Tesla fined for ‘serious’ heat violation at California plant

Tesla has been fined for violating California’s workplace heat protection rules at its Fremont plant.

Although the $13,500 penalty is a pittance for the electric car maker, which boasts a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion, state regulators categorized the company’s violation as “serious,” meaning it could result in injury, illness or death.

The findings stem from Tesla’s failure to provide employees working outdoors with adequate cooldown breaks in shaded areas, according to a citation issued by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, in December.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cal/OSHA did not provide specifics on the conditions workers experienced at the Fremont plant.

The citation references a section of California’s heat safety rules that mandate that employees be allowed and encouraged to take cooldown rests in the shade when they feel the need to do so to prevent themselves from overheating. Any employee who takes this type of preemptive break is supposed to be monitored for symptoms of heat illness by a supervisor and should not be asked to return to work until symptoms have subsided.

Tesla co-founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk has had a hostile relationship with the state in recent years, accusing California of “overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation.” And the new regulatory scrutiny comes at a time when Musk is leading an aggressive effort to scale back or entirely dismantle swaths of the federal government on behalf of the Trump administration.

The carmaker has previously tussled with California workplace safety regulators over conditions at the Fremont plant.

An investigation by The Center for Investigative Reporting in 2018 found that Tesla has failed to report some serious workplace injuries, skewing the company’s injury statistics. Tesla rebutted the findings, but Cal/OSHA cited the company the next year for omitting hundreds of injuries listed in logs at its factory from annual summary data that the company sends each year to government regulators.

Tesla also constructed an open-air structure outside its main Fremont vehicle facilities in an effort to speed up assembly and production of its Model 3 sedan, but in 2019 was hit with fines from Cal/OSHA for safety violations, including a failure to obtain a permit to build the open-air facility, failure to protect workers from exposed metal rods and rebar that posed risks and failure to properly train employees to prevent heat illness.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, Musk restarted production at the plant in defiance of a countywide stay-at-home order, although the company eventually reached an agreement with Alameda County to resume operations. Hundreds of infections were reported in the aftermath of the reopening.

And Cal/OSHA in 2023 slapped Tesla with four safety violations after an employee at the Fremont plant was seriously injured when she got stuck in a Model Y. Tesla had allegedly failed to ensure power was cut to a conveyor belt while workers were performing quality inspections, leading to the worker becoming trapped in the car.