“Day by day, Musk’s companies control more of the Internet, the power grid, the transportation system, objects in orbit, the nation’s security infrastructure, and its energy supply,” historian Jill Lepore told The New Yorker. Credit: Shutterstock / Frederic Legrand – COMEO

Tesla and SpaceX aren’t the only businesses owned by Texas billionaire Elon Musk’s to draw serious whistleblower complaints about their safety records.

Workers at Musk’s Boring Co. raised concerns about “life-threatening risks” during the firm’s construction of tunnels in the Lone Star State, according to a new Express-News investigation. Among the allegations: employees were burned with chemicals on the job, the company let inadequately trained hires run heavy machinery and managers frowned on breaks to such an extent that crews “urinated and defecated in the tunnels” they were constructing.

Even though Boring Co. workers raised their concerns with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Texas-based officials with the federal agency issued no fines and never even opened a case into the company, according to the daily.

OSHA’s Austin office declined to comment about how it handled worker complaints, and Boring Co. — which has disputed the workers’ allegations — didn’t respond to requests for comment, according to the Express-News.

The report comes as Musk, the world’s richest person, faces high-profile allegations of unsafe workplaces at his marquee companies, electric car-maker Tesla and rocket company Space X. Musk announced his relocation from California to Texas in late 2020 after fighting with the Golden State over its COVID-19 restrictions during the early stages of the pandemic.

Since then, Tech-focused news site The Information looked into complaints by Tesla’s current and former workers about “a pattern of risky incidents at the plant.” Employees described an on-site explosion and a worker being pinned by a robot among other incidents. 

A separate Reuters investigation from late 2023 documented roughly 600 previously unreported workplace injuries at SpaceX, based in the South Texas town of Boca Chica, including “crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye wounds and one death.”

Even though the OSHA slapped Boring Co. with $112,000 in fines for eight safety violations as it created a tunnel under a portion of Nevada, there’s no evidence the Texas office of the federal agency “ever visited [Boring Co.’s] test site near Bastrop to investigate,” the Express-News notes in probe of worker complaints.

“I felt like they just didn’t care,” Myles Ortiz, a former Boring Co. technician told the daily. “It was deflating.”

Ortiz, who once served as an Army tank commander, said he was moved to complain to authorities because he feared for his team’s safety.
“I fully believe they are going to kill somebody,” he said in his OSHA complaint, the Express-News reports.

Wayne Meredith, a former Boring Co. safety manager who filed the OSHA complaints that prompted the Nevada fines told the daily the only time crews stopped tunneling was when machinery broke down.

“People were expendable,” he said. “We were easily replaced.”

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This article appears in Apr 3-16, 2024.

Sanford Nowlin is editor-in-chief of the San Antonio Current. He holds degrees from Trinity University and the University of Texas at San Antonio, and his work has been featured in Salon, Alternet, Creative...