"The undocumented workers who helped build Elon Musk's Texas gigafactory,"

Cristy was one of many undocumented workers who powered the rapid expansion of Musk’s business empire on the outskirts of Austin, according to interviews with labor advocates, contract construction managers, and unauthorized laborers themselves. Bloomberg Businessweek spoke with 10 undocumented immigrant workers who said they’d been employed by outside companies to work at Tesla and SpaceX facilities in the Austin area...

Sean Forkner, who represented members of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners of America on the Tesla project in its early days, thought the proportion of undocumented workers there was typical of the industry—no better, no worse. He went to the site at least once a month, and members of his team visited at least weekly. “There wasn’t anything unique going on out there, it was just the sheer scale of it,” Forkner says. “was just a magnifying glass of the practices of the industry."...

[Musk's] undocumented workers say their labor helped his companies a lot, too. The Austin gigafactory is now busy churning out Cybertrucks, and construction never really stopped; Tesla recently embarked on an expansion. Neighboring Bastrop is fast becoming a Musk company town, with the Boring Company testing its tunneling technology and facilities for X and SpaceX in the works or undergoing expansion. Tesla and SpaceX didn’t respond to interview requests or detailed questions for this story. Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment sent to him and his lawyer prior to publication...

Working conditions varied greatly among the dozens of contractors and subcontractors on the Tesla site... Forkner recalls being approached by crews of 20 to 30 people at a time who worked for other Tesla subcontractors but wanted to join the union, whose members received overtime pay and had strong safety protections built into their contracts. He had to turn many of them away, because they didn’t have documentation showing they were authorized to work in the US. Some presented papers that were obviously fake; others had nothing at all. Forkner estimates he and his team interacted with hundreds of workers who were in this position...

On projects the scale of Tesla’s Austin expansion, three or four layers of contractors distance the owner of the property from the workers on the ground...

In its dealings with contractors, Tesla stressed that speed was paramount. Construction crews worked 24 hours a day, split into two 12-hour shifts. Some best practices fell to the wayside, according to eight current and former construction workers or union representatives on the job, including the past Tesla employee. Three of the former workers say dangerous areas of the site were left unbarricaded, amplifying the risk of injury...