Electric car company, Tesla, has come under public scrutiny after it was revealed in a report that their workers were being paid a shameful $5 (Rs 335 approx.) per hour by the company. The report has claimed that the company employed about 140 workers from Eastern Europe, mainly Slovenia and Croatia, to build a hi-tech paint shop in Fremont, Northern California, for the production of Tesla Model 3, the third sedan by Tesla.
Tesla
What happened?
According to a report done by the Bay Area News Group, the workers were hired by a Germany-based manufacturer called Eisenmann. It was revealed that the company hired the workers on an hourly wage of as low as $5 which is peanuts compared to the local sheet metal workers who make $52 per hour, and that’s excluding the $42 an hour they get in benefits and pensions.
teslamotors.com
What did the Tesla owner say?
In response to the scathing allegations made, Tesla’s billionaire owner, Elon Musk tweeted, “Only heard about this today. Sounds like the wrong thing happened on many levels. Will investigate and make it right.”
There’s more…
The report follows the story of Gregor Lesnik, a Slovenian electrician, who apparently suffered multiple injuries on the job after he fell off the roof, bounced off a scaffolding and landed on the floor. The fall resulted in broken legs, ribs, torn ligaments in his knees and a concussion. Even though Lesnik’s visa said his role would only be to supervise, he was not told about the manual labour that he had to do.
dailycaller.com
A lawsuit regarding the issue has been filed according to which the workers have been working for seven days a week, up to ten hours a day. But they were apparently only being paid for forty hours a week. No overtime was recognised. Talking about the situation, Tesla said,” We are taking action to address [Lesnik’s] situation and to put in place additional oversight to ensure that our workplace rules are followed even by sub-subcontractors to prevent such a thing from happening again. Creating a new car company is extremely difficult and fraught with risk, but we will never be a company that … allows, the wrong thing to happen just to save money.”
In their statement, Tesla kept claiming that they were not liable in court. They believe it “is not a legal issue, it is a moral issue”.
Lasnik’s lawyers estimated that the workers are owed $2.6 million in wages.
Read the full report here.