SpaceX has not yet responded to Reuters questions about any of the incidents.
Washington:
U.S. worker safety officials fined Elon Musk’s SpaceX $3,600 this month after an incident at the company’s Washington state factory resulted in a “near amputation,” according to inspection records reviewed by Reuters.
A Reuters investigation late last year found that Musk’s rocket company ignored worker safety regulations and standard practices at its factories across the country. Through interviews and government records, the news organization documented at least 600 previously unreported injuries to SpaceX employees since 2014.
SpaceX has not yet responded to Reuters questions about any of the incidents, including the death of one worker and the injury of another worker who suffered a fractured skull in a rocket engine failure in 2022 and remains in a coma. The company also did not respond to a request for comment about the new safety fine.
In December, inspectors from the Washington state Department of Labor and Industries discovered the company’s plant in Redmond, Wash., during a visit stemming from worker complaints, according to state inspection records obtained by Reuters through a public records request. New security violation. An agency spokesman said SpaceX could still appeal the decision.
Inspectors concluded the plant lacked a “comprehensive safety program,” adequate communication of work rules and a system “to correct violations,” records said. Inspectors said the “near amputation” incident occurred after a roll of material fell and crushed a worker’s foot.
SpaceX managers told state inspectors it was a one-time incident and the issue had been resolved.
However, inspectors found that employees were not required to wear steel-toed shoes, even though the rolls of material they had to load into the machines became heavier — from about 80 pounds to 300 pounds (36 kilograms to 136 kilograms) per roll.
A worker at the site told inspectors that “safety may have been overlooked” because the company’s “goal was to produce as much product as possible in a short period of time,” records show. The injured worker said the machine loading the rolls “was intentionally misset to increase productivity during the material loading phase.”
The worker, who was not identified in the report, told inspectors that the matter had not been resolved and that the company’s safety officer “did not have the reading comprehension skills or overall ability to implement a safety program at the Redmond facility.”
In a separate incident reported less than 24 hours later, an unidentified Raymond employee jumped from a dock during a fire alarm and was hospitalized with a broken ankle, a situation that inspectors said the company could not have foreseen. SpaceX was not fined.
A Reuters report last year found that worker safety agencies had fined the billionaire’s rocket company a total of $50,836 for various violations over the past decade.
SpaceX’s history of injuries and regulatory conflicts highlights the limits of worker safety regulation. U.S. worker safety experts say fines are limited by law and provide little deterrent to big companies. Federal and state regulators also face a chronic shortage of inspectors, they said.
NASA, which pays SpaceX more than $11.8 billion as a private space contractor, did not respond to questions about the matter. The space agency has repeatedly declined to comment on the company’s safety record, saying only that the agency has the option of enforcing terms of the contract requiring SpaceX to “have a strong and effective safety program and culture.”
Last month, the wife of a worker who was left in a coma after fracturing his skull filed a negligence lawsuit against the company. NASA and SpaceX have not yet commented on the complaint.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
