Stop The Poison! Speak Out At Twitter HQ To Protest Racist Union Busting Elon Musk

5/25 Rally-STOP THE POISON! Speak Out At Twitter HQ To Protest Racist Union Busting Elon Musk’s Control Of Social Media PlatformTwitter


Wednesday May 25, 2022 12:00 Noon
Twitter World Headquarters
1355 Market St.
San Francisco, CA

Initiated by United Front Committee For A Labor Party UFCLP
Initial Speakers:
Cheryl Thornton, SEIU 1021 SF Community Health Care Chapter Vice President, Delegate To SF Labor Council
Tesla Workers
Ricardo Ortiz, UPWA

The racist massacre in Buffalo, New York is the latest bloody attack on the Black community and this is only a continuation of open racist incitement and nazi ideology by Fox, Trump and the Trumpsters. The Black, Brown, Asian and Jewish communities are under direct threat as these deadly racist attacks escalate.
Billionaire Elon Musk has now decided to spend $44 billiion to take control of SF based Twitter and use the platform to push this racist ideology.
Despite his prolific use of twitter, he is strangely silent about the Buffalo massacare and the Nazi ideology of “replacement theory”. He also has a criminal record of racist terrorism at the Tesla plant in Fremont and union busting to prevent workers from having a union to defend their rights on the job.
He also illegally conspired to cover up the injuries of workers at Tesla and prevented them from gettiing medical care. This is workers comp fraud but has been unprosecuted. His drive for profits mean slave labor plantation conditions at the Tesla factory.
He has been allowed to get away with these crimes because the politicians like Governor Gavin Newsom who is a friend of Musk refuses to enforce the labor, workers comp and health and safety laws.
His Fremont factory was allowed to operate full blast during the covid pandemic even when there was a Alameda County Shelter In Place Order for all businesses in the County. Sick Tesla workers who were transported by buses to the Central Valley where they infected their families and working class communities in the Valley as a result of Musk’s criminal acts. Newsom even caved in and said he could violate the law. It is clear that Elon Musk is ABOVE THE LAW.
We need to stand up against this racist and union buster who wants to take control of this powerful global social media platform to propagate his anti-Black, anti-working class ideology. The danger of a racist fascist USA is growing. We need a working class political alterative that defends labor and democratic rights and workers should run these platform that they built.
On May 25, 2022 Twitter will be having a stockholders meeting.
We Need To Speak Out And Make Our Voices Heard

No Racist Nazi Ideology On Social Media
No Slave Labor At Tesla or Twitter!
Enough Is Enough!

To endorse and participate
info(at)ufclp.org

Initiated by
United Front Committee For A Labor Party
http://www.ufclp.org
https://www.facebook.com/masslaborpartyusa/

Column: With Elon Musk in charge, it’s the beginning of the end for #BlackTwitter

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-04-25/elon-musk-buying-twitter-will-silence-black-twitter


It’s all rather disturbing and yet somehow fitting in these doublespeak-steeped times.

Elon Musk, the founder of a company that California is suing for allegedly silencing [thousands of Black employees who complained about racism, is buying a company that has given millions of Black people a megaphone-like voice to complain about racism.

And the California-hating billionaire insists he’s doing it all to protect free speech.

“Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said Monday, announcing that he had succeeded in taking over the San Francisco-based social media company for $44 billion.

Consider this the beginning of the end of #BlackTwitter.
It’s all rather disturbing and yet somehow fitting in these doublespeak-steeped times.
Elon Musk, the founder of a company that California is suing for allegedly silencing thousands of Black employees who complainedabout racism, is buying a company that has given millions of Black people a megaphone-like voice to complain about racism.
And the California-hating billionaire insists he’s doing it all to protect free speech.
“Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said Monday, announcing that he had succeeded in taking over the San Francisco-based social media company for $44 billion.
Consider this the beginning of the end of #BlackTwitter.
Not of Black people on Twitter but of #BlackTwitter — the community of millions that figured out how to turn a nascent social media platform into an indispensable tool for real-world activism, political power and change
#BlackTwitter gave us hashtags that turned into movements.
#BlackLivesMatter and #ICantBreathe became rallying cries for hundreds of thousands of protesters after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. And for years before that, when fewer Americans were paying attention to the disproportionate number of Black women being killed by police, there was #SayHerName.
It was #OscarsSoWhite that led to pressure for changes at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And let’s not forget that #MeToo, which roiled the halls of power in corporations and government, was started by a Black woman.
There’s also #BlackGirlMagic and #BlackBoyJoy, both celebrations of the beauty of Blackness in a country that so often devalues it — and us.
On Monday, the mood on #BlackTwitter was neither magical nor joyful.
“There goes #BlackTwitter — new owners will call it CRT and ban it.”
“Um… #BlackTwitter we need to schedule a meeting ASAP! Where we meeting up when we leave Twitter?”
“So, where’s the back of Twitter? Asking for #BlackTwitter”
“It was nice getting to know you all. Especially everyone on #BlackTwitter. Now a white South African man owns it. Bye Y’all. #RIPTwitter”
Meredith D. Clark, an associate professor at Northeastern University in Boston who studies race, media and power and is working on a book about #BlackTwitter, wasn’t surprised.
“I think you will definitely see more people move off in larger waves,” she said. “I think there will still be a remnant left, but you know?”
The problems with the Twitter deal are multifold for Black people.
First, there’s Musk himself.
He’s the world’s richest person. Or, as Clark put it: “This is yet another example of how we’re falling prey to oligarchies. Men with billions of dollars who get to decide what our communications look like.”
He’s also a businessman with questionable ethics. Musk’s company Tesla is being sued by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. It’s the largest racial discrimination suit ever brought by the state and was filed on behalf of more than 4,000 former and current employees, all of whom are Black.
Some of those employees described their experiences to The Times. They alleged that they were often the targets of racist slurs by co-workers and supervisors and that Tesla segregated Black workers, gave them the hardest work at the Fremont, Calif., manufacturing plant and denied them promotions. And they say the company ignored their complaints about the treatment.
Given the long-standing diversity problems at tech companies, including at Twitter,this is troubling. Even more concerning is the climate on Twitter itself, which — despite the content moderation that happens now — is still full of racist trolls.
“With the knowledge that I have about Musk as a businessperson, and as someone who seeks to have great influence over culture, I’m concerned,” Clark said. “I’m concerned about some of the statements that he’s made in the past and how they reflect on his character and his mind-set.”
Monica Chatman is a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit for discrimination and harassment against Tesla
BUSINESS
Black Tesla employees describe a culture of racism: ‘I was at my breaking point’
March 25, 2022
The second problem is what Musk plans to do with Twitter.
He has repeatedly complained about the content moderation, even though it is applied sparingly and inconsistently. If he has his way, he could very likely get rid of it altogether.
Prominent white supremacists who got kicked off the platform for good reason could return — among them former President Trump,who, through his account, helped incite the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Perhaps more troubling, conspiracy theories could become easier to find and share and, therefore, grow in complexity and number of believers.
We’ve already seen the effects of disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and of QAnon, including the latest tall tales linking gender identity to pedophilia that are being echoed by reckless Republican politicians. What happens when those conspiracy theories, bolstered by more than a dash of white supremacy, escalate into violence? It happened once; it can surely happen again.
FILE - This July 9, 2019, file photo shows a sign outside of the Twitter office building in San Francisco.
Consider this the beginning of the end of #BlackTwitter, the community of millions that figured out how to turn a social media company into a platform for real-world activism, political power and change.
(Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)
#BlackTwitter knows this.
On Monday, Musk tweeted: “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech means.”
#BlackTwitter also knows that, no, that’s not what free speech means, because Twitter is a company — soon to be privately held — and has no obligation under the 1st Amendment to allow racism, transphobia, homophobia or misogyny to percolate through its platform.
And so, rather than safeguarding the “bedrock of a functioning democracy,” as Musk describes free speech, he just destroyed it — because the people whose tweets were the most effective at that are leaving.
“I don’t think that you’re going see the same sort of replication of a Twitter-like climate or #BlackTwitter on another platform. I don’t think you’ll ever get that lightning in a bottle back,” Clark said. “But I do think that you will see Black people doing what we have always done. And that is bend communication and other technologies to our needs and our will. And find ways to thrive in those various areas of the internet.”


Elon Musk’s silence on how he’d moderate the Buffalo shooting livestream is deafening
The free speech advocate had no comment on Twitter’s scramble to block videos of the mass shooting
https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/16/23076428/buffalo-shooting-video-elon-musk-twitter-content-moderation
By Corin Faife@corintxt May 16, 2022, 5:57pm EDT
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Aaron Jordan, of Buffalo, adds to a sidewalk chalk mural depicting the names of the people killed at a mass shooting at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, NY. Sunday, May 15, 2022 in Buffalo, NY. Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
On May 14th, social media platforms found themselves scrambling to deal with a livestream video of a white supremacist terror attack. Yet the man who has been the nation’s loudest commentator on content moderation had nothing to say.

Under Elon Musk’s view of content moderation, any restriction on speech beyond what the law proscribes is censorship. And by that standard, the video of the attack in Buffalo — however graphic — should have remained on the platform since videos of graphic violence are not illegal speech. In practice, platforms were criticized for being too slow to remove them, and Musk found no need to weigh in on the debate.

The details of the Buffalo, New York shooting are widely known and still painful to report. Ten people were killed on a Saturday afternoon in a supermarket that was a mainstay for residents of Buffalo’s predominantly Black East Side. A gunman livestreamed the murderous violence on Twitch and planned to inflict yet more before being stopped by police.

The Buffalo gunman was, beyond doubt, radicalized online. He cited the Christchurch mass shooter as an inspiration, copying large parts of the New Zealand terrorist’s manifesto into one of his own. He was motivated by the “great replacement” theory, which holds that white people are being intentionally dispossessed from their positions of power through immigration and interracial marriage. He wrote that he had learned of the theory through 4chan, the online message board that spawned QAnon and has been linked to many other acts of white supremacist terrorism.

He was also, without doubt, drawing from a playbook of mass shooters who engineer their massacres to spread on social media and hope to exploit the viral power of extreme, graphic violence to amplify a message of hate. And while the original Twitch stream was removed in a matter of minutes, on other platforms, the video circulated much more widely and for longer.

And as America reeled from the news, Elon Musk remained silent — despite Tesla’s sizable presence in Buffalo. While Twitter — the company whose moderation policy he has relentlessly critiqued in the lead up to and aftermath of his acquisition deal — was forced to make real-time decisions over whether videos of the shooting should be allowed to circulateor if links to a terrorist manifesto violated content policies, its aspirational owner refrained from comment.

Perhaps his focus has been elsewhere, a sympathetic reader might say. True, with stock markets wobbling, Tesla stocks down, and the Twitter acquisition deal “on hold,” there is a lot that could distract his attention. If he had stopped tweeting entirely over the weekend, it would be fair to suggest that he was occupied elsewhere.

In reality, within hours of the shooting, Musk had posted a number of tweets, some of them even touching on content moderation. Approximately five hours after the shooting took place, he explained to users how they could access the chronological feed to avoid being “manipulated by the algorithm.” Later on in the evening, he found time to share a newsletter from Matt Taibbi on corporate regulation in California, some images of a recent Space X launch, and a royal portrait of King Louis XIV of France. The next day, he revisited the thread on chronological ordering with a tweet about the importance of open-source code. On Monday, he found enough time to troll Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in a conversation about spam. But watchers looking for any comment on Buffalo found nothing.

Would Elon Musk have ordered videos of the shooting to be removed? So far, he has given no answers because there is no answer that can satisfy both a common understanding of moral decency and his stated position on moderation and free speech. A video showing graphic violence is not in itself illegal, and the Buffalo shooter’s video will certainly be shared by police departments, government agencies, and other organizations investigating the crime. But for millions of social media users to view and share a video of a massacre for their own morbid curiosity is unconscionable, and every platform will have content policies that rightly block or heavily restrict it.

Because he has failed — at least publicly — to engage with any of the numerous content moderation researchers who study violent and extremist content, Musk has shown no nuanced understanding of the range of speech that is legal but dangerous or that there is any difference between content we should ban outright and content that we should consider limiting from being broadcast on a giant, globe-spanning distribution platform.

Now is a time for that discussion. In a moment when the national conversation is focused on this act of terrorism, Elon Musk has a chance to plant his flag in the ground: to commit to his vision of laissez-faire content moderation and accept the consequences or recognize that there are limits.

Instead, the free speech advocate has become strangely mute.


Elon Musk’s possible takeover of Twitter is unsettling for many Black users

Analysis by Brandon Tensley, CNN
Updated 2:35 PM EDT, Thu May 5, 2022

Washington
CNN
—
A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Race Deconstructed newsletter. To get it in your inbox every week, sign up for free here.

If the racial discrimination lawsuit against Tesla is any indication, then it makes sense that the news about Elon Musk’s possible takeover of Twitter has unsettled many of the social media platform’s Black users.

While the site has become increasingly venomous over the years, it has also allowed Black users to deepen kinship bonds and elevate movements. Now, that community-building might be in jeopardy.

“There’s an innate sense of dread,” Meredith Clark, an associate professor at the School of Journalism and the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University, told CNN. “And I think that it comes not just from the announcement that Musk might buy Twitter.”

Clark explained that, for many Black Americans, the past decade has been rife with social and political turbulence.

There was the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, the 2016 election that installed in the White House a man who struggled to condemn White supremacy and the 2020 contest during which plenty of Republican Party leaders suggested that Black votes shouldn’t count, on top of so much else.

“The only reason that (the Musk announcement) is sort of on the same wave as those other events is that this is a person who has made a number of statements that are concerning to Black people,” Clark said. “He’s a son of apartheid. He’s in the middle of a discrimination lawsuit brought by Black employees at his Tesla plants.”

Clark minced no words, “You have to be concerned about what it means not only for another billionaire to be playing with money in a way that affects something that represents connection and that you enjoy but for thisbillionaire, with a specific history, to be the person behind that intended purchase.”

Creating connections
To understand what might be at stake, let’s pause for a moment to explore the communal dimension of Twitter that Clark nodded to.

In the early 2010s, when Twitter, which launched in 2006, was still relatively fresh, the site had a dramatically different atmosphere. People were more likely to tweet about fairly mundane things: school gossip, lunch, Shonda Rhimes’ hit TV series “Scandal.” Twitter was a place where ordinary people could talk about

ordinary things.

Black Former Tesla Worker: Nickname for the Plant Was ‘The Slave Ship’
Allegations of racial discrimination at Elon Musk’s flagship auto factory trigger major lawsuit by state of California.
https://capitalandmain.com/recent-lawsuits-allege-pattern-of-racist-words-deeds-at-tesla-plant
Thompson2-80x80.jpgPublishedon February 15, 2022By Gabriel Thompson
The Tesla factory in Fremont, California. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.
In the spring of 2017, when Fatima Islam learned she had been hired to work at Tesla’s production plant in Fremont, Calif., she had high hopes. Then a single mother of two young children, the 33-year-old was willing to face the four-hour round-trip commute from her home in Merced, and didn’t flinch when she learned she was expected to work 12-hour shifts, six days a week, inspecting Model 3’s that rolled down the line.

“I had heard so many great things about Tesla,” she said. “I thought that I would be able to grow at the company and turn it into my career, maybe be there my whole life.”

On the plant floor, Islam quickly started having second thoughts. As an African American woman, she noticed a striking lack of women or African Americans in supervisory roles. Soon after getting hired, she became pregnant, and during one grueling shift she fainted. Later, she said, one of the mechanical technicians referred to her as “the Black pregnant bitch.” Islam said that the same employee repeatedly harassed her 18-year-old co-worker, another African American woman, demanding that she sleep with him. When Islam reported the incidents, bringing along multiple witnesses, she said nothing was done. “He let it be known that he’s cool with HR,” she said of the technician. Soon after, she said, the 18-year-old was fired.


According to California’s lawsuit against Tesla, workers at the factory used, along with the n-word, terms such as “monkey toes,” “boy,” “hood rats” and “horse hair.”


Equally shocking to Islam was the overt racism. She heard the n-word constantly on the plant floor, while Latino workers also called her a mayate, roughly the Spanish language equivalent. Supervisors, she said, did nothing in response; in fact, floor leads sometimes joined in. Racist graffiti, including the n-word and swastikas, were carved into workbenches and scrawled on bathroom stalls.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. “They make it seem like this great place,” said Islam, of the high-end electric vehicle company that positions itself as a force for social good. “But the nickname for the Tesla plant was ‘the slave ship,’” she said. “You see how comfortable they are with things like that?”

* * *

Islam finally left Tesla in 2020, and in September of 2021 she filed a complaint with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), alleging that she suffered racial and sexual harassment and discrimation.

While Islam’s individual complaint is still pending, last week the DFEH dropped a bombshell of a lawsuit based upon a nearly three year investigation, which included factual allegations from Islam and other workers. According to the DFEH lawsuit, workers at the factory used, along with the n-word, terms such as “monkey toes,” “boy,” “hood rats” and “horse hair,” and referred to areas where African Americans were concentrated as the “porch monkey station.”


The Tesla Fremont plant is the only nonunion auto plant in the U.S. that is operated by a major American carmaker.


The lawsuit also alleges that the pervasive racism placed African Americans into the most physically demanding jobs; one worker that DFEH interviewed reported that only Black workers were assigned the task of cleaning the factory floor on their hands and knees. The lawsuit states that African American workers had complained about racial harassment and discrimination as far back as 2012, and that in response to complaints, they were “falsely accused of being late, unjustifiably written up, denied transfers, assigned to physically strenuous posts or undesirable locations, constructively discharged or terminated.”

In response to the lawsuit, Tesla published a blog post refuting the allegations. “Tesla has always disciplined and terminated employees who engage in misconduct, including those who use racial slurs or harass others in different ways,” the company wrote. “A narrative spun by the DFEH and a handful of plaintiff firms to generate publicity is not factual proof.”

* * *

The DFEH lawsuit is only the most recent alleging racial and sexual discrimination and harassment at Tesla’s Fremont plant, which employs more than 15,000 workers across 5.3 million square feet. According to the lawsuit, African Americans hold no executive positions at the plant and make up only 3% of the professional positions, while filling 20% of the factory operative jobs. Previously the home to General Motors and Toyota, the Fremont plant is the only nonunion auto plant in the U.S. that is operated by a major American carmaker. “Our mission: to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy” is stenciled over the entrance.

In an article published Feb. 11, the Los Angeles Times reported that “the last two years have seen a major uptick in racial and sexual harassment suits against the company,” including at least five in the previous six weeks. Last October, a federal jury ordered Tesla to pay a Black elevator operation at the plant, Owen Diaz, nearly $137 million because the company ignored the racist abuse he suffered. Tesla has since challenged the decision in court.


“If you’re hush hush and let everything slide past, you’re gonna move up. But if you’re someone who stands your ground and has morals, you’re going absolutely nowhere.”

~ Fatima Islam, former Tesla factory worker


In 2017, a class action lawsuit was jointly filed by the California Civil Rights Law Group and Bryan Schwartz Law, also alleging widespread racial and sexual harassment at the Tesla plant. The suit, which is still active, was filed on behalf of African-American workers at the Tesla plant hired by staffing agencies, who, unlike direct Tesla employees such as Islam, had not signed mandatory arbitration agreements that prevented them from suing their employer in court. “Although Tesla stands out as a groundbreaking company at the forefront of the electric car revolution,” the lawsuit contends, “its standard operating procedure at the Tesla Factory is pre-Civil Rights Era race discrimination.”

In response to the 2017 lawsuit Tesla CEO and Product Architect Elon Musk responded with an email to workers. “Part of not being a huge jerk is considering how someone might feel who is part of an historically less represented group,” he wrote. “In fairness, if someone is a jerk to you, but sincerely apologizes, it is important to be thick-skinned and accept that apology. If you are part of a less represented group, you don’t get a free pass on being a jerk yourself.”

For Islam, who has since found another job where she says she is thriving, asking employees to be thick-skinned in a racist and sexist workplace is another way of asking workers to be quiet. “If you’re hush hush and let everything slide past, you’re gonna move up. But if you’re someone who stands your ground and has morals, you’re going absolutely nowhere. For a person like me who never really missed days, who has worked on every line, there’s no way I shouldn’t have leveled up,” she said, referring to being promoted. But while she remained in the same position, inspecting Model 3’s on the line, she said she watched non-Black workers rise quickly, and attributes her lack of promotion to three factors.

“One, I’m a woman. Two, I’m African American. And three, I won’t stand for anything. You’re not going call me the n-word, you’re not going to sexually harass someone and I’m going to shut up about it. That played a big part in why I didn’t make it with Tesla. Because now I’m watching myself level up so quickly in the workplace, and I’m still me.”


Copyright 2022 Capital & Main

Correction: A previous version of this story stated that the Tesla Fremont plant was the only major nonunion auto plant in the U.S. The Tesla plant is the only nonunion U.S. plant operated by a major American carmaker. We regret the error.

Noose drawing, lynching reference left up for months at Tesla’s Fremont factory, civil-rights lawsuit claims
Suit says workers at the electric-car maker’s factory flaunted Confederate flag tattoos

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2022/02/10/noose-drawing-lynching-reference-left-up-for-months-at-teslas-fremont-factory-civil-rights-lawsuit-claims/
A production associate works on a Tesla Model 3 at the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
A production associate works on a Tesla Model 3 at the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., on Wednesday, July 18, 2018. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
By ETHAN BARON | ebaron [at] bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: February 10, 2022 at 11:28 a.m. | UPDATED: February 10, 2022 at 4:38 p.m.
Black workers at Tesla’s Fremont factory were paid less than white workers, denied advancements and faced daily racist abuse, including a noose drawn in a bathroom next to a reference to lynching and a racial slur, a lawsuit by California’s civil rights regulator claims.

Although the suit refers to Tesla’s three manufacturing facilities in the U.S., the claims focus on the factory in Fremont beside I-880 where the $950 billion, publicly traded company makes electric cars. Tesla, which recently moved its headquarters from Palo Alto to Texas, is fighting a slew of lawsuits by Black workers and former workers claiming it failed to adequately respond to racism and sexual harassment in its facilities, including at its parts plant in Lathrop near Tracy.

“As early as 2012, Black and/or African American Tesla workers have complained that Tesla production leads, supervisors, and managers constantly use the n-word and other racial slurs to refer to Black workers,” the suit filed Wednesday by the state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing alleged. “They have complained that swastikas, ‘KKK,’ the n-word, and other racist writing are etched onto walls of restrooms, restroom stalls, lunch tables, and even factory machinery.”

Black workers were paid less, assigned to “more physically demanding posts,” were terminated and disciplined more often than other workers and were “often denied advancement opportunities,” the suit said. The civil-rights agency also claimed that other workers at the Fremont factory displayed “racially incendiary” Confederate flag tattoos to intimidate Black colleagues.

Tesla, led by CEO Elon Musk, did not immediately respond for a request for comment on the claims. The company in a blog post Wednesday about the impending “misguided” lawsuit said it “strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment (and) has always disciplined and terminated employees who engage in misconduct, including those who use racial slurs or harass others in different ways.” The firm recently launched a training program that “reinforces Tesla’s requirement that all employees must treat each other with respect and reminds employees about the numerous ways they can report concerns, including anonymously,” according to the post.

Tesla says California civil rights agency is investigating ‘systematic racial discrimination’

Department of Fair Employment and Housing director Kevin Kish said in a statement that the lawsuit was based on hundreds of complaints from workers.

“A common narrative was Black and/or African American workers being taunted by racial slurs and then baited into verbal and physical confrontations, where they, in turn, were the ones disciplined for being purportedly ‘aggressive’ or ‘threatening,’ ” the suit claimed. “These written warnings in their personnel files had consequences for later promotional and professional opportunities.”

Complaints about racism in the electric car maker’s operations were filed as recently as this year, the suit said. Black workers who complained about racism were denied bonuses and promotions and “falsely accused of being late, unjustifiably written up, denied transfers, assigned to physically strenuous posts or undesirable locations, constructively discharged, or terminated,” the suit alleged.

According to a 2020 report the company produced regarding diversity in its workforce, 10% of Tesla’s employees are Black, while 4% of those in leadership roles are black. Among new hires, 12% are Black, and 10% of promotions go to Black employees, the report said.

Tesla is fighting a slew of lawsuits claiming discrimination in its facilities. Last week, Kaylen Barker, a Black worker at a Tesla parts factory in Lathrop, claimed that a white co-worker called her the n-word and assaulted her. According to the suit, Tesla fired her assailant but then rehired her about two weeks later. In November, Jessica Barraza, a Fremont factory worker, claimed in a lawsuit that she and other female workers at the facility were subjected to “a pervasive culture of sexual harassment” which included “a daily barrage of sexist language and behavior” along with “frequent groping on the factory floor.”

In October, a San Francisco federal court jury awarded a Black former worker at the Fremont factory almost $137 million. Owen Diaz, who worked at the plant in 2015 and 2016 as a contracted elevator operator, alleged in a lawsuit that he faced “daily racist epithets” and that colleagues drew swastikas and left racist graffiti and drawings around the facility. Tesla is seeking a new trial in that case and said in its annual report it would appeal the award “if necessary.”

In May, an arbitrator ordered Tesla to pay $1 million to Melvin Berry, a Black former Tesla factory worker called racial slurs by supervisors. Tesla is also still fighting a 2017 lawsuit by former worker Marcus Vaughn, a Black man who claimed the Fremont factory floor was a “hotbed for racist behavior.”

San Francisco lawyer David Lowe, who late last year filed seven sexual harassment lawsuits against Tesla by female workers and former workers including Barraza, said the Department of Fair Employment and Housing has investigative powers that private litigants lack.

“For them to take an interest and get involved indicates to me that they view it as a particularly serious or egregious situation,” Lowe said.

The department, in its lawsuit, is seeking unspecified compensation for workers and punitive damages.

In a statement, Regional NAACP president Rick Callender noted that people of color face daily discrimination in work and life.

“The Department of Fair Employment and Housing should be applauded for seeking justice against Tesla for their racist behavior,” Callender said.


Horrific allegations of racism prompt California lawsuit against Tesla

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-02-11/la-fi-tesla-race-discrimination-lawsuit

Black workers at Tesla’s Fremont, Calif. factory were relegated to difficult physical jobs such as scrubbing floors on their hands and knees, a lawsuit alleges. (Noah Berger/Associated Press)
BY MARGOT ROOSEVELT, RUSS MITCHELL
FEB. 11, 2022 5 AM PT
Warning: This story quotes several racist slurs allegedly directed at Black workers at Tesla’s California plant, according to a lawsuit filed against the company.

The N-word and other racist slurs were hurled daily at Black workers at Tesla’s California plant, delivered not just by fellow employees but also by managers and supervisors.

So says California’s civil rights agency in a lawsuit filed against the electric-vehicle maker in Alameda County Superior Court on Thursday on behalf of thousands of Black workers after a decade of complaints and a 32-month investigation.

Tesla segregated Black workers into separate areas that its employees referred to as “porch monkey stations,” “the dark side,” “the slave ship” and “the plantation,” the lawsuit alleges.

Only Black workers had to scrub floors on their hands and knees, and they were relegated to the Fremont, Calif., factory’s most difficult physical jobs, the suit states.

Graffiti — including “KKK,” “Go back to Africa,” the hangman’s noose, the Confederate Flag and “F-- [N-word]” — were carved into restroom walls, workplace benches and lunch tables and were slow to be erased, the lawsuit says.

Tesla responded to the lawsuit, filed by the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, with a blog post saying that the agency had investigated almost 50 discrimination complaints in the past without finding misconduct — an assertion the agency denied.

“A narrative spun by the DFEH and a handful of plaintiff firms to generate publicity is not factual proof,” the blog post said, adding that the company provides “the best paying jobs in the automotive industry … at a time when manufacturing jobs are leaving California.”

The lawsuit comes in the wake of Tesla’s billionaire chief executive, Elon Musk, moving the company’s headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin, Texas, where he is building a major new assembly plant.The state’s lawsuit suggests the relocation to a state known for looser enforcement is no coincidence, declaring it to be “another move to avoid accountability.”




Not only were Tesla’s Black workers California lawsuit against Tesla subjected to “willful, malicious” harassment, but they were also denied promotions and paid less than other workers for the same jobs, the suit asserted. They were disciplined for infractions for which other workers were not penalized.


A Tesla employee works on metal parts for cars in the Tesla factory in Fremont.(Jeff Chiu/Associated Press)
“We hear a lot about ‘structural racism.’ This case is very focused on segregation — the structural barriers to equality for Black employees,” Kish said.

Most of the agency’s complaints involve individual workers or small groups. And racial complaints are on the rise. In 2016, the agency investigated 744 cases. By 2020, that had grown to 1,548, Kish said.

The economic and political stakes of taking on Tesla are hard to exaggerate: The company has drawn praise for proving people will buy electric cars when most of the auto industry was saying that would be impossible.

Although competition is growing, it’s still the top-selling EV brand worldwide. In 2021, the company said, it delivered 936,172 cars, 87% more than in 2020.

“Tesla markets its vehicles to the environmentally- conscious, socially responsible consumer,” the lawsuit states. “Yet [that] masks the reality of a company that profits from an army of production workers, many of whom are people of color, working under egregious conditions.”

Tesla’s Fremont factory is the only nonunion plant in the U.S. operated by a major American automaker.

California’s crackdown on the carmaker, which has 36,200 employees in the state and 80,000 worldwide, has been a long time coming. Black workers’ complaints of racial harassment and discrimination at the Fremont plant, which employs 15,000, date from 2012, the agency said.

Black workers make up 20% of Tesla’s factory assemblers, but there are no Black executives and just 3% of professionals at the Fremont plant are Black, the lawsuit said.

In 2017, the California Civil Rights Law Group, a Bay Area firm, filed a class-action lawsuit against Tesla on behalf of 1,000 Black workers. It has interviewed more than 100 who make claims similar to those in this week’s DFEH lawsuit. But that private lawsuit, still in court, covered only workers employed by staffing agencies that did not make them sign arbitration agreements.

Like many companies now, Tesla requires its directly hired employees to sign arbitration agreements, relegating any complaints to secret proceedings with private judges and without any option to appeal. After the 2017 class-action suit, it also required its staffing agency workers to sign agreements waiving their rights to go to court.

When racism charges began to surface at Tesla, Chief Executive Elon Musk emailed employees and told aggrieved workers to be “thick-skinned” and accept apologies.(Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press)
Government agencies are not required to respect arbitration agreements, which opens the way for California’s broader lawsuit.

Lawrence Organ, the lead attorney in the 2017 suit, said his firm of six lawyers, which specializes in harassment cases, has seen a marked rise in race-related complaints in the last five years. Before that, his firm had handled just two or three such cases in a decade. Today, it has 30 pending cases involving the N-word.

“Ever since Trump started running for president in 2015, there has been this change in attitude by people who harbor racist thoughts and racist beliefs,” he said. “They think that they can speak out and say whatever they want to say.”

Besides the N-word, harassment at Tesla, according to the DFEH lawsuit, included slurs such as “Monkey toes,” “banana boy,” “hood rats” and “mayate,” a Spanish word for dung beetle.

But the Tesla cases are “very unusual,” Organ said, because “Tesla doesn’t enforce its alleged zero tolerance policy for racist conduct.” He added that he had sued the NUMMI auto plant, which occupied the same factory before Tesla, many times for employment cases “but never for racial harassment.”

At Tesla’s Fremont factory, Black workers’ complaints were “ignored or perfunctorily acknowledged and then dismissed” by management, the lawsuit alleges. Those who complained were subject to “retaliatory harassment, undesirable assignments and/or termination.”

Musk, who grew up in South Africa, responded to the 2017 class-action suit, which called the company “a hotbed of racist behavior,” with an email to employees describing company culture as “hardcore and demanding.” Anyone who makes an ”unintentional slur” should apologize, he wrote, and the recipient should “be thick-skinned and accept the apology.”

In October, a federal jury in San Francisco awarded a Black elevator operator at Tesla’s plant $137 million in a harassment case. A judge signaled in January the award may be reduced but did not grant Tesla’s request for a new trial.


At least 160 worker lawsuits have been filed against Tesla since 2006, according to Plainsite, a court document transparency organization. The last two years have seen a major uptick in racial and sexual harassment suits against Tesla. At least five have been filed in the last six weeks.

One was lodged by a female Black employee who said her female white boss struck her with a hot grinding tool and called her “stupid” and the N-word and insulted her intelligence. The suit says the supervisor was fired but later rehired.

Another was filed by a man who said he wrote directly to Musk to complain about racial harassment and was then told to report to human resources, where he was fired.

Tesla hired most workers through 14 staffing firms “to avoid responsibility,” the state lawsuit asserted. The carmaker declined to investigate complaints by staffing agency workers, although most of the Black workers were employed by staffing firms.

Staffing firms were also an issue in two large race discrimination cases brought by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission involving hundreds of Black warehouse workers in the Inland Empire.

A Moreno Valley case against Ryder Integrated Logistics and its staffing firm, Irvine-based Kimco Staffing Services, charged that at least 121 Black workers were frequently subjected to the N-word and other slurs by fellow workers and managers, and exposed to racist graffiti in the restrooms. Assembly lines were segregated by race, with Black workers and Latino workers in separate work areas. The two companies failed to investigate and retaliated against workers who complained, the EEOC said.

The suit was settled in May for $2 million. The companies were required to create a tracking system for discrimination, revise its policies and submit to stringent outside monitoring.

A similar EEOC lawsuit in Ontario against Cardinal Health, the giant medical distribution company, and its Glendale-based staffing agency, AppleOne, was settled in July for $1.4 million and requirements for stringent policy and monitoring rules. The case involved frequent N-word harassment, graffiti and job discrimination affecting hundreds of Black workers.

How Tesla and its doctor made sure injured employees didn’t get workers’ comp
https://www.revealnews.org/article/how-tesla-and-its-doctor-made-sure-injured-employees-didnt-get-workers-comp/?fbclid=IwAR0oyUjcA5sGI0RfBiD6CYrFjuNdsopW6wE1wblKfSGvP207xooxe7rvWQc

By Will Evans / April 11, 2019

basil-besh-v3-1200x640.jpeg
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Inside a medical clinic not far from Tesla’s electric car factory, Yvette Bonnet started noting a troubling pattern. The automaker’s workers’ compensation manager would pressure her boss, Dr. Basil Besh, to make sure Tesla wasn’t on the hook for certain injured workers.

And in her observation, Besh did whatever he could to not jeopardize his chance to run Tesla’s on-site factory clinic.

“He would say, ‘I’m not losing the contract over this – get this case closed,’” said Bonnet, who was operations manager for Besh’s Access Omnicare clinic in Fremont, California, for about a year.

“Besh wanted to make certain that we were doing what Tesla wanted so badly,” she said. “He got the priorities messed up. It’s supposed to be patients first.”

It’s not unusual for employers to be pushy about how they want their workers’ injuries handled, Bonnet said. But the intensity of Tesla’s pressure, she said, combined with Besh’s willingness to let bottom-line concerns influence clinical decisions, made this situation different from any Bonnet had encountered.

Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting previously reported that Tesla systematically kept worker injuries off the books, artificially improving its safety record and violating the law on recording workplace injuries. We also showed that Tesla’s medical clinic ignored worker injuries, sending the hurt back to work without proper treatment and helping the company claim publicly that it had improved. Besh said in an interview last year that Tesla doesn’t pressure him to dismiss injuries and that his determinations are “only based on what the patient needs.”

However, interviews with former clinic employees and internal clinic communications show how Tesla and Besh coordinated behind the scenes in an arrangement that financially benefited both the carmaker and the doctor, to the detriment of the injured. Neither Tesla nor Besh responded to questions for this story.

Besh’s clinic had been struggling to make money, according to former employees. They say business dropped off when Tesla, previously Access Omnicare’s top client, opened an on-site factory clinic managed by another company in 2016.

But as Tesla took heat for how often its factory workers were getting injured, Access Omnicare got a chance to win back Tesla’s business, to take over its on-site clinic. In December 2017, Tesla sent a patient, Bill Casillas, to Besh as part of a trial run of sorts.

Casillas, a worker at Tesla’s seat factory, had felt a strong shock when he touched a forklift there. Disoriented, he realized he had urinated on himself. A co-worker in the forklift saw it jolt Casillas back and told Reveal that it “seemed like it was affecting him greatly.” Casillas’ partner said he came home shaken, unlike she had ever seen him before. He was left with relentless pain, numbness and balance problems, he said.

An internal Tesla incident report documented a work injury due to “shock from an electrical forklift” that was then put out of service. Kaiser Permanente doctors who examined him the day after the incident diagnosed him with an industrial “electrocution.” A doctor at Besh’s clinic agreed that it was a work-related electrical injury, prescribing him limited job duties, physical therapy and additional tests, medical records show.

But Tesla didn’t like the diagnosis, Bonnet said. She got an email from Tesla’s workers’ compensation manager, Amir Sharifi. He argued that there wasn’t a work injury at all – just a case of minor static electricity.

Bonnet relayed the message to Besh, who “came stomping over in a huff,” Bonnet recalled. She said he angrily confronted the physician treating Casillas, echoing Sharifi’s static electricity argument. He complained the tests cost too much and told the doctor to discharge Casillas, Bonnet said. Afterward, the doctor told Bonnet that she didn’t agree. Upset with the doctor’s handling of the case, Besh asked Bonnet to stop scheduling her to work at Access Omnicare, Bonnet said.

That’s when another one of Besh’s physicians, Dr. Muhannad Hafi, stepped in and did as Tesla wished. Hafi was in a vulnerable position. He’d been publicly accused of sexually assaulting two female patients at previous jobs. The California Medical Board had moved to take away his license.

“I have spoken again with Mr. Sharifi at Tesla and he informed that the forklift did not have electric current running,” Hafi wrote. “With that said, in my medical opinion, the patient does not have an industrial injury attributed to an electrical current.” He went so far as to say Casillas didn’t have any symptoms of concern.

Casillas’ workers’ comp claim was denied based on Hafi’s January 2018 report, a decision being fought by Casillas’ lawyer, Sue Borg. A doctor conducting an independent medical examination as part of that process wrote in November that it was a “very complex case” and “difficult to determine” whether Casillas was suffering from an electrical injury.

Casillas said he still walks with a cane, is out of work because of the injury and needs government disability benefits to get by. Because of the denial, he said, Tesla stopped paying for his time off work.

“I was just speechless,” he said.

Besh, a prominent hand surgeon who also runs a surgery center and hosts political fundraisers at his home, used the Casillas case in negotiations with Tesla, Bonnet said. She recalled him telling Tesla that if he was in charge of the factory clinic, Casillas’ case wouldn’t have gotten as far as it did.

The week after Hafi discharged Casillas, at the beginning of February 2018, Tesla met with Access Omnicare.

“How was the meeting today?” Amirra Besh, the doctor’s wife and clinic administrator, texted Bonnet.

“GREAT!” Bonnet responded, saying Tesla agreed to start referring all MRI’s and pre-employment physicals to Access Omnicare.

In her reply, Amirra Besh sounded excited for the work ahead. “Excellent!” she texted. “Time to deliver.”

***


Former Tesla worker Stephon Nelson clutches his back as he climbs steps outside his girlfriend’s home in Oakland, Calif. He was injured in August while working in the trunk of a Model X. Something slipped and its hatchback crunched down on his back.
CREDIT: PAUL KURODA FOR REVEAL

The workers’ compensation system involves a fundamental tradeoff: Companies must provide medical treatment and benefits to injured employees, who then can’t sue over the injuries.

Workers’ comp fraud is usually associated with workers faking injuries or clinics billing for sham services. But the law also prohibits employers from fraudulently denying a claim or discouraging a worker from pursuing one. Those caught can face fines and jail time.

Physicians can disagree on what’s necessary to treat an injury. But if they’re being pressured to change a diagnosis to avoid a legitimate workers’ comp claim, “it could be both unethical and illegal on multiple levels,” said Dale Banda, vice president of the Anti-Fraud Alliance and former deputy commissioner of the California Department of Insurance’s enforcement branch.

Many employers have an incentive to keep down workers’ comp claims because it lowers their insurance premiums. Insurance companies pay out the benefits but charge employers based in part on the number of successful claims.

Tesla has even more at stake because it has a form of self-insurance. The company is directly on the hook for paying up to $750,000 of each worker’s claim, records show.

A serious injury easily could cost the company tens of thousands of dollars. In a factory with hundreds of injuries a year – Tesla recorded 947 in 2018 – that could add up to significant damage, especially for a company struggling to be profitable. Tesla recently closed some of its retail stores and laid off employees to control costs.

One way to keep costs down is to avoid having claims in the first place. Multiple former employees said Tesla has at times failed to give injured workers the official form to file a workers’ compensation claim. California law requires employers to provide the form, called a DWC 1, within one day of learning of an injury.


Anna Watson (in floral top), a physician assistant who worked at Tesla’s on-site medical clinic for three weeks in August, decried the lack of medical care the carmaker provided to injured workers at a meeting of the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority.
CREDIT: PAUL KURODA FOR REVEAL

Anna Watson, a physician assistant who worked in the Tesla factory clinic in August, said she wasn’t allowed to give injured workers medical treatment or job restrictions, even when they clearly needed it.

“Everybody leaves this clinic as first aid,” Watson said she was told. Employers don’t need to provide a claim form for injuries that require only first aid.

Laurie Shelby, Tesla’s vice president for environment, health and safety, recently told state officials, “We set up a process to ensure that our employees receive the proper paperwork and care.” But this, too, is contradicted by the accounts of former employees.

In March 2018, Vicki Salvador was at the end of her 12-hour overnight shift in Tesla’s paint department when she tripped on her overly long full-body paint suit.

The fall broke a bone in her hand, she said. Salvador went to the emergency room, where she got a splint. She was told that she should see a specialist but needed to have Tesla handle it from then on because it was a work injury. She still owes $100 for the hospital visit.


Vicki Salvador tripped and broke a bone in her hand while working at Tesla’s car factory in March 2018. She went to the hospital and got a splint, shown here, but didn’t receive a workers’ compensation claim form from Tesla, she said.

Salvador’s supervisor put her on light duty for a few weeks, she said. But even though she asked about workers’ compensation at the time, no one followed up or gave her a claim form, she said.

“At that point, I gave up because I felt like anything I said, I was in jeopardy of losing my job,” said Salvador, echoing a common worry among Tesla workers. She says she was fired in January after tweeting about how many cars were coming through the factory.

Stephon Nelson gave up, too. He suffered a crushing injury in August when the hatchback of a Model X fell on his back. The on-site medical clinic kept sending him back to work full duty, even though he could barely walk.

Eventually, Access Omnicare diagnosed him with intractable back pain and contusions, medical records show. Nelson said he asked for a workers’ comp claim form from his supervisor, the factory clinic and Tesla human resources, but no one gave him one.

“I just knew after the third or fourth time that they weren’t going to do anything about it,” Nelson said. “I was very frustrated. I was upset.’”

Nelson quit Tesla in September. Now he’s on the hook for more than a thousand dollars in hospital visits. He said he doesn’t know how he’ll pay it.

***

When Tesla flagged a case, Dr. Basil Besh jumped on it, Yvette Bonnet said.

In some cases, he ordered his medical staff to reverse course and change diagnoses and job restrictions to make the automaker happy, Bonnet said. In others, he’d take action himself.

One Tesla worker came into the clinic with a skin rash, Bonnet remembered. Amir Sharifi, Tesla’s workers’ compensation manager, told the clinic that it couldn’t have come from a work exposure. Normally, one of Besh’s providers would have seen the patient, but Besh intervened personally. Bonnet said she was there when he confronted the patient, without having examined the worker or reviewed his medical records.

“He went right into the room with that guy, and he said there’s no way this happened at work,” she said. “He had already decided before he went in that he was going to shut this guy down.”

A couple of text messages from Bonnet’s time at the clinic hint at Sharifi’s involvement.

In one, Amirra Besh wrote, “Tesla patient with alleged ‘mold’ exposure, Amir sending an email.” It notes that only a specific doctor, who “has been briefed,” should see the patient. Bonnet said this was a way for Tesla to influence the case.

In the end, Access Omnicare won the Tesla contract.

Besh, in an interview last year, said Tesla pressures him only on “accurate documentation.”

“What they’ll push back on is, ‘Doctor, I need more clarity on this report.’ And we do that for them,” Besh said.

Besh took over the factory clinic in June. Bonnet was fired the next month after clashing with Besh. Dr. Muhannad Hafi, who dismissed the electrical injury, also left Access Omnicare and later lost his medical license as a result of the sexual misconduct accusations.

Shelby, Tesla’s vice president for safety, gushed about the clinic on an earnings call in October, saying it provides “the absolute best care for our associates” and is overseen by “one of California’s leading orthopedic surgeons.”

CEO Elon Musk jumped in to add that Tesla will expand on it at Fremont and at Tesla’s Nevada battery plant, “so that we have really immediate first-class health care available right on the spot when people need it.”

“If you become injured or ill for any reason,” he said, “then there’s health care immediately on-site.”

This story was edited by Andrew Donohue and Matt Thompson and copy edited by Nikki Frick.

Will Evans can be reached at wevans [at] revealnews.org. Follow him on Twitter: @willCIR.


Elon Musk already restarted Tesla production. Now the county says it’s allowed next week.
The electric-car manufacturer brought workers back on Monday, in defiance of county orders.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/13/tesla-alameda-reopen-plant/
Work can restart at Tesla's manufacturing plant in Fremont, Calif., as soon as next week, Alameda County officials say.
Work can restart at Tesla's manufacturing plant in Fremont, Calif., as soon as next week, Alameda County officials say. (Ben Margot/AP)
By
Rachel Lerman
May 13, 2020 at 11:43 a.m. PDT
SAN FRANCISCO — Alameda County, where Tesla’s main manufacturing plant is located, cleared the electric-car company to start up again next week with safety precautions in place.
But led by chief executive Elon Musk, Tesla already ramped up production earlier this week, one of the most high-profile violations of a local health order amid the coronavirus crisis and raising questions about county enforcement.
Alameda County said late Tuesday that it had approved Tesla’s site-specific plan to reopen its plant in Fremont, Calif., assuming the company follows strict safety guidelines, including social distancing to prevent the spread of covid-19. Tesla can start preparing this week, and can restart work next week, the county said.
The county said that the Fremont Police Department will make sure Tesla is following the agreed-upon safety guidelines. The plan is also contingent on public health indicators tracking the spread of the coronavirus in the Bay Area.
“We reviewed the plan and held productive discussions today with Tesla’s representatives about their safety and prevention plans, including some additional safety recommendations,” the county’s public health department said in a tweet announcing the decision.
The county did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the plant’s reopening timeline. In a news release, the county said it did not have “any further comment and will not be taking any requests for interviews.”
Tesla’s Elon Musk receives support from Trump as he reopens factory in defiance of county order

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. Fremont Police spokeswoman Geneva Bosques said the department would visit the plant to make sure the safety protocols were being followed. She said the police wouldn’t give specific details about the visit before it happens.
The state of California allowed some business operations to start up again last week, but Bay Area counties have stricter regulations that have not yet been lifted. On Monday, Alameda County told Tesla to stop production, but workers continue to go to work.
Musk on Monday tweeted that officials should arrest him if any enforcement took place. County officials the same day said they were still in negotiations.
On Saturday, Tesla filed suit against Alameda County seeking to stay open. The same day, Musk threatened to move Tesla headquarters, which are located in another California county in Palo Alto, to Texas and Nevada.
He also called interim Alameda County public health official Erica Pan “an unelected county official” after learning that the county orders supersede the more relaxed restrictions from the state.
Tesla files suit in response to coronavirus restrictions after Musk threatens to relocate operations

It’s not Musk’s first attempt to keep the factory open. Workers were asked to report to work as shelter-in-place orders took effect in March, with public health officials stepping in to tell Tesla that the work was considered nonessential. Musk has also emerged as a vocal opponent of government shelter-in-place orders, calling broadly for society to reopen and people to get back to work.
Musk tweeted a picture of an ice cream sundae at a restaurant Tuesday night, replying “Life should be lived.” He told a commenter he got it at “Buca,” referring to Italian chain restaurant Bucca di Beppo. But the photo appears to have been taken from Buca di Beppo’s own tweet in March 2017.
The brash chief executive has corralled other leaders in Silicon Valley to his cause, and President Trump tweeted his support Tuesday for the Tesla plant to reopen this week.
On Saturday, Tesla posted a blog about its return-to-work plan, saying it is the result of “careful” planning for months. It calls for some temperature-check protocols and reduced break-room capacity to maintain social distancing.
Some Fremont workers who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the matter publicly said that factory workers were not observing proper social distancing.
Elon Musk calls Tesla workers back to the factory (again). Health officials say no (again).

Musk retweeted an article Tuesday night that said that he had emailed employees to thank them for working.
“It is so cool seeing the factory come back to life and you are making it happen!!” it said,