Tesla engineer 'attacked' by automated robot at Texas Gigafactory

A newly surfaced report features disturbing details of a workplace accident that occurred at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, Texas in 2021. 

Company documents reviewed by The Daily Mail’s Matthew Phelan tell of workers witnessing a robot designed to move car parts grab one of their colleagues and sink its claws into his arm and back, pinning him in place. According to the report, the robot gouged an “open wound” into the worker and left a “trail of blood” on the factory floor. The engineer did not require time off, according to Phelan’s review of the injury report. 

The news of the attack is just the latest breadcrumb along a long and dark trail of work-related incidents and controversies involving Tesla. The Elon Musk-owned automaker has been the subject of numerous lawsuits and organizing actions in recent years regarding its workplace policies and treatment of workers.

The company is currently two months deep into a bitter labor dispute with union workers in Sweden over Tesla’s refusal to sign a collective bargaining agreement, and in September of this year, a federal lawsuit was filed against the carmaker for alleged mistreatment and discrimination of Black employees at its Fremont, California factory. In September 2021, Antelmo Ramirez, a 57-year-old contractor building Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, died of heatstroke while laboring at an unshaded work site.

“There’s a long history of citations by OSHA,” Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, co-executive director of the nonprofit National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, told the Texas Observer in May. “We’re definitely well aware of Tesla’s history of apparent negligence towards their workers.”