特斯拉首席执行官埃隆•马斯克（elonmusk）今天向其员工发送了一封全公司范围的电子邮件，分享了针对不安全工作环境的调查结果。这些声明还主张特斯拉工厂成立工会。电子邮件的文本是由TechCrunch首先获得的，我们已经验证了它的真实性。

马斯克从一开始就对特斯拉（Tesla）一位名叫何塞•莫兰（Jose Moran）的员工提出的指控表示不满，他表示，可预防的伤害在该公司工厂很常见，强制加班给员工带来了损失。

马斯克在邮件中指出，特斯拉和福特是美国仅有的两家从未破产过的汽车公司，而且特斯拉的胜算“强烈反对”。他说，美国汽车工人联合会（UAW）的策略是“不真诚的或完全错误的”，莫兰岗位上的安全声明是不准确的，该公司**了数千名工人来创建第三班，减少加班时间。他还表示，特斯拉的股票授予意味着员工的收入远远高于其他美国汽车公司。

马斯克补充说，生活质量也在不断提高，包括免费的冷冻酸奶摊，还有一辆特斯拉电动吊舱汽车过山车（当然还有一条可选的环行路线！）这将使我们在弗里蒙特校园内进行快速而有趣的旅行，出入工厂，连接所有停车场。”

马斯克通过TechCrunch的完整电子邮件如下：

For Tesla to become and remain one of the great companies of the 21st century, we must have an environment that is as safe, fair and fun as possible. It is incredibly important to me that you look forward to coming to work every day. For that, we must be a fair and just company – the only kind worth creating.

This is vital to succeed in our mission to accelerate the advent of a clean, sustainable energy future. The forces arrayed against us are many and incredibly powerful. This is David vs Goliath if David were six inches tall! Only by being **arter, faster and working well as a tightly integrated team do we have any chance of success. We should never forget the history of car startups originating in the United States: dozens have gone bankrupt and only two, Tesla and Ford, have not. Despite the odds being strongly against us, my faith in you is why I am confident that we will succeed.

That is why I was so distraught when I read the recent blog post promoting the UAW, which does not share our mission and whose true allegiance is to the giant car companies, where the money they take from employees in dues is vastly more than they could ever make from Tesla.

The tactics they have resorted to are disingenuous or outright false. I will address their underhanded attacks below. While this discussion focuses on Fremont, these same principles apply to every Tesla facility worldwide.

Safety First

The workplace issue that comes before any other is safety. If you do not have your health, then nothing else matters. Simply due to size and bad luck, there will always be some injuries in a company with over 30,000 employees, but our goal is simple: to have as close to zero injuries as possible and be the safest factory in the auto industry by far. The Tesla executive team and I are absolutely committed to this goal.

That is why I was particularly troubled by the safety claim in last week’s blog post, which said: “A few months ago, six out of eight people in my work team were out on medical leave at the same time due to various work-related injuries. I hear the ergonomics are even more severe in other areas of the factory.”

Obviously, this cannot be true: if three quarters of his team suddenly went on medical leave, we would not be able to operate that part of the factory. Furthermore, if things were really even worse in other departments, that would mean something like 80% or more of the factory would be out on injury, production would drop to virtually nothing and the parking lot would be almost empty. As you know firsthand, we have the *opposite* problem – there is never enough room to park! In fact, we are working at top speed to build more parking. Also, hopefully our darn BART train station will open before all hell freezes over!

After looking into this claim, not only was it untrue for this individual’s team, it was untrue for any of the hundreds of teams in the factory.

That said, reducing excess overtime and improving safety are extremely important. This is why we hired thousands of additional team members to create a third shift, which has reduced the burden on everyone. Moreover, since the beginning of Tesla production at Fremont five years ago, there have been dedicated health and safety experts covering the factory and we hold regular safety meetings with operati*** leaders. Since the majority of the injuries in the factory are ergonomic in nature, we have an ergonomics department focused exclusively on this issue.

The net result is that since January 1st, our total recordable incident rate (TRIR) is under 3.3, which is less than half the industry average of 6.7.

Of course, the goal is to have as close to zero injuries as humanly possible, so we need to keep improving. If you have a safety concern or an idea on how to make things better, please let your manager, safety representative or HR partner know. You can also send an anonymous note through the Integrity Hotline (this applies broadly to any problems you notice at our company) or you can email [email protected].

Compensation

At Tesla, we believe it is important for everyone to be an owner of the company. This is your company. That is why, unlike other car companies, everyone is awarded shares and you get to buy stock at a discount compared to the public through the employee stock purchase program. Last year, stock equity grants were increased significantly and it will happen again later this year once Model 3 achieves high volume.

The chart below contrasts the total comp received by a Tesla production team member who started on January 1, 2013 against the total comp received over the same period at GM, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler. A four year period is used because that’s the vesting length of a new hire equity grant. I believe the equity gain over the next four years will be similar. As shown below, a Tesla team member earned between $70,000 and $100,000 more in total compensation than the employees at other US auto companies!

Work Hours

Another issue raised in the UAW blog was hours worked. First, I want to recognize how hard you worked to make our company successful. Those hours mattered to you, to your family and to our company, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate them.

However, the pace needs to be sustainable. This is why the third shift was established and why we created alternate work schedules based on feedback from various teams in the factory.

These changes have had a big impact. The average amount of hours worked by production team members this year is about 43 hours per week. The percentage of overtime hours has declined by almost 50% since the super tough time we had last year achieving rate on the Model X, which is probably the hardest car to build in history. What an amazing accomplishment! It is also a lesson learned, which is why Model 3 is designed to be dramatically easier to manufacture.

Fun

As we get closer to being a profitable company, we will be able to afford more and more fun things. For example, as I mentioned at the last company talk, we are going to hold a really amazing party once Model 3 reaches volume production later this year. There will also be little things that come along like free frozen yogurt stands scattered around the factory and my personal favorite: a Tesla electric pod car roller coaster (with an optional loop the loop route, of course!) that will allow fast and fun travel throughout our Fremont campus, dipping in and out of the factory and connecting all the parking lots. It’s going to get crazy good

Thanks again for all your effort and I look forward to working alongside you to create an amazing future!

Elon