US employee safety officials fined Elon Musk’s SpaceX $3,600 this month after an accident at its site in Washington state led to a “near amputation,” based on inspection records reviewed by Reuters.
A Reuters investigation late last 12 months found that Musk’s rocket company disregarded worker-safety regulations and standard practices at its facilities nationwide. Through interviews and government records, the news organization documented not less than 600 previously unreported injuries of SpaceX staff since 2014.
SpaceX has not responded to Reuters’ questions on any of the incidents, including the death of 1 employee and the injury of one other who stays in a coma after his skull was fractured during a 2022 rocket engine malfunction. The corporate also didn’t reply to a request for comment concerning the latest safety effective.
Inspectors from Washington state’s Department of Labor and Industries discovered latest safety violations at the corporate’s Redmond, Wash., site last December, in a visit prompted by employee complaints, based on state inspection records obtained by Reuters under an open records request. An agency spokesperson said that SpaceX can still appeal the choice.
The inspectors concluded the location lacked a “thorough safety program,” adequate communication of labor rules, and a system to “correct violations,” the records said. The “near amputation,” as inspectors called it, occurred after a roll of fabric fell and crushed a employee’s foot.
Managers at SpaceX told the state inspectors that it was a one-time incident and the issue was fixed.
Inspectors, nevertheless, found that employees weren’t required to wear steel-toe shoes, although the rolls of materials that they had to load right into a machine had gotten heavier – increasing from about 80 kilos to 300 kilos each.
One employee at the location told inspectors that “safety can get ignored” because the corporate’s “goal is to make as much as we are able to in a brief period of time,” based on the records. The injured employee said the machine where the rolls were loaded “had been deliberately arrange incorrectly for the aim of accelerating the production rate throughout the material loading phase.”
The employee, who was not identified within the report, told inspectors that the matter had not been addressed and that safety officials at the corporate don’t “have the reading comprehension nor the general competency to implement a security plan on the Redmond site.”
In a separate incident reported lower than 24 hours later, an unidentified Redmond worker was hospitalized for a broken ankle after they jumped off a dock during a hearth alarm, which inspectors said the corporate couldn’t have foreseen. SpaceX was not fined consequently.
The Reuters report last 12 months found that employee safety agencies fined the billionaire’s rocket company a complete of $50,836 for various violations within the last decade.
SpaceX’s history of injuries and regulatory run-ins underscores the boundaries of worker-safety regulation. Fines are capped by law and pose little deterrent for major firms, based on experts in US employee safety. Federal and state regulators also suffer from chronic understaffing of inspectors, they said.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which has paid SpaceX greater than $11.8 billion as a non-public space contractor, didn’t reply to questions on the matter. The space agency has repeatedly declined to comment on the corporate’s safety record, saying only that the agency has the choice of enforcing contract provisions that require SpaceX to “have a sturdy and effective safety program and culture.”
Last month, the wife of the employee who’s in a coma after his skull was fractured filed a negligence lawsuit against the corporate. NASA and SpaceX haven’t commented on that grievance.