Robin Amer: Hey, everybody. Robin here. 

First, I hope that you and your loved ones are staying safe, healthy and, most importantly, inside. I know this is a really difficult time, and we’re all looking for ways to adapt to the new reality of the coronavirus. 

For me and the rest of The City team, that means a few different things. 

For now, we’ve decided to put our regular Season 3 reporting on hold. 

Instead, we’re cooking up something new, something different, something else we’re really excited about. And something that we hope will help you get through this crisis.

We’ll have more to tell you in the coming weeks about what we’re up to. 

But in the meantime, the other reason you’re hearing from us today, is—surprise!—we have a new Season 2 bonus episode for you!

It has nothing to do with coronavirus, and everything to do with the story we reported about strip clubs and big tech in Reno, Nevada.

Now If this is your first time listening to an episode of The City, I recommend that you go back to the start of Season 2. Because that way this bonus episode will make a lot more sense. OK, thanks.

Production team member: Previously on The City… 

Mayor Hillary Schieve: We are truly rebranding this city, and companies like Tesla, Amazon, and Apple are all building and investing right here. 

Kris Thompson: Look at all the cars. This is all payroll. It's all jobs. It's all service contracts. None of this is visitors, or very few. This is all payroll. It's like a college football game. I mean, you can feel the economic power of payroll just by looking at all the cars here. 

Caller: Yes, this is Officer Fritz with Tesla security. We are located at 1 Electric Avenue. We are requesting EMS. 

Lane Dillon: And I can specifically remember waking up that morning and thinking, “Man, I hope nothing happens to me.” [Laughs] 

Caller: We need an ambulance. We have a female employee that her, she got a hand stuck between the two modules, and she's bleeding pretty badly. 

---

Robin Amer: It's a windy spring day in May 2019, 20 miles east of Reno. 

A county sheriff's deputy named Mitch Hammond pulls his police cruiser up to a tiny white guard shack, the entrance to Tesla's Gigafactory. 

He's here to meet Alberto Garcia, a safety supervisor for OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 

Garcia speaks first. 

Alberto Garcia: You know, the reason why we ask if you can come over and accompany us is because we have to obtain a warrant to perform a full inspection—
Deputy Mitch Hammond: OK.
Alberto Garcia:  —of the job site. Unfortunately, we have to go through the compulsory process, because they, uh. They’re a little...
Deputy Mitch Hammond: Yes. They're difficult ...

Garcia explains that he’s trying to conduct a full safety inspection of Tesla’s worksite. But for the past two months, Tesla’s refused to let inspectors into the building. 

Garcia hopes he’ll have better luck with a warrant and a deputy by his side. 

Someone else pulls up in an Audi sedan. Hammond turns to Garcia.

Deputy Mitch Hammond: This must be your guy. Paulsen?  

It’s Rob Paulsen, Tesla’s senior manager for environmental health and safety.

Deputy Mitch Hammond: Is he going to give you any flak? 

Paulsen is holding his cell phone out in front of him. He’s got Tesla’s lawyer on the line.

Rob Paulsen: You guys want me to go inside and kind of talk through what the next steps are, bring Alberto and Deputy...what was your last name?
Deputy Mitch Hammond: Hammond.
Rob Paulsen: Deputy Hammond.
Yesenia Villasenor: OK. I don't think we need to bring them inside. Why don’t we … Is it possible they could give us a few minutes? Like, you know, about five to 10 minutes…

Despite the warrant and the sheriff's deputy, it’s not clear whether Paulsen is going to let them into the Gigafactory. 

And it turns out that this moment of confrontation and uncertainty is just one chapter in a much bigger story about what happens when the power of the state and one of the state’s biggest employers go head to head.

I’m Robin Amer, and from USA TODAY, this is The City. 

ACT 1 

Robin Amer: OK, so this season on The City, we looked at the ways that Reno, Nevada, is changing now that it's home to Silicon Valley tech companies like Tesla. 

We wanted to understand the full impact those companies are having on Reno, both good and bad. 

And we learned that even though Tesla has created more than 7,000 jobs in the region, it has also helped spark an affordable housing crisis … and … has a troubling history of worker injuries at its massive Gigafactory. 

So we've wrapped our regular season, but our reporter, Anjeanette Damon, has continued to look into Tesla. She brings us today's story with some pretty shocking revelations about the way that Tesla has been operating in the state. 

Hey, Anjeanette.

Anjeanette Damon: Hey, Robin. 

Robin Amer: Take us back to the beginning of this story, before this OSHA inspector shows up at the Gigafactory with a warrant. How did we get here?

Anjeanette Damon: So we actually have to go back almost two years to March 2018, when in one night, in two separate incidents, two women had their fingers crushed in the same piece of equipment. 

Robin Amer: Hm! So one night, two separate women, two injuries in the same piece of equipment.

Anjeanette Damon: Yeah. One woman smashed her finger. The safety manager came in and, you know, shut down operations, said, “Everybody, be really careful of this point right here on this machine. You can get hurt.” Despite that warning, it happened a second time, just hours later. Another worker had the tip of her finger actually cut off.

Robin Amer: Oh my God. So Anjeanette, how did you first hear about this story?

Anjeanette Damon:  In our reporting for Season 2, I was aware of that incident. What I didn't know is that it set off this chain of events that resulted in this two-month standoff between Tesla and OSHA. 

Anjeanette Damon: I started to get anonymous phone calls saying, “Look, we know you're looking into Tesla, but you got to dig deeper, because right now Tesla is not letting OSHA on site. You got to check into this.”

Anjeanette Damon: So, of course, I want to figure out whether this is happening. So my first move is to pick up the phone and call OSHA and say, “Hey, I understand your inspectors can't get on site at the Tesla Gigafactory, what's going on?” 

And I got a very polite but a big “no comment.” So I turned to public records, which is another reporter's tool. When you get a “no comment,” go for the documents.

Robin Amer: And what did you learn from those public records? 

Anjeanette Damon: So as a result of those pretty serious injuries, Nevada OSHA, they decided to investigate. They found some workplace safety violations. They fined Tesla about $7,000. 

And as part of this whole process, Tesla and OSHA entered into a settlement agreement. Tesla, they agreed to have an outside consultant come and look at this piece of equipment, which was, uh, kind of a proprietary piece of equipment that Tesla had constructed and engineered itself. And as a result of that settlement, Tesla didn't have to pay its fines. 

So flash forward about a year, and OSHA inspectors are trying to follow up on this to see if Tesla indeed hired that consultant, did indeed get the report and make any changes to the equipment that was necessary. 

Right about this same time, some more complaints started coming in. There was a worker who was walking down a hallway and passed out on the floor. And so OSHA said, alright, it's time for us to follow up on this old complaint anyways to see if Tesla did what it needed to do. We now have this other complaint. We should go in there and do a full inspection of the entire factory to make sure that workers are safe there. 

Robin Amer: So what's the difference between this new, full inspection that OSHA decides it needs to do, and the other inspections that it had done previously, and how big a deal is it that they decide they need to do this full inspection at this point? 

Anjeanette Damon: So there's several different ways that OSHA can enter a business. One of them is if there is a reported injury, like an amputation or a hospitalization or a death, they'll go in and investigate that specific incident. They can also go in to investigate specific complaints. So, you know, this incident where someone falls in the hallway unconscious, they could go in and investigate just that complaint.

But those are very limited inspections and they usually are contained just to the area where the incident occurred. But OSHA can also go into a workplace, particularly when that workplace is part of an industry that has a higher-than-average rate of injury, and battery factories do. 

So because of multiple complaints, the OSHA inspectors in Nevada said, “You know what, we need to go in and take a look at this entire factory.”

Robin Amer: So what happened after OSHA asked Tesla to do a comprehensive inspection of the Gigafactory?

Anjeanette Damon: Tesla said, ook, OSHA you can come in and you can investigate these specific complaints. You can confine your inspection to the area of the complaint. You can talk to those employees. But we are not opening up our factory doors for a full comprehensive inspection of our plant. We just don't think that you have the legal footing to do that.

 OSHA reasserted itself, says, look, you have all these complaints rolling in. That allows us to request this comprehensive inspection. 

And they went back and forth for a couple months. You know, OSHA did its best to try and negotiate its way into the factory. Tesla kept pushing back. 

And finally, about two months after this all started, OSHA had enough. And they went to a judge and they laid out their case. Look, we've not done a comprehensive inspection. They're part of an industry that has a higher-than-average injury rate. Will you give us a warrant? And the judge agreed and signed a warrant.

Robin Amer: Wow. And I don't know if you know the answer to this, but how typical is it for OSHA to have to seek a warrant in order to be able to do one of these comprehensive inspections? 

Anjeanette Damon: I talked to the OSHA inspectors about this and they say, you know, it happens from time to time. You know, there's businesses in the community who pretty much will only let inspectors in if they have a warrant. Most don't put them through that entire process. But they do have a process under state law. It's called the compulsory process where they're able to seek judicial review and get a warrant.  

Anjeanette Damon: So that brings us back to that very windy day in May that we heard at the top of the episode.  

Robin Amer: What happens next after the break. 

 

ACT 2

 

Robin Amer: OK, so Anjeanette, where we left off, we've got the OSHA safety manager and a Storey County deputy showing up at Tesla at the Gigafactory, warrant in hand, to do this inspection. Take us through what happens after that.

 

Anjeanette Damon: You have OSHA’s safety manager Alberto Garcia on scene with the warrant in his hand. You have Storey County Deputy Mitch Hammond to help enforce that warrant. 

And to set the scene a little bit, they're only allowed as far as the guard shack. And the guard shack is about a mile down the road from the factory. 

So you can kind of picture, they’re on kind of this busy roadway with the traffic coming in and out of the factory surrounded by sagebrush covered hills and this, you know, giant building’s looming in the background. Tesla's safety manager pulls up on scene. His name's Rob Paulsen. And they don't know whether they're going to get in or not.

Rob Paulsen starts looking through the warrant. He’s looking at the date. He’s reading it. He sees, you know, the judge has signed it. And he's asking, you know, the lawyer...

 

Rob Paulsen: You guys want me to go inside and kinda talk through what the next steps are? Bring Alberto and Deputy...what was your last name? 

Deputy Mitch Hammond: Hammond. 

Rob Paulsen: Deputy Hammond. Um...

Yesenia Villasenor: I don’t think we need—I don’t think we need to bring them inside. Why don’t we, is it possible they could wait there if you give us a few minutes. Like, you know, about five or 10 minutes?

 

Anjeanette Damon: And you hear the lawyer on the phone say, just give us five to ten minutes to kind of talk about this and decide what to do. 

In the meantime, Storey County Deputy Hammond is kind of wondering, you know, what the heck do I do if this giant company decides to reject this warrant or deny these safety inspectors entry?

 

So Deputy Hammond starts getting on the phone to his bosses. He finally gets a hold of the district attorney and he explains the situation.

 

Deputy Mitch Hammond: I'm here with OSHA at Tesla. And now Tesla is wanting the particulars to what exhibits they're here to chase down and inspect.

 

Anjeanette Damon: You know, in most cases, if somebody rejects or denies entry to law enforcement with a warrant, they go to jail.

 

Deputy Mitch Hammond:: They have to do it or it's contempt of court, right? And that means, that means the guy that’s standing here gets taken away? I mean, he’s representing Tesla. And that's why I'm calling, because it's kind of a tricky one.

 

Anjeanette Damon: The district attorney is like, well, hang on. You know, let me think about this. I'll call you right back. 

In the meantime, Rob Paulsen comes back, starts asking some more questions of OSHA. You know, what's the basis of this warrant? What are you asking to do? And Alberto Garcia with OSHA is, like, look, it's up to you. We have this warrant. We have law enforcement here. It's up to you on how to proceed. 

Ultimately, the DA gets back to the deputy, says, look, we're not taking anybody to jail here if they deny entry. You got to go back to the judge and ask him to enforce this. 

And finally, after lots of discussion, Tesla says, you know what? You're not coming on site. We're denying you entry. 

 

Deputy Mitch Hammond:: All right. 

Unknown: Yeah, cool. 

Unknown: Thank you, deputy. 

Deputy Mitch Hammond:: I’m sure we’ll see each other again. 

Unknown: Yeah, yeah. (laugh) Hopefully on, uh‚—

Deputy Mitch Hammond::  We'll let the judge make the next decision.

Unknown: Yup. Yeah...

 

Anjeanette Damon: And this is what really shocked me when I was going through these records. Not only had Tesla for months told OSHA—who has the authority under the federal government to inspect workplaces—not only did Tesla say, no, you can't come in. Then OSHA shows up with a warrant and a deputy and they still say no. They still say, no, you're not coming into this factory. That really, that absolutely surprised me.

As you hear the deputies say on the tape, they didn't want to get into tricky water and complicate things by taking a Tesla employee to jail. And you can hear the frustration in the deputy's voice.

 

Deputy Hammon: I mean, anywhere else, man, this guy would go to jail.

 

Robin Amer: Wow. OK, so what happens after OSHA goes back to the judge, reports all this? What does the judge do?

Anjeanette Damon: Well, OSHA never got a chance to go back to the judge. 

After this entire thing happened, the next day, Tesla started to pull some political strings. They called one of the governor's cabinet members, the head of the Department of Business and Industry, which oversees OSHA, and said, look, we need a meeting. That cabinet member Michael Brown agrees, says, yeah. Let's all get in a room.

So Michael Brown, the head of the department, gets the head of the division that oversees OSHA—you can see the state bureaucracy here—and they also call up the elected attorney general of Nevada, whose lawyers for his office represent the department in this dispute. And they say, you know, let's have a meeting.

So the day after they unsuccessfully try to serve the warrant, they all gather in a room at the Nevada attorney general's office. Attorney General Aaron Ford is there himself for the beginning of the meeting. And they try to hammer out an agreement where Tesla will allow OSHA to inspect certain areas of the factory—not all of the areas. And because they're allowing OSHA into these certain areas, they want OSHA to go back to the judge and say, yeah, look, Tesla, let us in. All's good.

Robin Amer: So this meeting and these negotiations that Tesla brokered with OSHA, is that kind of thing common? And is that legal for Tesla to just say, you know, we'll give you access to this stuff over here, but not this other stuff over here? 

Anjeanette Damon: I talked to the head of the division of industrial relations, Ray Fierro, and I asked him that question. And he said in his experience, it was an unprecedented meeting. 

And even as the higher ups in state government are directing OSHA inspectors to agree to this. The district manager of northern Nevada wrote in an e-mail, look, I will do what you tell me to do, but it's in the best interest of the workers and their safety, if we go back to the judge right now and have them enforce this warrant. But that never happened.

Robin Amer:: How did Tesla justify its handling of this situation? 

Anjeanette Damon: You know, I would really like to hear Tesla's side of this. But they opted to completely ignore my request for comment. I sent emails. I sent text messages. I left voicemails. And they did not even acknowledge receiving my requests.

Robin Amer: So even before you reported this story, you had already done a lot of work about the power that Tesla wielded in Nevada. What do you feel like you're taking away from this story? What do you feel like you've learned that's new or surprising about the relationship and the dynamic between Tesla and the state?

Anjeanette Damon: You know, in Season 2 our reporting really focused on this question of Nevada's decision to recruit Tesla to the state almost at all costs. They offered this huge tax incentive package. 

And there wasn't a lot of thought put into what are the unintended consequences. There's a lot of benefits. But what could be some of the downsides and how do we try and address those maybe ahead of time? 

And so one of those, I think, unintended consequences of bringing a factory of this size to to this state is that safety record. 

You have thousands and thousands of people working there. And how does the state keep them safe? And I think that's what OSHA inspectors are really grappling with. They still say, look, we need to get a better idea of what's happening inside this factory and really make sure that the workers there are safe and and they don't feel like they've been able to do that yet. 

As you and I are speaking now, OSHA still has not done a comprehensive inspection of the factory. 

Robin Amer: Anjeanette, thank you.

Anjeanette Damon: You're welcome. 

 ----

Robin Amer: In early March, Tesla announced that it would start scouting locations for a new factory somewhere in the U.S., .a place to build its futuristic cybertruck. But that was before the coronavirus officially became a pandemic.

CEO Elon Musk was criticized for initially downplaying the disease and for keeping the California Gigafactory open even after local officials ordered a lockdown.

Tesla has since suspended operations at its Fremont plant and offered to make ventilators for hospitals in short supply. The company recently said it would drastically reduce the people working in its Nevada plant, but hasn’t yet closed it.

CREDITS 

The City is a production of USA TODAY and is distributed in partnership with Wondery. 

You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening right now. If you like the show, please rate and review us, and be sure to tell your friends about us.

Our bonus episode today was reported and produced by Anjeanette Damon, Kameel Stanley, Taylor Maycan, and me, Robin Amer.

Our editors are Amy Pyle and Matt Doig. Original music and mixing is by Hannis Brown. 

Legal review by Tom Curley. Editorial oversight by Brian Duggan and Chris Davis.

I’m Robin Amer. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @thecitypod. Or visit our website.

That’s thecitypodcast.com.