Electric Vehicle Manufacturers: Don’t Be Like Tesla

The big news item this week is that Elon Musk will officially be buying Twitter
TWTR
after threatening to do so for weeks. As with all of Musk’s moves, the $44 billion deal is snatching headlines as Twitter employees and users are left wondering what this means.

But what should be a trending topic is how his company, Tesla
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, has treated workers at its California assembly plant. As local and federal governments award millions in incentives to fuel the electric car industry, and transit agencies sign big contracts with companies to electrify their bus fleets, the company is an example of how these companies can get it wrong—especially when there’s a path forward that’s a win-win for companies and workers.

Investigations uncovered rampant health and safety issues at Tesla’s Fremont, California plant, many of which the company covered up in order to avoid recording the incidents. Workers at the Fremont plant have also spoken up about enduring racial slurs on the job. This may seem surprising for a company that seeks to change the world with cutting-edge technology, but this kind of dangerous and hostile working environment is unfortunately common in the modern manufacturing industry.

And the worst part of it all? These factories, including Tesla, often get millions—even billions—in tax incentives. The LA Times reported in 2015 how Tesla and Musk’s other companies have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government incentives. More recently, Tesla got millions to set up shop near Austin. As Good Jobs First reports in its recent “report card,” many states give out these tax incentives with very little transparency and accountability about where these tax dollars are going. A report from Jobs to Move America, the organization I work for, shows how Alabama in particular gave away $4 billion in tax giveaways to major companies to incentivize job creation, yet the state still has some of the highest poverty rates, lowest levels of educational attainment, and highest incarceration rates in the country.

But sometimes, our tax dollars have gone to benefit companies who in turn make our communities better with good-quality jobs, training and apprenticeship programs and safe workplaces. For example, BYD—a Tesla competitor that won a contract to produce electric buses for LA Metro—has a facility in California that is unionized, committed to hiring 40% of its workers from groups facing significant barriers to employment, and implemented the country’s first electric bus apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship program after signing a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) with my organization, Jobs to Move America, and the union SMAR
AR
T Local 105.

A CBA, which is legally binding, is one way to ensure that companies follow through on their commitments to create high-quality jobs. These CBAs should commit to creating safe workplaces, providing high-quality training to workers and giving them equal opportunities for advancement, targeting groups traditionally left out of manufacturing jobs for hiring, and allowing workers to unionize in order to win better working conditions. CBAs also stand to benefit companies: another CBA signed between my organization, Proterra, and the United Steelworkers Local 675 paved the way for the company and union to win a $650,000 grant from California’s High Road Training Partnership (HRTP) in 2021 to develop apprenticeships for existing workers and new hires.

Companies like Tesla that represent the future shouldn’t be stuck in the past with hostile, dangerous working conditions at their manufacturing plants. Instead, taxpayers should be rewarding companies that use our tax dollars to create good jobs and training programs that create a pipeline of skilled workers, which in turn improves the lives of these workers and their communities. Electric vehicle manufacturers have the opportunity to generate press for the right reasons by setting an example for what modern U.S. manufacturing can look like.