every injury be reported directly to me, without exception."
2. "I’m meeting with the safety team every week and would like to meet every injured person as soon as they are well, so that I can understand from them exactly what we need to do to make it better."
3. "I will then go down to the production line and perform the same task that they perform."
There is an implied fourth step that the process will be changed based on this feedback. I agree it should be explicit in this note -- but the Mercury News article does say that the 3 assembly has been changed to be easier for line workers based on feedback from S and X, so presumably that will continue.
I originally thought that he was requiring the injured parties report to him directly, but on a second reading that doesn't seem like the case. So I don't think it's an intimidation tactic anymore. I do, however, think that he is nuts.
Which makes logical sense too. Why are their injury rates higher? Because management isn't doing the right things to lower them. That's because either a) they don't care (which seems unlikely, given that they really need to hit production targets, and injured people can't work) or b) they're ignorant as to the actual causes.
Immersion in "minutia" (aka the actual work experience) is certainly one way to cure ignorance.
However Musk also demands overtime and says the production will be difficult, so I'm not sure how long it will take for things to improve, particularly for repetitive strain injuries.
Are you claiming that meeting Elon would be intimidating and the 'threat' of that would prevent people from reporting injuries at all?
For anything even remotely serious that seems unlikely to have an impact, if you're injured enough to need medical care I don't think that "management will find out" is going to dissuade you from making whatever reports you need to get medical care.
Or do you mean he is intimidating the managers into taking injuries seriously? In that case, yes, I guess you could call it that. But I definitely support that sort of intimidation.
It's 'caring theater'. He thinks he is the President meeting with people getting the purple heart for service. Such utter bullshit. [1] [2]
[1] The fact that he says he wants to be personally involved in the process is what puts it over the edge. I mean he is running how many companies?
[2] And to front run any legal or PR issues. Create an emotional block for the harmed to take things a step further. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer".
I read similar stuff in The Toyota Way book where workers kept complaining to the management about poor manufacturing processes leading to the injury and poor quality incidents and then the management made sure these processes are constantly improved (Kaizen).
Right. That is what I am calling out. The fact that he will do this is ludicrous and certainly not anywhere near the best use of his time.
We are not talking about a small mom and pop or lean startup with limited resources.
> and then the management made sure these processes
The CEO of Toyota? Almost certainly not.
Undercover boss type things or spending a few hours in a call center or store or anywhere to get a seat of the pants feel for things? Sure.
Musk is ultraproductive and works very closely with his employees. Tesla only has two factories; it's on a much more manageable scale than something like Toyota.
Sure and maybe to show his appreciation he will invite all of them to use some of the great things that he gains or has that they don't (material or otherwise) for the herculean effort. They aren't all created equal and his equal we all know that. Would think especially the factory workers on the floor.
And I am a owner and not a worker. So this isn't about the downtrodden or me feeling abused in a similar situation. Hasn't happened. It's about being realistic and quite frankly in all honesty jealousy of someone that can flip such stuff which I was never able to do even if it would benefit me. Couldn't be that dishonest.
Not saying that it isn't an effective technique (your point). It is.
The thing people are wondering about is whether it is disingenuous bullshit PR.
I am a fan of Tesla and Musk but this line in the email pasted in by thsowers irks me and signals to the underlying issue:
"Managers must always put their team’s safety above their own"
No Elon, every employee's safety is equal and is more important than your TACT time.
I remember when I toured the BAE submarine plant 10 years ago in Barrow in Furness being told that 1 death per month was considered standard and kind of ok in the early days of that plant - terrifying and thankfully not the case anymore.
Also FYI it's takt time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takt_time
But if you are a decade old company employing thousands and doing this sort of startup style crunch time then something is wrong. Don't set deadlines that will require worker burnout and workplace accidents to meet.
If they meet the production targets with greatly increased burnout and accidents then there can't be cake and bonuses, heads must roll.
Most accidents in manufacturing plants come from repetitive tasks which carry some small degree of risk each time they're done. Loading a stamping machine is the classic example. Those have to be engineered out of the production process. It's about reach limitations and pinch points and guarding, not "safety awareness". It's about finding the places where a simple error once in every million times results in someone losing a finger.
Someone using a machine might do a few thousand cycles in a shift. A million in a year. A "one in a million" accident can be an annual occurrence for each employee. This is why production processes have to be made much safer than one might expect. It's risk times time that gets you.
Tesla is new at this stuff. It takes a while to find all the sharp points in a factory and fix them. It also usually takes outside pressure from a union or OSHA.
Tesla has been spending an average of $100 million a week on capital expenses, mostly to manufacture the Model 3, according to chief financial officer Deepak Ahuja.The supervisor asked each person to introduce themselves as a way of proving they could speak and understand English, and therefore the training. When a few failed, he gave a lecture about how critical safety training is and that this wasn't the Spanish class, but then simply moved along and eventually graduated everyone.
The class was also full of not so bright people. I'm sorry, I'm not sure the politically correct way of talking about this. But the kind of people I wouldn't trust for a second with my life.
This was my first and only time in a factory so I'm not sure how par that all is for the course.
The class was also full of not so bright people
If I was an auto worker, I'd be very concerned. I'm not saying auto workers should stop complaining, but the more they complain and try to unionize, the quicker the automation will come about. They're in a catch-22
https://cdn.holmatro.com/files/thumb/c/a/Industrial_Tools_Ap...
General Assembly is where floppy things like carpet are installed (along with all the other things that get bolted to the body and frame/subframe).
Floppy things are hard to automate, and more expensive for less ROI.
Your idea would be more likely work in a country with fewer or no safety regulations. In the United States and Europe there are rules like FMVSS and UNECE rules[0]. Components have to be carefully designed and verified, which would be harder with Mom and Pop shops.
Also, OEMs are able to buy parts at volume, with volume discounts, small shops wouldn't necessarily get those discounts.
0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Motor_Vehicle_Safety_S...
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Forum_for_Harmonization_...
0. http://jalopnik.com/a-simple-explanation-why-america-doesnt-...
I'm so stealing that and extending it to:
Floppy or squishy things are hard to automate.
Like the other umpteen manufacturers had not done that before. The whole point of fordism was to make everything as simple, quickly repeatable, and eventually automated, as absolutely possible.
There is no "artisanship" in car manufacturing, humans are only required wherever the machines can't reach. That's been the case for a very long time. The only difference is that building production chains that keep workers safe and maintain high output, is not trivial. You have to design production chains with maintainability and accessibility in mind, which means the machinery might end up costing more or taking more to be designed or built. Whenever manufacturers cut corners, that's where workers end up in precarious positions. On top of that, you have to make sure workers get enough rest to be alert on the workplace, and make sure the actual shop floor is completely safe 100% of the time. If you don't do that, because you're too busy trying to hit production targets, that's where accidents happen - regardless of the degree of automation.
> I'm not saying auto workers should stop complaining
I'm not saying this statement is a pre-emptive disclaimer of responsibility towards the paragraph that follows it, but it's exactly that.
> the more they complain and try to unionize, the quicker the automation will come about.
Dude, that's already happened in that sector, it will keep happening, everybody knows it and it has nothing to do with unions. Employment numbers in the sector are nowhere near what they were even just 30 years ago - and not just in cars, all manufacturing is like that. Manufacturers run with the smallest possible skeleton crew that a modern production chain absolutely requires. This is not programming, where you can hire 2 or 10 developers depending on how you feel on a given morning; the production chain as built has X slots over Y shifts, so X*Y people will be hired. When you make a new model, you build a new chain; as technology makes chains better and smarter, X naturally decreases. That's just how it is, there is no "accelerating" the process - it's already as fast as technology makes it possible. Positive variations in employment numbers only come about from expansion, be it in volume or product diversification. Everything else pushes them down.
The kind of world we have created is one where one must create value in order to have food & shelter. Automation simply funnels more and more of the value created into the pockets of fewer and fewer individuals.
To me, this comes when we make automated machines whose purpose is to provide for human survival, and we make those machines open source. Groups of people purchase the machines, and through ownership they receive the benefits of automation rather than an elite ownership class.
I've written several essays on the topic on my website, and have a discussion board where people can discuss the ideas in more detail.
You may enjoy reading The Machine: http://tlalexander.com/machine/
Or The Corporation: http://tlalexander.com/corporation/
The transition will be tumultuous though, as most transitions are.
Today work is tied to our identity in many countries. "What do you do?" is a question asking about career. If you don't work, you must be lazy.
The solution isn't more jobs to make more things to keep us in the production cycle. Things should last longer. Cellphones should last six years, not two. When Intel posts a loss, it should be taken as a sign they produced chips so well that replacements aren't necessary.
This gets into a much much bigger problem of money, value, debt, consumerism and planned obsolescence. Ultimately if humanity is to survive another 10,000 years, we're going to need some pretty big paradigm shifts.
the market decides your worth, and unless you have something to offer, you get nothing in return.
which means work is going to be critical.
A major benefit of automation is predictability, much higher throughput, and quality - cost savings is icing on the cake.
Or on the other side, our society has people delivering milk directly to the house again. I wonder how long that will be in vogue this time - rehow soon until hipsters start buying cows to personally milk?
Robot workers are usually application-specific, while human people after incredibly general. Moving to robot workers is like replacing GPUs with ASICs - this could be excellent if they are designed for the task. Otherwise, your robots will not perform the task well. For instance, the humans can stop checking groceries and sweep the store on a slow day. Self-check robots cannot hold brooms or move around the area.
What do you mean by this? I (and most people I know) go through the self-checkout lanes. My trip to the grocery store from entering, selecting my products, purchasing them, and leaving, never causes me to interact with anyone.
Maybe you mean the "behind the scenes" stuff like people stocking the items? I don't know how that works at grocery stores but would be interested to learn.
- The bag you brought is too heavy and confuses the bag sensor.
- Buying age-restricted items.
- Item not in system.
- Coupons.
I find it pretty shocking that this is legal at all.
It's sometimes easy for founders to forget while they can take a lot of pressure on themselves its unfair to expect the same level of performance from others, who may not be as vested as the founders.
Passion doesn't scale.
"He lost his arm in the Sierra Mills, and like a broken-down horse you turned him out on the highway to die. When I say ‘you,' I mean the superintendent and the officials that you and the other stockholders pay to manage the mills for you. It was an accident. It was caused by his trying to save the company a few dollars. The toothed drum of the picker caught his arm. He might have let the small flint that he saw in the teeth go through. It would have smashed out a double row of spikes. But he reached for the flint, and his arm was picked and clawed to shreds from the finger tips to the shoulder. It was at night. The mills were working overtime. They paid a fat dividend that quarter. Jackson had been working many hours, and his muscles had lost their resiliency and snap. They made his movements a bit slow. That was why the machine caught him. He had a wife and three children."
"And what did the company do for him?" [the owner's daughter] asked.
"Nothing. Oh, yes, they did do something. They successfully fought the damage suit he brought when he came out of hospital. The company employs very efficient lawyers, you know."
The the owner's daughter doesn't believe him, and goes to the injured worker to see for herself:
"How did you happen to get your arm caught in the machine?" I asked.
He looked at me in a slow and pondering way, and shook his head. "I don't know. It just happened."
"Carelessness?" I prompted.
"No," he answered, "I ain't for callin' it that. I was workin' overtime, an' I guess I was tired out some. I worked seventeen years in them mills, an' I've took notice that most of the accidents happens just before whistle-blow. I'm willin' to bet that more accidents happens in the hour before whistle-blow than in all the rest of the day. A man ain't so quick after workin' steady for hours. I've seen too many of ‘em cut up an' gouged an' chawed not to know."
...
With the exception of the terrible details, Jackson's story of his accident was the same as that I had already heard. When I asked him if he had broken some rule of working the machinery, he shook his head.
"I chucked off the belt with my right hand," he said, "an' made a reach for the flint with my left. I didn't stop to see if the belt was off. I thought my right hand had done it--only it didn't. I reached quick, and the belt wasn't all the way off. And then my arm was chewed off."
...
His mind was rather hazy concerning the damage suit. Only one thing was clear to him, and that was that he had not got any damages. He had a feeling that the testimony of the foremen and the superintendent had brought about the adverse decision of the court. Their testimony, as he put it, "wasn't what it ought to have ben." And to them I resolved to go.
Just sayin'
However, with all that money one could do better than pay $5/hour to your subcontracted workers in California [1] or have one third higher number of injuries than industry average (this article).
[1] -- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/16/elon-musk...