Workers initiate federal investigation into Tesla Texas gigafactory

A local nonprofit said while the beams to Tesla’s over 10 million-square-foot facility were going up, the men and women putting them there were being mistreated. The Workers Defense Project filed two cases Monday with the U.S. Labor Department over worker pay and training during Giga Texas’ construction over the last two years. The group said dozens of workers have come to it claiming they didn’t receive pay for work, overtime pay or holiday pay. Staff attorney Hannah Alexander said the wage theft ranges from a couple thousand to tens of thousands of dollars. “For a corporation, a hundred, a thousand or 10,000 is nothing. For a community, that is rent, the groceries for the week, the difference between paying the utilities or not,” said Virginia Badillo, a Workers Defense Project board member, during a press conference Tuesday.

That complaint, it said, is being filed with the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. The group also filed a complaint with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), saying contractors and subcontractors gave some workers fake 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 when there’s no conceivable way workers could have even taken the training required,” Alexander said. These official complaints are targeted at contractors and subcontractors of the Giga Texas construction project, but Workers Defense said Travis County commissioners and Tesla also hold responsibility.