Elon Musk has decided to take a page out of kim Kardashian's book by
referring to American workers as lazy.
He did it during an interview with the Financial Times,
where he said there's just a lot of super talented hardworking people in China,
who strongly believe in manufacturing.
They won't just be burning the midnight oil, they will be burning the 3 A.M oil.
They won't even leave the factory type of thing.
Whereas in America, people are trying to avoid going to work at all.
China believes in manufacturing,
is that why manufacturing jobs were shipped abroad by US corporations to
exploit cheap labor and basically no regulations to protect that labor?
Could that be why?
Anyway, now Elon Musk loves to treat his workers like crap, and
if you don't believe me, take a look at this video.
>> In 2015 alone, the rate of serious injury at Tesla's fremont factory,
was 102% above the industry average.
And in 2016 it was above the average by 82.5%.
Tesla claims it's 2019 injury rate dropped below the industry average, but
the center for
investigative reporting found that Tesla under reported its injuries that year.
On top of that, California's inspection agency,
said it couldn't verify Tesla's claims about safety improvements.
>> Basically everybody would cut their arms and hands.
Sometimes people would bleed off the line, and have to run to the bathroom so
it would be a man down a second person.
I would have to stop the line and once you stop, if you stop the line their,
management come over would start yelling at you and
they'll be like why did he cut his hand, what is he doing?
I'll change them out with someone better,
almost like a modern day industrial sweatshop.
>> Dennis tried to help organize a union, to gain more of a voice.
But Musk and Tesla stopped it by illegally threatening, harassing, and
firing workers according to the NLRB.
>> Management makes you wanna feel like they're the superior,
you should be afraid, you should appease me.
That's basically the culture was always there, basically an extreme hierarchy.
>> Now here in America, even though workers are still treated like crap,
which is why we're seeing this unionization effort.
Across the country with Starbucks, with Amazon, there are still some protections,
whereas in China there are relatively few protections for workers.
In fact recently, they had COVID lockdowns in China,
but Tesla's factory decided to have its own lockdown.
Where their employees were locked in the factory,
continuing to produce Tesla vehicles on behalf of Elon Musk.
Okay, so last month workers at Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory, were required to
sleep at the facility as production resumed following a three week shutdown.
A memo indicated that each worker would be provided with a sleeping bag, and
an air mattress and expected to work 12 hour shifts, with one day off per week.
And that is what makes Elon Musk salivate, for all the right wingers who love to
filet Elon Musk because you think you're owning the libs,
understand what you're doing, okay?
You're empowering a guy, who sees you as nothing
more than another cog in the machine, who loves to abuse workers, for what?
To give them equity, to give them a fair share of the pie or to,
I don't know, increase his own wealth.
Which is part of the reason why he's one of the richest people,
if not the richest person in the country, in the world.
>> Yeah so, we talked about this in the context of Ben Shapiro,
same thing with Elon Musk.
Everything they say, is from the point of view of an incredibly wealthy person, so
they're like, well if you work harder you'll make more money.
Well if you're the founder, well he's not the founder of Tesla, but
if you're the owner of Tesla, there might actually be some truth to that.
And in different companies and different industries, even if you're not the owner,
you might be able to work your way up.
I know I did it, I did it at a place called me in Miami when we worked in TV.
I came in at the lowest sales shop and I worked my way up to head writer and
supervising producers.
So I don't want you to get discouraged and
say I think that it's not possible at all in the country it is.
But, there's a mythology, that anyone could do it anywhere.
Well that just physically isn't true, if you're working at a factory for
example, he used the Chinese factories like the gold standard,
because they make their workers work all night, until 3 a.m.
They make them sleep on the factory floor.
Now do you think those assembly line workers in China are going to one day work
their way up to CEO?
No, that's not how it works.
No they're just gonna get paid, the same thing they always get paid,
they'll just be forced to work more.
Are they gonna gain the equity of the company and
they're gonna get rich like Elon Musk?
No, of course not, how about here in America?
Wait, did you give all of your assembly line workers substantial equity in Tesla?
So they're all gonna be millionaires?
Because it happens sometimes, this guy who pinned a mural for
Facebook is a multi millionaire now.
So did you do that at Tesla?
Did all your assembly line workers are they all gonna be incredibly rich?
No they're not, are they Elon?
They're not, you're just paying them a wage, and then say back to the mines,
back to the assembly line.
Why don't you guys enjoy it so much?
And be honest Elon Musk and all of the rest of you,
is that the same pool of people that you're hiring executives from?
Now I'm in the business community, I know, no that's not what you do at all.
There's a totally different group of people, that you hire,
when you're looking for executives and management.
The mythology that maybe existed in the 1950s for a couple of years.
Of you go into the assembly line and if you're industrious hard worker,
you work hard, you can go all the way up to CEO.
Not in today's America, no way.
It's a total and utter lie, to get you to work more for less.
>> That's right, and
that's been going on since the 1970s where real wages have remained stagnant.
Real wages actually did rise though for one group of people,
at the top of the distribution, whereas wages rose at a lower rate or
even fell, at the middle and bottom.
Real inflation adjusted wages at the 90th percentile increased over 1979 to 2019,
for the workforce as a whole and across sex race and Hispanic ethnicity.
Meaning the people at the very top, the top 10%.
By contrast though, middle, meaning the 50th percentile and
bottom 10th percentile wages grew to a lesser degree.
Example, women or
even declined in real terms for men.
Now the reason why it declined for men and just kind of stagnated completely for
women is because women were already being paid less than men. But the fact of
the matter is, no there is no real revenue sharing happening?
And if workers don't have a stake
in the game, why are they gonna work themselves to death for
you Elon? And
by the way the culture is changing a little bit in China,
where the workers there are asking, why are we working ourselves to death?
This isn't right.
So I'm looking forward to when they rise up and they fight back,
because that's what needs to happen.
>> And the reason they're doing that in China is because, now they have a little
bit more wages, and so that's a great thing, and it has gotten them leverage.
So they now are in a position where they get to ask the question,
hey maybe we shouldn't work ourselves to death.
Now, I tell you that because think about what he
was saying about the factory workers.
Given that they're not getting any of the upsides of the company, and
given that they're paid a flat wage, why would they want to work all night?
Well the thing is they don't want to do it, they have no choice.
They have no economic power, they're worried their families going to starve.
And Elon Musk takes that, and flips it as if they have agency and free will and
they chose to do that, because they're positive,
they're gonna be multimillionaires once they do it.
No, they literally have no other choice,
that's why they're sleeping on the factory floor.
Look we're fair at one point Elon Musk, you could say it was theater,
you could say it was optics, but he once slept on the floor to once.
Congratulations, okay.
And does he work hard though?
I imagine that he does work hard.
But that's Elon, that's because you get $250 billion dollars for working hard.
Your assembly line worker is not getting that money.
Are there companies where that still happens?
Yes there are small business where you could move up, our company,
we move people up all the time, okay?
But, if you're a right winger out there, is that your experience at the big
companies and the big giant corporations screwing us all, including Tesla?
Do you have the experience that man I was working so hard at the assembly line.
Somebody came up to me and said, hey would you like to be vice president?
[LAUGH] If you got that story come and tell us, cuz that's a great story,
I'd like to celebrate that company.
There are good companies in the world, but not a lot of them that
are publicly traded corporations, they must maximize profit by law.
And they aren't going around going, that guy worked really hard.
I don't know let's make him in charge of marketing,
[LAUGH] it's not at all how it works and you know it.
They're trying to trick you, to get you to work longer for no extra pay, and
no extra nothing other than the myth, the fable, that one day you're gonna be rich.