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OSHA investigating work-related death at Tesla Gigafactory in Austin, Texas

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OSHA investigating work-related death at Tesla Gigafactory in Austin, Texas


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Elon Musk tours the recently inaugurated Tesla plant Gigafactory Texas in Austin, Texas, Monday, Sept. 25, 202 [AP Photo/Gyula Bartos/Hungarian President’s Press Office/MTI]

Federal investigators are looking into a death at the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin, Texas which occurred earlier this month. The Travis County Sheriff’s Office and local paramedics were called to the plant on the morning of August 1 when a worker went into cardiac arrest.

More details are not yet known, including the identity of the worker, and OSHA has indicated its investigation will take up to six months. But there have been three other inspections at the Gigafactory in the past three years, with the last open case dating to July 5, 2024.

The death follows the layoff of 14,000 workers at Tesla around the world, as part of a global attack on jobs across the entire economy, but concentrated in the auto industry. The labor-saving potential of electric vehicles, combined with lower-than-expected initial sales, are the impulse for auto companies to slash whole sections of their workforces.

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Following the layoff, Tesla CEO Elon Musk received a $45 billion payout from the Tesla board, in an act of blatant social banditry. Musk’s net worth is as of this writing $218 billion, making him the richest person in human history. Musk is also a notorious ignoramous and right-winger, who has used his personal control of social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to provide neo-Nazis a forum. The promotion of these political forces is aimed at shielding his absurd wealth from the working class, much as Henry Ford did in when he promoted antisemitism in the early 20th cenutury.

The massive facility spans 2,500 acres (10.12 square kilometers), making it one of the largest auto plants in the country. It produces Tesla’s Model Y cars, which was the worlds best selling car in 2023, and Tesla’s most profitable model, as well as the less-popular Cybertruck. The plant is designed to employ as many as 20,000 workers and produce up to 375,000 vehicles per year.

Tesla has increased its market share of the auto industry by 25.4 percent between 2022 and 2023 according to Yahoo Finance. However, it still controls only 4.2 percent of the US auto market and an even smaller share of the global industry. Nevertheless, Tesla is by far the world’s most valuable auto company by market capitalization, dwarfing companies with much larger operations like General Motors and Toyota. This massive overvaluation is due to speculative and parasitical behavior on Wall Street.

The company also receives Texas state tax breaks totaling around $50.4 million, and $14 million from the local government.

The plant only opened in 2022, but was dangerous even during construction. In 2021 construction worker Antelmo Ramírez died in 98 Fahrenheit (37 Celsius) heat.

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In the same year, a robotic arm designed to grab and move freshly cast aluminum car parts pinned an engineer by his arm and back. A trail of blood was left on a chute for aluminum scrap metal after the engineer was released by a coworker. Despite this, and having an open wound on his left hand, the engineer received no time off.

OSHA violations for construction contractors included issues such as fake safety credentials, and the company has been cited by the US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) for not giving proper pay and, in some cases, not paying workers at all. An attorney representing the contract workers at the plant told the Daily Mail later that injuries are under-counted.

In its first year of operation, one out of every 21 workers was injured on the job. For 2023, this increased to one out of every 13 workers. According to the most recent iteration of OSHA’s Injury Tracking Application [ITA] Summary Data report, in 2023 the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin racked up over 1,000 injuries.

The ITA Summary Data reports 1,049 injuries out of the 13,444 average annual employees of the plant. Only 8 other locations out of the 385,449 documented had more injuries, and one of these was another Tesla factory in Fremont, California, which ranked third with 2,149.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics there were 2,804,200 nonfatal injuries and illnesses in private industry in 2022, with an average of 2.8 million injuries per year in the 9 year period between 2014 through 2022. In 2022, 5,486 workers lost their lives in fatal work-related injuries with the deaths and injuries, with this number constituting a 5.7 percent increase year-over-year. Texas saw 578 of these deaths.

That these deaths are allowed to happen is a function of the destruction of the trade unions in the US and around the world, which had once set the standards for safety in plants and which put pressure on non-unionized plants to prevent accidents or face potential unionization, but which now function as a corporate police force enforcing the brutal conditions that are endemic to America’s industrial slaughterhouse .

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Austin, TX

Austin, TX venue Emo’s on the move again, AEG to take over the building

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Austin, TX venue Emo’s on the move again, AEG to take over the building


Emo’s in Austin is on the move again. 

After more than a decade at 2015 E. Riverside Drive (following the original Red River-era venue closing in 2011), Emo’s current Riverside space will be taken over by AEG Presents when the lease ends later this year. The Los Angeles, CA-based company will assume operations in January 2027 and plans to reopen the building under a new name in early 2027 following upgrades, renovations and a full rebrand.

AEG are also opening a new 4,000-cap venue nearby next spring as part of the River Park mixed-use development in southeast Austin.

C3 Presents, who reopened Emo’s at the Riverside location, say this isn’t the end of Emo’s — they’re working on a new home and plan to move the venue back to downtown Austin, with more updates to come.

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AEG Presents Vice President Robin Phillips shared the following:

There’s like no weirdness or any bad blood or anything. It just, you know, new lease and they’ll [Emo’s] go do something great. They have been important to the Austin music scene, so I have a lot of respect for them.

But I don’t think the Austin music scene or legacy is limited to one name. I know people will remember the original Emo’s and this Emo’s as, you know, both great venues… And I don’t think Austin’s music scene is just a name, it’s the artists, in my opinion.

 

A C3 spokesperson added:

Emo’s has a long history in Austin and we’ve been working behind the scenes for some time on a new home for this venue. After we wrap up at this venue in December, we will focus our efforts on our new location.

 

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Emo’s gave the following statement to Austin local news KXAN:

We’re grateful for all of the fans and artists who’ve shaped Emo’s to what it is today: a community of like-minded people who love live music. We have a vision for our future and will be moving into a new building downtown that celebrates our punk rock roots with the new amenities that fans are looking for from a venue. We’ll continue to share updates on the next chapter for Emo’s on social media.





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Austin, TX

Highly pathogenic virus found in herd of Texas dairy cows

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Highly pathogenic virus found in herd of Texas dairy cows


State and federal agriculture officials said highly pathogenic avian flu has been found in a herd of dairy cows in Texas.

What we know:

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Officials said the H5N1 virus was confirmed with laboratory tests in late May after cows at an unspecified farm became sick and milk production dropped. The dairy has since been quarantined and an investigation is underway.

This is the first case of avian flu in a Texas dairy herd this year, officials said.

What they’re saying:

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“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is confident that pasteurization is effective at inactivating H5N1, and that the commercial, pasteurized milk supply is safe,” officials at the Texas Animal Health Commission said in a statement.

A dairy cow is seen at a farm on June 1, 2026.

A dairy cow is seen at a farm on June 1, 2026. (Tim Evans/Bloomberg / Getty Images)

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Dig deeper:

H5N1 has a high rate of severe disease and death in animals that become infected.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the risk to the general public from avian flu is low. Some sporadic human infections have been reported around the world since 1997. There have been no known cases of person-to-person spreading of avian flu.

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The Source: Information in this story came from the Texas Animal Health Commission, the USDA, the FDA and the CDC.

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Austin, TX

New Texas law tightens rules for autonomous vehicle companies, including Waymo

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New Texas law tightens rules for autonomous vehicle companies, including Waymo


Self-driving cars have become a common sight on Austin streets, but a new Texas law is adding tougher requirements for the companies behind the wheelless vehicles.

Senate Bill 2807 imposes stricter rules on autonomous vehicle companies operating in the state, including state authorization, emergency response plans for law enforcement, and a public portal where residents can verify operators and file safety complaints.

The changes come as Austin continues to track incidents involving autonomous vehicles. The city’s autonomous vehicle dashboard shows 75 incidents in 2026, including a collision, eight near misses, and seven incidents of ignoring police direction.

Attorney Drew Gibbs, a partner at Slingshot Law, said one crash involved a Waymo vehicle.

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“There was a T-bone collision. A pretty serious T-bone collision where a Waymo just crashed into the side of my client’s vehicle,” Gibbs said.

ALSO| Waymo files voluntary software recall over flooded-lane risks on high-speed roads

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One of the incidents of ignoring police direction happened during the mass shooting on West Sixth Street back in March, when three people died, and 15 others were injured.

Austin Police Association President Michael Bullock said autonomous vehicles can struggle in unusual situations.

“It didn’t impede on anything in the moment, but it’s not necessarily uncommon where these vehicles don’t quite know how to deal with these one-off scenarios,” Bullock said.

The new law requires autonomous vehicle companies to be authorized by the state, to provide an emergency response plan for law enforcement, and to participate in a public-facing portal that allows the public to verify operators and submit safety complaints.

Kara Kockelman, a professor of transportation and engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, welcomed the added oversight.

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“I’m glad that the state is taking this a bit more seriously now,” she said. “It’s important not to just let others slip in without kind of meeting those basic minimums.”

Bullock said the emergency planning requirement may not make a major difference in fast-moving situations. Asked how impactful it is to have a fully laid out emergency response plan, Bullock said, “These plans are great, but it takes time to work through all of those versus the immediacy of having someone behind the wheel.”

The four autonomous vehicle companies operating in Austin — Waymo, Zoox, AV-Ride, and Tesla — are all state-authorized.

The Texas DMV said an autonomous vehicle company can lose its authorization to operate in Texas if the agency deems the vehicles are operating in a way that endangers public safety.

Waymo was contacted for comment, but had not responded.

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