DETROIT (AP) – Tesla is looking to assure its 55,000 workers that there has not been an outbreak of coronavirus at the company’s facilities worldwide, despite an online report from the electric vehicle industry that more than 130 Tesla workers or subcontractors tested positive.
In an email sent to staff Wednesday night, the company said that since January it had recorded fewer than 10 cases of the virus that COVID-19 was transmitting in the workplace.
But email from Laurie Shelby, Tesla’s vice president of environment, protection and health, also showed reports that Tesla is testing more than 130 positive tests among workers, adding those who contracted the virus outdoors at Tesla’s facilities. She said less than 0.25% of international workers tested positive for the new coronavirus, which equates to just over 137 workers.
Their message came here in response to a report from Electrek.co that more than 130 Tesla workers or subcontractors have tested positive and many more expect verification results. He said he founded the report on the company’s internal data.
Shelthrough wrote that the story referred to knowledge “that was being validated” and included workers from around the world who may have inflamed but never entered a Tesla site, or who swelled up in the house while Tesla’s operations were shut down the previous year. A Tesla spokesperson did not comment on the report or email, which he received through The Associated Press.
“Almost all of them, more than 99.99%, of those occasions were cases of viruses transmitted to the paintings,” Shelby wrote in the email. “Most of the positive cases were the result of a user living or traveling with a coVID-19 user who returned to the paintings after recovering from home.”
Shelby wrote that Tesla had no hard-working workers in the world due to COVID-19.
On Thursday, a message was sent for comment on figures from the Alameda County Department of Public Health in California, which includes Fremont, the site of Tesla’s only meeting facility in the United States. The plant employs about 10,000 workers.
Some workers have refused to return to the plant out of fear of catching the virus. They did so after CEO Elon Musk in May defied Health Department orders not to restart production under shutdown orders due to the virus.
Some Tesla workers and labor activists say the company is threatening to fire employees who haven’t returned, but Tesla officials have said claims about firings are not true. Workers say they’ve heard about COVID-19 cases at the plant but they don’t know numbers. They have called on the company and health department to release the figures.
However, Shelby wrote in the email that an employee survey found the vast majority of workers feel comfortable with the safety measures being taken by the company.
Among the measures are increased cleaning, limiting access to facilities, temperature checks for employees before they enter buildings, staggered shifts to keep workers apart, additional barriers between employees and providing protective equipment, Shelby wrote.
She suggested that staff wear a mask or mask to stay healthy and save lives and cautioned that not wearing a mask where it is mandatory or not being well dressed with them would result in disciplinary action. He also wrote that staff remain at home if they are sick.
Musk reopened the Fremont plant on May 11 in defiance of county orders. The Department of Health had thought the plant was an unsusable company that might not open completely under virus restrictions, but Tesla argued that it is imperative according to federal guidelines.
However, the next day, the Ministry of Health announced that the plant could resume production as long as it complied with the employee protection precautions it had accepted.