A leaked recording of a training during Tesla’s week-long production shutdown outlines a serious morale problem.
Something strange happened at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, Texas the week of Memorial Day.
The production lines at the plant went dark and the 20,000 folks responsible for running them—whether it be the ones putting the final touches on Tesla’s made-in-Texas Model Y or spit-shining panels on the Cybertruck—were told to take the week off if they had paid time off to burn. If not, it was time to come in and either scrub the floors or take some company culture training.
Production pauses do happen. Sometimes it’s due to upgrading lines, other times due to demand problems (and it might be a bit obvious which Tesla is facing right now). Tesla’s hasn’t said which, but a week is “unusually long” according to employees who spoke with Business Insider.
A few years ago I used to build trains, the factory was run like shit in all sorts of ways (The one that did my head in the most was to do a job we had to get a build instruction, but people would take and keep these.), it was as though no one was in charge. But every Friday management would stand in front of us and give us this motivational speech about how we had to pull it together and it was all on us.
The point being, over worked, under appreciated, disrespected staff aren’t to blame.