Reuters World News - Worker injuries at SpaceX soar in Elon Musk's rush to Mars

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Through interviews and government records, reporter Marisa Taylor documented more than 600 injuries of SpaceX workers since 2014. Employees say they’re paying the price for Elon Musk’s relentless push to colonize Mars at breakneck speed. Listen to Taylor describe her report. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three, two, one, zero. Lift-off. A SpaceX Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful active rocket, lifts off from Florida's Cape Canaveral. It's one small step in Elon Musk's grand mission to propel humanity into the stars. With Starship, we're aiming for full and rapid reusability. But that mission and the race to Mars is not without collateral damage.

A Reuters investigation has found that some of the company's workers are paying the price for the breakneck speed of innovation at SpaceX. On today's podcast, we talk with our reporter who spent months speaking with employees and combing through government records to uncover a lax safety culture, which has led to hundreds of injuries. I'm Marissa Taylor in Washington, D.C. And I'm Jonah Green in New York. Marissa Taylor is an investigative reporter for Reuters based in Washington, D.C. She's covered a wide range of topics, including health care, the FBI, and the U.S.-Mexico border for over 20 years, and she joins us now. Hi, Marissa. Thanks for talking with us.

Hi, Jonah. It's nice to be here. Thanks. So you've been investigating SpaceX safety lapses for months. What did you find? We found that SpaceX has essentially been disregarding worker safety requirements for years and we were able to document more than 600 injuries, many of them occurring as SpaceX wasn't reporting its injury data to regulators as required. And then when they did report it, we found

their injury rates exceeded the average industry rate. We also spoke to dozens of former and current employees who said they were concerned about the company's handling of worker safety. They described multiple problems, including a lax attitude when it came to safety. inadequate training. And in fact, one wife of a worker who remains in a coma told us that she was concerned that the attitude is that workers were disposable to the company and its executives. Can you describe some of the health hazards or injuries that these workers might face? I think the case of the worker who remains in a coma right now is a good example of the dangers for these workers. His skull was fractured after he was conducting a test on a rocket

engine. And then there was another case that we found a worker was killed when he was blown off a truck during gusty wind conditions. And we actually visited Brownsville, Texas. That's the center of Elon's Musk's efforts to build cheaper rockets. One worker, Florentino Rios, described how he's working high up in the dark at the rocket facility. And then when another worker didn't see his hand signal, when they were trying to communicate with each other, a crane chain broke and slammed him in the face. Now Mr. Rios is described as legally blind by his doctors. And so what is happening here culturally that makes it a systemic problem at SpaceX? Jonah, we interviewed more than three dozen people with

knowledge of SpaceX safety procedures, including more than two dozen current or former workers. And these workers repeatedly told me that the company was always in a rush. It's in a rush to manufacture, a rush to launch, a rush to test. And all of that push is in the name of achieving Elon Musk's mission to Mars. One former engineer told us that the company believes it's justified in casting aside worker safety in order to achieve that goal. And they told us that some the problem also has to do with the company's leadership in that Elon Musk has a disdain for perceived bureaucracy and doesn't necessarily prioritize worker safety. For example, they told us that he discouraged workers from wearing safety yellow vests on construction sites because he didn't like bright

colors. And they also said he would sometimes openly play with this novelty flame thrower, which was something that another company of his was marketing and it actually shoots out real flames. And he was playing with it in close quarters inside the office. And they said that he was generally perceived as being cavalier about some of these safety precautions. And in the end, that a lot of this has to do with the time constraints and the the deadlines set out by Elon Musk and a lot of the higher-ups. What does SpaceX or Musk say about all this? SpaceX didn't respond to questions from Reuters, and we also gave them a detailed description

of this article's findings before we published it to see if we could get comment from them, but they did not respond. The company itself has defended its safety practices and responses to government inspections. It says it provides workers with extensive. safety training and that it does provide a safe environment for workers. The flip side of all of this is that we do hear from employees that it is a pretty exciting place to work, that it is a place where there are a lot of bright people who are very creative and they are given a lot of freedom. It's just that they are often under a lot of deadline pressure. And that's what employees tell us

leads to these injuries. Are regulators doing anything about this? Do they know? So OSHA said that they've recently increased their inspection activities in general, but they did not comment directly on SpaceX's safety record or its enforcement decisions regarding the company. Former OSHA officials and worker safety experts in general said that it's hard for OSHA to have much of an impact on big companies because its fines are so small.

And they also said that the agency itself has been undermanned for many years and can't possibly keep up with worker safety issues across the board, not just in this growing, fast-moving industry like aerospace. And then when they do intervene, you're saying the fines are just kind of paltry to somebody like Elon Musk or a company like SpaceX that it doesn't really have any teeth, even if they find something that is a violation of their rule. Right. I mean, to give you an example, although the worker who died, OSHA found there were violations, and then they find SpaceX $7,000. The company's valuation at this point is reported to be $150 billion. When you spoke to some higher level SpaceX officials, what was their response? They defend Musk himself, saying that he gets a bad rap and that he actually does genuinely, of course, care. a worker is injured, that he knows it's in the interest of the company to make sure there are safe conditions. And these officials also said that the company itself knows that it needs to have a safe

environment for its workers, but that the company has so much activity that it shouldn't be held to the same industry standard as its competitors. Workers told me that the company, when they try to raise these issues, that the company's philosophy is that it's up to the workers to ensure safety for themselves. So just to go back a bit, one of the reasons for these injuries that they're giving you is that they're just working faster and doing more than their competitors. Is that right? Right, which they are. It's true. They are. That SpaceX is indeed at this point doing a lot in terms of various activities from everything from launches to they now are the,

largest satellite operator in the world. They have definitely revolutionized rocket manufacturing in terms of making it faster and cheaper. And as a result, as they see it, they're doing so much more activity than their competitors that their injury rates are naturally going to be higher. One former high-level, OSHA official Jordan Barab didn't find this idea very compelling or this argument very compelling. Yeah, I mean, the fact that Elon Musk and particularly SpaceX is working on new age innovative technologies and helping out the government with its space program does not exempt it from following the law and does not exempt it from ensuring that workers have a safe workplace. Pushing workers to do dangerous work, regardless of their knowledge that the work is dangerous,

essentially shows that this company is putting its profits ahead of worker safety. Thanks again to Marissa Taylor for her work in bringing this story to light. Podcast is produced by myself, Tara Oakes, David Spencer, and Christopher Waljasper. Our senior producer is Carmel Crimmons. The show is edited by Lila Decretzer. Engineering and sound design by Josh Summer. We'll be back on Monday with our regular daily news show. To make sure you know what's going on in the world, listen in for 10 minutes every weekday.

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