Undocumented Workers Helped Build Elon Musk’s Tesla Gigafactory
Feb 19, 2025
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Julia Love, a Bloomberg reporter, reveals the hidden labor force behind Elon Musk’s Texas empire. She shares insights on undocumented workers who played crucial roles in constructing Tesla’s Gigafactory and SpaceX facilities, despite facing extreme conditions and a lack of legal protections. Love highlights shocking stories of workers suffering from heat stroke and wage theft, juxtaposed with Musk's contradictory anti-immigration rhetoric. Their struggles raise important questions about labor policies and the tech industry's reliance on vulnerable labor.
Undocumented workers, despite facing severe exploitation and unsafe conditions, play a crucial role in constructing Elon Musk's facilities.
Elon Musk's paradoxical anti-immigration stance starkly contrasts with his reliance on undocumented labor for his business empire's expansion.
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Working Conditions for Undocumented Labor
Undocumented workers, often among the most vulnerable in the workforce, face serious risks in their employment, especially in construction. The podcast highlights the story of a cleaner employed by a Tesla contractor who suffered severe heat stroke due to inadequate working conditions and pressure from supervisors, illustrating the dire situation many undocumented workers endure. Such workers frequently experience low pay, long hours, and unsafe environments, exacerbated by the fear of retaliation if they complain. This exploitation is rampant within the construction industry, which relies heavily on undocumented labor while remaining largely unchecked by enforcement of labor laws.
Contradictory Immigration Policies
Elon Musk has adopted a hardline stance on immigration, despite benefiting from undocumented labor within his companies, Tesla and SpaceX. With his growing political influence and vocal opposition to immigration reforms, Musk's practices serve to highlight a significant contradiction in the relationship between high-profile employers and immigration discourse. While advocating for stricter border control and voicing concerns about undocumented workers, his companies continue to rely on their labor for construction projects. This incongruence raises questions about accountability in the labor market, especially considering the critical role undocumented workers play in sustaining various sectors of the U.S. economy.
Over the last four-and-a-half years, the footprint of Elon Musk’s Texas business empire has undergone rapid expansion. It now includes SpaceX facilities and a sprawling Tesla gigafactory outside the state capital.
New Bloomberg reporting shows that undocumented workers helped to build some facilities — even as Musk ratcheted up his anti-immigration rhetoric and advocated for a border crackdown.
On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s Julia Love investigated how undocumented workers ended up at these sites — and the conditions they encountered — and joined host Sarah Holder to share what she found.